Faye Valentine (Cowboy Bebop) gives me many feelings
Cowboy Bebop (The anime series) is a strange/thrilling/sad/slick/sonderous show.
All the characters are worth talking about but I’m always suprised at all the layers Faye Valentine has. She could so easily have been some object, more animated tits than character, or one of those gun girls who we keep getting told is a valkyrie or warrior but still ends up being mostly scantily-clad eye-candy.
(I mean, just look at this pose, it’s ridiculous, she’s being chased by gangsters but still making sure to stick out her butt)
So yes, Faye is shown for a long time as ditsy, addicted to gambling, arrogant, kind of a goblin (i.e. eating a tin of dog food). But the show goes out of it’s way to tell us that all this stuff is a persona- it’s the mechanism a woman out of time and deep in debt has developed over years to keep herself safe. She acts ditsy? Well that makes people underestimate her. The scanty clothes? Perfect for getting free stuff out of shallow men. The gambling? Well that’s probably a genuine addiction, but nothing else in her life is certain, not even her past. So that makes sense too.
So Faye Valentine- big mess, well thought out character- love it.
What really struck me the last couple of times I watched the show was her struggles with her past. Everyone on the Bebop is stuck in some sort of cycle, and hers is never being able to figure out or remember who she was before being put in stasis and waking up a couple of hundred yers later. Most of what she is told about her past is lies, people trying to con her. Even when she finally does get some real evidence on an old video tape (which spike and Jet are totally confused by, it’s adorable).
There’s a moment at the end of an episode where she just stares at this videotape of herself as a kid- a single eye quivers but mostly her face is frozen. It looks for all the world that she’s finally found some sort of proof of her past- but she just can’t remember being that happy smiling kid at all. it’s a self which has become stranger to her. And it’s heartbreaking.
Stuff progresses for Faye’s story, but this moment struck a deep vein of queer feels within me. I’ve seen the term ‘Queertemporality’ used for feelings like this. In many places, growing up as a queer person means you miss some parts of a typical childhood/early adulthood, or you experience them but not how you’d like to. I’m trans, but I’ll always have the experience of growing up knowing something was wrong. I can imagine what things would’ve been like if I could have grown up as the gender I am now, but even if I do it’ll be like Faye’s videotape. It’s a version of myself I can’t remember being, because it’s not a part of me. And the real version of my own childhood self can often feel like a stranger. And that’s something a lot of trans people share. And it is sad. Like Cowboy Bebop, MY FAVORITE SAD ANIME WITH GUNS AND KING-FU AND SPACE DOGS.