jedibuttercup | Entries tagged with fandom: meta

So the baby's bronchial ailment? Yeah, every single one of the rest of us came down sick a few days later, and I'm still getting over it. Writing, not happening. I'll try to get something out soon, though.

In the meanwhile, I've realized something rather alarming re: the Harry at the Dursleys mess, prompted by the Scamander movie and a rewatch of all the HP films, that's a little harder to refute than many past 'Dumbledore is malignant, not misguided' ideas I've come across. I really don't think JKR always thinks the implications of the story threads she puts out there through ....

( Contains Spoilers for Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them... )

Crossposts: http://jedibuttercup.livejournal.com/595605.html

The oddest things can still trip you up, months after tragedy happens. I got an email from LinkedIn today asking me to celebrate my dad's work anniversary. I didn't even know he had a LinkedIn. I don't think anybody else did, either. It felt a little like being slapped in the face, staring at that email, wondering if anyone else got it, and what I'd have to do to take it down. Even though I wasn't at all fussed about finally deactivating his geocaching account last month. *shaking head*

Maybe it's more on my mind today since I went to see Sound of Music with my mom when they rereleased it on the big screen this weekend, and she burst into surprised tears the first time they sang Edelweiss; she'd forgotten, Dad bought her a music box with that song in it on their honeymoon and they danced all around the hotel room to it. She made sure to fetch it after and have me take a picture, so after she passes it won't just get garage sale'd without somebody realizing. (She does that sort of thing a lot these days. I try not to let it bother me.)

*clearing throat* Anyway. Before that I'd meant to post today about my growing pet peeve with Hobbit fandom: fics from 3rd person limited POV that continually reference Bilbo as the hobbit and Thorin as the dwarf and so on, occasionally with bonus character-distilling adjectives (Balin - the older dwarf! Dwalin - the tattooed dwarf! Bofur - the hatted dwarf! etc.) OMFG, I get that it's difficult to handle all the he's without mixing up who you're referring to if you don't want to always be repeating names, and those labels are convenient, but it's also very awkward and seems so... one-dimensional and also a little distant at the same time? Like I'm aware every time it happens that it's an author's reference trick rather than feeling that I'm right there in the moment with the characters, because that's not how real people mentally refer to each other.

Or at least, it's not how I think? Do people think that way? Seriously, I'm curious now. Because, like I said. It comes off as terribly, terribly awkward to me. And yet so many people do it! (And not just in this fandom, obvs; it's just even more obtrusive here.)

Since I wrote my first Michael Carpenter story a couple of years ago-- my first non-crossover bookfic ever, if I remember right-- I've started populating the Dresdenverse with actors' faces. (Prior to that, believe it or not, I didn't actually visualise the characters at all; I tend to think neither in pictures nor in words, but concept-strings). And something hit me today, when I was rereading the bit in "Dead Beat" where Harry explains what's going on to Mac, proprietor of McAnnally's.

Mac? On whom bald looks good, and doesn't talk much, but is clearly tough as nails? Is totally Bruce Willis as DH4's John McClane. And Luccio's original body? Is now Dame Judy Dench, to me. LOL. Those are new; I'd been picturing Neal McDonough as seen in Tin Man as Michael and George Clooney in his Ocean's 11 guise as Marcone for awhile now. And Jordan Hinson as Eureka's Zoe Carter has been creeping in to play Molly lately.

I still don't have a Harry, though, other than the miniseries' not-quite-right Paul Blackthorne, or a Murphy-- I'd pick SMG, but her Buffy's too sharp-edged in my mind to ever qualify as "cute". Anyone have any suggestions, for them or any other significant book characters?
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I finished all of my entries for

remixthedrabble Round 7, and sent them off over the last couple days. It was my first time ever actually writing any remixes, and I'm not at all sure that I was following the rules properly with at least one of them, and the others had altogether more sex than I'm usually comfortable with writing, but... *sigh* I wrote what the stories suggested to me, and we'll see what reaction's like next week when the posts go up, I suppose! One only learns by doing. I just hope the people I wrote for don't dislike what I did with their creations.

In other news: several months too late, I've come up with an answer to that bizarrely strident Star Trek fan who insisted all over STXI fandom that labelling Kirk/McCoy fic as "K/Mc" rather than "K/M" was perpetuating racism, and wondered why people didn't default to "K/M" to begin with.

I saw a lot of people start dropping the "c" then, or spell the last names out fully when they hadn't before; and some start using cutesy names like "Jones" (Jim/Bones) rather than referring to their last names at all. Other fen, like me, just shrugged and kept writing or tagging as they had before. But I didn't see anyone (maybe I missed it?) mention the thing that just occurred to me today:

Because [Name]/m and [Name]/f are ways of referring to "other male" and "other female" in pairings; and writers want to distinguish McCoy from any implication of "random male". *facepalm*
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"Dedicated, honorable, courageous, self-sacrificial loonies are absolutely the worst people in the world to go up against."
-- Harry Dresden, Death Masks

........ Just a little bit ironic there. Huh. I wonder just exactly how many of my favorite fictional heroes or heroines that descriptor could also apply to?

How many of yours? =)

I've not yet joined any of the discussions on RaceFail '09. And I'm not going to, beyond a comment that yes, I've been following the broad lines of the issues as they continue to accrete in the fan community.

One reason is that I reject (as always) the assumption that simply because one does not have anything to add to any given Important Conversation, one must be contributing to the problem.

But the second, and more important reason, is this: that in the end, the voice of my existing body of fanwork speaks far louder than any ephemeral post I may make here, long after the balloon has gone up.

That said, if you do notice or recall any instances of Fail on my behalf, I would appreciate your bringing them to my attention. I don't doubt that some exist, despite the care I've always tried to take in worldbuilding and characterization. I can only hope to improve in future, in this respect as in all others.
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It's the OTP meme! (Spotted all over the f-list; specifically at

sulien77's journal).

Pick up to 15 OTPs/OT3s/etc.
Describe them in less than 15 words.
Have your flist guess the persons and fandoms.

A personal disclaimer: I don't really do OTPs (icon excepted), and I don't believe that all interesting pairings must necessarily include a sexual aspect. But the below are a few of the matchups (from books, movies AND tv) that have made me go "huh" and do some serious archive mining in their time.

( All guessed now: 15 pairings, 14 different sources, NO CROSSOVERS )
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I usually don't comment publicly about negative reviews I receive on my fanfic, but I'm going to make an exception in this case.

Have any of the rest of you heard from Samael3 of fanfiction dot net? I hope you haven't; and hopefully he (or she) will choke on what I just sent back and rethink his (or her) approach before spewing any more poison. Though I wouldn't hold my breath. Anyway, as follows:

( A Review Left by Samael3 on my fic, Annual Report: )

( And My Reply, Privately Sent, aka Thank You: )

... So, what do you think? Too much? Too little to penetrate such a thick skull? Click through to the replyer's own FFN page if you want an entertaining read through a prejudiced, small-minded person's profile. I don't care what a person's politics are, Samael3's efforts are not a reasonable approach to reach and change minds; it is, instead, an obvious attempt to attract attention and wank. I cry false advertising, and smile back through bared teeth: Have a nice day.
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Sorry I haven't been writing this week. I never get trivial colds-- unless I KO my immune system by spending a couple of weeks in a manic daze, getting too little sleep and expending too much energy on mental tasks. Should have remembered the other consequence of college finals week when I was comparing it to Yuletide writing season.

*blows nose* Yeah, so I'm a little under the weather.

Anyway. I'm seven books into the Oz series now, and seriously curious about whether there is any analytical commentary available about them. I mean, fan-level commentary, not scholarly works attempting to frame them as political allegories, or whatever. Attempts to explain (in-world) the wobbly inconsistent elements of Baum's fourteen-book canon (not including the rest of the "Famous Forty", or the multitude of Oz-ian apocrypha written since they started going out of copyright, ranging from additional children's books to more adult entries). Even attempts to real-world-ize them-- to come up with "reasonable" (as far as you can get with magic) explanations for the weirder bits.

Because right now? My brain keeps insisting that Glinda has to be sneakily evil, and thanks whatever source she gets her powers from every morning that Dorothy dropped in and eliminated her only serious competition, thus paving the way for a young girl with every reason to be grateful and attentive to Glinda's advice to take the throne and start running Oz the way Glinda wants it. I like Ozma. Lots. But some of her decisions, especially in Patchwork Girl, made the hair stand up on the back of my neck, and her attitude has definitely shifted since her introduction in the series.

The next seven books might change my opinion again. But right now? Yeah, I can definitely see how the tarnished O.Z. of "Tin Man" evolved from the "perfect" fairy-tale world of Baum's books.
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( Some Notes, Upon Watching Tin Man for the Third Time: )
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( If it were totally realistic, I would have been totally turned off. )
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Regarding the wank-- the crisis has apparently passed. Apology tendered, policy updated, air cleared, and I even let them have the last word. As long as I don't enter any popularity contests in that fandom anytime soon, and they don't "forget" any of my links again, I think the situation is as amicably settled as it possibly could have been, and in fact better than I expected. And on that note, I'm f-locking the previous posts on the issue to reduce the public profile of this little kerfuffle.

Thank you to everyone who posted supportive comments. I ♥ my f-list very much indeed. I was reminded by one of you that even if every newsletter mysteriously started ignoring me, I still have all of you. And that's more than enough. =)
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As seen in many journals this last week:

> Name a character and I'll give you three or more "facts" from my personal fanon about that character.

You know the fandoms I write in most, and/or that I get opinionated about. The Jossverses (Buffy, Angel, Firefly), the Gateverses (SG-1, Atlantis), the Trekverses (TOS, TNG), CSI, any of a wide variety of Action or Sci-Fi/Fantasy movies and novels... c'mon. Prompt me.
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Snagged from

emony2:

Are you a book lover? A TV freak? A movie aficionado? Put your mind to the test, and list some of your favorite fictional characters - one for each letter of the alphabet.

( Character Love: )

OK, so I cheated with two of them-- used last names instead of first-- and there were many, many others I wish I could have wedged in. (For example with the J's, of which I had at least five more candidates. *grin*) What would your list look like?
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My life would be a lot nicer right now if I could breathe. But at least the fever-chills and the worst of the sore throat and aches are gone. I still feel miserable, but it's a step up from yesterday: huddling on the couch with a blanket and a cuppa and a box of kleenex, shivering my way through the back half of Angel Season 3 because I couldn't think straight enough to actually write.

I hope to still finish my Wesley crossover ficathon story today; if not, I should finish it tomorrow. In the meanwhile, however, I had some possibly interesting thoughts in response to my re-viewing.

( Meta: The Groosalug's Role in Wesley's Downfall )
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gakked from

bastardsnow

Name a character, and I will tell you in no less than 100 words why I love that character.

Fandoms you may question me on are: Angel, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, CSI (Vegas), Firefly/Serenity, Harry Potter, Jane Austen (any of the books/adaptions), The Lord of the Rings, The Mummy/Mummy Returns, Pirates of the Caribbean, Star Trek (Original), Star Trek (TNG), Stargate Atlantis, Stargate SG-1

Of course, you could also ask about any of the other fandoms I've written for or admitted to watching, but I can't guarantee being able to come up with a love-paragraph about any given main character for every one of them. =)

Rewatched the Stargate movie recently. It had been awhile. I'd forgotten how many deviations it actually has from SG-1 canon, besides the obvious one of the lead characters being played by different actors. The show itself joked about the spelling difference of "O'Neil with one L", but there were a few other things that caught my attention.

( Cutting to spare the f-list: )

Anyone else noticed any major differences?
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