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One of the odd things I love about Archive of Our Own is that, every once in a while, I'll find worthwhile reading there other than fic. There are a fair number of fandom essays hosted on the site, from author's arguments for or against a specific ship or characterization, to handy "how to" guides for certain tropes.
While I don't watch Teen Wolf, as a some-time writer of werewolf fic I found "Real Wolf Packs and How They Relate to Teen Wolf Werewolves" by burntotears a very enjoyable read, and pretty much in-line with both my own research and how I like seeing werewolf behavior written in general.
Even more interesting (and more pointedly relevant to my own writing) was the essay "Ignorance of the Privileged: Problems with Erasing or Overlooking the Evidence of Hatred" by TeaOli. Again, while I don't read the fandom in question (in this case Harry Potter) and know next to nothing about Lucius Malfoy (with whom the essay is principally concerned), I found the overarching subject well worth the read (and re-read, actually, as I was writing this entry). In particular, one can read a word and understand what it means but still not get it, and for me this essay more than anything else helped me understand the real meaning and very personal impact of "privilege".
More specifically, it isn't difficult to see how the topic of hatred—and of past acts of persecution, and how it is handled in writing a character's redemption—applies to my Heroes crossover, Zeitgeist. 100k words into the first part of the series, it is easy for me to forget that Konrad Reichardt began with a joke, and matured into a challenge set for myself as a writer: can I write a beloved fandom character as a former Nazi and still keep him sympathetic? While, as of Black Edelweiss, I feel I've managed to avoid handwaving Konrad's past crimes, I feel there's still such a long way for me to go. In a huge way, TeaOli's essay forced a critical look at the character that has helped shape where the next two fics in the series are headed. Konrad has spent most of his life running from himself. Each new life he starts is an attempt bury the pain of losing the one before it. In the process he has distanced himself from his past to such an extent that, even when acknowledging his guilt and how it has shaped his actions, due to his disassociation from himself (both natural and not) he has never truly been forced to confront that part of his life.
As Black Edelweiss comes to a close, the shape the series takes is basically this: Kevin Ryan is the man Konrad believes he would have been if the Holocaust had never happened. Now, though, Kevin is no longer ignorant of his real history. Everything that Konrad has spent his life running from it now becomes Kevin's responsibility to face. As he and Javier move forward into the future glimpsed in the prologue, Kevin will be forced to make choices very similar to others Konrad has made in the past, a series of trials in which he stands as both judge and accused.
Moving on, if anyone had told me last month that I would sit down and read a 15k-word essay about Twilight, I probably would have laughed in their face. Doesn't change the fact that was exactly what I did.
Found entirely by accident, "Bad Romance: Dracula, Twilight and Rape Culture" by 100indecisions is an in-depth delving into an issue that has recently got my dander up in a big fucking way. Between the media's coverage of the recent Steubenville; a male friend's issues with unintentionally, severly offending another close female friend of his; and the drama surrounding the relationship of a real-life acquaintance of mine; the concepts of rape culture, subtle misogyny, and abusive relationships have been very much on my mind. So it was fortunate that, during a random tag-diving through AO3 I managed to glimpse the summary of this work before anything else:
My no-kidding master's thesis, the tl;dr version of which can be summarized as "Twilight sucks, but not because teenage girls love it or because it contains sparkling vampires".
Actual abstract: "Despite being generally received as wholesome entertainment, Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight series implicitly supports rape culture by subtly reinforcing dangerous ideas about romance and relationships. In order to demonstrate the pervasive nature of these attitudes at work in the Twilight series, this paper first describes the concept itself and the crucial features of the beliefs that support it. Dracula—and, more importantly, the prevailing cultural perceptions about Stoker’s novel—functions as an important intertext for Twilight thanks to its status as one of the earliest popular vampire novels, and I use it to show how these attitudes can normalize certain assumptions about sexuality in a context generally assumed to involve a clear sexual interpretation. My examination of the books in Meyer’s modern vampire narrative takes this idea further, arguing that the same attitudes applied to Dracula provide an even more subtle representation of the mindsets that comprise and perpetuate rape culture."
Now, I don't consider myself a "hater", and I am of more than enough independent mind to make up for myself whether something is crap (as a fan of genre fiction, one simply can't always take a critic's or even a friend's opinion for granted). Still, I had long ago made my decision regarding whether I would read, watch, or otherwise expose myself to Stephenie Meyer's fiction based on accounts of the values represented in the book. And I won't lie, in combination with these accounts the author's Mormon faith was a significant factor in my decision. While I hold nothing against Mormons as individuals, I find several parts of the faith's teachings and the church's policies offensive, in some situations approaching an irrational feeling of rage.
So...yeah, I've never really read Twilight, but for what I feel are very valid reasons.
This essay goes a very long way toward verifying that this was a wise choice on my part, because if my reactions to reading the essay are so extreme, then I think any attempts to actually read these books would have resulted in something truly nasty. As it is, my outrage is such I'd have a hard time outlining why I feel this examination of the books and the cultural attitudes they reflect is important.
While 15k might be a lot of words to read on a subject that may or may not even interest you in the slightest, I still can't help but recommend the essay very strongly.
While I don't watch Teen Wolf, as a some-time writer of werewolf fic I found "Real Wolf Packs and How They Relate to Teen Wolf Werewolves" by burntotears a very enjoyable read, and pretty much in-line with both my own research and how I like seeing werewolf behavior written in general.
Even more interesting (and more pointedly relevant to my own writing) was the essay "Ignorance of the Privileged: Problems with Erasing or Overlooking the Evidence of Hatred" by TeaOli. Again, while I don't read the fandom in question (in this case Harry Potter) and know next to nothing about Lucius Malfoy (with whom the essay is principally concerned), I found the overarching subject well worth the read (and re-read, actually, as I was writing this entry). In particular, one can read a word and understand what it means but still not get it, and for me this essay more than anything else helped me understand the real meaning and very personal impact of "privilege".
Moving on, if anyone had told me last month that I would sit down and read a 15k-word essay about Twilight, I probably would have laughed in their face. Doesn't change the fact that was exactly what I did.
Found entirely by accident, "Bad Romance: Dracula, Twilight and Rape Culture" by 100indecisions is an in-depth delving into an issue that has recently got my dander up in a big fucking way. Between the media's coverage of the recent Steubenville; a male friend's issues with unintentionally, severly offending another close female friend of his; and the drama surrounding the relationship of a real-life acquaintance of mine; the concepts of rape culture, subtle misogyny, and abusive relationships have been very much on my mind. So it was fortunate that, during a random tag-diving through AO3 I managed to glimpse the summary of this work before anything else:
My no-kidding master's thesis, the tl;dr version of which can be summarized as "Twilight sucks, but not because teenage girls love it or because it contains sparkling vampires".
Actual abstract: "Despite being generally received as wholesome entertainment, Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight series implicitly supports rape culture by subtly reinforcing dangerous ideas about romance and relationships. In order to demonstrate the pervasive nature of these attitudes at work in the Twilight series, this paper first describes the concept itself and the crucial features of the beliefs that support it. Dracula—and, more importantly, the prevailing cultural perceptions about Stoker’s novel—functions as an important intertext for Twilight thanks to its status as one of the earliest popular vampire novels, and I use it to show how these attitudes can normalize certain assumptions about sexuality in a context generally assumed to involve a clear sexual interpretation. My examination of the books in Meyer’s modern vampire narrative takes this idea further, arguing that the same attitudes applied to Dracula provide an even more subtle representation of the mindsets that comprise and perpetuate rape culture."
Now, I don't consider myself a "hater", and I am of more than enough independent mind to make up for myself whether something is crap (as a fan of genre fiction, one simply can't always take a critic's or even a friend's opinion for granted). Still, I had long ago made my decision regarding whether I would read, watch, or otherwise expose myself to Stephenie Meyer's fiction based on accounts of the values represented in the book. And I won't lie, in combination with these accounts the author's Mormon faith was a significant factor in my decision. While I hold nothing against Mormons as individuals, I find several parts of the faith's teachings and the church's policies offensive, in some situations approaching an irrational feeling of rage.
So...yeah, I've never really read Twilight, but for what I feel are very valid reasons.
This essay goes a very long way toward verifying that this was a wise choice on my part, because if my reactions to reading the essay are so extreme, then I think any attempts to actually read these books would have resulted in something truly nasty. As it is, my outrage is such I'd have a hard time outlining why I feel this examination of the books and the cultural attitudes they reflect is important.
While 15k might be a lot of words to read on a subject that may or may not even interest you in the slightest, I still can't help but recommend the essay very strongly.
