All Star Wars fans must watch (video).

lawpeeps, I'm looking at you!

tzikeh: [school's] kind of like The Amazing Race, except I don't get to go anywhere, and instead of winning money I have to go into debt. I don't even get Phil to hand me my diploma at the end. This season sucks.
Lydia: "My semester is broken! This is bullshit!"
tzikeh: omg *dead*
Lydia: that is literally the only thing I know about TAR.

I've never bought any X-Files, because I just couldn't bring myself to.

Now, thanks to tzikeh bringing it to my attention, and soobunny and jarslberg71 for an incredibly thoughtful and generous birthday gift*, I'M GOING TO OWN IT ALL.

One day only, all seasons of X-Files are $19.99!!! And yes, I even bought the despised seasons 8-9, because some day, when I have distance, I want to actually watch them all. *kof*

OMG HAPPY DAY AFTER MY BIRTHDAY TO ME!!!


*Their gift pushed me from the "Maybe" to the "OMG MUST BUY WILL NEVER BE SO CHEAP" place. *g*

I have not watched this season at all, but I will watch the finale, if only because the family should gather to say a last goodbye to a relative that sat around on life support and drained everyone's good will. This will involve pizza. --tzikeh, on the XF series finale

When Batman Was Gay

Link courtesy of afterelton -- it's not really telling me anything new, but it's a clear and interesting exploration of the dramatic shift in tone from the Golden Age, during which Batman used guns and killed criminals, to the more surreal and absurdist Batman of the Silver Age, during the 60s and 70s.

The villain of the piece is Frederic Wertham, he of The Seduction of the Innocents.

Batman and Robin, Wertham charged, inhabited "a wish dream of two homosexuals living together." They lived in "sumptuous quarters," unencumbered by wives and girlfriends, with only an aged butler for company. They cared for each other's injuries, frequently shared quarters, and lounged together in dressing gowns. Worse still, both exhibited damning psychological characteristics: proclivities for costumes, dressing up, and fantasy play; secretive behavior and double-lives; little interest in women; and, most damning of all, neurotic compulsions resulting in their violent vigilantism. Indeed, Wertham argued, depictions of Batman and Robin were frequently homoerotic, visually emphasizing Batman's rippling physique and Robins splayed, bare thighs.

And he said that like it was a problem. *kof*

More from the writer of the article:

If Bruce Wayne was a paragon of upper-middle class white masculinity - wealthy, cultivated, and amiable - his secret identity represented the dark liberation found in the lurid city, cruising strange corners. Even if Batman's genitals were never portrayed coming into contact with Robin, Batman's crime-fighting lifestyle still embodied a fantasy of freedom from male familial responsibilities and, in a very real sense, from women altogether. Batman's world of the 1940s was almost exclusively male.

.... Like many closeted men, Bruce Wayne dated women to keep up appearances, so that no one would suspect that beneath his placid veneer lurked the sort of fellow who wrestled with criminals in dark alleys.

....DC began to introduce a series of other female characters to provide romances for Batman and Robin - Bat-girl in 1956 and Batwoman in 1961.

As Best notes, Bat-girl and Batwoman's complementary crime-fighting acted as a replacement for regular heterosexual courtship: rather than dinner and a movie, a romantic Batman took his girl out on rooftops. In this sense, Batman's crime-fighting became a sight for potential heterosexual productivity, a time when Batman could WOO! and COURT! The cast of female characters provided Batman with something of a full family, or at least the groundwork for one. Even if the bat-family never achieved full "normalcy," it at least blunted the edges of a lifestyle that was irreconcilable with the gendered expectations of the decade.

....Just as elites worked aggressively to purge society and government of homosexuality, so too did DC purge Batman of any social deficiency which could be interpreted or construed as "gay."

Was it enough? To satisfy the most vocal critics, yes. But, ironically, the move to surrealism and fantasy also pushed Batman into the territory of high camp, in which Batman's ostensibly heterosexual romances were suspiciously unbelievable. Indeed, in the camp world of the Batman television series, Batman's exaggerated and largely asexual romances seemed almost like a parody of actual heterosexual romances

The article also uses the fannishly oft-reposted images of the rainbow-colored Batman suits, Batman wondering what he's done to Robin!!! Bruce&Robin sharing a bed, "Batman's doing his best to sound gay," and... the image in my icon. *g* (which I flipped, yes)

Hello, good citizen! My name is Batman. You could be my assistant! Would you like that? Would you like to ride with Batman? --Snickers commercial

batdina and chopchica have started stilljewish, a safe space for fannish Jews and Jewish allies to discuss and share their experiences, both on and offline. From the userinfo:

This includes things such as discussion of Jewish characters in books, shows and movies; discussion of how Jews are portrayed in the media; discussion of our favorite holidays or foods; discussion about conversion, child raising, weddings, cooking and other life events; discussion about the antisemitism we see in fandom and in the world, etc. Because we are Jews, we’re sure there will be a lot of discussion.

The only topics currently excluded are Israeli policies/politics (cultural and religious convo welcome), "attacks or judging of other people’s Jewish choices," and obviously any kinds of isms.

And I think this is very important to keep in mind:

If you’re here because you’d like to learn more about Jews and Judaism, that’s wonderful, but it’s not remotely our job to educate you, nor is this community an educational space. Our main suggestion is to *listen*. Then listen some more. And some more. And make sure you leave your agenda and privilege at the door. Don’t try to tell Jews just how things *really* are for them. Don’t explain why you’re right and they’re wrong. If a member of the community suggests that you might be missing something? It’s a pretty good bet you are. If multiple members say the same thing? We’d shoot those odds up to 100%. And if you’re here to educate us? That’s nice; please don’t let the door hit you on the way out.

AWESOME.

Napped on my lunch break at 3am and had a weird dream that Jed Bartlett was Batman. This will not do. --Sanj

From afterellon.com:

...a reader...told us that the show is based on an Israeli television program, and that the main character...had a female ex. In fact, an entire episode was devoted to her former female lover.

"She finds her old girlfriend (who she left, heartbroken, awhile back), gets things started again and when it gets heated up in the bedroom she suddenly 'remembers' why she is straight."

Wow. With a story line so original and complex, I'm really disappointed that we may never see this amazing scene played out on U.S. television. Maybe they can substitute it with something less gay but just as visceral, like how Bella Bloom "remembers" why she's anti-violence after she punches herself in the face.

Yeah, I could really hope the US version won't recreate that ep, please.

"I don't want assistance. I'm not broken, and I don't need to be fixed." --Brett Beasley, gay cousin of J. Falwell, when Falwell denied knowing him and offered any assistance he could.

They've cast Harvey Keitel as Gene Hunt. I... can see this. It's one of the first things that's actually made me think I might have to take a look, really. They've also cast Michael Imperioli as Ray, which I can see, and Jonathan Murphy as Chris, about which I have no opinion.

But Harvey Keitel! I just. It's not that he's a particular favorite of mine, just. He's good.

...and now I am in the trenches of Retail Hell. There's a reason why we all wear red shirts, but honestly? It's not that bad.... The other cashiers complain (we are, after all, red shirts), but I cling to the belief that, like Guy from Galaxy Quest, I'm the plucky comedic relief, and I'll survive to the end of the show. --gritkitty

liviapenn has done a great roundup of links here, including a link I saw last night to a short video Laura put up on Elevator Pitches, a site that "that allows entrepreneurs to pitch their startups to the general public," and a couple links to other, similar sites.

As cereta puts it, "That's her model, the one she's been trying to get off the ground. Step One: Get fans to do the kind of work they've been doing for free because they love the source and love fandom. Step Two: Profit.

The bit about how she's deducting her cell phone and con trips is particularly choice. There have been cases of zine producers/sellers profiting from the zines they sell beyond the costs of producing and selling the zines (see: Mysti of Agent with Style), but this seems like a whole new level. This is digging up specific shit I'd never heard of, and it's really appalling, not just in the doing of it, but in the transparent way Hale is attempting to dupe, use, and abuse fans to her own benefit, with a complete lack of respect.

when they made her? the mold was recalled. --Luminosity

ithiliana is awesome. I and a lot of people I know have been angry about the issues involved here (with Laura Hale/Michaela Ecks/Purplepopple/partly_bouncy) for a long time, but I didn't have what it took to speak out like this (although many people have been trying to stamp out the small flames here and there as they see them).

Note: please do not click on any links to fanhistory and thereby boost the hits to the page. svmadelyn explains why, as Hale has been open about her desire to sell the wiki to a commercial buyer.

Luck is infatuated with the efficient. --Persian proverb

"Knight Rider" FBI Agent's Bisexuality May Be Dropped

The folks developing the Knight Rider series were on the TCA press tour, and the question came up of whether they were going to keep FBI Agent Carrie Rivai's implied lesbianism/bisexuality (in the movie, she's shown saying goodbye to a blonde in her bed). Apparently the new EP was taken aback, and said "We haven't explored her sexuality at this point."

I really love this bit:

"Gary really was given sort of carte blanche when we brought him on board, to not be limited by what had been done in the two-hour movie," said executive producer Doug Liman (The Bourne Identity, Mr. & Mrs. Smith). "And having sat in the writers' room with them, the stuff that he's managed to come up with for … the first eight episodes are so imaginative. A question like that almost feels small," he said, referring to the question about whether or not Rivai is still queer.

Emphasis mine.

It's small, because it doesn't matter to him. He's not concerned with the lack of representation of lesbian/bi women on TV, let alone LB women of color. It's not relevant to his plot, and he apparently hasn't spent much time thinking about this character, which doesn't incline me to want to watch, I have to say -- not because he hasn't thought about her sexuality, but because he doesn't seem to have thought much about her, outside where the plot takes her. Which is normal, but maddening.

The article gets into the reactions of others, including the actress, another EP, and other people who worked on the movie. Dave Bartis said he intended for Rivai to be bisexual, because that opened up a lot of possibilities. Poitier, the actress, read it in the script and thought it was cool, and moved on.

But apparently it confused Thompson, because it didn't go anywhere. "I didn't understand it on a number of levels," he said of the sexually suggestive scene, "'cause there was no payoff. It didn't go anywhere. I didn't see her — I didn't see anybody talk about it, you know, and to me, if you're gonna do something, you should do it and make it a part of the thing."

I'd be willing to bet that if it had been a guy in the bed, or the agent had been male, leaving the blonde in the bed, Thompson wouldn't have been confused and expecting it to "go somewhere" plot-related. In the same movie, the main character is in bed with a woman, and another woman comes into the room, strongly suggesting a threesome -- but did that go anywhere, beyond setting up some character traits for the main character?

And this next bit just PISSES ME OFF:

Thompson cited that time slot as a reason for why he wasn't sure whether Rivai's character could remain bisexual. "We're also an 8 o'clock show," he said, "and I don't know what they're going to let us do. I get nailed on everything in standards-and-practice world." ...He skirted the question of why a bisexual character would need to engage in explicit sexual activity on the air...

wtf. I mean, I get it. I get that there are still a lot of idiots in the world who believe that GLBTQ is intrinsically more salacious/sexual/risky in terms of censorship than straight sex. But it makes me so angry.

Nothing's definite, apparently, but I have mixed feelings about the next bit, because it smacks of the same kind of issues as racial 'colorblindness':

Asked if producers were de-gaying Poitier's character, Bartis said: "That's not the case. … I want to introduce characters that are not remarkable in their sexuality. It's not remarked upon, it's a fact of life, as Syd said about her character, her generation … and I want to see that reflected in television the way it is for her generation."

In response to the same question, Thompson said that de-gaying her was "not my intention at all," but then he added, "I have no intention of anything; I haven't thought that far ahead."

Love it all. The fear, the excitement, the guilt, the power for change, the unworthiness, the hurt feelings, the euphoric feelings, the anger, the movement, the whole process, it’s known as life. --anonymous

According to futoncritic:

Effective immediately "Flashpoint" will now run on Thursdays at 10:00/9:00c while "Swingtown" will head to Fridays at 10:00/9:00c.

There is a crack in everything. That's how the light gets in. -Leonard Cohen

Ron Moore interview by Maureen Ryan

( Interview bullet points )

There's also a transcription of the interview itself, in which they talk about the expanding length of the finale, and that it will definitely be a longer cut on DVD. As ambivalent as I am about BSG, in some ways, I'm still excited by the possibility of a Caprica series.

Descriptions below from futoncritic:

Warehouse 13 is about two FBI agents who are assigned to recover objects stolen from and objects that would appropriately be stored in the warehouse seen at the end of Indian Jones and the Ark of the Covenant. Not literally, but that's how it is in my head. *g*

After saving the life of the President, two FBI agents find themselves abruptly "promoted" and relocated to windswept South Dakota. Their new top-secret location is Warehouse 13 a massive, secret storage facility that houses every strange artifact, mysterious relic, fantastical object and supernatural souvenir ever collected by the U.S. government over the centuries. In addition to searching the country for several missing objects discovered stolen from the Warehouse, their job is to monitor for new reports of supernatural and paranormal activity that could indicate the presence of another object they must investigate and safely bring back to the vaults of Warehouse 13.

Revolution is a futuristic take on the American Revolution, essentially, with a US space colony rebelling against taxation and struggling for control.

New America is a colony settled by the now-named 'United State of America' on a planet resembling our own, located 50 light years away. Echoing many contemporary issues and themes, it is a futuristic version of a new world's passionate fight for freedom. The expansive drama centers on the Hart family one of the founding families of New America. Tom, a former military man turned industrialist, is the patriarch of the family facing great pressure from the government to increasingly tax the colonists already heavily burdened. His two sons have struggles of their own with one rebelling against his industrialist grandfather and the old America, the other more radical one heading toward revolution. His 16 year-old daughter is simply trying to find her way in this world. Add to this a new local Governor torn between her allegiance to the colony and her desire for peace, and a young ambitious bureaucrat looking to bring the colony back under control.

I'd heard of both of these in passing, but not in any detail. I'm happy that Sci Fi is still developing actual scifi series, and not just reality shows, because they seem to have a lot of the latter in the pipeline for the fall.

And apparently they're developing a miniseries based on Neal Stephenson's Diamond Age. Unfortunately, they seem to have shelved development of series like Middletown, Witch School, Johnny Midnight, and Avery House, all of which sounded like shows I'd watch.

I'm trying to think of something deep and profound about how much I loved this. Unfortunately, I think I just died of squee and I'm not even supposed to be in this fandom. --katrimae

( I have a few thoughts. )


I try to avoid things I know have no art in their badness. -Rachael Sabotini

I had a really, really good weekend, this weekend. Tiring, but very, very good. And amazingly social, for me. It's not what I'd want every weekend, but!

Friday night I had a picnic with some other people of a certain age from church. This is a group I've been going to dinner with for a few months, about once a month. I don't know how long they've been doing it; it's clear that they all know each other better than I know any of them, and it's not a group I expect to become bosom buddies with, but it's nice to get to know them better, and it pulls me out of my shell a bit, and makes me feel more connected. They are mostly married, with children, and I haven't yet discovered any commonality of interest beyond the church, but it's pleasant.

The night ended sooner than I expected, though; we met around 6p, were eating by 6:30, and then it got to be 7:15, I realized everyone had their food packed up but me, and suddenly it was over sooner than I thought! One of the others said it was probably because it was too hot, and people wanted out of the heat, but I really didn't find it that bad, particularly for Oklahoma in July.

Saturday, I puttered around and got several of the VVC tapes dubbed to disc, and made a dent in clearing the kitchen table, and then was picked up for a trip to Tulsa and an IMAX viewing of The Dark Knight. This was awesome for several reasons, because BATMAN, because I'd never seen a movie in an IMAX theater before, BATMAN, and in large part because the couple who invited me were folks I've known in a more casual way for a while at work (monsterofmud and falfax), and are definitely people I've been interested in knowing better. *waves*

Also? BATMAN BATMAN BATMAN BATMAN BATMAN. BATMAN.

When we got there, was delighted to find another woman I know and like from work was there (tallwithglasses), with her lovely husband (lawpeeps), along with a half-dozen other people, and I found that I definitely have commonalities of interest with these guys, and I feel like I didn't shut up at any point except when the movie was actually on the screen. *g* Batman, Harry Potter, Star Wars, Wendy Froud, Celtic music, superheroes, and they let me burble at length about fandom and VVC and all kinds of stuff, see: not shutting up!

It was just amazingly comfortable and fun, in a way I don't get to experience often outside specifically fannish contexts, and that's just so nice. And yes, they are all already on LJ. *g*

As for the movie... I adored the movie, and the only element that shook me out of complete, brain-shut-off-and-enjoy-the-ride immersion in it was blinking every time "Johnny Smith" showed up as a reporter, heh. I don't know why, but it's much harder for me to recontextualize actors I heavily associate with a favorite TV character than it is to do so with primarily movie actors.

Reading through other reactions to the film, I'm almost embarrassed to admit that the fact that Rachel was almost entirely passive and used solely as motivation for the male characters completely passed me by. Batman just hits me at such an id level that it seems to turn my brain off entirely, and I miss those kinds of things entirely. I was too excited to hear my own beliefs about Batman's philosophy on killing and the like confirmed as being an intentional part of his characterization in the movie, too caught up in watching his extreme competence, too freaked out by Heath Ledger's excellent portrayal of The Joker, too enchanted by the mutual man crush that Bruce and Harvey were indulging.

Where Batman is concerned, I'm entirely too easy, and I am a happy, happy fangirl.


Sunday, I was "on duty" at church all morning, and it was a warm, warm morning, as the church's cooling system overheated and shut itself off. Still, it was good to see people, and the morning went quickly, and as always I wonder why it is that I've become so lax in my attendance. I did a little too much in and out of the heat and cool, though, as I ran errands between services, in and out of the air-conditioned car. By the time the service was over and I was finally sitting down, I started to realize how worn out I was. I came home and crashed out for an early nap, then got up and watched the Avatar finale. I may have more thoughts later, but by and large I was very happy with the end of the show, as well.

And then I did not one, but two vid betas, and that got my mind going in that creative, helping someone realize their own conceptions way that's incredibly satisfying. Every time I do one of these, I think, what if I've got nothing? What if I let them down? What if I can't see their vision? And when I feel that sense of rightness, that it's coming together, it is, indeed, extremely satisfying.

So, busy, busy weekend on my part, but fun and satisfying and full of good things. And this next week should be good, as well, and likewise social because Wednesday I'm off to see Heart, Journey, and Cheap Trick with wolfgrrrl (my birthday present to myself), I may get to watch more Blood Ties and/or Forever Knight with A. on Friday night, and Sunday I'm off to Tulsa and sushi with steldr, to celebrate our birthdays.

Who am I, and what have I done with the reclusive elynross?

I know some people...who take enduring comfort from the interconnectedness of all things, the sense that the weave of being ties us all together. Me--well,it makes me nervous. Too many weirdnesses in the economy, in the political climate,the social climate, the color of the morning sunlight. There are too many whackjobspulling at the threads in that great weave of being, and there's no way I can really untangle myself from them all. --Kat Allison

Not because I'm interested in it, but because I'm fascinated by the development of it? Um. Yeah, I got nuthin'. *g*

Apparently Jason O'Mara is the only survivor of the original unaired pilot, they've moved it to be set in NYC, and they've gotten "permission" to change the core secret of the show.

I just hope they give O'Mara a new wardrobe and hairdo, too, because it freaked me out seeing him with the buzz cut and dressed just like Simms' Sam Tyler.

Um. Not that I'm going to be watching. Nope.

Now I can look at you in peace; I don't eat you any more. -Franz Kafka, while admiring fish in an aquarium

I... am really boggling at the number of people who still seem to believe that 1) fanfiction/fandom is hidden/in the shadows/underground/secret/not readily available in millions of google hits, or that 2) fanfiction is still primarily something subversive.

Well, and that having some people want to have some kind of plan and or resources in place just in case someone does come after us is a bad thing. It's like the fannish, negative version of "If you build it, they will come."

Yes, I stupidly asked for links to the most recent kerfuffle that's a reaction to Rebecca Tushnet being interviewed on NPR, where she quite naturally talked about OTW, and her opinion of the legal standing of fanfiction. I wonder if any of those who are up in arms and wanting to hide under rocks actually listened to the interview? Or considered that NPR already knew about fanfiction, to want to invite Tushnet to come on in the first place?

We're getting random, unexplained (because they assume they don't need to explain) mentions in major entertainment magazines, more and more articles all over, pro and con, fanfiction on the official boards for major shows, places like Fanlib sponsoring fanfiction contests in conjunction with the shows themselves, writers and actors and such are getting queries about their opinion of fanfiction from mainstream interviewers -- we're not even an open secret.

What I have trouble understanding is the number of people who seem to either willfully misunderstand OTW's mission and intent, or haven't actually looked into it, and just accept the misinformation spread by those who think that we, as a whole, can stay under the radar that we haven't really been under in years.

Also, believe it or not, semagic picked the icon randomly. Course, I'm choosing not to change it, so.

It's really almost brain-breaking how fast I can go from feeling bad that I think so many people in the world just aren't bright, when really they just don't agree with me (although usually I question their underlying arguments or assumptions), to having my head explode wondering WHY SO STUPID.

Note: I don't think any and every fan should blindly support OTW, and I think you can reasonably and intelligently disagree with their goals and/or means. I just can't wrap my head around "OMG THEY'RE GOING TO OUT US" as either.

*kof*

A lifetime is more than sufficiently long for people to get what there is of it wrong. --Anonymous

Yeah, hi, I start posting, you can't shut me up. Don't ask me the point of this; I think I'm just documenting my own "huh!" moment. *g*

Someone else in comments to cereta's post mentioned Kiki's Delivery Service, and it made me realize that many of Miyazaki's films have female protagonists.

Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind: Warrior/pacifist Princess Nausicaä desperately struggles to prevent two warring nations from destroying themselves and their dying planet
Laputa: Castle in the Sky: the adventure of two orphans (one girl, one boy) seeking a magical floating island
My Neighbor Totoro: the adventure of two girls and their interaction with forest spirits.
Kiki's Delivery Service: the story of a small-town girl who leaves home to begin life as a witch in a big city.
Spirited Away: the story of a girl, forced to survive in a bizarre spirit world, who works in a bathhouse for spirits after her parents are turned into pigs by the sorceress who owns it. (OMG I LOVE THAT DESCRIPTION)
Mei and the Kitten Bus
Howl's Moving Castle: the story of Sophie, turned into a 90-year-old woman by a curse, who seeks out the mysterious Howl to get the curse lifted.
(Descriptions from Wiki or IMDB)

I've only seen Princess Mononoke, Spirited Away, and Howl's Moving Castle. I expected to really enjoy the first, with the English adaptation by Neil Gaiman, but... not so much. The language seemed odd and clunky to me, and the storyline was just kind of disappointing. The second I quite liked, because how can you not love that description! But I was really more enchanted with the visuals than taken with the actual story. And the last was fun, but none of these have made me so much a Miyazaki fan, as I am a fan of animation in general. I still need to see Kiki's Delivery Service, though, I know, and My Neighbor Totoro, because CATBUS.


Huh. I didn't realize that Miyazaki had wanted to adapt Ursula K. Le Guin's Earthsea tales. That would have been fascinating, even if the resemblance to the original was as wide as that of Howl to that of Diana Wynne Jones' book. Apparently Le Guin kept refusing, and then finally requested he do so... and he'd lost interest. She would have been better off acceding to his request than that of whoever made that wretched live action adaptation. His son did so as his first film; has anyone Tales from Earthsea?

But even that's not as good as the misquote from me in the Book Festival newspaper where I apparently say that "if you don't read Harry Potter books you'll wind up in the attic sacrificing kittens to Satan at midnight". Which is odd, as I thought I'd said, in response to a question about fantasy and reality, "It's not as if kids read Harry Potter books then wind up in an attic sacrificing kittens to Satan at midnight" which is not the same thing at all, really. --Neil Gaiman

cereta has an excellent rant here about how animated features of the last decade have failed to cast leading female characters, with particular emphasis on Pixar, who even made most of the ants we see in A Bug's Life into males.

In response, browngirl posted a link to the article Why film schools teach screenwriters not to pass the Bechdel test.

And then I wept.

If you're not familiar with the Bechdel test, it's named for Alison Bechdel, creator of the comic strip Dykes to Watch Out For. The Bechdel test first appeared in a 1985 strip, "The Rule," in which a character says that she only watches a movie if it satisfies the following requirements:

1. It has to have at least two women in it,
2. Who talk to each other,
3. About something besides a man.

(quoted from Wikipedia)

It's kind of alarming how hard it is to find things that measure up, even in shows that have multiple female characters. I kind of want to rewatch The (eta) Women's Murder Club to see how often any two or more of the women actually talk together about things that aren't either related to men, or related to the crime in hand. I mean, the latter would still technically pass the Bechdel test, but...

So, yeah, I read the article, written by a screenwriter who's been dealing with this since film school, and in film school she's told that she has to make the straight white males the leads, but as long as she does that, she can write "groundbreaking characters of other descriptions," as long as they don't detract from who the audience really wants to see. So she does, and she gets into the industry... and finds out that her "groundbreaking characters of other descriptions" cause problems, and when she tries to get answers as to why, there's hemming and hawing, until finally someone says, “The audience doesn’t want to listen to a bunch of women talking about whatever it is women talk about.”

And of course, it's not the industry who does it, all the straight white males (or even gay white males) who dominate the production/writing/direction of what we watch, it's us.

...and no matter how the numbers computed, they never added up to, “Oh, hey, look - men and boys are totally watching Sarah Connor and Ellen Ripley like it’s no big deal they’re chicks instead of guys.” They always somehow added up to “Oh, hey, look - those effects/that Arnold’s so awesome, men and boys saw this movie despite some chick in a lead role.”

Just like it's always a shock when a movie like Sex in the City or Kit Kitteridge is a big hit, even if the numbers don't support that it's "only the girls" watching -- apparently girls/women don't really watch anything, so it's a surprise when something aimed at us makes money?

I concluded Hollywood was was dominated by perpetual pre-adolescent boys making the movies they wanted to see, and using the “target audience” - a construct based on partial truths and twisted math - to perpetuate their own desires. Having never grown up, they still saw women the way Peter Pan saw Wendy: a fascinating Other to be captured, treasured and stuffed into a gilded cage. Where we didn’t talk. To each other. About anything other than men.

I haven't quite reconciled the fact that my major fannish preoccupation is talking (mostly) to other women about men. Who fuck each other. Ahem.

If the inner truth of gender is a fabrication and if a true gender is a fantasy instituted and inscribed on the surface of bodies, then it seems that genders can be neither true nor false. --Judith Butler, Gender Trouble

On the kind of cool side, it's the first time a basic-cable show has ever been nominated for Best Drama, apparently, and both Mad Men and Damages got nods, along with Dexter, House, Lost...and Boston Legal. Huh.

However.

HBO was shut out for the first time in a long time, to which my immediate reaction was, "Well, since The Sopranos, what have they got?" and figuring it was payback for cancelling Carnivale, Deadwood, and Rome. And then I remember that The Wire isn't Showtime, like I was thinking, it's HBO, and it hasn't been over long enough to be out of the running (which was my immediate reaction when it wasn't listed), and it's been almost completely shut out for its entire run, now, save for one nomination for writing in 2005, and one this year for Simon&Burns, for the finale script. wtf. I just don't get it. Or maybe I don't want to. I think it's seriously one of the most under-rated and under-watched shows ever. I guess it got critical raves straight through, but man.

*glower*

Gabriel Byrne is up for lead actor for In Treatment, which I still can't quite say I enjoy, but it definitely kept me watching. It's got a second season, with all new patients, and I suspect I'll keep watching. While I don't care for Byrne's character, Paul Weston, in many ways, Byrne does a great job of portraying a complicated man who is both very compassionate and very blind; it's the blindness that sets me frothing every now and then when I just want to club him with a cluebat.

And Dexter! Best Drama, lead actor, yay! Is it fall yet?

Did anyone watch the full season of Damages? I started out watching it, but it fell by the wayside. I wonder if I should give it another chance. And then there's Pushing Daisies, with 12 noms; I watched several eps, and... it just wasn't made for me. I'm having similar, but not as extreme, reactions to Middleman, but Natalie is too awesome to not keep watching! Nobody on Pushing Daisies impacted me very much, and I think the core detail of the star-crossed lovers just put me off, for some reason.

Everything you've learned in school as `obvious' becomes less and less obvious as you begin to study the universe. For example, there are no solids in the universe. There's not even a suggestion of a solid. There are no absolute continuums. There are no surfaces. There are no straight lines. -R. Buckminster Fuller

I just watched the first Act of Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog, and although there were some kind of cringy, near embarrassment squick moments for me*, it is fabulous!!! I don't think I'll watch Act II tonight, because I need to go sleep, but I did poke around on the Dr Horrible site, and looked at some of the merchandise.

I want a Captain Hammer T-shirt!!!! And given how things like this always seemed to be assumed to be more for fanboys than fangirls (not on Joss's part, necessarily, just in general), I am deadly amused (tho chagrined) to find...

...women's tees are Out of Stock in almost all the sizes of three of four designs (with Dr Horrible as the exception), while the men's... are not. And I wonder if this is because 1) we are out in droves for this, and prone to put our money where our delight is, or 2) they assumed that it would draw more fanboys than girls, and are subsequently very understocked in women's tees.

I am now going to bed, after having made myself ten new icons (the ones at the bottom of the list).

At last the time has come to reveal to you our Master Plan. BEWARE! Those with weak hearts should log off lest they be terrified by the twisted genius of our schemes! Also pregnant women and the elderly should consider reading only certain sentences. Do not mix with other blogs. Do not operate heavy machinery while reading this blog. You must be this tall to read. ‘Kay? --"Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog" Master Plan

My phone almost never rings, and when it does so at night, it's usually one of my credit card companies trying to enroll me in some program I don't want. However, it's campaign season, so tonight's call was a call bank on behalf of Bob Murphy, who is running for our state senate district seat. The blurb the caller read to me said that Murphy supported core Oklahoma values! After she finished, I asked her what these values were. Strangely, that was not part of her calling script. She did give me the number of the campaign headquarters and said they could probably answer my question. *g*


Nice thing that happened today: a new friend at work took the time to tell me she thought I was gorgeous! *beams* It was actually kind of adorable that she took the time to make it clear first that she's entirely straight, not that she has any problem with gays or lesbians! And I believe her on that -- we went out to dinner last Friday, and part of our discussion rambled over the issue of gay marriage, and she was pretty firm about thinking that it should be just as legal as the other kind. But she's of an age and a place and a temperament where, for her own comfort level, she needed to say that. And now I wonder if she thinks I'm lesbian... Heh.

Posted here in an attempt to reconnect fandomwise, if not fandomly. Um. *waves hands* Also, because soobunny nudged me! The longer I go without posting, the easier it is to not post at all. I've been reading, all along, ranting in my head about things like the Helix imbroglio and I don't know what all, but feeling that I have nothing to really add to any of the conversations. I'm currently busy trying to figure out my VCR-->DVD burner so I can transfer the VVC library to DVDs, to preserve it at least a little longer, I hope. I probably should get a big external drive just for VVC, and load it up with the files. If I learn how to rip the files. Heh.

And omg Avatar is on again!!! And for some reason they're running the entire last half of season 3 this week, ending with a 2-hour movie on Saturday. Also, I tripped across a rumor today that there may be a new, related series, but I'm trying not to believe it, because it's very weakly substantiated, possibly based on a misinterpretation of an interview, and I want it too much.

Also, this weekend I get to go see The Dark Knight at the IMAX with some newish friends from work! This is multiply cool, because these are people I'd like to get to know better, I've never been to the IMAX, and BATMAN. There is no bad.

Um. OH HAI. Tell me what I should talk about!

The Warhol Internet Corollary - On the Internet, everyone will be famous to 15 people. --tzikeh, on the meaningfulness of BNF status

I just got this in a notice from my university:

Also, OSU announced a $500,000 gift from the Masonic Charity Foundation of Oklahoma (MCFO) to create the Masonic Fraternity of Oklahoma Gender Studies Chair in the College of Arts & Sciences. The Masonic Fraternity is interested in academic disciplines like sociology, psychology, history, and philosophy aimed at researching the importance of men and the role men play in enhancing the stability of family and social life, as well as the economic and social progress of society.

“Our fraternal society is first and foremost the study of men and manhood,” said Robert G. Davis, MCFO board member. “There are few academic studies which have focused on the role gender-specific organizations have played in enhancing the physical, social and psychological health of individuals”

Davis continued, “Our hope is that this partnership with OSU will enhance family, social and community life through gender studies aimed at focusing on the needs of men, the ideals of manhood and a higher awareness of the importance of men in society.”(emphasis mine)

Seriously, I have nothing to say to that. I mean, at first I was all !!! Gender Studies! Okay, we're ages behind everyone else, and odd, that it's from the Masons, but...

And then I was just ???? Because men... need... more attention? Focus? Um?


I was editing an article for work, and there was a point being made about the difficulty of accurately assessing life expectancies, even within a fairly limited area.

The example used included an illustration -- a map of a section the London public transportation system -- and the comment that male life expectancy drops nearly six years between the westernmost station in this area and the easternmost station.

I take a closer look at the map. Second-to-last station is Canary Wharf. Well, there you go, is my immediate thought. Don't live near Torchwood headquarters. --faos

Sadly, my major response to July the 4th was WHEEEEE, DAY OFF! Part of which I spent watching the series finale of The Magnificent Seven with flambeau, the first ep of Little Mosque on the Prairie, and the last two eps of last season's Venture Brothers, which I had somehow failed to watch.

Saturday, I spent no time on the computer at all for the first time in what seems weeks, which is very unusual for me (to go that long without a break). I have this sort of love-hate relationship with my computer/the online world; I wouldn't want to do without it, and I'm fairly dependent on it in some ways, but when I'm off it for a day or two, I sometimes think I'd be happier if I didn't go back at all.

Today I went with gunhilda and wolfgrrrrl to see Wall-E, which was charming and delightful and I'll just ignore my reactions to the state of future humanity. Then I impulsively sneaked in to see The Hulk, which was a perfectly nice event movie of the testosterone-laden property damage sort, but which mostly made me want to see Ang Lee's version again, as I remember enjoying that much more, as it actually made me think a little. I've never been a huge Hulk fan, in general, so a straight-forward Hulk storyline isn't likely to really do a lot for me.

I went totally intent on movie popcorn and soda, and I suspect that's the last time for a long time. They've upped a large popcorn to $7, which is more than the movie ticket cost for a matinee, and the soda was over $5. I ended up with a combo that basically gave me free Twizzlers, but given that the core components were popcorn and fountain syrup, both of which are huge moneymakers for those what sells them, I'll definitely go back to smuggling in my own water and go with that. If I want to spend $20 to see a movie I'll buy the DVD.

I have once more proven to myself the inadvisability of reading the reactions of others about almost anything I have enjoyed by poking through reactions to the Doctor Who finale. I wonder if the difference is that however much I love various companions, I watch for the Doctor and his ongoing journey, and therefore I'm usually left happier (or unhappy in the best ways) than many other people are. Maybe. I dunno, for whatever reason the things that got to other people didn't get to me, and I thoroughly enjoyed it.

And now I'm going to find something to read before hopefully going to be before too late....

For some reason, I find the below sig immensely cheering and sanguinary. Sanguinatory. Sanguinificatory. ish.

Why shouldn't things be largely absurd, futile, and transitory? They are so, and we are so, and they and we go very well together. --George Santayana

At work, at play, life seems to be challenging me with multiple occasions to exercise those qualities that I tell myself I want to develop: patience, serenity, acceptance, grace, humility forgiveness -- what the hell am I thinking?

I fucking hate learning experiences. What I hate most is that moment where you're all set to be deliciously, slyly, maliciously spiteful and go, "FUCK. It's another fucking learning experience!!! You're doing it wrong!"

At work management is making us do idiotic statistical tracking that will end up providing them with a purely imaginary number that will supposedly equal how much it costs to process a book that someone has donated to the library, and mostly proves how entirely they don't understand what we actually do and how we do it. This has provided me both with the opportunity to completely rearrange how I work in ways I hate (thankfully temporarily), and prove how right my boss was in giving me my lowest evaluation scores in the equivalent of "Is a team player" and "Works well with others."

I might have said "fuck" in front of her when she was telling me about the new task. At the meeting this afternoon, I asked a coworker to kick me if I started saying things out loud. It's kind of sad that my boss has developed this nervous laugh to everything I say.

And then I just watched Maxed Out: Hard Times, Easy Credit and the Era of Predatory Lenders , a 2006 documentary on the credit industry and the lives it destroys with the help of our government, while patting itself on the back for its customer service and helping people afford their health care and mortgages and basic living expenses as it gouges them with interest rates up towards 30%. It made me physically nauseous, and I may have violated my own moral principles more than once calling curses down on some of those smug fuckers. I hope they lose everything and end up on the streets, but I'm not optimistic, and it's left me pissed off at the whole world, and resolved once again to pay off the credit cards and keep them that way. Which means I have got to stop eating out...

I haven't really posted since my fabulous vacation in California, which was fabulous. I didn't want to come home, but since then I've been swept up in prep for VividCon, which is going fabulously in spite of more fucking learning experiences and things that make me go o.O and flail.

And, um. Yeah, that's it. It seems like everywhere I turn, things and people piss me off, and I feel underappreciated and unheard, and what's with that? Probably I just need to watch more Corner Gas, sleep more, and watch Matt dance around the world some more. Nothing like a few good cathartic sobs to reset the universe!

If only we'd stop trying to be happy we'd have a pretty good time. --Edith Wharton

lady_ganesh, rachelmanija, and telophase are running livelongnmarry, a fandom auction to benefit marriage equality. Proceeds are going towards the fight against the California initiative which will legally destroy existing same-sex marriages and ban any further ones.

More info and instructions at the comm profile here! And most if not all of the items up for bidding also come with "buy now" prices. Here is full info on bidding.

I think this is a fabulous thing, even if I'm omg so late in prompting it, and you've probably already seen it all over. I've been a bit...busy! OH HAI. *waves*


I was editing an article for work, and there was a point being made about the difficulty of accurately assessing life expectancies, even within a fairly limited area. The example used included an illustration -- a map of a section the London public transportation system -- and the comment that male life expectancy drops nearly six years between the westernmost station in this area and the easternmost station.

I take a closer look at the map. Second-to-last station is Canary Wharf. Well, there you go, is my immediate thought. Don't live near Torchwood headquarters. --faos

Thanks to cofax7 for the head's up.

coffeeandink here discusses her reaction to a Wiscon 32 panel that dealt with the perceived gender inequities exhibited when Night Shade books published their anthology, Eclipse One, which had a 50/50 gender split of authors, while their cover displayed only male names.

And I quote her: My take is that there was a lot of sexism and male privilege displayed in the cover design, the name selection, and the ensuing conversation, including but not limited to people representing Night Shade Books.

Hold that thought.

cofax7 points to the author listing for Eclipse 2...which contains a 7/93 gender split of authors, and guess which gender is best represented? That's right, there is one woman in this anthology, out of fourteen.

In comments to cofax7's post, I expressed the opinion that if asked, the publishers would claim virtue and gender-blindness; even though I was entirely sincere, it was still disheartening when despotliz confirmed that this is exactly what they say. And the rep in question doesn't even see any reason to be embarrassed or concerned.

Because, as we all know, as long as your intentions are good, if you're blind to gender, then it doesn't matter if the perception is that there's a bias towards male authors. Even if, as pointed out in the comments to the post, the contributors to the second anthology were directly solicited, so that you're not operating solely based on submissions.

Apparently more solicited women "didn't deliver" than men, but then, "[o]f the stories actually delivered, some didn't quite work for [the editor in question] (that happens all the time too). Again, as it happened, more submissions for women were knocked out, but only by chance. It was just how it worked out... The key thing I'd ask you to take away from this, and I'm quite serious, is that I honestly don't think about this when buying stories. I'm not looking to achieve a gender balance."

There's no consideration given to the possibility of encouraging more women writers, not even a token consideration that continuing to put out male-dominated anthologies might lead to a continuing of the problem, not even a moment's thought given to the idea that possibly your view of what constitutes a great story is influenced by this kind of trend. Nobody who considers themselves blind to a particular disparity thinks that their perceptions are at all influenced by the disparity; we're too busy patting ourselves on the back for not being one of them: the people who pay too much attention to trivial issues like race, gender, orientation, ability. If only everyone were blind to such differences in the human condition! *cries*

Cofax said to me, "Do they think nobody's going to notice?" Obviously the answer is: they don't care, because they are secure in their virtue and high-mindedness.

I'll copy cofax7 again in pointing to hth_the_first's response to the virtue of blindness when it comes to issues of discrimination. And I won't be buying any books from Night Shade books any time soon. Because hey, I also support Affirmative Action.

I'm not saying there should be capital punishment for stupidity, but why don't we just take the safety labels off of everything and let the problem solve itself?

So, for reasons that won't bear close scrutiyscrutiny (ETA: and clearly neither will my spelling), I didn't sleep last night. And by "didn't sleep" I mean "didn't go to bed at all." By which I mean "sat on the FUCKING COMPUTER ALL NIGHT LONG.

I mean, sure, I had reasons. A reason. For getting on the fucking computer. To check something! I paused a TV show! There was a chain of events! ...I'm just a little fuzzy on some of the links. One or two. One.

See, clearly I ended up somehow on Amazon, but does that every really need explanation? I think it was because I was posting about books. It made sense! And I wasn't there all night. Because posting meant comments meant answering leading to catching up on LJ leading to seeing the very nice new icons that lanning posted last night. Which led to googling images of cat art! S'obvious! And then at some point there was the image search for "feral," because of the feral librarians and needing an icon, which led to uploading of icons and more searching for..something. Name of an artwork. Something.

And...somewhere in there there was a thing. A small thing. Maybe it was a cartoon. A, um. Very special and sadly far from unique cartoon. And by "special" I mean pornographic and by "sadly far from unique" I mean OH. MY. GOD. Um. Did I mention it was Lilo and Stitch porn? *hides*

I CAN SEE YOU JUDGING ME. I did not spend all night browsing Lilo&Stitch porn!!!! Really. Because there were Disney characters and Cartoon Network and Anime characters and X-Men and Superman and Batman and really THERE'S A GREAT DEAL OF CARTOON PORN OUT THERE. Which wasn't a surprise, at all! Just. Practice is much more... there. Than theory.

Of course, some of it involved short skirts and tentacles, usually belonging to two different creatures (although an argument could be made that more often than not only one character was wearing both), and it's not that the content of any of it was a big surprise! Or even particularly shocking--

Okay, there was the cartoon kiddy porn. AND NO, I DIDN'T SPEND ALL NIGHT SURFING ARTIFICIAL KIDDY PORN. But the bit I saw was... disturbing. And by disturbing I mean everything you think I mean, and while I still see a tremendous difference between actual child pornography and this...stuff, I can feel responses and arguments shifting in my head, because that stuff... was not harmless. And it did not make me feel better at all that Mommies seemed to get a fairly equal share of time with their little boys. *twitch*

And that was just in passing. YES.

There may have been a point last night when I almost came close to nearly considering thinking about actually spending money to get into a cartoon porn site. Which would have given me access to multiple cartoon porn sites! Because possibly there were seductive promises of more comic book porn pictures and um. Okay, I didn't even start to get out of my chair to hunt down my plastic, but THERE WAS A MOMENT. And I now have a slightly better understanding how porn addicts can lose their lives to this stuff, because those sites are tricksy. You see a tableau of pictures! You click on an, um. Intriguing one! And it takes you to another page full of pictures, which may or may not include the one you were "intrigued" by. Which leads to opening more tabs. And more. And there are traps, of course, movies that want to download, cgi scripts that want to run-- Dangerous things.

And of course, for reasons like this, this was all incredibly stupid and I have no excuse, it's just one more link, then bed, oh, huh, look at. Um.

My poor Firefox had a nervous breakdown and kept trying to escape, refusing to cooperate, crashing three to four times before it just couldn't take it anymore and it disappeared entirely. I think it had its head under a pillow, with ear plugs and a sleep mask, and when I tried to coax it back it wouldn't respond, as if to say "GO AWAY YOU SAD, SAD KINKY WOMAN."

Of course, it could have been one of the mozilla add-ons that's apparently known to do something similar, and the poor browser was finally persuaded to come back in safe mode, with add-ons disabled, at which point I could restart it and it was fine. Only a tiny tremor or two.

The end result of all this is that as far as how I'm feeling? It's still last night. I mean, it can't be tomorrow, I haven't slept yet. It was still light when I sat down at the computer, not quite twilight, but the sun wasn't really up. And by the time I realized that I should stop promising myself that be able to lie down for at least three hours, two hours, one, I was practically late for work and the quality of light, today being gray and cloudy, was almost exactly the same as when I sat down. It literally still feels like last night, and about twelve hours of my life just evaporated in a pornographic cartoon blur. It all kind of just... smushes together. And yeah, some of the pictures were just like that.

And I can hear you now. "You...are not precisely the person I thought you were." I am! No, really! Okay, I'm precisely the person I always was, only now I'm... more illustrated. In my head.

Some people cartoons were never meant to have sex.

Please be laughing. *looks nervously at Joule*

...and I said, but the forecast said it would be better this weekend! and Seah said, "The weather channel always gets us wrong!" and I said, "But I went by the local news site Margie gave me" and she said, "NO HORRIBLY HOT! ALL BAD! ALSO THE U.S. IS OUT OF GRAIN AND WE HAVE TO STOCK UP!" She also said, "Look, just think of it as stocking up against the Zombie war"

Like I'm going to think she's really serious about protecting us from the Zombie war when we don't even have the MOAT in yet. --Merryish

Lovecraft's Cthulhu meets Len Deighton's spies. In the title piece, Alan Turing, the father of modern computer science, completes his theorem on "Phase Conjugate Grammars for Extra-dimensional Summoning."


The Sword-edged Blonde stars "sword jockey Eddie LaCrosse, a private investigator who has spent most of his life trying to distance himself from a shadowy and tragic past.... Incorporating elements from both hard-boiled mystery and heroic fantasy, Bledsoe's genre-blending first novel is both stylish and self-assured: Raymond Chandler meets Raymond E. Feist."

(Clearly I'm on a posting upswing. I'll go to bed soon. No, really.)

Wouldn't it be great if kittens were found with the same frequency as spiders? My flatmates would rush out of the bathroom screaming, "there's a kitten in the bath! We think it crawled up the plughole! Please deal with it!" And late at night, you'd look out of the corner of your eyes, and see something furry scuttling across the wall, or hanging by a thread from your ceiling, purring. --Katharsis

(I wonder why that one reminds me of