Monkeys and keyboards aside, one Random + CSS still doesn't make poop.

I was finally starting to be completely past my Law & Order SVU-induced depression--taking two or three or five seasons in a row apparently does a number on one's mental state--but found myself thrown right back in via cnn.com's front page today. So a poor teenage girl got gang-raped outside her high school's dance by at least four guys and ended up having to be flown to the hospital in critical condition. Further investigation showed that this wasn't just a gang-rape, it was a show--at least fifteen and possibly twenty guys stood around and watched and did nothing to help for the two hours plus duration. Some even joined in.

Wow, I said. It's like Crank, only--oh, wait, Crank wasn't fucking funny either.


For reference: In the Jason Statham movie Crank, Statham's character needs to keep his heart rate up or he'll die. At one point he decides to up his heart rate by having sex with his girlfriend. Against her will. In public and in broad daylight. As a crowd of mixed ages and genders stands around and watches and does absolutely nothing to help her, despite her screaming and shouting no and trying to get away/fight the guy off. Of course, she magically decides she likes it mid-rape (to the cheers of the onlookers), and of course the female witnesses are more concerned with Statham's character's sex appeal and the size of his cock than they are with the woman who was just assaulted in front of them.

It's nightmare-fuel rape played as humor. It's without a doubt the worst movie scene I've ever watched. And now it's come to life, with a resounding shout of, "Silly female! Did you actually think anyone around you would come to your rescue?"


So . . . Do we really wonder where some people might get the impression that this behavior is appropriate?

I'm not advocating censorship here; just awareness. Here's a movie clip where the ditsy blonde girl has her clothes ripped off and is violently forced to have sex in public, despite her struggles. Not one of the onlookers tries to stop her rapist from carrying out his assault. You the viewer are supposed to see it as comedy.

Here's the real-life reflection: teen girl, possibly drunk or drugged, is violently gang-raped in public. Not one of the onlookers tried to stop the rape. What did the guys standing around think? That it was funny? That putting the girl into critical care was a good time? That this was a good chance for them to get off as well?


The area's police haven't released any explanations yet--though I'm sure no explanation given could ever hold water for the victim or victim's family.







In slightly more lighthearted news, a French court convicted the Church of Scientology of organized fraud because of their high-pressure "spend money on us and be saved!" tactics. Scientology spokespeople responded by comparing the ruling to the Inquisition--which, while a step up from shrieking and throwing poo, still goes to show that they Just Don't Get It.

Being fined for victimizing people: It's like being horribly tortured and burned at the stake, in a way. Only not.

Sad when throwing things at Scientologists registers as braincleaner.

I'm finding that "craft" shows in my neck of the woods are fairly miserable things--in part, probably, because many let buy&sell retailers in with those of us who make all our own product. It doesn't take much talent to order things from Oriental Trader, y'know.

And the kind of people attracted to shows like that, who happily toss their money at rhinestone-encrusted, mixed-metal, glue-and-plastic low-quality wares . . .


Three customers stand out from this weekend, amongst the people who wanted to try all my earrings on (Eew eew eew no!), and the idiots who tried to tell me my belts are really necklaces (yeah, for those of you with 40" necks), and the bastard children picking things up and literally throwing them on the floor, and the worthless parents who stood by and watched their child grab & twist handfuls of my hair sticks' dangles.

The first really memorable one was a woman who came up, put a finger on my sign for maille bracelets, and said, "Malley?"

"No," I said. "Maille." Sounds like "male." Anyone who's ever seen the stuff, or gone to a ren faire, or even just paid attention in history class knows this.

"Are you Malley?"

. . .

"Maille," I said, in case she'd missed it.

"Malley," she said, and poked the sign again.

"No. Maille. Like chainmaille." I poked a different sign, since that seemed to be the language she was speaking.

"Is your name Malley?"

Apparently not.

"It's not malley. It's maille. Chainmaille."

Blank stare.

"Like knights wore. You know--middle ages?"

Blank stare.

I tried again. "Ren faires?"

Even more blank stare.

"You saw Lord of the Rings?"

She brightened. "Oh! Okay, I get it now."

"Okay," I said, and went to roll into the sales pitch--idiot or not, her money'd still feed me--but before I could get going, she started talking again.

"So you're not Malley?"


I miss convention crowd kids. They understand what you're doing if/when you feel the need to headdesk yourself into a coma.


Then, the next day, Maille turned up. With her mom. I looked up from the anklet I was making to find a tween girl & her mother in front of the table, poking my sign again. Thinking nothing of it, I started talking to them--and got a bit of deja vu when the woman asked, "Are you Malley?"

Actually, it wasn't like deja vu. It was more like waking up from a nightmare, only to realize you're still in the nightmare when the creepy-crawly launches itself out from under your bed.

I'd learned, though. "Nope. That's the bracelet, and it's maille."

The daughter's face at this point went from a bland smile to completely blank. The mother kept grinning and talking.

"She's Maille. We've never seen anyone spell their name like this before."

I did not shriek or headdesk or throttle her. "Well, that's maille. Like chainmaille. Like knights in armor. Or ren faires, or Legolas."

The daughter's face started falling. The mother started to look confused. "So that's . . . maille?"

"Yup." I held up my anklet, which at this point was just a shiny silver & purple chain. "This, too."

"That's . . . Her name is spelled the same way, and we say it Malley. No one else spells it like that. I . . . I've never seen it like this before."

"That's okay," I said. "That's what I guessed," is what I almost said. But I figured the kid was probably already scarred for life, so I held back. It's not every day you find out your parent is an illiterate uncultured moron--and thankfully, it's not every day that their being an illiterate uncultured moron saddles you with an unfortunate name.

At least her name wasn't Chlamydia, I guess.


The third . . .

So it was the last day, it'd been raining, I was burnt out and cranky and somewhat miserable, and this woman walked up to my booth, looked at me, and said, "Belly button."

It was my turn for a blank stare.

The woman stared back. After a few seconds, she tried again. "Belly button."

Staring wasn't working; so I blinked a few times, shook off the urge to run screaming, and finally said, "What?"

"Belly button!"

. . .

Maybe, I thought, she was asking to see my belly button. Or maybe she'd slipped her handler.

I took a deep breath, looked around for anyone who might've been looking for her--didn't see anyone, of course--and tried once more. "I'm sorry--what?"

"Do you have . . . belly button?"

I gave up at this point and poked myself in the stomach. "Yes I do! Right there."

The woman started gesturing at this point, and as she started speaking in something more closely resembling a sentence I realized that she wasn't handicapped--she was just phenomenally stupid. "No, like . . . do you have . . . like . . . belly button!"

At this point I realized she was trying to ask for body jewelry.

At this point I also decided that I'm not a fucking mind reader, I'm not being paid enough to translate someone's halfassed attempts at sentences, and it's not my fucking responsibility to ask myself the question about my own stock for them. So I played dumb. "I'm sorry, what are you asking?"

With what looked like a monumental mental effort, she finally coughed out a full question. "Do you have, like, the things for belly buttons?"

"Body jewelry? No m'am--I only carry jewelry that I make myself."

"But do you make jewelry for belly buttons?"

. . .


It really is amazing that I did not kill her.




This coming weekend theoretically puts me at a long-running show where the populace is more artistically minded and the crafters all definitely make their stuff by hand. I've already upped my game with a spiffy new tablecloth and some new displays--hopefully I'll do better there. And not kill anyone. At least not while there's witnesses around.

"It's one massive circlejerk. You ever see video from Anthrocon? It's like that. It's like watching this giant pile of people in fursuits, doggies and bears and cats and maybe a lion, all rolling around humping each other. It's kinda disgusting."

Dragging this out again because it's suddenly become more pertinent . . . ( Hideously unoriginal YA authors are sandbagging each other! I mean, sticking together! )


The question remains, though: Is this flood of irony uproariously hilarious, or stupendously depressing? I'm leaning towards the latter.

Okay, so I'm starting to really hate Borders Group. ( Cut for the long and long of it. )

Someone on the etsy forums got bent out of shape because her neighbor Facebooked about killing a chicken for dinner tonight. She postured a bit about her animal-rights-activist and PETA-loving status--and Etsy's other forumgoers didn't respond too kindly. She flounced by the end of the first page. People continued to mock. She returned by the fourth page with this lovely bit of posturing:

I find killing of any living creature offensive. And that's my bottom line. And others like me? it's basically us against you. And you win! So eat your burger, chicken or whatever.

I'll go on being a compassionate person who at least has a clean conscious when I look down at my plate.

As a normal internet denizen might expect, people's responses became more acidic. Especially after, on page 5, the OP hinted that she'd break into the neighbor's yard and "liberate" their chickens. Or after she keeps flouncing off, promising to never return--and then coming back anyway.

Forums: You're doin' it wrong.

~~

CNN.com has a story up about how the new pope went to Africa to tell the people there that condoms are bad, and that they should seek to stop the spread of HIV with abstinence only. The article is quick to point out that the Catholic church is the world's "largest private provider of HIV care." They apparently feel they should be lauded for caring for people who'll die from a disease, rather than seeking to prevent the spread of that disease and thus prevent those deaths in the first place. And when you take into account the percentage of people with HIV in conjunction with the area's percentage of rapes and sexual assaults, this high-handed "Well, just don't have sex and you'll be safe!" declaration practically mocks itself. Some people don't get a choice in the matter.

But no. Every sperm is sacred. Even the ones that'll kill you.

Logic: You're doin' it wrong. This blanket sort of declaration regarding how people should view, control, stifle, and reject their own sexuality is the kind of ridiculous reasoning that leads to saddlebacking--or in this case, to who knows how many people not being informed as to how they could protect themselves. We're looking at a culture that has grown men raping babies because they think nailing a virgin will make the HIV go away. Telling them condoms are evil? Not such a good idea.

Dear Stephen King,

I like to avoid using broad, sweeping phrases like "Men are . . ." or "Women are . . ." because of one thing: when other people use them, they almost invariably tell me I don't exist.

I don't do girly things. I don't like makeup, I don't like primping and preening, I don't do cattiness and drama, I can't stand sappy movies, I don't shop for any longer than I have to, I hate the "Oh you are a bad man I shall change you with LUUUV" type of "romantic" stories, and I just flat-out don't like the color pink.

So when you drop something about "Women like stories in which a gal meets a handsome (and possibly dangerous) hunk on a tropic isle; men like to imagine going to war against an army of bad guys with a Beretta, a blowtorch, and a submachine gun (grenades hung on the belt optional)" then you're putting me a bit out of the loop.

I don't want the story about the tropical isle unless I also get the Beretta and some grenades. And a machete. And some rum. Otherwise it's boring.

Zen tells me this is because I'm outside of the stereotype. He also mentioned that King pretty much described every chick flick vs. action movie out there.

But I use "chick flick" as a derogatory term. I can't stand the things; I find them horribly contrived and full of characters who wouldn't have problems if they just kept their credit cards in their pockets and fucking said what they meant. Same with "chick lit."

So in a way I have to thank you, King. You've given me a new derogatory word: "Manfiction." It really is a wonderful thing--conjuring images of sweaty, bulky, gun-wielding . . . Well, of Gears of War. It really is the stereotypical extreme on the opposite end of the spectrum from chick lit. It's also even more stuff I can't relate to because it's more about the borderline-homoerotic brotherly love of slaughtering things and because the only female characters to show up are there almost invariably as vaguely-plot-advancing damsel-in-distress eye candy.

It's a caricature. And aren't we supposed to laugh at caricatures? I think so.


With minor annoyance,
Ran


And PS: Don't talk shit about Jody Picoult. She can write multi-layered, well-characterized, heavily researched, deeply humanist circles around you on any day.

Oprah's not doing so well with these authors of real-life sob stories . . . The latest person caught lying about their life story is Herman Rosenblat, who's been telling whoever'd listen that he first met his wife through the fence of a concentration camp, and that she threw him food every day to keep him alive. Oprah loved the story. Publishers loved the story; two different books were written about it, one for children (Angel Girl, by Laurie Friedman), one an autobiography. Sappy sentimentalists loved it: IIRC, the thing made its rounds through a handful of email forwards and also into a Chicken Soup collection. Even movie-makers loved the story--the movie was in the works.

Researchers debunked Mr. Rosenblat's story. Despite fighting an uphill battle with Berkley Books and the guy who wanted to make the movie, they eventually prevailed--and the movie was nixed, the kids' book was pulled from the shelves, and the (juvenile, terribly-written) autobiography shall never see the inside of a commercial publisher. (Indeed, it looks like Rosenblat's aimed straight for a DIY/vanity press.)

The question remaining for most people, it seems, is "Why?" Why do something like this, when it just gives ammunition to Holocaust deniers like David Irving--or more locally, the douchebag who named his kids Adolph Hitler and JoyceLynn Aryan Nation and Honszlynn Hinler (because he wanted them to have "good German names.") Was it greed? Was it all about the money, the attention? Was it that he just really, really wanted to meet Oprah?

Nope. It's because the guy's bugfuck crazy. He went under anesthesia for surgery and his dead mother told him to share his love story--so while recovering, he made one up.


Do I need to talk about why we don't pay attention to crazy people without doing our damned research? Really?

Didn't think so.


Maybe instead I need to consider why so many people were so willing to ignore historians and facts in favor of a wildly, unbelievably improbable love story.

Thoughts on the passing of Proposition 8 (a ban on gay marriages) on the West coast, the subsequent protests and attacks on/arrests of protesters . . . and the number of tv shows out there that feature or focus on on gay/bi characters?

Let's take special note of how House and Bones, a pair of fairly mainstream and popular shows, both currently and suddenly feature pretty young femme women who take to making out with other pretty young femme women.

Good enough to be entertainment but not good enough to deserve equal rights, huh?




I still don't understand how people honestly think two gays getting married will somehow invalidate their own heterosexual marriages, or somehow make their feelings for their partners be magically lessened.

So what's this shit about McCain putting women's health in air quotes?



Seriously, this man can not be allowed to get into office. Fuck him. Fuck him right in the ear. Because you know what? This isn't about abortion.

No, seriously. McCain's "crusade" (and I use those quotes as mockingly as possible) against abortion here is about as sensible as a kid in the backyard yelling for the rain to stop. Here's how it works: Despite McCain's notably colorful youth (and being an adulturer, cheating on and leaving his first wife after she was terribly disfigured in a car wreck), he's all about abstinence-only education--no matter that studies prove it doesn't work. Young girls are still having sex--only now it's uninformed/unprotected sex, which means our country's teen pregnancy rate is the highest in the industrialized world and the percentage of them with STDs (25%+) is utterly ridiculous.

But there's more! McCain doesn't think women should have their birth control covered by insurance. So if you're poor and need the pill, be it because you're sexually active or because you've got cramps that'll otherwise leave you curled up crying on the floor . . . Well, you might just be shit out of luck. But then again, McCain apparently didn't understand that birth control (condoms) helps prevent the spread of STDs, so this entire trainwreck might just be because he's woefully misinformed. Or an absolute fucking idiot.

So let's get this straight: Despite his youthful cockery, McCain doesn't think young people should have sex. If you have sex, McCain doesn't want you to know about having safe sex--which leads to pregnancy. And if you know about safe sex, McCain doesn't want you to have easy access to birth control. And what would this policy cause? More unintended pregnancies--which would in turn lead to more abortions.  Hell, even a guy who helped start the Religious Right knows this. Quote:

And I’d say something else about the choice issue. I am pro-life. I haven’t changed in that regard. If people read my book, Crazy for God, they’ll see that I’ve gone left, if you want to put it that way, in many, many areas, but not that one. But I actually believe that if your interest is not ideology and ideological purity, but rather abortion itself, i.e. you want more or less abortions, that the medical and social programs that Barack Obama is talking about for our country, in terms of care of women and children and families, improvement in education and possibilities for all Americans, actually will result in less abortions. So my interest in the abortion issue is that I think abortion is a tragedy. My interest is not the politics of it, as in always appearing to vote for the person who has the correct ideology.

With this in mind, does McCain's policy make the least bit of sense? Not unless he's just out to penalize women for being sexually active, or unless he's so busy trying to stand on his soapbox he hasn't realized it's at the bottom of a logical gully.

(Don't forget how if something goes terribly wrong somewhere along the line and you end up pregnant, McCain wants you to carry it to term--no matter your financial situation or mental situation or any of thousands of extenuating circumstances. And then he'll mock you and call you a radical pro-abortionist if you've got a health situation.)

Considering voting Republican, ladies? I'd certainly hope not.

( Link-heavy ramblings on the FLDS and its multiple violations of human rights. )

Way back when, I mentioned the manager who'd gone insane. She's back, is still insane, and is feeling juuuust a little vindictive. (I can tell this because she's taken my hours from fifteen and twenty a week to four, then tried to tell me that my hours had to go instead of any other part-time person's because I was management.) She's currently trying to tell all of us that the dummy cameras the company tacked to our ceiling are really live-feeding to the home office.

We're gonna ignore how I know they're dummy cameras . . . Okay, we're not. They're dome cameras with a red blinking light. Google that and you'll find fakies. They're also a different size and shade than the single real camera (which live-feeds, with no recording, pausing, or replay capabilities, to a highly visible tv). Also, in relation to how it would cost thousands of dollars for one store alone to hook up a transmitting network (a wireless one wouldn't work with our terrain) to an office with limited hours (so we'd have no chance of catching any shoplifters that came in after office hours) when our company is so damned cheap to begin with that it won't even get us a new scanner for our register, attach the credit card machines to the registers to cut down on human errors, or hook up any kind of internet access for real-time, non-faxed intercompany communications--and especially in relation to how a handful of $20 battery-operated plug&play fake cameras costs a hell of a lot less than a handful of installation-required $80-$300 cameras--and my suspension of disbelief has given up completely.

She tried to tell me the live feed story, I asked who told her that one, and she refused to answer.

I started to wonder if she really thinks we're that stupid.

I bounced her stats off a psychologist/social worker colleague and got BPD back: Lying, paranoia & attempted fostering of paranoia, addictions, more lying, (attempted) setting people against each other, starting rumors, smiling while backstabbing, believing a person to be all good or all bad (and idealizing/demonizing them accordingly), so forth. BPD is rough to work with. You can't rationalize with the person (as they tend to believe the lies they're telling) and there's no real slowing them down (note: not "fixing them") without liberal application of psychologists and drugs. The only thing we can really do is much documentation and damage control.


I do not like this.

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. )

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.

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.

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.

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?!

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:

slinkeepie087 (2:01:24 PM): you know what is nasty to throw up?
slinkeepie087 (2:01:35 PM): Spaghetti-Os that are in the shape of letters
slinkeepie087 (2:01:46 PM): at one point i was like... oooh maybe i can throw up words!
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.

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.

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. )