It's meme time again!

[gryphonsegg]

Name a fandom, and I'll tell you one of my unpopular opinions about it.

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Comments

[kansan_entrails]

Portal.

[gryphonsegg]

Hmm . . . I don't interact enough with the general Portal fandom to know if my opinions are all that unpopular or not, but I have seen some unfortunate wank about the change in Chell's character design between Portal and Portal 2. I prefer the earlier design, but I'm hesitant to say so just anywhere because in the mess I read, the people who preferred the earlier design accused the later design of being a case of whitewashing, when in fact the later design makes Chell look more East Asian, not more European. Yes, her skin was lightened, and there are unfortunate implications to that, but her features look less European in the redesign, not more. The earlier design looks more like Chell's family tree probably contains a little bit of everything-- African, European, Native American, East Asian, South Asian-- while the redesign has a more emphatically East Asian look. Basically, I like the first design more, but I don't want to be associated with the group that think the redesign looks white because that seems to based on the same "

[kansan_entrails]

Hurm. I see.

[gryphonsegg]

That was a lot of words devoted to a character's appearance, huh? I just don't know how my thoughts on Portal measure up to what's popular in the fandom as whole instead of the segment that cares about racial representation and the segment that overlaps with TF2 fandom (which are segments that don't overlap much, lolsigh).

[lady_ganesh]

Is feminism a fandom?

[gryphonsegg]

It should be. We certainly have enough character-bashing and ship wars.

My most unpopular opinion with regard to feminism is that I'm not sex-positive. A lot of what gets passed off as sex-positivity these days looks suspiciously like pressure to perform sexually in ways that aren't even all that different from what mainstream, non-feminist popular culture promotes. My second most unpopular feminist opinion is that I'm sick and tired of how frequently feminists precede or intersperse their statements about feminist ideals or policies with assurances that they "love men." My third is that I don't find Taylor Swift's lyrics and public image (supposedly "every feminist's worst nightmare," *rolleyes*) any more problematic that Ke$ha's or any other pop singer's.

[lady_ganesh]

I feel like Taylor Swift's Nice Girl song overshadows the rest of her work, which is...pretty much like every other pop star's yeah.

[gryphonsegg]

Even the Nice Girl song is, well, a Nice Girl song-- pretty much a genderswap version of the umpteen dozen Nice Guy songs out there. Annoying, yes. Feminist, no. But it's not nearly as bad as "Girlfriend," which didn't get Avril what's-her-name branded "every feminist's worst nightmare" and not even in the same galaxy as the barrage of misogyny and sexual entitlement that spews forth from so many popular male performers. So it bugs me when the usual suspects single Swift out as this huge threat to young women's sexual autonomy, especially when they jump to conclusions about her behind-the-scenes personality and unspoken political opinions, considering that most of the bloggers who do this have a history of chiding others for making the same kinds of unfounded judgments about women become famous with a more blatantly sexual "bad girl" type image. And all of that goes triple for Sadie Doyle, who has some weird issue about projecting the personality of a preppy girl who snubbed her in high school onto Swift.