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why don't animate skeletons ever get slashed?
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| Fantasy Cowardice |
[Oct. 27th, 2009|06:50 pm] |
I admire courage. A lot. Turn me back to eleven and put me under the Sorting Hat, and 'Gryffindor, Gryffindor' I'll be pleading. While I've respect for Slytherfen and fear the great power of the Badger, Gryffindor's the one I like(d). The reason why I admire courage is because I haven't got any, and nowadays I think Ravenclaw is more my natural home, but it's a good virtue. Nevertheless I think that it's overrated, especially with regard to the fantasy genre. ( Read more... ) |
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| Fancomic rec |
[Jan. 9th, 2009|10:50 pm] |
Untitled, by ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) rodentnetworks. I'm recommending even though it's fandom-specific--the art is more than worth it, and the story? A meeting in a strange dimension, subtly-written and interesting characters. Can't rec it enough.
Go here. More art: here. |
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| Yuletide letter |
[Dec. 20th, 2008|11:26 pm] |
(*pokes LJ...evidently I still have to work on time management. I am here to squee for Yuletide.*)
Dear Yuletide Writer,
Thank you and thank you again. All three of my requests went 'Any', and any character and situation in those fandoms is going to be awesome. So if you already have a good idea of your story and are in the least concerned that something I say here might stem the flow of inspiration, you never saw this post! ( Read more... ) |
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| Gay Dumbledore brief ranting |
[Oct. 22nd, 2007|07:26 pm] |
Like I said last brief entry, JKR totally did a Good Thing in announcing it. All credit to her for that act.
But BOOSUCKS to everyone who thinks it didn't belong in the book. (Well, to the opinion, not the people holding it.) Yeah, this way we get the pleasure of all the delayed reactions and the point well made that Dumbledore was a person like any other person and his sexuality didn't change anything he was, but it belonged in the actual books rather than cut out to please censors. The whole relationship with Grindlewald and how that was kind of just slightly important to the plot? The parallel of Snape/Lily, doomed Dark loves with tragic endings, and how that factored into the Snape/Dumbledore relationship which was of course not at all relevant to the books? callmecaito has a very funny list of bad ways Dumbledore's sexuality could have featured in the text, but marauderthesn has an edit to the Kings Cross scene that's perfect.
"I was frustrated with my family responsibilities," Dumbledore said. "I was desperate to feel as important as I had at school, I was taken with Grindelwald's ideas, I was in love - "
"You were in love?" Harry said, confused.
Dumbledore looked at him and suddenly he understood.
"Oh," he said, feeling stupid. "I didn't know that you and Grindelwald - "
"It felt as though we were compatible in every way," Dumbledore said. "Until the day that - that Ariana died..."
We would still have gotten that Dumbledore, the person we knew and (may have) cared about was exactly the same person he'd been in six books, we just knew one more fact about him and that fact changed absolutely nothing about who he was. Slash doesn't mean NC-17. The mention of "gay" doesn't mean the mind automatically switches to hot sexings a-going on. Gay isn't pedophilia, either. (Some jokes in callmecaito's post depend on those misconceptions.) We should have gotten over this by now and realised that it's kind of good to acknowledge the existence of more than heterosexuality.
It's true we didn't hear about the Patils' or Anthony Goldstein's religious practices, but we still could assume Hindu and Jewish options existed, and the Christianity wasn't quite as overt as...Harry/Ginny. Ron/Hermione. Bill/Fleur. Tonks/Lupin. Molly/Arthur. Nicholas/Perenelle. Grey Lady/Bloody Baron. Kendra/Percival. Snape/Lily. James/Lily. Luna/Dean. Cho/Michael. Draco/Pansy. Draco/unknown. Petunia/Vernon. Andromeda/Ted. The Lestranges. Frank/Alice. Lucius/Narcissa. Merope/Tom. Teddy/Victoire. Xenophilus/Luna’s mum. (Arguably implied) Bellatrix/Voldemort. (Teased) Scorpius/Rose. All the hetpairings defintely have their good points, but... We assume the authors are writing the characters straight (or writing the characters maybe sort of gay but not mentioning the word because it's hard and they might lose readers) unless there's evidence otherwise, because straight is the default. kate_nepveu raises this point in relation to John Scalszi on race. We imagine the characters to be default when we're not given the clues to go against stereotype--and authors really should have the courage to have their characters come out and say GAY, GAY, GAY ALREADY. |
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| Poor Albus/Minerva 'shippers! |
[Oct. 21st, 2007|10:15 am] |
Dumbledore is gay, gacked from ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/community.gif) the_hms_stfu, tiferet, and gehayi. (There's also already homophobic response, where one commenter praises his son for doing a crude parody called "Dumb Gay Fag".)
What will this mean for the hetshippers? It's easy to come across as homophobic by writing a gay character straight, but het also allows for the immediate anti-sexist side effect of female characters important in the story. And of course the revelation's secondary canon; thus cue the reopened debate on its precise status. I feel sorry for Jossed Albus hetshipping, especially those with slashy side pairings; but new information makes AUs for us all. And of course I have total SQUEE that JKR has come forth with this; it would have been better had she felt able to include it in the books themselves, but she certainly deserves at least a small chocolate-chip cookie for this stand. :D |
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| A quick question... |
[Aug. 30th, 2007|06:20 pm] |
(God, LJ's being stupid again. Liz_marcs did some interrogating of an abuse team member and found that even links can get you banned. Well, fuck. I understand that LJ doesn't want a flood of sharechildporn communities whose sole function is to link to illegal and disgusting content, but there's a world of difference between that and someone getting a ban for posting a link to their perfectly legal piece of well-crafted artwork featuring Romeo and Juliet getting it on, which could potentially happen under this thoroughly underdefined policy!)
Anyway.
Circumstance: A subsection of a fantasy world in a TV show is an obvious ripoff of good old Aussieland.
Details: Didgeridoo music, hot sands and red rocks albeit a placename referring to a desert in entirely the wrong continent, pubs, betting, white redheads with tattoos—and the only face of colour turns out to be a white bad guy in blackface.
Question: After invoking the sound of traditional instrumentation, is it racist to fail to represent the people responsible for inventing said traditional instrumentation, 'cepting for bad guy in disguise whose blackened face seems to have been meant to look sinister?
(Other question, same fantasy 'verse: does the notion of a big brown people who happen to be strong but stupid happen to remind you of any racist stereotypes?)
Especially as regards the latter…a little extra research and thought before using these things is never wasted. |
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| Late to IBARW... |
[Aug. 12th, 2007|09:09 pm] |
This is a blog, and it is against racism, and I apologise for being late. Here's the del.icio.us page, and there's so much there. fickle_goddess writes about Disney's Esmeralda and privilege; starfishncoffee posts a disturbing article; matociquala has an interesting post up; the-willow at InsaneJournal writes about Fillmore (I've seen a couple of episodes and think it's excellent); lea_hazel posts a brilliant Fables expose about the Arabian Fables; ciderpress writes about communication; kittiekattie's post on overt versus covert racism is marvelous; bibliotech posts and links to womanism resources; kate_nepveu makes a great point about defaults; and ibarw does daily round-ups.
rydra_wong began a meme to pimp a CoC of choice, and I thought I'd go for a character from my favourite obscure fandom ever, Ace Lightning. (See icon!) Credit goes to sapphiresilver and mystifiedstar for screencaps and transcripts, to Rotgut for his transcripts, and to scarab_dynasty and lightningflash8 for their excellent help. rydra_wong's roundups are here and here.
I was completely neutral about Sam at first. My Mary-Sues were warrior princesses with really big swords; Samantha Thompson is not a heroine, no fighter of legend with swift spear and a thousand lives. She has not saved the world; her birth was never prophesised at the behest of some strange destiny; she has no strange powers, and neither martial arts skill nor extraordinary intelligence. In a canon with so much more going on than her attendance at middle school, compared to the superheroics Samantha is quite frankly dull—and worse, she abruptly leaves the series two-thirds of the way through due to her actress’ other commitments.
And yet, as I grew old enough to understand that the young characters were young and to be excused their failure to be the great perfect heroes I was so sure I would have been in their place, I started to see Samantha's strengths. Not another useless human whose screen presence was to be suffered through in order to get to the superheroics, she turned out to be a strong and compassionate young woman, whose presence contributed a good deal to the warmth and resonance of the story.
( She wanted something amazing… (contains images) ) |
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| The Power Of Rejection |
[Aug. 10th, 2007|04:07 pm] |
So because my personal preferences are always Totally Correct In Every Single Way, I thought I'd explore a possible reason why I find myself feeling ridiculously protective about female characters facing this particular Dire Fate from the men in their lives, especially when previous canon has shown some sort of attraction.
This, especially if taken to extremes, sounds awfully like "Het Pairings Must Never Break Up; No Slash For You, You Perverted Hag!" (Not to convey anything advocating censorship of all fics Sarah Frost happens to personally dislike. I like slash, really. Sometimes even involving the technically underage, thankyousoverymuchLJ.)
Except I sometimes find myself hating the way women get rejected in originalfic as well, and one possible reason may be because ( equality is slowly coming in ) |
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| A Brief Study In Mary-Sue |
[Jul. 28th, 2007|11:42 am] |
A young girl thinks if born into another universe she would be a great hero, a legend added to existing legends, with a dead mother and noble father granting her powers, confident and capable and ready to save others. Her author takes screencaps of the existing male hero and photoshops (badly) over him to make this character, erasing him while bringing her heroine to light.
And that sends a little tingle to my feminist heart. The canon in question is highly misogynist; despite the only main female character's established skills, the hero quickly usurps her position while she has nothing useful to do in a good two-thirds of the episodes, and some of those are about punishing her for getting justifiably enraged at the protagonist's dickery. The other extant female characters never show up on screen, get mind-controlled, and get imperilled and rescued both by boys younger and less experienced than they.
So what does it mean, that female fans (more than one of them, actually) are inserting themselves into this universe that hates women, sketching themselves in over the chauvinist pig of a protagonist (although their characters do aid him)?
I once again recommend this article on the power of Mary-Sue. |
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| Ginny Weasley Rocks! |
[Jun. 8th, 2007|05:05 pm] |
My opinions have changed. Thanks to fandom, thanks to fanfic, Ginny Weasley is now a character I love love love and would like to see happy with Harry! (Or just generally happy, as long as she gets a POV that explains it and isn’t just randomly off somewhere while Harry finds true happiness with a superior model!) <3
Of course, her characterization did change a good deal between books four and five (yes, we knew her brothers were extroverts, but she didn’t really act like them, and going pale at injuries and falling asleep at the World Cup doth not make a keen plucky Quidditch-er willing to fly into commentators’ stands), and—well, yes, too many random people comment on her pretty neck and popularity and animals love her and she’s so totally the perfect girl for Harry. It’s true. She’s kind of a bit of a Mary-Sue. :( And she Bat-Bogeys people for asking questions and doesn’t mind Sectumsempra and brutally attacks commentators.
Except. She’s a teenage girl. She's bloody well not a slut or a whore, not least because no woman deserves to be branded as either. She’s a lively, impulsive, quick teenage girl who dated the boy she used to have a crush on after growing up a bit and enjoying herself and dating other boys, she’s attractive and popular and that’s not exactly blameworthy, she doesn’t always think things through and she sides with her friends even when they might be wrong, she’s not a perfect student or the chosen one but she’s brave with her own strengths, she’s temperamental but not deliberately cruel, she jokes and laughs and flings lightning-quick spells and words around as her Weasley hair flies and tosses, she’s—a spirited, vivacious fifteen-year-old girl. Harry likes her. He has his reasons.
She’s not supposed to be—and oh, this is *so* much more an emotional reaction than a logical one, I do disclaim for personal taste—deconstructed into the crude and bad-tempered parts of her.
( Read more... )
Writing this made me remember vitriol I’ve displayed towards female characters other than Ginny in the past; I’ve recently come across old posts of mine saying how nice it would be to drive a spork through another poorly written female character’s head or see her killed by another female character who seems to quite like her. And looking back at that makes me extremely uncomfortable. Violence towards women, what a wonderful yay that is. Female characters are often badly written because they’re often underrepresented in fiction because of sexism, and so overcompensate as a Sue or undercompensate to avoid that or draw on incompetent feminine stereotypes. So is it really appropriate to wish them dead in bloody ways and otherwise visit rage on them, promulgating yet more hatred of women? (Of course, fictional character != real person.) |
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| Reinstated. |
[Jun. 1st, 2007|10:04 am] |
pornish_pixies and the other fannish journals are back.
I'm so glad. I hope "interests" will be able to be defined as including reading about, writing about or crusading against, for purposes of easy searching, but if not, then what's really important is that these support and fictional communities will be able to remain. LJ's response seems good to me, though I wasn't in any of the affected communities. I hope they're able to further update providing reasons why this happened. |
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| GAH. |
[May. 30th, 2007|02:15 pm] |
pornish_pixies has been deleted, along with the RP journals of someone on my flist, merely on the basis of an interest list, with no opportunity to edit that.
I have no problem with the censorship of things like Holocaust denial. I think some pornography is hate speech. I'm rather glad that the person who apparently claimed to have raped a child (warriorsforinnocence.org/2007/05/livejournal-allows-child-rapist-free.html--no link, deliberately) has been deleted, and think authorities should have been notified.
But of the (like, three, 'cause I suck) smutty fics I've written, one of them had a sixteen-year-old boy raped by his mentor. Another was technical necrophilia (not Anne-Rice-vampire-technical, walking-skeleton-technical). Neither of them were written because I want to perform such acts in real life. I've read and liked some fics on pornish_pixies. I think amanuensis1 is a marvellous writer. Especially in the case of fanfic--which takes established characters for a reason--fictional sex cannot be assumed to represent something the author wants! It's about the story, about the characterisation, about the message and theme and concept, it doesn't mean Author Wants To Force This On Other People. Some smut? Totally creeps me out in the whole really-wouldn't-want-to-meet-them-in-RL way. But stopping people writing these stories (and it's just stories, not anything involving real people which has some danger of said real people being injured or said real people having little volition, and even then you don't have to ban it) isn't going to stop them from being deeply unpleasant people, and as long as they've followed normal rules for adult content nobody is going to be forced to read. Much better to err on the side of free speech when it comes to the question is-this-person-a-RL-asshole-for-writing-this.
The interest list. Gah. As people have already pointed out, this is going to cause problems for support communities, and roleplaying (the ace_lightning comm included "world domination", "dealing death", "necrophilia", "black leather", "kicking butt", "interspecies relationships" and "tentacle sex" in our RP journals), and, perhaps where the real argument is, the people who like to read about these things and understand that fiction and reality are not the same thing. I don't know if it's a problem with the legal system or LJ, though it sounds like the former. Either way, it sucks.
I'm seriously afraid for this. I'm only on the fringes of fandom, but I don't want to see significant parts of LJ fandom disappearing. Livejournal isn't the best archive--but so many good things have been posted on it, and it's where most of the good authors are. Fragment it and that strong community will start melting away, without the same access to everything. As a small-fandom fan, I find that especially worrying.
Maybe it'll clear up by the time Deathly Hallows is out? |
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| (no subject) |
[Apr. 22nd, 2007|11:18 pm] |
This is on a tangent from this interesting fanficrants post and comments, which discusses whether a change of sexuality (generally assumed to be making The Boys experience gay sex under circumstances when they have previously experienced none or few heterosexual relationships, therefore being obviously straight in the mind of the creator) makes a character OOC.
I think it's self-evident that personality and sexuality aren't the same thing. Gay people are smart/silly/happy/bitter/angry/driven/excitable/everything straight people are and aren't. (I wonder, how would Gay Personality and Straight Personality be represented in the classic good-angel-bad-angel visual on the shoulders of a bisexual? A small rainbow-coloured angel carrying a pitchfork-shaped vibrator facing a conservatively-dressed angel armed with Levitican verses on shrimp and other such topics? Jack Chick's adorable gay demons against his faceless god? Now my gay personality says to go out and enjoy myself but my straight personality says to stay home writing hetfic...) Orientation is who you shag, personality is what you're like.
Still, we can't argue that sexuality has no influence on personality. ( Cut for rambling... ) |
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| (no subject) |
[Mar. 25th, 2007|09:03 am] |
I firmly believe that you like what you like what you like for any reason or no reason or that thing that happened to you in high school, you know...
...and that's something that happens. It's not about what's Objectively Good And True, it's about personal fondness, and I firmly believe fandom would be a happier place if more people acknowledged that fact.
Sometimes people get more out of a work than was originally put into it. Who knows whether that stirring speech you think is the key to the whole play and create a whole thesis around was written at the last minute to pad out the word count and cover a scene change? Possibly that voice acting you think brought an incredibly complex character to life was just something someone did to pay the bills and they really thought the script was just pure rubbish and the character a complete idiot. Maybe the whole thing was created in a cynical attempt to appeal to the lowest common denominator, and yet you find things in it beautiful and intriguing.
I think this happens a lot. Harry Potter, which I'm pretty sure is the story JKR wanted to tell and not something just hacked out from the sort of motives that brought us Left Behind--people take the books as framework for their fanfic and put in their own knowledge of magic, of gender, of history, of issues the text doesn't seem to be going anywhere near--creating depth that's not in the original, finding something new in it. Television shows, created by a whole lot of different people, many of whom I'm guessing were just there to pay the bills. (I guess that's a jumping-off point for How Mercenary Should Art Be.)
And I think that's really neat, as a fan. I love it. I love it to bits.
But it does make me wonder. What would the creators think? I leave my early sucky fanfic up (bar one piece I decided could cause offence) because of this--I'm not offended that someone might enjoy it, if it's there and it's fanfic it's something that someone might like to exist, and I want the hypothetical future reader to think wow-there's-something-there. Except we fans are getting so much out of it, taking it more seriously than the writer possibly did, spending time thinking and dreaming and writing while the original writer's Moved On to Greater Things--and I'm wondering, is that creepy? Is it possibly threatening, someone going over your work again and again with a fine-toothed comb almost as though they're delving into you? I'm thinking about my older fanfic again, and how I'd feel--yes, I'd be thrilled that someone liked it, no questions asked, but to be reminded in detail that I'd done something I now consider That Bad wouldn't necessarily be something I liked.
So I don't think I can draw any real conclusions for this, other than that fandom is for People Who Care, like they say, and maybe the creators can just deal with it. (I'm starting to wonder if this is why people feel the urge to ban fanfic.) We like their work, or at least find something intriguing in it--and this is what we do, as a hobby, and it's enjoyable and stimulating and crazyweirdcool.
And, well, personal. We likes it for our own reasons, indeedy we do, and damn anyone who doesn't think that's valid. |
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| Dinner party meme... |
[Mar. 23rd, 2007|09:04 pm] |
Ten female fictional characters I'd invite to a dinner party, in no particular order. Obscurefandomyay!
- Judge J.B. from Bravestarr, because I want to have been a kid alive when that particular cheesy children's cartoon was put out, dangit, and she wielded a high-tech gavel to beat up bad guys on the planet of New Texas way deep in space. How cool is that?
- That Quinn Woman from the Vorkosigan Saga, because I like her.
- Sparx from Ace Lightning. Lady Illusion is probably very good and very decorative to have around at dinner parties, but Sparx is more likely to kick back, have a beer, and tell some great anecdotes about kicking arse.
- Isabel Fisher/Princess Julia from the Blue Moon and Hawk and Fisher books, for much the same reasons.
- Celie from The Colour Purple, because we need at least one Really Truly Nice Person here.
- Lady Une from Gundam Wing, because she’s a cool German assassin. I’d have Relena, but I’m not sure she’d get along with the others.
- Rei Ayanami from Neon Genesis Evangelion, because Asuka would drive the other extroverts on the guest list crazy and Rei’s nice and laid-back.
- Grace Dunbar from The Problem of Thor Bridge, because she seems like a nice person too, and I like the theory that she ended up as one of Watson’s wives rather than with the abusive jerk of the story.
- Agatha Christie’s Tuppence, because she’s quick-witted, bold and upright, and she was always my favourite of her detectives.
- The Chief from Burn Up Warrior, because she was scaryevil and smart and competent.
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| Male Centric != Misogynistic. |
[Mar. 22nd, 2007|11:29 am] |
Dear Various Unnamed Authors,
So you want to write about men.
That's great! Sure, lots of people already like to write about men, but lots of people like to read about men as well, so you've probably got your audience right there waiting for you. Nobody's going to call you sexist just for writing about men, I promise. In fact, you have many great opportunities to write about men! Want to write about pre-twentieth-century Earth or any fictional culture based on that? Men can be the rulers, men can be the fighters, men can be the heroes. You can have lots of main male characters!
What makes you sexist is when the female characters (yes, yes, you probably have to have at least one, I'm sorry, but you can actually make her think and feel like a penis-possessed person would under the circumstances and nobody'll see anything wrong) aren't written well. Stay out of stereotypes and pass the Bechdel Test and you're doing just fine.
Now you want to write about men in a place that's more like twenty-first century Earth. Okay, great. They're still about fifty percent of the population, it's perfectly fair and reasonable that one of them's going to be the hero.
Yeah, and it's still likely enough that the villain's going to be male too. That's 25% odds, pretty fair. And the hero who inspired the current hero. And the hero's mentor. And the hero's best friend. And the villain's main minion. And the community leaders. And all the bitpart thugs and law enforcement. And...
...Well, you see where I'm going with this, don't you?
Look, there are indicators you can give that sexism is still flourishing. I'm cool with that. But if you're not going to deal with a sexist world, you cannot write out female characters and expect not to be outed as a misogynistic twit. I'm sure you're against things like burqas and not allowing women property rights, even if you haven't grasped more subtle concepts of feminism. Take an easy stand against horrific abuse with a few casual mentions of the way women are property in your world and how of course the hero doesn't approve, and look at the sudden worldbuilding consistency you've gained with all the active important male characters you want! |
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