"And then Tam Lin spends the last several verses transforming into a variety of problematic objects that Janet has to accept and love anyway before the magic finally leaves him and he becomes a naked man. Ladies and gents, may I introduce you to season3!Blaine. If one of the main themes of this season hasn’t been peeling the Blaine onion, I don’t know what the hell it’s been doing."

Talks about the structure of Glee and how it's not actually Dramatic Theater, but Epic Theater a la Brecht. Omg, this. is. perfect.

(And it's Glee, so of course the boy and the girl representing how the world thinks it's supposed to work are all kinds of miserable, and thus making everyone else miserable, and of course, of course, the archetypal boy and girl have their first storyline about pregnancy. Of course.)

"Some context: I'm Autistic/possessed of an extraordinary set of Bad Brains, and I work(ed) in an intensive special education classroom where 4/9 students had abusive parents and 1/3 were no longer with their biological families. I was told by the teachers that this was a typical ratio for this classroom. I consume and interpret media and entertainment in a context that often feels more like a war-zone. Probably this is why I like Glee." A beautiful piece of writing, and a provocative piece of meta.

UNIVERSE EXPLANATIONS, OMG. *CLINGS* Comics fandom, it is crazy.

In which there is a little headcanon/ficlet where movieverse Tony and Steve come to an understanding. I JUST CAN'T MY WHOLE BRAIN IS CRYING (IN ECSTASY).

"As the warm, pure-hearted crooner, Blaine becomes the perfect counterpart and love object for the more ambitious, complex Kurt and for fans."
.......
"Perhaps most unusual of all, Criss writes and performs songs from a female point of view even outside of the Blaine character. Criss composed the song “The Coolest Girl,” for the character of Hermione in a musical adaptation of Harry Potter. In concert, he often performs the song, asking the largely female audience to join in, since “I am not a girl, although I try to be sometimes.”

Just as Colfer provides a model for queer kids who have not yet been represented, so Criss provides an equally significant alternative model for queer straightness. Both performers, through Glee and beyond it, give voice to radically fluid adolescent masculinities that do indeed offer their audiences new ways to dream."

"In the narrative, Kurt transfers to Dalton Academy to escape bullying and joins the Warblers, an all-male a cappella group fronted by gay crooner Blaine. Musically, Glee also takes a big leap, shifting from exposing the homophobic, misogynist stigma surrounding male singing to actively shattering it and singing on its grave."

Going back and rereading all these is making my day. "But what I really love? Is that Blaine is a leader. And readily followed. And deeply insecure. And struggling with the consequences of talent and attention. And maybe it’s the blazer and my sense that I can understand the world of his part of the show more than I can understand the world of the other parts of the show .... But he knows he’s lucky. And he just grabs for things. It’s all there in “Raise Your Glass,” which is his victory moment after doing something he adores (singing) with someone he adores (Kurt, who is complex and remarkable in his own right). It’s glorious.

Most of us don’t get victory moments like Blaine’s on that stage. Not in front of a cheering crowd, not spurring every one of your friends on to more joy and awesomeness. But somehow we get let into that moment in “Original Song,” and it’s startling. It’s why musicals matter. Hell, it’s why music matters."

As much as I love this writer's fanfic, it doesn't hold a candle to what her meta makes me feel.

"Giving Kurt a “hero’s journey” on Glee was always going to be a daring choice, because he’s a gay kid and because he performs gay in the particular way he does. But to take a gay kid who the world too easily wants to read as weak and make him a magician — that is, someone with the power to change others and bend reality to his will — is a truly risky and starling choice. It makes Kurt powerful, threatening, and seductive. It normalizes his gender presentation through function (because in a dichotomous system magicianship requires a union of the genders and an ability to step outside that union); and it confronts, side-steps and perhaps even embodies Glee‘s awkward preoccupation with the “predatory gay” stereotype, with a sort of enviable power.

Kurt, like most of Glee‘s main characters, has another year in Lima, but his season two arc shows us that he’s already gotten out."

WOAH, AWESOME. "This leaves Snape’s Doe patronus as a startling anomaly for which we have no clue within the text on how to decode. In thinking about this, I kept trying to look at the way the daemons work in His Dark Materials – same sex demons only occur in gay individuals – what does a same sex patronus mean? Is it representative of great sexual or romantic love? Is it symptomatic of Snape’s profound covetousness of the woman he can’t have? Is it an expression of grief? Or, does it ultimately emphasize Snape’s feminine characteristics and underscore both Snape’s identification with, and the reader’s identification of Snape with, the feminine within the Harry Potter series?"

Everything about this article is perfection. 

THEY LOOK AT EACH OTHER WITH THEIR FACES AND IT IS GLORIOUS. Love me some incoherent picspam/metaranting!

In which JGL from 10 Things is JGL from Inception. LOLOLOL.

The many parallels between Never Been Kissed and Original Song. Eeeeeeeeeeee.

Danny and Steve are married. M A R R I E D. And this primer proves it.

Yuuuusss, somebody pointing out that Arthur is not a completely fastidious dresser and frequently even rolls his sleeves up (which I find hotter than a fully decked-out 3 piece suit, anyway). Awesome picspam/meta post is awesome.

case for top!arthur. approved.

Everything about this post jives with my conception of JGL as a person and I approve.

"There is this terrible knack possessed by the writers and production staff of Merlin that make it incredibly entertaining to watch even while the little rational voice in your head is telling you how truly terrible it is. I haven't experienced this level of cognitive dissonance about a show in ever, really. I mean I've watched dumb shows, and I've watched utterly compelling shows, but I've never watched a show that managed to be this level of both at once. It's frankly baffling to me. " LOL EVERYTHING I EVER TRIED TO EXPRESS ABOUT MERLIN BUT COULDN'T FIND THE WORDS, CONVENIENTLY SQUEEZED INTO ONE PARAGRAPH.

"My thought is: 'Holy shit, these poor kids - they are filling the Labyrinth-shaped hole in their lives and they don't even know it!'

...not that Edward and Jacob and co would ever dream of jumping around singing and dancing with muppets, obviously - they're all far too cool for school and much too emo, as far as I can gather. But that whole adolescent fervour for a fabulous, otherworldly romance between a girl on the cusp of womanhood and the Really Quite Unsuitable powerful-and-sparkly older man with way too much hair product, who's all sexy and intense and kind of a powerful bad boy but totally undone by her? Yeah, okay, guilty as charged for fangirling the living shit out of that dynamic between Jareth and Sarah.

Only LABYRINTH IS A GAZILLION TIMES BETTER, obviously, because..." AND THEN PROCEEDS ONE OF THE AWESOMEST LISTS TO EVER AWESOME UP LABYRINTH EVER.

SERIOUSLY, INCEPTION FANDOM, THIS IS HOW TOTEMS WORK. MAKE THIS GENERAL FANON KNOWLEDGE ALREADY: "So this is how totems work: if Arthur were to roll his weighted die in Yusuf's city dream, the laws of physics would work as Yusuf subconsciously expects, based on experience - the actual weight of the die does not bias its roll, because Yusuf doesn't know the die is weighted and thus rigged. Hence he has a 1/6th chance of getting any number, and knows this is a dream.

Based on that, I'd argue most totems seem to be based on this kind of physical principle - the weight of Ariadne's bishop (any chess player knows how *terribly* those little buggers roll when you drop them, they don't stay there)."

OOOOOOER.

Some very interesting meta on Doctor Who S5 and Moffat's Who in general, and Moffat's portrayal of women in general, and then of the Library arc in particular.

Interesting conception of the fandom's reaction to Ariadne that I appreciated because seriously, all the Ariadne hate out there is just DEEPLY CONFUSING TO ME. Basically, the post outlines how the characters would have been seen differently if Ariadne was a boy and Arthur was a girl. AND IT'S SO SPOT ON.

The beginnings of a ship manifesto that I was pretty much a-ok with. I think the writing of the finale was weaker than Pru makes it out to be, but the sentiment behind it made it through the muck somehow and crawled out with a gut-punch ending, and it's the sentiment that's sketched here to brilliant effect.

Really, really compelling meta commentary for a really, really compelling vid. It doesn't really hit its stride until it gets to the verse by verse commentary, but when it gets there, it is ON.

It's all a dream theory tied in nicely to it's a film about film theory. Both strengthened by their relation to each other.

Yet more Inception as metaphor for film meta, and hey, I totally missed the meaning in Eames' name. Also, just noting, if someone was gonna ask my opinion on this interpretation stance, it would look more like this article than "in praise of inception."

"I honestly think the movie is such a hit because it gives audiences exactly the kind of action spectacles that they like, framed in a story that doesn't make them feel like they have to turn off their brains to enjoy the action. The savvy of that filmmaking approach can't be overstated." Response to In Praise of Inception

Very interesting take on the Inception as a metaphor for film-making interpretation.

Pretty much, yes, exactly.

Jack Sparrow is nasty. He is a mess that isn't hot. And if you don't believe me, let this epicepicepic hilarious picspam convince you.

Cas is a badass and sometimes fandom forgets that. Well, no longer!

Agreed.

Why this show works. (The answer is "because it's awesome.")

In one way, I really liked this post because it hit a lot of the major points that I picked up on in the show. I also see Dean as bisexual--although I don't see him as "out" like this girl does--for all of these reasons and more. I didn't really appreciate the Sam/Dean bias, but I could see where she was coming from and her analysis of Sex & Violence really rang true for me in a lot of ways. BUT this post failed to bring up Castiel, and his absolute absence from this post seems to be a conscious avoidance. This annoyed me and made me retroactively change my opinion of the overall post from general agreement to what I might have to characterize as grudge-fueled skepticism. Seriously, either take off the tin hat, or represent all the tin hats. Only keeping your own on makes your argument seem suspicious.

Dean and Cas' relationship in S4, recounted in chat/lolspeak.

Woah, kind of awesome.

In which the entire Supernatural universe is gender-flipped. OH MY GOD, AWESOME.

This series of contests is already awesome. (Part 1, Sam and Dean memoir titles: "Dean: Life of Pie" hahahaHAAAA.)

Invisible knapsack! Two great Internet phenoms that taste great together.

Awesome!!!!

HAHAHAHAHAHA. "SPIRIT OF CORNELIUS SIGAN: I am… returned. I AM…RETURNED! I AM MAKING A COMPLETE MOCKERY OUT OF GETTING MERLIN ARRESTED IN THE LAST SCENE! ATTACK, MY UNIMPRESSIVE SPECIAL EFFECTS! FLAP ABOUT A LITTLE, MY EVIL GARGOYLES! ATTACK! ATTACK! LATER I WILL UNLEASH SOME OF THE MAGIC I’M FAMOUS FOR HAVING, MAYBE! FOR NOW, LET MINOR PROPERTY DAMAGE BE THE HARBINGER OF THEIR DOOOOOM!" See also, "GAIUS: You must press the reset button on your relationship with the dragon under the castle. Make the kissy face if you must. MERLIN: But I had this whole speech! I swore he’d never see daylight, that I’d never speak to him again! He even did a next-season hook by calling out to Morganna, as if ushering her down the path of darkness and actually having a character instead of just a bizarre accent. You can’t make me undo all that! Please! Gaius! We’re not Voyager! GAIUS: Merlin… MERLIN: I know. Sigh. I have no choice. Or free will. Or backbone."

John Watson is a BAMF, don't you ever forget!

In which a reporter shadows Tony for a year after "the" press conference and we see the article that results. This was so, so good, I can't even believe it. A powerful piece that flies right out of the land of amazing meta-fanfic and right into the land of thought-provoking commentary on American sociology, the global climate, and the power of insightful journalism. I'm sitting here stunned.

Oh, boys.

This was a really insightful look at the Twlight backlash and how it isn't just how bad the series is, but how girly it is. She totally has a point.

Fandoms = drugs, guys. We all know it, but this girl has got the breakdown. Fandoms not included in tags: Firefly, SGA, Smallville.

Flowchart on the women in Supernatural, plus other hilarious things. "The family car, a 67 Chevy Impala, is the coolest thing on the show by a factor of four million. It survives despite being possessed by a ghost, stolen several times, crashed twice, and also beaten up by Dean in a fit of rage, after which the car claimed that she'd just driven into a wall, and that Dean just gets angry sometimes."

Love me some graphs.

The Lovesong of J. Anonymous Fandomer. Canon hates fandom and yet we're still here. I love this article for many reasons, and they all have to do with the BBC.

Haha, funny and also well done recap. "Many laughs at Merlin's rope trick. I shall refrain from asking WHY he happens to know a spell that apparently means 'come over here and get into my trousers'."

Here is Elizah Jane come to rain on our rainy gender studies parade with her sunshine and aggressive optimism re:5x09.

HAHAHAHA. A very moving treatise.

Thoughts thoughts thoughts. I learned some stuff from this, more than I thought I would.

Awesome Cas meta.

You know, I wasn't paying this much attention to the promo pics, but this just goes to show that this season is basically being written by fangirls. And they're doing an awesome job.

"Yeah, I feel like it's pretty much an uphill battle with that one. I see Merlin and Gwen getting together every morning to compare notes, like, 'All right, yesterday he forgot we were married and kept calling me "hey you", so we need to work on that.'"

OMG THIS THIS THIS THIS. Seriously.

5x01. Look at those faces!

See all of my thoughts on this episode, except written in a much more coherent frame of mind.

Awesome early S4 shipping meta. "Dean confessed to Sam at the end of Wishful Thinking that he remembers everything about Hell, that it's all there in his memory, all the time. Does he remember right up to the very, very end of his time there? When a warrior angel fought its way to him, perhaps? Being Dean, he surely would've had something to say in that moment. 'Don't tell me. You're Luke Skywalker and you're here to rescue me? Aren't you a little short for a stormtrooper?'"

CUTEST STORY EVER, INDEED. FIVE YEAR OLD SHIPPER. YES. "Kirk loves Spock, and that is a fact, and it's not gross, so shut up."

Yesssssss. Dean is growing up!

My fave season 5 opener review, hands down. I'M SO GLAD I'M NOT THE ONLY ONE MAKING LITTLE MERMAID CONNECTIONS IN MY HEAD.

Twitter mini-summaries of S4 and the S4 finale. For example, on the finale: "bros before hos."

Mannnnnn, this is well done.

I really need to reread this, like, four months ago.

YESSSSS. Man, I wish this article existed last fall when we did Dracula in my Victorian Lit class. Everything we tried to say in our classes on that book and the vampire phenom in general are arranged eloquently in this op-ed piece.