I followed a link to Accidental Dong tonight, a blog with has pictures of unintentionally penis-shaped things. And it was pretty funny and I was thinking of reposting the link.

Until I came to this entry with a photo of Caster Semenya, where apparently the "joke" is that she didn't know she was intersex, so she must have an "accidental dong". There's even someone in comments who refers to her as "she" in quotation marks.

What the fuck, people? I feel sick.

A bunch of "original slash" authors getting their panties in a twist that their romances aren't elligible for a Lambda literary award if they themselves are not queer.

I especially love the first comment: "[A]nyone who wins this year can be snug in the fact that they had no competition". Because no queer people write books about queer people! And they certainly couldn't be good books. (Not as good as those slash romances, that's for sure!)

They go on and on about how horrible it is, so discriminatory towards straight people! Look, I'm pretty sure there are other awards that are focused on minorities representing their experience. It's nothing new, and it's not discrimination.

ETA: Apparently people are also upset that the awards were not originally for queer writers only, but for any work of fiction about queer characters. I hypothesised that they probably felt no reason to specify since before the rise of original slash, most writers of queer fiction were queer. It seems I'm right. Look at this snippet:

given the perilous place we find ourselves in with our drastically changed market conditions. We also took into consideration the despair of our own writers when a heterosexual writer, who has written a fine book about us, wins a Lambda Award

The landscape of queer fiction has changed dramatically with the rise of original slash, much of which (like slash) is written by straight women. A minority space is being taken over by a majority. It is not discriminatory to take steps to change that.

In a shocking turn of events, a white boy is cast to play a Chinese-American superhero.

Tommy Zhou is a martial artist and inventor who was was raised by his Shanghainese grandfather in Honolulu Chinatown. And there's massive amounts of Chinese culture and imagery all over the comic, and ingrained into the plot itself.

So we have a lead character who was designed from the ground-up to be an Asian-American superhero. And the the perfect person to play him is a Caucasian Disney Channel star.

While there can be no excuses of "it's a fantasy world" or "but all anime characters look white anyway" this time, there are already defenders saying "he's not white, he's Italian" and "it's just a movie".

So. Much. Hate.

I hear people complain about the misogyny in Death Note a lot, but to be honest, I didn't really have a problem reading it. I hated the way Misa was portrayed, and I'm sure there was skeevy stuff with the reporter, but it's been so long I don't remember. So it could be that I just wasn't reading as critically at the time or that it was stuff that didn't push my buttons in the same way the stuff in Bakuman does.

But oh my God, Bakuman. I like the story of struggling mangakas and would probably still follow it even if I wasn't scanlating it, but. Almost every chapter makes me want to stab Oba Tsugumi in the face and the most recent one, chapter 52, was particularly egregious.

( Spoilery rant. )

If you're going to comment about how none of these things are problematic or sexist and I'm reading too much into it and being unreasonable, go ahead, but don't be surprised when I don't answer your comment.

This is an interesting article about a thirteen-year-old boy who used a walkman for a week instead of his iPod. He didn't realise at first that tapes had a second side! D: But while it's tempting to laugh at him for being stupid...why would he automatically know that? If he has been exposed to tapes at all, it's probably been VHS tapes...which have only one side. But really, at thirteen, he has probably only been exposed to DVDs, CDs, and intangible media.

*

This is a good post about sizeism, springing from discussion of a fic written for spn_j2_bigbang. I saw the story when it was first posted and the summary was enough to make me want to stay far, far away. It was about Jensen being really fat and being sent to a fat camp sort of place, where he meets Jared, a trainer, and loses weight and falls in love. Oh yeah, and he's a thirty-year-old virgin. And he's in really bad health. And the reason he's fat is because he stuffs his face all day and is lazy and never exercises.

Yeah...that sounds awesome. But of course it was a huge hit.

The idea that fat people would be thin if only they exercised and didn't eat so much is so pervasive, but it's just not true. Skinny people are not necessarily skinny because they don't eat much, or because they eat healthy food, or because they exercise all the time. Sure, some do those things. So do fat people.

I have been fat almost all my life. I have also been very active most of my life. When I was a kid, I rode my bike everywhere. When I was in high school I played sports (and still rode my bike all the time). When I was in college I walked a lot and rode my bike (UCLA is built on a mountain; going to school there will guarantee you a lot of exercise). Through it all, I was in great shape, but was still fat, and not just a little fat, but "obese". The only time I have not got a lot of exercise is the ten years or so that Bruce and I had a car. You know what happened then? I got out of shape. Being out of shape is not the same as being fat. Being in shape is not the same as being thin.

Now that we don't have a car anymore and are walking a lot again (we are now walking an average of three miles a day, and the better shape we get in, the longer our walks are getting), guess what? I am in so much better shape. I have also this past year or so made it a goal to eat healthier, and have been keeping to it really well. I have never eaten a lot. When we have family meals, I am always the one who eats the least, less than both fat and thin relatives. I only eat when I'm hungry, not for "comfort eating" or because I'm bored. I drink water almost exclusively.

Despite all this, while Bruce has lost about thirty pounds, I've lost maybe five or six. I exercise a lot and eat well, but am still over a hundred pounds overweight.

Of course I would love to be thin. I would love to just weigh less than I do now, even if I never got actually thin or "normal" weight. But I am not going to go on a diet, because diets are the worst thing for you.

And I resent the idea that I should starve myself because if I only ate less I wouldn't be fat! Eating healthy food isn't enough. Eating only enough to fill my stomach and stop it from hurting isn't enough. I'm really not fit to even eat at all. That's the message that it sends when people say all you have to do to lose weight is eat less.

*

But enough ranting. Now for some of those interview meme questions.

From helens78:

( click! )

From mikotokun:

( click! )

And from bell:

( click! )

1. We have not heard from Patricia Wrede, author of the faily book in question, herself, only from her defenders (mainly Lois McMaster Bujold). I have wondered idly what her reaction would be like. I know nothing of the woman, having never even heard of her until this, but if this quote from her when she was writing the book is anything to go by, I'm thinking she probably won't react well.

I responded on the thread itself, but I'll post my comment here as well:

Good to know that Native Americans are nothing more than a "problem" to be "eliminated", that the task of, as Alo said, writing them as people was beyond her, that she felt she had no choice (her hands were tied, folks!) but to write them as one tired stereotype or another. Apparently she found the stereotyped roles allowed "Aphrikans" to be more palatable.

And the "right feel"? What was the "right feel"? That white settlers were awesome and singlehandedly turned this (empty) country into a prosperous nation? Was there not a single thought going through this woman's head other than "squee! megafauna!!!1111!!!"?

I just...seriously? I keep going back to the words "eliminating the problem". Eliminating the problem. How could someone say those words without any self-awareness? (And I am still giving her the benefit of the doubt that it's just massive cluelessness.) This is text communication. You can choose your words more carefully than you might in the middle of an oral conversation. You have time to think about what you're saying. And you still choose to use words that call to mind the act of actual genocide while contemplating your planned textual genocide?

Really?

2. So I have been watching as Bujold continues to dig herself deeper and deeper. Others have discussed the fail inherent in insisting that those who claim to be Native American are suspect, that only those with money to give to charity are truly concerned with social justice, that it is somehow surprising that Native Americans know how to use the internet, that there are more than enough Native Americans alive today, so what happened in the past doesn't matter, etc. etc. so I will just focus on this:

Note that while the assessment is still negative, it is more nuanced -- and, in this case through a donation of time and attention, an opinion that has earned its right to be regarded.

Once again, it's put forth that it's invalid to have an opinion about something unless you have seen or read it yourself. Now, yes, there are times when people do get hysterical over things via second-hand misinformation, but just because some people believe crazy rumors about Harry Potter books that could be easily disproved by actually reading them doesn't mean that no one should ever form an opinion based on a review of something they haven't read (or seen) themselves. People do this all the time! That's why reviews exist! No one has time to read and watch everything. We are all always forming opinions based on something other than the full text of the work in question. Sometimes our opinions are "hey, this sounds interesting, I'm going to read it", sometimes they are "do not want".

Reviews can be especially important when the very premise of something sounds skeevy.

For example, two books I've seen recced all over the place recently are The Secret Life of Bees and The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time. After seeing those titles appear over and over, I decided to check them out and found that both summaries made me uneasy.

Secret Life sounded like yet another story where black people only exist to help the white heroine. The author is white. These two things alone were not enough to make up my mind. It could be that the summary is bad and the book itself does not fall into those traps. So I read the reviews on Amazon. There are a slew of glowing reviews...none of which mention the problematic aspects in a way that makes me think the readers had even thought about them. It wasn't that the reviewers discussed possibily problematic aspects and concluded that the author had done a good job; they seemed unaware that there was anything that could be problematic. So I looked at the negative reviews, and immediately found ones that discussed the book critically and addressed the points I had been worried about.

Curious Incident is about an autistic boy who, from the summary/reviews, sounds like every autistic stereotype rolled into one. The author is neurotypical. Positive reviews that mention autism at all praise the book for the insight, for a window into the autistic mind, etc. Now. I'm not going to say an NT author can never write something insightful re: autism, but I'm pretty doubtful, you know? So I check the negative reviews, and there are many comments by autistic readers who were unhappy with the portrayal. Who am I going to believe, when choosing a book that might possibly irritate me with its stereotypes and nonsense? Yeah, you can bet it's not NTs oohing and aahing about being ~enlightened~ by the portrayal.

In both cases, I have formed an opinion without reading the books in question. I am 99.9% certain that they would annoy me and waste my time. I will, if the books come up, not hesitate to anti-rec them and explain why I find them problematic, despite having not read them myself.

And that is what people are doing with Wrede's book. They saw a skeevy premise, they read reviews (positive and negative) by people who had read the book, and they decided the folks who had read critically and were engaging with the problematic aspects, rather than ignoring them or being unaware of the possibility, were the ones to be trusted.

Especially since not one positive reviewer has put forth any reason why the negative reviewers should be discredited. It's the same pattern in all three books discussed here. The only people engaging seriously and critically with problematic elements of the books are the negative reviewers. If positive reviewers make any note of the issues, it's to say things like "it's just fiction", which is not a defense and does not address the problems.

And having heard both sides, should I and others discuss the problems in the book, our opinions have just as much right to be regarded. (Not that I expect Bujold actually gave any more thought to that person's comments than she did to anyone else's. Her attitude is remarkably similar to Elizabeth Bear's.)



For further reading, see naraht's excellent links roundup (note: avoid anything by hatman for the sake of your blood pressure).

Stupid shit:

This and this are articles about a trans boy in Australia whom the courts allowed to get top surgery despite his still being a minor (the first article is more broadly about trans youth in Australia). They consistently use the wrong pronouns and refer to him as a girl, trot out a lone example of someone who had SRS and then regretted their decision without ever mentioning that the majority of people who transition don't regret it, and they psychoanalyse these kids and say it's because they're from broken homes. Oh yeah, and the have a guy saying that trans people are more likely to commit suicide and be unemployed... Shouldn't the solution to that be to STOP DISCRIMINATING??? No? I guess that would be too logical. Fuckwits.

Also LJ stupidity. At least they reacted fairly quickly to remove the ads, but ugh. I had not previously been against ads. I don't actually mind them, since I use adblock (and on LJ, I have a paid account and thus don't see them anyway), but the way the way these are working with the keywords means a horribly offensive ad could appear on the same page as content against it. I don't want someone reading something of mine and seeing homophobic or transphobic ads. :( I don't know... I don't want to leave LJ, and I'm not going to any time soon, but it's certainly making me think more and more of DW as my home journal rather than LJ.


Here, have some music to take away the rage. These are ten songs I've discovered and liked recently.

Tarou - Danjo
This is the song from those silly Transformers vids I linked the other day. It's so catchy I can't stop listening to it! 違うわ！よく聞け！こうやって座れ！XD

Bump of Chicken - Fire Sign
I discovered this a few weeks ago when I did the lyrics. Such an awesome song.

KAT-TUN - D-T-S
This is the coupling to their last single. I like the A side, too, but this is better.

Berryz Koubou - Dakishimete Dakishimete
Whoa, what? A Hello! Project song? Yes! This is so catchy and fun. Tsunku can still occasionally write good songs. Who knew?

Santogold - L.E.S. Artists
It took me quite a few listens to get into this, but once I did, I was hooked. I like a couple other songs, too. I should download her album.

Gackt - Blue Lagoon~Shinkai~
Newish Gackt song. It's very dark and heavy, which I like.

Magnapop - Open the Door
I don't know a thing about these guys, actually. Bruce had the song on a mix CD he was listening to while making dinner the other day and I totally fell in love with it.

Noodles - Love My Life
Another song I discovered while doing the lyrics. This is the theme song to a movie by the same thing about a lesbian romance (downloaded, but haven't watched yet). It's based on a manga of the same name, which I can't seem to find anywhere here because lesbian manga is like, the most minor of ladies' genres, srsly. Ladies manga is always hard to find here anyway. Compared to seinen, there will be like one little shelf, over half of which is BL vs ten or more for seinen. Grawr. ANYWAYS. The video is adorable.

BoA - Eien
Newish BoA single. Upbeat and catchy.

Arashi - Truth
Newish Arashi single. Very, very catchy.

Okay, so, sometimes I come across something that really pisses me off, and I'll leave it open in a tab thinking maybe I'll post about it later, but it doesn't seem like I have enough to say for it to really be a post on its own, yet everything else I want to talk about that day is positive, and so will go in the happiness posts. So I often end up going eh, and not posting about annoying stuff.

Well! Now I have enough things that I've seen lately to make a post of their own. :p

1. You've probably already heard about the Amazon hijinks, but if not the gist of it is that Amazon has begun erasing sales rankings for any books with LGBT characters on the grounds that they are adult material. This includes, of course, many books which do have "adult" material (by which Amazon means of course sex), but it also includes children's books and autobiographies and books without graphic sex. It's very obvious that the claims of not wanting to show adult material in the best seller lists are completely bogus and this is simply a way to shunt aside any books about LGBT people. What they are saying is that the very existence of people who are not straight and/or cisgender is objectionable. (Reminds me of the film Ma Vie en Rose, a sweet story about a transgender child, which received an R rating in the US despite having no sex (or even reference to sex) or violence or language or anything that makes a film R rated.) Not only do books without sales rankings not show up in the best seller lists, they are also much harder (sometimes impossible) to find via search. A good links roundup can be found here.

2. A Massachusetts representative introduced a bill to make it illegal for anyone over 60 to pose nude for a photo or film. The logic is that old people are as incapable of giving consent as a child is, and therefore this is abuse. Well, that would be great if you were talking about someone with Alzheimer's or senile dementia, but we're talking about everyone over the age of sixty! No longer a consenting adult! She also wants to include the disabled in her bill. I mean, everyone knows that being physically disabled means you're stupid and unable to think for yourself, right?

3. A Texas representative thinks Asians should change their names to something "more American" so that real Americans don't have to pronounce their difficult names (like Lee and Kim!).

I'm sure there were more, but since I already closed the tabs whenever, I don't remember what or where they were. And besides, it's almost time for the delicious dinner of deliciousness. I can't be pissed off now!

I thought Cramer and Shetterly's recent antics were surely the lowpoint of Racefail '09 (I mean, redirecting your blog to malware sites and comparing using a pseudonym to being in the KKK are pretty failtastic), but I think Elizabeth Bear's post takes the cake.*

Earlier she had admitted that she had not been open to criticism, and her seemingly professional response to said criticism had just been "taking one for the team" (her words). In light of that admission, her first post about the criticism now looks like a plea for hugs and reassurance from her friends, and sympathetic rantings about how bad those people who don't like her books are. And...that's what she got. Many people had given her the benefit of the doubt, thinking that she was receptive to criticism and simply unwilling to tell her friends to back off, but it's clear she did not deserve that benefit of the doubt.

Now she's taken it even further. She's come right out and said that she was unwilling to even consider the criticism, knowing herself to be incapable of wrong, apparently. Even as she urges everyone to "calm down" and stop talking about this for a while, she continues to feed the fire.

I tried in every way I knew how to mediate, to explain, to teach.

[...]

It's my fault because I accepted criticism of my book that I knew to be untrue, that I knew to be based on a shallow and partial reading (a reading of the first chapter of a 160,000-word novel), because I felt it was important to serve as an example of how to engage dialogue on unconscious institutional racism.

[...]

I had taken a hit for the team. I had tried to be a good cooperative white author, and listen to criticism from a person of color with open ears, and try to engage in a helpful dialogue of how to address one's own unconscious racism.

[...]

It's also one of the things that makes these debates particularly pointless, because we spend them kicking people who are fundamentally on our side.

Elizabeth Bear, you have proved yourself to not be fundamentally on the same side as people of color and allies who are trying to discuss racism in sci-fi/fantasy and the SF/F fandom/publishing world. You have proved yourself to be on the side of those who are desperately clinging to their own privilege, trying to reframe the discussion to make it all about themselves, to silence those who disagree with them. It is not your place to mediate, explain, or teach, and as long as you insist on coming at it from that angle, you will never get it.


Further reading:

ciderpress You mean those giant brains are making everyone on Earth stupid?
bossymarmalade sees fire
oyceter This hurts us all

and rydra_wong's racefail links roundup.





*I say that now, knowing that some asshat is going to try and top it, I'm sure! (Maybe even Bear herself!) DDDD:

So you know that whole thing where there's a live-action movie for Avatar: The Last Airbender starring a buncha white people?

That's no ordinary failboat. The makers of this film are determined to throw the biggest damn party they can on that failboat. Spectacular levels of fail on this boat here. Truly spectacular.

Because now that they've cast the lead roles with white kids, now they have a casting call for all the bit parts, and they want to let you, children of color, know that while you're not good enough to play the heroes, you can still be someone in the background. They'll throw you this bone.

Director-writer-producer M. Night Shyamalan is casting for The Last Airbender, a live-action film from Paramount and Nickelodeon based on the Nickelodeon animated series, shooting here from mid-March through July. (It's set in a world where human civilization is divided into four nations: Air, Water, Earth and Fire. The film's hero, the reluctant young Aang, is the Last Airbender. Aided by a protective teenage Waterbender named Katara and her bullheaded brother, Sokka, Aang proceeds on a perilous journey to restore balance to their war-torn world. Standard stuff.)

The O.C.'s Jackson Rathbone has been named as Sokka. Casting folks are looking for extras to play soldiers, martial artists, dancers, gymnasts, athletes and families - specifically physically fit people from 18 to 65 years old. The open call will be 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday at Bullies restaurant at the Wachovia Spectrum. You're asked to dress casually or in the traditional costume of your family's ethnic background.

And I love the weasel-wording of this casting call. They don't ever say they're looking for people of color for these roles, but when they say you should dress in "the traditional costume of your family's ethnic background", they sure don't mean kilts and lederhosen.

I thought Leonardo DiCaprio's wankfest whitewashing of Akira would take the prize for most offensive live action version of an anime, but I don't know, man. These guys seem determined to take him on. (And since Leo's is only theoretical at the moment, they're winning by a landslide.)

One, I was watching this documentary about blacks in Canada. bossymarmalade talks here about this appalling history of that particular area if you want some background. I was able to grit my teeth through the woman who smiled when talking about the big potatoes her family grew on top of the black cemetery, and the man who laughed when talking about using one of the gravestones for homeplate when he and his buddies played baseball on top of the cemetery, but when another man started going on about how if the descendents of the people buried there had cared, they would have come sixty or seventy years ago to try and do something about it, that was when I had to stop the video so I didn't take it out on my poor computer screen, because seriously, wtf!?

And two, in my stack of books to read next, I have Joy Kogawa's Obasan, which is about Japanese-Canadians during WWII. I'm really eager to read it, because while I know a lot about that period in US history, I had no idea that similar things had happened in Canada.

But what both these things made me realise is that it's not just the history of PoC in Canada that I know nothing about, it's the history of Canada, period. I honestly cannot remember a time when we studied Canadian history in school. How can that be? It's not like we learned a lot about Mexico, either, but we definitely studied it some. And certainly Mexico is much more closely tied to California than Canada is (I think most of my Mexican history I learned in elementary school, when the focus of history (or social studies, as it was called) classes was state history and the general southwestern US, rather than the country or world as a whole), but still...

This is a very interesting post. What also caught my eye was this thread, specifically "I'm currently confronting an internal bias that says the Caribbean simply cannot be the center of the world (in that whole, saving the world from evil sense)".

She is obviously talking as someone who wants to change that, who is resentful of the fact that white, American (or western in general) media and its focus on white Americans as the heroes is so prevalent that it has warped her own thinking in this way.

But it reminded me of the other side of the coin, of all the kids (American, presumably white) back on my Digimon messageboard, who would complain about Digimon and how wrong and silly it was that Japan was the focus, that Japan was saving the world, that Japanese kids were who mattered, that Americans were mentioned in passing a bit in 02, with the whole Digidestined all over the world thing, but that was it.

It used to make me so angry. Of course the focus was Japan. Of course Japanese kids were saving the world. It's a show made by and for Japanese people! Why the hell should they do anything else? These kids on my messageboard expected to be catered to by a show from another country. And this wasn't just the kids at home watching the dubbed version who didn't even know it was from Japan. These were kids who were into anime, who preferred subs to dubs and wanted the original version over what was aired in English.

And yet they still thought it ridiculous that Japanese kids would save the world? What the actual fuck, you know?

Just being reminded of it pisses me off.

And of course it's just that attitude that leads to stuff like the Avatar casting, or Dragonball Z or Speed Racer or Akira or any of the live-action films where characters of color are now suddenly played by white people. And Akira, of course is being moved to New York instead of Tokyo.

After all, it's silly for anyone but white Americans to be the heroes.

(Oops, that turned into a rant. *tags appropriately*)

Man, I've never even seen the show, but I can't stop reading the casting wank. (Though it has been vaguely in the back of my mind as something to possibly see eventually, so I decided this is as good a time as any, and had Bruce download it.) The rest of this rant sort of digresses from Avatar itself, as a lot of the wank has been hitting one of my pet peeves in general.

One thing I've seen a lot is "well, they look white to me". I see people say this a lot about anime and manga, too. Either as an excuse as to why it's okay to make live action movies where everyone is white, as an excuse of why it's okay to make characters white in a dub version (even as proof that they already were white), as proof of how all Japanese people are self-hating and draw themselves as white, or as some combination of both.

The thing is? Anime and manga characters are not drawn as white. They're cartoons and generally don't look like people, period (and often the ones that are more realistic do look more realistically Asian), just like cartoons about white people don't really look like people.

Anime and manga characters don't have "realistically Asian eyes"? Okay. So?

I don't see people saying these guys, these guys, these guys, or these guys don't look white. They certainly don't have realistically caucasian eyes. They don't have realistically human eyes. No one is colored yellow like the Simpsons or has naturally blue hair, or flesh-colored spikes coming out of their head where hair should be. But these characters are all immediately recognised and accepted as white.

Whites are the default in the west. They are unmarked. Draw a stick figure and it is white by default, no matter that a stick figure doesn't look like anyone.

You know what the default is in Japan? JAPANESE PEOPLE. They don't need to draw slanty eyes (also not a "realistic" depiction of Asian eyes, but one that is immediately accepted and read as Asian) on a stick figure to make anyone see it as Japanese because it is already seen as Japanese just as it is.

Anime and manga is made first and foremost for Japanese people. Anyone else is an afterthought.

I'm so tired of the "anime characters look white" meme. It can stop any time now.

People who said it better and more clearly than me:

The Face of the Other
Anime/Manga Characters =/= White (even better explanations in comments)
And here's a good comment on the reasons for many manga/anime stylisation techniques

And this is a good links post for more Avatar wank reading in general.

Wow, today was full of ragenating stories.

First off, there's the casting announcement for Avatar. I've never seen the show, but even without watching, I managed to gather that it was about people of color, not about a bunch of white kids. Somehow Hollywood missed that. I think possibly the most eye-twitchingly offensive comment I personally have come across (I'm sure there have been much, much worse, but I have been sticking to safer waters) was this one. Did you know that it's impossible to cast Asians in an English-language film because Asians don't speak English? That there are absolutely no Asians in the world whose first language is English. Not even any kids who've lived in English-speaking countries long enough to be fluent! I mean, jeez. No wonder they had to cast white kids.

This article about how any guy (who's not out as gay) who kisses another guy onscreen gets subjected to the most offensive, ridiculous questions about how it felt to kiss a guy. The article itself is great. It's the questions themselves (and some of the "zomg must protect my masculinity" answers some of the actors give) that are enraging. And since I don't read/watch celebrity interviews, I was unaware of how common this sort of thing was. Also, I never had any feelings one way or the other about David Letterman before, but I sure have a massive hate-on for him (and the audience!) after reading this:

"I didn't want to screw it up," Franco told Letterman on "Late Show" last week.

"See, if it's me, I'm kind of hoping I do screw it up," Letterman shot back. "That's what you want, isn't it?"

"To screw it up?" Franco asked.

"I mean, do you really want to be good at kissing a guy?" Letterman said as his audience howled with delight.

Finally, we have this "call in gay" protest, "which encourages gays and lesbians to 'call in gay' rather than calling in sick". Setting aside the fact that it's unlikely to have any effect, and punishes businesses which hire and/or are run by gays and lesbians, and doesn't take into account that some people might not actually be out at work, the very idea of the protest is just soaking in privilege. Because yeah, of course everyone has jobs with paid vacation and sick time, so you could totally call in "gay" without harming yourself financially or endangering your job. *eyeroll* The people behind this can't even imagine that some people don't get sick time, period. That in order to call in and take time off even when they are legitimately sick, that means they won't get paid. Sometimes it may mean they lose their job. These days, some jobs require you to have a doctor's note to take any sick time, which means you have to be able to go to the doctor, possibly at considerable expense if you don't have insurance.

So yeah. Vein-throbbing, eye-twitching Ragenesday.

At least this is some non-rage-inducing news. A sheriff in Ohion "has ordered deputies to ignore eviction orders when people have nowhere else to live."

I wish people would stop trying to ruin my day with racism (and classism, though that was unrelated to Prop 8).

When I saw darkrosetiger's post yesterday about people of color being blamed for Prop 8's passage, I hadn't yet seen any of the blame. Now it seems like every where I turn someone is going on about how it was all those damn blacks and Mexicans who are responsible for Prop 8 passing. Mostly this is based on a stereotype of PoC being so much more homophobic than whites, and one exit poll that shows a high percentage of blacks voting yes. Somehow people either conveniently forget to mention or legitimately don't notice that this exit poll is of a whopping 2000 people - not exactly representative. There is also the fact that you can use filters on the county map on the LA Times website to see which counties are 75% or more white...all but two of which voted overwhelmingly yes on 8.

Prop 8 would not have passed if PoC hadn't voted for it. Yes, this is true.

It's equally true to say Prop 8 would not have passed if whites hadn't voted for it. And yet, somehow, that's not who I'm seeing get the blame here.

Prop 8 passed thanks to people of all races, people of all income levels, people religious and not. It passed thanks to smart advertising on the part of the Yes on 8 folks and bungling on the part of the No on 8 folks. It passed because of ignorance and fear and hatred and misinformation.

Period.

So, if you haven't heard of Katy Perry, she's a new popstar best known for her single I Kissed a Girl and her bad fashion sense.

The song is not, as you might be thinking, a cover of Jill Sobule's awesome song by the same name. Not even close. The song is annoyingly catchy. I say annoying because I really like the music, to the point where I broke down and asked Bruce if he could find a download for me the other day.

But after listening to it a few times, I had to admit I just couldn't take it. I had thought, well, I like t.A.T.u. even though they pretended to be lesbians for fun and profit. But the thing is, I can listen to t.A.T.u. and not have that constantly shoved in my face. With I Kissed a Girl, on the other hand, the problem is with the lyrics themselves. Not really something I can ignore.

The song basically reduces lesbianism and bisexuality to something cool and forbidden you do for attention and maybe to get your boyfriend hot. Kissing a girl is "not what good girls do". She sings "I hope my boyfriend don't mind" that she kissed a girl, and goes on to say how the girl she kissed is "just my experimental game".

So I deleted it.

But while I was digging around looking for the song, I found she has another single, which is even worse. It's called Ur So Gay, and I searched for the lyrics with dread. They were even worse than I expected. It's just really, really gross. According to Katy Perry, "It’s not a negative connotation. It’s not 'you're so gay', like 'you're so lame', but the fact of the matter is that this boy should’ve been gay." Oh wow, that makes it so much better! Except, you know, not at all. So apparently this list is what makes someone gay, anything from wearing makeup to being veg*n and environmentally conscious.

And this is the girl the media is all over. Her songs are huge hits. Kids are eating them up like candy.

I'm so annoyed with myself that I ever even gave in and listened to her song in the first place when I was already ambivalent about it. Ugh.

SGA fandom is not going to wither up and die because the show is over. I'm not saying that because I hope it won't. I'm saying that because I know it won't. That's just the way fandom works.

Yes, some people will leave because they don't like a fandom where there's no new canon. But guess what? People were leaving already all the time. That, too, is just how fandom works. People leave and new people discover it.

There are active fandoms for stuff that's been over for years, and the bigger a fandom is, the longer it's going to be around once canon is over. Look at Harry Potter. People went through the same hand-wringing nonsense when book seven came out and it was just as ridiculous then as it is with SGA.

Mourn the loss of new canon if that's important to you, but I guarantee you the fandom is not going anywhere.

Go read this article about the semi-colon.

Some people don't like it because it looks "like an ink smudge on a new white carpet" and find it "arbitrary". Okay, sure. That sounds like perfectly legitimate complaints about a piece of punctuation.

But then we get stuff like saying they're "transvestite hermaphrodites representing absolutely nothing". "Real men, goes the unwritten rule of American punctuation, don't use semi-colons." They're "girly", "odious", and "the most pusillanimous, sissified, utterly useless mark of punctuation ever invented."

WHAT. THE. FUCK???

Cowardly anonymice.

Oh wait, no.

I mean, seriously, dude. If you have a problem with me, grow a pair and sign your fucking name. Why are you so scared of me? It's the internet, what can I do to you? I mean, I've seen the argument that the Little People can't speak their minds to the BNFs, and thus need anon memes, and you know, whatever. Still cowardly. But I don't get the logic here. You hate me. You obviously have no interest in anything I produce. I'm not a BNF who has magical fandom-controlling powers. So why anonimity? How is my knowing you hate me going to negatively affect you? I'm seriously puzzled by this. In fact, if I knew who the hell you were, I'd be sure to avoid you. Seems to be a win-win kind of thing. You have less contact with me, and you don't look like a cowardly asshole.

Also, wow, tainted every fandom and pairing I've ever touched? I guess fandom's pretty damn icky with the me germs, then, 'cause that's a lot of fandoms and pairings. Oops.

Also, also! Perfect time to break out the somewhat-new Tycho icon. As you can see, he's a big fan of anonyshits.

Also, also, also. For the record? Just because I don't like your brand of fandom? Doesn't mean I don't like fandom. Thankfully, fandom is not just entitled whiny asshats. It's got some awesome in there, too, though.

If you are so scarred by your past that reading a story about X will trigger you, you need to take responsibility for your reading. This means READING THE DAMN WARNINGS that authors provide. You do not get to bitch at authors because you decided to skip the warnings.

Because the thing is, just because you don't like something or find it triggering does not mean the rest of the world should have to be spoiled, too. The only way to be fair to people who want warnings and those who find them spoilery is to put them behind a cut, or in the same color as the background so you need to highlight to read, or put them at the end of the story with a note up top to scroll down for them. So if you know you need to be warned for things, you need to take an active part in protecting yourself from seeing them by, you know, clicking the cut, highlighting the text, or scrolling down. The author is not obligated to put the warning in big red letters to make sure you see it.

Seriously, this is one of my hugest pet peeves in fandom. It's one thing when people bitch about authors not warning. I don't think fanfic authors have any more obligation to warn than published authors. But if people want to complain about there not being warnings, well, sure, whatever. But complaining about not being warned well enough when there were warnings and you chose not to read them? MADE OF FAIL.

I am getting so damn sick of the McSheppers. I hate that pairing name, but I'm using it deliberately here, because I want to separate people who read/write or even ship John/Rodney, but who are not tinhats and/or offensive asshats. I've written John/Rodney and will probably continue to do so. I have nothing against the pairing itself. But I've really had it up to here with the fans who make everything about McShep, to the point of trying to erase everyone else from the show and who don't care about anything except their precious woobies. This thing about the race issues in Midway is just the last fucking straw. How can people just come right out and say they wouldn't give a shit except that it made their precious John look bad? (And are they completely and utterly unaware of the irony in that?)

Can we like, box these people up and ship them off to the crazypants island somewhere so that fandom can stop pissing me off constantly?

Turning in a sloppy fic for a fest? RUDE.

I'm talking about purely technical stuff here. Some people are just always going to be bad or mediocre writers, but everyone can at least turn in a presentable story. One or two typoes is understandable, especially with a longer fic. But when something is riddled with typoes and misspellings and formatting errors, that is just not acceptable. If you want to write stuff like that on your own time and post it in your journal or on archives, whatever. I still think it shows an incredible lack of respect for your readers, but I wouldn't necessarily call it rude. But when you are writing a fic for someone, you need to put in the effort. If you know you have problems with the technical aspects of writing, get a beta. Sometimes it can be hard to find a beta, but if you are writing for a fest, you can always ask the mods or post in the comm or whatever. There is already a built-in community there to find you a beta, even at the last minute.

Not only do you need to be extra careful in writing for holiday fests because you are presenting it as a gift to someone else, but also because you can't easily make changes if you catch them afterwards; you have to bug the mods to change it for you or just let it go. So check it over first. Then check it over again. And again. Have a friend do it (and not the sort of friend who is unwilling to tell you you made a mistake); make sure you get a beta. Get the number of mistakes down to as close to zero as possible.

Sometimes typoes creep through anyway. That's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about stuff that has obviously not even been read over once after writing. And that? Is rude.

cimorene111 says If you're calling guys gay because they cuddle and kiss their friends, wear feather boas, cry, love shoes, talk with their hands, love show tunes - even if you're saying it because you LOVE them for it, because you love that they're that gay - you're reinforcing the very cultural norms and stereotypes which they're fighting against.

She's talking about bandom here, but seeing as how it was the rampant stereotyping that made me start hating SGA fandom, I think it's applicable across the board.

And since I'm linking to a rant, here's one of my own. As you may know, I run a lyrics website. I take requests for song translations. These go on the end of the queue and are first come, first serve. There is currenly a one-year waiting list. Yeah. So I have told a few people that if they paid for me to translate their request, I'd do it sooner. It's just a token price, really, three songs for $10. But it gets me some pocket change and they can get their songs faster. Most people are happy to wait.

Recently I got this one guy who requested lyrics. He paid for three and then had some others put on the queue. After I did the first batch, I got about three or four emails from him questioning my translation of words and phrases and asking my interpretation of the song. First off, I am not in the business of interpretations. I translate the song and it's up to the reader to interpret it as they wish. But even more annoying was the questioning. I really hate when people know a few words and think that means they know better than me. If you think you know Japanese that well, translate the damn songs yourself. But you don't, right? That's why you need someone else to do it, right? So quit pestering.

Then he asked for a second batch of three. I told him I could do it, but it would probably take a couple weeks because I was in the middle of the script from hell and not having much time for my site. Well, as you know, the script took longer than I thought, so I didn't even do an update this past Sunday. He emailed me yesterday saying "the lyrics aren't up on your website yet". I emailed back and said I would try to get them done today. I then ended up sleeping for a good deal of the evening because, you know, I'd been getting 3-4 hours sleep for the past week or so, and now I woke up to another email saying "the lyrics still aren't up on your site".

So fuck that. He paid me the $10 so I'll do these lyrics, but I told him I would not do anything else for him, paid or unpaid, and took his other requests off the queue. I don't need to deal with that kind of constant harrassment. Oh yeah, and I forgot another thing. After I did the first batch of lyrics, he then had the gall to complain that I put them on my site. Apparently he thought his ten fucking dollars meant he should get them for himself and no one else could see them. Dude. I run a lyrics website. All lyrics will go on the site. You paid for my time in translating them. And it's a token payment at that. Dickwad.

Posted a rant/meta on writing as a hobby over on my LJ.

So there's a post about whether people think bandfic is part of media fandom, and someone comments questioning whether it's fanfic at all.

They say, "This is why I would not term bandfic 'fan fiction,' - which, truly, is a masturbatory more than a literary exercise - but with a not-yet-defined genre residing somewhere between roman a clef and original fiction."

I reply, "I don't deny that much of fanfiction is crap, and masturbatory at that, but I'm pretty sure the same could be said of bandfic, which is as much badly-written porn and Mary Sues as fanfiction is. Anything approaching (or even wanting to be) art in either category is pretty few and far between."

They come back and say they didn't mean masturbatory as bad.

...

Right.

Now, I could accept that statement if the original had been "Fanfic is masturbatory and I love it!" which is something I've seen people in fandom say. It grates on me and I hate it, but at least they are (somehow*) using it in a positive sense to them. But when it's a comparison between what you write and what they write, and yours is literary and theirs is masturbatory, I'm pretty sure that's not in any way meant as a compliment and I can't think of anyone who would take it as other than "I think mine is better than theirs".

Also the idea that because you're writing about celebrities and not fictional characters, that somehow makes it "literary" is more than a little boggling.



*Masturbatory inherently implies that it's meant for the author alone and that no one else will find it of any value, so I'm hard-pressed to find anything positive in it, but some people do.