August 2008

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Jun. 3rd, 2008

Sanctioned abuse = “freedom of religion”?

Link-heavy ramblings on the FLDS and its multiple violations of human rights. )
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Apr. 27th, 2008

For the Love of Boobies

Sorry to the Lj people: I know this won’t be under a cut there and it’s rather long-winded (as many of my link-heavy rants tend to be). I think I covered all bases here but I’m always open to additions. Direct rational feedback to the original post at Ij and any shrieks of UR RONG U AWFUL H0R to here, please.

●●●


My thoughts on the Open Source Boobies Project, let me tell you about them. )
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Mar. 12th, 2008

A new study says at least one in four teenage American girls has a sexually transmitted disease. How 'bout those abstinence-only education plans, dear moral decision-makers.

Seriously, this is absolutely insane. America's education system is putting millions of girls at risk for all sorts of preventable things just because we're all still so fucking terrified of sex and sexuality. As far as this country's majority is concerned, sex is (insert negative connotation-loaded words here), damn it, and young people shouldn't be doing it.

But of course our wonderful society will then hammer along on how being "sexy" is the ultimate of ultimates, leading to eye-searing bits of WTFery like hip-high children with "juicy" written across the ass of their pants because so many girls think they have to be sexualized or otherwise get boys' attention to be complete human beings--and a society full of consumer parents who think the ceaseless objectification of their daughters is all right but who flip their shit over protecting little Suzy Skankho from "objectionable content" on the internet.

You want teen girls to not have sex? You're shit out of luck. Teens will have sex. Nothing short of ungodly drastic & inhumane measures will stop them. But if you want girls to respect themselves enough to not buy into the anti-intellectual glorification and objectification of so many of the women in our media, or to have the sense & knowledge & forethought to protect themselves so they don't catch Dog knows what from Cat knows who, then a whole lot of somethings are going to have to change.

The starting point's what's got me stumped.

~~

In further sploogey news, Livejournal is celebrating SUP's 100th day of ownership with a massive shitstorm. They've tried to be sneaky about making all new accounts either be paid or plus (read: full of ads, some of which are for the OMGPR0N Lj has been so determined to keep from the ubiquitous internet-traipsing children), removing the ad-free and free Basic option "for the ease of the users"--and wow, have they failed. Cue wanksplosion. Brad Fitzpatrick is even PO'd. The cat macros haven't come out in force yet, but some moron new blood VP is trying to walk a high-handed two-faced and nonsensical sort of point, and is getting lit up for his efforts.
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Feb. 20th, 2008

red daydreams

There are plenty of things that make me cranky. That's a given. I generally grumble and snark and content myself with willing karmic retribution on people. All in all, it's no big deal.

There are very few things that make me want to go all Boondock Saints and fucking kill.

This is one of them.


As summarized at radgeek.com:
    In October 2006, in Salem, Ohio, Steffey, 47 41, was assaulted by one of her cousins in a domestic dispute and knocked unconscious. The family called 911 for help; a sheriff’s deputy named Officer Richard T. Gurlea came out to the house to do some serving and protecting. He asked Hope Steffey for ID, and she mistakenly gave him the wrong driver’s license — one of her late sister’s old licenses, which she kept in her wallet as a memento after her sister died. The cop noticed that it was the wrong license, and, after he got the right one, he refused to give Steffey back her sister’s old license. When she became distraught and pleaded with him to give back the license, Officer Richard T. Gurlea, sanctimoniously instructed her to calm down, ran a criminal check on her real license (which came back completely clean), demanded to search her car, still refused to give her back her keepsake, and finally, public servant that he is, snapped back Shut up about your dead sister. Now treating Steffey, the victim of a violent crime who had called for his help and protection, as if she were herself a criminal, he escalated the confrontation, and, when Hope Steffey dared to point at the pocket where he was holding her keepsake and to shout at him about how important it was to her, Officer Richard T. Gurlea courageously defended himself by grabbing the assault victim he had been dispatched to help, slamming her face-down on the hood of his car, and shouting are you going to stop? Then he threw her down, pinned her to the ground, and handcuffed her. Then he arrested her for disorderly conduct and resisting arrest, and took her to the Stark County jail.

    While they were booking her, one of the guards asked her Have you thought about harming yourself? Bewildered and brutalized, Hope Steffey asked for clarification: Now or ever? The purpose of this question is in order to give the jailers an opportunity to label you as crazy for legal purposes, which, in their minds, is reason enough to inflict on you absolutely any kind of cruelty, violence, or invasion of your privacy, and then, to crown all, to turn around and call your torture and humiliation a precaution taken For Your Own Safety. In this case, apparently the jailers figured that Now or ever? was close enough for government work, so what they did was get a gang of male and female guards to surround Hope Steffey and drag her to a cell, then have least two male officers pin her down and hold her arms (she was still handcuffed throughout the ordeal) while female officers stripped her naked and searched her over her screams of protest. After this sadistic sexual assault, they left her locked in her cell, totally naked, without even a blanket to cover herself.
They left her in the cell, sans phone calls or medical attention or even clothing, for six hours.

Oh, and one of their number went ahead and videotaped the entire thing. I doubt they expected the backlash that'd occur when the local news media got a hold of what parts of it are still available.

Warning: Do not watch the videos if you're easily triggered. Or not easily triggered. Or prone to violent rages and/or bouts of internet stalking.

Video 1 (Removed by Youtube) Video 1
Video 2 (Removed by Youtube) Video 2


Maybe Steffey was freaking out beforehand. Maybe not. But when the news brings us tales of police assault and prison rape and the story of that poor guy who was sodomized by cops with a toilet plunger, I dare you to find a person of any gender who would not flip the fuck out if they were handcuffed and pinned face-down by multiple people who proceeded to strip them, pants-first, without a single word of reassurance or explanation.

This is a sexual assault and human rights violation, sanctioned and condoned by the people who are supposed to be protecting us.

Some people don't get it, and try to justify the officers' actions because of what we don't see or because Steffey was freaking out. But the math is still simple. The second video shows eight cops altogether, some following along, one recording the entire process, and the rest leading Hope Steffey down the hallway. The majority are women. If Steffey was really out of control, you can't tell me that they wouldn't have enough people to just cuff her hand & foot to something solid and have someone sit with her, either until she calmed down or until they got proper mental health specialists on hand. There was absolutely no reason to hold her down and forcibly strip her, no reason whatsoever for the group to be mixed-gender, and even less of a reason to leave her alone for that long afterwards--especially if their intention was truly to keep her from self-harm.



Fucking Christ. And then people wonder why no one takes cops seriously. Between this and the drug enforcement people gunning down an innocent mother holding her child and the cops dumping the quadriplegic out of his wheelchair and that cock choking and throwing a fourteen year old kid onto the ground for skateboarding and saying "Dude," it's a wonder we aren't already neck-deep in riots.



The question remains: What's to stop people from taking matters into their own hands when calling for the authorities may result in something like this? I know I'm likely to think twice.
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Feb. 10th, 2008

So Tamora Pierce and Julie Holderman want to start a con specifically for authors specializing in Young Adult (henceforth YA) and children's sci-fi/fantasy. Part of their reason for doing this is how other people see them.

    Often kidlit writers are treated by members of adult F&SF cons in a manner that is patronizing at best, snubbing or scornful at worst.
I know what attitude this is. I grouched over the trainwrecked plot in a YA book to a coworker and her response was this: "What do you expect? It's young adult lit."

And I understand. I hate the YA section because if the back ad copies and hooks don't make me want to eat a kitten, the stories themselves almost invariably do.

But instead of asking why so many look at the younger kids' works with such scorn, they're taking their ball and going to play in their own damned backyard, thanks.

Seriously now. Let's think about this.

We don't have many Philip Pullmans in YA/Intermediate reader. We don't have many Lois Lowrys or Diane Wynn Joneses. What we do have--and what the average browser can readily see--are a metric assload of writers who hammer out the same damned story ten thousand times over.

Check out the SF/F section of Intermediate Reader (age group 8-12) at your local bookstore. You'll find buckets of magical school stories, interspersed with fairies and dragons and very few others. Check out the fantasy/horror part of the YA section--or, as named by a coworker of mine today, the Kiddie Sex Section. You'll find fairies, emo fucking vampires, and werewolves, with a terribly sparse spattering of sword&sorcery and almost nothing else.

This makes people scornful. It's writers who either don't care to think outside the bounds of what's been done already, or ones who aren't capable of doing so--or worse, ones who see the success of one venture and hurriedly squeeze off their imitation. It's the authors who hack out recognizable gobbets of someone else's plots or concepts, who write the same damned story four and five times over, who turn out half-assed characterization, invariably predictable plots, or wildly unbelievable dialog, or who beat the hell out of every single storyline cliché, then expect people to shell out money for it--actions that wibble between sheer authorial laziness, ineptitude, and flat-out taking advantage of the readers' inexperience.

A young reader doesn't analyze the book as they go. They don't know how. They don't get stuck on the plotholes. They don't say "Hey, you bastards, get your own imagination. I liked this the first time it was done." They may say something along the lines of "Well, this part didn't really make sense," or "It was like (fill in name of other, similar work)," but they don't know how to show their displeasure with narrative problems by penning a snarky review or refusing to buy more of that author's work. (And especially with the IR works, the buying power is frequently out of their hands anyway. When R. L. Stein killed the main character of a series halfway through one of their books, it threw me hard--and I was ten at most. But my parents kept buying Stein books for me, just because I'd liked 'em before.)

One would assume that the mentioned cranky congoers have seen this (if not also understood the implications), and have formed their opinions accordingly. It sucks if people who actually do try to write something original get pigeonholed along with mimics, metaphor-maulers, cliché-beaters, plothole-hoppers, collage artists, and bad fanficcers in disguise Clare? Paolini? I'm STILL looking at you., yeah--but that becomes a problem with the genre; one that requires a lot of cooperation to fix. Some people don't care, and won't care, and won't change. Far easier to take your ball to your own playground than it is to convince everyone involved that you should make a new game.
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Jan. 26th, 2008

Society is fucked.

So I've picked up, cracked open, and put down the Twilight series a couple times now. What I've seen has done nothing but piss me off. WTFPlot? WTFUrple writing style? WTF, hundred year old anybody wants to be in high school again? WTF, he touches her and she turns into orgasmic goo? WTF, he calls her an idiot and it's okay? WTF, is this girl intent on proving him right? WTFSPARKLY VAMPIRES?!

[info]newageamazon has made it through more of the books than I have. Mentioning Stephanie Meyer will invariably set her off on a high-volume rant. Thusly.

Note that with this rant, she's questioning what it is in today's society that's made a runaway bestseller series out of the romanticizing of a decidedly abusive relationship, where the guy treats the girl like shit and constantly tries to control her (Telling her where she can and can't go, or who she can and can't be friends with, WTF? Disabling her car or locking her in her house or emotionally crushing her "for her own good," WTF? Telepathic stalking, WTF?!) and the girl's entire existence revolves solely around him.


And people come trolling in to prove that our collective worst fears are true.
    for NINETY percent of the time, Edward DOESN'T treat Bella like property. I think when girls say they want a boyfriend like Edward, they mean they want a boyfriend who is a gentleman, which Edward mostly is. Like I said earlier, Edward definitely has his issues with being overprotective, but the thing is he DOES love Bella - he doesn't just say it, he shows it in the books.
Because it's okay if the guy treats the girl like property as long as it's not the majority of the time? Because it's okay because he's supposed to love her--because the author tells us he loves her and he says it a few times?
    the attraction to Edward is that he's a gentleman...not so much him. Some of the traits that can be considered as abuse like the ones listed above (while bigoted) aren't necessarily abuse. That's over the top protection.
. . . Words failing.
    IT IS A BOOK,
    i think that if half of you guys just got laid
    your lives would be filled with more than bashing Edward Cullen,=.
And that one just speaks for itself.
    Edward is dead, see, and he's not controlling! When did he once control bella?
. . .
    Now using his "charm" to get her to do what he wants, wouldn't most people do that? I mean seriously, think about it: if you had the ability to make someone do ANYTHING you wanted them to, just by looking at them, wouldnt you use that? and if you say no to that, there is just no reasoning with you. And as for the controlling her, he is doing what he thinks is best. Now we may know that what is actually doing is not the best choice, but he doesnt know that!
So it's okay because he can. Or because he thinks he's justified.

I wanna see a fight to the death between Edward Cullen and Richard Rahl. May the most self-justified asshole win!
    And yes, Edward has his moments of being opinionated and controlling, but I sware to you, he does care for Bella. Until he found Bella, he had spent many years alone. Would you want to lose something so great after having waited for so long to finally get it?

    In the fact of him leaving her, he was trying to be selfless. He was giving her an opportunity to live her life, without him being involved in it. As for him dragging her along to prom, it was another case of wanting her to live as a human. He didn't want her to miss such a great experience. Edward has given Bella countless chances for her to to leave him, especially for Jacob. She is one who chooses to stay.
It's okay because he's been alone! It's okay because he felt she needed to have experiences, no matter what she wanted for herself! It's okay because she chose to stay with him!



Miseryxchord sums it all up pretty well towards the bottom:
    miseryxchord: 01/25/2008 5:03 AM
    Wow. Reading the comments here has been very educational... apparently:

    1) It's okay to totally trash someone's opinion, accuse them of overreacting, and belittle their concerns, as long as you tack "but I respect your opinion" onto it.

    2) If someone has an opinion that disagrees with yours, you should repeatedly lecture them on your right to disagree with them, while acting like they have no right to disagree with you.

    3) The number of people who are excusing an abusive character's actions because 'He really loves her' or 'he's a gentleman the rest of the time' or 'he's only controlling because (insert excuse here)' totally justifiy Ashly's concerns for young women living in a society where they apparently believe an abusive person is a great catch, fiction or not. THEY (the people commenting here) are in the real world, and THEY are making excuses for his behavior in terms of a real person... he loves her, so it's okay.



So today we've learned that it's okay to squeal over a fictional character, but it's wrong wrong wrong to point out that character's faults or that they're built to be an exceptionally shitty person. We've also learned that excuses for the emotional abuse of a fictional character look almost exactly like the excuses given by someone in an abusive relationship. And that society is fucked.






And that spaghetti-o's plus the flu = nothing good. From an unrelated IM:

[info]slinkeepie087 (2:01:24 PM): you know what is nasty to throw up?
[info]slinkeepie087 (2:01:35 PM): Spaghetti-Os that are in the shape of letters
[info]slinkeepie087 (2:01:46 PM): at one point i was like... oooh maybe i can throw up words!
[info]slinkeepie087 (2:04:51 PM): i thought... in that sick way you are when you're vomiting.. for a quick second it was like... man if i threw up "Bbbblllllaaarrrrrghhhhh" id take a picture.

Jan. 13th, 2008

Looks like Gj is going into its final throes. I was gonna try to private-lock everything there but I can't get past the database errors.

I'm wondering if I should get an AFF.net account for the smuts, or if I should just drag them to here. Again. I'm getting a little tired of moving them too.



I was reading the giant post on fanficrants-Lj about reasons to not join the Organization for Transformative Wank Works and realized that the ranter missed something:

OTW says that they envision a future where all fanfic is "legal." Lots of people get stuck on the "legal" bit--what do they mean, legal? That fanficcers can sell it? I'm gonna go for the "all fanfic" bit. I saw an author on the Dear Author site who found her entire book copied and pasted into someone's fanfic, with only the names changed. She said that as it was she had hell getting the admin to take it down, and that the plagiarist's fans gave her all kinds of hell for shutting down the c&p machine. Would this author have no recourse? The thing the plagiarist turned out was fanfic and would be "legal" by OTW's standards.

And what about the fanficcers who get hit by plagiarists? Does OTW think that's all right because it's fanfic of fanfic? Or that the work's okay because it's a "transformative" variation of the original? Hey, the plagiarists switched some spelling and sentence structure. Sometimes. Sort of. That means it's CHAAAANGED. And with plagiarist and plagiarist-defending Heidi Tandy as part of their legal team, these worries become very very valid.

Though I probably won't have to worry, anyway. It's not like the community's done anything besides stand around and posture (and talk about having people pay dues to be full members of their LIVEJOURNAL COMMUNITY). They want to have a wiki! but haven't started their own or tried to work with the thousands of pages of existing wiki. They want to have a super duper uberspecial fanfic archive! but haven't started their own, haven't taken into account the tons of archives that they'd be competing against, and haven't tried to work in with the most logical solution to scattered fanworks, fanworksfinder.com. They want to defend fanficcers! . . . but if it comes to legal mess, probably won't.


Bah.

I have a page of Cassie Edwards rant, four total pages of PWP, a mixing bowl full of unsealed dreads, about eighteen hair sticks in process, two hundred words of silly-fic, a revamped and retweaked other silly-fic, a WIP for a(n original) flash fiction contest, and most of a second chapter for the crit group. And I am still hideously behind in everything, and must be back at work in nineteen hours. Can't wait for vacation.
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Sep. 30th, 2007

I've added fairies to the list of things in fantasy-type fiction that I can no longer stomach. When I could spill a coffee in the YA section and easily hit at least eight fairy books (three of which are about how the main female character is a lost fairy princess/needs to become the fairy queen), then I'd think it's pretty safe to say that authors need to get the fuck off that bandwagon.

This makes me sad, because Gregory Maguire wrote a YA tooth fairy story and I'm curious, but am not sure I could bring myself to get through it.

So instead I've picked up Kelley Armstrong's Dime Store Magic. Her characterization doesn't seem to be quite as smooth as in No Humans Involved, but thus far I'm easily able to forgive her for it. Here's to hoping for the best.



Okay. So Borders put out an employee newsletter where they went on about the success of their proprietary publishing venture, then told employees they'd love to publish someone from within the company & to send in a manuscript by January. To the best of my understanding, I am not seeing how this is a good idea. )