The meme going around is "list your favorite characters and ask your friends to find a pattern in them." I'm not going to do that, because I know the patterns in my favorite characters. And by "favorite" I mean "the characters I get really obsessed with about once a year or so and latch onto almost to the exclusion of all else." There's a reason I'm using my "weird" icon, okay.

The "Deep Down I Just Want A Mary Sue" Category
1. They code as "special" within the source text. This is hard to explain and easy to recognize.
2. An aura of mystery.
3. Formidable reputation.
4. Charisma.

The "Playing This Can Get Exhausting" Category
5. Immense capacity for rage.
6. Obsessive and/or particularly dogged determination.
7. Formidable willpower.

The "This Is Kind Of Unhealthy" Category
8. Trapped in the moment (or sometimes a whole era) of past trauma. You can usually tell if this is the case by looking for repeated flashbacks of the tiny version of the character looking traumatized.
9. Carries a burden of guilt, whether deserved or not.
10. Emotional sleight of hand: masks his true issues in some way, often by faking normal around much more obviously maladjusted people. May or may not actually believe the mask.
11. Presents a front to the world that is notably different from his inner self, whether deliberately (ideal) or unintentionally (can also sometimes qualify).

(This category is more likely than the others to attract also-rans.)

The "This Is Really Unhealthy I Love Dead Characters" Category
12. Dead by the end of their canon, even if it's retconned later. Characters who die and come back as was planned all along (I'm looking at you, John) don't count.
13. Self-sacrificing (although he may not necessarily die this way. Then again he might).
14. Self-destructive (although he may survive. Then again he might not).
15. Goes knowingly to his death.
16. Inescapably, unfixably tragic natures.

(Every single character I've fixated on slots into the above category in some way.)

The "I Don't Know Where Else To Put This" Category:
17. Mentor figure.
18. Bonus points: cool scars or a missing eye.

Assorted bonuses often applicable to non-fixated favorites and also-rans:
a) Father issues (often but not always specifically "craving their father's love and approval despite being constantly and royally screwed over by him").
b) Being a spy.
c) Survivor's guilt.
d) Obsessive unrequited love or devotion.
e) Identity issues (especially for female characters, but not always).

The only category that my current fixation is lacking in is the first one. He has a freaking bingo in some of the others.

When I play out Lockon (considering my cast on polychromatic and all my future plans, I hope it's not for a while), I will just link this post and ask for suggestions on acquiring a new character obsession. With these things I'm a serial monogamist.

Also, I have discovered that unless the character is really inappropriate for it, I can totally write porn about these guys despite my general aversion to writing porn with male characters in it. I wish I'd discovered this back when I was into Gundam SEED. Well, maybe someday I can get all nostalgic, rewatch, and write some Mwu/Murrue.

Today hates me in many different and inventive ways. I will have to catch up on important stuff and also RPing tomorrow. Hopefully the people I'm delaying on will forgive me.

Meanwhile, a pointless meme and a pointless link.

Name a fandom and I will tell you:

1. The first character I fell in love with:
2. The character I never expected to love as much as I do now:
3. The character everyone else loves that I don’t:
4. The character I love that everyone else hates:
5. The character I would shag anytime:
6. The character I'd want to be like:
7. The character I'd slap:
8. A pairing that I love:
9. A pairing that I despise:
10. Favorite character:
11. What are my five favorite things about the fandom.
12. What are my five least favorite things about the fandom.
13. Who are my five favorite characters.
14. Who are my five least favorite characters.
15. What are my five favorite pairings.
16. What are my five least favorite pairings.
17. Which character are you most like.
18. What is my deep, dark fandom secret.

I'll do this meme again in a few months after I've finally watched some more stuff and gotten myself some more fandoms.

The link: http://annwyd.mybrute.com/

No, there is no point to that except to give me experience on a meaningless webgame.

Ask me any question about fandom.

It can be about a canon you know I'm familiar with and into fannishly, a canon you know I'm familiar with but haven't seen me do much with fannishly, a canon you don't know if I'm into, or a canon you know I'm not familiar with but know that I've heard about.

It can be as simple and specific as "which do you prefer, A/B or B/C?" or as broad as "what are your thoughts on yaoi?" (although this is boring and I'm sure you can do better) or as complicated as, "tell me what you think about the implications of Theory X for the themes and characters of Canon Y."

Just ask.

Comments are screened. I'll answer in another post.

So, this post about female characters is being linked around, and while it's interesting and informative and clever, it leaves me somewhat dissatisfied.

Here's the thing. I don't believe you can fully grasp the issue of why there is so much dislike of and dissatisfaction with fictional women until you acknowledge that sexism and misogyny influence everyone. Not just the creators in making limited, stereotypical, flat characters, and not just the audience in rejecting so many female characters. Just because you love an author doesn't mean he can't fuck up and unconsciously let some unfortunate attitudes slip into his character construction, and just because we are supposedly Enlightened Fans does not magically make us free of the mental lens of sexism.

It is a fact that far too many female characters are hampered by authors (sometimes male, sometimes female) putting them in unfairly sexist situations, stereotyping them, defining them by their sexuality, using them as props to build up the male characters, and in general seeing them as women rather than characters. Yes, even now.

It is also a fact that female characters are consistently held to higher standards than male characters, and often arbitrary ones at that. Male characters are rarely judged on whether they fall on the "proper" place on the personality spectrum between aggressive and nurturing. Only self-proclaimed moral guardians complain if they're "bad role models," and then only if the canon in question is aimed at children. If they have a romantic subplot and it's not well-received, they're not likely to be the one taking the blame from fandom (and even if they do, the girl will almost certainly take some heat too, and the reverse is not true). They're less likely to be criticized by fandom for their sexuality. Male characters are not judged as representatives of their entire gender--although of course this is in part because they're almost never intended as representatives of their entire gender.

Your favorite series and its creators don't get a "get out of jail free" card for sexism. Neither do you.

I need some motivation to get some fannish things in my life, such as roleplay and That Simon/Nia Thing for ship_manifesto, done before November (grk). So let's start with this meme.

1. I want to talk about how my ships and concept of shipping varies with fandom, so name a fandom and I'll discuss what I ship and what shipping means to me in that fandom.

2. I have a lot of fandoms. Have you ever wondered about one of the fandom I sometimes mention on my journal which you don't know of? Ask me any question you want about them!

In addition to the existing text of #1, I'm going to add that you can ask me that question--what does shipping mean to you here?--about specific pairings, as what I mean by "I ship X" varies wildly from pairing to pairing. Some I think barely venture over the platonic-romantic line, others I don't care whether they venture over the platonic-romantic line but would prefer they don't in canon, and others I want to be married and having adorable babies right now.

I am slowly working on updating my icons. I want to make more cat icons, I want a few more Gundam 00 icons, I want some Princess Tutu icons, I want...I don't know.

So I decided to make the last few secrets for fandomsecrets that have been bugging me, then get the hell out of Dodge, by which I mean the Troll Cavern, by which I mean the land of FEMINISTS SUCK AND GIRLS HAVE COOTIES AND I CAN'T BE BOTHERED TO THINK BECAUSE IT HUUUUURTS, by which I mean the fandomsecrets community.

I was going to make more, but then I realized: I hate it when people post angry opinions disguised as secrets, and that's what a lot of these would be. I actually am not ashamed of them. So instead, I'm going to just post them here.

( My opinions: let me show you them. )

Some other stuff, before I forget:
--Am up to the epilogue of Velvet's book in Odin Sphere. After relentless grinding and much dining out, she is at HP Level 40. She's a few levels behind in Psypher, though. I think when I replay the various books, I'll swap to the Japanese voice tracks for variety.
--Velvet is really distracting to watch. It's not that she jiggles...it's that her jiggle is not nearly as unrealistic and bizarre as Odette's, the most prominent offender of this type until Velvet's book. She still jiggles more than a real woman would (possibly because she dresses in scarves and chains rather than anything practical), but her boobs move as if they were part of her chest rather than wild animals sealed inside airbags and leashed to her body. It's unexpected.
--Spending nearly five hours straight working on my Simon/Nia essay wiped out my creativity pretty badly yesterday. I suck. I was going to get the second draft done over the weekend, but I think it'll have to wait for next week. Hopefully I'll still be done with the whole thing by the end of that week, though.
--Going into NYC tomorrow. Delicious dumplings await.

Stephen Colbert just suggested setting soap operas on the moon. I want this.

I want many things which I do not actually have the time or effort to write or do.

I want a multifandom cosmic horror game, with steampunk and mythology thrown in.

I want a ridiculously overwrought multichapter Jet/Zuko/Katara triangle/threesome fic of torrid romance and epic destiny--written by someone who does not hate the canon pairings and is not out to prove how their fic can Do It Better.

I want a mecha series where the girls actually get to pilot mecha and kick ass and are not later reduced to refrigerator filling or hilariously pointless love interests.

I want something with an epic, beautiful, intense OTP that steals my heart, even while the characters spend more time going on adventures than fretting over romance.

I want the third Takeshi Kovacs book to not be the last, but it is, and that is why I have to RP him.

I want to get back into RPing in general.

I don't know. Maybe I'll have more energy after Otakon. One can only hope.

It really seems like in fandom, anyone who actually takes time to explore the deeper ramifications of just about anything--from female-negative language in a show's dialogue to the reasons a certain popular behavior is unhelpful--is characterized as a tightly wound loser with sand in her vagina and no life.

Because lolololol the internet isn't serious business lolololol! Dumb fandom feminists trying to ruin our enjoyment! You're taking it way too seriously! We're just here for the porn, and you should be too!

This bothers me. A lot.

Related: I came to the conclusion today that the secret to life is knowing when saying, "Relax, you don't have to take it so seriously" makes you an ass and when saying the same thing makes you wise.

So I was going through old metafandom posts and I ran across this little gem:

The idea that I automatically have to like a woman because she is a woman is absurd and the idea that I have to automatically like a female character is equally absurd (especially since that would mean I had to like every single writer's views of women and consider every writer talented).

Oh, for the love of God.

Okay! First things first: I'm not attacking whoever said this. I think it was probably just a slip of the tongue fingers. But it's telling, isn't it?

No, of course as a woman or as a person, you are not obligated to like every female character. But here's the thing: that's not because you're not obligated to like every woman. It's because you're not obligated to like every person.

Liking a female character =/= endorsing the author's views on women. After all, nobody would ever say something as absurd as:

...the idea that I have to automatically like a male character is equally absurd (especially since that would mean I had to like every single writer's views of men and consider every writer talented).

Because except in really egregious cases of gender stereotyping, nobody thinks of male characters as men first and people second. With female characters in fiction and women in reality, though? All the goddamn time.

Look, people. Sometimes it's a good idea to step back and think about what female characters say about an author's view of women. And if it means you find yourself unable to like those female characters, so be it. But as much as possible, can't we try to think of female characters as characters instead of Representations of Women?

See, some people believe that the vast pool of hate for female characters in fandom stems entirely from mainstream creators' inability to write women. Some people believe that it stems entirely from fandom's misogyny and double standards. Me? I think it's a nasty intersection of the two.

Yeah. Writers are going to let sexism influence their portrayal of women. That sucks. What can we do about it? We can point it out when it happens and give the writers themselves grief about it (instead of railing about how horrible and weak and bad the female characters themselves are--counterproductive and victim-blaming much? Even when the victim's not a real person it's a bad habit to fall into). We can write realistic, believable, fully-rounded female characters of our own. That's about it.

But what can we do to make fandom a more feminist, woman-positive, and welcoming environment? We can look at female characters as people first--regardless of whether they were written that way. It doesn't mean you're a tool of the patriarchy, I promise. You might even be surprised by how much you like.

(I can go into this in more detail later. For now? This is it, I think. Despite it being dreadfully incoherent and not really saying half of what I want to say.)

Found on fandomsecrets, like all headdesk-inducing things these days:

I love strong girls. I get pissed off when girls act like spineless whiny ninnies. Then I realize that not every girl can be as awesome as me. XD Someone's gotta be the weak useless foil that makes the good girls shine.

I can't believe I never noticed this before.

In fandom and perhaps in other parts of life, "strong kickass tough girl/'weak' gentle girly girl" is the new madonna/whore dichotomy. All while the old one still exists in the background (and sometimes in the foreground).

Discuss.

(Yes, I'm being serious, but feel free to also bring the lulz, because otherwise I may get too cranky.)

I don't really feel like saying anything useful here at the moment, so instead, a bunch of fannish memes! Yeah, I know, I haven't been answering these lately. I'll try this time, though!

I. Name a fandom and I'll provide five reasons why the character or characters I have a crush on/find attractive in that fandom would be a bad boyfriend or girlfriend in real life.

II. Name a fandom. I will provide one thing that I actively seek in fanfiction and/or fanart, and one thing that I can't stand to see. (I don't read much fanfiction, and some of my fandoms have very little fanart, so answers may be somewhat sketchy on this one.)

III. I've listed twenty of my favorite characters. Ask me questions about them (e.g. "If #8 and #19 went on a date, would it end well?") and see how many it takes before you can guess who's who. And yes, they are from fandoms all over the damned map.

Guessed so far:
5) Suki (Avatar) [molten_ghost]

1) Open your bedroom door and see something flapping down the hallway.

To be totally responsible, I should have tracked down the bat, carefully captured it somehow without getting bitten, and released it outside...but it was nearly 1:30 in the morning and I needed to get to sleep. If I'd devoted myself to capturing something tiny, flight-capable, and possibly infected with rabies at that hour, sleep would have been a very long time in coming.

So, once it had flown into the guest room, I closed the door (well, after coaxing a fascinated Othello out of there) and taped a "BEWARE OF BAT" sign on it.

Last I saw the little thing, it was actually being pretty cute: it had curled up on the highest point on the wall and apparently gone to sleep. Hopefully it'll survive the night in there and my parents won't freak out and kill it in the morning.

For something more interactive, a meme that amuses me:

Come up with the craziest theory you can think of for any fandom (or fandoms--ridiculous crossover theories a bonus) I know about, and I will explain why it makes perfect sense and is in fact probably true.

And now I'm just coming up with excuses to avoid going to bed, so I think I'll post and be done with it.

Oh yeah, sadieko showed me this site. It looks nifty. You scribble a picture, and people have to comment either in pictures themselves or in drawn text.

You guys, you guys. Guess what Wikipedia told me? That's right. They've done three tiny two-minute prequels to the Wire--one about Bunk and McNulty in the year 2000, one about tiny Proposition Joe in 1962, and one about--yes yes yes--tiny Omar in 1985. Someone up there loves me. Also, this makes me hope there will be more Omar in Season 5. Although I live in fear that they will kill him off. But at least even if they do, I will always be warmed by the knowledge that baby Omar being a tiny adorable badass is canon.

The mini-prequels are being aired on HBO On Demand--and, fortunately for those of you who don't have that, on YouTube, of course.

( Snipped for YouTube exploitation. )

On an unrelated note, I had a conversation with a_white_rain last night that led to me thinking about how everything can be improved by more kittens. Take my fandoms, for example. ( No, please do. )

Next on the agenda: getting my iPod, watching more Avatar, finishing Season 4 of the Wire, making more icons. But mostly, napping.

So, I had an idea.

This was partly spun off me reading The Alien Years, by Robert Silverberg, which is one of the most dreadfully sexist books I've read in a long time--when I finish it (sigh), I'll rant about why.

It's partly inspired by all the BLAH BLAH GIRLS SUCK NO THEY DON'T I'M NOT SEXIST YOU ARE shit flying on fandomsecrets lately.

But it's also just something I'm interested in.

Would you be interested--and do you think a sustainable number of other people would be interested--if I created an LJ community devoted in general to discussing treatment of gender in fiction and fandom and, in specific, to reclaiming female characters and encouraging women-positive messages in fiction and fandom?

You'd think this would have been done already. If it has been, I can't find it (please link me if you know it's been done). Maybe other feminists are not as pathetically obsessed with fandom as I am, and when they want to do something to help women, they actually go out and help women instead of rambling about fandom. But, well, I talk about this stuff enough anyway. This would give me a positive outlet for it.

So I was thinking, what to do to get my LJ rolling again? And then I realized: I would hold The Night of a Million Memes.

Here's how it works. I start by posting a handful of recent memes. You contribute by giving me other memes you'd like to see me do. It's a super meta meme!

( The Fandoms As Lovers Meme )
( The Ten Things Starting With A Letter Meme )
( The Why Character A Loves Character B Meme )
( The Superteam Challenge Meme )

Now go! Give me your memes!

ALPHABET MEME: Name a character you love for every letter of the alphabet!

A: Allison Cameron (House M.D.)
B: Balthier (Final Fantasy XII)
C: Cagalli Yula Athha (Gundam SEED)
D: Data (Star Trek: The Next Generation)
E: Elim Garak (Star Trek: Deep Space 9)
F: Fllay Allster (Gundam SEED)
G: Griffith (Berserk)
H: Hatake Kakashi (Naruto)
I: Inoue Orihime (Bleach)
J: Jiraiya (Naruto)
K: Kurosaki Karin (Bleach)
L: Laguna Loire (Final Fantasy VIII)
M: Mwu la Fllaga (Gundam SEED)
N: Nel Zelpher (Star Ocean: Till the End of Time)
O: Omar Little (The Wire)
P: Perry Cox (Scrubs)
Q: Q (Star Trek: The Next Generation)
R: Ravi (D.Gray-man)
S: Stringer Bell (The Wire)
T: Temari (Naruto)
U: Urahara Kisuke (Bleach)
V: Vincent Valentine (Final Fantasy VII)
W: William (Romeo x Juliet)
X: ...whut. OKAY I FAIL.
Y: Yamanaka Ino (Naruto)
Z: Zechs Merquise (Gundam Wing)

I almost got them all, too. Damn.

In other news, I am still slightly hypomanic, but I think it's winding down. I still reallyreally want Nexus City and/or sandboxing, though. Especially since I'm almost finished watching what I have of the Wire, and season 4 won't be coming out on DVD anytime soon. I mean, I could torrent it off the internets and watch that, but I want to watch it on my nice big TV.

I'm also slacking off on writing the ficlets I've promised people. I WILL WORK ON THAT. Srsly.

I have a bunch of icons I need to make, but really I just want to make simple Wire icons. Sigh. However, I do need to open Photoshop soon so that I can make some entries for fandomsecret. Apparently I have no shame. Okay, I admit it: I just want to make some entries for that place that don't look butt-ugly.

Also, this and this are ridiculously adorable and I want them. Especially the Rin one.

Here's the important part of this post, though:

♥ happy belated birthday, thenowhere ♥

I hope you get your new computer soon! And not just because I miss RPing with you and would totally sandbox with you. Only partially because of that.

I looked up photography trade schools, and the nearest one is in freaking Queens. :x I guess I'm going to have to start emailing photographers in the area asking for an apprenticeship or something.

To take my mind off that bit of emo, have some pointless fandom memes!

I've done this one before, but I feel like doing it again, so here it is.

Unpopular Fandom Opinions Meme
01. Post this on your journal.
02. Your friends will comment with some of your fandoms or some general topic about fandom.
03. In the comments, respond back with one or two of your unpopular opinions for that fandom or topic.

And then there's this one, which I haven't done in quite some time. No cheating by looking in my fandom post! Besides, it's out of date anyway, so you'd just get confused in some cases. :D

1. Post a list of 10 fandoms.
2. Have your friendslist guess your favorite character from each fandom, and ALL of the the major pairings you support.
3. When guessed, bold the fandom, put in brackets who got it and write a sentence explaining why you like the characters and pairings.
( Under the cut. )
Okay go!

I am so bored, and at the same time so desirous of putting off more useful things such as fic-writing, driver's-manual-reading, and even icon-making, that I have resorted to my SO3 replay in between checking up on a scene I'm supposed to be paying attention to.

So to give me something else to do, here's a meme I swiped from heron_advocate:

Give me two characters from any fandom (that I know), and then ask me any or all of the following:
- Who tops who?
- Preferred character?
- Easier to write?
- Bad cop, good cop? (If they were to interrogate someone, who would play which role?)
- Who would win in a fight?

If I get really bored, maybe I'll poll my flist on their preferences in Naruto and Bleach pairings, not that I don't already more or less know.

Maybe I will eventually sit down and work on my IchiRuki fic. Or on stuff for gs_exchange, since I should set that up soon. Or icons. Whatever.

Nabbed from berrygold.
( Spam mostly relating to fanfiction under the cut. )
Now I believe it is time to restart this computer so I can open Photoshop and do some last-minute iconing. Maybe I'll even make the banner for bleach_yurithon so I can start on that.

But first, I must start catching up on this week's Daily Shows and Colbert Reports with my father.

Ditching SEED fandom; it's more trouble and heartache than it's worth; my behavior there makes people (including my own friendslist) quite rightly turn on me; etc.

I'm still addicted to icon-making and I still may be able to be persuaded to write fic, but there will be no meta/discussion/whatever here on my LJ or in communities (although I'll keep moderating seed_ot4 just in case anything happens there--unless I can convince someone else to take over, which would be great). I'm also going to go through all my old SEED posts and lock just about everything.

If it comes up on friends' LJs, I may not be able to resist commenting, because I still love the series, but...yeah. Over and out.