metanews | Meta Links (18/04/13

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General Fandom

Female characters

On Female Characters: summer-of-supervillainy (tumblr) - "I am tired of being told to like female characters."

character: female

Untitled: gingerhaze (tumblr) - "Send me an ask or reply to this post telling me about a female character you hate, and tell me why. "

character: female

Untitled: gingerhaze(tumblr) - "my problem with the initial post that started all this is that it displays an attitude I see all too often: “because sexism exists, it would be better if there were no female characters rather than ‘bad’ female characters.”"

character: female

Meta Month of May: Prompts & Brainstorming: month_of_meta(DW) - "Is there something in your fandom you'd love to see someone write a meta post about? A subject you wish fandom talked about a little more? Something you've thought about writing up but never had the time? Do you want to float an idea and see if there's any interest? Do you have an underdeveloped meta idea that you'd like to put out there and find people to brainstorm with about it?"

topic: discussion

in re: fanfic, the difference between infringement and plagiarism: bookshop (tumblr) - "So I got asked by a reader to explain why publishing fanfiction based on someone else’s characters and words wasn’t plagiarism."

topic: fanfic

The Three Categories of Crack Fic: canolacrush (AO3) - "A brief explanation of the different distinctions among crack fic, why people read and write these different types of crack fic, and its legacy in English literature."

topic: fanfic

Slash Report 309 - Tropes: Slashreport (podcast) - "We heard you guys like tropes so we got you some tropes so you could trope while you trope." (Discussion on tropes doesn't start until about 04.55)

trope

Dear Fandom, here are some things from my experience that may be helpful to consider when you write m/m sex: clickthefrog (tumblr) - "Hardly anything you’d write is wrong, because people vary so much. There’s probably a gymnast with a 10-inch penis somewhere that can make that position possible. The question for writers is how you will choose to balance realism with the story that you want to tell, and how far you can successfully take your readers into statistically improbable territory without breaking their suspension of disbelief"

topic: writing, topic: sex

What Fanworks Do : OTW (LJ) - "OTW Fannews: What fanworks do"

topic: fandom, topic: podfic, topic: fanvids, fandom: harry potter, fandom: doctor who

Specific Fandoms

Avengers

Avengers Meta: Scientist vs Warrior in MCU: icarus-chained(LJ) - "I'm picking Thor vs Tony as the angle of attack on this, but it actually spreads out across the movieverse, so I'll be taking the whole team as we move on. They actually divide relatively neatly into opposing pairs by cast-herd: Thor vs Loki, Steve vs Tony, Clint vs Natasha, Bruce vs Hulk, but Thor vs Tony has the advantage of an almost carbon-copy narrative to highlight the contrast, so it makes a good starting point."

fandom: comics

Star Wars

The Moral Lanscape of the Star Wars Saga: Padme Amidala : rpowell(LJ) - "In her own quiet and ladylike way, Padmé never struck me as one-dimensional. True, she does reflect an ideal persona in a superficial way. But when I looked past her aura of serenity and wisdom, I saw a young woman who not only made some unwise choices in her life, but also possessed her own set of personal flaws."

fandom: star wars

Teen Wolf

Teen Wolf mini meta: Vote Boyd for Alpha.: nemo_r (DW) - " I love hyper-competent Lydia, but realistically, it should really be Boyd in that position. "

fandom: teen wolf

Game of Thrones

Meta Monday: the Disabled: justadram (tumblr) - "Today’s topic is the treatment of disabled people. Tyrion’s comment leads us to believe that children born with disabilities or disorders were likely to be the victims of infanticide in Westeros. It’s only the accident of his birth that spared him that fate. Was this also the case in the Middle Ages? Were the disabled universally despised and disposable?"

fandom: game of thrones, topic: disability

Doctor Who

Why I don’t enjoy Doctor Who as much as I used to.: castieels (tumblr) - "Steven Moffat has turned Doctor Who into something so disjointed from its former self that it might as well not be the same show." (contains a spoiler for the title of this season's final episode)

fandom: doctor who, warning: spoilers

Songs of the Red Snow: Cold War: Lonewytch(LJ) - "One of the things that I want to talk about briefly before getting into the meat (meat, meta, meat) of the ep itself, is Joseph Campbell’s Monomyth, also called the Hero’s Journey. Clara’s journey with the Doctor is following some of the key points of Campbell’s mythic map"

fandom: doctor who

Hannibal

Are you watching Hannibal? What do you think of it?: notbecauseofvictories(tumblr) - " I don’t think I can enjoy any narrative where Faust is giving in not just to Mephistopheles, but the evil within him—and this is celebrated as a virtuous realization of his real self, a shedding of the needless and arbitrary morality of mankind and ascending to one’s true power and strength."

fandom: hannibal

Untitled (response to above post): bookshop (tumblr) - " It’s a universal problematic truth that the bad boy is the ultimate sex symbol, and we’ve been conditioned from birth to want him, love him, admire him, want to be him, want to fuck him, even when he’s threatening to kill us, even when he makes us eat our own brains and like it."

fandom: hannibal, character: bad boy, character: villain

I think people are misunderstanding Will Graham’s mental state and what it means.: nikibee1(tumblr) - "Will Graham is neuroatypical. His ability to empathize with serial killers is not an indicator of his moral character, it’s an innate fact of his brain. What is an indicator of his moral character, by the way, is that he’s chosen to use his abilities in order to catch killers despite the negative consequences to his mental state. That says something about Will’s character and his priorities and I think it’s something we should appreciate."

fandom: hannibal, topic: psychology

Harry Potter

Untitled (Dumbledore is gay photoset) : gyzm (tumblr) - "There are a thousand different ways to establish a character’s sexuality, which I know, because they’re used to establish characters as straight all the time. "

fandom: harry potter, topic: sexuality, topic: representation

Lizzie Bennet Diaries/Pride and Prejudice

I feel like we lost a little bit of something with LBD, in never really getting an apology scene between Lizzie and Darcy.: lulabo (tumblr) - " This is a man who looked in the mirror, decided he could be better, and tried to be better not with the goal of wooing the woman who rejected him, but with the idea that she existed in the world and if he could he’d want to be worthy of her."

fandom: lizzie bennet diaries, fandom: austen

Sherlock

Why on Earth would anyone call a child Mycroft? : certainetymolo (LJ) - "I thought I’d put my linguistics degree to some actual use and write up a short piece about the names of both canon and some BBC Sherlock specific characters. Three days later I’m lost in the library, digging through long-forgotten 19th century tomes about the typonymic names of Lancashire. Well, those are the occupational hazards of an academic "

fandom: sherlock

Fangirl on a Bicycle: "I am disappointed in everybody", Or: No, My Expectations were Never that High: prettyartitrary (tumblr) - "Remember how I promised a bunch of you that at some point I’d make that post about committed asexual relationships and A Scandal in Belgravia? Well, here it is. "

fandom: sherlock, topic: asexuality, relationship: friendship, warning: spoilers

Supernatural

On writing hell: a comparison: maenad (LJ) - "I have heard it said that Supernatural simply doesn't have the resources to do hell properly, and that that is why the hell that appeared in Taxi Driver was just kind of ... there. I don't believe that at all.Supernatural has frequently presented complex concepts effectively on its limited budget. "

fandom: supernatural