FREE-FOR-ALL META COMMENT-A-THON

[upupa_epops]

Old news: lj is dead. Everyone is crazy busy, or they have other reasons not to be here. No one has time to read those huge meta posts we used to write once upon a time. But maybe we can all find ten minutes to do this:

FREE-FOR-ALL META COMMENT-A-THON!

Comments

[wheatear]

Any fandom, Rule 63 (switching the guys to girls and vice versa): how would this affect the characters, their relationships, and the way viewers react to them

[wheatear]

Im not sure if you're familiar with Community, but there's been some discussion of how the relationships'd be received if the characters' sexes were different:

http://community-anon.livejournal.com/4970.html?thread=21130602#t21130602

And general talk about fan-casting and what attributes would change and/or stay the same:

http://community-anon.livejournal.com/4970.html?thread=21132138#t21132138

[wheatear]

I'm not, but I'm sure there will be others who appreciate this! \o/

[ghanimasun]

Thank you for the links, anon!

[wheatear]

Orphan Black, what do the characters' different reactions to finding out they're clones say about them, and what does it say about how society views women

[mikomichan]

I don't feel at all qualified to write meta, but I finished watching Orphan Black a couple of days ago and have an urgent need to talk to someone about it!

One thing the show seems very vested in is the whole nature vs. nurture idea. We can't help but be shaped by our surroundings to some degree, and our five women (I'm not counting Katja in on this because we know so little about her) all have distinctly different backgrounds. So while I feel like a lot of how they react to news of being part of the "clone club" is reflective of their personalities, that in turn is also somewhat reflective of their upbringing and circumstances. So going chronologically...

Poor Beth. We can only infer from what other characters have said that she was slowly losing her mind over being a clone. She was the first one Katja reached out to and she went into Detective Beth investigation mode, running her facial recognition software to find Kosima and Alison. And from there she sort of seemed to play a major role in "clone club". By being a police officer

[mikomichan]

Cosima seems to have approached the clone-revelation like a mystery she wants to solve or a code she wants to crack, and even though she understands the very serious implications for herself and the other women, she's at the same time totally fascinated by it. She clearly has a very secure sense of self, she knows who she is and is very comfortable with that, so I'd imagine she had a very positive, open-minded, and supportive upbringing with parents that really loved her and encouraged (or pushed!) her into wanting to explore and learn. I don't think she feels at all defined by being a clone the way that Alison and Beth seem to, if that makes sense? And she is clearly the most well-equipped to deal with it in terms of knowledge (all over that with a PhD in evolutionary development) and emotional stability (actively seeking out her monitor vs everyone else, even if that sortakinda backfired on her).

Alison is very, very insecure and tries to combat that with the appearance of a perfect suburban life that she has complete control over

[mikomichan]

Sarah wasn't raised with a family in the traditional sense, and it sounds like she had a really rough and tumble life with very little guidance before Mrs. S and Felix, and then continued on a path of self-destruction even with them. With very few exceptions (Felix and Kira), she sees herself as lone wolf, capable of taking care of herself through her own street smarts and charisma. She's never had real structure in her life and never really had an authority figure she could fully depend on (one can argue Mrs. S, but clearly that was always a contentious relationship) so when she learns the truth, it's pretty much "I need to run from this, everyone for themselves, I am only here for me and mine" knee-jerk reaction she's had all her life. While obviously a mind-blowing, discomfiting bit of news, I think Sarah is like Cosima in that she's very secure in her own individualism, in who she is. And maybe that isn't someone who has the greatest morals or the kind of person you can really trust, but even if she has no clue where she comes

[wheatear]

The Vampire Diaries, let's speculate about what Tatia might have been like compared to Katherine and Elena

[wheatear]

Any fandom, pick daemons for the characters and explain your choices (in His Dark Materials, characters' souls take animal form)

[magisterequitum]

I've done TVD for this and actually spend far too much of my time thinking about daemons in the TVD verse, especially how vampires and their daemons behave. (here's a tumblr post: (http://kirkwoodisinoregon.tumblr.com/post/49033134309/hi-i-just-wanna-say-that-youve-inspired-me-to-read) and then i've written elejah fic actually for them with daemons (http://archiveofourown.org/works/817367... )

[wheatear]

Ah, I read your fic! :D I love anything written with daemons, and that was lovely.

I've thought about daemons in TVD as well and had some different ideas: I imagine that vampires wouldn't have daemons because they do literally die, so their daemon vanishes. It's a much more cruel and overt way of showing that vampires are lacking a part of themselves somehow, so it makes more sense that they would mourn their humanity.

[magisterequitum]

Ahh thank you! i'm glad you liked it.

See I've wondered about that too! That was actually my original thought for vampires, that you just lost your daemon. And imagine the brutal awakening that would be, to lose part of yourself and you can never get it back. And having to look at others and seeing them with their daemons. That alone makes me want to cry.

But then I thought that would make it harder for any vampire to be out in public? Because they would instantly be known as being "bad" or "wrong" without a daemon.

[wheatear]

Sci-fi fandoms: do sci-fi shows tend to present an atheistic or theistic universe? Discuss the differences.

[eilowyn]

Really quick

[wheatear]

Star Wars vs Star Trek is probably the ultimate comparison here. I'm not so familiar with Star Trek, but I agree completely about Star Wars. Star Wars is a very moral universe and a very mystical one as well. Sci-fi that includes mystical aspects is more likely to have religious overtones.

[beer_good_foamy]

This is a very interesting question. I guess there are (at least) two ways of looking at it:

1) Whether or not there are gods in the story. Which gets muddled a lot since sci-fi is full of examples of Shermer's Third Law - "Any sufficiently advanced extraterrestrial intelligence is indistinguishable from a god." Where do you draw the line there, how do you define "god" when there are multiple and varying levels of "exaltedness", for lack of a better word? Are the beings in 2001 gods? Are the aesir in Thor just aliens? When the Magratheans in Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy create heaven and earth, are they gods or just overpaid architects? The Doctor in Doctor Who are often referred to and even worshipped as a god, and as an effectively immortal member of a race far beyond human capabilities he might as well be. Yet The Doctor also goes out of his way to never accept a mystical explanation (even if he sometimes finds himself making up technobabble just so he doesn't have to call it magic). Everything is science to him, things may be