Who put these GIRLS in my fandom?!

Because I didn't feel like leaving it JUST on Tumblr, I responded to a good post by patheticfangirl about guys who are angry that there are yucky-ucky girls and gay people in their fandoms:

Seriously.  Hear fucking hear.

You don’t get to complain that there are no women in fandom and that you can’t meet “cool” chicks AND try to define how women DO engage with fandoms when they do.  I mean, you CAN do that, but it makes you a juvenile asshole.

It would be especially great if your objections didn’t so often boil down to “OMG TEH GAYNESS EWW!”  That’s just pathetic and sad.

So what if it’s “out of character” and “not canon”?  Women have had to put up with CANONICAL inconsistencies of character, stupid outfits, ridiculous pairings, sexist storylines, and blatant pandering to a male audience.  That shit insults us as women and as readers (if you are taking notes, that means it’s insulting your intelligence, too).

GLBT people have had to put up with the fact that people like us pretty much do not even fucking exist in comics and derived works, that when a gay character is presented, it’s unusual, and that small-minded dipshits would literally shit their pants in rage if you ever had a trans character in a mainstram comic.  Characters like us are considered a threat.

Racial issues?  Don’t make me fucking laugh.  Er, vomit.

Complaining about how fans enjoy their fandom is basically saying “Hey, you aren’t the kind of person I want in my fandom.”  Know what?  You don’t get to decide that.  We’re here, and we’re not going to take our dollies and go home crying just because you want to preserve your fandom as a pristine preserve for the oh-so-rare-and-endangered free-roaming male gaze.  Your fandom will change to accomodate us because we are here.  And we get to help define our fandom for ourselves, just like you have been doing.

We really ought to get along.  All of us.  We all have the same basic interests at heart.  We like geeky things.  We like superheroes and spaceships and snark.  We aren’t just here for the tight pants — we’ve been here all along.  The difference is now we have at least some fanservice directed at women to enjoy, and there is finally a great enough density of us on the internet to connect with one another and start carving out our own corners of fandom.  The difference is that you have finally noticed us.  And you don’t like what we’re doing.  And you know, you don’t have to like it.  You can walk away.

It was irritating when your parents and teachers and everyone else in the goddamn world acted all disgusted at your choice of entertainment, right?  You remember that feeling?  Yeah.  That kind of petty, judgmental crap is exactly what is being directed at us.  Knock it the fuck off.

I don’t write fanfiction.  I barely even read it.  I think, in all the years I’ve been on the internet, I’ve read maybe ten fics.  Most of it’s just not my thing.  And yet, my world has not imploded from the weight of gay Avengers fanfiction, or been torn apart by the lack of the fanfiction I would like to read.

If I can manage to cope with an internet full of things that do not interest me, and a fandom that does not always cater to my every whim, you can, too.  You can grow up and share.  You can decide that it’s great that people who aren’t like you are interested in the same things you are interested in, even if they show that differently, even if they are demonstrating their appreciation in ways that — shock and horror — do not include you.  Step up, grow up, act like an adult, and be part of a bigger, more inclusive fandom.

If you really need the help, you can borrow my big-girl panties.  THEY WILL BE COMING OFF JUST AS SOON AS MY COPY OF JOHN CARTER A PRINCESS OF MARS GETS HERE.

Oh, and JSYK, tonight, in honor of all the blatant, petty homophobia that gets slung around on threads like these, I am going to ship the ever-loving balls-deep FUCK out of John Carter and Kantos Kan.  BECAUSE IT IS MY GODDAMN FANDOM, TOO.  And Dejah Thoris would totally watch the shit out of that.

Tags: fandom, homophobic drivel, sexism

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Catching up and moving onward

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I Am Poppy Z. Brite's Ex-Boyfriend

Current Mood: recumbent
Tags: birthday, ftm, love, queerness, testosterone

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My tweets

• Sat, 14:36: One of our fishies just died. :(
• Sat, 17:09: The txvoodoo Daily is out! http://t.co/Wc4NW3eo
• Sat, 19:05: @KikiWrites @inner_moppet Thank you. :( No idea why he died. He was fine yesterday. He was the 1 who'd 'play' with us. :(
• Sat, 19:11: They're scum. Joan has me blocked but, NO. RT @ahuntre: Breitbart Blogger Launches Sexist Attack On Salon's Joan Walsh http://t.co/1YrhIdij
• Sat, 20:02: RT @Karoli: FFS RT @LbrlOkie77: Kansas governor signs 'Shariah bill' to ban Islamic law: http://t.co/4eKc8Raq via @msnbc
• Sat, 21:00: Oh shit - I passed 100,000 tweets and didn't notice! Um. Yay me?
• Sat, 21:11: Ate too much for dinner. I think I should go lie down and sink into a food coma now....
• Sat, 21:25: RT @elonjames: Check out my 1st post w/ @BlackingItUp at the @Leadership500 discussing the relevance @NAACP http://t.co/3a2Pgnuk #TWIBIU
• Sat, 22:38: Sleepytime #puppyporn http://t.co/ueVTRjUx
• Sat, 22:43: I have to sneak pics of Cache-he's camera shy. #puppyporn http://t.co/3rtPX1KY

Tags: twitter

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Pop. 1280

What are all these goths doing here? I thought I came to a post-punk show.

Mirrored from jwz.org.

location: 37° 45' 43.80" N, 122° 25' 9.60" W
Tags: firstperson, music, photography, sf

Magazines from the future

Future Noir:

Turning down the block and ducking into a futuristic newsstand revealed the most humorous touches of layering, for it was here that this author immediately noticed that a number of faux twenty-first-century magazines had been stuffed into racks mounted on the newsstand's walls, and that many of them sported decidedly tongue-in-cheek covers.

These publications had been designed by BR art department member Tom Southwell. Periodicals of note include Krotch (going for $29 a copy!), Zord (at $30), Moni, Bash, Creative Evolution, and Droid. Horn, the "skin mag" of the future, had a cover which offered articles such as "The Cosmic Orgasm" and "Hot Lust in Space." Kill (whose logo was "All the News That's Fit to Kill") sported cover stories like "Multiple Murders - Reader's Own Photos."

Mirrored from jwz.org.

Tags: movies, perversions, robots, the future

London Day Four: Oxford

This building is an archive, I couldn't go in.	This is Trinity College, it was closed.
This is the cloisters at Magdalen College - looks very familiar to a Bryn Mawr alumna.	Interior of the Magdalen church. This college is where C.S. Lewis taught; it was featured in the film "Shadowlands."
Christ Church College. This was the priciest one to get into.	Me at Magdalen. It really was like being back at Bryn Mawr.

Tags: travel: london

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Riding in a Critical Mass

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Tales Of A Fourth-Rate Nothing: Busking On The Wrong Street Corner

During Clarion, I coined the phrase “busking on the wrong corner” to describe the phenomenon of “entertaining writing that doesn’t serve the story.” It’s the reason writers have to  kill their darlings.  It’s the trap that stops a lot of good writers from making the transition to great.

“Busking” is the practice of playing in public spaces for donations – you know, that guy playing the guitar, his guitar case open before him, full of scattered singles and quarters.  Buskers are often some of the most talented musicians.  But the buskers’ art is also partially a knowledge of where the crowds are.

You can sing your fucking heart out on a corner where there’s no foot traffic.  If you’re really good, you might make a few bucks.  But if you’re really good and really smart, you’ll position yourself near the subway where people are pouring out by the hundreds as rush hour ends, a place where even a mediocre musician can clean up.  Part of your strength is not just the raw force of your musicianship, but knowing where to place that skill so it’s maximized with silver rains of spare change.

Writers (me included, oh so included) are often putting their talents to use on the wrong corner.  This chapter is brilliant writing, it’s got great characterization, it’s exciting.  But underneath, the scene is at odds with what the story is trying to do, and what you’ll wind up with is a great scene that advances the story in the wrong ways.

Lemme give you the real-life example: the lead character of the novel I’m plotting right now, Autumn Akeley, is a taxidermist.  In the beginning of the book, Autumn is deep in the woods on a rumor, searching for the Hulk.

Why the Hulk, you ask?  Because she’s not just any taxidermist – she makes wild viral videos online parodying recent movies in order to drive business to her online taxidermy shop.  Autumn’s latest planned video (“The Bearvengers”) needs a gigantic, light-skinned animal she can dye green to play the part of the Hulk.  Autumn does not kill animals for her entertainment (she takes the death of any creature very seriously), but she just got a tip from a hunter that there’s a decaying grizzly in the woods she might be able to use.  She tracks it down with her friend Karla and examines the corpse – it’s a little too moldy for her liking, but it has very light fur.  She thinks she can salvage it.

Then a shot rings out across the forest: there are poachers in the woods.  As someone who hates to see an animal killed senselessly, she does not take lightly to poachers.  She sets off to investigate, starting the chain of events that sets up the novel….

…Now, that’s a pretty good scene.  It’s got an interesting character doing something we’ve never seen done before in a book, it displays her odd compulsions, it allows us to watch her work (if you have a character with an odd profession, people love to see the fine details), and for a short intro it’ll do quite nicely.

And yet we are busking badly here.  Why?

Because this novel is about Autumn’s friendship with Karla.

Okay, unfair, I didn’t tell you that – but the whole point of the novel is that a new man in town with a shadowy past begins to romance Karla, causing a rift when Autumn discovers the man’s past as a serial killer.  And this scene, while good in a vacuum, utterly fails to set up the dynamics of Karla and Autumn and their friendship.  In fact, you’d be excused for forgetting the existence of Karla in this summary, because while we can put in some nice dialogue and characterization to set up Karla’s character, the underlying structure of the scene is not about her at all.

This is a great scene for a novel featuring bold Autumn Akeley, bold adventurer.  It’s a terrible scene for Autumn and Karla’s big fight – especially since the next scene involves Autumn tracking down poachers, which has even less to do with their friendship.  And if you’re not a careful writer, you’ll think this is an awesome scene because it’s got it all – humor, good characterization, a quick hook to action – without realizing that it’s an awesome scene that’s structurally at odds with what you want to do in the long run.  It doesn’t set up the things that need to be established.

It’s a good scene in isolation.  In context, it’s a darling that needs to be killed… Or at least dramatically changed so that Karla does something so interesting here that the scene metamorphosizes away from Autumn’s search for the Hulk and into an expression of how Autumn and Karla couldn’t get along without each other.

The point I’m making here is that had I written that chapter, I’d have been very proud.  It’d be a nice, 1,500 word opener that would grab the reader, full of lovely details and fun stuff.

And then I’d have to place it into my trash folder, because ultimately it doesn’t do what it needs to, then hunt for the right scene to write.

Cross-posted from Ferrett's Real Blog.

Tags: writing

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My tweets

• Fri, 16:48: RT @ElliePlimsolls: Dachshund Gretchen needs URGENT lifesaving surgery, $900 off trgt http://t.co/34caKgcS http://t.co/dGXeEPjw
• Fri, 16:49: @ItsMeMarisol @farleftofright @UsaSlumdog Thank you! #FF
• Fri, 16:51: RT @BarackObama A hug, circa 1992. http://t.co/MEwvyXLM
• Fri, 17:09: The txvoodoo Daily is out! http://t.co/Wc4NW3eo
• Fri, 19:30: RT @LOLGOP: Dick Cheney is not something Mormons are forced to wear. It's completely voluntary.
• Fri, 20:23: Lazy Knitter Confession: I like making things I don't have to swatch for.
• Fri, 20:26: I love @JoeBiden so much. This guy is just so damned honest.
• Fri, 21:20: @Johngcole @rootless_e I'm pretty sure Bill's pretty high on the "Is Bill Maher High Tonight?" scale.
• Fri, 21:21: @Johngcole @rootless_e I'm pretty sure Bill's pretty high on the "Is Bill Maher High Tonight?" scale .
• Fri, 21:32: @DomsWildThings I'm boring tonight & wonder if you are too. What are you doing tonight?

Tags: twitter

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