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A post of miscellaneous unrelated things
1. Roga is right. Red River is the gayest Western ever. There is just no way to view the characters as completely straight in some of the scenes without resorting to hetero tinhattery. (It was also completely fascinating to watch a 1948 western through 2009 eyes. Fascinating in an occasionally skeeved-out kind of way.) ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
roga pointed me to this Red River fic (incidentally written by hradzka of "oh John Ringo no" fame) which is very well written and pretty much nails the utter slashiness of canon -- you don't need a tinhat to believe that this is what's happening when the camera is not on them. (The author's notes are also entertaining -- scroll down for them.)
2. I am currently struggling with temptation to buy one of these. No, I don't need a sonic screwdriver pen and an itty-bitty Doctor Who journal, but I want it!
3. Dollhouse, the new Joss Whedon show, aired last night. I'd actually forgotten about it since glooming at length about the casting spoilers and premise last year. The reactions I'm generally seeing on my f'list aren't encouraging; there are a couple of people who liked it, but a whole lot more OH JOSS WHEDON NO. There's a poll over atliviapenn asking people's opinions on the show (including options for not having watched it).
4. Also ganked fromliviapenn, What news anchors do during commercial breaks is unbelievably adorable. :D
5. I don't recall how I got here, but I had an intriguing insight while reading this review of Neil Gaiman's "Neverwhere". What I found fascinating from a writing standpoint was this:
This really fascinated me, because it made me think that I might finally know why I have trouble relating to a lot of so-called "strong" female characters -- it's because of their lack of empathy towards the people around them. (Though I don't specifically remember feeling that way towards the women in Neverwhere -- I found Door kind of wimpy and annoying, and Hunter completely awesome, but it's been a decade since I read or watched it, so take all of that with a grain of salt.) In general, though, I can think of a number of times I've been bothered by writers tending to give female characters abrasive personalities for no particular reason (like the "ice queen" type or the fish-out-of-water sort who doesn't even try to figure out how to work with the people around her -- see half the romance novels ever written -- and are usually allowed to get away with it) while the male characters, in contrast, are more conciliatory or at least less inclined to be in-your-face jerks to people they supposedly care about or have to appease, unless they're flat-out villains.
I know there are exceptions to this, there are a ton of exceptions to this, and there are also lots of cases where female characters get castigated and male characters get let off the hook for similar behavior -- see Rodney McKay + Sam Carter. But for one particular dynamic, I think it explains a lot, for me. And it's something that I'm going to keep in mind when I'm writing a gender-mixed group of characters.
ETA 6.fox1013 is hosting a Gen Battle, generally modeled after the Porn Battles only, well, gen. There are prompts for a ton of big and small and micro fandoms : Prompts #-H, Prompts I-R, Prompts S-Z + Crossovers and fic is here. I already have a couple of insta-recs, too: Discworld/Torchwood crossover, Owen+Death (TOO AWESOME FOR WORDS) and another Owen ficlet for the prompt "zombies". Apparently I still ♥ Owen quite a lot.
roga pointed me to this Red River fic (incidentally written by hradzka of "oh John Ringo no" fame) which is very well written and pretty much nails the utter slashiness of canon -- you don't need a tinhat to believe that this is what's happening when the camera is not on them. (The author's notes are also entertaining -- scroll down for them.) 2. I am currently struggling with temptation to buy one of these. No, I don't need a sonic screwdriver pen and an itty-bitty Doctor Who journal, but I want it!
3. Dollhouse, the new Joss Whedon show, aired last night. I'd actually forgotten about it since glooming at length about the casting spoilers and premise last year. The reactions I'm generally seeing on my f'list aren't encouraging; there are a couple of people who liked it, but a whole lot more OH JOSS WHEDON NO. There's a poll over at
liviapenn asking people's opinions on the show (including options for not having watched it).4. Also ganked from
liviapenn, What news anchors do during commercial breaks is unbelievably adorable. :D5. I don't recall how I got here, but I had an intriguing insight while reading this review of Neil Gaiman's "Neverwhere". What I found fascinating from a writing standpoint was this:
The next thing I wanted to understand was why I didn’t like any of the women characters quite as well as I liked the Marquis and Old Bailey. Now, I did admire the women, and I was thrilled none of them were characterized by obnoxious stereotypes. But I really liked the Marquis and Old Bailey, so I had to ask myself what precisely was the difference? The first thing I realized was that the women were mostly oblivious to Richard’s discomfort. So were many of the men - but Old Bailey asks Richard if he’s all right and tries to feed him. The Marquis occasionally hands out stern encouragement, so he has noticed Richard is afraid and overwhelmed. This endears the two characters to me, because Richard is the Everyman through whom I put myself into the story. It’s inevitable that I’m going to perceive any character who fails to notice his feelings as insensitive to Richard, and by extension to me.
This really fascinated me, because it made me think that I might finally know why I have trouble relating to a lot of so-called "strong" female characters -- it's because of their lack of empathy towards the people around them. (Though I don't specifically remember feeling that way towards the women in Neverwhere -- I found Door kind of wimpy and annoying, and Hunter completely awesome, but it's been a decade since I read or watched it, so take all of that with a grain of salt.) In general, though, I can think of a number of times I've been bothered by writers tending to give female characters abrasive personalities for no particular reason (like the "ice queen" type or the fish-out-of-water sort who doesn't even try to figure out how to work with the people around her -- see half the romance novels ever written -- and are usually allowed to get away with it) while the male characters, in contrast, are more conciliatory or at least less inclined to be in-your-face jerks to people they supposedly care about or have to appease, unless they're flat-out villains.
I know there are exceptions to this, there are a ton of exceptions to this, and there are also lots of cases where female characters get castigated and male characters get let off the hook for similar behavior -- see Rodney McKay + Sam Carter. But for one particular dynamic, I think it explains a lot, for me. And it's something that I'm going to keep in mind when I'm writing a gender-mixed group of characters.
ETA 6.
fox1013 is hosting a Gen Battle, generally modeled after the Porn Battles only, well, gen. There are prompts for a ton of big and small and micro fandoms : Prompts #-H, Prompts I-R, Prompts S-Z + Crossovers and fic is here. I already have a couple of insta-recs, too: Discworld/Torchwood crossover, Owen+Death (TOO AWESOME FOR WORDS) and another Owen ficlet for the prompt "zombies". Apparently I still ♥ Owen quite a lot.
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