fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #2620 ]

[ SECRET POST #2620 ]

⌈ Secret Post #2620 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

01.

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02.

[My Mad Fat Diary]

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03.

[Stargate Atlantis]

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04.

[Andromeda]

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05.

[True Detective]

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06.

[Samurai Flamenco]

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07.

[Star Trek: DS9]

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08.

[Supernatural]

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09.

[Wild Adapter]

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10.

[The Bletchley Circle]

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11. [ns]

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12.

[Junior Prom - Prelinger Archives Video]

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 01 pages, 015 secrets from Secret Submission Post #374.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 1 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Oh, I forgot to ask my question.

I hear a lot here about SPN and Teen Wolf. Never seen an episode of either. I want to know: what are the female characters like? Are they important? Are they well-written? I get that everyone talks about the dudes because slash - I just wanted to know how these fandoms approach the women (and by extension, het and femslash).

Not trying to be wanky here, genuinely curious. Because I'm sure there's more to SPN than The Sam and Dean (and Castiel) show, and there must be more to Teen Wolf than Derek and Stiles (literally the only characters I've ever even heard about for that show).

Also, by extension: how to women figure into these bizarre ABO universes? Do they also have roles? What about their romances (het or femslash)?

All the women in SPN are evil, dead, or put on a bus. I wish I could say I was exaggerating, but, yeah, not really. If a female character happens to not be one of those things, relax, she probably will be the next time she shows up. The show isn't so much bad with women as fascinatingly terrible.

Teen Wolf...eh, they're a mixed bag. One the home hand, they do have female characters, they are not there solely to serve the cause of Man Pain (tm) and they tend to be bad-ass, fairly rounded characters (as rounded as characters get on TW, anyway). They also portray female sexuality in a generally favorable light. Ladies express desire and have sex, and are often the dominate partner in romantic relationships. The only character so far to be punished for having sex is Derek.

On the other hand, TW is REALLY BAD about recycling characters. One woman left at the end of the second season and they replaced her with a character with the exact same personality template, then that actress left, and they did the same, and it makes it seem like the writers are drawing from a bank of six female templates and can't imagine anyway. Still, of the two shows, TW is FAR superior.

It seeps over into fandom, too. While Sterek is definitely the flagship, you take it out and you get het pairings, some femslash, and other slash, too.

I have no idea about ABO. Try to avoid it, meself.

Ah, ok. Makes sense because I definitely hear about SPN more.

Thanks for the response! :)

Re. women on SPN, the AYRT isn't wrong, but it's been less true of late than in previous seasons. There are currently at least three pretty awesome ladies who've been around for multiple episodes and are very not dead, and though none of the three are regulars, none have been written off in a way that precludes their returning either.

Some of those who appeared earlier were also pretty kickass, though they are sadly no longer with us. And in fairness, a whole lotta men on the show wind up dead too.

In most of the ABO I've seen (which isn't a whole lot), women can be any dynamic: alpha, beta, or omega. An alpha female can generally impregnate an omega of either gender; they often knot with their clitoris, which is large enough to penetrate with. Otherwise, it depends on the author and the 'verse - I've seen settings in which men and women are equal and social status is affected only by ABO dynamic, and settings that have both sexism and dynamic-ism.

o.O dang.

I've been in fandom too long and completely lost my ability to recognize when things are weird; which bit are you reacting to?

mostly the knotting/penetrative clitoris part

If you mean how SPN, the show, approaches women, it pretty much stinks at it. As the anon above mentioned. The male characters are generally written as much more complex, with much more agency, and just much more than what few female characters there are. And (as evidenced by secret 8 today, which talks about a female character that was turned psycho), they weren't really well nuanced. Plus there is fridging. And lots of other death. (Yes, the male characters die too, but the female character death/alive ratio is much greater than the male death/alive ratio, just by virtue of there being a shitton more male characters. (They even managed to have an entire episode without a single female character/actress credited. With several males, so it wasn't like it was a show with only Dean and Sam in it. Which is kinda impressive in a disturbing way.))

There was a very compelling video about how poorly SPN dealt with female characters. If you are interested, here is the backstory (with the video)... http://fanlore.org/wiki/Women's_Work

If you mean how the SPN fandom approaches women, it is hit and miss from what I've seen. Back before season 3, it was mentioned that SPN would be adding two female characters, Bela and Ruby. The fandom went crazy and basically hated the characters before even seeing them. They continued that hate throughout the next season. And even now, most of fandom seems to dislike all female characters except the lesbian one (which I'm kinda convinced is because she won't get in the way of their slash ships). However, there are areas of fandom these days that are more female character friendly. If you manage to stay in those areas, you don't see as much of the vitriol. Of course, I gave up on the show in Season 5, due to its treatment of female characters and I've tried my damnedest to stay in my little women-friendly corner of fandom, so I really cannot truly judge all of the show/fandom. I tried looking for het/femmeslash fic when I was really into fandom and there was very little of it. So much so that

crack_impala, the SPN rec community, had seven days of recs, one was for "het and other slash" and it was pretty much all other (male) slash all the time. I've seen a little more femmeslash now, floating around tumblr, with photo/gif manips and concepts and things like that, but there is still just a drop in the ocean of it compared to the slash from what I've seen.

I liked the first three seasons of SPN a lot. The fourth I also mostly liked, I guess. So it's not like I would say not to watch it if you think it might be something for you. But women are very much a weakness of it.

This is maybe off-topic but... I don't think the only problem with Bela and Ruby in s3 was with the fandom. I like pretty much every other female character on the show (although I wish there were more), I liked Ruby when she came back in s4, don't have any real investment in the ships in the show, and I absolutely could not stand Bela or Ruby in s3.

I think they were just really, really bad characters. Poorly-written characters, mostly. It felt like any time they were in a scene, the only point of that scene was how badass and cool and mysterious they were and how much more they knew than anyone else. And that's no way to write a story. Not sure if this is a popular opinion (they seem to be quite well-liked around here) but w/e.

AYRT

Do you like Gabriel and/or Crowley? Because if you do, I take issue with your reasoning for not liking Bela. As those two pretty much have the "cool, mysterious, know more than everyone else" and snarky personalities that Bela did, yet fandom tends to adore them and hate her. If you don't like them, then it just doesn't seem to be your type of character, and that is fine. (And I will not / can not argue that they were written perfectly. They were not. TPTB really don't seem to have a very good understanding of how to write fully fleshed out/complex female characters from what I'd seen. There was potential, but there were also issues.)

I think Bela's popularity has kind of grown? As either more people decided they liked her or more people entered fandom who were inclined to like her or there were more people like me who decided that (for the most part) they were willing to speak out and say they liked/loved her, despite fandom not feeling that way. That seems to be my impression, as I have found more people to talk to positively about her now than I could back in season 3. It might just be where I am, though? IDK.

Eh I'm probably never going to watch it. I hardly ever watch live-action TV.

Thanks for the response!

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

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