ajawrites

[ajawrites]

damn this was so shrewd of me actually

also ties in extremely well to this article i just wrote:

The narrative predetermines not only what information you receive, but how you interpret it and order it within the larger story. As Duncombe writes, “We understand our world less through reasoned deliberation of facts, and more through stories and symbols and metaphors.” Received in a community of devotees, such stories and symbols often morph into esoteric codes only true believers can see, from “Q drops” to signs that Louis Tomlinson’s baby is fake. And as with intensely held religious beliefs, such communities tend to double down on their beliefs once challenged or proven inaccurate rather than rethink them. In fandom communities where this happens, we see groups collectively rejecting a more measured version of reality in favor of intense conspiracy theories to support their big narratives, again and again and again and again and again.

^ in the link-outs in that last sentence, four of the five articles are about fandom conspiracies that evolved out of intense shipping, precisely because those priorities of validating their ship, just as i discussed in 2012, skewed the way shippers perceived objective reality and became a narrative they clung to with a zealous mentality, sometimes against all rationality.

why I don't need my ships to become canon

quick eta before plane flies: i absolutely am in favor of (esp slash) ships becoming canon, if it happens naturally and respectfully, & for fans to advocate for those ships. it is just that for me personally there is a huge difference between want and need, and that’s what i’m discussing.

boundary issues. the longer an open canon continues, the more parameters get placed around characterizations and what’s considered “canonical” or “in-character.” Same with ships. The closer a ship gets to canon, the more restrictions you have around how you can write it, if you care about canonical authenticity and accuracy, as many do.

narrative. i feel like it’s pretty rare that you find a slash ship like Hikaru and Akira in Hikaru no Go, where the entire narrative arc of the series is focused around the two coming together in the end. Usually, these two points of focus don’t coincide, and often what I want from a narrative and what I want from a ship within that narrative are two totally different things. If a ship becoming canon can change the shape of that narrative, if it would have to be shoehorned in to fit, or if it would somehow alter the point of the narrative, then I don’t want it to happen. Because ideally, I come to my ships through the narrative first, and fall in love with the pairing dynamics as a result of what the narrative gives me.

if the writers don’t love it / believe in it as much as i do, i don’t want it to happen. remember when Buffy/Spike finally became canon, and all the Buffy/Spike shippers who’d wanted that ship to happen were so long were OUTRAGED, because Marti Noxon hated that ship and wrote it in the unhealthiest way possible? I REMEMBER THAT, and I wasn’t even in that fandom. No, thank you. That kind of approach to a pairing, giving in because it’s what the fans want, is not what I want for my canons. 

and can the writer even write it better than we can, anyway? ahahaha, ask me if Christopher Nolan, who writes all his own movies, could write an A/E sequel to inception. HAHAHAHA, OR NO, DON’T ASK. Or, say, JK Rowling writing Harry/Hermione or Harry/Draco or Harry/Luna. SHE WOULD HAVE DONE A SHIT JOB OF ANY OF THESE THINGS, even though I gleaned all of those ships from her subtext anyway. She was not a very self-aware writer, in the end? And I want my ships to be written with self-awareness, especially in canon.

validation, who needs it? i don’t believe something being “more” or “less” canon provides more or less validation for my ship as real or special.  fandom operates entirely around the assumption that the author is dead, so why do we venerate the idea that the author lending credence to a ship somehow gives that ship a layer of superiority?

i’ve been burned too many times before to invest in a level of need that may well go unrewarded. This is both about personal ship preferences and about queerbaiting. I don’t get my hopes up. self-preservation, baby.

i don’t want my desire to read slash into everything to skew my overall view of/objectivity about the ship or the show. If my ship suddenly becomes problematic or unhealthy *cough* sherlock *cough* i don’t want my priority to be SHIPPING IT AT ALL COSTS. I want to be able to say, dude, I love this ship for what it gave me in the beginning, but the way it’s proceeding now? that is not what i want and not what I support.

i don’t believe that putting all my equality eggs in one slashy basket is the way to proliferate queer relationships on television / in the media / on film / anywhere else.  i believe that the way to get equality and representation in the media is to support all sexualities and genders, not to elevate one pairing to the extent of all other characters in my canon of choice. if i’m not invested in my OTP becoming canon, then i’m more able to look for ALL the queer possibilities in a text, and to talk about them, and to support them.  For instance, I feel like the attitude towards shipping in fandom these days is so intensely polarized that if Buffy were airing right now, the outrage over Spike/Xander not being canon would drown out ALL of the queer positivity established through Willow/Tara, Buffy/Faith and Spike/Angel subtext, Jonathan/Warren/Andrew, and later Buffy/Slayer chick whose name I forgot.  Like, that just makes me want to cry. WE CAN HAVE NICE THINGS but for me, personally, I don’t ever want those things to be wrapped up in canonicity in order to be important. And I don’t want them to get in the way of all the other things that are important about promoting queer characters in all my media, whether or not they’re my OTP.

i had more but now i have a plane to catch! :D

[ajawrites]

i know nothing about knitting but from what i can tell this looks like a very fitting new year's spread!

The "WTF?!" spread

I frequently do personalized spreads when I do readings, and I made a new fun tarot spread just now, thought I'd share if anyone else wants to use it! Feel free to credit me, or not, whatever!

[ajawrites]

Did the Tumblr purge of 2018 do more good than harm or vice versa? There's no denying many young people used this site and there were incidents, their protection is necessary. Bad actors were driven out but the benign mature community also lost a space.

Hi! While I think Wordpress acquiring Tumblr is an ultimate good, these types of purges historically don't accomplish much by way of protection and instead drive away marginalized communities seeking safe spaces for self-expression, as you noted. Sex positivity used to be a vital and core part of Tumblr culture; in the wake of the ban and the forced removal of many queer, exploratory, and sex-positive Tumblr accounts, Tumblr culture has — as i'm sure you've noticed — shifted towards puritanism and mistrust of anything overtly sexual, including sexual content and sexualized identity.

[ajawrites]

Highlights from 7 years at Vox!

I cannot believe it's been this long but here I am, just past my 7-year anniversary at Vox! I made a version of this post to celebrate my 3-year anniversary (in lieu of updating my portfolio, which still is woefully out of date), and i thought it might be fun to do it again!

So here is a retrospective of some of my favorite, most provocative, and most successful work from my last four years at Vox — an overview of everything from 2019 til now!

Articles that Poked at Bears:

Trans people deserve better journalism.

Is J.K. Rowling transphobic? Let’s let her speak for herself.

How many van Goghs is one Earth worth?

What the deepfake controversy about this Chinese actor says about conspiratorial thinking

Bridgerton has a rape scene, but it’s not treated like one

Why does Hillbilly Elegy feel so inauthentic and performative?

With “Dynamite,” BTS beat the US music industry at its own cheap game

Fave Reviews/Analysis:

The Chinese government’s unlikeliest standoff is with … fandom

Is Jeremy Strong the bad art friend?

One Good Thing: This Chinese dance show is the only thing I care about

The queering of Taylor Swift

The Untamed, streaming on Netflix, ripped my heart out and fed it to me. I can’t get enough.

Harry Potter and the author who failed us

Pixar’s Turning Red is an unlikely culture war battleground

The shadowy puzzle-box pleasures of Chinese spy thriller Hidden Blade

Pop Culture Deep Dives:

Why we can’t stop fighting about cancel culture

Conspiracy theories, explained

A history of “wokeness”

Why won’t American radio play more K-pop?

The delicate relationship between grief and fanfiction, explained by a psychologist

The internet’s most beloved fanfiction site is undergoing a reckoning

The right’s moral panic over “grooming” invokes age-old homophobia

Reports from the Hellscape:

Lil Nas X’s evil gay Satanic agenda, explained

Why the Depp-Heard trial is so much worse than you realize

How do you solve a problem like Joe Rogan?

How ’90s Christian radio enabled Rush Limbaugh’s toxic views

Revisiting the Christian fantasy novels that shaped decades of conservative hysteria

Kanye West’s antisemitic spiral, explained

The weird sorrow of losing Twitter

[ajawrites]

Not only are they having to deal with the emotional stress caused by the harassment, they’re still dealing with all of the things that make them marginalized, whether racism, transphobia, classism, whatever.

from an interview I gave to The Lily about 15 Minutes of Shame

I was pleased to be a guest commentator for the HBO documentary 15 Minutes of Shame, produced by Monica Lewinsky and directed by Catfish’s Max Joseph (who was amazing!)

[ajawrites]

I’m proving to be the world’s worst at updating my portfolio but I’m back, a year late, to add the fabulous BBC documentary short I got to do last year. Producer Sam Peach was kind enough to invite me to co-write and host the documentary as well as conduct interviews with the guests, and it was a great experience all around. Terrible context! But a great experience.

[ajawrites]

hi aja, i saw that you're going by they/them now in your author bios. i know it can be vulnerable to ask for different pronouns, so i hope people have been understanding about that. i will definitely make a note that you use they/them nowadays : )

Hi! Thanks for this note, that’s very sweet of you. I’ve been going by they/them for a while — I first asked my colleagues at Vox to refer to me as they/them and started putting they/them in bios etc at the beginning of 2018. But I have tried to remain lowkey about it, because I am pretty resigned to the fact that people will always see me as I look — as a frumpy fat woman, an earth mother — so I try to still allow for people to feminize me without it being a big deal.

It still fucks with me a little or a lot, though, so I really appreciate this! Thanks. :)

[ajawrites]

A bit late to the reblog, but thank you both for reading! <3

Great article by @ajawrites .

[ajawrites]

Oh, here’s another podcast appearance I did recently that I definitely wanted to ~memorialize~ on my very sporadically updated Tumblr portfolio: I sat down with the Keanu fans at the Cool Breeze podcast, where they have steadily been watching and analzying Keanu’s entire filmography, to discuss one of my favorite/least favorite Keanu films: the terrible jewel known as The Watcher. So many inexplicable directorial decisions! Such ambivalent pacing! Such terrible phoning-it-in acting from James Spader, who inexplicably took no flack for this film, while Keanu, who actually delivers a solid performance in context, took so much ragging! So much needless misogyny! So much inexplicable homoerotic killer/cop duality that ultimately goes nowhere because no one else besides Keanu will commit to the bit! 

I do love a good bad movie, and this is one I had a blast talking about. 

This all came about, btw, as a result of my unexpectedly popular Keanu Reeves explainer. Thanks, internet. <3

[ajawrites]

Got to talk to Sean about my latest explainer for Vox, the “OK Boomer” meme and why it’s not at all the dismissive ageist retort it’s been branded. I always so enjoy these conversations! And in this case I’ve really loved seeing people link the Vox article as a further retort in conversations where people are misunderstanding the meme!

Also, just because I like having them all in one place, here are all my other Today, Explained episodes, including THE GOLDEN STATE KILLER ep which apparently terrified several listeners, woot:

The Deep Fake — explaining deepfake technology and the rise of celebrity porn manipulation on Reddit)

Congress just broke the internet — a rundown on the pernicious implications of Fosta/Sesta for the internet

Golden State Killer Opens Pandora’s Box — in which I tell you a true campfire story about one of the country’s most terrifying and notorious serial killers.

Delete your account — in which I explain why internet trolls pursued public figures like James Gunn and Sarah Jeong in 2018.

Tumblr’s war on sex — why Tumblr’s adult content ban is about so much more than just porn.

[ajawrites]

Hi Aja, I just watched a Star Is Born and was so troubled by the story line direction and ending. I started googling for reviews and came across your review. I found it interesting and worthy of thought because your view and assessment of the movie was a location on the map that I didnt see at all. Would love to bounce my interpretation off of you.

Hi! 

For context, my review of a Star is Born argues that the film portrays Ally, the titular star, as a side character in her own life, next to Bradley Cooper’s character, who consistently ignores her when she tells him no or tries to assert her own autonomy, and wears her down until she gives in to whatever he wants.

Thanks for reading the piece, and, sure, feel free to message me your thoughts!

[ajawrites]

I just finished a completely amazing and intense two-week stint at the National Critics Institute, which is part of the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center’s slate of summer intensives designed to enrich and educate and diversify the world of the theatre and the performing and media arts. We spent the 2 weeks in a very focused cycle of attending and reviewing performances, shows, movies and even food across New England, and then workshopping and discussing our reviews with some of the greatest critics in the country. 

This year was the most competitive year in the NCI to date, which meant that I was profoundly grateful to be among some of the most fabulous and inspiring writers I’ve ever worked with. I’m so grateful to the NCI for choosing me to participate (and to Vox’s Constance Grady, who did the program last year, which is how I learned about it!), and especially to director Chris Jones for being so warm and thoughtful and encouraging every step of the way.

At one point I looked around and realized I was sitting in a room with Chris Jones, Eric Deggans, and Ben Brantley, getting feedback from all of them at once, and it’s just incredible to be gifted that kind of opportunity. I’ve learned so much from it, and I’ve come away with so much more confidence and ambition and belief in myself as a writer. 

To any of you who are interested in pursuing a career as a critic, I absolutely recommend this program and would be happy to speak to you more about it!

[ajawrites]

Highlights from 3 years at Vox!

I’ve been woefully remiss at updating my portfolio, but I thought it would be a great idea to put a retrospective here of some of my favorite, most provocative, and most successful work from my time at Vox thus far. 

Articles that Poked at Bears:

Hopepunk, explained 

A Star Is Born has a problem with consent.

YouTube’s most popular user amplified anti-Semitic rhetoric. Again.

S-Town is a stunning podcast. It probably shouldn't have been made.

Hamilton is fanfic, and its historical critics are totally missing the point.

Fave Reviews/Analysis:

Sexy Oklahoma!, explained

The Game of Thrones finale had a chance to break the wheel. It upheld the status quo.

Us’s big plot twist, explained

How Suspiria turns the color red into a plot point

Don't Breathe is one of the year's best horror films. It's an even better social allegory.

Sam Mendes’s The Ferryman balances rollicking family fun with a study of extremism

The Harry Potter universe still can't translate its gay subtext to text. It's a problem.

In remembering George Michael, don't forget the decades we spent shaming him.

Pop Culture Deep Dives:

The history of Satanic Panic in the US — and why it's not over yet

How K-pop became a global phenomenon

Pusha T vs. Drake: the long history of rap’s feud of the moment

Netflix’s re-translation of Neon Genesis Evangelion is drawing backlash for queer erasure

Janelle Monáe’s body of work is a masterpiece of modern science fiction

The secret behind internet erotica icon Chuck Tingle: his own life may be the best story he's ever written.

“Johny Johny Yes Papa”: the meme born from YouTube’s hellscape of kids’ videos, explained

How Ouija boards work. (Hint: It's not ghosts.)

Reports from the Hellscape:

The Leslie Jones hack is the flashpoint of the alt-right's escalating culture war

How the Christchurch shooter used memes to spread hate

How the alt-right uses trolling to confuse you into dismissing its ideology

How the alt-right’s sexism lures men into white supremacy

What a woman-led incel support group can teach us about men and mental health

Richard Spencer is an infamous white nationalist. Twitter says he’s not part of a hate group.

The fight to save net neutrality, explained

A new law intended to curb sex trafficking threatens the future of the internet.

Why Reddit’s face-swapping celebrity porn craze is a harbinger of dystopia

What Rick and Morty fans’ meltdown over McDonald’s Szechuan Sauce says about geek culture

[ajawrites]

Dan Harmon quit Twitter. James Gunn was fired by Disney. Sarah Silverman defended a nine-year-old joke about molestation. Vox’s Aja Romano explains why internet mobs are digging up celebrities’ old social media posts.

I really loved doing this interview regarding the recent trend of trying to “own” celebrities by digging up their old social media sins, and so I wanted to put it here!

Also just to note, I’ve really enjoyed all my interviews with Today, Explained — and here they are!

The Deep Fake — explaining deepfake technology and the rise of celebrity porn manipulation on Reddit)

Congress just broke the internet — a rundown on the pernicious implications of Fosta/Sesta for the internet

Golden State Killer Opens Pandora’s Box — in which I tell you a terrifying (true) campfire story about one of the country’s most terrifying and notorious serial killers.

Tumblr's war on sex — it’s so much more than just banning adult content.

[ajawrites]

No country takes its fluffy pop music more seriously than South Korea.

The other thing I meant to note is that Vox recently wonderfully packaged my guide to the growth and culture of K-Pop, which was a piece I really enjoyed writing and got lots of positive responses to. Plus, I got to showcase lots of fun and not-necessarily-mainstream K-pop groups and performers — like the recently debuted Holland, above. 

And I got to make gifs! I’m always happy when I get to make gifs. :D

[ajawrites]

Oh! And I was recently on Today, Explained, Vox’s awesome new podcast, to talk about the brave new world of Deepfakes. I loved doing this interview. Sean is an amazing host.

[ajawrites]

I have been so, so terrible about updating my portfolio (2017 was a beast), but I got asked today about whether my True/False presentation was online anywhere, and it reminded me that I needed to come talk about what an amazing time I had as a True/False 2018 Provocateur.  I met amazing people and saw incredible, profound films, and got to follow in the footsteps of heroes like Sarah Jeong, which was so incredibly flattering.

My provocation was about Harry Potter, and I don’t think it was recorded, so I am contemplating turning the slide show into a YouTube video and re-enacting it for anyone who’s interested. But as the image above —which I took from tumblr dot com — hilariously highlights, the Harry Potter fandom has evolved far away from J.K. Rowling on a number of points regarding intersectionality and diverse representation. My talk was about looking at the state of the fandom from multiple sides of a complicated situation, and hopefully both explaining how we got here to begin with, and discussing why this is all relevant for the political and cultural moment we’re in.

It was an extremely fun talk to do, and everyone was so wonderfully positive. I’m so grateful that I got to attend, and I definitely hope I can make it back to True/False at some point. What a great film fest.