Comment Meta

[amaresu]

Femslash Mini Meta fest was an utter fail this year. And I'm still not in a place where I could do it, so I purpose Comment Meta. And let's have it cover all things female and fannish. However you define those.

How it works

1. Post a meta topic in a top level comment. Use the subject line for the meta subject and expand as you want in the body of the comment. Or don't.

2. Repeat Step 1 for as many meta ideas as you have.

3. Comment on other meta topics.


It's kinda like a kink meme, only with meta. Feel free to browse the mini meta tag for ideas.

This is meant to be about as low pressure as it comes. Feel free to write on your own journal/Tumblr/blog and link back here. Respond with as little or as much as you want. This post will remain open indefinitely, so please track it if that makes things easier for you.

Comments

In defense of Bella Swan

[chaila]

You know you want to! Pretty please!

Re: In defense of Bella Swan

[lyssie]

I have no meta, I just always find Kristen Stewart entertaining. Or maybe I'm just shallow? idk. I sort of wonder if Bella can be read a latter-day Snow White allegory, but with all her wits about her until the prince's kiss awakens her into the world of magic that is hers by right.

It has been an exceedingly long work week, and I haven't actually read or seen any Twilight aside from the first movie and I was bored and doing other things

Re: In defense of Bella Swan

[chaila]

Kristen Stewart is kind of the best?! I am totally willing to go with your Snow White allegory, especially because there is a huge sense of Bella not feeling in step with other teenagers, etc., even apart from usual teen awkwardness. Human = asleep, when she was meant for monsterhood!

Re: In defense of Bella Swan

[shiegra]

Bella Swan as she exists in canon is absolutely vital for her story in various meta-narrative ways. The story would go absolutely nowhere without Bella's agency and desires driving it. Her text may crap all over her, but Bella has a clear presence and strong characterization; it's just one many people find painfully unglamorous or too reminiscent of aspects of feminity - especially adolescent femininity - that is most enthusiastically reviled by a lot of people. AKA unabashed romantic interest, prettiness/appeal that garners her harassment she's uncomfortable with, self-centred self-interest and a prioritization of what she wants done with her body over what a dude wants done with her body.

She's at first put off by the creepy new boy and then fascinated and irrevocably drawn in by the realm of fantasy and personal power he entails, not to mention his physical appeal. Bella wants to become a monster - she wants to escape feeling lonely and anxious and uncomfortable, she wants strength (and beauty, often irrevocably entwined with strength and likability in the cultural identity of young women) and whether or not the relationships she forms are healthy - they're pretty universally not, but it's not exactly surprising she doesn't identify them as such considering she's an American teenager - Bella actively fights the way the men in her life treat her but is shamed and gaslit by EVERYONE around her, especially authority figures and including her own father, and fandom's erasure of that fight is just as disturbing as the fact that Bella Swan is reviled by supposed feminists far more vocally than the abusers in her life.

Re: In defense of Bella Swan

[chaila]

Yessss this is amazing! It's very frustrating to me that in all the Twilight hate (not saying people have to love it, but they should hate it less vocally) people refuse to acknowledge that a HUGE ASPECT of the story is Bella deciding what she wants done with her own body and life, IN SPITE OF multiple dudes telling her to do other things with both. Like yes this is constructed in a way that makes it fairly unchallenging to the larger social order on a meta scale, because what she wants is largely a teenage het relationship and eventually a baby, BUT that is absolutely the worst reason ever to hate a teenage female protagonist. And she also wants immortality and to be a monster, both of which she gets, which is a pretty weird and interesting coming of age story.

fandom's erasure of that fight is just as disturbing as the fact that Bella Swan is reviled by supposed feminists far more vocally than the abusers in her life

I think this is mostly what makes me kind of uncomfortable and angry. There's all this criticism of stalker!Edward--which is fair, and which is a valid criticism--but not only does that completely ignore Bella's perspective on her own relationship (and all her relationships), and how she carves out space to do what she wants within that relationship with a guy she loves who doesn't always *get it* (newsflash: most men don't), but the actual hatred always comes back to her for being bland, for being a doormat, for inspiring this devotion, for being the main character who is a girl in a mainstream story, popular with other girls, that doesn't live up to some arbitrary standard. IDK. It bugs me!

Mostly, this is an excellent comment and I love it!

Re: In defense of Bella Swan

[nocowardsoul]

Real teenage girls (and I suppose boys) with Bella's personality exist. They deserve to see characters with that personality in fiction because they are human. It doesn't matter that she's passive, or selfish, or whatever people call Bella nowadays. Passive and selfish girls deserve to have stories told about them.

Re: In defense of Bella Swan

[havocthecat]

Good point! Not every story needs to be a morality play, and teenagers are allowed to act like teenagers. Which means emotionally immature and confused.

I will confess to not reading any of the Twilight books. But I finally got around to watching the last three films (someday, my library will have the first in) and they're none of them as bad as the mockers say they were. Nor is Bella. She's not really my type of character, but I don't dislike her at all. (I do love Alice and Rosalie, though.)

Re: In defense of Bella Swan

[nocowardsoul]

Yeah, Alice was my favorite. And Leah Clearwater - I haven't seen the movies after the first, but book!Leah is an awesome werewolf girl.

Re: In defense of Bella Swan

[havocthecat]

Leah is really amazing in the movies too. She was sadly minor, and you probably shouldn't get me started on werewolf alpha bs, because I could go into huge rants about how it's thinly veiled d/s for the people who don't understand d/s. But I really did love Leah and her struggles and how she refused to let life grind her down.

Re: In defense of Bella Swan

[amaresu]

One of the most interesting takes on Bella that I've read is one of her as a person with an undiagnosed disability. As clumsy as she is, she's clearly got something going on there and the idea was that she's spent her entire life accidentally hurting herself and that's why becoming a vampire is so appealing to her.

The girl, as written, can barely get through the day without some fun and exciting new bruises. (And realistically broken bones with really stupid stories behind them.) The appeal of becoming a creature like the Cullen's is obvious.

I like this theory.