laceblade

And for the record, I do have a social life. Reading LJ posts really doesn't take very much time. I like being informed, and I like deconstructing this stuff in my free time.

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Relevant Posts that give a background to the one I'm about to write!
coffeeandink: RaceFail: Once More, with Misdirection
vom_marlowe: Fucking Will Shetterly Insults Me and My Family
deepad: To burn a bridge is sometimes as necessary as to build one
shewhohashope: Cultural Appropriation and SF/F: Once More, With Apathy
coffeeandink: Dear People....

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I am really confused by posts like Kathryn Cramer's, which cries foul at people who use aliases online.*

I'm sorry, but some people have very good reasons for choosing to be anonymous on the Internet. Not everybody is self-employed, or even employed by leftist, free-thinking people who agree with all of their opinions anyway.

Does nobody remember the PDF files from WhiteHouse.gov that were floating around just about a month ago? To be considered for employment in the Obama Administration, a person had to detail any blog posts or blog comments, or comments of any sort, made online in their entire life.

People who work in the same field as me are actually forbidden by their employers from having blogs at all, because anything - and they do mean anything - can misinterpreted and reflect poorly on their employer. People who have blogs are not hired. So if you choose to have a blog anyway, you'd damned well better use a pseudonym.

People like me are not using aliases to hide behind a made-up name, to never own up to the things we say, to never take responsibility for hurting others, for making a point, for speaking out. In fact, many of us make use of aliases so that we might have a voice at all. I'll own up to things I write online. I'm not going anywhere! I don't start conversations and then run away, taunting with "HAHA BUT YOU DON'T KNOW MY REAL NAME!"

In fact, I think using a pseudonym keeps the conversation focused on what's being said, and not on who people are.

I thought jonquil solved this shit with her post calling attention to all the bad-ass people who have used pseudonyms like, say, Publius.


vom_marlowe points out why it's quite dickish to make assumptions about people's class after finding out single bits of information about them. I don't really don't know what Will Shetterly's deal is. Like, you find out one detail about a person, and then you know their entire life story!

Even if he was right....what if people are middle class, or *gasp*, upper class? Does it take away their right to call you a fucker for being a dick on the Internet? No! It does not.

And I'm getting really sick of all of his friend's comments of "OMG, but he really is nice in person! I can't believe he's this mean online."

For the record, dear friends of mine, if any one of you were to start being a total asshole to all of my friends online, but you were still nice to me in person, I would not be friends with you any more! The way you treat other people also reflects on you as a person. The Internet is real. People who type words are not machines or paper dolls; I find it ironic that in this RaceFail 9000, the people using their real names are often the ones who don't seem to understand that. IF YOU ARE A DICK ONLINE, YOU ARE STILL BEING A DICK.

To bring up high school as an example most people understand: even when Abercrombie-wearing "popular" kids were nice to me, if they were mean to me or people they viewed as ugly or fat in my grade, I was not nice to them in return! That shit is mean. Nothing excuses it. I didn't stop thinking that they were assholes when they were nice to me, or when, at that moment, they weren't picking on other kids.


Lastly...can someone tell me who Theresa Neilsen Hayden is? Same with her husband? I'd never heard of these people before RaceFail 9000, and they must be big in fandom or something, but all I know is that they acted with fail.

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Upcoming/Uplifting:
-Tonight's beer_marmalade discussion, at which we discussed topics and thoughts from RaceFail 9000. It was a good conversation! Even with a mostly white crowd! GOOD THINGS CAN COME OUT OF MIRES OF CRAP.





*Link removed because Kathryn Cramer keeps changing the redirection of the URL, sending people to scammer sites that might have malware. Mark a bitch point in her column!

[Poll #1268291]

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Anyway, Geek.Kon.

I spent time with sasha_feather and owlface1, and were_duck. I was also able to chat for reasonable amounts of time with berzerker_prime and britrock37, both of whom are heavy-lifting planners for the convention. I fangirled Sarah Monette (truepenny), telling her I loved her recent posts about revenge tragedies, and received book-buying advice from her in the dealer's room. We even saw bipagan!

I have enough brain functions for bulleted lists, so I'll do that.

*I liked that this year, more space was reserved for the convention, and all of the gaming stuff: RPGs, CCGs, LAN party, Super Mario Smash Brothers and what-have-you were all in a separate building (but still close and connected by a foot-bridge). I'm assuming that the people who like this stuff like it all being in one place. I liked it because I don't care about that stuff, and it was separated from all the stuff I was interested in: panels, vendors, and anime viewing.

*I watched the first two episodes of Tsubasa: Reservoir Chronicles. Overall, I like the manga better, as expected. I think the art style in the manga is pretty neat, and it's lost in the nature of animation. Yuki Kajiura music gets pretty old pretty fast, too, and felt overly dramatic. I think this is just a general rule for me with CLAMP. In every instance I can think of, I prefer the manga version of their stories to the anime version.

*Attended SF Films of 2008; left pretty early on. Still, admired the comprehensive list of every sci-fi movie from 2008!

*Stuck around in SF&F TV Shows long enough to offer up my opinions of Terminator and Fringe. Was skeptical about panelist's opinion that Heroes is the best sci-fi show on TV. For white fanboys, maybe.
chrome_kitten has decided to stop watching the show after seeing the season 3 premiere (which I personally have yet to see), but she's had a great number of posts dissecting the show's representation of race and gender. This post analyzes the presentation of the Heroes centerfold in this week's Entertainment Weekly. This one offers a list of things she would have changed about season 2 to make it better. Pretty much every point involves giving more power to the female characters and people of color on the show. It might be hard for some people to hear.....because Heroes is their favorite show! But looking at how gender and race are represented in the media you spend time with is always important. It doesn't mean that you have to stop, but just give it some thought. It's hard not to read chrome_kitten's posts and not realize that Heroes really is all about white men. As she says:

to me, its biggest failing is that it still assumes that viewers can't get into stories that aren't centered on white, male characters. Characters of color are relegated to the background or to stories that are ultimately only important in how they affect the Petrelli storylines. Women are also generally either pushed to the background or are only foregrounded in terms of their gendered fucked-upedness (e.g. Niki/Jessica) or their potential for weekly torture porn (e.g. Claire). And as usual, heaven help the women of color. These portrayals are the primary reason why I've given up watching the show. I suspect that the writers, directors, producers, advertisers, etc. think they're being clever, insightful, or edgy; but really, they're just being lazy.

*Only lasted about 5 minutes in the Fanfiction panel. I didn't think any of particular depth was being discussed.

*britrock37's CLAMP panel was a delightful romp through all of CLAMP manga, ever, complete with PowerPoint slides. I thought it was a good overview for people wanting to know more about their work.

*Attended "Speedy Singularity" and "Build a World" panels. Lots of time was spent on Hard SF, which I'm not really interested, but I appreciated truepenny's presence.

*Purchases:
Revolutionary Girl Utena button
fanart bookmark of Katara from Avatar: The Last Airbender
fanart bookmark of Sailor Moon
fanart bookmark of Tamaki from Ouran High School Host Club
Hammered by Elizabeth Bear (as recommended by truepenny
Those Who Hunt the Night by Barbara Hambly (as recommended by truepenny)
Bride of the Rat God by Barbara Hambly (as recommended by truepenny)

*sasha_feather, make sure you find me tomorrow, because I have were_duck's copy of Buffy, season 6 for you.



Differences of Wiscon and Geek.Kon that stand out for me, for the curious
*Geek.Kon strives for PG-13 fun, and lots of high school kids go. I like this. It's a safe space for them to totally freak out with each other, which I'm assuming is hard to find in high school.
*I love Wiscon, but Wiscon sucks in regards to anime content. I don't have a ton of fun in the dealer's room at Wiscon because yeah, I obviously like books, but I can get them from the library, and only one table sells cheap used ones. At Geek.Kon, there's all kinds of anime merchandise that makes me ridiculously excited, and I can't buy it anywhere else. Wiscon's cool, but you can buy books all the time, and I like being able to buy unique things at a convention. Also, at Geek.Kon, there is a room devoted to anime viewing all day, both days. Easy to run, nice for relaxing, and lots of varied content.
*The panels are a lot better at Wiscon. Still, panels are pretty much all that Wiscon does, aside from allowing attendees to plan their own parties, so that makes sense.
*There's lots more cosplay at Geek.Kon, at least of the anime variety, which I can easily recognize and appreciate. Of course, this also means there's more scary cosplay, :[ How come so many young girls dress up as Chii from Chobits?!

Today was very relaxing, which was a nice change compared to the last few days. I was in my pajamas for most of it, which always helps. My dad and I bought a space heater, so hopefully now when I go back to Madison, I won't feel like dying from coldness in my room all the time. Julie and her kids came to our house for dinner (steak and potatoes), and afterwards I went to Chad's house for a while, to spend time with him, Kristy, and a couple of other people.

I spent time doing some blog maintenance, too. While I originally thought that it would be too much of a pain in the ass to keep a heinously organized tagging system of labels for posts, I've since decided that it's quite useful. So, the LiveJournal tag list has been weeded through and organized, and I cleaned up the sidebar of the journal. As for the blog version of this blog, the tags list is still a bit of a work on progress, but can be found here.

Last night, I was also at Chad's while he entertained friends of his parents for dinner (delicious). After they left, Kristy, Chad, Dave, and I watched Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children, which is the movie sequel to my favorite video game of all time, Final Fantasy VII. Kristy had played the game a long time ago, so I wanted her to see it for closure. From an outsiders' perspective (Chad's, Dave's), and even from an insiders' perspective, the movie was pretty lol. Chad kept asking if there was a plot, and if Sephiroth was going to show up, while we all laughed at at the improbable physics, and the cutting-in-half of a motorcycle with a sword. What got made fun of the most, though, was the English dub. I hadn't watched it all the way through in the dub yet, so I didn't know how poor it was. There were a lot of sentences that had unnecessarily large pauses in the middle of them, and I don't even know where all of that "dilly dally, shilly shally" crap came from. It gave me lots of game nostalgia, though. I should check out the special features on that DVD.

Speaking of movies, I've seen a number of ones for kids in the last few days, with my sister's kids. Among them are "Meet the Robinsons," "Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium," and "Night at the Museum." All of them were all right, although "Meet the Robinsons" was probably my favorite of the three.

Westmark
I finished read Lloyd Alexander's Westmark today. It is the first novel in the Westmark trilogy. I've never read anything by Lloyd Alexander before, but he seems well-known and respected in the Wiscon crowd for having been an author who wrote lots of YA fantasy that included strong female characters. Westmark was quite bleak in its reflections on human nature and society, and I quite liked it.

One thing that I definitely liked about the book was that Alexander doesn't take forever doing his world-building. His prose is sparse and to the point. Action, plot, dialogue. There is no lag. A pleasant change from, say, the endless reflections that plague the Libba Bray books.

( I have other thoughts that are spoilery )

I have the next book, The Kestrel, checked out, but I have some other things I need to read first. I'm looking forward to it, though, as many people say that The Kestrel had a profound impact on them.

rilina on Westmark here (Spoilers)
oyceter on The Westmark Trilogy as a whole here (No Spoilers)

Anyway, it's time for a bit of reading, and then bed. I'll be at the Packer game tomorrow with my dad, sister, and brother-in-law. I find it amusing that many households that live near Lambeau Field plow their lawns of snow (often to the point of completely covering their windows and siding with blasted snow) in order to be able to park more cars on their property, and make money.

A Note on the Sidebar (this applies to the blog only, and not the LiveJournal)
You'll notice that I've actually put a list of links on the sidebar so that you can re-visit posts at a later time, if you so choose. Eventually, I'll get a link to my archives back up, too. For now, though, you can see that there is in fact a method to my madness of post labels. I've listed general topics together, and then separated out the anime and manga labels. I find label-sorted tags to be very useful when I'm reading other people's livejournals (especially when they review anime and manga), so hopefully at least one of you will find it equally useful!

Epiphany of the Day
I write the intercessions for mass for St. Paul's, the Catholic church here in Madison that is practically on campus. Today, while working on the intercessions for the Easter Vigil mass, I read the following, which is part of the story in which God asks Abraham to sacrifice his son and then says, "Just kidding!":
God put Abraham to the test.
He called to him, “Abraham!”
“Here I am, “ he replied.
Then God said:
“Take your son Isaac, your only one, whom you love,
and go to the land of Moriah.
There you shall offer him up as a holocaust
on a height that I will point out to you.”
So! Where did Abraham have to go? Moriah.
I probably only thought of this because I'm currently rereading Lord of the Rings for my SciFi/Fantasy class, but where did the Fellowship have to go and sacrifice Gandalf (although that, too, was a "just kidding!" sacrifice)? Moriah. That Tolkien - what a whore!

Hiroki Endo's "Eden;" Volume 1
It's Spring Break, and that means that I have time to read at least a few volumes of manga. Yesterday, I was able to read the first volume of something that's been sitting on my shelf for a while, and that is Hiroki Endo's "Eden." I had found the book at HalfPrice Books, and had heard good things about it, so I picked it up. Luckily, those good things are true. Here, I will lazily transcribe the information on the back cover, but it is actually reflective of the style and story, so I feel justified in doing so.

Eden is both a brilliant love song to the post-apocalyptic survival genre and an exploration on humanity's role in the natural order. When a large portion of civilization is wiped out by a new virus, those who aren't immune are either severely crippled or live only with cybernetically enhanced or entirely mechanical bodies. Taking advantage of a world in chaos, the paramilitary Propater forces topple the United Nations and seek global domination. In this cutthroat, cyberpunk future, Elijah - a young boy on a personal quest - travels with an artificially intelligent combat robot through a pitiless, futuristic landscape.
Hiroki Endo's Eden is a garden of violence, pathos, and philosophy, where endearing, unique heroes face a constant struggle for survival and harsh surprises wait around every corner!

I guess that the series is a little comparable to Neon Genesis Evangelion. It is a post-apocalyptic world in which much of the world's population has been wiped out, the UN serves as a major character but has been subverted by an organization with ulterior motives, there are flashbacks that explain how the parents of the teenage protagonists were very much involved in instigating the events that propelled the world to where it is - etc.
At the end of this volume, the author's note explores the notion that he created this with his "leftover feelings" after watching Evangelion. Still, the story feels really fresh to me, and it is well-written in addition to being well-drawn.

As to whether or not the series will be good, I'll have to wait and see what exactly happened to the character in volume one. If nothing else, this first volume of the series does work nicely as a stand-alone, too. The first chapter serves as a set-up, but it is 116 pages in length. Chapters two and three take place 20 years after the first chapter, so obviously things have changed, and I'm not sure yet what happened to those characters to whom I became so attached to in chapter one. Still, I really want to find out! I will definitely continue reading this series to find out what happens.

Additional note: I've now read volume 2, and it is still awesome, and seems to have lost its Evangelion-esque-ness.