broken-nosed gods

I am getting worse and worse at commenting, but much better about posting! Moving right along, here's day 5: current fandom I wish everyone would be into.

Now, dhampyresa asked for current fandom, which means I have fewer decisions to make. I always want people to be into Utena, or Gokusen, or Ranma 1/2, but those are constants. By 'into', here, I'm going to assume 'producing fannish things' rather than just 'liking'.

Taking all this into account, it's actually a really easy choice.


( Read more... )

December meme over here, still mostly empty, give me more stuff to talk about please.

so, let's talk about destined rivals!

this is a trope I can either love or hate, depending on the execution. i mean, on one level it's really quite silly, this idea that you have ONE PERSON who is your DESTINED ONE, whether it's for romance or enmity or anything else. but i do think you can have 'true love' (though of course that does not make other loves false) with someone, where you can feel yourself falling inevitably in and down, down, down.

so i can find the trope of destined rivals very interesting indeed. it's true love without the happy ending, soulmates without romance. two people who are eternally opposed, though in the end they may be very much alike. but they are not enemies; there is always this expectation that if something truly terrible happens, they will back each other up against it. --but also, there is the knowledge that for them there is no happy ending. or rather, that their happy ending is to fight and clash for the rest of their lives, wary glances across a room, blood and death waiting in the wings.

their destined and fated end is to die at each others' hands.

--in a lot of ways this is more interesting to me than romance, though of course it's definitely less healthy for everyone involved. very tragic. yet satisfying!

as with most tropes i like, this one is too often about guys when I think it would be more interesting with female characters.

---and yet, I think it can also be much more interesting to take this trope, with its inevitable ending, and have one character decide that this is not how they want things to go. because as powerful as things like that are, big dramatic feelings things, there are other things much stronger and more important. which would you rather have, a destined and perfect rivalry, or a real, flawed friendship (one where you don't have to worry about getting stabbed)? and if you can't get a friendship, then at least lay those old ghosts to rest. get out of the game. you, at least, will not die upon an old friend's sword.

actually, that would be a great fic: younger, they are infatuated with this feeling, the knowledge that there will always be one person they can fight with honor, one who can oppose them perfectly. and older, they realise that this slow-burn life-long fury is not something to hold on to; rather, it is something to set into a jar on the mantle and look at now and then.

because that life, that relationship, does inevitably end in death, because either they or you will come back to try again and again until the other is permanently gone. this is not a sustainable way of living; it has a build-in endpoint. and you have to plan to live.

--

The above is all just me thinking to myself, which is why it's all in lowercase, but I read something today that made me dust it off and post it. This thing, in fact, and much thanks to aintgotnoladytronblues for bringing it to my attention. For those of you who don't want to click the link, it's a post on True Detective, and -- more importantly -- about the fact that the whole Destined Rivals thing is a really misogynistic trope that ties into the whole Great Man theory of history, where it's all about heroes and kings and villains having their epic destined fights, and never you mind all those hundreds of thousands of people who won't eat this winter . . .

I don't know. It's a very interesting trope, especially if you look at it through its natural mirror of soul-mates, but also I feel that it's ultimately pointless. The brilliant detective and the clever murderer, yeah yeah, who gives a fuck.

Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go watch True Detective.

I love, I adore the idea of plot without conflict. You don't have to fight all the time! It's okay! You can just hang out and do stuff and everything will be fabulous, nobody has to worry about winning or losing or anything like that. There doesn't have to be any kind of epic struggle, or any struggle at all. Not in the pure one thing vs. something else sense. Like, idk, most of Natsume Yuujinchou. It's most emphatically not any sort of battle manga, of course, but most importantly it's really just a story about people learning to deal with the world and each other. Which is another of my favorite kinds of stories, because I feel like in some ways that's the big meta-narrative, the Real Story of everyone's lives. Good vs. Evil is untrue and overplayed; it's the story everyone wants to think is true, so they can feel all validated that they're right and good and amazing and someone else is bad and evil and wrong. Or even that right and good don't mean all that much compared to that one thing that's important to you, fuck everybody else.

But that kind of story, I feel, is not the kind that actually needs to be told. The story of people growing and changing and just learning how to deal with the world and the people around them, though, is not just a good story it is THE story. Because that is the essence of people's lives. Everybody has to deal with learning how to interact with people, finding out the difference between what they think and what actually is. Everybody has to deal with, well, life. And I'm pretty sure that's a hell of a lot more important than a bunch of dudes fighting each other because somebody just felt like destroying the world.

(In summary: fuck Supernatural, seriously, that show is like the perfect example of everything that is wrong with the currently popular style of Western storytelling.)

(and also Natsume Yuujinchou and Azumanga Daioh are fucking amazing, okay, and so is Ashita no Ousama.)

(and also also: Gokusen, despite being primarily about Yankumi beating people up, is surprisingly non-conflict-oriented in its main plot. the main plot is: Yankumi teaches students and bonds with them and they become close and help each other and also Shin has a giant crush on her.)

Hello, everyone! I am not sure you know this (though if I have known you for any length of time it is likely), but

• strong yet nice lady meets morally ambiguous dude


• lady befriends dude, with understandable reservations


• dude develops interest in her


• dude begins controlling her life

is a very problematic narrative! And this is sad for me, because I love stories about strong yet nice ladies and their relationships with morally ambiguous people (dudeness not necessary). Apparently there are many people who do not understand that the proper formation of a nice lady/morally ambiguous person is

• strong yet nice lady meets morally ambiguous person


• lady befriends person, with understandable reservations


• person goes 'wow, this lady is pretty cool'


• fun things!


• *understandable relationship problems caused by difference in personal worldview*


• *honest conversation about relationship boundaries*


• a relationship enjoyable to both parties, as well as all their friends, who think they are HILARIOUS together.

Only having read several stories in this latter format do I realize exactly what was bothering me about the former.

(Feel free to spread this post to anyone you think would benefit by reading it, e.g. the creators of Black Bird.)

Spoilers only for the episodes in question.

Episode eight: ( three short paragraphs )


Episode nine: ( Parallels! and also Treize Khushrenada is a jerk )


Episode ten: ( questions! )

(This is exactly the sort of thing I should not be doing when I have three-and-a-half essays to write before tomorrow and a scene-bunny bouncing around in my head. Bite me.)


I feel like everyone will be able to guess my fics in anonymous writing fests now, because all they'll have to do is pick the one with the over-symbolic title.

( Evidence: )

I did manage to finish all but one of the essays before I finished this post! Booyah.

This is the first time I've ever been in a fandom that has just one totally obvious m/m pairing, and it's kind of weirding me out. I'm used to being in fandoms that have lots of ships, or one het ship (well, okay, that's really just Gokusen), or no ships at all.

It's interesting to see the difference between the fandom for something like T&B and the fandom for something like Natsume Yuujinchou, which has a totally obvious threesome and a separate fairly obvious m/m pairing but a roughly equal ratio of gen:romance fic. On the other hand, Gokusen fic has about the same ratios as T&B, except Gokusen fic is usually funnier. (This is probably because Gokusen as a whole is funnier, not because Gokusen fic is better.)


The kind of topics I (would) really enjoy in Tiger & Bunny fic: Karina & her singing, Kaede finding out her dad is a hero, the hardships of hero life in general (are you allowed to tell your non-hero friends about your secret identity? would you even want to? what happens if you die? what's it like, all your closest friends/acquaintences also being your rivals?), Kotetsu & Barnaby roommate hijinks, why Fire Emblem enjoys playing to the gay stereotypes so much, Kaede & Barnaby's first meeting.

But now I've read a lot of the fic and I think I found all the genfic there was. :( NOT ENOUGH.

I just spent about an hour and a half articulating to myself why

1. I intensely dislike media that prioritize a magical world over a real one—the real world has all the stuff I care about in it already, and if your shiny cool magic world is full of sparklies but not one goddamn personal conflict I will not give a drop of ink for it—and

2. Real conflict is not in events but in how people react to them.


Piece of articulation I am fairly proud of, considering the lateness of the hour:

I don't care about your huge fireballs and your dragon-slaying and your oh-so-special self who is so privileged to be in this oh-so-special world. I care about fights between friends and social (in)justice and household chores and academic research and culture clash, I care about actual difficulties that have to be dealt with.

It doesn't matter if it's physically impossible, so long as it's real.

Not entirely unrelated to this: The Magicians is a very good book so far, and the author seems quite aware of what he's doing, but I kind of hate Quentin a lot of the time. And Loveless is fast becoming my comfort manga for not-enough-internal-conflict media. INTERPERSONAL DIFFICULTIES WHAT HO. (Other things good for this: gateway_girl's Blood Magic, dolores_crane's In Loco Parentis, kirinin's Secret of Slytherin and Geas of Gryffindor, and all things Utena.

My first use of 750words culminates in a Harry Potter essay, in which my own tastes are extremely apparent even if my logic is possibly not.

( Pureblood culture vs. Mudblood counterculture, or, why I wish all HP fic was like <i>In Loco Parentis</i> )


*Sometimes I really, really want to write fic that is just Dean and Hermione making fun of wizards.

(and also to distract myself from the fact that I picked way too broad a topic for my paper and probably need to find a new one)


He's quite clever, when it comes to something he's interested in. Unfortunately, he's also thoughtless and lazy when it comes to things he doesn't care about, or things he cares about but doesn't know how to go about framing in his head. If you can talk him into thinking about things, though, he can do it quite well. He just doesn't always like to, which is why he avoids doing so.

This is why he's only average in most of his classes; they're not what he cares about, and he only needs to maintain a minimal level in order to do the things he does care about (quidditch, chess, strategy, playing around with friends).

He mostly reads chess books and things for schoolwork, but he quite enjoys a certain kind of history book. You know, the ones about generals and wars and rulers and politics, that are far enough removed from daily life that they can be thought of as abstractions and not applied to the real world at all if you don't need them to. (I also like this kind of book, so that's how I know.)

He thinks most people are pretty decent, given the right circumstances and plenty of time. Maybe he fights with Malfoy, and maybe they don't particularly like each other, but they could probably get along if they had something to talk about and the issues of family politics were removed. Maybe he doesn't like Professor Snape, but he's probably an okay bloke if you like Potions.

He is easily cruel to those who've hurt the people he counts as his. (This doesn't mean he hates them.)

He is easily envious and jealous. He wants to be special, he wants to stand out from his brothers but still fit in with his family. He wants to have money for the little things people like Malfoy or Harry don't think about, new clothes and toys and schoolbooks. (He understands Hermione's fascination with marked-up books, but he'd rather have something new and shiny.) Not even big things, like brooms -- just the little things of everyday life. If he lived in the Muggle world, he'd probably love buildings made of steel and glass.

One of the things he's always loved about Hogwarts is that there's always somewhere you can go off to and be alone when you need it.