annerb

( Wherein I recap the Mary Sue debate and get snarky. Surprise! )

So...I'm still alive. Really. I'm in this weird stretch I hit sometimes when the words just stop (usually because there is some plot hole or major issue with a story that I refuse to admit). This is when my reading phase kicks in. I get strangely voracious after not reading much of anything for a long time. I think it's the distraction factor. My brain is subconsciously churning away at whatever writing block I'm pretending doesn't exist, while I read, read, read, read until a solution presents itself, BAM, usually in the middle of something. (Got a lot of half-finished paperbacks abandoned around the house due to this.)

Unfortunately, I am reading stuff so fast that I'm desperate to get my hands on enough stuff. Inevitably this means I get desperate enough to hit the paperback historical romance rack, even though I know this only ends up torturing me. (BUT! I picked up 'Silent in the Grave' on a stupid supermarket whim once! I could discover another Lady Julia Grey to fall madly in love with! Really! Suuuuuuuuuuure.) Needless to say, I did not stumble upon my next great beloved heronine of snark this time. No. This time picking up the first novel with a minimally embarrassing front cover with no half naked people humping on it, I stumbled unknowingly into some of my most HATED elements. Some I had been fooling myself into thinking were only the foibles of young, eager fangirls writing their first grade school fanfic. I don't know why it's so much worse to find them in print. Maybe it's the back section where the author pimps all their other novels and you realize they've written 25 of these hideous things, many of which sat on the best-sellers list at some point and seem to repeat the SAME EQUATION. This particular novel's sins?

( Cut for ranting and mention of non-con )

Ok. I'm done ranting now. Really. And since I feel it's bad karma to dump vitriol out into the world without at least a little squee to balance, here are some things that don't suck and that I quite love:

Any Persuasion fans out there? As much as I love Pride&Prejudice, I think Persuasion may be my favorite Austen book. I think it's the maturity of the characters, the subtlety of their ship, not to mention the drawn out angst of missed chances. (no, I am not predictable in my kinks. Lol.) Anyway, I have just finished Susan Kaye's 'None But You' which is a retelling of Persuasion from the point of view of Captain Wentworth. I haven't read the second half 'For You Alone' yet. (HURRY UP UPS, do you have any idea what I have been reading in the meanwhile?!) But I can comfortably say that the first half alone is enough to make me love and adore it. Great tone, delicate touch, and more Mrs. Croft. What more could you possibly want?

If SJ smut is more to your taste today, make sure you don't miss: Drink That Sun by penknife 

Oh, and dsudis  continues her awesomeness with the next in her Bechdel Fix-it's for Stargate. Really great Sam piece. Solidarity

Yes, it's always good to remember that for every piece of crap out there, there are some pretty freaking awesome things too.

I've been doing a bit of reading in the area of sizism and fat rights lately. Not that it's an easy topic to crack into as very little scholarship has been done, unlike feminism, gay rights, and civil rights. I've been trying to track down one scholarly article for months now (Mev Miller's 'Fat Politics: The Bottom Line is Women's Power' from Melpomene, if anyone happens to have a copy when the multi-million volume research library has failed me). There is also the fabulous 'Killing Us Softly,' 'Still Killing Us Softly,' and 'Beyond Killing Us Softly' by Jean Kilbourne, which deal with imagery of women in advertising. Here's a link to an introduction to her third installment of Killing Us Softly.

It blows my mind how common and socially acceptable it is to be sizist, to treat people as a faceless group of, not people, but things. The news, advertising, even TV shows constantly point a finger and teach us "thin=healthy" and "fat=unhealthy". Thinner = better. Well, you know what? Shut the hell up. How confused and messed up is a culture who consider women the size of concentration camp victims to be beautiful? That makes  women think they need to have major plastic surgery just to feel normal or healthy? And fat women? What instant assumptions have media, government, and news taught you to think about them? What? They automatically aren't active people? They automatically eat too much? And it's just EVERYWHERE. And no one seems to think there is anything wrong with this sort of stereotyping and bigotry. It absolutely blows my mind. And. Pisses. Me. Off.

I want to say something about the F word. You know the one I mean: Feminism.  Oh, has there ever been a term more misused and misunderstood than Feminism?  How often do you hear things like “Feminism is where men suck and women refuse to shave their legs, right?” and most recently “Feminism means being loud and bitchy and eviscerating people for their opinions.”

Well, not my Feminism.  Not the Feminism that affects my daily life, the way I approach the world and visual and written culture in general.

( My Feminism, Let Me Show You It )

The lovely and talented dsudis has recently done an analysis of Stargate season 1 according to the Bechdel Test. (splash_the_cat pointed out this great link describing what the Bechdel Test is if you aren't familiar with it.)  Upon noticing the general fail of the show, both when analyzed by sex and race, dsudis has done the admirable thing and has set out to fix the season 1 eps with fantastic little fill in scenes.  So far she has written Sisters in Arms which is Sam and Sha're in COTG, and Common Language which is Sgt. Hoyt (the unamed kidnapped Earth woman) and Sha're. I've been a fan of dsudis ever since I read her amazing and wrenching With The Dying that I have rec'd many a time already, but if you still haven't read it, GO NOW.  It's Daniel and alt-Teal'c in the past from Moebius. Lovely.

Anyway, the point of this. Bechdel Test. I decided to cast a critical eye over my own writing. I had a feeling going in that as a het ship whore who obsesses way too much over Jack and Sam, I was doomed to fail bitterly.  And I was mostly right.  I've written around 60 fics at this point, give or take a few comment fics here or there. And while 20 of these are actually gen (surprising), only 11 pass the Bechdel Test (boo!). 11.  Out of 60.  I'm running at less than 20%. That's just embarrassing.

Now, one could point out that there isn't exactly an overabundance of female characters in the Stargate SG-1 universe to begin with, but that doesn't really make me feel any better.  I find it interesting that three of the fics I had the hardest time writing recently all pass the test, and I have to wonder if it was this element in particular that gave me such a difficult time.  Was it hard to write because these two women never actually interacted on screen, or the fact that it's two women not talking about men?  God, I really hope the former, but who knows.  All three of these fics were also all written for ficathons, meaning I probably never would have thought to write a fic about Sam and Sha're, or Cassie and Vala without the prompt and looming threat of deadline. This makes me sad. (Oh, and the third fic? An SGA fic with mostly all OCs. Interesting. I had to make up my women characters.)

So what to do? Swear off het fic? Only write women characters now?  No, of course not.  I sat down and did this little anaylsis because I needed to make myself painfully aware of exactly what I am doing so that it will be much, much harder to ignore in the future. I want that little voice in the back of my head questioning, always questioning.  Because that's what we'd really like TPTB to do as well, right?

Meanwhile, I might just go peruse the leftover galpalficathon prompts again.  Wanna come with?

I rarely digress into politics this blatantly, and I know some of you out there completely disagree with me, but this is one day that I can't be silent. Feel free to skip.

*

Dear America,

Thank you, thank you, thank you.  Now comes the hard work.  Let's get started. 

Yes we can.

Love,
Annerb

*

Dear California, Arizona, Florida, and especially Arkansas,

EPIC FAIL. There is no excuse for bigotry, not even your personal discomfort.  And even less for your 'seperate but equal' mindset that I thought we proved complete BS during the Civil Rights Movement.  We still have a long, long way to go.  I know change is scary for some people, but please, hate and exclusion are never the answer.  Luckily I have hope for love, compassion, and equality winning in the end. Let's move forward.

Stubbornly hopeful,
Annerb

*

Dear Colorado and South Dakota,

Thank you. Thank you for remembering that reproductive rights are not optional, but FUNDAMENTAL to equality for women.  It is a slippery slope and you proved you understand that. Thank you for helping me keep the faith, and maintain control over my own body. Thank you.

Proud,
Annerb

*

Now back to your regularly scheduled fic journal.

If anyone has managed to forget for even a moment that despite all the sexist crap out there, we American (British, Canadian, Australian, etc) women lead privileged lives compared to the majority of women in the world, here's a reminder: Nova's A Walk To Beautiful.  I admit it, I cried.  And I sat there a while just thinking about my life and these women's lives and...  It just seems so wrong that there can be such disparity in the world.  Globalization, my ass.  And if anyone ever wondered why reproductive rights are so fundamentally essential to equality and simple standards of living for women, here's just one example.  It is a slippery, slippery slope that we can't afford to mess around with.  Definitely watch this Nova if you get the chance.

Splash coined it, and I couldn't help iconing it. :)