familiar friends
characters in media who feel like home
hi folks!
for awhile i’ve been wanting to write a post about my favorite characters in different media formats. i think the majority of us can name at least one; those characters who were mirrors to pieces of identities. who represent experiences we couldn’t express. for me i didn’t have access to the language when i was younger, or perhaps were still yet to be created or defined: neurodivergence, queer and nonbinary, or other ways i experience and walk through life. so i started thinking of characters i could write about in a single post, and then quickly realized i couldn’t fit them all; too many kept coming to mind.
so, here we are. to break up the heavier posts (we’re processing lots) once a month i’ll share about these familiar friends who helped me see parts of myself i was taught to feel ashamed of in a different light. from jo in little women and the way she balked at the conventions society expected women to follow, or seeing lou from before me & you and her pure expression of joy when william gave her bumble bee stockings. hell, i could do an entire series looking at a bunch of the characters from she ra and the princesses of power to talk about the wounds its healed, whether its adora thinking its her goddamn mission to save everyone even to her own demise or entrapta and her entire being, from seeing social gatherings as science experiments to completely missing social cues to her own detriment and putting her life and others’ in risky or flat-out dangerous situations (i’m not saying i inadvertently ended up working for this imperialistic overlord trying to colonize an entire planet or threaten its destruction or anything but i was raised christian.)
today we’re going to start with a decades-long treasured duo: lilo and stitch.
01. it started squished on the couch next to my friend.
our parents were in the other room with other parents and adults from church. the kids (i don’t remember if there were any others, honestly) were relegated to the family room where the tv was. they put on lilo and stitch for us to have something to do.
immediately i fell for them.
stitch was the most adorable, most snuggable blue alien of my dreams. his garbly voice was soothing and hysterical.1 lilo was audacious, spirited and blunt in her honesty (which often got her in trouble) and had a strong need for justice without hesitating to point out when situations weren’t fair. she stood her ground and fought for the people she cared about. she felt DEEPLY and didn’t know how to express it in ways that the people around her understood. her special interests seemed to alienate her from peers. she struggled to make friends with others her age until she found stitch.
02. *garbly stitch voice*
except for finding my own stitch, lilo’s way of existing in this complicated, sometimes cruel world (a lesson she learns way too young) resonated with me.2 the way she was so fully herself no matter how others rejected her made my bones ache in recognition. i knew that feeling. her wish for a friend who didn’t leave her behind is something a lot of us can relate to. her persistence to see kids who clearly found her too different for them to find relatable to be around as her friends was something i saw from another perspective.
as a kid i recognized parts of lilo in ways i didn’t understand fully. but now nani’s fierce loyalty and commitment to loving lilo exactly as she is helps me feel seen in my experience as a late-discovered audhd human. how she loves lilo heals different wounds from the ways my drive for autonomy was ignored or mishandled. and i think this can be demonstrated partly through her sister, nani.
take the scene in the pound, for instance.
when lilo insists she be the one to pay for stitch’s adoption fee, and then whispers in nani’s ear asking if she can spare the two bucks, without flinching nani takes the two bills from the bewildered employee, passes them to lilo who then immediately hands the payment back to nani, who calmly and without question hands the two dollars to the employee for lilo.
or when bubbles is about to drive off with lilo and nani tries to stop him. she says:
i’m the only one who understands her. you take that away, she won’t stand a chance.
when i was rewatching lilo and stitch for this newsletter and this scene came up it caught me, and i started thinking.
maybe to a lot of people the scene in the pound looks like a big sister trying to avoid a temper tantrum by way of appeasement, and maybe the one with mr. bubbles is a grieving sister trying to keep the remaining pieces of her family together after severe tragedy (which is a huge part of it) and only that.
but i like to think nani implicitly understood her sister’s need for autonomy and without shame created the space to give it to her. you see examples throughout the movie, little moments that feel like those spaces in seasons of deep grief when you come up for air and for just a minute everything is the same as it was before (such as the scene in the pound.) nani getting lilo’s film developed no questions asked, the evidence in the pictures pinned all across her bedroom walls and the photo books collecting. or the records strewn across the house, a clear sign of support of another one of lilo’s special interests. or the way lilo processed her grief; nani didn’t ever tell her how she should grieve, or that her way of processing was “weird”.
maybe these things seem small or insignificant to some. but for an audhd kid, these small actions of support mean everything in a world that tells us from the beginning everything we do differently isn’t right. and i think she understood that and was afraid other people wouldn’t consider lilo’s internal experience and needs and how they would present externally to others wouldn’t be seen or understood.
and yes, i’m well aware that this is a disney film from the early 2000s and that it’s not that deep. it’s still fun to analyze favorite media.
03. that’s all, folks
i spent two weeks working on this post and missed last week’s post and it still isn’t where i want it, but that’s life with two small kids and a big one running around the house. next week i want to talk about a video i saw on tiktok (go ahead and laugh) and the connections i made. i’ll link the video here.
until then. stay safe. hug your friends.
rowan
to this day i speak in stitch’s garbly voice as a stim. it’s become a great parenting tool.
she had a special interest in photography too, which by happenstance i developed in middle and high school.