: Tuesday, July 6, 2010 & Wednesday, July 7, 2010
: so morgandawn is way more succinct than i am - Compromise is created on the backs of those who can stand to be the enemies of both sides. They pretty much get screwed, let's not pretend they don't; they do it anyway, God knows why. They're considered traitors to both sides, they're erased from the rhetoric, their feelings and opinions are reviled or patronized or both. They are soundbited, their statements taken from context and used by both sides as proof of x, y, z. They're told to sit down, shut up, they're holding up progress. They're forced to disclose personal information to prove their right to have the conversation. And then they're ignored. - : so the history of warnings 101, i could go for this - Now, we use warnings to make things more inclusive to other fans, but there was a time they were a form of social control, and it could be institutionalized in ways that marginalized. - : Suspension of Disbelief - It’s quite clear to me that there are areas in which writing unrealistically is not only accepted, but the preferred mantra. And there are others where people would like to see more realism. What defines these parameters? When I look in on the stuff, I see a jumbled mess of areas where realism is preferred (character identities, realism in portraying medical conditions/disabilities, etc.) and others where the fantasy dominates and the realism isn’t so important - : Vid warnings: not as easy as it sounds - I generally skip warnings, because I don't want to know what's in vids before I see them. But I spent hours yesterday watching vids specifically with that trigger list in mind, and when I came across Laura's post I wanted to see if it matched my general experience with those vid discs.It didn't, at all, and in fact was so different I sat there blinking, because her warnings also didn't match my memory of her vids. - : An Argument in Favor of Athletics - So you like something weird, right? A TV show you can't stop thinking about, a book that's compelled you to dress like the characters. You obsess a little bit. Maybe you want to be a writer, it's your passion. You want to do it because you need to do it, not for the money, not for the fame. That's one in a million: this is like air. It's what makes you happiest. It's what you wake up for.Meet the female athlete. She's just like you. - : on warning at Vividcon - I keep seeing what seem to me to be assumptions that of course many (or at least several) vids will be marked "no warnings apply," while some vids will have specific warnings and some will have "choose not to warn," and the end result will be that people with triggers will be able to enjoy a large portion of the show. And that just doesn't match my memory of what Premieres is like. - : Loving a phenomenon without loving a text: Twilight - The point is, this is just... well, it's awesome. I've been lucky enough since I hit adulthood to always being geek communities that were close to 50% female. My gaming groups are are usually half women. And yet. And yet we are still consuming our geek cult phenomena written assuming a male audience, and we consume them as geeks do, which is to say with a lot less glitter and girly drinks and slow-motion scenes of jailbait boys taking their shirts off. - : Striptease, Entitlement Kink, and Dominant Narratives - Instead, the question we must ask is: how is the story functioning within the community of its readership? Is it normalizing harmful behaviors, reinforcing damaging stereotypes, &c? The answers to these questions will rely as much on the character(s) of the readership(s) as on the content of the story. - : Adulthood and disability - Don't tell me I am not an adult because my abilities, my priorities, and my life are different to yours. - : data points - Some recent comment threads have me thinking about the intersection of a number of issues: the tone argument, privilege, assumptions of categories, the assumed lines for particular categories and people who don't toe them, and how slippery it all gets when you're talking to pseudonymous and anonymous people on the Internet. -