Meta Links (02/05/13 - 08/05/13)
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metanewsNotices
If you want to give feedback, volunteer, link us to meta or ask a question, comment to the volunteers post, the Questions and Things post, the screened post, or PM/email.
General Fandom
Of scene-setting, fanfic, and The Great Gatsby: naraht (DW) - "I've always thought that scene setting is one of the main points where fanfic falls down compared to professionally published fic. It is so easy to assume that your readership knows all of the background, can envision everything they need to see in their mind's eye, allowing you to write in a sort of literary shorthand. "
Exactly what I was going for: podklb (tumblr) - "The reason I’m going into this right now is that, for authors who love podfic and want to have that positive contact with people who podficced their works, I want to share my thoughts about things that I think would facilitate that and make it feel safer and easier for podficcers to give them what they want. I can only speculate about how any individual podficcer would respond, but at least for me, these things would make a big difference:"
Parenting the fannish child: lunabee34 (DW) - "Josh and I have a lot of decisions to make about her participation in fandom and her use of the internet in general. What follows is a list of some of the issues I see looming ahead, what we’ve done so far, and what we’re still struggling to figure out. "
An Introduction to Mary Sue and Her Critical Uses and Abuses: kate_nepveu (DW) - "being called a Mary Sue is not necessarily a sign that the story is bad. That's because the definition of Mary Sue has expanded greatly since the term was first coined and, as I will argue here, is now effectively a reflexive way to discount and discourage women's writing, female characters, and female participation in fannish activities."
Can videogames teach us about race?: Sydney Fussell (blog) - "The conciliatory tokens of acknowledgment that worked in the past are no longer acceptable and, I believe, that through online dialogues gamers can hold developers to the same degree of accountability in their treatments of both race and gender."
On Character Death and Deathfics: niko in whumpable (DW) - ""Presumed death" scenarios are, of course, a staple of hurt/comfort, but does actual death fall within the spectrum of hurt/comfort stories, or would you consider it an entirely different animal, outside the scope of h/c discussion?"
Profanity in Fiction: armaina (DW) - "[A]s I was listening to the radio, I was thinking about the aspects regarding word censorship, the standard in which some words are deemed so harsh they must be altered, removed or bleeped if presented on certain public areas."
Specific Fandoms
Avengers
Clint, Natasha and AUs :franztastisch (LJ) - "BUT more specifically than just AUs, this is about Clint and Natasha, and how you make Clint and Natasha Clint and Natasha when you’ve taken away a great deal of what makes the canonically Clint and Natasha"
Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Spike’s Identity : itsnotmymind (LJ) - "Spike has two parts. The first Spike we meet is the Slayer of Slayers. In vamp face, the cool guy, telling the other vampires about the slayers he killed (“Who am I kidding? I love to brag!”). Then Dru shows up, and he drops his vamp face, we see the other side: Love’s Bitch. Doting on his sick girlfriend and giving her his coat. No one else in the room matters when she shows up."
What's Your Childhood Trauma?: Parenting and Attachment Styles in Buffy the Vampire Slayer: tiny-white-hats (LJ) - "The Buffyverse isn’t really known for having an excess of good parents...almost every character in Buffy the Vampire Slayer either comes from a home with less satisfactory parents, or their home situation is never discussed."
Doctor Who
Meeting with the Tardis: Journey to the Center of the Goddess : lonewytch(LJ) - "In which the World Tree is blatant, the Tardis is a Goddess, Clara's lessons about Death continue, the Doctor is in denial, Clara is most certainly not an android and a million other very interesting things occur. "
What is wrong with Doctor Who: the idiot box (blog) - "I thought it was time to give some thought to what the Doctor-assistant relationship is, what function the assistant has on the show, how Doctor Who distributes personal qualities by gender, and why I now hate this lovely show that I used to love."
You don't like the Moffat era companions then, why is this?: such_heights (tumblr) - " It’s perfectly legit to prefer RTD’s take on the show, of course, but to say that his companions have agency and arcs while Moffat’s don’t is not particularly convincing."
Iron Man 3
warning: all Iron Man 3 posts contain SPOILERS
Why the Mandarin Needed to be Portrayed as He Was in Iron Man 3: fuckitfireeverything (tumblr) - "... I want to discuss my opinions on why IM3 really did the Mandarin the only way they could, and why that worked so well narratively within the MCU."
In Defense of Pepper Potts: rozzingit (tumblr) - "Most of Pepper’s life for the past — I don’t know, seems at least a decade — has been taking care of Tony Stark, and now she takes care of him as a lover and a girlfriend rather than a personal assistant, and that’s great, but he is Tony Stark, and he must be exhausting."
Armor and Angst: Tony Stark is the New Captain America: Linda Holmes in NPR's monkeysee (blog) - "The biggest difference between Stark and other superheroes, both in the Marvel universe and elsewhere, is that his goodness is not instinctive."
Iron Man 3 Takes On Drone Strikes, Media Manipulation, and the War on Terror: Alyssa Rosenberg in thinkprogress (blog) - "...[M]ainstream pop culture can question the assumptions of the War on Terror only so far."
Race + Film: Who Is the Mandarin?: Kendra James & Arturo Garcia in racialicious (blog) - "This wasn’t about avoiding racially problematic character tropes; this was about not jeopardizing the film’s prospects at the Chinese box office."
"Blow something up? I already did that.": liviapenn (DW) - "There are no supervillains in the Iron Man movies, not really. That's not what really drives the plot. There's just Tony and Tony's huge personal problems."
Post-Trilogy Reflections on 'Iron Man 3':thatlitgirl (DW) - "The difficulty in interpreting Iron Man 3 lies in the film’s inability to decide whether it is affirming or critiquing everything from the U.S. American military-industrial complex to patriarchal gender politics."
Iron Man 3, The Dark Knight
Iron Man 3!: lettered (DW) - "I have a big problem with the Iron Man franchise in general. The Iron Man suit is a weapon of mass destruction."
The Dark Knight
Why was Dark Knight Rises Terrible?!: hellotailor (tumblr) - "TDKR is a trifecta of bad ideas: nonsensical storytelling, pointlessly racist/sexist stubtext, and an apparent lack of respect for the film’s original source material."
Lord of the Rings/The Hobbit
Hobbit Origins and Philosophy: theonering.net (blog) - "I have read The Hobbit, the Trilogy and am halfway thru the Similarian. I have not run across anything about Hobbit origins, or life and death philosophies."
Dwarven gender politics and sociolinguistics: mildred_of_midgard(DW) - "Based on what little we know of Dwarf women, 1) They rarely ever go outside or interact with other races, 2) The birth-rate of the Dwarven population and of females in particular is low, 3) They can pass as Dwarf men to the uneducated eye."
Mass Effect
The Simple Lesson I Learned from 369 Hours of Mass Effect: ars technica (blog) - "The simple lesson I learned from 369 hours of Mass Effect Why these three games were so damn great—and why the ending, good or bad, doesn't matter."
Shoujo Manga (General)
Working Hard is for Losers and Women: Why Shoujo Manga is the Worst Place for an Ego Boost: ughfandoms-in-general (tumblr) - "...there is a severe lack of female characters in shoujo who get rewarded for their efforts. No matter how hard they try, it doesn’t matter. Their “prince” is always going to be better..."
Game of Thrones
Meta Monday: Tavel: justadram (tumblr) - "Today’s topic is travel. In a series that takes us from Dorne to beyond the Wall, we see a great deal of travel in Westeros. From foot to hoof, the characters travel wide and far, encountering danger with great regularity. What drove travel in the Middle Ages was a combination of commerce, religion, and politics, and the variety in modes of travel and the dangers faced were much the same as what we find in Westeros."
Just because you like it doesn't make it feminist: On Game of Thrones’ imagined feminism: Meghan Murphy (blog) - "I get the feeling that (some) women, especially younger feminist women, really, really want the things they like to be feminist. Which is a nice thought, of course, but is also ridiculous."
Due South
Stand in the Place That You Live: Shayheyred (AO3) - "Is a man's home -- or apartment, or cubicle, or storeroom -- really his castle? An exploration of the living spaces inhabited by Fraser and the two Rays."
The Great Gatsby
Why I despise the Great Gatsby: Katheryn Schulz (blog) - "I find Gatsby aesthetically overrated, psychologically vacant, and morally complacent; "
Avatar: The Last Airbender
Toph and Teo's disabilities are not what you think they are.: chordatesrock(DW) - "I see people make supposedly definitive statements about Toph and Teo that are not only not canon, but are highly implausible. Specifically, I see people saying that Toph has no light perception and Teo has paraplegia."
Veronica Mars
Veronica Mars Television Club: National Black Velvet And Urkel: Alyssa Rosenberg (blog) - "these two episodes of the show are about what happens when people refuse to conform to the tropes that they’ve been assigned to. "
If you want to give feedback, volunteer, link us to meta or ask a question, comment to the volunteers post, the Questions and Things post, the screened post, or PM/email.
General Fandom
Of scene-setting, fanfic, and The Great Gatsby: naraht (DW) - "I've always thought that scene setting is one of the main points where fanfic falls down compared to professionally published fic. It is so easy to assume that your readership knows all of the background, can envision everything they need to see in their mind's eye, allowing you to write in a sort of literary shorthand. "
topic: fanfic
Exactly what I was going for: podklb (tumblr) - "The reason I’m going into this right now is that, for authors who love podfic and want to have that positive contact with people who podficced their works, I want to share my thoughts about things that I think would facilitate that and make it feel safer and easier for podficcers to give them what they want. I can only speculate about how any individual podficcer would respond, but at least for me, these things would make a big difference:"
fandom: podfic
Parenting the fannish child: lunabee34 (DW) - "Josh and I have a lot of decisions to make about her participation in fandom and her use of the internet in general. What follows is a list of some of the issues I see looming ahead, what we’ve done so far, and what we’re still struggling to figure out. "
topic: fandom, topic: parenting
An Introduction to Mary Sue and Her Critical Uses and Abuses: kate_nepveu (DW) - "being called a Mary Sue is not necessarily a sign that the story is bad. That's because the definition of Mary Sue has expanded greatly since the term was first coined and, as I will argue here, is now effectively a reflexive way to discount and discourage women's writing, female characters, and female participation in fannish activities."
topic: fanfic, character: female, character: mary sue
Can videogames teach us about race?: Sydney Fussell (blog) - "The conciliatory tokens of acknowledgment that worked in the past are no longer acceptable and, I believe, that through online dialogues gamers can hold developers to the same degree of accountability in their treatments of both race and gender."
fandom: gaming, topic: race
On Character Death and Deathfics: niko in whumpable (DW) - ""Presumed death" scenarios are, of course, a staple of hurt/comfort, but does actual death fall within the spectrum of hurt/comfort stories, or would you consider it an entirely different animal, outside the scope of h/c discussion?"
topic: hurt/comfort, topic: character death
Profanity in Fiction: armaina (DW) - "[A]s I was listening to the radio, I was thinking about the aspects regarding word censorship, the standard in which some words are deemed so harsh they must be altered, removed or bleeped if presented on certain public areas."
topic: writing
Specific Fandoms
Avengers
Clint, Natasha and AUs :franztastisch (LJ) - "BUT more specifically than just AUs, this is about Clint and Natasha, and how you make Clint and Natasha Clint and Natasha when you’ve taken away a great deal of what makes the canonically Clint and Natasha"
fandom: avengers, topic: au, topic: character
Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Spike’s Identity : itsnotmymind (LJ) - "Spike has two parts. The first Spike we meet is the Slayer of Slayers. In vamp face, the cool guy, telling the other vampires about the slayers he killed (“Who am I kidding? I love to brag!”). Then Dru shows up, and he drops his vamp face, we see the other side: Love’s Bitch. Doting on his sick girlfriend and giving her his coat. No one else in the room matters when she shows up."
fandom: btvs, topic: character
What's Your Childhood Trauma?: Parenting and Attachment Styles in Buffy the Vampire Slayer: tiny-white-hats (LJ) - "The Buffyverse isn’t really known for having an excess of good parents...almost every character in Buffy the Vampire Slayer either comes from a home with less satisfactory parents, or their home situation is never discussed."
fandom: btvs
Doctor Who
Meeting with the Tardis: Journey to the Center of the Goddess : lonewytch(LJ) - "In which the World Tree is blatant, the Tardis is a Goddess, Clara's lessons about Death continue, the Doctor is in denial, Clara is most certainly not an android and a million other very interesting things occur. "
fandom: doctor who
What is wrong with Doctor Who: the idiot box (blog) - "I thought it was time to give some thought to what the Doctor-assistant relationship is, what function the assistant has on the show, how Doctor Who distributes personal qualities by gender, and why I now hate this lovely show that I used to love."
fandom: doctor who, character: female
You don't like the Moffat era companions then, why is this?: such_heights (tumblr) - " It’s perfectly legit to prefer RTD’s take on the show, of course, but to say that his companions have agency and arcs while Moffat’s don’t is not particularly convincing."
fandom: doctor who, character: female
Iron Man 3
warning: all Iron Man 3 posts contain SPOILERS
Why the Mandarin Needed to be Portrayed as He Was in Iron Man 3: fuckitfireeverything (tumblr) - "... I want to discuss my opinions on why IM3 really did the Mandarin the only way they could, and why that worked so well narratively within the MCU."
fandom: iron man
In Defense of Pepper Potts: rozzingit (tumblr) - "Most of Pepper’s life for the past — I don’t know, seems at least a decade — has been taking care of Tony Stark, and now she takes care of him as a lover and a girlfriend rather than a personal assistant, and that’s great, but he is Tony Stark, and he must be exhausting."
fandom: iron man
Armor and Angst: Tony Stark is the New Captain America: Linda Holmes in NPR's monkeysee (blog) - "The biggest difference between Stark and other superheroes, both in the Marvel universe and elsewhere, is that his goodness is not instinctive."
fandom: iron man
Iron Man 3 Takes On Drone Strikes, Media Manipulation, and the War on Terror: Alyssa Rosenberg in thinkprogress (blog) - "...[M]ainstream pop culture can question the assumptions of the War on Terror only so far."
fandom: iron man
Race + Film: Who Is the Mandarin?: Kendra James & Arturo Garcia in racialicious (blog) - "This wasn’t about avoiding racially problematic character tropes; this was about not jeopardizing the film’s prospects at the Chinese box office."
fandom: iron man, topic: race
"Blow something up? I already did that.": liviapenn (DW) - "There are no supervillains in the Iron Man movies, not really. That's not what really drives the plot. There's just Tony and Tony's huge personal problems."
fandom: iron man
Post-Trilogy Reflections on 'Iron Man 3':thatlitgirl (DW) - "The difficulty in interpreting Iron Man 3 lies in the film’s inability to decide whether it is affirming or critiquing everything from the U.S. American military-industrial complex to patriarchal gender politics."
fandom: iron man, topic: gender
Iron Man 3, The Dark Knight
Iron Man 3!: lettered (DW) - "I have a big problem with the Iron Man franchise in general. The Iron Man suit is a weapon of mass destruction."
fandom: iron man, fandom: batman, warning: spoilers
The Dark Knight
Why was Dark Knight Rises Terrible?!: hellotailor (tumblr) - "TDKR is a trifecta of bad ideas: nonsensical storytelling, pointlessly racist/sexist stubtext, and an apparent lack of respect for the film’s original source material."
fandom: batman, topic: wealth
Lord of the Rings/The Hobbit
Hobbit Origins and Philosophy: theonering.net (blog) - "I have read The Hobbit, the Trilogy and am halfway thru the Similarian. I have not run across anything about Hobbit origins, or life and death philosophies."
fandom: tolkien
Dwarven gender politics and sociolinguistics: mildred_of_midgard(DW) - "Based on what little we know of Dwarf women, 1) They rarely ever go outside or interact with other races, 2) The birth-rate of the Dwarven population and of females in particular is low, 3) They can pass as Dwarf men to the uneducated eye."
fandom: tolkien,
Mass Effect
The Simple Lesson I Learned from 369 Hours of Mass Effect: ars technica (blog) - "The simple lesson I learned from 369 hours of Mass Effect Why these three games were so damn great—and why the ending, good or bad, doesn't matter."
fandom: mass effect
Shoujo Manga (General)
Working Hard is for Losers and Women: Why Shoujo Manga is the Worst Place for an Ego Boost: ughfandoms-in-general (tumblr) - "...there is a severe lack of female characters in shoujo who get rewarded for their efforts. No matter how hard they try, it doesn’t matter. Their “prince” is always going to be better..."
fandom: manga, topic: gender
Game of Thrones
Meta Monday: Tavel: justadram (tumblr) - "Today’s topic is travel. In a series that takes us from Dorne to beyond the Wall, we see a great deal of travel in Westeros. From foot to hoof, the characters travel wide and far, encountering danger with great regularity. What drove travel in the Middle Ages was a combination of commerce, religion, and politics, and the variety in modes of travel and the dangers faced were much the same as what we find in Westeros."
fandom: game of thrones
Just because you like it doesn't make it feminist: On Game of Thrones’ imagined feminism: Meghan Murphy (blog) - "I get the feeling that (some) women, especially younger feminist women, really, really want the things they like to be feminist. Which is a nice thought, of course, but is also ridiculous."
fandom: game of thrones, topic: feminism
Due South
Stand in the Place That You Live: Shayheyred (AO3) - "Is a man's home -- or apartment, or cubicle, or storeroom -- really his castle? An exploration of the living spaces inhabited by Fraser and the two Rays."
fandom: due south, topic: location
The Great Gatsby
Why I despise the Great Gatsby: Katheryn Schulz (blog) - "I find Gatsby aesthetically overrated, psychologically vacant, and morally complacent; "
fandom: the great gatsby
Avatar: The Last Airbender
Toph and Teo's disabilities are not what you think they are.: chordatesrock(DW) - "I see people make supposedly definitive statements about Toph and Teo that are not only not canon, but are highly implausible. Specifically, I see people saying that Toph has no light perception and Teo has paraplegia."
fandom: atla, topic: disability
Veronica Mars
Veronica Mars Television Club: National Black Velvet And Urkel: Alyssa Rosenberg (blog) - "these two episodes of the show are about what happens when people refuse to conform to the tropes that they’ve been assigned to. "
fandom: veronica mars,
