metanews | Meta Links 2013/10/10-10/16

Notices
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

What’s in a Name?: OTW Fannews(blog) - "How do you see fanboys or fangirls talked about?"

topic:fandom

Fandom As a Guilty Pleasure: Red Hamilton (blog) - "Next time, someone tells you about something they like and you happen to disagree, bite your tongue for a moment and reserve judgment."

topic:fandom

How to Engage with Tumblr Fandoms: Hannah Carter (blog) - "engaging with people on Tumblr is simultaneously easy and the scariest thing in the world "

topic:fandom

Why You Should Worry About Amazon Buying the Right to Publish Kurt Vonnegut Fan-Fiction: Michelle Dean - Flavorwire (blog) - "...the very fact that this kind of licensing is becoming standard practice should raise eyebrows. The Vampire Diaries, Gossip Girl: those are clearly commercial literary properties. They were designed for merchandising and licensing and spinoffs. Vonnegut: eh, not so much."

topic:copyright, topic:fanfic

Don’t Panic: The Number of LGBT Characters On Television Isn’t In Real Danger Of Falling: Alyssa Rosenberg - ThinkProgress (blog) - "Whether the minority group in question is women, people of color, LGBT people, or people with disabilities, and whether their function is as writers, directors, showrunners, or actors, gains in the entertainment industry tend to happen in isolated enclaves."

topic:television, topic:representation, topic:queer

Why Don’t We Tell Stories About Collapsed Civilization Anymore? And What’s With Our Postapocalypses?: Alyssa Rosenberg - ThinkProgress (blog) - "In the post-apocalypse, we tend to meet our characters long after the disaster or political crisis that wiped our society away, and once a new order has been firmly established. The transition period tends to be marginalized from the narrative, sometimes even to the point of having been erased from history and the characters’ memories."

topic:writing

Rainbow Rowell’s ‘Fangirl’ Would Be Better If It Had More To Say About Fandom: Alyssa Rosenberg - ThinkProgress (blog) - "But I wonder if Fangirl would have been more compelling if there was a genuine competition between the people Cath meets in college, and her community of readers and fellow fan fiction writers online. As it is, fan fiction mostly seems like a stand-in for Cath’s relationship with Wren, rather than a larger competition between relationships built on line and those built in person."

topic:writing, topic:fandom

Specific Fandoms

Adventure Time
Adventure Time, Neuroethics, and Agency: Daniel Elliot - Overthinking It (blog) - "Under this reading, the Ice King’s sadness is penance for the actions which made him what he is, while the problems caused by Lemongrab’s existence are borne as penance by Princess Bubblegum for her mistakes."

fandom:adventuretime, topic:psychology

ASOIAF
The Ruins of Castamere: msunyata (blog) - " it is the half-destroyed or the half-buried that oftentimes holds the most sway over our existences, our emotions, and, perhaps most tragically of all, our futures."

fandom:asoiaf

the reason Theon (Reek) rhymes his name: incblackbird (tumblr) - "By making them rhyme it was easier to remember them."

fandom:asoiaf

Lady’s Death: mademoisellesansa (tumblr) - "Reposting this because I’m so sick and tired of hearing people claim that Sansa had any significant causality at all with Lady’s death"

fandom:asoiaf

Jon’s constant references to Ygritte in ADWD: maisiewilliams (tumblr) - "Dost my eyes device me, or is a male in Westeros (a position of unreasonable power and authority, even before the fact that he’s the Lord Commander of the Nights Watch) placing a woman as equal to him??"

fandom:asoiaf

Being Theon Greyjoy, or Why This Dick In A Box Matters: Michelle Chihara (blog) - "by raising Theon as a bastard in Winterfell, instead of in his rightful place, they rob him of what he sees as his birthright, identity, and manhood. "

fandom:asoiaf, warning:spoilers

Breaking Bad
Breaking Bad: The Process is the Product: John Perich - Overthinking It (blog) - "The idea that we can follow our most fulfilling talent and succeed is the core of the American Dream, and the consequences of it are why Breaking Bad is about the American Dream’s failure to satiate."

fandom:breakingbad

Comics
Chix List: Important Social, Political and Autobiographical Comic Makin’ Ladies: Kate Kotler - Comic Chix (blog) - "This issue of Chix List focuses on five important graphic storytellers who have used their art and writing to tell social stories bigger than themselves and to tell very personal, intimate stories of their own personal struggles."

fandom:comics

PBS ‘Superheroes’ Series Captures Comics’ Attempts To Lead Culture, From The Sixties To Today: Alyssa Rosenberg - ThinkProgress (blog) - "But it’s clear that the alignment of restrictions like the Comics Code, which regulated what artists could depict down to the level of the sexual implications of a phone left off the hook, with larger conservative forces like racism and sexism made a more progressive approach to superhero design a rebellious act."

topic:superheroes, topic:socialjustice

Creative 'risk' taking in assorted media: how money matters: beccaelizabeth (DW) - "So comics can please a tiny slice of humanity and still be doing pretty well. TV and movies have to please millions. "

topic:diversity, fandom:comics

Fifty Shades of Grey
What The ‘Fifty Shades Of Grey’ Casting Shakeup Says About Sex And Masculinity: Alyssa Rosenberg - ThinkProgress (blog) - "But it’s not merely that the part [...] is intensely sexual. It’s that taking on the mantle of Christian Grey requires the actor who plays the role to accept that he’ll become, to an unusual degree, a sex object whose primary role is to be consumed by female fans."

fandom:fiftyshadesofgrey, topic:gender

Gaming
A Second Golden Age of Isometric RPGs is upon us!: S.C. Barrus - Nerds of A Feather(blog) - "[...] the isometric RPG gaming experience (a genre thought to be unprofitable in this day and aga) is nearing a second golden age, a full fledged resurgence featuring many of the same developers behind the originals, inspired by the same first golden age elements that made the past so great!"

fandom:roleplaying

Keys to Your Brains: Plants vs. Zombies vs. Operant Conditioning: Richard Rosenbaum - Overthinking It(blog) - "[...] PvZ2 and its ilk [...] functions by the principle of operant conditioning – or to be more specific, intermittent reinforcement – which is the same reason that Grandma couldn’t tear herself away from the One-Armed-Bandit until your college fund became wholly the property of the mafia."

topic:gaming, topic:psychology

Gravity
Gravity: lettered (DW) - "Everyone is right about this movie. You should go see it."

fandom:gravity

Harry Potter
Darkfic Meta #2: Creating a Safe Space for Darkfic: hpdarkarts_mods(LJ) - "This post is about encouraging and supporting darkfic in fandom, breaking down barriers and hosting and moderating darkfic fests or challenges."

fandom:harrypotter, topic:writing, topic:dark

KPop
‘Cause I’m So Bad, Bad, But I’m So Good, Good: Minzy & IU: Gender and Sexuality in K-Pop: (blog) - " Of course, the idea of teens being marketed to teens is not a new trend. But when these young teens are placed in groups with much older members, it can cause discontinuity with their groupmates, considering that some members are legally old enough to marry or drive, while others are still in middle school. Even more distressing is the hyper-sexualized portrayal of many of these young performers."

fandom:kpop, topic:gender, topic:sexuality

Orange Is The New Black
This, Right Here, Is The Problem: foz meadows (blog) - "Orange is the New Black is a Netflix original show about women in prison. [...] It’s a clever, well-written, engaging show, and it’s doing something important. So, naturally, its value is immediately reduced to being a source of hot topless chicks for straight dudes to gawk at."

fandom:orangeisthenewblack, topic:feminism

SherlockQueer Identities in ‘Sherlock’: A Study in Embarrassing Failures: cuddlytogas (tumblr) - " On the most obvious level, Sherlock operates on a primarily heterocentric basis, and has a bad habit of presenting few and problematic queer characters. "

fandom:bbcsherlock, topic:queer

Star Trek
Doubles; or, Six People Jim Isn't: my_daroga
(AO3) - "Six people Jim isn't. My exploration of doubles, in canon and out. Warning for hints of selfcest and RPF, though it could be seen as abstract meta. It really only makes sense in the context of the game I was in, but I like a lot of what it says."

fandom:startrek

Supernatural
anger and s8 and sam and dean: amonitrate (tumblr) - "Rewatching the start to season 8, something I love is Dean’s all-encompassing anger, anger that just bleeds out of him."

fandom:supernatural

Is Sam the failure Dean Claims He is?: brightly-lit (LJ) - ". It’s been said before that Show seems to be ‘Sam’s story told through Dean’s eyes,’ which inevitably brings up the question of Dean as a supremely unreliable narrator, because as this friend (said, “Most of what we know of Sam comes from Dean. Do we know what music he likes or what stuff he'll put in his own room if he even has one in the bunker? Is it ever stressed what he feels about the whole Dean/Purgatory thing, or how he feels post Cas healing him in S7?”
"

fandom:supernatural

The Hunter Lifestyle: From Family Business to Lonely Affair: fictionalforce(LJ) - "Anyway, what a lot of my feels led to is this (not so small) bit of meta on the Campbells, the Winchesters, and what things might have been like for Hunters after the Men of Letters were essentially wiped out."

fandom:supernatural

Teen Wolf
Dichotomy: a different take on Scott’s and Derek’s narrative in season 3a: uniwolfwerecorn (tumblr) - "This post focuses on the narrative as a direct dichotomy of Derek’s and Scott’s character arcs, and how both arcs were poorly executed. It’s is not a judgment of their characters, it is a description of the narrative as I see it."

fandom:teenwolf

Derek and Scott: sirenalpha (tumblr) - "I think season 3A could have been a lot better had Jeff Davis focused on using Derek and Scott appropriately and well as foils as they shifted roles."

fandom:teenwolf

Tolkien
Tolkien was right: mildred_of_midgard (DW) - "Whatever Jane Chance may be as a English professor, she is not a philologist."

fandom:jrrtolkien