So take Cervantes and bring him back to life in this century or the last. Make him attend a performance of Man of la Mancha. More to the point, make him listen to the theater-goers gushing over the beauty of dreaming the impossible dream.

So take Machiavelli into the modern day and let him look up his name in the English dictionary. Then ask him ( Read more... )

The question of problematic works has been weighing on my mind a lot lately, not so much because it's being discussed (it's always being discussed, somewhere) as because my current favored canon has its own issues, and one of the most questionable ones happens to be closely tied in with my favorite part of the source material. So I'm wondering.

( Some background, cut because of length and spoilers for a series I'm still trying to get people to watch. Names omitted so this doesn't devolve into fanwank and shipwar, although much of my friendslist knows perfectly well what I'm talking about. )

This post. That post, about an April Fool's joke involving an interview revealing the main character of Final Fantasy Versus XIII being gay. The prank to which it refers is insulting enough, but the comments on the post--how the majority of them seem to be variations on either "I don't want this because I don't like yaoi" or "This would be awesome ( Read more... )

Nth round, same as the first. "Why isn't there more fanfic about women?" "Why aren't there more awesome female characters ( Read more... )

Wrote this a while back, reminded to post it by a post linked on metafandom. Time to get this out of the way so I don't feel the desperate urge to rant about it every time I see the subject come up in the future. Instead I can just link here! Note: this refers primarily to anime fandom's practices. I can't speak for other parts of fandom, as the post I just ( Read more... )

So I was going through old metafandom posts and I ran across this little gem:

The idea that I automatically have to like a woman because she is a woman is absurd and the idea that I have to automatically like a female character is equally absurd (especially since that would mean I had to like every single writer's views of women and consider every writer ( Read more... )

Saw Brokeback Mountain. Liked it, although I imagine there are people out there ranting about how it set gay rights back three decades or something. Whatever ( Read more... )