ah ebay, how much do i love thee?

[hope]

frood omg is teh best plant evar.


a few other things:

1. bah! seriously, though. the more i think about it, the more i get enraged about his behaviour. and this is nothing like the john noble thing, the attitudes of both the guest in question and the attendees is completely different. he's downright exploiting the fans attending. liek. GRR! even the other guests at the con in march were offended by his behaviour and planning to complain.

um, not that i'm planning on going to the next bobw (or any other they'll hold in future), but i'm still enraged on behalf of all the other fans being swindled by the organisers. i'm still composing my Letter Of Complaint.


2. is this for real? surely not. mary is convinced it's a troll, and i'm inclined to... incline in that direction too. it's just. SO outrageous. i was tempted before to post an extensive constructive crit in response to it, or even put it through some kind of translator in an attempt to try and understand it, but i've run out of steam and decided to follow my tried and true path with badfic: ignore it. it seems some people are enjoying it, and who am i to try and tell them that they shouldn't?, but i much prefer the other fic she posted in her lj:

Dominic fucked Elijah. Hard.
The End.

and the elijah in her icon looks like he's trying to lasso some meaning out of whatever the hell it is she's trying to say. meh. each to their own. still funny, though.


3. speaking of stories-i-have-problems-with, last night i was perusing the faculty-fic yahoogroup (which i haven't done in a while), and came across this story. which... disturbed me to some extent, and continued to disturb me in the fact that so many people seemed to enjoy it (including people i know and respect). it wasn't extremely poorly written or anything, and i know there's many many fics like it out there (and i have read a whole bunch of them), but maybe i'm just over-sensitised to it now, what with thinking about it a lot and studying the likes of it at university,

but... the way casey was so thoroughly objectified really got to me. the general gist of the story is: casey has been beaten up. he's all bruised and bloodied upset and zeke riles him up a bit more because he's hotter when he's angry. then they go and have sex because zeke wants to and casey has no character and thus can't think for himself. generally, as far as plot lines go, that's pretty typical for the faculty fandom. but casey is focused on in the story as a woman is in a feminist's worst nightmare: the emphasis is on his physicalness, and it is completely unrealistic. his cerulean eyes, his lips like pillows, his creamy skin; he looks like "a little boy" and "a greek nymph"; the other character (in this case, zeke) is increasingly turned on by these observations until he just can't hold himself back. the reader is invited to align themselves with that view point, sympathise with his responses ("completely understandable! how could he resist his natural urges?" -sound familiar?). i can understand that some people love elijah because of the physicality of him, how 'beautiful' he looks, and i can understand that people enjoy stories that focus on that aspect of him.

but i was really fucking concerned at the lengths at which both the author was exploiting that aspect, and exploiting the character of casey, and at the lengths the story itself took to exploit the character within it (if that makes sense). if a woman in a film was treated and presented the way casey was in that fic, there would be outrage (amidst academic circles, at least). and that has nothing to do with the physical violence in the plot of the story. i understand that this is 'only fanfiction', but fanfiction is still a cultural medium that we all (at least everyone who is reading this - which is a few hundred amongst many more) partake in, and obviously place some value in. i'd like to think that the authors and readers are at least aware of what they're perpetuating here, especially considering the 'roles' that they themselves exist in within society - not only as fans 'poaching' and questioning media texts, but as women.

i've been meaning to write a more in-depth essay-thing about the above for quite a while, maybe i'll do that soon. once i've done my essay for assessment, that is. hah.


4. must go off and call loose_your_dogs now, as we are all moving in together as of TOMORROW NIGHT. omg!

PS. why am i writing in a pseudo-early 1890s journal voice? perchance it comes from reading baranduin's delightful into the wood.

and eep! might not be on as much over this weekend, on account of possibly having difficulties setting up the 'net at the new place. fingers crossed we won't, but just in case.

Comments

[novanumbernine.livejournal.com]

the fic has *got* to be a troll. it's gobbledegook from beginning to end. someone is using babelizer, (http://www.tashian.com/perl/multibabel.cgi) methinks.

or, if you prefer my comment in its babelized form:

troll fic that it is gobbledegook to begin somebody must to cover of
the obligation more beginning when babelizer, methinks.

n.x :)

[anatsuno.livejournal.com]

i thought that too, but man.

and some people like it! *weirded out omg!*

and then I read the entry in the journal AND THE COMMENTS and now i think someone is making a very elaborate maskerade with several sockpuppets, or leading some poor souls on. the way that anonymous comment in FW seems to have been so totally misunderstood (wasn't the anon basically saying 'i use big words too, and i know it annoys people and i find that stupid that it annoys them, BUT there are too many big words here, it makes your prose hard to read' ??) and the agonizing over its possible deletion... it's so WEIRD it makes me want to save it all O.o

[anatsuno.livejournal.com]

FS (fellow_shippers) not FW (argh, all my typos are belong to wank!).

[novanumbernine.livejournal.com]

i'd bet *casts around for something to bet* ...my very nice bottle of gold nailvarnish that someone is taking the proverbial urine here. i dunno about the comments: there's plenty of stuff out there that, to my mind, is inexplicably raved-over. or they're socks, like you say.

n.x ;)

[andraste-oz.livejournal.com]

OMG *heart* you like crazy for pointing out 'Into the Wood'. I had not seen it before!

[vissy.livejournal.com]

There are no paragraphs in that Faculty story. It makes my eyes tired and not-want-to-ready.

[samena.livejournal.com]

Either it's a troll or we have someone with severe delusions of grandeur on our hands. I mean... 'To those of a higher intelligence, thank you for actually liking the story.' Is she actually implying you have to be intelligent to appreciate her, ehm, fic??!! O_o

[not-fledged-yet.livejournal.com]

I didn't look at the Faculty story you are disrecommending because I don't belong to the yahoo group, but if it is as you say it is chances are that if I did read it I didn't like it either (although if it had no paragraphs separating it out I may not have read it). The reasons you identify are reasons that I don't like Borderlines or Void either (and why I'm weirded out by people getting all as;lfkja;lkjl over pictures of Elijah looking all bruised up), but I guess we all have different sensitivities/levels of tolerance for these kinds of things.

[wymsie.livejournal.com]

Regarding Comment 2. Elijah heaved his eyes *cough* Sounds painful. I couldn't read it, brain was eclipsing or having an anamnesis (is that a word?). Really though, it seems like the author did go the babelfish route or is trying to be really poetic. I've read worse...isn't that frightening? *g*

i'd like to think that the authors and readers are at least aware of what they're perpetuating here, especially considering the 'roles' that they themselves exist in within society - not only as fans 'poaching' and questioning media texts, but as women.

I haven't read the story but your comments remind me of a published "romance" novel I read a few years back. It represented women horribly (and I never consider myself a feminist) and many readers reviewed negatively on amazon about it. I'm really surprised it was published. Basically the woman was kidnapped by a childish idiot, tied up in the man's bedroom, treated like a slave, forced to marry him, and once the vows were said she was in love and they had hot sex. Later he raped her because of a misunderstanding she had no part in and she soon forgave him. It made me feel sick (they really should have non-con and lack of character warnings in books). My squick level has become pretty nil now, but unbelievable characters/plots bother me. I've run into this pretty-boy victim cliche a lot in fanfiction.

[wymsie.livejournal.com]

Forgot to add: Some reason it feels as though published authors have more of a responsibility, but you make a good point because the Internet is so widely used and most likely read more than printed works. Stories written online are usually fantasies and there are quite a few many would find questionable, but the Internet is a "safe" venue to post anything from smushy to down right squicky. It is so easy to become lost in that feeling of posting to a void; that what you write does not really affect anyone.

Perhaps for women who write/read such slash it is fun to write the "pretty-boy victim" and may be cathartic for some. The boy/man is feminized (sometimes to a ridiculous degree) yet is still male enough that it is not a woman being harmed. It is a way to take charge and play out a rape fantasy without the usual problems of leaving the author or reader feeling vulnerable.

I do enjoy Frodo in a dress, so who am I to talk? *g*