Fandom Cave

Gilbert Baker added a 9th stripe shortly before his death, with the new stripe representing diversity. He added this stripe in reaction to the 2016 US election. It’s unfortunately not as well known as the 8 and 6 striped versions.

Here’s an image of him sewing together the 9 striped rainbow flag.

Little Aogami and Bino scribbles!! :')

What if Belle's mother was the enchantress that cursed The Beast?

I love his smarmy little face so much. So whimsical in his bad behaviour.

That’s a lover of woman’s rights and wrongs right there, your honour.

Doctor Who (Steven Moffat specifically)

Sherlock (Steven Moffat specifically)

Actually Steven Moffat is basically just this sentiment given human form.

A version of this happened with The Magicians, tbh. Though instead of expectation: men, reality: women it was expectation: smug nihilists, reality: mentally ill queer folks.

Arguably Game of Thrones.

If we broaden it outside of television…I think Star Wars falls into this, at least the sequel trilogy. Maybe the MCU as well. And I can’t help but think of every band that’s ever complained that their fanbase is mostly women. 5 Seconds of Summer comes immediately to mind.

In general, most white male creators seem to have this massively entitled mindset where they want–and think they deserve–the time, attention, and enthusiasm that creative fandom (i.e. the side of fandom more dominated by women) is known for.

They want our eyes for ratings, our word-of-mouth for free publicity, our metas for social media buzz, and our spending power for merch and cons. But they don’t want us. And they don’t really want the responsibility of telling a story to a thoughtful, engaged audience, regardless of that audience’s demographic makeup. They just want to be praised for whatever schlock they cough up.

Mind you it is perfectly possible to make the switch in marketing, but execs would rather throw it all out than have something that doesn’t perform well with male viewers. For example the Rey merch was not expected to be popular, for some reason, there had to be public outcry to get merch of one of the main 3 protagonists. A PROTAGONIST. The fact that she wasn’t a huge part of the 1st launch says a lot already.

And what happened when female fans got too invested in the Sequel Trilogy? The entire writers room didn’t necessarily lash out, but they sure forgot how to behave.

Young Justice

Paul Dini: Superhero cartoon execs don’t want largely female audiences

#WhereIsRey (initial)

#WhereIsRey (ongoing)

Simply, they’re trying to assert a particular worldview via fiction, and upon getting confronted with something else, begin foot stamping. It’s not just men wanting male attention and gatekeeping. It’s that the fiction in the first place was an attempt to curate dominance and whoopsie! they miscalculated.

I’d also love to hear your thoughts, as I literally wrote it for communities like ours to read, so, thanks.

anyways enjoy ya filthy shuadders

ARGH. For the third time in about a month I have seen somebody (not necessarily on Tumblr) write:

Alexandros and Hephaestion.

NONONONO....

I blame that damn recent novel (by a Greek no less!) Young Conquerors, which put the two mis-matched in the title.

Alexandros and Hephaistion (Greek transliteration)

OR

Alexander and Hephaestion (Latinization)

Do not mix and match. For the love of God, please.

Well, it’s just fine to use the super common (Anglicized) Alexander with Hephaistion. But going the OTHER way with the (very uncommon) Alexandros with the Latinized Hephaestion is just...weird.

Deciding what form and spelling to use is a bit of a cobra nest in Classics--why a lot of publishers try to push us all to (Anglicized) Latinized forms...to increasing resistance. It doesn't help that other European countries have different forms. Germans like their Greek. :-)

In the novel, I used entirely Greek precisely because I wanted to divorce the characters from popular "historicized" perceptions of them. But (as you've seen in my posts here), otherwise I tend to use the Anglicized forms for the most common: Alexander, Philip, Ptolemy, Aristotle, Plato, etc.

In my academic work, I do the same, although there I also often use the spelling found in the Loeb for extant (still-existing) authors, but the Greek for now-missing authors. So here, I often write it Herodotos and Diodoros, but in the monograph, it's Herodotus and Diodorus...but Kallisthenes and Kleitarchos. I may change my mind about that, however, when it comes to publishing. Not sure.

I also tend to maintain the /ch/ instead of /kh/, but not necessarily the /y/ for /u/. No, I don't really have a rhyme or reason behind this.

Although I'll admit that Thoukudides will always look weird to me. LOL

Btw, if you're not sure how the actual Greek is spelled, Wikipedia often includes the Greek characters, so you can check there. Sometimes you can guess: /c/ in Latin is always /k/ in Greek because there is no /c/ in Greek and no /k/ in Latin. -us is usually -os (except if it's -eus as in Perseus), and /ae/ is /ai/. But sometimes it's less clear: Posidonius is Poseidonios. That simple /i/ might be /ei/ in Greek...or it might not.

And yes, there are about a million copies of the Greek alphabet to be found on the internet, so you can do a simple cypher translation. ;-)