that sweet, sad thought has faded now

I am still trying to refrain from obscenities over issues. From screaming and cursing and

fuck that

SLUTS ARE AWESOME

THOSE THAT ARE NOT SLUTS ARE ALSO AWESOME (unless they're the assholes that blame girls for having sexual desires)

A WOMAN'S SEXUALITY IS NOT SOMETHING SHE SHOULD BE ASHAMED OF

A WOMAN HAVING DESIRES DOES NOT MAKE HER A SLUT CHECK YOUR FUCKING DICTIONARY, ASSHOLES

GO TO HELL

**screeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeams**

From this. I do not actually suggest you go and read it or follow the links, (it's a report on the actual events) but if anyone is curious, they may. Now in other news, since I can't go down there and fucking ventilate the heads of every slut-shamer there (god, I just learned that phrase and I already hate it) I DEMAND A FIC MEME.

Give me a prompt. Fandom, original, anything. A female character and something either directly sexytiemz related or evocative thereof. And I will write something adult about a woman or girl enjoying the hell out of her sexuality.

This entry was originally posted at http://shiegra.dreamwidth.org/80562.html. Please comment there using OpenID.

Okay, this looks considerably more awesome than the first trailer. I am now somewhat looking forward to this movie!

I do hope Alice does more than stand around looking worried in the movie, though. That seems to be largely what she's doing in the trailer, armour or no. What I especially loved about Alice was how active a part in her own story she had. Don't ruin that plz, Tim Burton. Not that I have any faith in him after Charlie and the Chocolate Factory--but entirely too much of the trailer is Alice standing looking worried while Hatter narrates, fights, and does pretty much everything.

This entry was originally posted at http://shiegra.dreamwidth.org/80353.html. Please comment there using OpenID.

PSA to Emerging FFXIII Fans: Don't Do Racist Shit! (Fail in comments.)

An Interesting and Heartbreaking Addition to the Debate At Hand: SEXISM!

This is how people run out of spoons, run out of energy to educate people, and it answers the question: why didn't you tell me? These are the reasons we don't tell, don't speak up, pretend we didn't see, and know in our hearts that we can lift teaspoon after teaspoon, and they'll be scooping the water back with their hands where they think we can't see.

Time to discuss racism and humour! aka how about them mildly infamous icons?

Bingo in FF fandom

So after a terrible come-home-crying day, I think, to take my mind off it I'll spend some time with something that gives me enjoyment in my leisure time, [insert fandom for whatever source here]. That'll help me escape the daily grind of the effects of racism. But here's the rub: It's there too. Deliberately or unintentionally, here's yet another place where POC are Othered and excluded. The salt in the wound are the justifications for this hurtful behaviour.

Teaching Diversity With Multimedia (How Some People Try To Distance Themselves From These Images)

Gratitude, which is beautiful and upsetting (to me) all at once.

But this is exactly what people mean when they say “Check your privilege.” They mean it is far more likely this person got it wrong once but right the other 99 times out of 100 than it is that this person is hysterically overreacting to a wholly imagined problem. It means you don’t get to see the problem they’re reacting to, the blatant pattern, in your own daily life—so for you, this one experience feels huge and representative, while for the person who doesn’t share your privilege, it’s a drop in the fucking bucket. And if you can keep that in mind, you can probably reach out and fix things with that person, who is probably entirely reasonable underneath the veneer of defensiveness she’s developed with damned good reason.

This entry was originally posted at http://shiegra.dreamwidth.org/79898.html. Please comment there using OpenID.

Friday: 4-7am; 7.30am-9am
Saturday: 2-7am
Sunday: -

Thankyou and goodnghhh. Wish me luck, internets.

x-posted from http://cheloya.dreamwidth.org/454787.html || comments

I'm buggered, mind, but it was a good day. ^^ Rage's dress is going to be lovely.

Hopefully I get a good night's sleep, because tomorrow is going to be a right doozy. I don't want to check my emails tonight because I don't want to lie awake stressing, but I fear it may be damned if I do, damned if I don't. Bless you, Tuesday release schedule, you screw up my sleep schedule like horrible, horrible clockwork.

x-posted from http://cheloya.dreamwidth.org/454634.html || comments

Meme! Sort of? I made it up, does it count? Sum up your main original character in a single sentence. Straight-forward or whimsical as you please.


Helena, who likes to hunt bunnies in the dark of the night.

Courtney, who is adapting to getting blood all over her favorite shoes.

Alice, who really wants less mayhem in her tea.

Suzannah, who favours Hell for the company.

August, who finds it best to always be someone else.

This entry was originally posted at http://shiegra.dreamwidth.org/79424.html. Please comment there using OpenID.

So today I was introduced to Posemaniac, a site which randomly generates poses for the purpose of thirty, forty-five, ninety second sketches. It's great for getting more comfortable with drawing quick, clean lines!

( Here are today's results. )

x-posted from http://cheloya.dreamwidth.org/454224.html || comments

I have to say I deeply disapprove of the fandom trend of rejecting female characters with deep flaws or scars. Or really, often any flaws at all--and when those characters are dealt with, the flaws are ignored and smoothed away.

It goes on with Jill Kismet, Sookie Stackhouse, Dante Valentine--though mostly she suffers from fandom-wide shrieks about how she isn't nice enough to the man that controls and manipulates her--Max Guevera, Vorena and any number of other female characters. In male characters, dark pasts and flaws and ruthlessness and dangerousness are sexy, appealing, romantic. In female characters, it's 'recklessness' 'bitchiness' 'whining' and being 'too mean' or just 'dumb.'

I'm beginning to think that's why so many people glom on to pairings where the male partner puts the female character on a pedestal and usually gives her lots of flowery words about how he does know her--citing only the admirable surface qualities. Why no one seems to realize how fucked up a basis for a relationship is, is beyond me. Because you know how they react when that admirable but human woman steps off that pedestal? Badly. An example off the top of my head is Agrippa and Octavia from Rome. She doesn't step off the pedestal--thus leaving it open for Meaningful Glances in the finale--but it's made clear it was an infatuation when at the first hint of trouble he goes scurrying off to hide in her brother's shadow.

This kind of relationship isn't love, because he doesn't know her. (And vice versa with the genders, but it's almost always actually treated like the simple infatuation it is there.) And I, personally, find it a little creepy. She isn't a human being to him, not really. She's an icon.

This entry was originally posted at http://shiegra.dreamwidth.org/79220.html. Please comment there using OpenID.

I am reading a book that is volume one in The Parasol Protectorate. Completely unsurprisingly, it is awesome so far.

This entry was originally posted at http://shiegra.dreamwidth.org/79017.html. Please comment there using OpenID.

"I know it's racist, Te, but the special effects look awesome!"

The simple fact of the matter is that every dollar you spend on these films (and TV shows, and books, and everything else) is a dollar telling Them -- yes, Them -- that it's just fine to piss all over me and other people of color for the sake of 'entertainment.' You're part of the problem.

And, not actually in much of a subject change at all, we have Avatar! Which is, to all accounts, everything I was afraid it would be, with added ableism.

When Will White People Stop Making Movies Like "Avatar"?

Think of it this way. Avatar is a fantasy about ceasing to be white, giving up the old human meatsack to join the blue people, but never losing white privilege.

And what is at the core of it, what I want fucking stapled to the media executives' foreheads:

Whites need to stop remaking the white guilt story, which is a sneaky way of turning every story about people of color into a story about being white. Speaking as a white person, I don't need to hear more about my own racial experience. I'd like to watch some movies about people of color (ahem, aliens), from the perspective of that group, without injecting a random white (erm, human) character to explain everything to me.

And, from this review:

By the end of the film you're left wondering why the film needed the Jake Sully character at all. The film could have done just as well by focusing on an actual Na'vi native who comes into contact with crazy humans who have no respect for the environment. I can just see the explanation: "Well, we need someone (an avatar) for the audience to connect with. A normal guy will work better than these tall blue people." However, this is the type of thinking that molds all leads as white male characters (blank slates for the audience to project themselves upon) unless your name is Will Smith.

Disappointing and appalling all around, but not surprising. Why do these people never think?

Characters in most novels, of course, have to have flaws. Novels exist where they don’t, but often the character is either boringly idealized or part of a historical and cultural context that doesn’t exist in most twenty-first-century Western countries any longer. (Characters like Herman Melville’s Billy Budd and George Eliot’s Eppie are also meant to serve a specific allegorical purpose that’s rare for modern fantasy novels). But it’s also possible to make a character too flawed, or to add only “charming” quirks that don’t actually impact a character’s life in any discernible way. I’m sure you can think of at least one protagonist whose only fault was being too generous, or too kind-hearted. (I will never get back the hours of my life which I wasted reading The Wayfarer Redemption).

Here, then, are some (more) ideas about adding flaws to characters and what to do once you have them.

( Read more... )

A rant on loyalty is probably next.

Oh hey, I almost forgot to make a present month post! I doubt people are going to ask for anything but I thought I'd put it out here just in case.

I make icons and write drabbles/vignettes. Most of my main fandoms are in my interests, as well as ships I'm inclined to write for (I'll try writing for things that aren't listed but it may not end well).

I feel like I should post more often but I have nothing interesting to say. My life is so boring. I clean the house, look after the pets, take care of my mother, and usually play World of Warcraft in between. So boring. T_T

...Maybe I'll start trying for fandom posts again.

I need to take a break from the internet, you guys. Stuff has been building up and up and just becoming too stressful for me. See you eventually.

This entry was originally posted at http://shiegra.dreamwidth.org/78449.html. Please comment there using OpenID.

“Successful, Black And Lonely” by Nadra Kareem.

But so prevalent is the idea that black women can’t find a man because they’re too aggressive that an Asian American woman I know actually repeated this stereotype verbatim to me. I was astonished, not only because I found the statement racist and sexist but because she’d completely overlooked her own singleness. And that’s exactly my problem with these types of articles. I can’t recall ever reading an article about lonely Asian women or lonely Latinas. But these women exist, too.

There are worse racist representations out there in books and movies--so why do is this one particularly aggravating to me? I think it might be because like the 'chick flicks' that are so sexist it hurts, this kind of ridiculous stereotype is so accepted in our culture they're making a movie out of it.

This entry was originally posted at http://shiegra.dreamwidth.org/78292.html. Please comment there using OpenID.

Saturday Night Live keeps minstrelsy alive and well.

Ellen Page and Blake Lively help out.

Previously I didn't have much opinion at all of these actresses. Now I have a low one.

Livejournal removes gender unspecified option.

This was such a scumbag move I was--well, not astounded, this is LJ, but certainly offended. A lot of people, naturally, protested, and we received this bullshit-heavy bit of backpedaling, (especially considering this bit of code) but at least it's not going through any more.

On a lighter note: octopus snatches coconut and runs.

This entry was originally posted at http://shiegra.dreamwidth.org/77940.html. Please comment there using OpenID.

Okay, I could not be less interested in Twilight if I tried. But I was scrolling past my flists a while back, and saw this. Okay, ignore Robert whatshisname looking like the most hangovered vampire in the history of ever, Kristen Stewart is so unbelievably gorgeous. I ran across these animated icons and I could not help myself, I saved them just to watch her hair ~swirl~ in ~slow-mo~ because oh my god, that girl is beautiful.

And a good actress! I think she's a great actress. But on a purely shallow level damn, is she pretty.

This entry was originally posted at http://shiegra.dreamwidth.org/77727.html. Please comment there using OpenID.

I literally do not comprehend how the hell Laurell K. Hamilton thinks that forcing her heroine to have sex with people she does not want to have sex with is sexy or exciting. It is rape. Anita is upset by it, horrified by it--almost certainly traumatized by it, though the books focus on the male angst over being neglected because she's being forced to have sex with others. Anita does not find people attractive on the basis of looks alone. Anita very strongly does not want to have sex with someone unless she is in love with them.

RAPE IS NOT FUCKING SEXY, LKH.

So having a male character boast smugly about Anita's awareness of him is not charming, it is not cute. He is bragging about the fact that Anita was completely uninterested in having sex with him, was forced to have sex with him, and is now aware of his body in that physical sense. As a direct result of rape.

I'm going to go slink off into my corner and cry. NOT. SEXY.

Someone said that Blood Noir was taking a step back toward the old Anita, so I picked it up off the shelf at the library and flipped through it. First the aforementioned nauseating bit, then suddenly we're at a part where Jason seriously tells her that because they went off together, they're undermining Jean-Claude's reputation and they have to 'think up a punishment' for themselves so he doesn't look bad. Anita passively listens.

WHAT THE FUCK. WHAT THE--you know what? He can look bad all he wants, because she's the fucking Executioner and she will kick their asses. Every element in that plot hole is such a gaping example of all the horrible derailments of the early books. Just...what. Just stop, LKH, for god's sake.

This entry was originally posted at http://shiegra.dreamwidth.org/77333.html. Please comment there using OpenID.

I thought I was gonna hafta hang up my yaoi writer hat, honestly. But! The Advent Calendar entry for the 15th is decidedly not work-safe.

( and if you don't want spoilers about what it is, don't click here. )

The next time I hear 'well, TV audiences aren't going to care about changes to books because they are 'so much bigger' and 'entirely different' I'm going to slap something. Because all those quaint book-reading types never watch TV! Because people who watch TV a) don't read books and b) are so much more important!

Because we don't actually want to keep any trace of diversity or feminism in our product, so we'll spout this bullshit when people protest sexist and racist changes from the sources material!

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