A collection of random fandom thoughts/rants....because I feel like it.
1. HEY MISOGYNY, GTFO OUT OF MY SLASH FANDOMS PLZ. I have a feeling if I spent a lot more time in fandoms with really prominent slash pairings (SPN, I don't even know you yet I'm looking at you...) then I might be more used to seeing it, but holy crap I've seen some idiotic stuff in the Sherlock Holmes fandom so far.
I actually saw someone say what they want in the sequel is "Less women taking up H/W screentime." Less. Women. They want...less women. Seriously? I mean...when it comes to adaptations of things that are very male-centric and don't have the best portrayal of women given the time they were written, I do think there's always ways the portrayal of women can be improved, but it's not like I'm going to have a problem with there being no prominent female characters in an adaptation if that would mean changing the essential story of the original. Not everyone can get away with turning Starbuck into a woman. Though it's not easily and without conflicted feelings that I think so, I'm kind of bothered by the idea of the new Star Trek movies losing the Kirk-Spock-McCoy trinity as the main focus just so they can be more progressive and PC by turning Uhura into more of a main character.
But, um, Irene Adler and Mary Morstan were really not extremely prominent parts of this movie, people. If that's too much for you, then...wow. And it especially bothers me because I actually thought they were pretty enjoyable characters. Mary is portrayed as somewhat witty, and she could see through Holmes's disguise, and the end showed she was willing to forgive Holmes for being an ass. I mean duh, as if Hotson the badass is going to get engaged to some totally dumb and dull lamecase. I love how Holmes can be generally deficient in the kind of compassion that comes naturally to normal people but be fangirled to oblivion while some of Mary's actions somehow lead to her being written as some heinous bitch in fic (you know, her actions as well as the general threat that she gets in the way of the slash-OMG, HOW WILL FANFICTION EVER RECOVER??) And I've said a lot by now that it seems Irene's role in the movie is primarily antagonist/sidekick and secondarily a love interest, which I really like. She's the one who disables the machine at the end, how sweet is that? And I can't help but always be a sucker for Batman/Catwoman or Jack Sparrow/Elizabeth Swann kind of relationships where it's always kind of...there...but not there...and nothing can ever really come of it and it's simultaneously a perfectly matched and eternally doomed thing, so I find Holmes/Adler kind of cute and amusing in its craziness. (Multi-shipping is not a dirty word, dammit! LOL)
And this is kind of unrelated but some H/W shippers are already starting to scare me with their irrational hopes for it to become canon in the sequel or whatever. Please, not this shit again. (For the record, I most ardently ship both H/W and Kirk/Spock, if it's not clear that I'm definitely not complaining about the slashers in general.) And I laughed a lot when people were freaking out over the woman who owns the rights to everything SH threatening to take away Guy Ritchie's rights to the story if he makes the characters gay. Because LOL, it's not like that's going to happen. She never had any objection to the subtext or anything in the movie, but rather RDJ's comments on Letterman which she idiotically took to mean Ritchie would be "pursuing this theme" in future movies. (Isn't it funny how she had no objection to the Holmes/Adler relationship though, which is not any more canon?)
2. Of course it's always very nice for people to leave reviews/comments at all, and just about any review is better than hearing nothing from people, but I can't help but be a little miffed when people leave me reviews on fics that are completed with nothing to say but "Great, I hope you'll continue this" or "Please keep writing!" I'm sure these people don't realize there's something a little disconcerting about the idea that a story does not feel satisfyingly complete the way it is, but I'd just be much more complimented if they seemed more able to appreciate it the way it is. I mean, if you want MOAR so bad, maybe try checking out my other fic? This is probably such an overreaction to a kind of thing I know people mean well, but I guess I just don't like the feeling that I'm disappointing them in some way.
And I know I'm not the only person who has noticed this happening, but people are constantly subscribing to finished stories on ff.net. It's just weird. Sometimes they don't favorite, they don't review, they just subscribe. I've wondered if lots of people just like doing this as a way of quickly bookmarking fics they want to look at later. It's actually not a bad idea, lol.
3. I'm honestly tired of seeing people complain about the word "bromance" like there's something wrong with the word itself as opposed to the misuse of it. "Bromances" are supposed to be buddy movies. It's a very colloquial name for a real and legitimate genre of story which has been around forever. And does often have homoerotic subtext but not always, and is not interchangeable with "a really gay movie" even if some idiots tends to use it as a more wussy way of approaching the idea of a really gay movie and yeah, I understand that's annoying. But the term is generally applicable to a friendship between men that is so close it supplants any romantic relationships in either of their lives in importance in accordance with the "bros before hos" mantra, sometimes actually being the closest thing to a marriage either of them will ever have because their ways of life don't really allow for romance (especially if we're thinking cowboys or starships captains). I believe Chris Pine said it really well sort of like that in some interview but I'd have no idea now how to find which one it was and track it down now.
So anyway, RDJ's comment about how "the word 'bromance' is so passé" kind of makes me simultaneously want to grin like an idiot and want to just sigh. You can't necessarily just assume any interviewer asking about the movie that way is just indirectly trying to be like "So are Holmes and Watson doing it or what?" But if he were the first I'd ever known to object to the word like it's hindering the progression of homosexuality in mainstream culture or something I probably wouldn't even be miffed about it.
4. I could really do without all the Jacob/Bella-as-friends-when-they're-kids fic that is getting so popular. Sometimes they're really cute and well-done, but some people just seem to think the concept of them playing as kids is so cute that right there they automatically have a whole concept for a fic, and it never really gets very interesting and I'm like "Cool story, bro."
Plus I can't help but be bothered by how this is obviously becoming popular because it's movie-canon. The books say Bella sometimes used to play with his sisters, who would have been closer to her age, but that she doesn't really have any memory of Jacob from her childhood. It probably really shouldn't matter, lol, but there's only so much I can seem to suspend my disbelief to read all these kiddie-fics.
5. FYI, world, most of the time if you leave me a review that ends with you asking me to "R&R back" there is very little chance I will actually feel like looking at your stuff. For one thing, it's an obvious fact that there are people who go around leaving reviews like this on tons of fics they haven't even read just to try to get more attention for their stuff, so reading this at the bottom of a very general review that gives no clear indication you actually know what happened in the fic can sometimes make me kind of :/.
Also, even if you're honest, I don't write fic to make friends. I happen to have made some writer friends along the way who are lovely people, but those friendships are not based solely on mutual ass-kissing and I like it that way. I don't want you to be reading my fic because you're doing me a favor as a friend that I should return as a friend, but for you to read my stuff because you like it, and bugger off for all I care if you don't like it or don't want to leave concrit, so I know that if you actually bother to leave a positive review it's not only very kind on your part but earned on my part. Make sense?
6. I've started to get really frustrated with a complaint I've gotten several times about "What Music They Make" because I seriously just don't get it. It's not like I'd deny that the fic has plenty of problems and things I could have handled better, but out of everything what I see people criticizing is how Bella is being despicably "indecisive" about the Jacob vs. Edward thing, and this makes no sense to me. Bella isn't indecisive. She knows she loves both of them, and a big point of the story is that Jacob's life being in jeopardy as a consequence of her being turned is a big influence in making her realize she could have possibly chosen him and been able to live with it, but I don't see how there's ever any indication in the fic that her being with him is still a possibility, especially after the point that she saves him from being turned. She's a vampire now. The whole point of the scene on the cliff is to show how impossible a physical relationship between them is now and that's what makes it so tragic. Not to mention it would be wrong and pretty unhealthy for Jacob now. Sure, the J/B relationship is still written as something much deeper than just friendship on both sides, but it's not like she's making advances on him or vice versa.
I feel so full of myself dismissing criticism like this, but I can't help but assume that readers are just so used to being preoccupied with the romance aspect of all fanfic that they can't see past it and get the bigger picture when there is one. *sigh*
7. I'm officially pretty tired of Naomi/Emily being over-praised like they're the greatest thing to ever happen in Skins and one of the bestest ships liek in the history of ever. Yes, they're a lovely couple, with scenes that are very well performed because Lily Loveless especially is really good. And I'll even agree that it's definitely the most well-written couple of Series 3, though they're not the one I was ever the most invested in. But seriously, people? It is not what I would cite as an example of a great, rich, very well-developed relationship.
What makes it worse is how much people complain about other aspects of Series 3 as if the difference in quality between Naomi/Emily parts and most everything else is like night and day. To me, it's not actually that big a difference. S3 is my favorite, oddly, but it's true that just about every storyline in this series didn't get the kind of care and detail it needed. I ship Freddie/Effy because I see in theory how they'd work together, but I can admit that the writers really didn't do the work in developing their relationship and it's not hard for me to understand how a lot of people don't see it. But other fans would totally attack me for suggesting that Naomi/Emily wasn't actually better developed by any colossal margin. It wasn't. They're both likable but somewhat bland characters. It actually took looking at the extra material on the E4 website like the character blogs for me to get much of a detailed feel of what kind of people they are.
I actually saw someone say what they want in the sequel is "Less women taking up H/W screentime." Less. Women. They want...less women. Seriously? I mean...when it comes to adaptations of things that are very male-centric and don't have the best portrayal of women given the time they were written, I do think there's always ways the portrayal of women can be improved, but it's not like I'm going to have a problem with there being no prominent female characters in an adaptation if that would mean changing the essential story of the original. Not everyone can get away with turning Starbuck into a woman. Though it's not easily and without conflicted feelings that I think so, I'm kind of bothered by the idea of the new Star Trek movies losing the Kirk-Spock-McCoy trinity as the main focus just so they can be more progressive and PC by turning Uhura into more of a main character.
But, um, Irene Adler and Mary Morstan were really not extremely prominent parts of this movie, people. If that's too much for you, then...wow. And it especially bothers me because I actually thought they were pretty enjoyable characters. Mary is portrayed as somewhat witty, and she could see through Holmes's disguise, and the end showed she was willing to forgive Holmes for being an ass. I mean duh, as if Hotson the badass is going to get engaged to some totally dumb and dull lamecase. I love how Holmes can be generally deficient in the kind of compassion that comes naturally to normal people but be fangirled to oblivion while some of Mary's actions somehow lead to her being written as some heinous bitch in fic (you know, her actions as well as the general threat that she gets in the way of the slash-OMG, HOW WILL FANFICTION EVER RECOVER??) And I've said a lot by now that it seems Irene's role in the movie is primarily antagonist/sidekick and secondarily a love interest, which I really like. She's the one who disables the machine at the end, how sweet is that? And I can't help but always be a sucker for Batman/Catwoman or Jack Sparrow/Elizabeth Swann kind of relationships where it's always kind of...there...but not there...and nothing can ever really come of it and it's simultaneously a perfectly matched and eternally doomed thing, so I find Holmes/Adler kind of cute and amusing in its craziness. (Multi-shipping is not a dirty word, dammit! LOL)
And this is kind of unrelated but some H/W shippers are already starting to scare me with their irrational hopes for it to become canon in the sequel or whatever. Please, not this shit again. (For the record, I most ardently ship both H/W and Kirk/Spock, if it's not clear that I'm definitely not complaining about the slashers in general.) And I laughed a lot when people were freaking out over the woman who owns the rights to everything SH threatening to take away Guy Ritchie's rights to the story if he makes the characters gay. Because LOL, it's not like that's going to happen. She never had any objection to the subtext or anything in the movie, but rather RDJ's comments on Letterman which she idiotically took to mean Ritchie would be "pursuing this theme" in future movies. (Isn't it funny how she had no objection to the Holmes/Adler relationship though, which is not any more canon?)
2. Of course it's always very nice for people to leave reviews/comments at all, and just about any review is better than hearing nothing from people, but I can't help but be a little miffed when people leave me reviews on fics that are completed with nothing to say but "Great, I hope you'll continue this" or "Please keep writing!" I'm sure these people don't realize there's something a little disconcerting about the idea that a story does not feel satisfyingly complete the way it is, but I'd just be much more complimented if they seemed more able to appreciate it the way it is. I mean, if you want MOAR so bad, maybe try checking out my other fic? This is probably such an overreaction to a kind of thing I know people mean well, but I guess I just don't like the feeling that I'm disappointing them in some way.
And I know I'm not the only person who has noticed this happening, but people are constantly subscribing to finished stories on ff.net. It's just weird. Sometimes they don't favorite, they don't review, they just subscribe. I've wondered if lots of people just like doing this as a way of quickly bookmarking fics they want to look at later. It's actually not a bad idea, lol.
3. I'm honestly tired of seeing people complain about the word "bromance" like there's something wrong with the word itself as opposed to the misuse of it. "Bromances" are supposed to be buddy movies. It's a very colloquial name for a real and legitimate genre of story which has been around forever. And does often have homoerotic subtext but not always, and is not interchangeable with "a really gay movie" even if some idiots tends to use it as a more wussy way of approaching the idea of a really gay movie and yeah, I understand that's annoying. But the term is generally applicable to a friendship between men that is so close it supplants any romantic relationships in either of their lives in importance in accordance with the "bros before hos" mantra, sometimes actually being the closest thing to a marriage either of them will ever have because their ways of life don't really allow for romance (especially if we're thinking cowboys or starships captains). I believe Chris Pine said it really well sort of like that in some interview but I'd have no idea now how to find which one it was and track it down now.
So anyway, RDJ's comment about how "the word 'bromance' is so passé" kind of makes me simultaneously want to grin like an idiot and want to just sigh. You can't necessarily just assume any interviewer asking about the movie that way is just indirectly trying to be like "So are Holmes and Watson doing it or what?" But if he were the first I'd ever known to object to the word like it's hindering the progression of homosexuality in mainstream culture or something I probably wouldn't even be miffed about it.
4. I could really do without all the Jacob/Bella-as-friends-when-they're-kids fic that is getting so popular. Sometimes they're really cute and well-done, but some people just seem to think the concept of them playing as kids is so cute that right there they automatically have a whole concept for a fic, and it never really gets very interesting and I'm like "Cool story, bro."
Plus I can't help but be bothered by how this is obviously becoming popular because it's movie-canon. The books say Bella sometimes used to play with his sisters, who would have been closer to her age, but that she doesn't really have any memory of Jacob from her childhood. It probably really shouldn't matter, lol, but there's only so much I can seem to suspend my disbelief to read all these kiddie-fics.
5. FYI, world, most of the time if you leave me a review that ends with you asking me to "R&R back" there is very little chance I will actually feel like looking at your stuff. For one thing, it's an obvious fact that there are people who go around leaving reviews like this on tons of fics they haven't even read just to try to get more attention for their stuff, so reading this at the bottom of a very general review that gives no clear indication you actually know what happened in the fic can sometimes make me kind of :/.
Also, even if you're honest, I don't write fic to make friends. I happen to have made some writer friends along the way who are lovely people, but those friendships are not based solely on mutual ass-kissing and I like it that way. I don't want you to be reading my fic because you're doing me a favor as a friend that I should return as a friend, but for you to read my stuff because you like it, and bugger off for all I care if you don't like it or don't want to leave concrit, so I know that if you actually bother to leave a positive review it's not only very kind on your part but earned on my part. Make sense?
6. I've started to get really frustrated with a complaint I've gotten several times about "What Music They Make" because I seriously just don't get it. It's not like I'd deny that the fic has plenty of problems and things I could have handled better, but out of everything what I see people criticizing is how Bella is being despicably "indecisive" about the Jacob vs. Edward thing, and this makes no sense to me. Bella isn't indecisive. She knows she loves both of them, and a big point of the story is that Jacob's life being in jeopardy as a consequence of her being turned is a big influence in making her realize she could have possibly chosen him and been able to live with it, but I don't see how there's ever any indication in the fic that her being with him is still a possibility, especially after the point that she saves him from being turned. She's a vampire now. The whole point of the scene on the cliff is to show how impossible a physical relationship between them is now and that's what makes it so tragic. Not to mention it would be wrong and pretty unhealthy for Jacob now. Sure, the J/B relationship is still written as something much deeper than just friendship on both sides, but it's not like she's making advances on him or vice versa.
I feel so full of myself dismissing criticism like this, but I can't help but assume that readers are just so used to being preoccupied with the romance aspect of all fanfic that they can't see past it and get the bigger picture when there is one. *sigh*
7. I'm officially pretty tired of Naomi/Emily being over-praised like they're the greatest thing to ever happen in Skins and one of the bestest ships liek in the history of ever. Yes, they're a lovely couple, with scenes that are very well performed because Lily Loveless especially is really good. And I'll even agree that it's definitely the most well-written couple of Series 3, though they're not the one I was ever the most invested in. But seriously, people? It is not what I would cite as an example of a great, rich, very well-developed relationship.
What makes it worse is how much people complain about other aspects of Series 3 as if the difference in quality between Naomi/Emily parts and most everything else is like night and day. To me, it's not actually that big a difference. S3 is my favorite, oddly, but it's true that just about every storyline in this series didn't get the kind of care and detail it needed. I ship Freddie/Effy because I see in theory how they'd work together, but I can admit that the writers really didn't do the work in developing their relationship and it's not hard for me to understand how a lot of people don't see it. But other fans would totally attack me for suggesting that Naomi/Emily wasn't actually better developed by any colossal margin. It wasn't. They're both likable but somewhat bland characters. It actually took looking at the extra material on the E4 website like the character blogs for me to get much of a detailed feel of what kind of people they are.