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I think I'm going to be sick
Jan. 14th, 2014 06:40 pmI know I shouldn't get this worked up over somebody's stupid AU fanfic, but . . .
( cut for feminist nerdrage )
( cut for feminist nerdrage )
The state of my fannish leanings
Jul. 1st, 2012 09:15 pmSo . . . y'all probably noticed some sudden changes in my LJ and DW recently, as well as a complete lack of commentary on the sequel to the series for which I had the most icons and produced the most fic, followed by multiple posts about a game fandom I didn't write much about before. ( Cut for stuff that people who haven't had me friended since the early days probably won't find interesting )
Okay, I'm pretty sure Michael Bay doesn't know how anything works, but this takes the cake. Most likely one of these cakes.
He's supposed to be making a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie. So he decided to make the world "richer" (um, what?) by making the main characters members of an extraterrestrial species instead of mutant turtles like it says in the title. Then, when TMNT fans reacted exactly the way anyone who has spent more than 17 seconds on the internet would expect, Bay responded by telling them to "take a deep breath and chill" because "they have not read the script." Dude, comics fans will go through the roof if you change a character HAIR COLOR! You cannot get away with acting surprised that they're mad about a radical departure from who and what the main characters fundamentally ARE! I am simultaneously laughing like a hyena because LOL, what? Is this guy new or something? and feeling a little bit guilty about that because I remember how I have raged over much less drastic departures in the X-Men movies.
You couldn't pay me to see this movie, but I am making popcorn for the internet storm around it.
He's supposed to be making a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie. So he decided to make the world "richer" (um, what?) by making the main characters members of an extraterrestrial species instead of mutant turtles like it says in the title. Then, when TMNT fans reacted exactly the way anyone who has spent more than 17 seconds on the internet would expect, Bay responded by telling them to "take a deep breath and chill" because "they have not read the script." Dude, comics fans will go through the roof if you change a character HAIR COLOR! You cannot get away with acting surprised that they're mad about a radical departure from who and what the main characters fundamentally ARE! I am simultaneously laughing like a hyena because LOL, what? Is this guy new or something? and feeling a little bit guilty about that because I remember how I have raged over much less drastic departures in the X-Men movies.
You couldn't pay me to see this movie, but I am making popcorn for the internet storm around it.
Why is it that whenever I like a popular pairing, I soon discover that the reasons I like it are completely different from-- and sometimes directly opposed to!-- the reasons the rest of the fandom likes it? This happens to me over and over again. If I like a het pairing because it blurs or subverts traditional gender roles, other people like it because they see it as much more traditional and less potentially subversive than I do or because they see one or both of the characters as needing to "mature" or "improve themselves" by becoming more conformed to traditional roles. If I like a pairing in spite of a potentially problematic age gap because the characters' personalities just seem to click, other people like it because of the age difference and write fic where the difference between the characters' ages is constantly emphasized and their canonical way of interacting has been dropped to make room for a generic older person/significantly younger person dynamic. If I like a pairing because the character who is physically smaller/weaker has a strong personality and a lot of power in the relationship, other people like it because they want to see the smaller person get completely dominated.
This is partly a frustrated near-rant because, seriously, I am almost at the point of wishing the pairings I prefer DON'T catch on so I don't get my hopes up only to end up feeling discouraged by the mountain of fic that portrays something I love as something I hate. It's also partly a legitimate question: Why am I so profoundly fannish on the big picture level and yet so weirdly out of synch with others like me in the details of what I want from fandom? I'm sure it happens to everyone occasionally, but it happens to me so often I'm starting to feel freakish. And I'm used to feeling freakish in a lot of contexts, but I'm not so used to feeling freakish within fandom.
This is partly a frustrated near-rant because, seriously, I am almost at the point of wishing the pairings I prefer DON'T catch on so I don't get my hopes up only to end up feeling discouraged by the mountain of fic that portrays something I love as something I hate. It's also partly a legitimate question: Why am I so profoundly fannish on the big picture level and yet so weirdly out of synch with others like me in the details of what I want from fandom? I'm sure it happens to everyone occasionally, but it happens to me so often I'm starting to feel freakish. And I'm used to feeling freakish in a lot of contexts, but I'm not so used to feeling freakish within fandom.
The end of an era
Jan. 17th, 2012 09:02 pmPeople, I think I'm finally cured of Valdemar. I bought the newest collection of Valdemar short stories (various authors, Mercedes Lackey advertized as sole editor), but once I started reading it, I found that multiple stories made me want to throw it. The Shin'a'in Herald story was the absolute last straw for me-- not only the last straw in the book, but the last straw in the series. I can put up with many things for the sake of returning to a world I've loved for years. But this story's blatant disregard for continuity shattered any remaining hope I had of any effort being made to keep Velgarth a mostly internally consistent world.
In this story, a young man raised by the Tale'sedrin clan, which was wiped out by bandits and refounded by Tarma over the course of several previous books and short stories, goes to Valdemar. He trains with the Heralds and has trouble learning how to use a sword because his people have no tradition of sword-fighting!!!! That's right, all the people Tarma adopted have been raising the new Tale'sedrin with no knowledge of how to use a sword or how to fight on foot because, in direct contradiction of all previous portrayals, Shin'a'in don't use swords, don't use melee weapons generally, and don't fight on foot. Ever. And they never did in the past, so they have no traditions related to those skills. All Shin'a'in warriors were only ever archers, and only from horseback.
As for the priests of their most honored and beloved deity being called the SWORD-sworn because they were supernaturally good SWORD fighters, and that being a huge part of the identity of Tarma, the Shin'a'in SWORD-sword character through whom we first me the Shin'a'in, and that being a fundamental plot-point of many of the stories in which Tarma was featured . . . THAT'S ALL RETCONNED! Sure, Lackey didn't write that story herself, but she gets sole credit for editing the anthology in which it appears. She approved this gross mangling of continuity. Shin'a'in sword fighters, specifically Tale'sedrin sword-fighters are not an obscure part of her previous worldbuilding.
I already knew that she's been phoning it in for a few years now, but there's something about her acceptance of such a complete defiance of previous canon that gets under my skin in a way that nothing else, not even her own relatively easy-to-miss retcons, ever did. I've stuck with Valdemar for a long time despite annoyances and misgivings about a variety of things that pale in comparison to letting this level of continuity-smashing slide. But I think I'm done now. If she cares that little about her own worldbuilding, I'm out. I'm giving up before we get stories in which Talia is a former race car driver and Vanyel has cat ears.
In this story, a young man raised by the Tale'sedrin clan, which was wiped out by bandits and refounded by Tarma over the course of several previous books and short stories, goes to Valdemar. He trains with the Heralds and has trouble learning how to use a sword because his people have no tradition of sword-fighting!!!! That's right, all the people Tarma adopted have been raising the new Tale'sedrin with no knowledge of how to use a sword or how to fight on foot because, in direct contradiction of all previous portrayals, Shin'a'in don't use swords, don't use melee weapons generally, and don't fight on foot. Ever. And they never did in the past, so they have no traditions related to those skills. All Shin'a'in warriors were only ever archers, and only from horseback.
As for the priests of their most honored and beloved deity being called the SWORD-sworn because they were supernaturally good SWORD fighters, and that being a huge part of the identity of Tarma, the Shin'a'in SWORD-sword character through whom we first me the Shin'a'in, and that being a fundamental plot-point of many of the stories in which Tarma was featured . . . THAT'S ALL RETCONNED! Sure, Lackey didn't write that story herself, but she gets sole credit for editing the anthology in which it appears. She approved this gross mangling of continuity. Shin'a'in sword fighters, specifically Tale'sedrin sword-fighters are not an obscure part of her previous worldbuilding.
I already knew that she's been phoning it in for a few years now, but there's something about her acceptance of such a complete defiance of previous canon that gets under my skin in a way that nothing else, not even her own relatively easy-to-miss retcons, ever did. I've stuck with Valdemar for a long time despite annoyances and misgivings about a variety of things that pale in comparison to letting this level of continuity-smashing slide. But I think I'm done now. If she cares that little about her own worldbuilding, I'm out. I'm giving up before we get stories in which Talia is a former race car driver and Vanyel has cat ears.
This is the beginning of an animal soulbonding story that was inspired by the conversation in comments on this earlier post. Warnings for the kind of backstory that fantasy protagonists so often have (dead mothers, abusive older men, bullies and wicked step-brothers of sorts), but the story concerns the aftermath of that. I think the piece is coherent in itself, but the comments on that post are necessary for understanding why I made the specific choices I did (no wolf-women, downtrodden and abused protagonist, a mission led by a female wolf and her partner). Oh, and the fey-wolves and wolf-men in this story, while they're not angels, are certainly not into gang rape.
( 3,364 words, in which Cinderella's fairy godmothers are an interspecies duo of grumpy badasses )
( 3,364 words, in which Cinderella's fairy godmothers are an interspecies duo of grumpy badasses )
So much concern!
Sep. 23rd, 2011 09:13 pmA strange and wondrous thing is happening in response to recent discussions among comics fans. Take heart, o feminists, for the newest, hottest trend among DC readers is straight dudes being really, really concerned about slut-shaming, especially the slut-shaming of female fictional characters by prudish real-life female comics fans! Does any woman dare to suggest that there's something wrong with rebooting a once warm, vibrant, and expressive female character into someone who strikes stereotyped "sexy" poses and asks other characters "Do want to have sex with me?" while wearing the most listless, dead-eyed expression? Well, that's slut-shaming, and this new breed of sex-positive fanboys won't have that! Starfire's taking charge of owning her empowered sexuality with freedom and liberation and agency, and these guys won't let any sex-negative feminist shame her for that. 'Cause Starfire was such a sexually repressed character before the reboot-- she used to go around having feelings like a weak, shameful, unliberated, unempowerful girly-girl. She even had a long-term partner for a while, which is so prudish! They're also concerned about the slut-shaming of Catwoman by her longtime fans just because she is now empowered and agency-tastic enough to be introduced in the opening pages of her own comic with close-ups of her tits and ass but no image of her face. If I were a fictional lady who wanted to look sexy in a comic, I would feel just awful about all that slut-shaming. Luckily, we have valiant fanboys to call out all that slut-shaming and defend the right of fictional characters to shove their most commonly fetishized body parts right in front of where the artist is looking and exercise their empowered sexual agency by offering to have sex they're obviously not looking forward to. Oh, and Starfire is acting that way because she was enslaved and raped, and that's just how rape victims cope with trauma, so criticizing her depiction is slut-shaming rape victims too-- thank goodness for the sudden upsurge in concern about this topic!
DAMN IT, DC!
Sep. 15th, 2011 07:34 pmStupid Suicide Squad travesty in the stupid "New 52" mess! THEY MADE AMANDA WALLER THIN. They also de-aged her so much that her original backstory can't possibly fit in the timeline. They lightened her skin and straightened her hair too. They put her in a tight, low-cut top and heavy make-up, and they have her introducing herself to her new team of convicted murderers with a sultry, flirty expression. If we needed more evidence that DC's ostensible commitment to promoting diversity only applies to diversity among MALE characters, we have it. Diverse characters*, reflecting the diverse audience** DC is trying to attract!
*No fat chicks
**No girls allowed
*No fat chicks
**No girls allowed
There's more?!
Aug. 19th, 2011 04:33 pmI have been to the bookstore, and I have learned that A Compendium of Wolf Fail has a sequel. It is called The Tempering of Men. Its cover depicts shirtless troll-battle. Because who needs a shirt when you're living in a cold climate and fighting clawy, fangy monsters? Protection from enemies and elements is for those silly, offensive slashers and their weak characters, not for professional writers of quality fiction and their strong, manly characters who are totally not gay even though they have sex with each other because their telepathic, biologically nonsensical "wolves" make them do it.
I am morbidly curious, but at the same time, there is a strong chance that I'll regret looking.
I am morbidly curious, but at the same time, there is a strong chance that I'll regret looking.
So, about Fuzzy Nation, Scalzi's completely unnecessary reboot of one of my most beloved books, H. Beam Piper's Little Fuzzy . . .
( Spoilers below cut )
( Spoilers below cut )
Kind of conflicted over here . . .
May. 22nd, 2011 11:24 amI gave up on X-Men and on Marvel as a whole long ago. Less long ago, I gave up on seeing movies in mainstream theaters (with one instance of backsliding to indulge my lingering weakness for certain wand-swishing bookworms). Yet I'm really, really tempted by X-Men: First Class. The premise sounds like it's closer to an Xavier/Magneto movie than I ever dared hope for. On the other hand, I'm very worried about how the female characters will be treated. I don't want to give any more money to Marvel because of all the many ways they have disappointed me in the past. The third X-Men movie REALLY pissed me off like only those who were there would believe. But . . . but . . . Xavier/Magneto!
Whatever I decide to do about the actual movie, I know without a doubt that it will cause an upsurge of Xavier/Magneto fanfic, and I will be reading more of that than any carbon-based lifeform should.
Whatever I decide to do about the actual movie, I know without a doubt that it will cause an upsurge of Xavier/Magneto fanfic, and I will be reading more of that than any carbon-based lifeform should.
