mcity

It is impossible for a character to "literally" have a "river of exposition", unless in that universe, emotion has a physical presence, takes a liquid form, and makes a river. You don't have to hang a lampshade on everything. Half the characters are in a strange dimension, of course they'll need an explanation.

TVTropes has a lot to answer for.

-J

Our boy specifically thinks he does not want to marry women X and Y, while he is sneaking into a quick wedding with woman Z.

X and Y were willing to share, since the planet allows polygamy, but he did not want to be shared, since he felt that for all their good company in the bedroom, either or both would be the domineering type of woman his mother is before long, and more than he could bear. He has been dodging their offer of marriage for two years.

And Z is the girl next door type, and he both loves her and wants to help out her dad.

Due to a series of circumstances, X and Y show up, and our hero is forced by social and political pressure--from two Emperors, no less--to marry all three women. Z seemed to have no problem with it, but absolutely no one saw fit to consult our boy, even while they were negotiating right in front of him.

So he walks in expecting to marry one woman (whom he loves), and ends up marrying three women, two of whom he explicitly did not want to marry.

I know he's the whipping boy of the canon, but that's Not Okay.

And to think, this fanfic series was going so well up until now, then you just ran full tilt into what TVTropes calls Unfortunate Implications.

Do you know why people like the Wooster books? Because we know Wodehouse is never going to let Bertie end up in a loveless marriage. If he ever did end up getting hitched, we would be reading less along the lines of a light-hearted comedy of manners, and more along the lines of those critically-acclaimed Oscar-nominated movies where everyone is miserable but played by really good actors.

Hang on, I think I'm onto something here. All I have to do is call it a "deconstruction".

Srsly?
-Jonathan

I don't really care.

No, wait, I do care, if only idle curiousity about whether the fangirls are going to be sad that he's unavailable to them forever, or if they're going to start writing Bomer/Tim DeKay/Willie Garmin fanfic.

YOU IMAGINED IT, YOU CAN'T UNIMAGINE IT.

...When you find a cool, well-edited fanvid about a ship you don't ship, and want to favorite it.

In "The Last Roundup", we finally get to hear "Derpy Hooves". She's klutzy and has a "idiot" voice. More specifically, she has the same type of voice as Ed from "Ed, Edd, and Eddy". She is wildly popular in fandom because of an animation mistake in her eyes, and then fans liked her, giving her the name. This episode had the name confirmed.



Now, of course, some people are saying her portrayal is ableist.

More specifically, the eyes, combined with her "stupid" voice, general klutziness, and now canon-confirmed name resemble a stereotype.

( look, torches and pitchforks )

The creator, Andrew Hussie, announced the eight lead characters are aracial, and were supposed to be from the start.

Everyone thought they were white.

So now we have one of those arguments on the MSPA forums where one really pissed off person starts making sardonic responses to people who disagree with them. This person is also waving around their race card every five minutes.

(My race card I keep in a locked cabinet, and requires two men with keys to release it. I just use one hand and my toes.)

And, naturally, people keep informing her(?) that she should try not being a jerk to everyone, and that she has gotten much better responses when she explains things calmly.

Her response is to say that Hussie wasn't nice, so she doesn't have to be nice.

People reminded her that it's his comic, and he was acting in exactly the same fashion he normally does.

Also, Hussie corrected a reference or two that seemed to be referring to white kids. Keep in mind that Homestuck is in the thousands of pages. He most likely slipped up a few times.

Of course, the wanker is calling him "disingenuous". They're weasel-wording around saying he's a liar. See also "don't believe what you're saying" and "I never said that" in the annals of not-exactly dishonest Internet debating techniques.

Of course, the wanker has no problem assuming she's talking to white people, since POCs couldn't possibly disagree with her. She also has no problem making it about Hussie's opinion being valued over hers because she's black and he's white, when people have explained to her exactly how that's not the case.

And the fandom on tumblr is more talking about the wank and going "bwuh"? than actually wanking.

I seriously can't believe over a creator giving them more freedom in their interpretation of the characters, and they complained about it.

( Read more... )

Russell T Davies: Here's a new character for Doctor Who. He's Captain Jack Harkness, whose most prominent characteristic is that he's pansexual and will hit on anyone.
Fandom: Yay!

Steven Moffat: Here's a new character for Sherlock. She's Irene Adler, whose whose most prominent characteristic is that she's pansexual and will hit on anyone.
Fandom: Why does everyone think bisexuals are only about sex? This is just more of Moffat's problem with writing strong, competent women.

Me:

This is Irene Adler, professional name "The Woman", introduced in "A Scandal in Belgravia", the first episode of the second series of the BBCs hit series "Sherlock", which is more or less the Doyle books set in the modern day. For example Watson's stories are now a popular blog, and Holmes still scoffs at the absence of science and logic in the comments.

Like, oh, just about every version of Holmes in existence, she's portrayed as a love interest to the sexually oblivious Holmes. Holmes helps people for a living, out of the sheer intellectual joy of it. Adler's a professional dominatrix, who is decidedly not in her line of work for intellectual reasons. Holmes is basically asexual, Irene is bi, and hits on everyone, everywhere, all the time. Sherlock wears the same basic outfit at all times, Adler has an large closet. Sherlock is smart, so is she. Sherlock is Connected, so is she. Adler's sleeping with her assistant/partner, and Sherlock isn't, no matter what the fanfics say. Said assistant is, naturally, submissive, while Watson is anything but to Sherlock. Und so weiter.

Basically, she's just begging to have fanfic written about her. In fact, she's like a fanfic Mary Sue, only better written, with actual flaws and weaknesses and stuff, like her habit of objectifying people. Sherlock turns people into puzzles. She turns people into sexual objects. And then blackmails them; the letter from A Scandal in Bohemia is turned into a camera-phone, and the question becomes not merely finding it, but figuring out the password.

A brief aside: the show actually does update the themes of the Doyle canon to the modern day. Sherlock uses nicotine patches instead of opium, and the close friendship with Watson is viewed, by modern sensibilities, as very, very gay. It's a running gag in the series, despite Watson's parade of girlfriends (he was a ladykiller in the Doyle canon, and modern interpretations, led by the Ritchie films, have stived to restore him to his status as Holmes competent, ladykilling partner, rather than the popular image of a bumbling nincompoop of a sidekick). The actors admit it, the producers admit it. So we have, of course, slashfics. There's even a very, very popular kinkmeme.

Some fans don't like Irene, sez TVTropes, which confused me. Why would any significant amount of people not like h--



Oh. Hang a sec, this'll take some explanation.

"Supernatural" is a show about two denimed brothers who travel the country slaying monsters and ghoulies and long-leggedy beasties in a cool car and are more than a little codependent. One of the running gags of the show is jokes about how people think they're gay, despite their denials.



This woman is Bela, a brown-haired upper-class Englishwoman with a traumatic past who..."collects" and sells supernatural artifacts to the highest bidder. She's the amoral yin to our boys' yang. Also, she's a more realistic version of Lara Croft.

While she is attracted to Dean, the older and shorter of our two denim-clad balls of daddy issues, there is basically no chance they're ever going to be in a relationship, or even sleep together. He simply does not trust her, and for good reason. Bella is a fan-favorite character in the female-dominated, slash-heavy fanbase, for all her resemblance to, again, a better-written fanfic Mary Sue. Sex positive, competent, an occasional guest star who's a counterpart for the main characters, has her own adventures, and is almost completely ignored in fanfics in favor of slashing the two male leads.



Jo Harvelle started out the show as a wannabe monster hunter, a daughter of a hunter, with a crush on Dean. Fans didn't like her much. A few seasons later, she showed up with more maturity, but most importantly, telling Dean she wouldn't sleep with him even if it was the last night on Earth. (As it probably was.) The fanbase loved her.

You may be noticing a pattern here.

The bottom line is that whatever female-dominated slash-heavy fanbases may say, they don't want Strong Female Characters. They want Strong Female Characters who can be easily ignored for their slashfics. Though to be fair, they do this with het shipping too. Just look at the "Avatar: The Last Airbender" fandom. Or better yet, don't.

( Major Spoilers )

-J

( spoilers! )

-J