Pretty much everything in this post deals with sexism in fandom, yaaaaaaay
Or, at the very least, with what the author perceives as sexist tropes in fandom. But the author is also a cynic and a pessimist with regard to this issue and is extremely likely to perceive problems that may or may not, in fact, exist.
I have a new computer! (This computer, in fact.) It is a beautiful, sleek thing, even if it is Windows 8 (ARGH WINDOWS 8 IS ALL THE DUMB) and I've promised myself to at least try to get used to the awful that is the new start screen, but I'm not certain I'll be able to deal with it. I might have to do the registry hack to get the old start menu back. (I've noticed there are a number of third-party start menus that either replace or supplement the new start screen -- do any of you use one, and what do you like/dislike about it?)
Miscellaneous fannish things I wanted to mention:
Garo: Makai Senki
I decided to catch up on Garo, because apparently they kept making more shows after Beast of the White Night and I had no idea and this was my first toku show. I am almost halfway through Makai Senki and my feelings boil down to two things: 1) I still love Kaoru more than is entirely healthy, even though she never actually does anything and her role is basically to be the pretty supportive pseudo-girlfriend to the dark, brooding hero, and every time they start hinting that she might start doing awesome things and being more of a character in her own right I get really excited until they crush my dreams horribly; and 2) maybe I'm misremembering because it's been so long since I watched the original TV show, but the pacing in this series is so weird. Some episodes are allllllll plot, and then some of them are allllllllllllllll fight scenes, and there's almost no happy medium between the two. Besides which they've decided to treat Rei as a main character even though he's not interacting with Kouga and Kaoru at all, and so we switch between all-Kouga/Kaoru episodes and all-Rei episodes and it just feels... idk. Really unbalanced. Also, I am going to be seriously pissed if they teased me with the possibility of Kaoru becoming a Makai Priest and then they take that away from me. I WANT HER TO BE A MAKAI PRIEST SO MUCH. It even makes good storytelling sense! Kouga and Kaoru have no conflict in this series, so her inclusion in the story is basically pointless; if she started training to seal Horrors on her own, Kouga would get angry that she's risking her safety and generally be a sexist nuisance and she'd eventually win the argument and they would both have to grow as human beings. Her presence in the story would make sense.
Merlin
I've gotten stuck again. I really don't care for Arthur or Merlin (nor do I care for the pairing, seriously, ugh) but I have ALL THE FEELS for Morgana/Gwen. And also Morgana and Gwen individually. (And okay, Uther's existence is frequently annoying but mostly I can't be bothered to care because he is ridiculously hot; I could stare at his lovely face all day.) Anyway, OTP and its guarranteed doom aside, Morgana is my favourite and things are only going to get worse for her from here on out and I just. Ugh. I'm going to watch it eventually, but I really don't want to see it happen.
I find it interesting (read: dumb) that Arthur listens when Gwen tells him he's a jerk... sort of. It's more than he does with Merlin, and Merlin's been pointing out Arthur's dickishness since day one, but even after Arthur learns to care about him, he doesn't give Merlin's occasional criticism any thought. By season two, Arthur still doesn't really know anything about Gwen, yet when she calls him an asshole, he immediately tries to fix up his act. (Sort of. And also badly.) It's just... he knows Morgana and Merlin, and he doesn't know Gwen (except what he knows Morgana and Merlin think of her), and he cares more about her opinion of him than those he trusts. What it ends up looking like is that Arthur only cares what Gwen thinks because he finds her pretty, and he goes through alpha male posturing rituals in order to win the attention of an attractive female. He may find her intelligence intriguing, but mostly he finds her pretty. Her subservience helps; Morgana is (supposed to be, at any rate) equally beautiful, and likewise equally intelligent, but her position as Arthur's relative equal makes her an unattractive prospect.
There's more to it than that, obviously, but it really does feel as though Morgana's refusal to act as anything other than his equal is what really rankles him. And it fits with Gwen's estimation of his character flaws.
Star Trek Reboot, fandom, and Uhura
So, Star Trek into Darkness had vastly more Uhura, right? She was even portrayed as an asset and not a foil for Kirk's manwhorish ways. AND YET. Kirk and Spock are still the ones to save the day, Uhura gets a chance to be useful by speaking Klingon and ends up having to get rescued from a messy death as a result of her supposed usefulness. No, fuck you, Abrams. At least fandom knows better! Right?
...Right?
Here's the thing I've noticed about Reboot fandom: outside of fic, there's a lot of discussion of why Uhura is awesome and better than what Abrams & co. believe. There's a lot of criticism of the film's misogyny. The fic, to a certain extent, reflects this: even fic about Other People's (read: Men's) Awesome (B)romance makes sure to mention that Uhura is 287% awesome and fully capable of kicking your ass. But then, even in fic, she never gets to do anything. When there are action scenes in the fic, the boys are the ones saving the day. When there are communications issues, some male crew member (usually Kirk, Spock, or Scotty) are needed to help reconfigure the communications console so she can do her job. Whenever anything goes really wrong, Uhura gets relegated to the background and either doesn't see any action at all, or needs to get saved by a male crewmember. She never gets to repay the favour, and she never gets to save herself. And that's just not cool. Fandom is the place that the original media is supposed to become better, where the flaws are supposed to be rewritten into strengths, where systemic oppression gets broken down and rebuilt into real equality. When a fandom perpetuates the problems it perceives in the original media, there's a serious problem.
Not all of fandom is like this. Not all the stories do this. But the overwhelming majority, from what I've seen, does. And that needs to change.
On that note, I'd like to rec something I read the other day that manages to avoid the aforementioned pitfalls: Lunch and Other Obscenities by rheanna27. It's just under 10,000 words, and it's a really great look at Uhura and Gaila and their relationship as roommates and, later, friends -- and Uhura gets to save the day twice, even if it's not quite in a literal "life-or-death" way. It is one of my favourite Star Trek fics ever, which is a difficult position to attain without being novel-length and full of danger and espionage and political intrigue, etc. etc. etc.
In other news, I started watching Star Trek: Voyager, and B'Elanna Torres is the best. I want to be her; she's completely amazing. I am incapable of expressing how much I love her character. Oops. I said that last time. Oh, well, it still stands. B'Elannaaaaaaaaaaaaaa *_______________*
I have a new computer! (This computer, in fact.) It is a beautiful, sleek thing, even if it is Windows 8 (ARGH WINDOWS 8 IS ALL THE DUMB) and I've promised myself to at least try to get used to the awful that is the new start screen, but I'm not certain I'll be able to deal with it. I might have to do the registry hack to get the old start menu back. (I've noticed there are a number of third-party start menus that either replace or supplement the new start screen -- do any of you use one, and what do you like/dislike about it?)
Miscellaneous fannish things I wanted to mention:
Garo: Makai Senki
I decided to catch up on Garo, because apparently they kept making more shows after Beast of the White Night and I had no idea and this was my first toku show. I am almost halfway through Makai Senki and my feelings boil down to two things: 1) I still love Kaoru more than is entirely healthy, even though she never actually does anything and her role is basically to be the pretty supportive pseudo-girlfriend to the dark, brooding hero, and every time they start hinting that she might start doing awesome things and being more of a character in her own right I get really excited until they crush my dreams horribly; and 2) maybe I'm misremembering because it's been so long since I watched the original TV show, but the pacing in this series is so weird. Some episodes are allllllll plot, and then some of them are allllllllllllllll fight scenes, and there's almost no happy medium between the two. Besides which they've decided to treat Rei as a main character even though he's not interacting with Kouga and Kaoru at all, and so we switch between all-Kouga/Kaoru episodes and all-Rei episodes and it just feels... idk. Really unbalanced. Also, I am going to be seriously pissed if they teased me with the possibility of Kaoru becoming a Makai Priest and then they take that away from me. I WANT HER TO BE A MAKAI PRIEST SO MUCH. It even makes good storytelling sense! Kouga and Kaoru have no conflict in this series, so her inclusion in the story is basically pointless; if she started training to seal Horrors on her own, Kouga would get angry that she's risking her safety and generally be a sexist nuisance and she'd eventually win the argument and they would both have to grow as human beings. Her presence in the story would make sense.
Merlin
I've gotten stuck again. I really don't care for Arthur or Merlin (nor do I care for the pairing, seriously, ugh) but I have ALL THE FEELS for Morgana/Gwen. And also Morgana and Gwen individually. (And okay, Uther's existence is frequently annoying but mostly I can't be bothered to care because he is ridiculously hot; I could stare at his lovely face all day.) Anyway, OTP and its guarranteed doom aside, Morgana is my favourite and things are only going to get worse for her from here on out and I just. Ugh. I'm going to watch it eventually, but I really don't want to see it happen.
I find it interesting (read: dumb) that Arthur listens when Gwen tells him he's a jerk... sort of. It's more than he does with Merlin, and Merlin's been pointing out Arthur's dickishness since day one, but even after Arthur learns to care about him, he doesn't give Merlin's occasional criticism any thought. By season two, Arthur still doesn't really know anything about Gwen, yet when she calls him an asshole, he immediately tries to fix up his act. (Sort of. And also badly.) It's just... he knows Morgana and Merlin, and he doesn't know Gwen (except what he knows Morgana and Merlin think of her), and he cares more about her opinion of him than those he trusts. What it ends up looking like is that Arthur only cares what Gwen thinks because he finds her pretty, and he goes through alpha male posturing rituals in order to win the attention of an attractive female. He may find her intelligence intriguing, but mostly he finds her pretty. Her subservience helps; Morgana is (supposed to be, at any rate) equally beautiful, and likewise equally intelligent, but her position as Arthur's relative equal makes her an unattractive prospect.
There's more to it than that, obviously, but it really does feel as though Morgana's refusal to act as anything other than his equal is what really rankles him. And it fits with Gwen's estimation of his character flaws.
Star Trek Reboot, fandom, and Uhura
So, Star Trek into Darkness had vastly more Uhura, right? She was even portrayed as an asset and not a foil for Kirk's manwhorish ways. AND YET. Kirk and Spock are still the ones to save the day, Uhura gets a chance to be useful by speaking Klingon and ends up having to get rescued from a messy death as a result of her supposed usefulness. No, fuck you, Abrams. At least fandom knows better! Right?
...Right?
Here's the thing I've noticed about Reboot fandom: outside of fic, there's a lot of discussion of why Uhura is awesome and better than what Abrams & co. believe. There's a lot of criticism of the film's misogyny. The fic, to a certain extent, reflects this: even fic about Other People's (read: Men's) Awesome (B)romance makes sure to mention that Uhura is 287% awesome and fully capable of kicking your ass. But then, even in fic, she never gets to do anything. When there are action scenes in the fic, the boys are the ones saving the day. When there are communications issues, some male crew member (usually Kirk, Spock, or Scotty) are needed to help reconfigure the communications console so she can do her job. Whenever anything goes really wrong, Uhura gets relegated to the background and either doesn't see any action at all, or needs to get saved by a male crewmember. She never gets to repay the favour, and she never gets to save herself. And that's just not cool. Fandom is the place that the original media is supposed to become better, where the flaws are supposed to be rewritten into strengths, where systemic oppression gets broken down and rebuilt into real equality. When a fandom perpetuates the problems it perceives in the original media, there's a serious problem.
Not all of fandom is like this. Not all the stories do this. But the overwhelming majority, from what I've seen, does. And that needs to change.
On that note, I'd like to rec something I read the other day that manages to avoid the aforementioned pitfalls: Lunch and Other Obscenities by rheanna27. It's just under 10,000 words, and it's a really great look at Uhura and Gaila and their relationship as roommates and, later, friends -- and Uhura gets to save the day twice, even if it's not quite in a literal "life-or-death" way. It is one of my favourite Star Trek fics ever, which is a difficult position to attain without being novel-length and full of danger and espionage and political intrigue, etc. etc. etc.
In other news, I started watching Star Trek: Voyager, and B'Elanna Torres is the best. I want to be her; she's completely amazing. I am incapable of expressing how much I love her character. Oops. I said that last time. Oh, well, it still stands. B'Elannaaaaaaaaaaaaaa *_______________*