spearcarrier

The Iron Man movie

2008-05-07T03:45:41Z

Awesome. This movie is awesome. It also treats its female character, Pepper Pots, beautifully. At least in my opinion. In general, I will say that the movie does a wonderful job of making her a person in her own right and not just an extension of Tony Stark's entitlement complex.

in the middle of the movie, Tony Stark goes to an event. Pepper Pots is there in a pretty dress and everything, he asks her to dance, they go to the balcony and she tries to initiate a kiss. He does not reciprocate and goes to get her a drink. While below, he finds out that his company is actually double-dealing and selling weapons to terrorists. He leaves the party without telling her, and puts on his armor to go stop those terrorists who are using his weapons to terrorize a village.

At the end of the movie, he mentions he could use a girlfriend who is proud but also very worried and anxious for him every time that he goes out as a superhero, then mentions 'that night'. She responds, "Oh, you mean the night where you went to get me a drink and left me standing on the roof? All alone, all night?"

I love that part. She is essentially telling him that she is not an object, not just some poseable doll for him to fit into his life. She is a person and expects to be treated as such; when he hurts her, she will remember and react accordingly. Normally I'm very down on Marvel's stance on women, and I think that most of their work needs a lot of improvement from a feminist and equal rights viewpoint. But I'm incredibly happy over the relationship angle in this movie. So bravo, Marvel.

Inter-party conflict

2007-10-31T03:26:02Z

You know, I'm really starting to hate fighting with other characters in my tabletop games at this point.

There's the guy in D&D who's playing the cleric of a neutral evil lich-god, or the dread necromancer who wants to pretend that summoning skeletons and zombies and other forms of walking dead is not even a little icky and actionable by a chaotic good character. Or the person playing a djinni who's always made floating, unmotivated and undifferentiated characters, throwing lethal damage at another PC in Mutants and Masterminds. Or it's the guy in Champions who gets all the breaks by the GM, including special swords and rules breaks and victories in other people's backstories and has to get taken down because he promised said special sword to a devil and we have to stop him from giving it up.

I can't get through a single campaign without wanting to strangle someone. And what's worse is when it crosses over with OOC issues, like not wanting to kill another PC and thus having the conflict with the cleric and the necromancer drag out and become an acrimonious debate of alignments and behavior ethics. Or knowing that the person made the djinni to pull some variant of the excuse, "My character's not human, so she doesn't have to care what she does to other people." (Happened first session of the campaign.) Or feeling resentful of the GM and the character he so favors, then feeling guilty because I worry that's bleeding over into my character's IC excuse to beat him up.

I play games for escapism. I argue enough with people every day; co-workers over their incompetence, friends over their horrific taste for belonging to 4-chan, significant other over who has to clean the ferret cage next, and so forth. I don't want to escape into more fighting. I want to do something big and constructive and /useful/, as a team, without having to worry about tons of personality conflict to get in the way of achieving some neat goal. But instead all the games I'm in get stuck in a mire of argument and frustration. I play tabletop games with RL folks to enjoy myself, but every session I'm in of almost every game seems to get further and further away from that. Arghhh.

A Sadly Tilted Worldview

2007-09-27T04:18:40Z

Why, Madeleine L'Engle, why? Why does it have to be all about the blue eyes?
Of the Native American group that call themselves the 'People of the Wind', only the ones born with blue eyes (passed down from intermarriage with a Welsh prince) are taught the special mystical magical powerful poem. Only the ones born with blue eyes have magic, or the 'gift'. Only the Native Americans with a specific European feature inherited from that one ancestor are important or powerful at all, even within their own tribe. Brown eyes, the phenotype common to the people actually native to the area, are apparently inferior when compared to this outside, white person's marker.
I didn't notice that when I was younger. I almost wish I hadn't seen it now; the book was so lovely, but I can't get over the...insensitivy? racism? inherent in the 'blue eyes best' theme, and it spoils most of the book's joy.
It was such a beautiful, beautiful book...

AAAUUUGGGHHH!

2007-08-26T17:06:42Z

"Officer, I need to report an attack!"

"What's the problem, sir?"

"My respect for Robert Heinlein's work has been utterly violated."

"What was the name of the perpetrator?"

"'I Will Fear No Evil'. It-It was awful. It started out all right, if not great, and then things got ugly. Let's not teach the big black bodyguard how to read, even though there's enough time and money, because he's 'found his niche' as the rich old white man's bullet sponge. And of course, letting a man make all the decisions being positive and 'womanly'.

"Sir, you have been warned about the 'Dirty Old Man' zone. I know you thought you were prepared from visiting 'Friday' and 'To Sail Beyond the Sunset', but 'Time Enough for Love' is several blocks down even from those. There's much less in the way of safety measures; he didn't bother to proof his design or put in any alternate philosophical buttressing. Now, I realize being mugged for your sense of wonder can be upsetting, but I'm sure you can recover by visiting the McDevitt area, or perusing some of Andre Norton's memorials. And Sharon Shinn's opened her mountan retreats. Maybe you can even visit the Heinlein neighborhood again; just remember to stay out of the red-light district."

"I...I think I'll do that. Thank you, ma'am. It'll be all right, it will...it has to be. *sob*"

HI!

2007-08-14T16:25:26Z

You bring any vodka? :)