well behaved women rarely make history

shiegra @ 2009-11-06T22:43:00

2009-11-07T06:45:46Z

A-AWESOME

IT'S ALREADY OUT. HOW DID I NOT KNOW THIS.

On the other hand, I was watching it going 'I really hope Lola gets to do more' and she doesn't even appear once. **sulks**

This entry was originally posted at http://shiegra.dreamwidth.org/56677.html. Please comment there using OpenID.

history lesson!

2009-11-05T04:18:17Z

I have never read or seen the Dragon Ball, and yet when I saw a page about the history of Honolulu on their site (.gov and everything) that mentioned "King Kamehameha I, who conquered Oahu in a decisive battle..." my mind went straight there.

**shakes head** Internet fandom osmosis is no joke.

This entry was originally posted at http://shiegra.dreamwidth.org/56457.html. Please comment there using OpenID.

TRUE BLOOD

2009-11-04T06:42:58Z

I need to stop getting, like actually angry over the shit Allan Ball does to Charlaine Harris's books, but this just stirred up boiling anger that never left me.

Ball said the Vampire King of Mississippi is coming in season three. He provides a contrast to Sophie-Anne, the Vampire Queen of Louisiana (Evan Rachel Wood). “He’s older,” Ball said. “He’s much more mature. He’s much more methodical and grounded. She’s kind of crazy. To me, she’s kind of like Paris Hilton/Lindsay Lohan, where she has a very short attention span and she’s very, very egomaniacal and very self-obsessed and doesn’t really think about her actions, whereas the Vampire King is very much an adult. He has an agenda. He has things he wants to achieve. I think he’s much more formidable than she is.”

So basically, he took Sophie-Anne's character and gave it to a man. Who is, of course, this being True Blood, 'much more formidable.' And set her up to take a disastrous fall and have 'higher' vampire authorities PO'd at her.

I mean, he spends the entire second season undermining and sidelining Sookie--I'm not even mentioning Calypso being turned into Maryanne--and a fair amount of the first season too, so I'm not surprised, just frustrated all over again.

ALLAN BALL. SOOKIE DOES NOT NEED POWERS TO BE AWESOME. SHOVE OFF.

(Source.)

All I've been doing is complaining lately!

This entry was originally posted at http://shiegra.dreamwidth.org/56252.html. Please comment there using OpenID.

Merlin 2.06

2009-11-04T04:26:22Z

I'm not sure why Uther being an asshole is supposed to surprise/alarm/set off warning bells for anyone. So he indiscriminately murders his people, but they're shocked if he taxes them? He isn't acting any different than usual, beyond fawning over Sarah Parrish, who is actually kind of awesome.

ETA: Guys, I can't help but think that saying 'Uther is good king except for the whole magic thing!' is like saying, 'he's a good boyfriend except for the bit where he stabs me in the face when I breathe in the vicinity of another man!'

This entry was originally posted at http://shiegra.dreamwidth.org/55841.html. Please comment there using OpenID.

shiegra @ 2009-11-03T15:32:00

2009-11-03T23:35:14Z

On Hating Female Characters.

For a while now I’ve been thinking about how many readers seem to hate female characters more than they hate male. Or rather that the same behaviour from a male character is okay but someone inexcusable in a female.

NO KIDDING. I read and enjoyed this post a while back, but a link popped up on my flist, and I returned to it and decided in light of some recent comments I'd read that it needs to be sung from the rooftops.

She also has a very good post here: The Advantages of Being a White Writer Highly recommended.

This entry was originally posted at http://shiegra.dreamwidth.org/55794.html. Please comment there using OpenID.

shiegra @ 2009-11-03T12:30:00

2009-11-03T20:36:19Z

My Multi-Cultural class--a class that tries to teach the students to acknowledge/understand/fight racism, sexism, hetereosexism, ableism, classism (and on)--upsets me, badly.

I walk away from every class where I have to interact with my fellow students feeling indefinably sick, with a greasy, twisting knot of anxiety, dissatisfaction and unhappiness in my stomach. I trip over my words. I get upset over the issues and can't express myself properly, especially since my tendency is to shut down and fold inward when upset; they don't even listen to statements the teacher has made five seconds earlier, they're so convinced they're right, why would they listen to me?

I went to this class because I thought it would--I don't know, teach me, be a place for discussion, and I have learned and I'm glad for it, but I just.

I feel so awful and miserable and twisted up in knots almost every class.

This entry was originally posted at http://shiegra.dreamwidth.org/55328.html. Please comment there using OpenID.

D.GRAYMAN

2009-11-03T07:49:46Z

There's plot! There's plot threads coming together by way of answers! There's the strong potential for some actual resolution!

There's not enough Rinali.

This entry was originally posted at http://shiegra.dreamwidth.org/55254.html. Please comment there using OpenID.

shiegra @ 2009-11-02T22:52:00

2009-11-03T06:53:29Z

Well, uh.

I made some remark about smug villains/antagonists/anti heroes not being my thing. Then I accidentally watched a clip of Supernatural! Now smug heroes are so far beyond 'not my thing' it's a little alarming.

bleurgh, Dean Winchester, why such a misogynistic sack of shit

This entry was originally posted at http://shiegra.dreamwidth.org/54801.html. Please comment there using OpenID.

Sort of all around fail

2009-11-03T01:57:40Z

Wow I actually cannot believe Joss Whedon ever had the sheer gall to call himself a feminist. GUESS WHAT. YOU'RE NOT. END OF STORY.

Spoilers within, but they're warned for before they're reached.

I was remembering Nalini Singh's novella in her Angel's Blood series, one about Ashwini and the vampire she hunts on and off. In this, the angel--who is pretty much a carbon copy of Raphael--is treated the way a sane person would treat them. She's creeped out by his come-on, spooked, and hopes to interact with him as little as possible. At the time I didn't put much thought into it, but the only difference I can really come up with between the angel and archangel is that one--the one acknowledged as negative--is black.

Mm. Well.

This entry was originally posted at http://shiegra.dreamwidth.org/54705.html. Please comment there using OpenID.

shiegra @ 2009-11-02T05:40:00

2009-11-02T21:48:22Z

I was thinking about white privilege, and racism and all the -isms and the baggage that goes with it. On top of what I have as a white person, even as a girl and a feminist there have been and probably still are sexist views that I've subconsciously absorbed and not yet unearthed or examined.

A while back I was reading Anne Bishop and she made a remark about 'feminine' in her books. The quote is on my profile, I liked it so much, and it goes like this: "....the gist of it being whatever a woman enjoyed wearing was feminine and whatever she didn't enjoy wearing wasn't.""

And I had to reevaluate what I, a girl, thought of as feminine. I mean, what does feminine mean?

1. pertaining to a woman or girl: feminine beauty; feminine dress
....
4. belonging to the female sex; female

(I deleted the two between because, to be frank, they very demonstrably displayed the very cultural manipulation of roles that I'm complaining about.)

And what is our cultural view of 'feminine', especially in regards to clothing? Delicate. Pink. Satin. Lace. Frivolous. And what cultural image does all that feed into? The 'fragile' woman. The one that needs to be protected. She can't run in it, and it sure as hell isn't going to offer her any protection against the world. The one that needs the man to make decisions for her (frivolous, clothes as too important) and, for example, control her money.

So when you're talking about theoreticals, and societal views, and stereotypes and archetypes and tropes, fine. You can use feminine in that manner all you like. But what 'feminine' really means is 'female.'

And we can be whatever we damn well want to be.

This entry was originally posted at http://shiegra.dreamwidth.org/54478.html. Please comment there using OpenID.

HUH.

2009-11-02T00:22:42Z

On one hand: very pretty.

On the other: ooh, white men go into space, land on alien planet, either do a full-body 'blueface' or steal a native's body so they can gather intel on natives, and then make war. Oh, and a beautiful ~exotic~ native woman is involved in a starcrossed romance! Oh, and by doing this they 'fix' a disabled person.

I am feeling sour over this.

Especially after reading that this twit:

...is bragging about getting to use a whitewashed film about a Chinese-American martial artist and inventor as his vehicle. Here's what Tommy Zhou should actually look like:

FAIL DETECTED. If anyone's curious, it looks like the entire four-issue comic is online, completely legit at Drunkduck.com

This entry was originally posted at http://shiegra.dreamwidth.org/53689.html. Please comment there using OpenID.

shiegra @ 2009-10-31T23:44:00

2009-11-01T06:46:12Z

Y HALO THERE

Halloween was fun. I went trick or treating with three largely obnoxious boys, one of whom actually minded his behavior when asked to, and brought home about a truckload of candy. I wore fabulous facepaint--my mother drew it on--and wore a black velvet cape, so.

Fun.

This entry was originally posted at http://shiegra.dreamwidth.org/53266.html. Please comment there using OpenID.

shiegra @ 2009-10-30T14:25:00

2009-10-30T21:25:36Z

Worst Sexy Halloween Costumes

urgh urgh urgh

And the litany of people blaming a fifteen year old girl for being brutally assaulted while intoxicated has begun. I honestly didn't expect it in this particular case, which makes me too fucking stupid and idealistic for words.

This entry was originally posted at http://shiegra.dreamwidth.org/53089.html. Please comment there using OpenID.

Off Our Backs: a racist collective

2009-10-30T00:34:58Z

Oh good god.

The Demise of Off Our Backs

An examination--brief--of classism and racism--extensive--within a 'radical' feminist organization. The racism is awe inspiring to behold, fountaining up in a mess of hot, frothing entitlement, malice and prejudice.

Basically, a WOC calls the racist white women on their racism, and one explodes in messy rage, spiteful, appalling and horrifically racist and sexist language, and apparently is now seeking to bring charges against her. (Excerpts in the first link.)

I'm ashamed to know they call themselves feminists.

This entry was originally posted at http://shiegra.dreamwidth.org/52842.html. Please comment there using OpenID.

i am po'd. i often am after this class.

2009-10-29T20:52:35Z

One of--actually, a couple of--my female classmates today informed me that sexist romance novels were actually sexist against men, because they're portrayed as thinking with their dick.

Oh, yeah. Being portrayed as stronger, smarter, more capable, more important, more justified in all things and more deserving--and hey, not being portrayed as if only one of your gender (the one the man is interested in) is not evil!--and completely essential to any woman's happiness or feeling of completion in her life is so sexist! Gee, thanks for educating little ol' me.

(And yes, I know that--presumably--not all romance novels are that bad. But a frighteningly high percentage of them are jaw droppingly sexist.)

This entry was originally posted at http://shiegra.dreamwidth.org/52647.html. Please comment there using OpenID.

shiegra @ 2009-10-27T14:27:00

2009-10-27T21:33:27Z

A fifteen year old girl was sent to the hospital in critical condition after being gang-raped for two and a half hours. Fifteen people stood around, watched, and did nothing. Some joined in. She was only found--her life was only saved--because someone heard people bragging about it.

"As people announced over time that this was going on, more people came to see, and some actually participated," Gagan said.....The victim was found unconscious and "brutally assaulted" under a bench shortly before midnight Saturday, after police received a call from someone in the area who had overheard people at the assault scene "reminiscing about the incident."

...."This just gets worse and worse the more you dig into it," Gagan said. "It was like a horror movie after looking at the evidence. I can't believe not one person felt compelled to help her."

I don't have any commentary for this. I'm just full of pure hatred; rage and terror and concern.

This entry was originally posted at http://shiegra.dreamwidth.org/52439.html. Please comment there using OpenID.

shiegra @ 2009-10-27T07:33:00

2009-10-27T14:37:30Z

People are so astonishingly loath to admit their own culpability, even in an environment as constructive and undemanding as a classroom. (I'm sure I've suffered a kind of that reluctance in the past.) Are they simply so attached to their lofty perception of themselves as just and correct? The sheer ridiculous effrontery of a privileged person informing the oppressed that they are being 'over sensitive' if they note prejudice is almost hard to grasp. I'm left floundering as to how to speak to these people.

Can you really argue with someone who doesn't recognize logic?

This entry was originally posted at http://shiegra.dreamwidth.org/51977.html. Please comment there using OpenID.

Dark Angel fandom: EPIC FAIL

2009-10-26T21:54:23Z

Guys, Max spent ten years on the run, completely alone, constantly fighting life-or-death battles, constantly undercover, becoming an extremely competent cat burglar to provide for herself and defeating highly trained operatives at every turn to keep herself free.

Alec spends the same amount of time safely locked away, being brainwashed and doing drills.

What factor of this--besides misogyny--can even remotely be interpreted to mean 'oh yeah, he is totally and obviously so much better than her!' You know, besides one throwaway comment from a biased source whose ass Max kicks in a later episode.

To think that, after spending a great deal of time immersed in this fandom, I managed to emerge largely intact as a feminist before I even knew what a feminist was. I must have been raised right.

This entry was originally posted at http://shiegra.dreamwidth.org/51923.html. Please comment there using OpenID.

Julie Benz

2009-10-25T23:17:00Z

I've never even seen Dexter, and I laughed out loud.

This entry was originally posted at http://shiegra.dreamwidth.org/51510.html. Please comment there using OpenID.

shiegra @ 2009-10-21T12:39:00

2009-10-21T19:41:01Z

I am so unbelievably tired. I've been getting more sleep, not less! Body, what is up with this!

Also, I need to get out more, or all the stuff I've been reading and hearing about, the sheer ugliness of the things humans will do and say to each other, is going to knot and warp inside me and I'll shrivel and implode.

Emotionally, anyway.

This entry was originally posted at http://shiegra.dreamwidth.org/51413.html. Please comment there using OpenID.

I am well aware even the early books had flaws, but...

2009-10-21T19:28:46Z

I forgot how much I loved Anita Blake back in the day.

Back when she was a solid stone-cold badass, a professional and an Executioner who had no patience for enemies, squeamishness that endangered others, or ridiculous ~sex appeal~ vampires in general. The woman who promised she'd kill anyone who hurt her friends and never, ever bluffed. The woman who loved stuffed penguins, was a little too sarcastic for any hope of social graces, and was actually pretty well adjusted, all things considered. Confident, dangerous, with close and badass female friends and a love interest that knew he was less dangerous than her and didn't really mind.

Back when she honestly had no patience with overdressed vampires, and the author actually understood the meaning of consent and textually supported her, 'just 'cause I think you're hot doesn't mean I actually want you' stance. Because seriously? After so many romance novels with their 'if you find him attractive you're meant to be no matter how much of an ass he is!', that was really good to read.

I have most of her books right up to the brink and just a little over where L.K.Hamilton really goes downhill (her eyeroll worthy character derailment of Richard when she broke up with the man he was based off of started long before the full Shark Jumping) and nostalgia makes me sad. It's one thing to know a writer isn't going to be able to write more of a series you love, and an entirely different thing to know she's still writing them, but they have no actual resemblance to the ones I loved.

I've never found another female character that I love quite as much as Anita in the early days, nor any who were so convincingly ruthless, lethal and human at the same time.

This entry was originally posted at http://shiegra.dreamwidth.org/51181.html. Please comment there using OpenID.

Pairing Smushnames

2009-10-21T04:49:07Z

In further evidence that I am possibly the most immature newly-minted ~Adult~ ever, I cannot actually manage to say Sooric--even in my head--without stretching out the double vowel for, like, five seconds. I don't know! I can't stop! I don't know whether it's the softer consonent after the 'oooo' or just how hilariously awful the amalgam of names is, I cannot stop. I have the sense of humour of a five year old.

What spurred this little segue was getting a review--a quite nice one, actually--complimenting me on a story I'd written that apparently featured the pairing 'Bolivia.'

...what? For starters, the man in the pairing they refer to has a name starting with P. There are three men in the canon just off the top of my head with last names that start with B. THIS IS A LITTLE TOO UNSPECIFIC FOR MY TASTES. I mean, normally they're sort of ridiculous but on an unmistakeable level, if you know what I mean.

The only potential pairing names I can come up of in Blood Ties fandom sound sort of like STDs to me. If you know of any actual ones--sounding like an STD or not--please do not share.

This entry was originally posted at http://shiegra.dreamwidth.org/50916.html. Please comment there using OpenID.

Blood Ties

2009-10-21T03:35:37Z

You know, I love Vicki, but I really, really do not like Mike. His condescension, patronization--accusing her of lying--controlling habits and domineering attitude is just appalling.

Refusing to give her the keys to her office back? When this was obviously a repetition of her telling him she didn't want him to have them? I was staring open mouthed at the screen in horror. Abusing police resources on the basis of nothing more than jealousy? I don't care that he was right, he was way out of line. And telling her she has 'anger issues' because she doesn't roll over and play nice whenever he want to be a possessive prick?

God, I loathe him.

ETA: Also? He just lied to her face.

This entry was originally posted at http://shiegra.dreamwidth.org/50500.html. Please comment there using OpenID.

shiegra @ 2009-10-20T17:23:00

2009-10-21T00:29:05Z

Marjorie M. Liu on Roman Polanski: Forgive me (again) while I take a moment…

I've posted a barrage of posts on this issue, but this one was especially appreciated by me. Because people are actually saying, 'we shouldn't charge him because the victim has forgiven him!' Disregarding the fact that maybe she just doesn't want to give him an opportunity to make her life hellish all over again. And I would like this to be trumpeted from the rooftops:

Roman Polanski raped a child. Not if, maybe, or possibly—he did it. He did it, he did it, he did it. And then, like the coward son of a bitch he is, he fled the authorities.

Now, most people would say, “Wow, that’s horrific and unspeakable, and he should be punished for his crime. Not just because he hurt a young girl, but because he might do it again.“

Carolyn Jewel: Maybe you'll want to skip this post. Or not. Your Choice

I really thought we'd moved past the days when we blamed women for the violence committed against them. I really did. I didn't think anyone in America today could stand up and blame a 13 year old girl for the actions of a 43 year old man who gave her alcohol and drugs before he got around to having sex with her -- because, damn, she kept saying no!

This entry was originally posted at http://shiegra.dreamwidth.org/50192.html. Please comment there using OpenID.