domicile of the man-eating cape

Why the [blank]-as-other metaphor rarely works, part deux!

Thu, 08 Oct 2009 00:20:02 GMT

((ETA: added stuff about another plot arc that just came to mind.))

Now, before anyone gets the idea that certain authors are my darlings and are free from my bilious eye of scrutiny and death: they are not.

Because as much as I'm going to fangirl Kazuya Minekura's Saiyuki in this chunk, I'm also going to crit bits of it.

That said, if the idea of a little nobody dilettante like me criticizing a published author bothers you, don't read on.

Those of you who are interested, have an LJ cut! Big bad spoilers all the way to Reload 9 and beyond lurk here!

So. Saiyuki! The title is a pun! It has four bishounen in it! The wikipedia page is woefully stupid, but what else is new for wikipedia! The anime has epic filleritis! The Tokyopop translation is extremely middlin' and its take on the dialogue gained a lot of fratboy-homophobe nonsense for no reason I can discern! Hey! Why am I talking like Fred Milton?

Okay, now that I have all the nonsense out of my system (mostly), on with the srsbzns. Saiyuki has, thus far, two manga 'chunks' to its storyline. The first, titled just plain Saiyuki, covers how the crew got together, gives you a bunch of stuff on their pasts, shows you how they interact, and throws all kinds of villainy at then, from a Taoist-looking stalker shikigami to a crazy little !priest with a castle full of creepy toys to a noble youkai prince with one hell of a spazzy little sister -

That would be Kougaiji, incidentally. Kou is one of the 'good youkai' in that he's still sane and unaffected by the bizarre minus energy wave that's sweeping across the land and making a majority of the local youkai flip their shit and start attacking humans willy-nilly. There is also eating of humans, which is a big fat hairy taboo. (Kou's dad, Gyuumaou, got turned into a big damn rock for such tomfoolery). Kougaiji is not interested in humans, he just wants to save his also-currently-a-rock mommy. And he inspires massive loyalty in his subordinates by being plain awesome. We find out in Saiyuki Reload, the second manga chunk, that he has FANGIRLS... But I digress. Kougaiji is all-around awesome.

Unfortunately not all youkai come off as well. While Kou and his posse (Dokugakuji, Yaone and Lirin-the-spazzy-little-sister) are invariably nifty people, a lot of the grunt/redshirt youkai seem to be assholes in going about their mission to get the sutra off Sanzo and frag him. Even so, Sanzo, Hakkai, Gojyo and Goku comment on the sheer loyalty of these guys. There are also youkai who have lost their shit completely and just gone berserk killy-stabby-yay. it struck me as interesting that these youkai who have totally lost their minds are regarded with no small amount of sympathy by Sanzo and Co., none of whom have clean hands.

We discover in Reload that even the youkai who seem to go utterly around the twist sometimes come back to sanity through its rear entrance. Reload is also the series that deals more explicitly with the prejudice issue. In the Burial arcs - stories dealing with the charcaters' pasts - Banri, Gojyo's ex-roommate and fellow former street kid, brings up the topic of youkai power limiters (jewellery that makes youkai look human) and comments that there's never truly been peace and balance between humans and youkai in Togenkyo; humans look on youkai with suspicion. Now, anyone looking at BANRI with suspicion is smart, but then - ah - THEN we run into the 'Even a Worm' arc, and we meet Hazel.

Hazel is a bishop. He speaks with a Kyoto accent, he is bishounen, he is proper and fussy and very much Sanzo's foil, and he is the lens through which we really start to see the discrimination against youkai. There are hints about such things as early on as the arc with Rikudou/Shuuei waaaay back in volume 2 of the original series, but Hazel kicks it into high gear. Hazel, you see, hates youkai. Universally. Sane or non-sane doesn't matter; to Hazel a sane youkai is a walking, talking pointy eared ticking bomb scenario. Hazel would as soon have his bodyguard, Gato (or Gat, depending on how you want to romanize it) dispatch them with a quick head or heart shot than look at them. (Gato is much more open minded than Hazel, but has reasons for not arguing with the little bum.)

Hazel also does weird things with souls. He can, and does, use the souls of dispatched youkai to revive their human victims. Unfortunately said victims get as violent toward youkai as batshit youkai are toward everything. We can imagine how well this goes over when Sanzo's team is involved. Hakka, Gojyo and Goku are youkai AND human in various ways but Hazel's reanimated weirdos don't discriminate. Or maybe they do. Hazel sure does. ...I'm not funny. Anyhow, a one point Sanzo asks if Hazel could do his trick the other way, reviving a youkai with a human soul. Hazel's response, "Why would I want to do that?" goes over like a lead zeppelin for Sanzo.

Sanzo does not discriminate. To Sanzo, everybody is annoying. Hazel becomes doubly so for him when he ends up having to travel with the bishop in order to locate someone whom he reeeeally hates. Hazel knows where this man is, so Hazel must get followed. While the team is divided, both groups end up aorund the same area, though on opposite sides of a mountain range. On one side, where Hakkai, Gojyo and Goku end up, we have a desert climate and a town of youkai who are busting arse making a living. (Their city looks pueblo-like.) On te other, it's much less arid, and there's a big bustling town of humans who seem antsy about these youkai over there. Hazel is immediately sympathetic to their cause, and throws himself into protecting them.

When the spit hits the fan, guess who turns out to be the choad loaders? If you said 'the human side', BING. You are corright. They actively bait the youkai into attacking them, utterly massacre the attackers (or so they think), and then burn the youkai town to the ground when there's no one there to defend it. Hazel, to his credit, is appalled. It's a testament to Minekura's skill as an artist, the spread where Hazel sees the human casualties and youkai casualties (one side laid out respectfully, the other in a haphazard stack like cordwood) in the scene where he's asked to resurrect the human soldiers who died. Hazel looks completely horrified. This is, after all, HIS fault to a great extent. Whether he likes youkai or not, he's aided and abetted the killing of innocent people who weren't doing anything, and who were indeed the wronged party!

Sanzo's response; 'it took you long enough to clue in, dumbass.'

Ultimately, the human village gets theirs - the youkai start to overwhelm the human soldiers, and it's this chaos that Sanzo turns his back on and walks away from. It is not, after all, his fight. He's unusually PASSIVE in that arc, functioning mainly as the one who swings the cluebat to really drive the point home to Hazel. he doesn't attempt to stop Gato and Hazel's killing of straggling youkai, which begs the question: how come? Then again, COULD he have? When I first saw Gato, I made like UltraJMan: "Aw man he's huge. *pause*...HOLY CRAP, he IS freakin' huge!!" it's hard to say, in the end.

So. Why do I think Minekura's youkai work better than Harris and Whedon's attempts?

She does not explicitly set the youkai up as symbolic. The youkai are just that - they are their own 'other' group, they are not a stand-in for another 'other' (though they can be read that way). There is still the question of what the true nature of the youkai is - a lot of the ones who come back to sane now see humans as wolves see deer. So there IS that, but then - how DO wolves see deer? Well, as food. There's no malice, no specific targeting - humans are just really easy food. A predator goes for the easy pickins because that way there's no energy wasted and major injury sustained going after the difficult stuff. Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom: Togenkyo version. Also, the youkai aren't depicted as innately malicious. They're like humans: some nice, some assholes. When attacked, they retaliate. They can have close families or batshit ones. They can despise people, and they can definitely love. Kougaiji is not necessarily the exception to the rule. He's not one of the rare good apples - he's just Kougaiji. And there is pity on the part of the Sanzo party for the youkai who go batfuck; they will not truck with the needless killing of youkai who weren't doing anything.

So now another question: WHAT took Minekura so long, when it comes to addressing the human-youkai issue? I mean, the easy answer is pace of storytelling, but why wasn't it addressed a bit more often sooner? Rikudou (vol 2-3 or the original series) lives in a waking nightmare killing youkai wholesale to feed the miasma in the talisman on his chest - whether they're sane or not doesn't matter, he kills to feed it because the alternative is screaming agony. The regret, though, might be much worse than the pain. He DOES regret; while his talisman-possessed self spits out all kinds of venomous shit about dirty souls, the person Rikudou WAS utterly loathes that 'self' and is constantly pleading with it to just fuck off for a second. So there is that, and there is Gojyo's abject fucking FURY about what Kami-sama (7-9 original series) does to Kinkaku and Ginkaku, who are twin youkai kids. They're about six to ten years old, and Kinkaku is INCREDIBLY innocent. He's very naive, easily duped, and Kami just uses him until it's borng, then murders him. And Gojyo is livid. The first time someone leaves the quartet happens here - Gojyo goes alone to make Kami pay for that shit. So yes - Gojyo does not like the ill-treatment of the unfortunate. At all. But the issue of active shittiness directed at youkai is not addressed explicity until Hazel comes on the scene.

There are plenty of negative portrayals of youkai in the interim - Hyakuganmaou comes to mind, but again, his uh PROBLEMS are not directed solely at human women. Yaone works for Kougaiji because he intercepted her en route to Hyakuganmaou's joint. Cho Kanan isn't so lucky. (Saiyuki, like lot of shonen manga, suffers from occasionally-spotty protrayals of women.) Hyakuganmaou's son is NUTS, but growing up in that house I doubt he could have ended up any other way. Minekura's treatment of THAT issue impressed me, because the basic opinion of Yisou seems to be "Yeah he has a right to be pissed off, but what the FUCK man he's going WAY too far looking for revenge!" He is not absolved from blame - both he and Gonou are portrayed as batshit, and guilty of sin - but he is allowed to be angry at the loss he experienced. Yisou hated his father (he calls him a monster or bastard, depending on the translation, and he's not speaking in an ironic Hakkai-mimicking tone, there's no sign of that sort of a thing - you don't speak ill of the dead, but Yisou doesn't care, he HATED the man), but there were other family members who died. Wholesale massacre was not justifiable, and Hakkai doesn't pretend it is either. So yeah. Yisou is fantastically creepy and falls square into the Medea 'TOO FAR, DUDE' category of revenge plots. But he is not depicted as a natural-born monster. Something of a dick? Yes. But so is Gonou at that point. Whether or not someone becomes a monster is just as often depicted as a conscious choice.

There's another plot arc in which Sanzo and Co. come to a town run by a swindler of a taoist priest. We learn that the village occasionally sacrifices undesirables (or people like Sanzo and company) to the local youkai in return for going unharassed, and that sets up the same problem as did the fact that Kanan ended up dead because the villagers sent her to Hyakuganmaou - and did so because she and Gonou had no other family. Both are orphans. Kanan was an 'acceptable sacrifice'. What humans do to survive is not always savoury, and is definitely not depicted as such. Whether it's right or wrong, no one can say, and Minekura doesn't anvil us one way or the other. Although she does bring up the question; is there a such thing as acceptable sacrifice? While the youkai are willing to die for Kougaiji, we don't see them doing this in the desert. Water is scarce, but what little there is gets divvied out to everyone. So - what is 'acceptable' sacrifice?

Fascinating to me, though, is the interval in which Kougaiji's true nature is suppressed. Kougaiji's default mode is that of a compassionate, big-hearted sort of an utter badass who adores his family and would do anything for them. With his true nature suppressed, he becomes a cold, callous, pointlessly-violent asshole. How's THAT for a reversal. When I put this up against how Angel's portrayed, it's even more significant. Kougaiji is the 'other', and his true nature is compassionate. Dokugakuji and Yaone are the same - and Yaone, though she starts off iffy, blossoms into an AMAZING character. In another interesting reversal, it's Yaone who whaps Dokugakuji one when he starts babbling self-defeatedness after they meet suppressed!Kou. The WOMAN keeps it together.

I am digressing a lot. I think I'm trying to discuss too much at one time! Back to the quux of the matter. Minekura's portrayal of youkai works in ways that other authors' portrayals of supernatural beings as the 'other' does not because the youkai are not set up to be symbolic. Like Hazel says, youkai are youkai. They're not 'supposed to be' anything else. You can, if you wish, read them as something else, and at times it's hard not to. But at the end of the day, they're youkai. And they're not always wrong - sometimes they are the wronged. AND the question of 'true inner self' is answered quite well with Kougaiji. Anyone can be compassionate. Anyone can be cruel. Kougaiji, arguably the 'bad guy' (I call him the antagonist because he is; he's not 'bad' at all!), is a whole hell of a lot kinder to his subordinates than Sanzo EVER is. That's the final interesting reversal. Your heroes are sometimes blatant asses. Your opponents ain't.

In spite of its flaws*, I really do like Saiyuki. I can recognize the flaws and still enjoy it. so it is with a bunch of my friends and Whedon's stuff; I won't begrudge them that! I will NEVER read a Hamilton book, and Harris and Butcher unfortunately fell to the wayside of my fickle attention span, but plenty of people I know enjoy THOSE books and I'm not going to insult them for that.

But I will say this: if you're going to do something with a metaphorical 'other', don't use those four as your template? Please? XD

*For example: Sanzo IS very assholey to the scorpion youkai in volume 5 - though he's an asshole to everyone, that scene still makes me wince because we did not know until Minekura stated right out that the youkai is a crossdresser; while his tone is NOWHERE NEAR as transphobic as Tokyopop made it out to be, Sanzo's hugely catty comments about her makeup are way below the belt, even if they're just a means to an end and very typical Sanzo jabbing at cracks in armour. It;s significant, though, that Sanzo is not picking on Ranri for being gay. He never ONCE calls her any slur near 'fag' (the insult he uses, okama, implies a theatrical vegas drag queen) - he's picking on her for having bad makeup. Which is incredibly nasty to do to someone like Ranri. For all Sanzo knows, Ranri is a woman with bad makeup who thinks she's ugly, so that's where he targets. Still - yeah. Argh.

There aren't a lot of active female characters either. The incidental women in the early volumes are just that, and Yaone at first is very dull. I adore Lirin, but she rather quickly gets sidelined. Kanan and Gojyo's mother are dead before the story begins - they're part of backstory more than characters. Yeah. not - real awesome. A lot of shonen manga have that issue.

In spite of the issues, i do enjoy the mnga a LOT. I just enjoy it while aware of the issues.

Why the [blank]-as-other metaphor rarely works

Wed, 07 Oct 2009 13:48:10 GMT

((ETA: Until i can find conclusive evidence that Thomas has shagged with another guy, I'm baleeting that reference. The analogy still stands, though, with regard to perception - Thomas is a pretty boy ergo mistaken for gay, and that's another can of worms.))

The short answer: 99% of the time, authors are doin it rong. (Mostly because they're approaching from a privileged position and cannot see that they're doin it rong - and 'privileged' does not mean 'bad person' kaythanksbai. Nor does it mean 'possessed of a life that is always easy'.)

Of course that's just an extension of Sturgeon's Law, but anyhow. Let me break it down -

People do this with vampires a HELL of a lot and it never, ever, ever works that I've seen. Whedon tried it and failed; if Butcher was going for that, he failed; Hamilton failed. True Blood fails. Rice was not trying for that, so she gets spared my disdain for now. XD

Why does it fall apart so hard? Well - it's inevitably a minority of vampires depicted as being 'good guys'. If you are setting up your vampires as metaphorical gay guys or black guys or another marginalized group that society casts a lot of aspersion on...uh, yeah, we can see where this connection is going to become A Problem, right?

Mention of Angel, Thomas or say Jean-Claude doesn't change the fact that there's a huge flaw in the design. In the case of Angel and Thomas, there's a lot of faffing around about 'true nature' and it tends to come down on the side of 'these guys are monsters suppressing their natural BLAGRGHARBRBL urges and if you remove the stopgap you see their "true" selves' and oh, guys, NO. No, no, no, NO, no, NO. Jean doesn't come out any better - some of that is Hamilton's obvious stupidity abut French folks, but some of it is her issues about queer men.

Plus, she murders any chance she ever had at setting up that metaphor with Anita's wanky little 'oh people SAY vampires are just like us BUT I KNOW BETTER'. Hamilton's issues with her own ethnic background are ENORMOUS, however, and for her to fail@metaphor is therefore pretty much inevitable.

Charlaine Harris explicitly sets up the vampire thing as metaphor, more so than the Fanboy Duo above (and god are they fanboys, with all the good and bad that can entail), and hers dies for the same reason. The 'suppressed true nature' thing and all. Even a lot fo the 'good' vampires are morally shady, and I remember a rather disturbing scene in which Bill, just having been rescued from creepy torturers, just flips the hell out of Sookie and makes with the non-consensual nom and goes farther than that and - yeah. Can we see where using these guys as an explicit metaphor and then doing that is a problem? Plus there's a while whack of other issues lurking under the surface.

The things with Bill and Thomas come across as especially disingenuous (I almost said specious, but that has a connotation of sin-of-commission to me and I really don't think that Jim and Charlaine realize what they're doing - they are not BAD people but they ARE both het, cis, and white-euro, and if you fit into those categories then you aren't the subject of the BS directed at LGBTTQI, transgender/transexual, and having-of-melanin folk) because Harris draws explicit parallels between vampires and gay guys, and Thomas 'reads' as gay (which the hairdresser thing amps up a lot - this is another can of worms I won't get into). Now, considering what befalls both of them, the fact that they freak the motherfuck out is, to me, understandable. Torturing people does things that are very, very bad, okay? It's physical abuse specifically directed at causing mental harm (and inevitably administered by raving cocks, but we'll get into that later). Let me put it to you blunt-like: anyone can freak the fuck out under duress. Both Thomas and Bill freak out under duress, BUT since Thomas reads as a gay guy (some of this is because of an image he constructs, some of it is because he's a pretty well-dressed man et cetera) and since Bill is an explicit stand-in for queer guys...

...The depiction of them as breaking down becomes yet another implication that queer or not-uber-masculine men are 'less than real men': weaker in spirit and body, less morally sound, more easily moved to giving in to 'animal instinct' or whatever.

Again, it should be obvious where this is going to be A Problem. Again, I don't know if Butcher was going metaphorical or no, but the thing is - because vampire-as-metaphor is so common, it can pop into writing and interpretation whether the author realizes it or not.

Hamilton's fail in this is both more overt and less so. While she doesn't set up quite as obvious a metaphor as Harris and so on, she does have that 'inner nature' issue, a lot of morally sketchy vampires (this is sometimes depicted quite hypocritically; Anita gets away with a lot that other characters are condemned for, but she's a blatant Author's Darling and borderline idealized SI, so yeah) and a lot of her morally sketchy characters? They're queer. She has an especial problem with the Asshole/Crazy Lesbian failtrope (and seems to have a problem with lesbians full-stop - seriously, when every queer woman in your books is a jerk it kind of says something about your views, whether you mean it to or not - Hamilton probably doesn't even realize there's a big problem though; again this is a sin of omission and not comission), and any sex that isn't mostly-vanilla missionary with a man and woman seems to be depicted as morally suspect. Basically it's like 'gay sex is wrong but hot, BDSM is wrong but hot' etc. While Hamilton's making some effort at eliminating the durfurdehur about queer women, it feels like a token one at best.

I'm not even going to address the problems and issues that the character of Narcissus brings up. or the stupidity about how and why black people cannot become vampires in the Blakeverse.

Hell, all the authors I'm on about don't have the greatest record when it comes to REGULAR other-type folks in their work, never mind symbolic. Butcher for example - Joseph Listens-to-Wind is suitably badass and quite awesome, but he's also something of a Magical Native Guy (literally), and it's hard to tell whether the character is acting the trope in a tongue in cheek way or what. The Asian Paladin guy functioned as a Mr. Miyagi type, and he also died, which is annoying. The Red and Black Court vampires would be much, much hinkier if not for the presence of the third contingent (which doesn't totally alleviate things) - the Black court especially, since they really do fall into the same stereotypes that happened in Dracula about Eastern Europe and about its people. It's a subtrope of orientalism and the whole 'mysterious shadowy east'. The Reds seem to have a particular association with the Romance-language region, which bounces more off deep-rooted Puritanical notions about how Those Europeans Can Be. White Court has the problem of being associated with pr0n and queer sex and - yeah, it comes off looking like Hamilton's issues with non-vanilla. I doubt this was intended, but because of how society is - especially how the midwest is perceived to be - it starts to look funny.

Whedon really makes me facepalm hard since he's so active online and since he touts himself as this amazing feminist and equalitarian. Yet - he fucked up hard with the Dead Lesbian cliche and refused to cop to it. He is very obviously something of a weeaboo. He depicted a California with very few Latin@ folks in it at all, which is nonsense, and I can remember two black people, Kendra and Trick. Both of them cark it. Firefly is suspiciously free of Asian folks, and Shepherd Book flies dangerously close to the Magical Black Guy archetype. And the less said about Dollhouse the better. Whedon, if I can hear you getting an anime-boy nosebleed from here, you need to dial it the fuck back.

Hamilton's internalized prejudices about her own background (she and Anita have the same ancestry) and her issues with stereotype show up bigtime - the were-rats are Latin@. Yeah. I'll - leave it there.

Harris I am less familiar with, but other people whose opinions I trust have demanded to know what the chuffing fuck, so yeah.

Now, i am NOT saying these authors are horrible people or that no one may attempt this metaphor ever djkbdfsgghjdfg. I -am- saying that these authors are well-meaning but quite privileged folks who happen to have grown up in this society and picked up the same nonsense as we all do growing up in this society.

I'll stop this here and continue my ramble later, and talk some about Kazuya Minekura, who I think doesn't miss the boat as badly because of her execution of the trope, and the fact that the youkai are not METAPHORICAL, but literal. The prejudice is specifically anti-youkai, and that makes a lot of difference, but I gotta go to work so I'll address that later.

you little, little turd.

Mon, 05 Oct 2009 18:24:35 GMT

Hey, random customer.

I heard you and my boss chatting upstairs (lol my office is in the basement) and you seemed to be getting along fine. You were both amiable and joking aorund and the store seemed to ave what you were looking for, or at least something close, and you were going to tell your significant other -

- And then my boss, in response to your question about where he is from (which was kind of an 'uh' way to phrase it), said he was born in Tehran and his family bugged out to Canada when the spit hit the fan.

And you clammed up and got all evasive and monosyllabic and then borderline-rude, and left.

Now, I didn't care for you very much because of the implications associated with asking a brown guy with an accent where he's from (um, CANADA, right now - for all you know he could be 2nd or 3rd gen. Canuck, genius), but after THAT bullshit?

I reeeeally don't like you.

Way to be, you fucking assclown. Boss did not TMI you or say anything beyond 'yeah, I'm from here, my family left when everything went down the hole'. He wasn't rude, he wasn't pushy, he didn't bring up a verboten topic like politics or religion or hemorrhoids. But you, in your infinite assclownery, apparently decided that since he's Iranian you can't talk to him anymore or buy stuff from him?

You stupid, stupid nutsack. I really hope you did NOT just leave because you found out the nice guy you were talking to is OH EM GEE FROM IRAN.

Really hoping it was something else so I stop having this urge to bean you with a Nerf bat,
-E.

P.S. Maybe you missed that thing where Iran explod on account of election fuckery? Not everyone likes Ahmadinejad. The guy's a figurehead anyhow. And you know, if you'd asked my boss instead of making stupid assumptions, you'd know exactly how UNflattering his opinion of the current crew is.

You assclown.

To the individual who messaged me on LJ out of nowhere -

Thu, 23 Jul 2009 17:26:36 GMT

I do not respond personally to mail or IMs from people I do not know.

Mon, 01 Jun 2009 16:51:32 GMT

I think catchester may have fallen on her face a lot as a kid.

I just.

*facepalm.*

I don't even.

I mean.

Didn't joye get her ass whacked so hard she may still be orbiting Jupiter for that crap?

Also: wow, noob thingiee, you know fuck-naught about confidentiality laws.

Urh

Thu, 16 Apr 2009 03:56:35 GMT

Some days it's extremely apparent that I fail at neurotypicality. I don't think like 'regular' people; when I do, it's like speaking a second language. I don't parse things the same way, I don't express them the same way, and some days it's like there's always going to be this GULF between me and other people, because I do not think 'normally', and I never have.

I mean, my nonexistent social life throughout school up to post-secondary is screaming proof of that.

I'm learning to like my mind, weirdness and all, but some days it's just incredibly aggravating to know that no matter what I do, no matter how hard I try - and I try hard, I REALLY DAMN TRY HARD - and no matter what measures I take, I am 'them' and not 'us'.

I don't express myself normally, I don't read normally, I don't correlate and absorb and store normally.

I am not built, mentally, in the normal mould.

I can deal with the worst of it. I'm not going to use ADD as an excuse to be incredibly stupid, immature and short-sighted. I'm going to a counselor and basically learning how to think, all over again. I have to learn all over again how to respond to some stimuli, how to deal with myself. I have to learn to be fair with myself, over all, and it's hard.

Especially on days when I'm so convinced I'm going to be 'them' for the rest of my life because I seriously don't speak the same mental dialect or even language as most of the world.

It probably sucks eight times harder for people with AS. I'm very poor at parsing tone from text - extremely crashingly gong-show poor - and I'm bad at parsing tone and intent from spoken words face to face sometimes. I loathe the phone because I'm certain I will say the wrong thing, and disgust people. I am a princess of foot-in-mouth - though that's better than the empress i used to be. My tact is still sometimes sparse.

I got as far as I did before the explosion because I'm stubborn. XD My breaking point was when I was 25. On one hand I'm proud but on the other JESUSING CHRISTING HELLISH BALLS.

I dunno. I don't like the gaps between me and 'everyone else'. There are things I will never be able to do, and I'm only now coming to terms with the fact that this is the case but it is okay for that to be the case. I've got a couple of disabilities. One learning, one physical. They don't define my life or who I am, but they shape my interactions with reality to a great extent. Until gene therapy gets real real good, this is how it is. I have to be more careful with me than most people have to be with them.

And I'm not that bad off comparatively.

Iiii don't know. VIEWING THE INTERIOR OF MY NAVEL! :D

Sometimes, it just whacks me in the head, though.

...GAH

Sun, 29 Mar 2009 13:38:22 GMT

The sum total of a conversation I had on AIM last night -

Her: WELL I DON'T THINK IT'S RACIST
Me: That's nice, you're caucasian and so am I, we don't get to decide what's racist or not, you're being purposefully thick, knock it off.
Her: *I'm-a-victim flailing about how I called her racist*
Me: Yeah not so much. Further, *admittedly-needless sarcasm*
Her; *pissy snipey threatening*
Me: *yawn.* *blargh.* *attempt to clarify*
Her; *further explanation*
Me: Okay, that's cool there, but there's still issues.

And apparently I'm supposed to know psychically whether she is feeling ill.

She's the dingdong who came out of the blue flapping around about how she DOES NO THINK IT IS RACIST BAWWWW and she knows god DAMN well that (a) I don't agree with her on what constitutes racism (she labours under the misconception that it's all hatecrime, I think) and that I'm more radar-y about things (I'm not 'looking for it', and it doesn't matter how much you 'let it bother you', dammit), and (b) when she does this kind of thing, it cases problems.

Big ones.

We have done this dance before, ad last night I was clearly kind of b33r'd, so I don't know what the sam hell she's thinking.

I am literally yhe only person she has a spine arguing with. I honestly think she likes trying to argue with me. I wsh she'd get her vertebrae on elsewhere. I'm afraid that some day I'm seriously going to kick her ass, and she won't be able to take it. :/ Bt honest to GOD. She does things like this - she can't access the forum that an RP we're co-running is on and for MONTHS AND MONTHS does not tell me that she has Comcast and it fails at loading this, she canNOT confront poeple frankly about issues she has with their gaming, she feels sorry for herself half the time because she sees what she's doing but doesn't move to change her behaviours to solve an issue... and she thinks she wants to fight with me and that what - is it FUN to her or something!? It's like she wants me to eat her face.

When it comes to spine, and brains, I >>>>>>>>> her. I'm sorry, I sound like a dick, but it's true. She's smarter than me in some respects but when it comes to practical things, or dealing with matters outside her personal understanding -

(She pulled the 'well this one person of colour said they didn't have a problem' bollocks too. I asked her if she thought PoC were the Borg.)

She really doesn't GET things. She does not GET that white folks don't get to decide what's racist/problematic and what isn't. And she does not get that things can be done well in some respects, and fail in others.

I think most of her denial is a matter of fangiring Blizzard very hard and not wanting to have to feel guilty about playing their games on account of Issues.

I'm not here to dole out band-aids. And I don't know why I have to explain that jokes that work within her social circle might go over like a lead zeppelin outside of it, or that WHITE PEOPLE DO NOT GET TO DECIDE WHA IS FRIGGIN' RACIALLY FAIL because WE INVENTED THE RACIALLY FAILISH SHIT.

aaaaggrrggrhhghghhghghhh

...I don't know. I'm just exasperated that I got baited by this. I should have just gone 'yeah okay'. I don't know. I need to TRY to explain but when someone's actually being willingly thick - gah. GAH. Argh.

I dunno man. Progressives can still have e fail in many respects, and the answer isn't to go 'oh well it'll always be there' or 'oh what so we shouldn't ever write XYZ anymore'. The answer is to go 'well fuck, that was stupid of us to do, let's fix it.'

I don't know. I get that she's not in a great situation at home, blah, but why the HELL would you wanna fight with me? I'm kinda a jackass sometimes!

I dunno. I'm just - irritated. I'm annoyed that I got baited and I'm annoyed because I thought she had GROWN PAST THIS PASSIVE AGGRESSIVE SOPPY WHINEBALLING BULLCRAP THING OF DOOM.

Blah. Usually she is not bad, but she has a shit sense of how she comes across textually (I know damn well I can sound pretentious, and I try to alleviate that - ) and a shit sense of who is going to validate her or something.

I should have just linked her to the racefail link depot.

OMG!

Fri, 06 Mar 2009 01:40:07 GMT

'TIs Ashenmot'es birthday!

Happy birthday to you~, and may the next year be full of kitty shenanigans, herons, and other such wonderful photo opportunities. ♥

aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

Fri, 27 Feb 2009 13:34:25 GMT

why you do this?

And some mean little chunk of my mind is all like, "Ahh, I love the smell of internalized prejudice in the morning. it smells like Chee-tos funk."

I don't even know why you'd nghaaahh.

To keep this from tuning into THE WHINIEST JOURNAL EVOR, I am really damn enjoying playing CV!Dracula in the crackmobile RP of joyous doom. I mean REALLY. I haven't had this much fun since my principal game slowed wwwway the hell down (on account of someone being irresponsible as hell posting - and we can't really boot anyone becuse GAME IS SO TINY and everyone's plot-integral now) and I stopped having anyplace to be KH1!Ansem. (I'm Drac there too; he's a miniplot boss and OF COURSE the game has stalled like a stalling stallmonkey RRRRIGHT as we're about to destroy Shaft's face and then ascent to the keep...there's one guy who I don't even know how the ur-GM stood as long as she did, he's a decent enough PERSON but he's lacking common sense on a level that makes Leeroy Jenkins look like a deliberate and calm individual. it's really hard to work around someone who jumps in with both feet that hardcore, and at first he lacked the common sense to determine that 'freeform game = still abides by some RP rules' and powerplayed a LOT. He's improved, and learned, but it's still difficult for me to be sure he won't stry to do something potentially devastating or permanent to someone else's character, or have someone run into a cave full of wyverns yelling his head off - which would be IC for Zed, who is the only character he's consistently really good with. Decent guy, just kinda dumb ad, as a result, comes off extremely inconsiderate at times.

And sort of an airhead, which can be EXTREMELY entertaining - he's aware of his doofiness and is not en ego case at all - but I think he's hit a new record high. He has (I shit you not) forgotten where his characters are at the moment. He told me this, and I said, "Well, everyone running the castlecrashing miniplot is in the antechamber" - he says he forgets WHERE in the antechamber... It's not a very big room, dude, and the post history log is right THERE - I don't even know man. Maybe Zim took his brain? Maybe he's just nuts.

Ehn, I'll just tell him to put people wherever, it's kind of blindside-mayhemmy in there right now with Shafot hucking orbs around - oh god, there is no way to put that that isn't totally immature-snortcackle worthy - but seriously he's this little old priest of Drac, his name is Shaft, and he uses these green crystal ball things in battle. And he fails at dying. So the team has decided they're going to nail him with a cursed weapon (Fate/Stay Night Lancer's Gae Bolga and its causality-dicking effect) and then just WAIL on him until his regen ability burns out. he's not perma-dead, he seems to be prone o weaseling out of that, but he's going to retreat. oh yes he is.

If we ever GET there...

BUT I DIGRESS - I think I have a Thing about pansexual hedonistic scary noblemen. KH1!Ansem, Dracula, Walter Bernhard (whose name I have to consciously not drop a 't' onto the end of because I SWEAR HE IS SURNAMED AFTER SARAH BERNHARDT, it's the redheaded and extremely refined thing), Sydney Losstarot... Yeah. XD

Playing Dracula is fun. I kinda wanna see what happens if he and Kyl's Lestat get into a preening-nobility war...

*gratuitous icon*

An example of impossible -

Sun, 08 Feb 2009 16:12:05 GMT

1) Nailing Jell-O to a wall
2) Trying to explain privilege to BJR

I don't know why I'm trying, I just - don't. I think it's some lingering fear that someone will decide that ANYONE ANYWHERE EVER who admits to having some kind of mental 'er?' or learning disability is going to use it as a excuse to be a dickhead. And a hope that she'll someday Get it and thus not, you know, be forever known as the privileged dingbat target of all that is epic dogpile for eternity.

I WHINE A LOT IN THIS THING I AM REALLY SORRY uh. I'd start posting my dumbassed Castlevania fic here but I have no idea how it'd go over since it's mostly AU On Crack. But I don't woobify Dracula so I think I'm okay. XD

cool stuff is eeee.

Fri, 23 Jan 2009 13:32:11 GMT

do want D:

I am such a nerd~

more!

(as the running 'dracula commentary' of my imagination fires up and he begins to mutter that silver bullets are for werewolves, and since he is hardly a werewolf, firing silver bullets at him will only annoy him and quite possibly inspire an equally-unsociable response blah blah etc. yay for my brain and its nonsense.)

That fic critique discussion on _discuss spawned this longcat of a reply...

Sat, 20 Dec 2008 14:26:46 GMT

From this post came THIS BABBLE! I broke the comment limit, so I post it here!

***

I think that the very defensive attitude of some ficcers comes out of an inability to divide 'this part of your work is problematic' from 'you as a person are problematic'. There's a pervasive ridiculous idea in 'Western' culture about an artist's work being a reflection of their soooouuullll, which parses into 'art = artist', which leads to people getting extremely stung by critique.

Yes, there are flaming dingbats on the internet. And they are not confined to one particular group. And any given group is composed of individuals; no two feminists are exactly alike, and so on. The problem here lies with societal tendencies to use one person from a minority/unprivileged group as the representative of everyone FROM that group. (This is why the 'some of my best friends are X!' or 'my girlfriend doesn't say X!' or 'I'm a woman and X!' Yes, and while that may be the case, one woman or one PoC or one LGBTTQI person is not ALL OF THEM. Where's no hive mind. We are not the Borg.)

A lot of the time, out of any given group of characters, you only have one or two women, one or two PoC, and they function as spokespeople for the entirety of the group they represent. (The only place I haven't seen this happen with much frequency is the Star Trek series.) White cisgender straight guy characters are considered the default or the norm, and so they don't have this responsibility attached to them.

Wow, that ran the queen mother of tangents! Back to the main point I was trying to make: we equate the artist or writer's work with the artist or writer themsleves to an extent, and so someone who has not yet realised or been taught that a criticism of their work is NOT an attack on themselves will seriously feel that they are being told they are horrib;e people because, like anyone who lives in a society rife with such junk, they internalised some stereotypes, or didn't really think about how something could be a problem, or something. Most of it is not intentional. This doesn't mean the writer should go on, tra-la-la, huddled behind the defensive blankie of not-thinking-about-it. It means that since they weren't thinking this time, they ought to consider it next time.

If someone screws up in a marvellous fashion, and is called on it, the person saying 'hey, that's not on' is usually (a) someone who's surprised that a writer they like and who's usually good about such things suddeny facewalling, and (b) someone who is not telling them that they suck and should catch fire. Yes, people will tell you that you suck and should catch fire. There are entitled fen out there. I had to kickban someone from my FL at one point because she was so rude and vocal and condescending about what I did and didn't write; she didn't have anythhing of value to offer critique-wise, and she really did think that I as a fanfic writer was obligated to alter my work to exactly suit her tastes. She demanded that I not write somethig, and threw a fit when I said, 'Uh, at the risk of sounding six, you're not the boss of me. If you don't want to read my fic about [character who she associated so so deeply with her omgbff that it pained her soul to see them written in a way she didn't think was right (which was incidentally OOC)], why are you clicking the cuts anyhow?' She had a giant temper tantrum, and I finally ended up slapping her ass and ejecting her when she got rude to my friends.

She then came back anon to whine more under the guise of a truce, and I told her to get a new hobby pls.

So yes. There ARE entitled fen out there. If that woman hadn't been massively entitled and had given me crit to work with (instead of verbatim informing me that 'well, concrit is telling you I don't like it!' ...well, yes, maybe if you told me what was problematic instead of regaling me with stories about how much kinky sex you and your boyfriend had last week and using 'vanilla' as an insult, dood) I wouldn't have plonked her. Fortunately, the betas I have now are awesome, and if they tell me 'this is getting into stock/cliche territory' or 'this sounds kind of not great in this sense' then I know they're telling me this with my best interests in mind. They're not telling me I suck, they're telling me I messed up something in a fic. Mistakes are fixable.

I'm lucky, and went to an art university where it was cluebatted to me repeatedly that 'you are what you are, you are not what you drew or what you do for a living.' Do writers' opinions colour their work? Yep. Do they make mistakes? YEP! Do mistakes mean you suck? Nope, and you can learn from 'em! And they don't mean your very soul is all that is fail. I think that there are a lot of writers and artists who need to remember this.

...Good gravy, I run on and on, don't I. I hope that I'm not talking out of my butt here; I've just noticed the I AM MY ART, SDJHGDKHJGDAJ attitude making a resurgence lately and it's a thing.

Sat, 11 Oct 2008 15:36:29 GMT

GODDAMMIT DC.

Goddammit in the nostril.

Twice.

With pointy bits on.

As a member of Sep's Posse...

Fri, 05 Sep 2008 20:34:37 GMT

...I offer a cake that can be seen for MILES!

MIIIIIIILES, I tell you!

And a bonus flaming mutagen thingy.

goodnight sweet lady

Fri, 29 Aug 2008 15:37:13 GMT

For my Mir, who has probably in the hereafter gone up Muhammad's sleeve with Muezza.

At four-twenty-seven she called me to the door. She chose not to come in, but let me know she was there, and she was in Her Spot.

Goodnight.
We will meet anew Hereafter.

Until then, I will miss you every day. I am your person. This is your lap and your bed, in your house. I am yours, and I will take utmost care of me because I was so dear to you.

No cat can be your equal, for you were the most beautiful one in the world.

You did not ever allow me to mourn and be sorrowed alone. You saved me many times, and for that I love you, I love you so much more than I can ever give voice to.

Nine are your lives, and you spent them with us. We're blessed forever by that. My gratitude to you is vaster than the span of the universe. You're my Enkidu. I love you.

For I will consider my Cat Jeoffry.
For he is the servant of the Living God duly and daily serving him.
For at the first glance of the glory of God in the East he worships in his way.
For is this done by wreathing his body seven times round with elegant quickness.
For then he leaps up to catch the musk, which is the blessing of God upon his prayer.
For he rolls upon prank to work it in.
For having done duty and received blessing he begins to consider himself.
For this he performs in ten degrees.
For first he looks upon his fore-paws to see if they are clean.
For secondly he kicks up behind to clear away there.
For thirdly he works it upon stretch with the fore paws extended.
For fourthly he sharpens his paws by wood.
For fifthly he washes himself.
For Sixthly he rolls upon wash.
For Seventhly he fleas himself, that he may not be interrupted upon the beat.
For Eighthly he rubs himself against a post.
For Ninthly he looks up for his instructions.
For Tenthly he goes in quest of food.
For having consider'd God and himself he will consider his neighbour.
For if he meets another cat he will kiss her in kindness.
For when he takes his prey he plays with it to give it chance.
For one mouse in seven escapes by his dallying.
For when his day's work is done his business more properly begins.
For he keeps the Lord's watch in the night against the adversary.
For he counteracts the powers of darkness by his electrical skin and glaring eyes.
For he counteracts the Devil, who is death, by brisking about the life
For in his morning orisons he loves the sun and the sun loves him.
For he is of the tribe of Tiger.
For the Cherub Cat is a term of the Angel Tiger.
For he has the subtlety and hissing of a serpent, which in goodness he suppresses.
For he will not do destruction, if he is well-fed, neither will he spit without provocation.
For he purrs in thankfulness, when God tells him he's a good Cat.
For he is an instrument for the children to learn benevolence upon.
For every house is incompleat without him and a blessing is lacking in the spirit.
For the Lord commanded Moses concerning the cats at the departure of the Children of Israel from Egypt.
For every family had one cat at least in the bag.
For the English Cats are the best in Europe.
For he is the cleanest in the use of his fore-paws of any quadrupede.
For the dexterity of his defence is an instance of the love of God to him exceedingly.
For he is the quickest to his mark of any creature.
For he is tenacious of his point.
For he is a mixture of gravity and waggery.
For he knows that God is his Saviour.
For there is nothing sweeter than his peace when at rest.
For there is nothing brisker than his life when in motion.
For he is of the Lord's poor and so indeed is he called by benevolence perpetually -- Poor Jeoffry! poor Jeoffry! the rat has bit thy throat.
For I bless the name of the Lord Jesus that Jeoffry is better.
For the divine spirit comes about his body to sustain it in compleat cat.
For his tongue is exceeding pure so that it has in purity what it wants in musick.
For he is docile and can learn certain things.
For he can set up with gravity which is patience upon approbation.
For he can fetch and carry, which is patience in employment.
For he can jump over a stick which is patience upon proof positive.
For he can spraggle upon waggle at the word of command.
For he can jump from an eminence into his master's bosom.
For he can catch the cork and toss it again.
For he is hated by the hypocrite and miser.
For the former is affraid of detection.
For the latter refuses the charge.
For he camels his back to bear the first notion of business.
For he is good to think on, if a man would express himself neatly.
For he made a great figure in Egypt for his signal services.
For he killed the Icneumon-rat very pernicious by land.
For his ears are so acute that they sting again.
For from this proceeds the passing quickness of his attention.
For by stroaking of him I have found out electricity.
For I perceived God's light about him both wax and fire.
For the Electrical fire is the spiritual substance, which God sends from heaven to sustain the bodies both of man and beast.
For God has blessed him in the variety of his movements.
For, tho he cannot fly, he is an excellent clamberer.
For his motions upon the face of the earth are more than any other quadrupede.
For he can tread to all the measures upon the musick.
For he can swim for life.
For he can creep.

Excerpt from "Jubliate Agno," by Christopher Smart

Dear eroge artists-

Fri, 22 Aug 2008 11:10:54 GMT

Specifically, TypeMoon dudes -

Please don't motionblur the participants in a sex scene? I mean, I dig you guys for making sex look ENJOYABLE (participant making :3 face of bliss ninny = ecchan happy) and not getting into creepy noncon passed off as consensual, and being open and nonstupid about bisexual characters...but - the motion blur - it really makes it looks like the hero guy is vibrating.

Which is hilarious.

So uh yeah.

Hee hee hee the amazing vibrating Emiya. *snort*

-E

(I am such a nerd. I don't even play the games in question, I just gank CG packs because TypeMoon draws very hot men. i have a thing about Lancer. XD)

Snorfle!

Tue, 22 Jul 2008 11:51:10 GMT

So the bookstore near my work is having an oh-em-gee ~*midnight launch party*~ for the last Twilight book.

I have this urge to wander into the midst if the teenyboppers, fart with vigor, and exit stage right, because I'm mature that way.

gfhslkgfhs

Sun, 01 Jun 2008 14:48:20 GMT

st00bie=st00pid n00bie dfgjhksdfjgjdfg *choke splutter agh*

whuh

Wed, 28 May 2008 21:48:44 GMT

Why do people make posts about how much they don't care about things...? it seems counter-intuitive.

So I made a new icon!

Thu, 22 May 2008 00:05:57 GMT

That is all XD

I'm not quite sure what's more pathetic -

Mon, 19 May 2008 01:11:22 GMT

That the otakin woman genuinely thinks I stalk her and is willing to fabricate 'evidence' that 'proves' I do (MsScribe style) -

- Or that people are foolish enough to believe any of that bee ess.

I've discovered something weird.

Sat, 17 May 2008 18:26:58 GMT

I SUCK as lightweight characters on Wii games. MarioKart, SSBB - SUCK. I finally decided that Rosalina is my favourite racer, and my favourite puglist is -

Get this.

Ganon-freakin'-dorf.

He has an I SQUISH UR HED A LA MAGIQUE move, dude, what's not to glee for. And I can keep him from being EJECTED ITO THE WILD BLUE YONDER all the damn time which i could NOT do with others (damn you jigglypuff and miniLink).

Also, the only people crankier than him are
1) Solid Snake, and
2) Bowser.

It amuses me.

So, yeah, the tiny woman likes beating on people with the big bruiser of a klepto. lawl? XD

Also, Rosalina's little orbity star buddy is love.

OMG! SPACE!

Fri, 09 May 2008 23:46:27 GMT

Stephen Colbert yelling HAIL XENU to a really amused astronaut = MY DAY IS MADE

feh

Fri, 21 Mar 2008 18:18:43 GMT

Dear anti-whatever loudmouth yap-lipped twits:

Please do your 'not caring at all omg' at a lower decibel level, and farther away from me. Thxbai.

Oh, and kindly refrain from making stupid generalizations about others while complaining about things assumed of you? Pot, kettle, et cetera. Hypocrisy smells like cheese mould.

Boom shanka NOT,
Ecchan the Tea Deprived.

where is the tea oh god

Nostalgia meme wheeha!

Tue, 04 Mar 2008 00:55:25 GMT

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EDWSeFvIP5s Megaman 2 Wily Stage 1 theme. In Mariopaint. XD

(I can't dislodge the 'oku-sen-man!' lyrics from my head.)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oAfjMJNmyJ8 wish I could piano. XD I had Magnet Man's theme in my memory banks for about - oh lord - fifteen years or so without remembering what ti was from until someone tossed the OC Remix at my head. Ah, I remember it well - holding the Nintendo Power and watching Kim and Lyn fall down holes and die and swear at Protoman and... *sigh!*

Yeah XD