I just keep hoping, and then feeling like a kicked puppy when they come so close and then turn away. Puppy, I tell you.

Right. It may be heathier for you to think of them as idiot savants who get the emotional truth of family relationships, but fail the logical conclusion throw every time. It is for me!

It's weird, for me, at times, because I do call it out on things I see that bother me, but at the same time, I also (largely due to the reaction of non-viewers, oddly enough) get defensive about how other people take it. After Women's Work came out, a lot of the non-viewers who watched the vid kept making comments about how, "And that's why I'd never watch the show and don't understand people who do." Sometimes, the judgement's just something I've inferred, that was never really meant to be implied, but I can't really shake the feeling that my reaction, if I do not display suitable outrage, is being judged. It cuts both ways, as defensive people go on what feels like the offense, and get all up in arms about people who are up set, and then it just feels damned if I do, damned if I don't, and I wish the source was BETTER at things, just so that I didn't feel like every Thursday, I'm girding my loins if I wade into LJ.

I'm uncomfortable talking about it in fandom-at-large, this feeling. I'm not especially comfortable talking about it here, but as we're already sort of going down that path, I figured I might as well.

And, you know, it also feels like this is the first BIG fandom that's come along post-IBARW. There's been, in certain circles, a huge increase in both awareness and of calling out the texts when they veer in directions that make a body get twitchy. I don't remember this level of examination of other fandoms, although when I rewatch, I can see similar levels of ick. It just went largely uncommented.

Anyhow. My Mixed Emotions, Let Me Show Them To You.

Cindy I bet you are glad you don't have to recap this one if the regular recapper is coming back. I could watch an hour of JA and JP posturing for the camera, but I wouldn't want to have to describe it.

I do have to recap it, Austin. Demian needs a little more time off. We're going to take it week by week.

I didn't like the resolution of the love wish storyline, but I'm not sure I'm ready to interpret it as a rape story (mostly for selfish reasons -- I don't feel like being mad at the show, again).

I understand comparison, and even accept it. The wish is like a date rape drug, and Hope not remembering anything makes serves to highlight the similarities. I'm just not sure I will adopt it.

I can also interpret the wish to be a lie, rather than a drug. When I look at it that way, it stinks less.

And to pull out the big fan-wankery, it's not canon that the couple had sex. I mean, I would assume so, but that's an assumption. I never saw it on screen. Some couples wait.

Mostly, I'm just in line with Amy's way of thinking. It's hard to be though, because race, sex, and sexual orientation are this show's big blind spots.

Edit:

And, you know, it also feels like this is the first BIG fandom that's come along post-IBARW.

Plei, what's IBARW?

IBARW = International Blog Against Racism Week, which came out of the huge, huge debate about cultural appropriation in the wake of PotC 2.

It's not that anti-racist fans hadn't raised issues in the past (they had, esp. WRT, say Buffy and Angel and issues there), but for me, that marked a critical mass turning point.

the huge, huge debate about cultural appropriation in the wake of PotC 2.

Can you put that in a little nutshell?

Can you put that in a little nutshell?

Ahahaha. Only if I had a nut the size of the entire universe.

I mean, it's really two things as a trigger, because I keep spacing on the WisCon panel, and I'm forgetting the exact timing. But a lot of frustrations about not being listened to, and about concerns being dismissed, all kind of came to a head at once.

(The nutshell issue WRT to PotC: 2 is that the movie embraced some specifically racist and false ideas about the Carib people (they were not cannibals, though that was used as a pretext to justify their enslavement by the Spanish, and it's an understandably sore point with said people, who were highly critical of that particular plot point in the movie), and when a fan/viewer talked about how upsetting and harring she found that to be, people got stroppy and defensive at her.

Plei is right. But the POTC trigger should be added to the Wiscon panel on "cultural appropriation" (Part 1), where IIRC, all the panelists were white and the entire discussion was just chock-ful of white liberal attitudes and no understanding of the perspective of POCs. A POC who attended the panel came home and wrote up her thoughts on her LJ, and that started a whole big thing.

She ended up as one of the founders of IBARW.

Ah. I had no idea.

I am weirdly insular, fannishly. I watched most of Buffy on my own, just nattering about it to Stephen. Fandom still startles me sometimes.

Anyone want to give me a nutshell description of what is meant by "cultural appropriation"?

Quick links for IBARW:

IBARW 2006 round-up post: [link]

IBARW community (includes the 2007 & 2008 round-up posts): [link]

There's a lot of interesting reading in there, but I don't think the either the POTC debate or the Wiscon write-up are included. I could be wrong, though.

Reading all this, I realize that it never occurred to me that there was the element of rape (it actually reminds me of Owen's use of the phereomone thingy in Torchwood). Maybe it was that I was tired, or I wasn't paying enough attention to pick up what the show wasn't laying out explicitly.

I agree that they could have quickly addressed that there was more to a story that we would never see, a comment about how pissed she was going to be when the townsfolk started asking her why she and Wes called off the engagement (it was in the paper, and they weren't a discreet couple). So, even if she doesn't remember at the end of the ep, she'll soon find out (especially if she can't remember the last month).

I also agree that nowhere in the story was her victimization the point (and, btw, oh how I rolled my eyes at the shower scene in the beginning. I don't recall who said it, but I also was excitedly expecting it to be Dean (or Sam). Dunno why).

the huge, huge debate about cultural appropriation in the wake of PotC 2

The hell? I just thought the movie sucked.

it actually reminds me of Owen's use of the phereomone thingy in Torchwood

Which was also, basically, rape, and called out as such by many fans. Didn't stop them from watching the show, but many people never got over their disgust with Owen for that.