#captain underpants

headspace-hotel:

t-auto:

icedcatte:

headspace-hotel:

headspace-hotel:

The qualities that divide good children’s literature from bad children’s literature:

1) The dragons are real.

2) The adults don’t believe you.

will elaborate

what I’m getting at here is that being a child is an experience defined by marginalization—by powerlessness, not being taken seriously, not being believed.

when you are a child you are aware of the terrible things in the world and terrified by them, and you feel everything so intensely. Before you learn to manage your emotions, they are consuming, incandescent experiences that are almost impossible to access again as an adult. You are small but your emotions and experiences are as large and as vivid as anyone else’s, but they are not taken as seriously as everyone else’s. You recognize that adults condescend to you and dismiss you.

As a child, you know that the world ought to be fair, that people ought to be helped, and you ask “Why?” And you ask “What is the point?” And as you become an adult you learn to repress those things. The answer to every question you ask as a child is “Because you have to” or “Because that’s the way it is,” and these are bullshit answers and we all know it, but defending an authoritarian relationship to someone weaker is easier than defending things about our world that are indefensible if we look at them honestly.

In The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, when Lucy first enters Narnia, she is not believed. Narnia has so much about it that makes it THE quintessential children’s book series, the archetype for children’s book series, and it all centers around how Narnia cannot be understood by adults.

Imitators have reduced this down to something about the Wonder of Childhood, something about how children are innocent and special that means only they can see magic because only they are able to believe in it. This is Not Correct. Books that do this are saccharine and awful because this is fake and we all know deep down that it’s fake.

Here’s the truth. Children do not live in an idyllic fantasy land where bad things aren’t real, adults do. For kids who have dealt with grief, abuse, trauma of all kinds—and let’s be real, that’s most of us—it’s condescending and idiotic to treat children as if they’re innocent about the evils in the world. Almost every child experiences evil early and is unable to communicate that experience to adults, whether this is in the form of a relatively innocent childhood fear or deeply damaging abuse.

There is much that has been said about how the Narnia books are about the trauma of World War 1, but most of that can also be said about how Narnia is about childhood in general—the traumatic nature of the return to the Real World is left unstated, because it is understood by the audience. Children have a vivid inner world that they do not have the vocabulary to explain to adults, and this is what Narnia is about.

There’s a reason why Neil Gaiman’s children’s books are so memorable, and it’s the same reason that they scared the living shit out of adults. There’s a reason why Where the Wild Things Are and Shel Silverstein’s poetry have had such a long cultural shelf life. These are not cozy, comfy stories that affirm adult perceptions of the childhood world as flat and innocent; they are troubling and ambiguous.

There’s also a reason why the children’s books that are so important often piss adults off. The best example I can think of is the Captain Underpants series. I never read any of them and yet I remember the extraordinary disdain people had for those books; they were the poster child for What Terrible Thing Has Become Of Literature.

And sure, maybe to an uncritical adult eye the adventures of misbehaving kids thwarting the rules of the world with poop jokes has no value, but I would argue the opposite—the poop jokes are, in fact, fundamental to the anti-authoritarian message. Adult attempts to suppress the scatological sense of humor children have hold a very important message about power.

Because here’s the thing: poop and farts are funny because they’re taboo, and especially so to children because we are constantly telling children what they Can and Can’t say. It’s not about poop, it’s about how adults betray themselves every time they get in a tizzy about a seven year old saying “turd,” because the fact that “turd” gets such a reaction means that uptight adults don’t have the power over kids that they want kids to think they have.

Scatological subjects embarrass adults, and the more uptight and controlling those adults are, the more devastating the embarrassment is. Kids are super conscious of the power dynamics in all their dealings with adults—how could they not be? And the explosion of raucous laughter that results from an elementary school teacher saying something that sounds sort of like “doody” wouldn’t happen if elementary school teachers weren’t constantly trying to reassert and solidify their position of power.

They, too, can be mortified and laid low by a humble “doody,” and if it did not have the power to do so, they wouldn’t try so hard to stop the kids from saying it.

I’d argue that where that all stands for Captain Underpants, part of it is also that it’s a comic book series for kids that features two kids who constantly disobey their teachers and principal. Dav Pilkey, the author of Captain Underpants, has ADHD and dyslexia and has been open about the fact that he was punished very often for both of these things. The reason why many adults find Captain Underpants distasteful is not only because of fart and poop jokes, though that is certainly a factor, it’s that the series is for those kids who can’t focus, who struggle in school academically because the author himself was a kid like that, and as a result Captain Underpants has some pretty strong anti-authority messages. For example:

Dab Pilkey genuinely has the best ‘about the author’ I’ve ever read and I think it’s a crime that it hasn’t been included yet

Dav Pilkey is not even in the vicinity of fucking around, is he.

*.✧ ʜᴀʀᴏʟᴅ ʜᴜᴛᴄʜɪɴꜱ (ᴄᴀᴘᴛᴀɪɴ ᴜɴᴅᴇʀᴘᴀɴᴛꜱ)

↝ ɪᴄᴏɴꜱ ᴛʜᴇᴍᴇ/ᴄᴏʟᴏʀꜱ: ʀᴀɪɴʙᴏᴡ

rabbit-kinder:

Well, it’s 11:19 at night on a Thursday. This is 3,654 words long, it’s a Captain Underpants fic, and I’m crying.

Take that as you will.

This is my half of the trade with @crispcomet who for me illustrated the last bit of ch 6 from It’s Hard and it is the CUTEST SMOOCH I’VE EVER SEEN. Look- go look- do yourself a favor and look.

And to note- Baron von Berry Redberry is a real cereal from the 1970′s. Yes, I did check. (Also it’s a guy in a plane and his ‘arch rival’ was Sir Grapefellow who also flew a plane and look, your wiser to the world now. You’re welcome)

---

      Benjamin gripped the edge of the sink, staring into the mirror and watching his own eye twitch as he quietly whispered to himself, “Come on, come on, come on.”

      He could do this.

      Or, rather, in theory he could do this, but there were a lot of things that only worked in theory alone; quantum theory, string theory, the theory of relativity, so many things yet to be proven and yet held near and dear as though infallible. He wouldn’t pretend to understand any of it, or this, least of all this, but he could make a couple of well-informed guesses.

      If Captain Underpants could fly, and he was Captain Underpants, then by all reason, he too, as Benjamin Krupp, should be able to fly.

Keep reading

I just saw a reblog of this in my notifications, and after doing some digging I’m glad to see that this fic was mirrored onto Ao3 before Rabbit-Kinder deactivated. Here it is!

Here we go again!

so! its been 5 years since the release of the Captain Underpants movie! and that… that just feels wild.

the spring/summer of 2017 was one of the most transformative periods of my life - and somehow, that wasn’t because i’d just entered college. no, it was because of an adorable, low-budget, shamelessly silly little movie. it was because of all the driving-age people who suddenly remembered “woah, this was my life as a kid!”. it was because of those people looking back and rediscovering how creative, how encouraging, how radical children’s literature can truly be. almost overnight this site was awash with gorgeous fanart and eye-opening theories and heartfelt thank-yous to Dav and Dreamworks. it was as fun as it was unexpected.

and i had so much fun riding the wave! i bought first-edition copies of the books just to see what was changed over the years. i took screencap requests and made edits about literaturetheory and threefanmixesandan ask blogandan accidental viral hoax that’ll haunt me till i die. i made so many new friends.

and through it all, i learned the answers to questions that had scared me for way too long; about my neurodivergence, my worst school days, and what i wanted to do with my life.

does anyone remember that opportunity i mentioned back as Miss Givings? ill be honest - im still working at it five years later. theres been many obstacles, a big one being myself. but as discouraging as the setbacks have been, its still a great comfort to know im headed somewhere with purpose.

i havent engaged much with the fandom since maybe mid-2019. aside from my other interests and obligations, the main CU tag’s content tends to skew a bit younger these days. and thats great - kids are who the series is meant for! (man tho, you guys sure love Melvinborg lol.)

but anyway, im sending this post out for anyone else from 2017 who just might check the tag today. and if that describes you: hey. i remember yall. i still think of yall, and all the weird fun things we made and said and did. and we probably cant go back to how it was, but im so glad it happened and i cant thank you enough.

and if Book 13 or The Second Epic Movie ever happens… i may not make as much noise as before, but i promise i’ll see you there.

agenderpinkiepie:

captain underpants is a book series written by dav pilkey, who was often punished in school and reprimanded because he had ADHD and dyslexia, and he created captain underpants while sitting in the hall being punished for “misbehaving.” when he wrote captain underpants, he encouraged the behaviors that he was so often yelled at for, and encouraged creativity and humor, mostly the very type of creativity and humor that got him in trouble in the first place, despite his teachers literally telling him that his comics were useless and there was no way he could make that into his living. instead of giving up, he wrote a beloved book series that had two cannonically ADHD characters who were told that their ADHD was not only okay, but wonderful, one of whom is cannonically not straight  and grows up to have a husband, in a book that flat out makes fun of the GOP in the first few chapters, and i am being completely and utterly serious when i say that we do not deserve dav pilkey or the captain underpants books and it makes me want to tear up as a pan kid w/ severe ADHD because this means so much to me

… or, in his own words:

The two aliens in episode 8 of the Captain Underpants series have the kind of voices I’d expect from Underswap Sans and Papyrus

some random melvinborg doodle