trishna87 said: idk if you’ve noticed my spoiler tag post but I’ve been tagging non show spoilery posts with the corresponding book.. like for Asos it’s been tagged with ASoSBookSpoilers. maybe GoT book fans should tag ONLY with “Game of Thrones Books” or something?

It would be nice. I don’t think we can count on people to do that though, frankly. it’s come up a lot and I think people automatically tag stuff with ‘Game of Thrones’ so it’s almost futile to fight it. I usually tag stuff with the book name in the rare instance that I’m discussing a future book, but I’ve probably slipped up before. It’s easy to do.

So I’m thinking using a tag like “Unsullied Fandom” might work for avoiding the annoyance altogether. At the very least I could use it if no one else wants to, but obviously a busier tag is more fun. (Just plain “Unsullied” would be a problem with too many actual-Unsullied posts this season so it needs a modifier somehow.)

If anyone’s got a better suggestion for tag names, I’m all ears.

rambling on being a woman in internet fandom 

“Public space has traditionally been an entirely male sphere. It’s only recently that this has begun to change. But, like street harassment and the threat of violence that give it its suppressive power, namely rape and physical assault, this kind of online abuse is largely tolerated. Having an opinion, as Laurie Penny put it, is the “short skirt of the Internet.” And, like harassment, women are supposed to quietly adapt. “Grow a thick skin!” “Just ignore it!” “Don’t read comments!”  We’re suppose to pretend that these digital incivilities are gender-neutral  and unrelated to other behaviors meant to keep women silent. They are not. A 2006 study found that chat room participants with obviously female names were 25 times as likely to be the targets of sexually explicit, threatening and malicious messages.”

“…this isn’t about censoring people, it’s about changing norms for what is acceptable. This speech online, whether in random blog comments, on Twitter or on Facebook, is no different than the same speech taking place in homes, street corners, schools, cable television, locker rooms every day. Online harassment is just a technology-enabled take on long-held ideas that women are public property, to be commented on and criticized, publicly shamed and held up for abuse as an example.  Confronting it in this space has to happen as we confront it in all the others.”

-quotes from “The Digital Safety Gap and the Online Harassment of Women” by Soraya Chemaly

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An ex-boyfriend introduced me to the series. My love for the books obviously lasted a lot longer than my affection for him. I don’t remember any more when exactly it was. Years and years ago, before I was ever married and had a kid and moved around the country. It’s funny, I’m a different person completely now than I was when I started the books.

My top favorite characters: of the POVs, I’ve always loved Tyrion, Arya, Jon, Sam, Jaime, Brienne, and on rereading, I’ve got new love for Sansa, Cat, Cersei and even Davos. Realizing now that I’m a parent what it meant for him to send four sons into battle for his king, and to lose them all. My favorites shift based on mood. I love any scene with Littlefinger and/or Varys.

Least favorite- probably the obvious choices like Gregor Clegane and Joffrey. Ramsay Bolton, though he is an incredible villain. Joffrey has fewer villainous deeds to his name, and he is a kid, but man, he gets under the skin. I think it’s because we spend so much time with him in the books. I dislike Victarion Greyjoy. Not impressed with him. I don’t have many characters I don’t enjoy. I mean we’re supposed to dislike them, so that’s good I guess. :)

It means that if you’re writing a post (or created a macro/graphic/whatever) about a character that is just hate or rudeness about them, don’t tag the post with the character name. People track tags and read them because they are fans of a character. It makes fandom a little more pleasant if people respect this etiquette. I should say that analysis of a show and character that is not totally flattering does not qualify as “hate.” It’s okay to not love a character and to discuss the show and to want to share your thoughts with other people. But if it’s just, “OMG Cat is such a biatch for being mean to Jon,” then don’t tag the post to Catelyn tags.

When fandoms complain about minor delays, I just remember

and

and then I

tags: #lol #fandom

thegrassthathidestheviper:

we need this so

tags: #patriarchy #fandom #polls

downtheroadandupthehill:

Officially doing my capstone paper on women in Game of Thrones, specifically the controversial ones—Cersei, Catelyn, and Sansa, at the very least—and how patriarchal values influence how the fandom at large tends to loathe them. Though that last part might be hard for citations, etc, so we shall see.

As part of the project we have to maintain a blog about it, and I’ll link that once I start posting there, if anyone is interested.

As far as the fandom loathing part and citations, you could use this: Top 15 Hated Characters Poll, conducted at Tower of the Hand. Cersei, Catelyn and Lysa ranked higher in hate than some truly terrible male characters.

There’s also the Top 30 Characters Poll where Jaime and Sandor Clegane rank above Ned and Dany, among others.

The best way to deal with fandom feels is to share them with others so the pain is divided up into pieces like pie.

tags: #so very true #fandom #especially this week #analysis doesn't mean you hate something

“Why do you have to pick it apart? Why can’t you just enjoy it?” 

abbyforth:

raptorific:

I’ve seen this a lot. It’s a criticism I get very often, and I’m pretty sure I’ve heard people asking the same basic question of Eli, V, Broegan, Nadiyah, Caitlin, and Kai and a whole host of other bloggers, especially when talking about the Hunger Games.

Here’s basically how it goes. Someone will explore a theme in a book or movie or TV show. They’ll examine a character, their actions, their characteristics, and their flaws. They’ll describe the merits and problems with a story. Inevitably, though, they’ll get some variation of the same message. “Why do you have to pick it apart? Why can’t you just enjoy it?”

This whole line of reasoning baffles me. How do you guys enjoy something without picking it apart? Do y’all just jam a hamburger in your mouth in one bite without bothering to taste it? When you go to a museum, do you just look at each thing for half a second, shout “SAW IT,” and move to the next thing without taking a second to observe?

Take this whole Gale business from the past few days. People have been saying I’m a bad fan, that I’m “hating on Gale,” and it always comes back to the same question: “why can’t you just enjoy it?” The thing is, I can and I am. The only way I can enjoy Gale’s character is it I examine it. Liking someone as a person and liking someone as a character are two entirely different things, and the only way I can like someone as a character is if I examine their motivations and their actions.

Because the thing is, if you’re not thinking about what you’re reading, if you are not gaining something from the experience, then there is no point in reading.

So when I’m “picking it apart,” that is how I enjoy it. I hate to see this criticism being thrown about because it implies the harder you think about something, the less you enjoy it, and if enjoyment can only be found by refraining from thinking about anything, then I don’t want enjoyment.

Yup, yup, and yup. This is true for every fandom. 

And “Why do you have to pick it apart? Why can’t you just enjoy it?” is so often followed by, “Just stop reading/watching it then if you’re unhappy with something.”

Some stats 

Bear with me, I do have a point here!

These gender stats are taken from my youtube channel (Stevethepirate78) which contains only Game of Thrones-related videos- mostly the character featurettes from last year and the HBOGo extra videos that come out every week. Not many casual-only GoT fans bother watching the small hbogo vids, in my experience.

My first post on tumblr over a year ago was a screencap of gender stats of viewers of a popular upload. It was of a particular preview vid, but the 28% female/72% male split was pretty typical of all the other videos I had at the time.

I checked a few months later, don’t remember if I screencapped it, but the percentage of female viewers of the videos had increased to approximately 40% across the board. Some videos spike even higher with female viewership, like the ones for Khal Drogo and Jon Snow. But consistently, I saw a 60% M/40% W split.

This is the gender demographic info I took today, and it covers all 181 short videos, with a total of almost 2.5 million views. This is merely a sampling of GoT fans, but I think the sample size and unique viewings number (meaning according to youtube, one girl is not watching the same video a 100 times) is large enough to make a few general conclusions.

Still approx. 60% men, 40% female. The reason I’m pointing this out is that I get really tired of journalists and critics behaving as though women are this tiny portion of our fandom. There are more men than woman, true, but not by a whole lot. I just wanted to reiterate that we aren’t this small, easily ignored portion of the Game of Thrones fanbase. Sometimes it’s easy to think, ‘Well I guess writers, producers and reviewers don’t cater to women as much because the majority of the people watching are guys,” but that’s bullshit.

(Okay technically 60% is a majority, but you know what I’m saying.)