promo, links, and meta

[tielan]

dark_agenda's Racebending Revenge challenge.

I'd love to see Latino Dean and Sam Winchester in Arizona. Bet that would go down differently. Or a black John McClane from Die Hard. And what if Superman landed in a field somewhere in China instead of Kansas?

So many possibilities. Alas, there are only 24 hours in a day and I don't have the time.

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Also The Fictional Females Fandom University Faculty over at shes_awesome.

Yet again, I have no time. But I'd put Teyla up as the lecturer for "When To Diplomatically Kick Their Asses", and Elizabeth as the lecturer for "How To Walk Out Of Hell With A Tactical Nuke", and Ziva as the lecturer for "Learning To Be More Than You Originally Were Taught To Be".

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Back to Mary Sues again:

On Mozart And Mary Sues by ar

And a sad tale from majoline:
But I also learned that I didn't know how to write anything. That I should be ashamed to read certain things. Or think certain things.

Some of us were lucky: we fell in with other fans who liked female characters, who thought female characters were awesome and fabulous, and not overdone when they were given a bigger part to play in the narrative than a woman "should".

majoline's story made me wonder: where would I be if someone had stifled my love for Sam Carter from the get-go?

Without Sam Carter (and yes, Sam is, indeed, super) would I have plunged on into fandom, to love and adore Faith (who is the 'bad girl' and the 'slut' of the Buffy-verse, albeit one fighting on the side of right - mostly)? Would I have fallen in love with Diana, Princess of the Amazons (both a sexy and yet asexual vision of womanhood: too good for any mere mortal to do more than adore from a distance)? Would I have attached to Teyla (who is brown and 'primitive', physically sexy and yet emotionally reserved)? Would I be all over Ziva (aggressive and forward), or Gwen (flustered and yet she can bite when it's needed)?

Maybe, maybe not.

It sure helped to have enthusiastic Sam Carter fans around me when I got into SG1. Because, yeah, her opening lines were a little winceworthy, but she was in there and being confrontational to get her name in the ring, and then she backed it up with action and intelligence and humour. What the hell is not to love about that?

Still, I was older when I first encountered fandom for srs: twenty-four, maybe twenty-five, and already with a strong sense of what I was good at, who I was. And that makes a difference, too.

Would you have loved the female characters you love as much as you do, if you had been taught from an early age that "women are inferior to men and do not deserve to be represented as anything more than the love-interests or the victims, or occasionally as good minor characters so long as their storylines suitably submissive to that of the male (main) characters' storylines"? If that was what your friends and the people around you said - or didn't even have to say, just reinforced with story after story, or praise after praise about guys and their feelings and their actions and their conversations, while cutting out the women, or sending them away, or making them the victim?

I don't know that I would. So I got lucky.

And isn't it sad to think that being among women who don't just say that female characters are very nice oh look a gorgeous guy let's talk about him instead, but act like they believe female characters are awesome is "lucky". Because it shouldn't be lucky; it should be the norm.

Comments

[havocthecat]

Yet again, I have no time. But I'd put Teyla up as the lecturer for "When To Diplomatically Kick Their Asses", and Elizabeth as the lecturer for "How To Walk Out Of Hell With A Tactical Nuke", and Ziva as the lecturer for "Learning To Be More Than You Originally Were Taught To Be".

I would attend that university. Happily.

[tielan]

I thought you might. :)