{"id":2800,"date":"2009-12-04T08:00:03","date_gmt":"2009-12-04T15:00:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.alertnerd.com\/?p=2800"},"modified":"2009-12-04T08:00:03","modified_gmt":"2009-12-04T15:00:03","slug":"a-fangirl-is-born","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.alertnerd.com\/?p=2800","title":{"rendered":"A Fangirl is Born"},"content":{"rendered":"
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A Firestar Is Born<\/a><\/b>
Uploaded by dishdude87<\/a>. – Discover more animation and arts videos.<\/a><\/i><\/div>\n

For the longest time, I thought I made it up.<\/p>\n

I remembered a superheroine telling her origin story to a gang of attentive old friends. I remembered that said origin story somehow involved high school and people being big mean meanies. I remembered the moment when she realized she could fly.<\/p>\n

It all sounds so generic when I say it like that. But this was all<\/em> I could remember, a series of vague images rendered in bad \u00e2\u20ac\u02dc80s animation — the kind where \u00e2\u20ac\u0153running\u00e2\u20ac\u009d is represented by a repetitive sequence of mechanical lurches.<\/p>\n

It wasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t until recently that the pieces came together. I was describing my collection of hazy half-memories to my husband, and he was like, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Wait, that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a thing<\/em>. A thing that actually exists.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d And then we realized it was \u00e2\u20ac\u0153A Firestar is Born.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

This is an episode of Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends<\/em>, the big \u00e2\u20ac\u02dc80s toon wherein Spider-Man, Iceman and Firestar are college roomies who fight crime. (As depicted in the opening credits, their dorm room or group house or whatever it is is fucking amazing. The couches turn into computers<\/em>.) I was probably about 6 when it came out.<\/p>\n

Despite my lack of clarity on what actually took place in this episode, I remember it having a weirdly profound effect on me. It was one of the key things that sparked my love of superheroics — particularly superheroics performed by ladies who don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t put up with bullshit<\/em>.<\/p>\n

I couldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t really remember why<\/em> it had this effect, though. I mean, maybe just seeing an entire episode of something devoted to a lady superhero was enough for 6-year-old me, but\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6surely there had to be more to it than that, right? So recently, I watched it again.<\/p>\n

First off: okay, yes, there are a ton of goofy \u00e2\u20ac\u02dc80s things going on in this ep that are sort of hilarious. Like, why does Cyclops have a booming old man \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Phil Hartman doing a bit\u00e2\u20ac\u009d voice? And why is Wolverine vaguely Australian? And what is with the complicated trophy-by-way-of-birdbath exit route from Spidey and Friends’ superhero HQ? (Actually, that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s kind of awesome. I want it!)<\/p>\n

But let\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s try not to dwell on all that and get to the heart of the eppy, which is basically an extended flashback of Firestar\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s origin (Firestar, remember, was created specifically for this show). So there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s this total bitch named Bonnie who apparently exists solely to make Firestar\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s childhood and teen years a living hell. Seriously, Bonnie appears have no other purpose in life — she gives Firestar an ugly duck-wearing-a-baseball-cap doll! She messes up Firestar\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s book report! And when other people try to call her on her Firestar hatin\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 ways — like, Jesus, Bonnie, let it go already<\/em> — she\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s all, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153DON\u00e2\u20ac\u2122T TALK TO ME LIKE THAT OR YOU\u00e2\u20ac\u2122RE NOT A CHEERLEADER ANYMORE.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d (I know!)<\/p>\n

Throughout all this, Firestar is discovering her powers, from making things all melty to flying. When Bonnie takes things too far — hatching a needlessly complicated anti-Firestar plan, because you know, she\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Bonnie<\/em> — Firestar is finally like, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153God, enough<\/em>\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and sews herself a costume and takes that bitch down.<\/p>\n

Okay, so here\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s why I think this resonated with me: you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve got this girl who\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s instantly easy to relate to telling her origin story in her own words. And there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s something about it that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s utterly normal, even though she\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s, you know\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6a superhero. People at school are mean to her. She discovers her powers gradually, but she doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t instantly go out and try to save the world — she\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s just kinda like, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153oh, cool.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d She doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t even make herself a costume until push really comes to shove, and then we see her sitting at a little sewing machine, stitching that shit up in awesome DIY fashion. And what does she ultimately use her powers for the first time out? To take down a haggy high school nemesis. At a football game. In front of everybody<\/em>. She even gloats a little.<\/p>\n

If I discovered I had powers? This is probably what I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d do.* It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a perfect example of the utterly human side of superheroics — and the comic book stories I love the most know how to balance that with the larger-than-life, fate-of-the-world, OMG-we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re-all-gonna-die<\/em> type stuff.<\/p>\n

You can watch \u00e2\u20ac\u0153A Firestar is Born\u00e2\u20ac\u009d above (it’s not available on DVD, at least not in the States). And yes, yes, yes\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6as I mentioned before, it is a total goofball ’80spalooza. But it will always have a special place in my heart. Even though I could only remember random images and moments from it \u00e2\u20ac\u02dctil recently, those images were pivotal in shaping my 6-year-old brain\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s all-consuming superhero obsession. And considering that it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s tough to find fully-realized female superhero stories<\/a> amongst Hollywood\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s current glut of spandex-centric comics adaptions\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6well, being able to watch 25 minutes of a lady superhero who doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t put up with bullshit<\/em>** is pretty dang cool.<\/p>\n

*Or at least that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s what I would\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve done when I was a kid — now I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d save the world. Seriously<\/em>.<\/p>\n

**Especially bullshit from bitches named Bonnie.<\/em><\/p>\n

**This episode was written by the great Christy Marx, who also created Jem and the Holograms and wrote for shows like G.I. Joe and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. She seems to be — as Matt recently noted — some kind of \u00e2\u20ac\u0153essential fangirl connective tissue.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d You can totally become her Facebook fan here<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A Firestar Is BornUploaded by dishdude87. – Discover more animation and arts videos. For the longest time, I thought I made it up. I remembered a superheroine telling her origin story to a gang of attentive old friends. I remembered that said origin story somehow involved high school and people being big mean meanies. I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,69,4],"tags":[234,148,235],"class_list":["post-2800","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-comics","category-fandom","category-tv","tag-christy-marx","tag-fangirl","tag-firestar"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.alertnerd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2800","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.alertnerd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.alertnerd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.alertnerd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.alertnerd.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2800"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.alertnerd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2800\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.alertnerd.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2800"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.alertnerd.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2800"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.alertnerd.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2800"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}