Meta Links (01/08/13 - 07/08/13)
Aug. 8th, 2013 01:42 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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metanewsNotices
We are now posting to tumblr (metanewsfandom) as well as DW and LJ. Also there will be no post on the 21st of August, to give the mods time to sort out our tags. (tumblr posts are currently untagged.)
If you have meta to sumbit or rec, please comment to this post or to the screened Submissions Post. If you'd like to give us blanket permission to link your meta please comment to the Blanket Permissions Post. If you have feedback or questions, check out our FAQ, Contact the Mods, or PM/email. If you'd like to volunteer to link-find or mod, please comment to the Volunteers Post.
General Fandom
Damsel in Distress (Part 3) Tropes vs Women Feminist Frequency: (blog) - "That said I don’t necessarily think equal opportunity damseling is the answer. Simply reversing the gender roles of a problematic convention so that more men are damsel’ed in more games is not the best long-term solution, even if the practice might be subversive in the short term to help demonstrate a very real gender disparity in the medium. Ultimately we need to think beyond the cliché altogether."
Genre Pieces and “The Rules” Overthinking It: (blog) - "To use the example we always return to: in A New Hope, the rules of The Force are never clearly established. Apparently, The Force can mimic giant animal noises, hypnotize people, let you see in the dark, choke people at a distance, preserve your spirit as a Force ghost, and aid in missile targeting. Nowhere is this laid out. Yet I would never say the movie suffers for it. So whence this fascination with the rules? And what do the people who like rules get out of it?"
In Which I Rant for 1,600 Words on Cheating and Plagiarism SL Huang: (blog) - "As I’ve gotten more into writing fiction, I’ve seen the occasional uproar about plagiarism—people selling copies of other people’s books, or quoting other authors’ writing almost word-for-word as theirs. Again, I wonder, why? Sometimes this isn’t even for profit; I’ve seen online rancor rise up about fanfiction writers plagiarizing either other fanfiction authors or published works. WHY WOULD YOU DO THAT??"
Specific Fandoms
A Song of Ice and Fire
Untitled: onlyalittlelion (tumblr) - "'LOL Tyrion tells Oberyn that he was born with a tail but he’s clearly not being serious. Some people need to learn what sarcasm is istg.' Oberyn’s teasing Tyrion when he pretends to have believed the rumors, but I don’t doubt for a second the rumors existed."
Untitled: joannalannister(tumblr) - "There was strong evidence that Dany had her period ETA: a miscarriage while lost and alone at the end of ADWD. So if Mirri Maz Durr lied about Dany being barren, did she lie about Rhaego being born deformed?"
Breaking Bad, Sex In The City
How Should ‘Breaking Bad’ Judge Walter White? What About ‘Sex And The City’ And Carrie Bradshaw? Alyssa Rosenberg - ThinkProgress: (blog) - "I’d go a step further and argue that some of the best television shows end on ambiguous notes because their subject–or among their subjects–is the failure of institutions. The Wire ends the way it does because David Simon is making a dual argument about institutions like the Baltimore Police Department and the Baltimore Sun, and about human nature: his argument seems to be that passionate people often respond to flawed incentive systems and damaged bureaucracies not by rising above those imperatives and restrictions, but by acting out in ways that are more destructive to them than to orders they’re raging against."
Doctor Who
You’re a beautiful woman, probably: My life as an ace Who fanNightsky - Doctor Her: (blog) - "Worse, fandom is not exactly a refuge: I’ve sometimes said that Doctor Who fandom is the only place I feel that asexuality and feminism are somehow in conflict. I don’t object to shipping. (Why would I?) What I do object to is what I experience as fandom insisting that shipping represents an advance over the old “prudish anoraks terrified by sex” days–that because, broadly speaking, shipping is associated with female fandom, enthusiasm for shipping is feminist; and its opposite, preferring an asexual Doctor, is therefore somehow anti-feminist."
Untitled: owldee (tumblr) - "Canonically speaking there’s no reason why the Doctor shouldn’t or couldn’t be a woman. It has been established in canon that Time Lords can change gender when they regenerate. So why hasn’t it happened? Because the tradition of having a white male protagonist as the savior of the universe is a hard habit to kick. That is sexist. "
Game of Thrones
Meta Monday: Greyscale: justadram (tumblr) - "Today’s topic is epidemic disease, particularly the striking similarities between greyscale—a disease that might be about to hit Westeros in a big way—and leprosy, which affected Europe in the Middle Ages and beyond. As we’ll see, these similarities extend beyond the fact that both are diseases that affect the flesh."
Harry Potter
The Unforgivable Curses and Wizarding Society: ncfan (AO3) - "An essay on the Unforgivable Curses and what their designation as "Unforgivable" says about Wizarding society. Also, a theory on how the Cruciatus Curse works, and my case for why the Imperius Curse is the most insidious of the three."
K-pop
Pretty Boy, Punk Boy, Bad Boy: GD and T.O.P - The Learned Fangirl: (blog) - "Why start with G.D. (G-Dragon) and TOP? Because these lifelong friends are emblematic of the ways that K-pop as a genre offers more flexibility for gender and sexuality for men than for women. This essay is the first of the specific K-pop artists in the series, because unlike any of the female performers, I didn’t need to be hyper-aware about unintentionally slut-shaming the male artists in my descriptions of them. "
Pacific Rim
Untitled: verysharpteeth (tumblr) - "And because I haven’t seen it discussed, I’m going to talk a bit about the dynamic between Yancy and Raleigh. (I’m aware there’s a back comic, but we’re going off of just what the movie presents)."
Spider-Man
Why I Want A Gay MJ: cupidsbow (DW) - "Some of you might have heard the recent suggestion about MJ from Spiderman being played by a guy, as a gay love interest. And I have an opinion about that, nay, a rant..."
Star Trek
Heroes and Villains: thoughts on Star Trek Into Darkness : anduria trianys(LJ) - "as we study the mediums, we find ourselves cheering for the heroes. Why? Because we know, or we believe, that they are fighting the good fight. We relate to them. We understand where they’re coming from and why they do what they do. But what if we don’t? What about when the situation isn’t as black and white as it appears to be?"
Teen Wolf
The Alpha Rating Scale: cupidsbow (DW) - "In light of not particularly surprising revelations in episode 307 of Teen Wolf, I amused myself by making an Alpha Rating Scale for effectiveness of the alphas we've seen leading a pack so far in Teen Wolf."
The Problem Of Belief: Teen Wolf 3.08: cupidsbow (DW) - "Okay, I've needed a few days to come to any conclusions about Teen Wolf 308. Behind the cut are several things. First, an overview of all the major plot points in the seasons to date, to make the pattern of Davis' plotting in previous seasons clear, and then my prediction for what's going to happen in the next four episodes. Second, my thoughts on 308 itself. "
The Girl Who Knew Too Little (That's Me, BTW): cupidsbow (DW) - "Hypothetically speaking, let's imagine that the number-one rule of the Teen Wolf 'verse is that Derek's life has to take the worst possible turn whenever it can"
The Wolverine
The Wolverine: Let’s Look at the Women: Arwen Spicer (blog) - "The latest X-Men film, The Wolverine, has recently opened in theaters. As you might guess, it’s about Wolverine–but I need to talk about the women. As gender fail goes, The Wolverine is by no means an egregious offender. In some ways, it handles its female characters well, but this is all the more reason to critique it: its gender fail not a fluke. It’s not a movie that just happened to be penned by a sexist writer. If anything, its handling of women is better than the norm for a Hollywood superhero flick. Yet it’s still offensive, and we have to do better. Now."
The Wolverine/Teen Wolf
Manpain: Why So Often A Bore?: cupidsbow (DW) - "I've been thinking about manpain a lot over the last few weeks, in part because of Teen Wolf season 3, but also because it's so prominent in storytelling at the moment, and so often used incredibly poorly in terms of telling an interesting story."
Tolkien
Elves and Humans: On Speciation of the Firstborn and the Followers: professor_thu(tumblr) - "The assertion that Elves and Men (or shorthanded with less accuracy to Elves and humans) are different species crops up periodically. However, neither the source text nor scientific considerations extrapolated to our primary world’s knowledge of genomics support this contention."
Zelda, Finnegans Wake, Dahlgren
Hyrule Castle and Environs: The Legend of Zelda through the Joycean LensJohn Perich - Overthinking It: (blog) - "Interpreting any work of pop culture through a particular lens does not presume authorial intent (we say this a lot; it’s worth repeating). You can read the works of Coleridge with a Marxist interpretation, even though Coleridge’s corpus predates Marx’s by several years. Rather, to interpret one work through a particular philosophy or authorial viewpoint is to say, “Insofar as this philosophy or author says true things about the world as we find it, those true interpretations may also be applied to this work, regardless of the latter author’s awareness of that philosophy.”"
We are now posting to tumblr (metanewsfandom) as well as DW and LJ. Also there will be no post on the 21st of August, to give the mods time to sort out our tags. (tumblr posts are currently untagged.)
If you have meta to sumbit or rec, please comment to this post or to the screened Submissions Post. If you'd like to give us blanket permission to link your meta please comment to the Blanket Permissions Post. If you have feedback or questions, check out our FAQ, Contact the Mods, or PM/email. If you'd like to volunteer to link-find or mod, please comment to the Volunteers Post.
General Fandom
Damsel in Distress (Part 3) Tropes vs Women Feminist Frequency: (blog) - "That said I don’t necessarily think equal opportunity damseling is the answer. Simply reversing the gender roles of a problematic convention so that more men are damsel’ed in more games is not the best long-term solution, even if the practice might be subversive in the short term to help demonstrate a very real gender disparity in the medium. Ultimately we need to think beyond the cliché altogether."
topic: gender, topic: sexism
Genre Pieces and “The Rules” Overthinking It: (blog) - "To use the example we always return to: in A New Hope, the rules of The Force are never clearly established. Apparently, The Force can mimic giant animal noises, hypnotize people, let you see in the dark, choke people at a distance, preserve your spirit as a Force ghost, and aid in missile targeting. Nowhere is this laid out. Yet I would never say the movie suffers for it. So whence this fascination with the rules? And what do the people who like rules get out of it?"
topic: worldbuilding, topic: narrative
In Which I Rant for 1,600 Words on Cheating and Plagiarism SL Huang: (blog) - "As I’ve gotten more into writing fiction, I’ve seen the occasional uproar about plagiarism—people selling copies of other people’s books, or quoting other authors’ writing almost word-for-word as theirs. Again, I wonder, why? Sometimes this isn’t even for profit; I’ve seen online rancor rise up about fanfiction writers plagiarizing either other fanfiction authors or published works. WHY WOULD YOU DO THAT??"
topic: plagiarism
Specific Fandoms
A Song of Ice and Fire
Untitled: onlyalittlelion (tumblr) - "'LOL Tyrion tells Oberyn that he was born with a tail but he’s clearly not being serious. Some people need to learn what sarcasm is istg.' Oberyn’s teasing Tyrion when he pretends to have believed the rumors, but I don’t doubt for a second the rumors existed."
fandom: asoiaf
Untitled: joannalannister(tumblr) - "There was strong evidence that Dany had her period ETA: a miscarriage while lost and alone at the end of ADWD. So if Mirri Maz Durr lied about Dany being barren, did she lie about Rhaego being born deformed?"
fandom: asoiaf
Breaking Bad, Sex In The City
How Should ‘Breaking Bad’ Judge Walter White? What About ‘Sex And The City’ And Carrie Bradshaw? Alyssa Rosenberg - ThinkProgress: (blog) - "I’d go a step further and argue that some of the best television shows end on ambiguous notes because their subject–or among their subjects–is the failure of institutions. The Wire ends the way it does because David Simon is making a dual argument about institutions like the Baltimore Police Department and the Baltimore Sun, and about human nature: his argument seems to be that passionate people often respond to flawed incentive systems and damaged bureaucracies not by rising above those imperatives and restrictions, but by acting out in ways that are more destructive to them than to orders they’re raging against."
fandom: breaking bad, fandom: sex and the city
Doctor Who
You’re a beautiful woman, probably: My life as an ace Who fanNightsky - Doctor Her: (blog) - "Worse, fandom is not exactly a refuge: I’ve sometimes said that Doctor Who fandom is the only place I feel that asexuality and feminism are somehow in conflict. I don’t object to shipping. (Why would I?) What I do object to is what I experience as fandom insisting that shipping represents an advance over the old “prudish anoraks terrified by sex” days–that because, broadly speaking, shipping is associated with female fandom, enthusiasm for shipping is feminist; and its opposite, preferring an asexual Doctor, is therefore somehow anti-feminist."
fandom: doctor who, topic: asexuality
Untitled: owldee (tumblr) - "Canonically speaking there’s no reason why the Doctor shouldn’t or couldn’t be a woman. It has been established in canon that Time Lords can change gender when they regenerate. So why hasn’t it happened? Because the tradition of having a white male protagonist as the savior of the universe is a hard habit to kick. That is sexist. "
fandom: doctor who, topic: sexism
Game of Thrones
Meta Monday: Greyscale: justadram (tumblr) - "Today’s topic is epidemic disease, particularly the striking similarities between greyscale—a disease that might be about to hit Westeros in a big way—and leprosy, which affected Europe in the Middle Ages and beyond. As we’ll see, these similarities extend beyond the fact that both are diseases that affect the flesh."
fandom: game of thrones, topic: medicine
Harry Potter
The Unforgivable Curses and Wizarding Society: ncfan (AO3) - "An essay on the Unforgivable Curses and what their designation as "Unforgivable" says about Wizarding society. Also, a theory on how the Cruciatus Curse works, and my case for why the Imperius Curse is the most insidious of the three."
fandom: harry potter
K-pop
Pretty Boy, Punk Boy, Bad Boy: GD and T.O.P - The Learned Fangirl: (blog) - "Why start with G.D. (G-Dragon) and TOP? Because these lifelong friends are emblematic of the ways that K-pop as a genre offers more flexibility for gender and sexuality for men than for women. This essay is the first of the specific K-pop artists in the series, because unlike any of the female performers, I didn’t need to be hyper-aware about unintentionally slut-shaming the male artists in my descriptions of them. "
fandom: K-pop, topic: gender
Pacific Rim
Untitled: verysharpteeth (tumblr) - "And because I haven’t seen it discussed, I’m going to talk a bit about the dynamic between Yancy and Raleigh. (I’m aware there’s a back comic, but we’re going off of just what the movie presents)."
fandom: pacific rim
Spider-Man
Why I Want A Gay MJ: cupidsbow (DW) - "Some of you might have heard the recent suggestion about MJ from Spiderman being played by a guy, as a gay love interest. And I have an opinion about that, nay, a rant..."
fandom: Spider-Man, topic: sexuality, topic: representation, character: female, topic: relationships
Star Trek
Heroes and Villains: thoughts on Star Trek Into Darkness : anduria trianys(LJ) - "as we study the mediums, we find ourselves cheering for the heroes. Why? Because we know, or we believe, that they are fighting the good fight. We relate to them. We understand where they’re coming from and why they do what they do. But what if we don’t? What about when the situation isn’t as black and white as it appears to be?"
fandom: star trek
Teen Wolf
The Alpha Rating Scale: cupidsbow (DW) - "In light of not particularly surprising revelations in episode 307 of Teen Wolf, I amused myself by making an Alpha Rating Scale for effectiveness of the alphas we've seen leading a pack so far in Teen Wolf."
fandom: teen wolf, trope: angst
The Problem Of Belief: Teen Wolf 3.08: cupidsbow (DW) - "Okay, I've needed a few days to come to any conclusions about Teen Wolf 308. Behind the cut are several things. First, an overview of all the major plot points in the seasons to date, to make the pattern of Davis' plotting in previous seasons clear, and then my prediction for what's going to happen in the next four episodes. Second, my thoughts on 308 itself. "
fandom: Teen Wolf, topic: review
The Girl Who Knew Too Little (That's Me, BTW): cupidsbow (DW) - "Hypothetically speaking, let's imagine that the number-one rule of the Teen Wolf 'verse is that Derek's life has to take the worst possible turn whenever it can"
fandom: Teen Wolf
The Wolverine
The Wolverine: Let’s Look at the Women: Arwen Spicer (blog) - "The latest X-Men film, The Wolverine, has recently opened in theaters. As you might guess, it’s about Wolverine–but I need to talk about the women. As gender fail goes, The Wolverine is by no means an egregious offender. In some ways, it handles its female characters well, but this is all the more reason to critique it: its gender fail not a fluke. It’s not a movie that just happened to be penned by a sexist writer. If anything, its handling of women is better than the norm for a Hollywood superhero flick. Yet it’s still offensive, and we have to do better. Now."
fandom: the wolverine, character: female
The Wolverine/Teen Wolf
Manpain: Why So Often A Bore?: cupidsbow (DW) - "I've been thinking about manpain a lot over the last few weeks, in part because of Teen Wolf season 3, but also because it's so prominent in storytelling at the moment, and so often used incredibly poorly in terms of telling an interesting story."
topic: mainpain, fandom: Wolverine, fandom: Teen Wolf, fandom: general
Tolkien
Elves and Humans: On Speciation of the Firstborn and the Followers: professor_thu(tumblr) - "The assertion that Elves and Men (or shorthanded with less accuracy to Elves and humans) are different species crops up periodically. However, neither the source text nor scientific considerations extrapolated to our primary world’s knowledge of genomics support this contention."
fandom: tolkien
Zelda, Finnegans Wake, Dahlgren
Hyrule Castle and Environs: The Legend of Zelda through the Joycean LensJohn Perich - Overthinking It: (blog) - "Interpreting any work of pop culture through a particular lens does not presume authorial intent (we say this a lot; it’s worth repeating). You can read the works of Coleridge with a Marxist interpretation, even though Coleridge’s corpus predates Marx’s by several years. Rather, to interpret one work through a particular philosophy or authorial viewpoint is to say, “Insofar as this philosophy or author says true things about the world as we find it, those true interpretations may also be applied to this work, regardless of the latter author’s awareness of that philosophy.”"
fandom: gaming, fandom: finnegans wake, fandom: dhalgren
