solitary_summer | (no subject)

I'm in hibernation mode, I think, I'm so sleepy all the time. All that cold can't be good for the soul. Where's global warming when you need it? And will push-up bras ever go away again? Picked up fingerless gloves (for work, *sigh*; early 18th century building, high ceiling, impossible to heat) at H&M, though.

And I feel so very blah about writing at the moment. My mind is like... something sticky and very, very slow moving? I'm even running out of metaphors. I'll type a couple of sentences, a paragraph, and then start wondering if whatever I've written is 1) even English, and 2) worth writing about, at which point it either gets deleted, or joins the other 'unfinished'-tagged entries.

Oh, and Merlin. As long as I was watching shows on (German or Austrian) TV, I always was anything from a year to... a lot longer than that behind everyone else; spoilers? *sarcastic laughter*. In fact S2 Torchwood, S4 DW and Merlin were the first shows where I followed fandom and fanish debates, squeeing and wanking in real time. So it's still kind of weird to see the adorable slashy little show that only a handful of people were watching, but that kind of got under your skin despite yourself and then suddenly turned out out to be surprisingly good and you found yourself writing meta even when you thought you never ever would, suddenly on the way to become the Next Big Thing, and watching or not watching suddenly becoming a question of ethics and whatnot...

On that note, I think I also just realised why I'm completely unsuited for fandom. With very few exceptions canon is canon is canon in my mind, and that's what mainly interests me about a show. There is no independent version of Jack or Ianto or... say, Harry Potter, in my head that's better or deeper or more complex or more whatever-it-is-that-people-are-(allegedly)-looking-for. And if it's complexity that they want, why do they so often disregard whatever complexity is already present in the source material? Why does (e.g.) so much of the Torchwood fanfic - oh, all right, admittedly this is a bit of a wild generalisation since I have given up looking for good fanfic a while ago, so everyone please feel free to prove me wrong and point out what I've been missing - fall back on clichès and simplify rather than complexify or explore? On the whole, the more I like a show, the less I'm interested in the fanfic, and vice versa, to the point that the fandoms where I read the most fic are those where I've only seen a few episodes, or am not familiar with the source material at all.

And I simply refuse to panic or even worry about the future of livejournal at this point. Granted, economic crises and all that, but I've simply seen this whole The End Is Near! thing one time too often.

Eh. Russian homework to do, which I'm not allowed to feel blah about.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Ah. Now I see what might have prompted this post that I commented on yesterday, when it got linked in the SV newsletter. :p But in response to the original post itself, the examples she raised to make a point about Merlin being a misogynistic show are inaccurate at best. I mean, Uther is just as unhinged as Nimueh is when it comes to magic. Merlin is just as dark and morally ambiguous as Morgana is. Gaius can be very apathetic and disregarding of his culpability. Arthur is very much a strong character, but at certain times still needs someone to give him that final push to do the right thing, which is Morgana herself for most of the time. And it's Gwen who has been unequivocally portrayed as the moral touchstone of story so far.

There's quite enough complexity for all of Merlin's characters to appreciate their motivations and course of actions, whether we agree with the show's execution or not. Sometimes I think the cry fouls at a show being misogynistic is just a little too often that I can't seem to take the arguments without thinking there's another whole agenda behind them, like in the post I've referred to in my previous response.

Yeah, Smallville can be crazy painful and not in a good way too. S3 is probably the only season I'd never watch again. They went way overboard with trying to woobify Lex, and it ended up serving no one. But in the later seasons, I think they've gotten their act together somewhat -- making him completely cold, competent and leaving no room for doubt that he's in full control of his faculties and conscience at the same time. And I can appreciate that.

Edited 2009-01-11 07:47 (UTC)

I'm ready to believe almost everything anyone says about fandom and its internalised misogyny, because I've seen it in myself, to an extent. It used to be so much easier to identify or empathise with the male characters than the women - I still have no real idea (although maybe a few vague theories) why.

What does it even take for a male character to be really disliked by fandom or even criticised to the extent female characters are all the time - especially if he's pretty?

What does it even take for a male character to be really disliked by fandom or even criticised to the extent female characters are all the time - especially if he's pretty?

The million dollar question. I don't know much about how it goes in fandoms other than SV, but it's enough to last me a lifetime.