Life on Queen Street

Sorry, Scully, I love you but Sam Carter blew up a sun once.

Sweet Jesus on a pogo-stick. In the future, I must remember to stay far, far away from the Hathor Legacy.

The constant woman-bashing in the name of "feminism" make me tired, people.

Snurched and adapted from about the Flist:

1)Tell me who your favourite(s) female character(s) is/are and I'll tell you 3 things I believe about her/them.

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2) List five characters you'd want on your side in any kind of trouble. Bonus points for assembling an "Action Team" with complementary skills:

Team Leader: Ellen Ripley - she's a survivor, she's cool in a crisis and she doesn't flinch - from anything. If you're going someplace hellish, it's good to follow someone who knows the countryside. Ripley can also pilot deep space freighters, run exo-suits and solves munitions crises with duct tape. Leave the cats and small children at home, though - Ripley's relentless decency can be her own worst foe even though we love her for it.

2nd/Tactician/Geek: Colonel Sam Carter - career military with more than 10 years experience in all forms of small unit combat, she's an astrophysicist and engineer who can make computers and all sorts of alien technology sit, lie down and roll over for her on command. And if it doesn't, she'll blow it the fuck up. Besides, math is a universal language and Carter speaks it fluently. That's gonna come in handy.

Medic: Martha Jones, MD - between Ripley and Carter, something's bound to explode sooner or later and you want someone there to deal with the inevitable flash burns, shrapnel wounds and radiation poisoning (Carter and Ripley are scarily fond of nukes) that follow. Jones trained as a doctor before traveling with The Doctor and then went on to work for UNIT and Torchwood, which means she's now qualified to treat everything from an Alien infestation to passing a four-day liberty with the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force (or a night with "Captain" Jack Harkness). More importantly, Martha just doesn't know how to quit - if push comes to shove, she'll go to the ends of the Earth to save a friend: that's the kind of determination you want in your doc. Dislikes: tiny blonde chavs; men who can't see a good thing when it shares a Tardis with them; traditional Gallifreyan drumming. Likes: black leather.

Pilot/Muscle/Badass in Black Leather: Aeryn Sun - centuries of selective breeding and a training regime designed to weed out the unfit have made the Peacekeepers the most feared military force in their corner of the galaxy, crushing all resistance under the heels of their shiny black leather boots. Aeryn Sun was among their best until she got caught in the middle of her insane commander's blood feud with displaced astronaut, John Crichton. Four years later, Aeryn's just another working mother, trying to juggle a busy career as galactic fugitive with raising her toddler son and keeping her husband out of trouble, a career in itself. Because Sebaceans are long-lived, Aeryn has more piloting experience than pilots twice her apparent age and that dash of Pilot DNA she picked up along the way gives her an affinity with the Uncharted Territories' most interesting species, the living Leviathan ships. She's also fiercely loyal to her comrades, compassionate, believes shooting something will cure most ills, and doesn't mind hanging around with nuclear weapons, so she'll fit right in with Carter and Ripley.

Fixer/Sage/Handler/Intelligence: Emma Peel - James Bond wishes he were this suave or this deadly. Mrs. Peel is everything that is most elegant and shit-scary about British women - she can wield a tea cup and a stiletto with equal grace; apply a sleeper-hold as easily as lipstick. Spy, genius industrialist, adventurer and Avenger, Mrs. Peel brings a necessary sang froid to our band of heroes as well as an impeccable dress sense and an infectious elan to the proceedings. She is, as they say, "extremely good in the room."

eta - I know, I know I didn't pick Sarah Connor but there's no "my son's destined to save Humanity from The Machines if I don't stop the Robot Apocalypse" in t-e-a-m. Now, if the question were "who would you want to save your ass from killer robots" Sarah Connor would definitely top the list.

Honourable Mentions: Toshiko Sato, Zoe Washburn, Julie Parrish, Ashely & Helen Magnus (Helen Magnus & Emma Peel - there needs to be fanfic), Barbara Gordon, The Black Widow, Carolyn Fry, Elizabeth Swann (who should be reborn as a Space Pirate now), EVE, Marion Ravenwood (Helen Magnus and Marion Ravenwood walk into a bar... inevitably, they throw some guy out the window) and Tara Chace.

Gakked from medie:

Ask me about my unpopular fandom opinion, and I shall spew forth some vitriol for you. Or, you know, express an opinion. Depends how I'm feeling, really.

(Feel free to be specific.)

hee.

Okay, flist - you had my back with the Gwen icons for my TORCHWOOD needs.

Can anyone help a fangirl out with some Kyle Reese and Sarah/Kyle icons? There is an unmet need in my userphoto selection.

Thanks, peeps.

I am at Comic-Con.

If you are not alarmed, you have not been paying attention!

I am also two glasses of red wine, a very dry martini and one conversation with a lovely Brazilian oyster chef (don't ask because I didn't) up on the night - coherence is for squares.

Me.

San Diego Comic-Con.

If everyone gets out alive...

It will be a fucking miracle, y'all.

Dear Lord Jesus save me.

No, seriuosly.

I have bought plane tickets to California. I have hotel reservations (which I will have to either extend or sleep Sunday night in the SD airport but minor detail). I have booked time off work.

I appear to be going to Comic Con.

This cannot possibly end well...

When the fuck did I become a girl that needs At. Least. three pairs of shoes to go on vacation (regular, running and cute). When? When? Also: note to self - finally go and buy cute shoes.

PS - I am so finding time for the San Diego Zoo. NO. MATTER. WHAT.

liviapenn has made a Gender-Reversed NuTrek Picspam that is made of kittens and fields of puppies to roll in and never-ending series of your favourite unjustly cancelled TV show (DIAF, FOX).

No, really. It's that good.

Oh, participatory media - I had forgotten how much I love you and your near-endless capacity to rearrange and reassign meaning to conventional narratives.

When Shonda Rhimes concentrates, Grey's Anatomy can be really good.

The most interesting parts of my flist are leaving for Dreamwidth. I feel slightly like I'm standing at the jetty, watching the boat leave for Amerikay.

Southland wants to be... a good show. But it's really not. If they play a beat that I haven't seen before, I'll fall over in shock.

We have this article about how slash keeps the wimyns down (by way of cofax).

I've plumbed this particular argumentative vein before and in broad strokes, I agree with the author's - "Dissenter" - basic thesis that:

what slash writers are actually doing is merely recognising the homosocialism that exists in film and literature, as well as everywhere else in our society. To say they are drawing out a ‘gay subtext,’ and to attempt to attach revolutionary potential to this act is highly inaccurate, since homosocialism is one of the foundation stones of male supremacy, and fanfic authors who endorse and strengthen the homosocial relationships of male fictional characters by portraying them as homosexual are committing an act in support of patriarchy, not against it.

( Well, I don't exactly *heart* the slash either but... )

( Dude, fanfic is always about the characters that the author finds most interesting, *always* )

( Writing slash is about the characters not the sex )

( Obviously, she never watched Xena )

( Funny, as interesting female characters disappear, the amount of slash increases )

( Radical? I don't think that word means what you think it means )

( Should reading fanfic be a political act? )

The fact is that we live in a culture that has learned to monetize female competition. From Vogue to news coverage of Hilary Clinton, we live in an environment that not only encourages women to tear each other down but profits from it. There is nothing particularly radical or feminist in Dissenter's attack on female fan-culture, in tearing down the creative works of other women to raise the prestige of her own. It is at its heart the same anti-woman screed fans have heard from commentators who want to dismiss and devalue fanworks time and again. The ongoing marginalization of fan-culture and the characterization of fanworks as aberrant cannot, in my mind, be divorced from the predominantly female population of media fandom. For all her "radical feminist" reading of fanfiction, Dissenter is just one more woman supporting the patriarchy by tearing down other women.

In such an environment, is it any wonder that men - who need only compete with other men - continue to dominate the mainstream?

eta: as is common after I spend two hours marshalling my intellectual powers on a subject entirely not worthy of the effort, I realize that there's a much shorter version. To whit - irony much, beeyotch?