astridv

People who know me know that I’ve in the past spoken up against the denigration of female characters. Actually I’ve lost a good chunk of my LJ friends list over that issue, and I stand behind every word I said. But I don’t think that denigrating male characters is the answer to that problem. In my opinion, the answer lies in promoting fanworks about female characters. Writing fic. Drawing fanart. Reccing those works. Commenting. Exchanges. In calling out unfair character bashing. But I’m not going to choose between fangirling female characters and fangirling male ones. I want both. I need both in a canon in order to get really pulled in.

Is fandom seriously just capable of thinking in binary terms? No nuance, no context? I get backlash but it makes no sense to throw the baby out with the bathwater, and there’s a lot of that going on. Has been for years. It’s so unproductive.

You know what's annoying? When you post fanart to tumblr where it goes mostly or entirely ignored, only to see the same fanart posted by other people getting plenty of attention.

I don't know how to counter this development but let me state for the record that as an artist I find it frustrating and it pisses me off. It's getting to the point where to find the feedback for my fanart I would have to self-google my name on tumblr. I thought getting my own tumblr account would help in that at least some of the feedback would find its way to my inbox, but it makes actually no difference. I'm not gonna bother with crossposting any more, waste of time.

This looks like fun. Snagged from half my circle...

Give me a fandom and I'll tell you:

my favourite female character
my favourite male character
my favourite book/season/etc
my favourite episode/issue/chapter, etc
my favourite cast member
my favourite relationship
a character I'd die defending
a character I just can't sympathize with
a character I grew to love
my anti otp

... just opened for business. :) Here's the signup post.

If nothing gets in the way I won't be working at all in December, hallelujah, so I hope I can stuff a few stockings myself.

Fandom stocking, Yuletide... and I just bought two large beeswax candles and a pair of lambskin house slippers at the christmas market. All things that considerably brighten up the winter season. And only four more weeks to solstice, not that I'm counting.

Now all that's needed is some actual frost so we'll have an excuse to drink Glühwein!

It's a tight race over on Fandom Steel Cage Match and Parker currently needs only 9 more votes to take the lead over Peggy Olson from Mad Men. I'm just sayin'...

Here, a vid with the best Parker moments. You can see it's a pretty long vid! That's a lot of great moments! And that's just season one!

OTW is having its annual membership drive, with most of the donation money going toward the AO3. I love that archive! I go there almost daily by now, and it makes me happy to watch it grow and develop and become more awesome bit by bit.
Not gonna lie, the thought fills me with pride that fandom is creating something at this level.
So, here's to more servers! (And hopefully a kick-ass bookmarking feature, if they can work out the kinks in the tagging system...)

My to-rec folder is once more overflooding so it's time for another link dump. Fic recs will probably be next. Or vids. Or both.

fanfic and copyright
jimhines: Marion Zimmer Bradley vs. Fanfiction - If we’re going to toss this story around every time we talk about fanfiction, it would be nice to have a few facts to go with the fourth-hand accounts, guesswork, and rumors.

fandom and female characters
rawles: A Quick Note

The erasure of female characters from a narrative is never feminist. Period. The end.

If you're only interested in writing about dudes, go ahead, and work out how you feel about that with yourself. But please stop pretending you're doing this all for the ladies.

impertinence: impertinence: linkin' some links

White men are cultural blank slates, of course. Buddy cops, the anti-hero, the odd couple...they're all white guys. All of those dynamics fandom likes, and turns into fandom-specific tropes, can be traced back to wider cultural tropes. And they're coded as being for white men. Obviously, I think that's part of it. But I think the other part requires being critical of fandom itself.

Here's the thing: what we do isn't just transformative. It's really heavily derivative, both of the source material (obviously) and of other fanworks. [...]

Stepping out of that mold takes EFFORT.

ar: way too much rambling on mozart and mary sues

For him to write that 40th symphony, though, he first had to write his 4th. And just there's no shame in young Mozart writing some derivative stuff that sounds cool while he's working his way to writing really original stuff that also sounds cool, there's no shame in writing female characters (or any characters, for that matter, but the discussion hasn't been about writing Gary Stus) who might not be entirely plausible. You should totally write stuff that sounds cool to you, and you should write a lot of it--and the more you write (and the more you read!), the more you'll figure out how to make your characters plausible even as they're awesome. Same with your descriptions, your plots, your everything.

I had to go all the way back to skip=400, and I'm caught up with the flist... though now my to-read folder is overflowing.

Writercon was excellent, I'm very glad I went. I finally met friendshipper. And sgatazmy and greyias. And pukajen, whom I just had dinner with a few days before at Comic Con. missmurchison and revdorothyl who graciously offered me a place to stay when the Minneapolis hostel turned out to be a no-go (seriously, don't go there). Also monanotlisa, who lives, like, next door (well, 90 minutes away) so we have to go to Minnesota to see each other, deepad, former co-mod from the days of bbf. And I met argosy in my downtime between conventions and we did touristy things at SeaWorld. :) michelel72, who offered her room as a hang-out. Okay, I met a whole lot more fun people at WriterCon but it's impossible to list them all, and I'd likely forget half the names.

The panels were really good overall, very interesting, with a high level of audience involvement - I didn't really expect such lively discussion. The details are becoming quite blurry, so I won't attempt to write proper panel reports. lunabee34 has detailed write ups for some: part 1, part 2.

I would like to write more on Kristina Busse's talk 'Affect and the individual fan' which ended up being about tropes... at the very least I'll have to look up the vids she showed there... ah well, I'll link them with my next recs post.

The 'Evil in our midst' panel was quite interesting though I agree with whoever said that those topics would have been better served if they had been split into three separate sessions - racism, sexism/internalized misogyny, and homophobia/fetishization of gay people - instead of lumping them all together.

friendshipper, greyias, tazmy and I were quite encouraged by the 'SGA as closed canon' panel... like someone, I think friendshipper said: There we were, fans from all corners with very different opinions, having a productive talk about the future of the fandom and no one has left the room in angry tears (and someone shouted, We still have ten minutes. *g*). No, really, we were glad we went to that one in spite of being wiped after a day of con.

Many thanks to the con committee for getting everything organized and running so smoothly. And three cheers to shaddyr, who ran what must be the best hospitality suite ever. I haven't been to many other cons but no way that can be beat... it was cozy and inviting, a good place to hang out and chat anytime one felt like it, and the food was great, with a wide selection ranging from snack food to freshly cut veggies and a delicious homemade chili. You guys rock hard!

Okay, I actually came here to post fic recs but this got so long, I'll put those in a separate post...
[x-posted to DW and LJ]