judgmental much? (yes, v. much)

[rose_griffes]

I'm amused? irritated? to report that random disdainful commentary about fictional characters that DON'T DESERVE SUCH SLANDER SAID ABOUT THEM is still enough for me to not add someone to my Dreamwidth reading list. (This is especially true if that commentary JUST HAPPENS to be a part of that person's defensive tactic in shipping. As in, Mai from ATLA is a toxic partner to Zuko and, ahem, coincidentally this person happens to prefer Zuko with Katara. Or Yennefer from The Witcher is an awful person who knew the price she was paying when the only way to move forward with any power was to sacrifice her fertility and she oughtn't to change her mind like people sometimes do and it's just happenstance that this person likes to ship Geralt with Jaskier.)

Anyway! Things I could be doing:

• reading one of the three e-books I currently have checked out from the library
• writing that Fusco fanfic
• working in the garden
• organizing craft supplies so that I can, y’know, actually DO crafty things
• trying out some of the recipes I’ve been drooling over for the last few days

What I am actually doing:

• re-reading this amazing fanfic about Loki and Heimdall (I DON'T EVEN LIKE LOKI but the fic is SO GOOD!) (it's an AU where Odin still takes abandoned infant Loki from Jotunheim to the royal home, but later gives Loki to Heimdall--an exploration of what fatherhood and heritage mean to the two main characters)
• eating too much chocolate
• mulling over writing something about sexism as a (failed) visual language in The Last Jedi and Thor: Ragnarok (essay links below)
• trying to figure out how to find my “to read” list on AO3 (there’s a “Mark for later” button on each story... but where’s the list of stuff I marked for later?! I’ll report back if I figure this out GOT IT*)
• whining about people hating on characters that I like

*Okay, to read things that you mark for later on AO3: go to your history, and then on the top right there's an option to just show what you, well, marked for later. Huzzah!

The two essays that got me thinking about sexism as a storytelling medium in TLJ and Ragnarok are:
Middle-Chapter Romance – How The Last Jedi Holds The Empire Strikes Back and Attack of the Clones Accountable
and
What Heroes Do: Queer-Coding, Slut-Shaming, and Heroism on a Trash Planet

Comments

[senmut]

+side eyes that case+ hmm, yeah. If you have to bash to have your ship, I'm not with it.

+shakes head+ It's more fun and challenging to make your ship work without that, IMHO.

[fleurviolette]

I posted something new in the Gallya comm. Hope you like it! 💜

[grav_ity]

I had to black out SO MANY WORDS on Twitter because my friends (MY FRIENDS!!!) canNOT stop posting about it, and I don't care what they like or who they like, but being told OVER AND OVER that I'm stupid/misreading the story for liking a 'ship/character is EXHAUSTING.

ANYWAY, Mai is CLEARLY FANTASTIC and should never be judged by anyone, let alone with a boy as a metric.

[rose_griffes]

Mai is awesome. And ATLA is a lovely show that inexplicably has a messy group of shipping fans that I find incomprehensible, but that's just the way it is.

[yourlibrarian]

Okay, to read things that you mark for later on AO3: go to your history, and then on the top right there's an option to just show what you, well, marked for later. Huzzah!

You can also just go to the AO3 front page if you're logged in ;)

Glad you're enjoying that fic. I thought it was quite an original preseries story.

Interesting read about the Star Wars films.

[rose_griffes]

You can also just go to the AO3 front page if you're logged in ;)
*laughs* Okay, so apparently I've never scrolled down far enough to notice that!

As for that Star Wars link: it helped clarify my own thoughts about why TLJ didn't work for me at a visual level with the costumes and hairstyles. Which is probably the opposite of the person writing the essay intended--heh.

[elperian]

I get that! I don't want to just absorb negativity off my dash, you know? I just posted a reply to a comment about a character I really hate and still decided to not show it on the reading page (I just like to save my own commentary over here). This is supposed to be a fun space!

[rose_griffes]

I used to follow someone on livejournal who had an irrational dislike of a female character that I liked... but she knew it was irrational and didn't bother making up bad-faith readings of the text to justify it. And she always gave fair warning if she was going to trash-talk that character, so it was never a big deal.

It's not the negativity so much as the carefully-placed disguise of justification that really gets to me. That, and the repetitive nature of those justifications. *sigh*

[elperian]

It's not the negativity so much as the carefully-placed disguise of justification that really gets to me. That, and the repetitive nature of those justifications. *sigh*

"Jyn stole Cassian's line and didn't credit him so she's racist!"

I'm going to give myself flashbacks.

[goodbyebird]

Ah yes, people who need to justify their ship by shitting on other characters in ~totally valid ways~. And those characters are usually POC, female, or both. Like, just coincidentally. Go figure!

Oh my, that fic sounds amazing!

[rose_griffes]

That fic is so good! And basically two or three novels in length, and solid storytelling throughout. I am impressed.

Fandom really does love its hidden misogyny and racism; and shipping seems to bring out more of it.

[rosaxx50]

Truly, there's little worse than obnoxious misreads of canon, against all evidence, because in fandom there's always a shipwar or ideological war behind it. (Yennefer being awful because she changed her mind after like 80 years of life sure is a take, and the most boring one to boot. There are plenty of ways she's flawed in canon, but that's not one.)

Just say it's your NOTP because it breaks up your OTP! Or you find it boring! That's an equally valid reason to dislike characters as anything else.

[rose_griffes]

Bad-faith character analyses seem ubiquitous in shipping echo chambers; it's an unceasing annoyance, and as someone else pointed out upthread, almost always directed at female characters and characters of color.

[lackadaisicalnereid]

hello, i came here because you left a comment on redbrunja's recent entry so i came to check out your blog and i'd like to say bless you for your essay recs, i read both and thoroughly enjoyed them, and the thor ragnarok one (tho i'm not sure i agree with it entirely, but then again, the first two thor movies are vague in my memory). i even recced it to a friend and rewatched ragnarok with her so that we could discuss the article with a fresher memory, so basically you brough hours of fun into my day yesterday, so thanks a lot for that! :)

[rose_griffes]

I'm glad the links were interesting! I liked Thor: Ragnorak a lot, but having read the criticism, I'd say most of it is pretty fair... even while I still enjoy it.

I have a lot of thoughts about that other link. Mostly that Rian Johnson FAILED in his attempts to use sexism in his storytelling within TLJ--and only partly because of the dudebros who didn't like watching women doing stuff in the movie.