it is very late, even for musicians
I maybe stayed up too late last night, reading, and now I am kind of completely brainfried. Luckily, today has been a quiet day at work so far (tomorrow will be busy), and I can coast by on the pair of braincells I've got left, which are mostly devoted to going, "NEW SPN TONIGHT! WHEE!" even though this episode concerns me.
Speaking of SPN, I haven't watched it, but there's video of J2 + MC discussing fannish misogyny.
Obviously, the show has gender (and race) issues, has had them since the start (though no one will convince me it wasn't worse in season 3 for whatever reason), and the trend of virulent, vocal fannish hate for female characters - long before they even appeared in numerous cases, so don't even hand me the bad writing excuse (and it's not like large swathes of fandom hold bad writing or bad acting against the male characters, and lord knows, there's plenty of dodgy writing to go around on this show) - has only reinforced them (especially with a showrunner so willing to cater to such a vocal group of fans), so it's like a snake eating its tail.
I had more to say, and a more elegant way of saying it, before my boss arrived and gave me work to do.
But that can lead into this post by![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
thelastgoodname about whether The Devil Wears Prada is a feminist manifesto, and this post by melusina about what, to her makes a text feminist.
On a completely different fannish note, I'm sure you've all seenthefourthvine's brilliant post about feedback, and why any of us are lucky to get any comments at all.
Personally, I love all the comments I get on stories (well, not the comments to people about their icons that never actually reference my story - those I hate), and I try to answer all of them, because they give me a huge happy feeling, and when I am down about writing, I go back and reread them (and the stories they're attached to), to remind myself that I am not so bad at this whole thing.
I've said it before, but I will say it again - I welcome one word/one line squee comments, and I hope nobody ever feels too intimidated to leave me a comment because they don't really have anything to say but, "I enjoyed this!" I leave fb like that all the time, and I love getting it, because it tells me that someone enjoyed my story, and there is no bad there.
***
Today's poem:
Questions About Angels
Of all the questions you might want to ask
about angels, the only one you ever hear
is how many can dance on the head of a pin.
No curiosity about how they pass the eternal time
besides circling the Throne chanting in Latin
or delivering a crust of bread to a hermit on earth
or guiding a boy and girl across a rickety wooden bridge.
Do they fly through God's body and come out singing?
Do they swing like children from the hinges
of the spirit world saying their names backwards and forwards?
Do they sit alone in little gardens changing colors?
What about their sleeping habits, the fabric of their robes,
their diet of unfiltered divine light?
What goes on inside their luminous heads? Is there a wall
these tall presences can look over and see hell?
If an angel fell off a cloud, would he leave a hole
in a river and would the hole float along endlessly
filled with the silent letters of every angelic word?
If an angel delivered the mail, would he arrive
in a blinding rush of wings or would he just assume
the appearance of the regular mailman and
whistle up the driveway reading the postcards?
No, the medieval theologians control the court.
The only question you ever hear is about
the little dance floor on the head of a pin
where halos are meant to converge and drift invisibly.
It is designed to make us think in millions,
billions, to make us run out of numbers and collapse
into infinity, but perhaps the answer is simply one:
one female angel dancing alone in her stocking feet,
a small jazz combo working in the background.
She sways like a branch in the wind, her beautiful
eyes closed, and the tall thin bassist leans over
to glance at his watch because she has been dancing
forever, and now it is very late, even for musicians.
~Billy Collins
***
Speaking of SPN, I haven't watched it, but there's video of J2 + MC discussing fannish misogyny.
Obviously, the show has gender (and race) issues, has had them since the start (though no one will convince me it wasn't worse in season 3 for whatever reason), and the trend of virulent, vocal fannish hate for female characters - long before they even appeared in numerous cases, so don't even hand me the bad writing excuse (and it's not like large swathes of fandom hold bad writing or bad acting against the male characters, and lord knows, there's plenty of dodgy writing to go around on this show) - has only reinforced them (especially with a showrunner so willing to cater to such a vocal group of fans), so it's like a snake eating its tail.
I had more to say, and a more elegant way of saying it, before my boss arrived and gave me work to do.
But that can lead into this post by
thelastgoodname about whether The Devil Wears Prada is a feminist manifesto, and this post by melusina about what, to her makes a text feminist.On a completely different fannish note, I'm sure you've all seen
thefourthvine's brilliant post about feedback, and why any of us are lucky to get any comments at all. Personally, I love all the comments I get on stories (well, not the comments to people about their icons that never actually reference my story - those I hate), and I try to answer all of them, because they give me a huge happy feeling, and when I am down about writing, I go back and reread them (and the stories they're attached to), to remind myself that I am not so bad at this whole thing.
I've said it before, but I will say it again - I welcome one word/one line squee comments, and I hope nobody ever feels too intimidated to leave me a comment because they don't really have anything to say but, "I enjoyed this!" I leave fb like that all the time, and I love getting it, because it tells me that someone enjoyed my story, and there is no bad there.
***
Today's poem:
Questions About Angels
Of all the questions you might want to ask
about angels, the only one you ever hear
is how many can dance on the head of a pin.
No curiosity about how they pass the eternal time
besides circling the Throne chanting in Latin
or delivering a crust of bread to a hermit on earth
or guiding a boy and girl across a rickety wooden bridge.
Do they fly through God's body and come out singing?
Do they swing like children from the hinges
of the spirit world saying their names backwards and forwards?
Do they sit alone in little gardens changing colors?
What about their sleeping habits, the fabric of their robes,
their diet of unfiltered divine light?
What goes on inside their luminous heads? Is there a wall
these tall presences can look over and see hell?
If an angel fell off a cloud, would he leave a hole
in a river and would the hole float along endlessly
filled with the silent letters of every angelic word?
If an angel delivered the mail, would he arrive
in a blinding rush of wings or would he just assume
the appearance of the regular mailman and
whistle up the driveway reading the postcards?
No, the medieval theologians control the court.
The only question you ever hear is about
the little dance floor on the head of a pin
where halos are meant to converge and drift invisibly.
It is designed to make us think in millions,
billions, to make us run out of numbers and collapse
into infinity, but perhaps the answer is simply one:
one female angel dancing alone in her stocking feet,
a small jazz combo working in the background.
She sways like a branch in the wind, her beautiful
eyes closed, and the tall thin bassist leans over
to glance at his watch because she has been dancing
forever, and now it is very late, even for musicians.
~Billy Collins
***
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Do not look behind the curtain!
And yeah, the fandom does consistently squick me with how misogynist certain aspects of the fandom are, but I remember s3 SPN. And I do wish, oh do I wish, that Kripke et al hadn't chosen to taken Jo and Ellen off the show because of fannish reaction to them.
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So I think the show and the fandom feed off each other in ways that are less than healthy, in this particular instance.
Of course, three guys employed by the show are probably not going to say that in interviews.
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As a writer of both meta & fic I always try and kid myself believing that comments work to the power of ten: i.e. if one person comments then 10 read and didn't. etc.
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And I try to be really good about leaving fb, but it's generally only the one line, "I liked this!" kind, and when people have been disdainful of that (and some people have), I've stopped leaving it for them.
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But a change in the signal to noise ratio would be a lovely, lovely thing.
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But yeah, I can't believe the disdain some people have for the simple "squee" or "I liked this!" type of fb. Don't they know they're making it harder on the rest of us?
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They don't care, or they assume that everyone feels the same way that they do.
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