metanews | 18 Dec 2014 - 31 Dec 2014 (Reply)

Notices
If you have meta to submit 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

"A meditation on unrequited, fangirl love, and Trent Reznor," by unreconstructed fangirl: lorimori (blog) - "This post needs a bit of set up, I think — it's an old piece from a past fangirl life (circa 2005!), but I wanted to bring it over here, because it's a subject that's near and dear to my heart."

topic:fandom

Queer Representation in Animation: Are We Settling?: Black Girl in Media (blog) - "In the end, despite their flaws, I do find myself a fan of almost all of the animated shows listed above. Though, I have to wonder what the line is for problematic media – even without perfect representation, are we doing more harm than good as viewers for supporting flawed representation of other members of our community?"

topic:representation, topic:lgbt

2001: A Superhero Odyssey: Noah Berlatsky (blog) - "Rather than a better society somewhere to come, we imagine an atemporal, ongoing empowerment. The future isn't so much a possibility as a superpower itself; a technology which fundamentally changes nothing except our sense of our own awesomeness."

topic:sci-fi, topic:superheroes

Why Hollywood is blaming its racism problem on you: Nico Lang (blog) - "In yet another embarrassing disclosure from the company's deluge of leaked emails, executives advised not to cast Denzel Washington in blockbusters, because according to Page Six, foreigners hate black people."

topic:racism

A Matter of Gaze: Foz Meadows (blog) - "Though not as overtly gratuitous as the surfeit of naked ladies, the direction in these moments felt equally dehumanising for its failure to recognise that women can have a gaze of their own; can be the active participants within a narrative, rather than merely passive subjects."

topic:femalecharacter, topic:gaze

'Shipping' and the Enduring Appeal of Rooting for Love: Eric Schulmiller (journal) - "As seen on countless fan-created Tumblr pages, to "ship" is to express your passionate approval of someone else's relationship, or your desire to see two (usually fictional or famous) individuals in a relationship with each other."

topic:shipping

Untitled: beatrice_otter (LJ) - "There are a lot of people confused about what to tag their stuff on AO3. I mean, like, people who use AO3 regularly sometimes talk about not knowing how to tag their fic."

topic:ao3, topic:tagging

A Lack of Female Characters is Always a Choice: Rhiannon Thomas (blog) - "People point out the lack of female characters in popular fantasy series precisely because so many fantasy series succeed without including female characters."

topic:fantasygenre, topic:femalecharacter

7 reasons by sequels (and Seth Rogen) took over Hollywood: Sriram Krishnan (blog) - "How did Hollywood get taken over by franchises? And what does this mean for movies? And what does Seth Rogen have to do with any of this?"

topic:movies

Sexualized Saturdays: Starring People or About Them? brothadom (blog) - "This got me to thinking: I play many games starring men, as this industry has a gender disparity, but I can't recall seeing too many gaming experiences about being a man."

topic:gaming, topic:gender

Magical Mondays: It's a Metaphor: pantydragon (blog) - "As writers have addressed before, allegory is a very common and a very positive element of fantasy, but even the noblest and most direct of allegories are not the same as visible and relatable minority representation in fantasy."

topic:representation

The Portrayal of Sisters in Pop Culture or Why I Wasn't as Impressed with Frozen as Everyoeg Else: Lady Geek Girl (blog) - "Here is my problem, though: I have only seen one sisterly relationship portrayed in pop culture that I can actually relate to."

topic:family, topic:femalecharacter

So-Called Continuity:Melannen (DW) - "Serial storytelling is something I have very strong feelings about, probably mostly because I was someone brought up in a house where you read books as you found them at the library, you read comics as they appeared out of a friend's or relative's attic, and you watched TV only when you had nothing better to do.

So for most of my life, the idea of experiencing an entire series, in order, with no gaps, was just a dream, a dream unattainable."

topic:continuity, topic:serials, fandom:mcu, fandom:marvelcomics

Just Post It: sasha_fether (DW) - "A while back longwhitecoats asked on Twitter about movies that influenced our queer identities.

I was thinking about this last night; and it's possible I've written about all or most of this before in 2009-ish. Queer identity is not static, but shifts over time. However, for me, my queer identity was most in focus when I was coming out, and the TV, movies, and other media I consumed mattered a lot. "

topic:movies, topic:queer

Sunreturn!: melannen (DW) - "espresso_addict asked about my writing process.

Since the alternative is actually writing, here it is:

Well, it starts with an idea, as you do.

I have tons of story ideas. Usually, these days, they're either an idea that was put up by somebody else as a prompt; or they come from taking a fact or what if, or making a connection between several of them, and realising that taking that for granted could lead interesting places. Sometimes I dream/hallucinate them though, not gonna lie."

topic:writing

Yuletide Meta:Skin In the Game: executrix (DW) - "About seven more hours until the Yuletide collection opens! (And perhaps my instinct to get the treats into main collection stems from the commonly held perception that hardly anyone bothers to read Madness.) (Cut for length)

In retrospect, not only is one of the treats in one of the biggest YT fandoms,it would not be surprising if the same prompt got written by at least one somebody-else. And I am all sadface about this. Although one of the other treats is from a prompt so cracked-out that I made sure to indicate in the A/N DON'T BLAME ME it wasn't thunk up by me all by myself. I think there's a teeny little bull's eye of a sweet spot when I won't think that either what I wrote was too conventional or...inadequately conventional. "

topic:yuletide, topic:writing

Specific Fandom

American Horror Story
'American Horror Story' reveals the cruel optimism of science fiction: Sam Yates (blog) - "Teasing out the connections between science and magic seemed crucial to understanding what made Coven, among the other American Horror Story seasons, a critical success."

fandom:americanhorrorstory

Amistad
Amistad: All the Legal Bits: aelarsen (blog) - "In 1839, a Spanish slave ship, La Amistad ("Friendship" in English), was travelling between Havana and Puerto Principe, Cuba, when the slaves in the hold found a file and were able to liberate themselves from their chains. "

fandom:amistad, topic:law, topic:slavery

Batgirl
On Imperfect Allies, And Why 'Batgirl' Still Deserves Support: Andrew Wheeler (blog) - "Issue #37 damaged the book's image and reputation, but it remains one of the best and most important superhero books being published today."

fandom:dccomics

Batman
Batman Fights Criminals, Not Crime: Squid, Inc. (blog) - "Batman is obviously not a sworn enemy of income inequality; he does not put on a cape and go toe-to-toe with the misallocation of resources, the troubling legacy of international colonialism, or the profit-driven culture which encourages the building of sweatshops or the abuse of labor rights."

fandom:dccomics

Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Dawn Summers Hate: A Rant: sheis-theslayer (tumblr) - "Someone on FB made the mistake of giving me permission to write a manifesto about why hating Dawn Summers is a crappy thing to do."

fandom:btvs

Centurion
Centurion: Roman Seal Team Six vs the Time-Travelling Killer Picts: aelarsen (blog) - " an action film about the disappearance of the Roman 9th Legion."

fandom:centurion

Charmed
Sexualized Saturdays: The Not-So-Charmed Love Lives of the Charmed Ones: polyglotpisces (blog) - "How do the portrayals of some of these relationships engage with gender issues and tropes?"

fandom:charmed

A Christmas Story
Why A Christmas Story Is The Most Honest Holiday Movie: Jed W. Harris-Keith (blog) - "First off, and I do welcome anyone else's input on this, A Christmas Story is lacking in what could be considered a message. (Maybe the message is about love and family and all that jazz, but that's a stretch.) Right off the bat, it's clear that the film isn't trying to BS anyone by surreptitiously sliding in a lesson about being good to your fellow man during the holiday season."

topic:movies

Constantine
Why NBC's 'Constantine' failed to live up to its comic book origins: Gavia Baker-Whitelaw (blog) - "Constantine hasn't officially been cancelled yet, but after having its first season truncated to 13 episodes, it may take a ratings miracle to save it from the jaws of death."

fandom:constantine

Doctor Who
'Inception' meets Santa in the 'Doctor Who' Christmas special: Gavia Baker-Whitelaw (blog) - "In keeping with Doctor Who tradition, this year's Christmas special was both thoroughly festive and totally nonsensical."

fandom:doctorwho

Why can't Steven Moffat find women to write for 'Doctor Who'?: Gavia Baker-Whitelaw (blog) - " Steven Moffat has had a lot of practice explaining Doctor Who's lack of female writers."

fandom:doctorwho

Dragon Age
Icons and Empathy: on the weird difficulty of player identification in videogames: Richard Rosenbaum (blog) - "What struck me most when I had that confusion with my friend about whether Hawke was a man or a woman was the realization that, even though we had been playing the same game, our experiences identifying with this character whose choices we controlled were much different – much more personal – than our experiences playing games where our characters were already created for us."

fandom:dragonage, topic:videogames

Game of Thrones
'Tis the Best Season: Slynt (blog) - "When I was asked which season I liked the best by my fellow writers at Tower of the Hand, I thought that would be an easy question to answer."

fandom:gameofthrones

Game of Thrones Jumping the Shark, Part II: msunyata (blog) - "Picking up where we left off from last time, the mighty table of round gets pounded even more over the exact nature of Jaime's character arc in FeastDance, an intriguing theory regarding the hidden presence of Aegon VI in season five, and the role - and validity - of the Tullys, specifically, and the Riverlands, generally."

fandom:gameofthrones

Harry Potter
Why you should send back J.K. Rowling's Pottermore Christmas presents: S.E. Smith (blog) - "Yet Rowling's perpetuation of her multibillion dollar franchise is getting a little tired—and one of the most tiring things about it is the endless retconning."

fandom:harrypotter

J.K. Rowling's tweets on representation at Hogwarts provoke major fan backlash: Aja Romano (blog) - "Were there Jewish students at Hogwarts? Does it matter? To the Harry Potter fans outraged over a response J.K. Rowling gave to the question on Twitter, the answer is undeniably yes."

fandom:harrypotter

We Need to Talk about Draco Malfoy: thusspakekate (LJ) - "I'm going to break my response/reaction to new information about Draco Malfoy released as a part of the 12 Days of Pottermore into two sections. 1) Draco's "backstory" and 2) JKR's "thoughts." BECAUSE EVERYONE HAS SOMETHING TO SAY ABOUT THIS"

fandom:harrypotter

A Rough Guide To Writing Your Own Independent!Harry Fic:BeastOfTheSea (AO3) - "In case you've ever wanted to write such a fic, but didn't know where to start."

fandom:harrypotter

The Hunchback of Notre Dame (Disney)
Oh, My Pop Culture Religion: Romani and Notre Dame: stinekey (blog) - "One of the things I love most about the movie is its complex portrayal of religion."

fandom:disney, topic:religion

Interstellar
Why Interstellar is Like Having an Argument With an A-hole: stokes (blog) - "There is a literary device that TV Tropes calls the Space Whale Aesop. "

fandom:interstellar

The Interview
Why Seth Rogen and James Franco should be thankful for North Korea: Nico Lang (blog) - "You're a movie studio. You have a film on your hand no one likes all that much. One of your own executives calls it "desperately unfunny." Reviewers seem to agree, and when the movie hits theaters, audiences are likely to not show up at all, especially if they could go see The Hobbit or Into the Woods instead. What do you do?"

fandom:theinterview

Stop criticizing 'The Interview' for killing Kim Jong-un: Matt Rozsa (blog) - "Say what you will about The Interview, but let's abandon the notion that the filmmakers were wrong for their fictionalized depiction of Kim Jong-un's death. The reason is simple: It is healthy to assert that Kim Jong-un deserves to die."

fandom:theinterview

j

Why pulling 'The Interview' from theaters is bad for America: Chris Osterndorf (blog) - "Amid the fallout from this month's widespread leaks, and with movie theaters dropping plans to release the movie left and right, Sony did the unthinkable yesterday and outright cancelled the theatrical release of The Interview."

fandom:theinterview

How everyone missed the point of 'The Interview': Matt Rozsa (blog) - "The Interview has been getting a lot of sympathy but, from a critical standpoint, not a great deal of respect. After seeing the film twice, I find this attitude a tad dismaying."

fandom:theinterview

Legend of Korra
On Korra, Her Relationships With Women, And That Epic Series Finale: Dee Hogan (blog) - "So in the end, we have a series about a powerful, bisexual woman of color battling against violent zealotry while simultaneously coming to understand the experiences and feelings that give rise to such extremism—the frustration that comes from a lack of control, the anger that develops when one's voice has been ignored (or outright silenced) for too long—which, in turn, leads her to eventually empathize with and in many ways fight for her antagonists' goals, even while she (and the series) condemns their methods."

fandom:legendofkorra

Fantasy Changing Reality: The Legacy of Korra's Legend: Juliet Kahn (blog) - "I seek, instead, to highlight how nothing else, high or low culture, would have the guts to do a scene like this involving, exclusively, women of color."

fandom:legendofkorra

Final Bows (Or Korrasami is Canon, Because Staging): heartlighting (tumblr) - "The last shots of a show or a movie work on the same principle. You wrap up your character arcs roughly in the order most important to the story, then to the main character, if you have a central one like Korra. LOK's finale was a great example of this, and their use of staging and structure just points big, fat arrows at Korrasami being legitimately queer and canon."

fandom:legendofkorra

Little Nemo
Dream a Dream of Public Domain: Noah Berlatsky (blog) - "Being public domain doesn't make Little Nemo uniquely vulnerable, then. On the contrary, being public domain seems to afford him some measure of protection. When you're owned by a large conglomerate, there's no telling what sort of sordid nonsense will happen to you under the auspices of "official" continuity — a villainous thug may turn into a dashing anti-hero, a warrior woman can be changed into an amnesiac sex doll. Why not, if it's good for business?"

topic:copyright, fandom:comics

Marvel Cinematic Universe
Untitled: wintercyan (tumblr) - "My question is: what is Steve Rogers's body count?"

fandom:mcu

I Want To Be A Real Boy: Hegemonic Masculinity, Gender as Performance and Two Dumb Kids From Brooklyn: ilgaksu(AO3) - "For the purposes of this, I'm focusing on pre-serum Steve Rogers and Brooklyn-era Bucky Barnes, although I'll probably return and reevaluate this for post-serum Steve and WS!Bucky at some point. 'Queer' will be used throughout as a blanket term for non-heteronormative sexualities."

fandom:mcu

The Newsroom
What Went Wrong on The Newsroom: Richard Lawson (journal) - "They showed that, as much as some of us maybe tricked ourselves into thinking that Sorkin was aware of the inherent folly of this exercise, maybe he really did think cable news could be some last bastion or bulwark against the lazy mediocre-ism of the Internet."

fandom:thenewsroom

The Nightmare Before Christmas
The Nightmare Before Christmas Is Actually About Why Cultural Appropriation Is Terrible: Katie Schenkel (blog) - "it comes down to repackaging and misrepresenting that culture, often for your own gain."

fandom:nightmarebeforechristmas, topic:culturalappropriation

Pan
Trailer Tuesday: Pan MadameAce (blog) - "Unfortunately, I think I might have gotten my hopes higher than I should. Almost immediately, the internet banded together to criticize the movie's casting choices, specifically that white actress Rooney Mara is playing the Native American princess, Tiger Lily."

fandom:pan, topic:racism

The Simpsons
Embiggening English: The Simpsons and changing language: Michael Adams (blog) - "The first episode of The Simpsons aired twenty-five years ago, on 17 December, 1989, and since then, English has never been the same."

fandom:thesimpsons

A Song of Ice and Fire
Chapter-by-Chapter Analysis: Catelyn II, ACOK: Steven Attewell (blog) - in depth ASOIAF analysis

fandom:asoiaf

A Laboratory of Politics Part V: Steven Attewell (blog) - "In Part V of A Laboratory of Politics, I'll be examining the largest and arguably one of the most powerful of the Free Cities, Volantis."

fandom:asoiaf

Stark Justice: An Apologia for Ol' Neddy Stark: mikelywhiplash (blog) - "Ned Stark believes in law, justice, and honor; dangerous attributes in such treacherous terrain. But more than making him moral, it makes Ned wise, even though things, um, go south for him."

fandom:asoiaf, fandom:gameofthrones

Star Trek
Classic Zines: Contact Two (Star Trek TOS): intrigueing (DW) - "Here's my overview of Issue #2 (first published in 1975) of the Star Trek TOS zine "Contact." I wrote about Issue #1 back here. This issue differs from the previous one mostly in that it has a larger variety of authors and artists. "

fandom:startrek, topic:zines

Star Wars
J.J. Abrams Beyond the Mystery Box on Hyperspace Theories Episode Four: Hyperspace Theories (podcast) - "Little pieces of official information about Star Wars: The Force Awakens are slowly beginning to be revealed. But that doesn't slow us down one bit on Hyperspace Theories!"

fandom:starwars

Stargate: SG-1
Oh, My Pop Culture Goa'uld: When Our Gods are Aliens: MadameAce (blog) - "Unfortunately, the mythology, while being a central part of the story and adding depth to the narrative, is not the best from a more religious perspective."

fandom:stargate, topic:religion

Supernatural
Season of Women: S10 of Supernatural: Foz Meadows (blog) - "The first time I tried to watch Supernatural, I gave up midway through the first episode, irked by the show's highly stereotyped portrayal of women."

fandom:supernatural, warning:rape

Supernatural/Dexter
Moral Combat! Dean Winchester vs. Dexter Morgan Fight!: Madiholmes (AO3) - "It's always startling to see Dean Winchester and Dexter Morgan compared together"

fandom:supernatural, fandom:dexter

Teen Wolf
Magical Mondays: Teen Wolf Does Kitsune: polyglotpisces (blog) - "The viewers met a new brand of being: the kitsune. While the new characters brought girl power and much needed Asian representation to Beacon Hills (and TV in general), did they bring any more consistency and logic than the banshees? Not so much."

fandom:teenwolf

True Blood
True Blood Season 3: More Misogyny and Stereotypes: MadameAce (blog) - "I wouldn't be surprised to hear that the writers purposefully went out of their way to make Season 3 the most offensive, difficult, triggering season possible."

fandom:trueblood

Vikings
The Vikings: Winning is Easy When the Show Cheats: aelarsen (blog) - "Today I want to look at the way The Vikings series depicts combat, particularly the raids on Northumbria in the fourth and seventh episodes, because it fundamentally misrepresents how Viking raiding and Viking combat worked."

fandom:vikings

White Collar
Why I was quite disappointed by the White Collar series finale (a vidder's perspective): luvtheheaven (AO3) - "Not a fanfic, just a meta... or like,you know, me typing up my thoughts in reaction to the finale. So MAJOR SPOILERS for how 6x06, the final episode ever of White Collar, played out."

fandom:whitecollar

Welcome to Night Vale
All Hail The Glow Cloud: Presenting The Fantastic As Ordinary: Aeryn Brown (AO3) - " how what might be considered unusual or otherworldly in our world is seen as utterly normal in Night Vale."

fandom:wtnv

Wonder Woman
P / P BOOK REVIEW: WONDER WOMAN: BONDAGE AND FEMINISM IN THE MARSTON/PETER COMICS, 1941 – 1948: Emily Ballaine (blog) - "The idea that these images of women being bound and subjected to male dominance stems from a place of female empowerment is one that I would not have necessarily fully agreed with before reading this book, and yet Berlatsky makes an effective argument that the purpose behind such images is not one of male excitement, but rather as a way of understanding a common experience—what woman (or man) has not at some point in her life felt out of control, afraid, weak?"

fandom:dccomics, topic:sexism

Why is Hollywood scared of Wonder Woman?: Veronica I. Arreola (blog) - "Wonder Woman and feminism have often had a complicated relationship. The heroine started her life in 1941 as, essentially, a feminist idol."

fandom:dccu, fandom:dccomics