I've been watching TV again.

Well, specifically, I've been watching "How It's Made" late night on the Science Channel while I wait for my sleeping meds to kick in (I'm fascinated by stuff like that. *iz a geek*).

It dawns on me that I mainly watch non-fiction stuff when I watch TV nowadays. I think it's because of my whole, "I'm bored by watching guys all the time" thing. TV offers up few awesome female characters. Though I do have a huge thread full of recs, a lot of which I checked out and enjoyed. Something seemed to be missing, though.

Cause (this will seem like an odd segue, but bear with me), I went through classic Identity Issues a couple years ago. Guys were treating me "like a girl". This upset me. Watching commercials on late-night TV reminds me of why. Girls get excited over some new fabric softener. They happily use a swifter to clean up after their husband and three sons. Men worry about the finances while women look on, concerned.

What's more, being feminine was so tied in with being subservient, powerless, not-as-smart-as-guys.

It took me a while to figure out that being feminine didn't require those traits. That being "just a girl" wasn't an insult. I had to learn to embrace the feminine in myself without accepting the cultural baggage. Some of my heroes helped me do this - Buffy, Willow, Gabrielle.

There's something that was missing in this, though. While I was attempting to reconcile my feminine side, I also had to figure how to deal with my, well, masculine side. Traits that are typically seen as "guy-like". I'm not butch by any stretch, but I've been thought of as "one of the guys" in the past so there appear to be some characteristics of mine that are perceived as masculine.

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In my Social Movements course, we had a section on the New American Right movement, which prompted some thoughts.

Actually, they collided with some thoughts I'd already been playing around with regarding feminism.

So now I have these two thoughts that have collided, and I need to untangle them. So bear with me here. I have no conclusions or anything. I'm just working out a thought trail.

( I get all feminist-y under hereCollapse )

This is probably just a "me" thing, but when I come across a popular ship/character that I just can't grok, I want to try to get it. Like, really. And eventually, given enough time and musing and discussion, I usually do. Even if I don't end up liking it, I "get" why other people do.

There's three big ships in fandom that I've been trying to understand the appeal (cause...I don't see it).

1. Buffy/Angel. Obviously, a canon ship, but it doesn't appeal to me at all in a shippy sense. And I'm desperately waiting to come across a Bangel fic that nails how I view the ship and makes me bookmark the hell out of it and rec it to everybody as, "That fic that I loved...and it's a Bangel fic!" As it is, most Buffy/Angel fics are leaving me either bored or rolling my eyes (or both).

2. Buffy/Faith. A subtext-y ship where I am oblivious to said subtext. I just don't get it. I don't see Faith as having a thing for Buffy, and I don't see Buffy as being sexually tempted by Faith or whatnot. And most Buffy/Faith fics kinda work on the assumption that those two premises are a given, so I'm left floundering. So I'm waiting for a Buffy/Faith fic to work me into the pairing and sell it to me. I know it's out there somewhere!

3. Spike/Xander. Yeah...I don't know that I have as much hope for this one, but dammit, I'm working on it!

My solution? I wanna fic them. Yeah, I wanna do a fic for each of these ships and try to sell myself on them. Don't know how long it's gonna take or how successful I'll be. But it'll make me feel better that I made an honest attempt to get the ships. Then, if I'm still left puzzled, I'll just let it be and remember that not everybody's gonna understand every ship. You just have to accept that other people will enjoy different things than you do. :)

Meh. I'm feeling all icky and I kinda wanna just curl up and watch random South Park episodes on my comp, but it seems like a timely time to take up the topic of lurkers and why I wield pom-poms for them. Any incoherency is strictly due to me being stupid, not the sickliness. :)

Let's start with one of those damned annoying questions that'll make your head spin and your shoulders shrug. What is "fandom"? Who are we talking about when we talk about fandom? It's a word used so often by us, but actually pinning down who it includes can be something of a bitch.

Let's start with the basic: People who create fanworks, whether it be fanfic, fanart, fanvids, meta. Also, people who run comms, forums, award sites, rec lists, or in some other way actively contribute with significant chunks of their time/talent.

Those people are indisputably part of fandom. Hell, they're the part of fandom you hear about most. But fandom surely doesn't stop with them.

( This is interesting to me. If it's likewise interesting to you, click this cut.Collapse )

Humor me a bit. It's Friday night. I have no plans. And I have question-y thoughts.

Poll is below. Unfortunately, I could only include BtVS characters. LJ poll limits prevent me from adding AtS characters on. Sorry!

( Click the cut, Frank!Collapse )

Happy 2010, guys!

I've been thinking about my love for Buffy. The character, not the show. Well, I love the show, too...but...crap. My brain's still weary from last night's celebrations. I'll move on.

When I first watched BtVS, I was all about Spike. As with most women, the Cheekbones O' Sexiness prompted immediate hysterical fangirlishness from me and I was blind to all else.

Well, maybe not quite that extreme, but you get the picture. I was firmly a Spike Fan.

Buffy? Meh. I could take her or leave her. I was largely unsympathetic towards her in S6 (ironic, yes), and my fannishness for Spuffy hinged largely on Spike.

As I lurked around fandom, I found a lot to satisfy my love for Spike. Websites devoted to him with oodles of essays and fics and discussions. I honestly don't have much to say about Spike's character now that hasn't already been said by people far more eloquent than me.

While I was getting my Spike fix, though, I ran across a lot of stuff ragging on Buffy. Some of which I agreed with, some which went way too far. So I started defending her, even if only in my head (cause I was still a lurker then). But that planted the seed and when I actually became a non-lurking member of fandom, I was prone to defending Buffy against some of the more unfair arguments against her.

My reversal of my initial S6 opinion furthered my soon-to-be Buffy fangirlism. I realized my initial lack of sympathy for Buffy's situation was a bit of good ol' over-identification. Once I was in a better place, I was able to clue into that and became a staunch defender of S6 Buffy.

And so, through my participation in fandom, my love for Buffy, the character, emerged. I still love and fangirl Spike (after all, those cheekbones are still sexy). But it's equaled with my love for Buffy. And unlike Spike, Buffy (the character) doesn't seem to have the vast amounts of websites and essays and such devoted to her. So I've been trying to fill that need.

This is all a long-ass way for me to ponder if there are any characters that tend to "sneak up" on people. Maybe you weren't too fond of the character when you watched, but as time went on, you began to fangirl/boy them. And what characters are people immediately drawn to? I'd guess Spike would be a popular one, as his entrance in S2 is...well...pretty squee-worthy. Was anybody immediately drawn to Buffy as a character?

Random thinky-thoughts. I should probably go back to checking out the recs on buffyversetop5. Oh, hey, you should too. :)

I've been thinking about romance in fanfiction. Prompted by many different things. A while back, urania_calliope posted this image about Disney Princesses (Edit: Whoops. That post was flocked. Click the cut below for the image. It comes from Sociological Images) which is spot on. Plus, ladyofthelog and angearia have had posts somewhat lately about the wussification of Buffy in Spuffy fics.

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Hold on. I'm going somewhere with this.

How do you get two characters together without resorting to putting one partner in peril to be rescued by the other? Whether we like it or not, that trope is so completely common, it's recognized as the standard way to do a romance. Its variations include hurt/comfort and 'Buffy Learns a Lesson About How Awesome Spike Is' fics.

I'm mainly thinking of Spuffy here, as that's the ship I'm most familiar with. I'm not sure if this can be generalized so well, though I have a feeling it can be.

A common way to get Buffy and Spike together in fics is to have Buffy disabled or weakened in some way, whether through emotional or physical injury or by tweaking the character so that she's substantially wussier. With this, Spike has the opportunity to rescue/comfort/prove himself to her and win her over.

It's not the only way, of course. There's plenty of fic out there that tortures Spike to have Buffy rescue and comfort him. But you don't see the same OOC wussiness on Spike's part that you'll often see with Buffy's character.

Why do we resort to this trope in order to get these two, incredibly strong, characters together? Is it just because we don't know how else to develop a romance?

No, really. Do we not know how to do a love story with two characters on completely equal footing? With two characters who may get injured but can save themselves and remain emotionally strong?

This isn't a condemnation, but just a puzzled thinky-thought. Cause, truth to tell, I like hurt/comfort fics. I even enjoy fics where Spike rescues Buffy. I know intellectually that those fics play into old sexist tropes, but I like them despite myself. Cause I, too, grew up with Disney Princesses.

And as I was puzzling around that, I started to wonder what a more egalitarian love story would look like. How do you hook the two characters up without wussifying one or the other? I suppose we still have the "Buffy and Spike are isolated and must rely on one another" trope, though that usually incorporates hurt/comfort in some way.

I guess it bothers me on some level that we link being rescued with romance in such a way - that I link the two. That being weakened is romantic. That a person can't fall in love with you when you are strong and powerful - you must be injured and vulnerable. What, then, are they falling in love with?

Or I suppose Spuffy is often the reverse. Buffy falls in love with Spike when he takes care of her in her weakened state. Why? Why does Spike have to prove that he can "take care of" and save Buffy before Buffy can fall in love with him? There's so much traditional gender roles-y going on with that scenario when Spuffy is anything but traditional with gender roles.

Then I feel myself conflicted because what appeals to me about the ship in canon is that it is so subversive and different than the traditional romance. And yet, when reading fanfic, I find myself enjoying when authors stuff Buffy and Spike into those age-old boxes.

Ah, my random thoughts...let me show you them. I have no conclusion on this one. Just sharing the puzzlement.

How bout some Spuffy fic recs that have Awesome Buffy? You know, Buffy being strong and kick-ass, yet still developing a romance with Spike. Got any? You must share!

Okay, I know there's some brouhaha about the S8 comics and objectification right now. As most know, I don't read the comics, so I don't feel qualified to weigh in at all. I have a guess of an opinion, but it's devoid of context and, therefore, not really presentable as any sort of serious argument.

But from seeing some of the fringes of it, it made me start to think of objectification. What it means. What sort of presence it has in the show. The TV show. This post...not about the comics. Don't bring them up. Really. I will spank you if you do.

I've seen people (in other debates) argue about what "objectification" means. And I'm not sure I have a quick and dirty answer. So let me ramble about the topic and see if I hit on anything.

My immediate starting point is the male gaze. The Wiki link has a pretty decent summary of it, but let me try my own words.

There is a default assumption that women in media are there for men. To appeal to men. As such, women will be portrayed in the media in ways that visually please men. This involves awkward poses, camera angles that highlight "assets", such as the classic "tits and ass" shots, skimpy costumes, make-up, etc.

This is so ingrained in our media that women have to appeal to men, that we're unaccustomed to seeing something where a woman is not presented with a male gaze.

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Okay, yes, I'm spending my Saturday evening getting caught up on the recent explosion on metafandom. What of it? After this, I'm probably gonna marathon some more BtVS. Hey! Staying in and watching off-the-air cult fantasy TV shows is cool, dammit!

Anyway, if you missed the latest fandom to-do, here's a pretty good summary of it. Basic recap if you're too lazy to click the link: Couple supposed science guys think our brains function strangely, want to prove it, make up some half-assed, problematic survey for fandom folks, then proceed to FAIL in massive doses when called on their skeevy research methods and "theories". And, as with any good fandom story, it ends in a complete flounce and deletion of all the evidence (Oh! Except for the screencaps that astute fandom folk snapped).

It's amusing.

( I ponder below the cut. My ponderings...they wander...Collapse )

Just a couple notes on When She Was Bad, an episode I never thought much about before...

- Why did I never notice this?

Buffy gets drawn away from the group by a diversionary tactic. She realizes her error and goes racing back to the library, only to find her friends attacked and kidnapped.

Dude, this is both When She Was Bad and Becoming Pt. 1.



I'm seeing thematic parallels. This makes me happy.

- Okay, now this I had noticed before, but post-death Buffy in WSWB has a lot of similarities to post-death Buffy in S6. Well-played.

- Bitca. *g*

I sat down earlier today and started rewatching Buffy. Starting all the way at the beginning.

Nah, I'm not gonna do a formal "rewatch" where I do up pithy comments on the episodes and share. I'm just kicking back and watching. You know, for fun.

I've been officially "in fandom" near on a year now (two weeks shy of, apparently), and...you know, it's easy to lose sight of why we're here in the first place.

I mean, I watch episodes. My favorite episodes. Or I go back and watch scenes for various reasons. But those are snippets. Snapshots. Often watched in the context of fandom. To review something for fandom.

And then I get caught up analyzing minutiae and dissecting and criticizing and debating and then suddenly the series is a chore. A much beloved chore, but a chore. A mental chore that I sit around and hash out with a group of other people. The fandom becomes more central than the actual show. The show only becomes relevant in how it contributes to fandom.

Then I get caught up in the meta and the discussion and I forget the whole reason I became a fan.

It's because I just like watching the show.

There. That's it.

All the fannish stuff. The fics, the meta, the squee. That's just extra. That's just me displaying and sharing this enjoyment.

But the enjoyment's still there. I just forget about it because I get so caught up in the external manifestation of that enjoyment.

So watching the show...not worrying about figuring it out or seeing patterns or having to write about it or argue a point or be clever about observations or really think much about it at all. Just relaxing, enjoying the smart dialogue, the cadence, the female kick-assedness, the cast, the story, the fun.

Yeah, it's good to get that reminder. This show is awesome.

You know, as I plan out my new plot bunny for a fic, I find myself horrified at the thoughts that come out of my mind. I mean, this is gonna be one fucked up and twisted fic.

But...that's not really new for me. I'm killing off characters left and right in Murphy's Law, despite the fact that I tend to avoid fics with character death. And in Influence of Demons, I made Buffy a prostitute! Seriously. If I were reading fics, just that concept alone would cause me to back out unless the fic seemed unbelievably compelling (and I don't think of my stuff as that compelling).

So I guess I don't write fics that I'd like to read. Which is very odd. I mean, my ideal fic is a long epic with low angst, a good plot, and a happy ending. If I can get some domestic Spuffy in there, I'm a happy chica.

But I end up writing stuff that is so completely and totally wrong and just not something I'd ordinarily read, and that makes me think I'm a very strange person.

Not only that, but I find myself oddly embarrassed by some of what I end up writing. Because that means showing people that I can think of some pretty bizarre stuff. Which shouldn't be too surprising for anybody, but still.

( More writerly pondering under the cut...Collapse )

Oh, sidenote, let me just say that I am totally psyched that my Spandrew drabble, Cardboard Memorial, got nommed at the Fang Fetish Awards. It's really one of my favorite popcorn fics I've written (popcorn fics = drabbles. my term). Thanks to whoever nominated it, and good luck to all the peeps up for awards there (kudagirl, angearia, deird1, stormwreath, snowpuppies, shapinglight, pfeifferpack, and everybody else that got nommed but I failed to mention)!

I've been pondering a bit. A while back saena17 had a bit of a musing about what constitutes a feminist character. I kinda shared my initial thought, but I've been mulling it over ever since.

So...what does constitute a feminist character? Does she have to have a clearly feminist arc, like Buffy? Or can a character like Willow be a "feminist character" without the underlying feminist metaphor? Is it enough that she be a strong character or does there have to be more to her? Can characters who were introduced as "the love interest" (such as Anya and Tara) be feminist characters?

Hell, is there a distinction between "strong female character" and "feminist character"? And do people even consider Buffy, the character, a feminist character?

Yeah, lotsa questions, and I've been playing around with the answers without any major conclusions. Extra speshul bonus question: Can a male character somehow be a "feminist character"?

Oh, and I completely missed green_maia's b-day, which is major fail on my part because she's such a lovely and insightful person she deserves massive birthday wishes. Also, it's angearia's birthday today, and she's also a super-fantastic person. Happy birthday!

I'll admit that I'm very surprised that S6 is in 2nd place in the poll right now. I mean, I adore S6. But I know it's often outright hated by some fans. I guess the fans who do like it really like it.

Interesting. Anyway, I'll keep that poll open for a bit and then see how it turns out.

It's a "Snow Day" today. In Texas, that really means "Ice Day", but there's no ice. They just thought there would be ice, so they closed campus just in case. Yeah, Texans don't do winter weather.

So I've been spending the day doing some work and actively avoiding my fanfics in order not to frustrate myself. I've also been reading some other people's fanfics, which I haven't had a chance to do in a while.

( I babble entirely too much about feedbackCollapse )

Fic writing is kicking my ass. Both fics. I have the chapters planned, plotted, outlined, and everything, but I keep staring at Word with the damn blinking cursor thingy and nothing's getting written. Okay, something's getting written. I'm about 1,000 words into each chapter. But it's like pulling teeth from a snarling vampire to get those words out.

I blame school, personally. College is already sucking away my creativity.

Sometimes I feel dumb. I try to make sure my stories have a theme and a deeper meaning behind them, and I try to do so subtly because I'm not a fan of the "anvil" method of getting a theme across. To my great pleasure and satisfaction, people here, for the most part, get it when I do that. You have no idea the joy it brings to me as a writer to read a comment from someone who obviously got the underlying meaning behind a chapter or story (My chapters each tend to have encompassed themes within them).

Then, every now and then, I'll get a comment that leaves me fumbling for words. It's when a reader picks up on something, some sub-thread or theme or character aspect, that I didn't even realize was there. And they're usually not wrong. Once they comment, I'm able to see it quite clearly in the fic. However, it obviously wasn't at all intentional and it feels odd taking it as a compliment because of that.

Also, I try to reply to every comment/review, so I'm often left going: "Oh, that wasn't intentional, but you are right. Wow." And that just sounds...lame. And then I'm suddenly a whole lot less brilliant than the reader thought I was. Okay, that's not quite true. Let's say I was accidentally brilliant, which just isn't as impressive.

At the risk of sounding insane, stories help with their own creation sometimes. They develop organically. I can inadvertently weave a theme throughout the story just because that's what the story calls for to "feel" right. It's just not something I may be aware of until it's pointed out to me.

Then I feel dumb cause I feel the story outsmarted me.

However, I feel even more dumb when the story won't even talk to me. Like now. *sob* I just want to write pretty words. I think I'll just write ugly words for now, then go back and make them pretty later.

Here's an OT public post. Crazy, right. I'm gonna veer off sharply from fandom for this entry as this is something that I'm rather passionate about, and I do feel it's important. I was having a discussion with a girl in my World Cultures class that prompted me to start thinking, which often leads to rather verbose essays on my part. (Not even back in school a week and I'm already doing some feminist ranting. Sheesh)

We've all heard the rape statistics, unless you prefer to utilize the ostrich method of getting by in this world. Just using the RAINN webpage as a reference, 1 out of 6 American women have been a victim of an attempted or completed rape in their lifetime.

Course, numbers are impersonal, so try this on for size: half of my girlfriends are rape survivors. And that's just the ones who've felt comfortable telling me about it. Also, I'm not taking into consideration the number that have lived through an attempted rape.

Here is, perhaps, the worst thing: girls in my age group seem to see rape as an inevitability. When I learned that one of my friends had been raped, it was literally as an aside in a conversation: "Oh, yeah, and then he raped me, but hey. The next guy I dated was much nicer." Rape is, frighteningly enough, seen as something that will, at one point or another, happen to you.

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I have a confession, guys. I don't "get" drabbles.

Never have. In any fandom I've been in. I've always thought of fanfic as like juicy pieces of steak I can sink my teeth into and chew on. Long-lasting and delicious. Drabbles seem like...I dunno...popcorn shrimp. Yummy at the time. But you forget about it soon afterward.

But I recognize the talent that's required to tell a tale in 100 words (or 500 or 200 or whatever your variety of "drabble" entails). In fact, it sounds like a writing exercise of some sort to me. In that way, it's very focused on prose quality and making the very language it's written in sound pretty. That's when it occurred to me that drabbles are like something else I just don't "get": poetry.

Poetry has always baffled me. I don't get it. I don't see the appeal. I can't write it. I can't critique it. I'd rather read a mediocre novel than a brilliant poem. Why? Cause odds are, I'll have ended up more invested in the novel regardless of the quality and so it'll stick with me longer.

So I think I've come to an arrangement with drabbles that's much like the one I've come to with poetry. I'll appreciate the artistry that goes into writing them. But, as a reader, I can't say I enjoy them so I'll just leave them alone.

Please don't hate me?

ETA: Hey, all. While I appreciate the thought behind showing me to the good drabbles, I'm really not looking to have my mind changed on this (Cause it's not really something that I can just change my mind on). I've read drabbles before. They're not my thing. Sending me to a bunch of them will just make me even more adamant about my apathy towards them. And may even make me a little grumpy...sorry...

Here's me going off on a ramble as a way of procrastinating on stuff that I really need to get done.

I've given lots of thought to canonocity of fics and people's comfort levels with how far away from canon fics veer. Also, how it relates to fanon in people's perceptions of canon. It's something I've talked about with my sis, who's a silent follower of fandom.

It's pretty obvious that there's a scale as far as how close fics stay to canon. A fic that comprises a "missing scene" or a vignette that can easily be inserted into canon without changing anything is an example of one extreme end of the scale: the completely canon-compliant fics. Then you get the other end of the spectrum with the fics that take the characters and put them in a completely different situation. Buffy may suddenly be a receptionist at some company and Spike is the new boss and there are no vamps (Human AU). The only part of canon these fics contain is the names and (hopefully) personalities of the characters.

I usually think everybody has a section of that spectrum that they like to stick around in. Their comfort zone. Personally, I stick pretty close to canon. I've tried reading some of the more AU fics (vamp!Buffy fics and such), but they just don't appeal to me.

The you get fanon. When a piece of fanon becomes widely accepted as canon, it skews the spectrum so that the far extreme of "canon-compliant" is no longer even there. It's in the negative. Instead, it starts the spectrum at another point, ignoring the actual canon.

It's some interesting thoughts (to me).

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Been having some thinky thoughts, so I'm gonna wander a little OT. But it's relevant to my interests. :)

Was having dinner with my boss and partner in crime...er publishing. I help run a small publishing business. Interesting work. And the small pub community, especially when you look at epubs, have a lot of similarities to fanfic. It amuses me.

( Long entry with stats and meanderings and strange comparisons to fanfictionCollapse )

I'm taking a (one-post) break from Buffyness to get down some general thoughts about fandom here on LJ. Cause I'm overly-analytical and think about this sort of stuff way too much.

I joined LJ about a month ago. Previous to joining, I lurked around for a couple months to see what it was all about. Prior to that, I knew about LJ, but never really visited it. For fanfics, I went to archive sites. For discussion, I went to forums. For reviews or wallpapers, I went to websites. I guess I'm old-school net geek like that (Though not Usenet old-school. That's hardcore).

Honestly, I was turned off by trying to find things on LJ as a lurker. Without an account, LJ isn't the most convenient gathering spot for fandom. The navigation is erratic, a lot is closed off, you have to jump from journal to journal and hope the LJer has a decent layout to find anything, and there's no easy way to find things relevant to what you're searching for. And, while short fics fare well on LJ, it really isn't set up well for multi-chaptered fics (To the point where I still just try to find the fic on an archive site instead of reading it on LJ). So lurking around LJ? Not the best experience in the world.

Actually getting an account, though, does give you a centralized location to do everything, and I really could only understand the appeal of LJ once I got an account. But moving from LJ back to fandom...

Things are different on LJ. And I mean fandom, as a whole, is entirely different.

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