zvi_likes_tv: [in remixers_lounge] Tools! Schemas! Plans! Maps! Thoughts made two-dimensional or electronic! - When you're deciding what scenes need to be kept and which can be elided, do you keep notes on a spreadsheet? If you want to make sure to quote particular lines of the original fic, do you cut them out of a printout and tape them to your monitor? Do you use yWriter's outline function to figure out how the original story fits together? If you want to write a story that reverses the chronology of the original, do you write the scenes in the normal order in SuperNoteCard and then rearrangement? Do mindmaps let you know what you're thinking about what your remixee wrote? -
alias_sqbr: Why I don't read so much original science fiction any more - So when I read original sf books(*) I expect originality, and I expect cool ideas, either in science or in future extrapolation or something. And I'm just not getting it, it all feels like a rather uncreative pastiche of what's gone before with a slightly modernised technobabble veneer. Like fanfic without the queer or female characters and with less of the character development. -
sqbr: Fanart meta: genderswap, crossdressing, and trans-ness - there's kind of a three pointed continuum on which all gender/sex-changing fanart seems to sit: sincere expression of a trans or crossdressing POV (on the part of the character and possibly also the artist), exploitative porn and humour, and explorations of gender and character from a cisgendered POV which happen to involve characters cross-dressing or switching gender/sex but aren't really about that.The first sort is unfortunately in the minority, and not always easy to recognise from my cisgendered POV. Searching -
telesilla: 3W4DW -- Day ??? - So as a writer, which would you prefer? Readers who read your books, like them, and then move on to the next author on the shelf until your next book comes out? Or ones that are passionate about your characters or love your universe? Readers who get down in there and think and speculate and get involved because what you wrote was just that compelling. Either way, you sell the same number of books** but wouldn't you want involved, engaged fans?I know I would. -
helens78: geek conventions and body/self image (3W4DW) - I go to two different kinds of major geek gatherings: Defcon (an annual hacker convention held in Las Vegas) and my annual WoWfolk get-together (an annual meetup of RPers who play on our server held in Seattle). Body image plays no role whatsoever at my WoW meetup, but a minor role at Defcon. -
reddwarfer: I need a new pair of glasses. - With men, I can look distantly at actions, choices, thoughts and think...yeah, that makes sense, I can see that happening, that seems realistic enough. I'm not a man. I don't ever suffer any sort of disconnect when reading about them.With women, I can't be objective. I'm always looking at thoughts and actions through the history of my own self. I think, would I do that? Would I think that? Because I can never completely divorce myself from a woman I'm reading about/watching on tv. -
sarraceniaceae: Rethinking the MZB case - At the time it happened, MZB's version was pretty much the only one that got heard since, you know, she was the pretty-well known author versus the tiny unknown, but only hearing one person's side in a complicated and contentious story is never going to get you the right answer. And the more I hear, the more skeptical I am that it was the fanfic author who was the more wrong one. -
cleolinda: Things you think about if you're me - And I started thinking, and then I realized that people never really take that axiom far enough--a story isn't just about wanting something; it's about how the characters are positioned in relation to that something, and what they want to do (or not do) with it. -
ladylunas: Women, Fandom, and Female Characters - The problem comes in when strong female characters exist within a show. They are everything that consumer-producer woman is not. They are amazing and they aren't afraid to show it. In contrast, the consumer-producer might be an amazing woman herself, but has been taught to suppress the willingness to show it, or even the ability. So what feelings come out against the character is envy. Anger. Why is she like that when I can't be? -
nwhepcat: It's easy for me != it's easy. - In my experience it's not necessarily easy, but sometimes it's doable. The ability to speak up on one's behalf (or someone else's) is a fluid thing, and often situational. There are times when I can speak up loud and clear and sometimes obnoxiously. There are others where it takes enormous effort, or I just can't. Sometimes there's a grey area where I think, "This just doesn't feel right," but I can't say why. -
tanndell: Potentially Triggering: Rape Culture and Me - Am I passing on the culture of victim!shame that I unknowingly imbibed? I think I am, and I don't know how to stop it. I know, from both personal experiences and the experiences of others, that acts of sexual violation have nothing to do with clothes, or bars or public transport. It has to do with bad people doing bad things. But, if it is so difficult for me to subconsciously separate the two, I'm feeding right back into rape culture, and this is unforgivable.r -
huzzlewhat: I don't believe in "should have" - Should haves just circle back onto themselves, into the middle of the now-past situation, leaving the victim stuck there. Should haves prevent forward movement. They're the illusion, the road that doesn't exist. -
issuegirls: there are no words - A woman has the right to walk home at night, to have a drink at a party, to trust a male friend to drive her home, to wear whatever the hell she feels like wearing, without the fear of being accosted. Not because her potential attacker/s should fear reprisal, but because it is her basic right as a human being. -
lab: I was completely blacked out, I can't remember a thing - I chose to reply to this comment here because it has a pervasive rhetoric, the rhetoric of "I know it's wrong, the don't have the right but it's society, whatareyagonnadoabout it" --- that rhetoric is part of the problem. It's not - as one might be led to think - a clever, mature, rational reaction to "what society is", it's just a more subtle form of saying "well, it's your fault, you just weren't careful enough, I'm sorry, but it's true." No, it's not. -
amireal: I can't believe I actually have to say this. - It does not end when the uncomfortable elements are removed. Just because no one touched them and they touched no one, does not make it any less of an issue. Someone is a victim if they feel victimized. Feeling victimized in no way takes away their power or control (assuming they managed to keep it in the first place), it means that the memory and feelings remain. It means that there are consequences DESPITE being lucky enough to be physically unharmed. -
spaggel: A breeding ground: excuses and justifications. - We need to give women support. Give them the support they need, when they need it. We need to stop telling them that how they reacted is going to weigh in on how "bad" those actions really were and that how they handled it is going to let us know how much support we will give them. How much we will back them up.Do not make your support conditional. Do not add a "if you just had done this". Do not lessen their emotional turmoil and distress about situations. Do not think that being "pressured" isn't harassment. Do not turn them away. -
commodorified: Did she pass them by, did she dare to meet their eye? - So, as long as we're all at it, I may as well talk about the Thing That Happened at ConFusion this year. It may serve some useful illustrative purpose in a discussion about rape culture and what individual women can and cannot reasonably be expected to do about it. -
cluegirl: Rape culture and road rage - And then he was gone. But he left behind the persistent sensation of hope inside my jaded, cynical breast; that men realy CAN learn to get it; they really can understand, and reject rape culture without resorting to a kneejerk fear reaction, or defensiveness. They can actually hear that their suppositions are flawed, and deeply so, and can carry that away to repair in their own time. That the dismantling of rape culture isn't necessarily going to rest entirely on the shoulders of feminist men and women -- that non-feminists too can just reject the underlying sleaze that holds up the code of conspiratorial silence, apologism, and victim-blame. -
gabrielleabelle: Personal responsibility can bite me - Any discussion about a rape/sexual assault/unwanted sexual situation is not about whether the victim did the 'correct' thing. It's about what the other person (or persons) did. Bringing up 'personal responsibility' is a handy way of ignoring the perpetrator to chastise the victim for not being awesome enough to...I don't know...not get into that situation? -
sarasvati: Why I didn't tell. - My father once told me that if somebody was trying to rape me, I shouldn't shout out for help and say that somebody was trying to rape me. I should instead shout, "Fire, fire!" People will help you if there's a fire, he said. Nobody wants to get involved in a rape scene, even if it's to stop it.What disgusts me the most is that he's probably right. -
livrelibre: I should still be writing right now but - In fandom it can feel like we're all one big sprawling, relatively free and safe group and that we know each other and like similar things. I think that sense often turns into "fangirls are like me," no matter how often this is disproved every day. For people who have been burned by oppression and lack of privilege in an area, this can mean it feels like there's finally a safe space. For people who haven't (yet or that they've recognized-privilege, you're soaking in it!), this can mean they trample right over someone else's safety. -
elandrialore: My .02 - See the thing that most people forget about fear-based decision making is that it isn't just 'fight or flight.' The actual phenomenon is called fight, flight or freeze. It's the freeze part that's most important in terms of recent discussion because freezing has apparently come to mean weak or pathetic.It is neither of those things. It is an instinctual response for a lot of people. It is no more or less healthy than fighting or running away. IT ALSO DOES NOT IMPLY CONSENT. -
jay_linden: This is a tangential tangent, or: why not to be a dick at a hotel. - I'm not afraid to knock on that door because I don't have agency, or because I don't know how to stand up for myself. I'm not afraid because I don't have personal responsifuckingbility. I'm afraid because I'm a woman, and I can't lock my vagina up at the desk to keep it safe before I go up to tell people to politely shut the fuck up. It has to go with me, wherever I go, because that's the body I have, and the world that I live in. -
hederahelix: Since It Looks Like the Post With This Comment Isn't Coming Back . . . - I think often in these debates, partly because journals are this weird semi-public, semi-private space, sometimes we feel like we want to rush out and support a friend when someone else has thrown a bag of stink on the person's front lawn.But I don't think the people here who are sincerely telling [personal profile] thenyxie that they're troubled by her comments--and why they are troubled by her comments--are using criticism as a weapon. Those comments seem to me to be a model for the kind of criticism that is attempting to let people know that their mascara has run in the rain, and hey, maybe you want to clean that up before you go into your next meeting. -