Grenacia's Random Thoughts

The one kind of spoiler that's starting to bother me

grenacia — Wed, 10 Jun 2015 04:22:50 GMT

I'm not really that bothered by spoilers, generally. They don't really ruin anything for me, they just change the experience. It's kind of interesting to watch things happen with a little knowledge of how things will turn out. It's like a weird hybrid of watching something for the first time and re-watching it.

But lately, there's one sort of spoiler that is starting to bother me that seems to happen with any movie or TV show I'm really interested in watching. Before I have a chance to see it, I see someone talking about why they think it's sexist, or racist, or homophobic, or ableist, or something (or, sometimes, arguing why they think it's NOT despite evidence to the contrary).

Now most things that come out of Hollywood do unfortunately have some imperfections in one or more of these areas. And it is important to analyze and discuss these imperfections. And if a movie has a problem so bad that it would really ruin it for me, I want to know so I don't rush out and spend $20 to see it in 3D IMAX.

But a lot of the time it's pretty minor or debatable problems that I'd love to hear and talk about after I've seen the show, but really don't want to know in advance. I'd like to form my own opinions first. If it's something so minor as to be easily missed, I'd rather enjoy the show and THEN hear about it's flaw instead of go into it watching for the flaw I've heard is there.

I stop looking forward to the show, and instead start thinking, "well, I should probably see that sometime, but I'll probably be disappointed in it" though I have no idea whether or not that is true, since there's often a lot more to a show than that one issue.

I'm not sure what the solution is to this. I can't avoid such spoilers entirely, though I can try to limit the level of information I take in, and try not to take the simple statements I see too seriously. I should not click on links that look like this: https://www.reddit.com/r/TumblrInAction/comments/36223y/mad_max_fury_road_is_fatshaming_and_ableist/ and instead trust the recommendations of friends. But I really WANT to click the link and find out how Fury Road supposedly fatshames! I am the sort of person who generally wants to know things, even if I know that the knowledge won't make me happy.

Oh crap, I'm a strong female character, aren't I?

grenacia — Thu, 26 Feb 2015 21:06:27 GMT

matociquala wrote this essay about problems with the concept of the "strong female character" awhile ago. It listed various problematic traits, and my first reaction as I read the was, "oh crap, I'm a strong female character, aren't I?"

I'm not necessarily a strong embodiment of all the traits listed, but really, many of them are a pretty good description of either me or someone I know well at some point in our lives. So I wouldn't say they're inaccurate so much as overused and sometimes misused (which the matociquala does acknowledge somewhat). The essay made me think a lot about how these tropes relate to real people and to fictional characters, and I'm going to write out some of my thoughts on each of them here*.

Not like the other girls
Well, you've got two options when you're writing a female character. You can write her as a stereotypical female, or you can make her different in some way. The latter is probably going to be more interesting and more accurate/believable. Most real women are, in some way or other, "not like the other girls", it's part of what makes you an individual and (in fiction) an interesting character. Maybe we're physically stronger, or more fearless, or not into certain "girly things", or excel in a male-dominated industry. Sometimes we're even disparaging of other women who are more stereotypically female in ways we aren't (though in fiction that should be portrayed as a negative character trait). Where does the problem come? I suppose when there are too many characters who deviate from the stereotype in exactly the same ways, creating a new stereotype. There's also a problem when the author seems to have a very negative opinion of typical females, and writes atypical females to try to hide it.

Brittle and mouthy
Well, this trait describes many women I know, generally ones who I think are really awesome, but who can really get on my nerves if I have to work too closely with them for too long. The character trait can be a cover for minor psychological issues or be a reaction to the hectic nature of their lives. The problem comes when this these characteristics are pointless and poorly-written, and when there are too many female characters like this.

Trinity Syndrome
She starts out as an awesome female character, and ends up sidelined in favor of a male hero that she previously mentored. This gets listed as a characterization trope, but really, I don't think that's what it is. It isn't who a woman is, it's a thing that gets done to her in a sexist society. Portraying this happening in fiction isn't the problem - the problem is treating it as perfectly normal and unremarkable and okay. You should either show it as something unfair and worth fighting against, or you should rewrite to avoid it happening.

Madonna/Whore Dichotomy
This one is straight-out unrealistic. If you're using this as a characterization trope, making your female characters either "dirty sluts" or "good girls", then you're doing it wrong. We're all more complicated than that. The only place for this in writing is in characters' minds, and then hopefully other characters will point out that they are wrong to think that way (or they will discover it on their own through experience).

Lack of female friends / only woman in the ensemble
Again, this happens sometimes in real life, if you're a woman working in a male-dominated field, or really into a hobby that many more men than women are interested in (going back to "not like the other girls"). But it is way overdone in fiction even when there isn't a reason for it, showing more men than women even when in real life there would be more of a gender balance. Sometimes when efforts have been made to even out the genders, they'll still fail by making only one woman a major role and the other females very minor characters.

I think one of the big lessons here is, don't defy stereotypes by creating new stereotypes. Write people as individuals, and watch how you write gender roles and gender balance.

* Note this is not intended as a rebuttal of the original essay. Some of my thoughts and opinions aren't too different from matociquala's, I'm just taking them and running with them.

"Survivors" vs. "Victims"

grenacia — Fri, 13 Feb 2015 18:53:30 GMT

There's this trend to use the word "survivor" in the place of "victim", to make the people being referred to feel more empowered. It's most widely used when talking about sexual and domestic violence, but you see it used anytime there is discussion of people who have undergone some sort of extremely bad experience, be it violence, disaster or disease.

I have no problem with the idea of people who have survived some bad experience being referred to as "survivors" of it. But the generic use of the word "survivor" as an all-purpose replacement for "victim" has always bothered me. The more I think about it, the more I detest it.

Because, what about the victims that DIDN'T survive? If, for example, you say your organization "advocates for the survivors of ___", you are explicitly excluding those that don't survive.

"Survivor" can be a pretty broad category, including those who brush off a bad experience and those who are traumatized by it but make it through anyway. But it doesn't include those who are outright killed by the bad experience, or those who initially make it through but then die for some other reason such as suicide or accidental overdose because they can't cope with the pain or memories of what they've been through or how the experience changed them. It might eve make those who aren't sure yet if they are going to make it through feel excluded.

So, if you're intending to refer to all victims of ___, saying "survivors of ___" is not appropriate. So what do you call those who didn't survive? Are they victims now? But if you abandoned the word "victim" in favor of "survivor" because you thought "victim" was demeaning, it's kind of rude to apply it only to those who didn't survive. They weren't necessarily any weaker or more passive than those who survived. There are a lot of factors outside a victim's control that determine survival.

You could say "survivors and casualties of ___" if you want to be inclusive. But it's simpler to just say "victims of ___" and define it simply as "people who have experienced ___" and not apply negative associations to the concept of "victim".

The Amazon Wishlist Saga

grenacia — Mon, 29 Dec 2014 21:48:04 GMT

Awhile before Christmas, my mother-in-law asked me what I wanted for Christmas. I told her there were some things on my Amazon wishlist. She said, "But it's all books!" I told her that was because books were one of my favorite things in the world, and she said that that made sense then, and that she used to get people books for Christmas but had gotten out of the habit.

Fast-forward to Christmas Eve when I unwrap her gift. It is a boxed set of books on playing minecraft. I don't play minecraft. I've never even looked at that set of books on Amazon.com. I meet this gift with a quizzical look.

Apparently she was looking at my wishlist and somehow got off my wishlist onto something else, and thought she was still on my wishlist. She thought to herself, "I didn't know Sharla was so into Minecraft, oh well" and bought it.

We went over to my dad's computer in the next room and I spent a little time helping her process the Minecraft books for return and print out a shipping label. Then we went to my actual wishlist and she had me pick out a couple replacement gifts. I got Brian K. Vaughan's Saga Volume 4 and Ted Naifeh's Princess Ugg. I think these two graphic novels that I don't actually have yet are my favorite Christmas gifts.

Livejournal dream

grenacia — Sat, 26 Jul 2014 16:06:23 GMT

I think some dreams I have are really not like other people's dreams. I just woke up from a dream that consisted of me reading a mass of comments on a livejournal post I had previously written. The people commenting were all dream characters, not actual people I know on LJ. In the dream, though, I knew some of them, while others had just found the post somehow through friends.

It was mostly writers talking about about books and writing and the publishing industry (the original post was about a book), but some things reminded people of other things and some comments went off on tangents.

There was one tangential comment thread of a musician friend of mine (named Barry) reminiscing about all the bands he'd been in, and I read it and was like, "oh yeah, I'd forgotten that first band, but I heard them play at Convergence way back when HarmCon was in an atrium". None of these bands nor this musician actually exist, to my knowledge, and I certainly hadn't heard of them in real life, but dream memory is funny.

And once again, to people who say "you can't read in dreams", I say, "well, maybe YOU can't read in dreams . . ."

To hell with fear

grenacia — Sat, 31 May 2014 04:20:27 GMT

I've seen been seeing various links turn up in my social media feeds to essays written (generally) by men, trying to explain #YesAllWomen to other men. I've been noticing a theme to some of them, which I would boil down to this concept:

"Guys should watch their behavior in regards to women, because certain behaviors, though they seem innocuous to guys, will cause women to fear them, because they remind the women of bad things that have happened to them or to other women in the past. You may think women are overreacting, but they're doing it because they're afraid, and they might have logical reason to be afraid, because it's hard to know for sure whether a guy is just annoying or if he's going to turn violent if rejected."

So, there might be some truth to that, but still it bothers me. And I'm going to have to say Not All Women to that one. I completely refuse to be afraid of stupid guys who don't know how to cordially interact with their fellow humans. Annoyed? Sure. Angry? Sometimes. Cautious? When it seems warranted. But not afraid. There are things I fear in life, but douchey guys giving me unwanted, inappropriate attention are not one of them.

Letting fear of them effect how I live my life is a waste of my time. In the unlikely event that one of them points a gun at me someday, I'll consider fearing that one, because then I'd actually have good reason to. Until then, no. Knowingly or unknowingly, harassers will USE that fear to get women to tolerate and placate them, to coax them to be nicer and less firm in their rejections of harassment.

Aside from my personal belief of refusing to live in fear and let those idiots win, there's something else that bothers me about the fear explanation. It implies that the reason harassing behavior is wrong is because it makes women afraid. But the fear is really just a side effect, and there are all sorts of reasons harassment is wrong that have nothing to do with fear. It's really more about consent - if you are indulging in a behavior, and if the people primarily effected by that behavior tell you it's inappropriate and that you should cut it out or go away, you need to cut it out or go away, not try to explain why you think your behavior is appropriate.

EDIT: By the way, I absolutely do not mean this as a criticism of anyone else's fear, even if I don't share it. We all have our personal fears, and our personal reasons for them. There may well be other things that I'm terrified of that don't phase you.

"It's military science fiction - written by a girl!"

grenacia — Sat, 24 May 2014 14:45:35 GMT

At one point at this year's Minicon, on a panel about the best science fiction of the previous year, one of the panelists recommended a book in a way that really bothered me: "It's military science fiction - written by a girl!" I think the guy thought he was being funny, but there are a few things wrong with what he said:

1. I wouldn't think of Ann Leckie as a "girl". She is unquestionably an adult woman.

2. Military SF written by women is not even that unusual. Over the years, I've read several works in that genre that were written by women, including some long series. And I'm not even that into military SF! Had that panelist been ignoring them all as "girl stuff" until one won a Nebula? It boggles the mind.

3. Even if this WAS unusual, pointing out that it was written by a woman is a silly way to promote it, opposed to saying that it won a Nebula and is really good. Unless you are trying to point out that it's military science fiction that isn't horribly sexist like a lot of the stuff men write, which would be a valid thing to note, but not really what the guy was saying.

I haven't read "Ancillary Justice yet, but I expect I should, it's supposed to be really good. I don't know much about it yet though, since I was so dumbfounded I tuned out the rest of the guys recommendation.

Musical thoughts - the ease of performing something you wrote yourself vs. someone else's work

grenacia — Sun, 16 Feb 2014 03:16:48 GMT

Something I realized a long time ago is that I find it much easier to dance a dance routine that I choreographed myself than one someone else has choreographed, even if they are otherwise equal in challenge and quality. Because my own choreography feels right to me and makes sense to me in my mind in ways that someone else's doesn't, even if it is no way superior or easier for anyone else to understand. When I was a senior in high school I was chosen to do movement in a theater piece based on an audition that never tested my ability to learn someone else's choreography, to less than ideal results. Though I could choreograph and dance a complex piece, I sucked at learning to dance someone else's choreography, because it will always full of choices that are not the choices I would have made.

I'm starting to find myself in a similar place with guitar playing, though I've been trying to get past it. Lately I've been writing songs and trying to learn to play them well, and I find it a lot easier than trying to play other people's songs (or, at least, to play them anything like the original). But I want to be able to play other people's songs and to play them like the original, both to learn things from them and also just to be able to play songs I like.

Part of it is that when it is my song, I can say what the right way to play it is, I don't have any outer thing to compare it to. But that's not all it is. There's a song I'm trying to learn. All the chords in it are familiar to me, but getting the chord changes down feels oddly tricky. There's a spot where I need to go quickly from C to A minor, which is just moving one finger but it feels awkward to me, even though in a song I wrote I go quickly from A minor to C. The reverse is harder, for no particular reason, just because it's not a musical decision I made myself.

I'm sure I can get past it with practice though. There are other things that will be harder, though - the big challenge ahead will be syncing up my singing to this strumming pattern that lines up with the singing differently than I would have done.

The Time Traveller's Wife

grenacia — Mon, 13 Jan 2014 04:32:33 GMT

I caught up on lj-friendslist-reading this weekend, which I was a couple months behind on. Then tonight phoenixredux and I watched a DVD of the film adaptation of The Time Traveller's Wife, a book we'd both read. The movie was not as good as the book, and had a lot of interesting bits cut out of it, but it did get me thinking new thoughts, some of which I hadn't thought before after reading the book (which I think I've reread a couple of times). The main one was something sad . . .

Adult Henry goes time-travels back and visits his childhood quite a bit. His daughter Alba is also a time-traveller who goes back and visits her past. But we never see her as anything older than a child, just as an older child going back to visit her younger childhood and events before she is born.

So why do we never see teen or adult Alba? It's a pretty strong indication of the possibility that - despite her limited abilities to control her time travel, and the family/professional support structure for it she has that her father didn't - she succumbs to some of the dangers of showing up naked in a random place and time, and doesn't survive to be an adult.

There's also the possibility that a cure for time travel is found and she takes it. But somehow this seems less likely to me.

Though I never thought of this from the book before seeing the movie, I don't think there's anything in the book that specifically says Alba survives to adulthood. Thought the book does have one incidence of Henry traveling much further forward in time and visiting Alba's mother Clare as an old woman, which diverts us from the fate of Alba.

Reframing unhealthy relationship ideas

grenacia — Tue, 31 Dec 2013 14:16:42 GMT

Someone posted this article to Facebook:
http://loveisinfinite.wordpress.com/2013/12/27/five-romantic-ideas-that-are-really-not/
. . . and I thought to myself, "It's easy to come up with healthy-relationship-alternate phrases for some of these":

Turn “I can’t live without you.” into something like "You make me happy to be alive" to remove the creepy "I'd die without you" implication.

What's creepy about “I know you better than you know yourself” is the direction it is being said in. If it's really true, the other person might say things like, "Sometimes I think you know me better than I know myself" or "I love the way you know how I like to be touched."

The last 2 are just plain wrong, though, they don't have a clever alternate.

“You should JUST KNOW…

…what’s wrong/exactly what your partner wants in bed/if someone wants to have sex with you/if you’re serious or casual or exclusive.”

No, don't assume you just know, Communicate, dammit!. Because it's so easy to THINK you know when you don't, really. Unless you communicate, and then you know for sure!

“If you really love someone, you want to keep them all to yourself.”

No. We all get possessive of things sometimes, but possessiveness doesn't mean you care about something, it just means you want it. There's so much more to love than that.

There's more than one way to play a guitar chord!

grenacia — Sat, 12 Oct 2013 05:07:38 GMT

Awhile ago, I got together a big batch of songs to try to learn to play on guitar. A couple of them* I was really enjoying, and liking the sound of, except they each had one chord I was finding impossible to play - sure, I could try to play them, but however slowly and carefully I laid down my fingers, I'd get dud notes.

The problem is that I am not good at barre chords - when I try to press more than a couple of strings with the same finger and simultaneously play other notes with other fingers, it is a mess.

The first thing I tried was the half-assed solution - play a familiar, easier chord that is vaguely similar to the chord I'm supposed to be playing. That was unsatisfactory.

The second thing I tried was just practice the impossible chords a bunch. That didn't really help much - I'd have to get them right in the first place to be able to practice up to getting them right in the middle of a song.

The third thing I tried was researching how to get around difficulties in playing barre chords. I actually watched a couple of instructional YouTube videos, which is something I rarely do. They told me some potentially useful stuff, but also led me to the idea that barre chords really just aren't my style. If I switched to a different guitar or lowered the action and put thinner strings on existing guitars, it might make barre chords easier. But it would also make the guitar much less the sort that I like to play in general.

The fourth thing I did was google for alternate ways to play the chords*. And there, I unexpectedly hit the jackpot! I found a good source for alternate ways to play chords, and both chords had alternate, non-barre options that I found much easier to play, which didn't even require me to slide to a totally different section of the neck or anything crazy.

In fact, in the case of Heart of Gold, I'm pretty sure I discovered how the song was actually supposed to be played, because I find it very unlikely that Neil Young would switch to the annoying chord of annoyingness when he could get the same basic bunch of notes by simply lifting up one finger from the chord he was playing previously!

I guess the moral of this story is, don't assume the most well-known fingering for a guitar chord is the right one for you and what you are trying to play, if it isn't working for you.

* "Something Fast" by Sisters of Mercy, and "Heart of Gold" by Neil Young.
* Most notes on a guitar have more than one spot they can be played. If you count the same note in a different octave, there's even more options. So while chords have common fingerings, there is always another way to get basically the same set of notes. Whether it is a better way or a worse way, depends on the chord or the situation. For an example, click here and select a chord, any chord, and see some different ways it can be played!

Some People Regenerate . . . Get Over It

grenacia — Tue, 17 Sep 2013 01:56:54 GMT

I made this bit of art in reaction to the reactions fans were making to the announcement of Peter Capaldi playing the next Doctor on Doctor Who. Every time the Doctor regenerates, there always seem to be people who don't like the new version of the Doctor. To me, they're all just the Doctor.

If any of you would like this image on a t-shirt, they are available for order here through September 27. Any profits go to the Tardis Tea Society.

Thoughts on Iron Man and Batman

grenacia — Wed, 05 Jun 2013 17:19:32 GMT

Thinking about Iron Man and Batman today. They are both popular superheroes who don't have any true superpowers, but do everything with gadgets. They are both orphans. They also both were born into incredible wealth with family-owned corporations. I wonder how they'd have ended up without the money.

Batman I think would definitely be in a different place. He isn't a supergenius. His incredible gadgets were taken from the family corporation's R&D, and his skills were learned traveling the world. If Bruce Wayne was an ordinary orphan with a lesser inheritance, he would have turned out rather different.

Iron Man, though . . . Tony Stark IS a supergenius who actually created his own gadgets. He created his first electromagnet chest piece and Iron Man suit in pretty horrible conditions, in captivity and secrecy when he was supposed to be building something else. I think much of his story could have worked as well without the inherited wealth. Having the family corporation certainly helped him along the way, but it wasn't required to make the story happen. He was a boy genius who went to MIT at 15 and didn't become Iron Man until many years later. It might have been harder or less plausible, but he could have got there on his own.

Are there any major superheroes who don't have either superpowers or inherited riches? I can't think of any.

Some thoughts on friendship: hugging and non-hugging friends

grenacia — Wed, 29 May 2013 20:18:52 GMT

I have some friendships where, whenever we see each other, there are big smiles, big hugs, and general excitement to see each other. I have other friendships where we greet each other with much more reserve, no physical contact, smaller smiles, quieter conversation. Large smiles and excitement will occur only if there is some exciting news or something, and hugs are a rare event. And of course, some friendships are somewhere in between.

I generally prefer the hugging model, but I'm pretty easygoing about it and try to pick up on cues from others on what they are comfortable with. What I didn't really realize to myself until recently is the fact that the hugging friends aren't necessarily closer friends than the non-hugging friends. I used to assume that the hugging friends were closer friends and liked me better than the non-hugging friends, unless there was some major cues otherwise. But when I heard a friend say she "wasn't really a hugger", something clicked into place in my brain and I started thinking differently.

For example, when I ran into the former accountant from my work at IrishFest last year, she and I had a typical "hugging friend" greeting, even though we barely know each other, and had never worked closely together or had much personal conversation. She greeted me that way because that's the type of person she is - it doesn't mean we are close friends. On the other hand, when I ran into another former coworker and her partner at PrideFest, we did the "non-hugging friend" greeting, even though we had worked much more closely together and had much more personal conversation. She greeted me that way because that's the type of person she is, not because likes me less or feels less close to me.

Some people just aren't really huggers, or at least tend to reserve hugs for special occasions or people they are very, very close to. Other people like to hug everyone they like, even if they barely know them (though, when they encounter people who are similarly free with hugs, they may form close friendships easier than the non-huggers).

I have realized that I know several people who are probably closer friends than I thought they were, because I had assumed no hugs meant we weren't that close. But when I look at all the other details of the friendships, I realize that some people just aren't huggers and that sometimes the hugs don't really matter.

If you want to be my hugging friend and you're not, it is probably because I've misread your cues. It happens. But it is easily corrected - just start giving me hugs and I will respond likewise. But if I've read your cues correctly and you're just not much of a hugger, that's cool too, I know now that it doesn't mean I'm consigned to some outer ring of friendship.

merle_ is dead - thoughts on this and on my own life

grenacia — Mon, 27 May 2013 21:03:05 GMT

I never met merle_ in person. In fact, the only communication I ever had with him was through livejournal posts and comment threads. Nonetheless I felt like I knew him and that we had some deep conversations. Perhaps we skipped the shallow ones?

Until I saw his wife's post in his journal about his death (scroll down and see the comment from eryn_ for more details) I was completely unaware of his alcoholism and liver disease, or how he had left his wife when she decided he couldn't live with her anymore if he wouldn't stop drinking. I know that people who knew him in real life had a bit more knowledge of this than those on LJ, as well they should, but I get the impression there was still some concealment.

When I suddenly found out all at once, that he had drank himself to death and died alone, I started doing a lot of thinking about what happens when you try to keep your problems private. If you try to keep your problems private, then your friends don't find out until something drastic happens, and then they're completely puzzled. Even if you can keep it under control so nothing drastic does happen, the secrecy is still a bad thing. Because it's harder to fix something you're trying to conceal.

I told myself that I didn't really know merle_ and that his death didn't really effect me much, aside from making me think. For the past couple days, I didn't consciously think about merle_. But I felt sad and depressed. This morning I woke up thinking about merle_, who I WILL miss, as much as I would miss some of my real life friends were they gone.

Merle's wife eryn_ said, in the post about his memorial, "If you cannot attend but wish to honor his memory, he would have requested that you do something that he would have enjoyed. Merle_ was not one with strong ties to ritual or tradition." I might do that at some point, if I think of something good, but the main thing I will do in merle_'s honor is to fight my tendency to try to keep my own problems private.

My own problems are minor and infinitesimal compared to merle_'s. As far as I know I have no tendency towards addiction nor any major health problems. But I do have my own problems that I tend to conceal and downplay. Anxiety and depression are ongoing ones. After some stress this spring, the anxiety's been worse than it's been in a long time, though it is getting better. Sometimes it takes immense courage to reach out to people through it, and even then I find myself concealing how much I need those I'm reaching out to, if I feel like I shouldn't need them that much. I find it very hard to depend on others. I try to fill my emotional needs through helping other people, so I can feel strong and get comfort through comforting others. It's not altogether a bad thing, but it is limiting.

Of course, I'm also an introvert for whom withdrawing with a book is sometimes what I need (or all I can handle). I said above I have no tendency towards addiction, and that's true when it comes to drugs, but I am totally addicted to books.

As for the depression, I've been telling myself I'm not really that depressed these days, because I've been through so much worse depressions than this, and now I'm able to keep a positive attitude even when depressed, and not despair or wish I was dead. I don't think I need to do anything major to treat these little depressions, but I do need to acknowledge the existence of depression when it crops up, even when it isn't that bad. Not hide it (and myself) and make people wonder what's going on.

So merle_, in your honor and for my own benefit and that of those around me, I'm going to make an effort to be more open about these and other problems in my life, and work on how to do this without hurting or blaming others.

Some thoughts on Kindle Worlds

grenacia — Thu, 23 May 2013 18:20:55 GMT

Kindle Worlds

Fan fiction and pro fiction are both very large places, which blur into each other here and there. My most comprehensive experience of them both is in Star Trek fandom, the main obsession of my coming-of-age years. In Star Trek, none of the writers own the characters and world they are writing in. They are owned by Paramount Pictures. Star Trek novels have the authors' names on the cover, but are © Copyright Paramount.

There have been times when it was very easy to get a Star Trek novel published, all you had to do was be a decent writer with a reasonable understanding of the characters, write a story that didn't go anywhere too inappropriate, and send it in in the appropriate manner and wait for it to be picked out of the pile. A lot of sci-fi writers grew up as Star Trek fans, and a lot of them wrote fanfic, and some of them also wrote official Star Trek fiction.

I have, on my shelves at home, a large collection of Star Trek fiction (pared down from an even larger collection I read but eventually decided I would never re-read). It includes some fanfic that is better than some of the official fic. It includes some fanfic that is written by the same authors as official fic (because, however well written it is, Paramount is not going to buy your novel that was elegantly plotted to put Ambassador Sarek into a situation where he decides an orgy is the logical choice). The official novels I have read include some masterpieces and some stinkers, and a lot of in-between. The fanfic of course does as well. Some of it, I have no idea why it didn't get officially published. Other writings, I totally know why (hello, ream of Jadzia Dax/Kira Nerys slashfic I downloaded and printed back when DS9 was on the air!).

I think Kindle Worlds could be a pretty cool new thing, but it has limitations - probably necessary ones. It's a lot more like writing an official Star Trek novel than writing fanfic. You're never going to truly own your work when you write about other peoples' worlds and characters. There will be limitations on the content of your official writing of them (no porn, nothing too out-of character, and whatever other arbitrary limitations the owners and creators come up with) and limitations on how it is sold.

If you want creative freedom and ownership of your work, you should make up your own worlds and characters. If you want creative freedom but want to write about other people's characters, you should write fanfic, but realize that it is fanfic, not pro fic: it is unofficial, not something you can sell legitimately. If you are itching to write a story about characters you don't own, but think you can do it within the right limitations, and don't care that you don't own or control it, than Kindle Worlds (or other tie-in fiction) is for you.

I've seen a lot of complaints about Kindle Worlds, but they all seem to be from people who were hoping to see fanfiction treated like original work, and are all sorts of disappointed for this reason. Unless you want to write fanfiction based on works in the public domain or Creative Commons, that's not going to happen.

The other big limitation of Kindle Worlds is that it has a very limited number of worlds available for writing in. That list may grow, but not as much as one might think. Creators that have historically kept a tight leash on spinoffs and frowned upon fanfiction will probably never release their work to Kindle Worlds, however many limitations they could apply therein.

Body Image Bullshit about Breasts

grenacia — Tue, 21 May 2013 20:21:17 GMT

So, I recently read this article on salon.com about one woman's experience of post-pregnancy plastic surgery, because I was bored at work, and because I know someone who is thinking about getting such surgery. One quote from the doctor in the article really stood out for me, because I think it's complete bullshit:

“The areolas are supposed to rest in alignment with the top of the armpit.”

Unless I'm reading that wrong, or the writer heard the doctor wrong, the doctor claims that the top of the colored parts of our nipples should be as high up on the body as the tops of our armpits. I don't know where he got that idea, because as far as I know NO ONE naturally has nipples that high up on their body, unless she's hanging upside-down and her breasts are therefore sagging in the opposite direction from normal. To get nipples up there, you have to not only negate the effects of gravity, but reverse them.

Now most of us have probably never thought about the level of nipples relative to armpits (I sure hadn't until I read the article), so if you're unsure of where nipples start out before breasts sag, look at pictures of babies. Because babies haven't experienced any significant body sagging, but nonetheless, you'll see that their nipples are lower on their bodies than their armpits. So, there's our starting point.

So, when girls go through puberty and grow breasts, do those breasts grow mostly upward, towards their armpits? Not that I've noticed. They grow outward fairly equally in all directions, and inevitably sag downward to varying degrees over the years.

So, I understand about women wanting to reverse the sag of their breasts, but this plastic surgeon appears to be saying that breasts are supposed to be higher up on our bodies than they would be even with no sag. And I find that pretty ridiculous.

Is it illegal for Firefly fans to make and sell Jayne hats?

grenacia — Fri, 12 Apr 2013 22:12:00 GMT

There's been a lot of uproar lately over handmade Jayne hats being removed from Etsy and their sellers being served with cease-and-desist letters, in conjunction with an official licensed Jayne hat going up for sale on ThinkGeek. The cease-and desists did not come from ThinkGeek, and ThinkGeek responded by donating all their profits on these hats to Can't Stop the Serenity. The most thorough coverage I've seen of the whole situation is here on buzzfeed.

One thing I've noticed in this is that some people are firmly convinced that Firefly fans making and selling Jayne hats is illegal. Considering the nature of Firefly, fans are probably more concerned with right and wrong than legal and illegal. I'm going to set aside the complex issue of right and wrong here, and talk about whether it is legal or illegal . . . which is really no less a complex issue.

Part of why it is a complex issue is that copyright on clothing is much looser than copyright on most other things, and for good reason. A lot of clothing is very similar to serve similar basic functions, so overly strict copyright would result in things like Levi having a monopoly on blue jeans. Here is a good general article on clothing copyright. So, the Jayne hat is not a good candidate for being copyrighted, trademarked, or patented. It is a very basic classic hat pattern, the earflap hat with a pom-pom. Yes, it has a specific color arrangement to it, but that isn't unique enough to change anything legally. It is a pattern that is very easy for a knowledgeable knitter to recreate from a photo. Fox may have legal precedent to take issue with the marketing methods of people selling Jayne hats, but not so much the making and selling of hats in and of itself. And, in fact, many Jayne hat-makers are renaming their hats and changing the language and images of their marketing to get around this.

I'm going to tell you what Fox should have done if they wanted to keep some control of the knitting of copies of the hat, which was designed and knitted by a production coordinator on Firefly who based it off a watercolor sketch by the costume designer. They should have published and sold a pattern, with standard knitting-pattern restrictions* on distributing the pattern, selling items mades from it, etc. Ideally they would have done this as long ago as possible, back when they first got the inkling that fans would want to knit this hat. A pattern can be copyrighted. Knitters are used to seeing restrictions on the use of a pattern and the items made from it. There would be more understanding of the idea that it reasonably okay to accept money from your friend to knit him a hat from a pattern he purchased for that purpose, but it isn't cool to knit a ton of them and sell them.

If there had been a pattern published, knitters wouldn't have had to create their own patterns, and if they had their hats would truly be seen as knock-offs by people who didn't want to pay for the pattern. But without that official pattern, it was inevitable that knitters would do the simple work of recreating the hat they'd seen on the show, then share their patterns with others on the internet, considering it to be their own work. Then others knit hats from those pattern, seeing no restrictions to what they should do with it. The Jayne hat trend grew and grew until there were large operations making and selling the hats. And then, much too late, Fox decided to do something about it, and handled it poorly.

Even with a copyrighted pattern published for the hat with restrictions on its use, the legality of enforcing those restrictions is still fuzzy*. But it would still be a much clearer situation giving guidelines to knitters to do the right thing.

*Here are two good articles on knitting pattern copyright:

http://www.vogueknitting.com/magazine/article_archive/ask_a_lawyer_knitting_and_copyright.aspx
http://www.knitty.com/ISSUEfall03/FEATcopyright.html

Plan B

grenacia — Thu, 11 Apr 2013 21:10:24 GMT

So, a few of my friends have been posting about their usage of Plan B (the morning after pill) to try to dispel misconceptions about its use.

http://eyelid.livejournal.com/1538091.html
http://pen-grunt.livejournal.com/257903.html

I thought I'd take a moment and join in with my own, unremarkable story:

It was late 2001 and I had sex in the very early stages of a relationship, so early I wasn't even sure if it was a relationship. Either the condom broke or the guy was being dumb about condom use, I honestly don't remember which, but either way there was some chance I could get pregnant. The guy mentioned the possibility of Plan B, and also suggested I consider going on birth control pills.

Plan B was still prescription-only at the time, but I searched the web and found a place that offered prescriptions for Plan B and birth control pills to women over the internet, all I had to do was fill out some information online. The organization did this because they knew not all women could access an understanding health care provider quickly enough (the organization did require proof that their clients were getting pap smears and pelvic exams if they used their service for more than a year).

So I got a prescription for Plan B from the online place and got it filled at a local drugstore. I recall it wasn't very expensive, my insurance might have partially covered the prescription. I took the pill and it made me very tired for a few days. And I didn't get pregnant. I probably wouldn't have anyway, but it seemed worth doing.

I think it is good that Plan B is now available without a prescription to all ages. Though it is too bad it can cost around $50 - someone in a bad situation who doesn't have much money might have difficulty getting that much together.

Thoughts on my guitar playing

grenacia — Sat, 18 Aug 2012 05:01:14 GMT

I hung out with my friend Tom M. for awhile tonight at the Music-Go-Round where he works, and, as usual, I picked up various guitars and played them a little.

I have always been way better at playing one-note-at-a-time melodies than I am at playing chord sequences. That's what I understand better and have many years more practice at, and what makes more sense to me. That's also why at one point I declared myself a bass player (or rather, accepted someone else's declaration that I was a bass player) because the style of playing I am comfortable with is well-suited to bass guitar. So I normally play mostly melodies rather than chords when noodling around on a guitar.

However, lately I have been trying to get back into playing chords, to try to write accompaniments to some of the lyrics I write. So today I picked up guitars and spent most of my time playing a chord sequence on them.

And I realized that it was about 10 times easier to play chords and make them sound good on some guitars than it was on others. On one guitar I'd be flying through my chord sequence, and having some random music store oddball compliment my playing, and then I'd pick up another guitar and try to do the same thing, and I couldn't get it to work right (and yes, I did check the tuning on the guitars first, it wasn't anything to do with that).

And it occurs to me that, the latter experience of not being able to get it to work right is what I'm used to. And I wonder if I've ever properly evaluated guitars for ease-of-chord-playing when I've been picking them out. Sure, I've always thrown in a few chords when testing guitars out, but I've done that knowing that I'm not good at chords and that I flub them, and mostly relied on melody-playing and general sound to evaluate guitars. And when I've picked up other peoples' guitars and tried to play chords on them, have I ever considered that the quality of my chord-playing involved not just me but the guitar? Not really, aside from with incredibly crappy guitars.

I am starting to realize that there are some mysterious differences between guitars that effect my chord playing beyond the stuff I normally evaluate (such as action and the spacing of frets and strings, which also effect my chord-playing, but which I'm already aware of). And I should pay attention to it, because why make something more difficult than it needs to be?

And I should re-assess the guitars I have in the house, and see how easy/hard it is for me to play chords on them relative to guitars I tried at the Music-Go-Round that worked best for me on that. Might or might not want to do some more guitar-trafing at some point.

And yes, I definitely need to practice more too.

Dreams

grenacia — Fri, 10 Aug 2012 12:13:33 GMT

I remember a few different dreams from last night:

In the first one, I was lounging around with my friend Tom G., who died eleven years ago, in the apartment we used to share, and talking about the music I'd been listening to lately. I always like the dreams about him that somehow skip both the "hey, you're supposed to be dead" AND weird explanations/guilt about why we haven't seen each other in so long. In this dream, he'd stayed in that apartment (and somehow learned to keep it reasonably clean without me!) and I'd moved on, but we didn't get into the how or why, just talked about music like we would if he was alive.

One thing that was odd was pretty much all the music I talked about was fictional and only existed in that dream, with the exception of "The Long Straight Forever", which is a real band but I haven't been listening to them. I've had a lot of dreams of being in a bookstore excitedly discovering books that don't exist in real life, but this is the first dream I can recall of imaginary CDs. And I was telling all sorts of details about them too, like talking about the solo projects of the imaginary members of imaginary bands.

This transitioned into a dream about a concert, which was somehow simultaneously at the Ford Parkway Music-Go-Round if you were inside, and at someone's house on a more scenic parkway if you were outside. My very-much-alive friend Tom M. who works at the Music-Go-Round was there at the counter, and at the start he was wearing a young-monk-from-"Name of the Rose" Halloween costume I had made for the deceased Tom G. many years ago. Then he spilled something on it, which he was quite unhappy about. The Hummingbirds (who I had heard at Convergence) played a show, as did one other band I was excited about, but I forget who they were.

Then this somehow moved on to my last dream before I woke up, which seemed totally unrelated to the previous ones. I was Harry Potter at Hogwarts, going on a supposedly dangerous rescue mission into a long-sealed-off section of the school to rescue an unconscious girl. I kept thinking that any moment, the real, magical danger would appear, but it never did. I was just trying to make my way through an obstacle course of bindery equipment, just like the bindery equipment that fills the back of the pressroom at my work in real life, since the owners of the company bought way too much of it at a going-out-of-business auction at another printing company. I had to move it around and prop big, heavy doors open with it, and it was close together and hard to get through, but there was no magical danger as I expected. By the time I woke up, I had gotten the girl out and was in the process of going back for her bookbag and stuff.

I think that last dream is some kind of metaphor for my job, where I've been spending a lot of time on this seemingly-never-ending bindery project rather than my normal work (though yesterday I spent doing my regular work).

Pondering on how being teased as a kid might affect response to harassment as an adult

grenacia — Sat, 04 Aug 2012 18:06:31 GMT

There's been a lot of talk lately about harassment in the geek community, ever since the incident at Readercon. I just read another couple posts about it, on top of the umpteen other posts I've read lately, and I started thinking about my own experiences with harassment over my lifetime. One particular thing has occurred to me:

No harassment I have experienced or even witnessed as an adult has come anywhere close to the teasing I got from other children for being a weird kid. I got through that, reasonably undamaged, and after that, I have been able to dismiss any adult harassment I've seen as insignificant and easily smacked down.

I'm going to assume many people in the geek community got the same childhood teasing I did. In fact, I would assume most of them got it worse than I did. Therefore, I'm going to have to assume that it effected many people differently than it did me.

Are we full of the shell-shocked? Did a lot of geeks decide as kids that fighting back will just get you hurt worse by the bullies, and take that into adulthood? It's a sad, sad thing, and difficult to solve.

I've always fought back, with fists, or with words, depending on what the situation called for. It didn't always yield a good result, but I guess I'd rather be thought of as a crazy bitch than a subdued victim. And I'm damned if I'm going to lay low and not stand up for myself and for anyone else who needs it.

By the time I got to high school, if I saw kids being hassled for being themselves, I was inclined to do whatever they were doing (even if I wasn't as into it as them) and dare people to try messing with me instead of those who hadn't learned to fight back. Funny, though, I don't think anyone ever did. They preferred to go after the easy targets.

A few notes:
Now, I know that there are some creepy people out there in the adult world who truly ARE dangerous, even to those who fight back. They are not the majority, nor what I am discussing here, or what has generally been discussed in these conversations. They are an anomaly.

Also, if you're going to say childhood teasing is different than adult sexual harassment, you don't know what you're talking about. The worst teasing was in early puberty years, and had definite sexual overtones.

A vague but significant memory, and some rambling thoughts

grenacia — Tue, 31 Jul 2012 04:23:53 GMT

Thinking tonight about a vague memory from my childhood, which I think says a lot about who I am and how I live my life.

I was on some kind of long nature hike with my family and some friends of my parents and their kids. I was getting tired of walking but my parents said I was too big to be carried now. I felt tired and sad about having to walk on my own.

So I looked at a kid who was smaller than me and having an even harder time with the long walk, and gave that kid a long piggyback ride. And then I wasn't walking on my own, and I didn't feel so tired anymore. I just felt so proud and happy that I was giving that kid the comfort of a ride.

I am much better at taking care of others than I am at letting others take care of me, or even than I am at taking care of myself. I do much better at things when I have a focus of somebody needing me, and fulfilling that need makes me happy.

But that only really works out if it is something I'm only doing some of the time, when I choose to. If I try to do it too much of the time for any one person, it wears me down and I don't know how to set the boundaries right, and at some point I snap. That's part of why I need a lot of alone time, and like relationships that seem to naturally give me a good balance of time together and alone time.

These rambling thoughts brought to you by the question, "How do you stay so calm?". At the time, all that came to mind was, "I'm not always calm"and "I don't know". But if I'm calm, it is because I think someone needs me to be calm, and I don't need to NOT be calm. If someone pisses me off enough, this can break down as it hits the point where I don't care what the fuck they need from me. But when this happens I tend to eventually go off on my own and read a book, and then I am calm again.

I have more thoughts on this, including a digression about how as a child I was ridiculously strong for my size, but right now I should get ready for bed.

Mistakes

grenacia — Sat, 31 Dec 2011 19:26:06 GMT

Neil Gaiman just posted his New Year's message:

I hope that in this year to come, you make mistakes.

Because if you are making mistakes, then you are making new things, trying new things, learning, living, pushing yourself, changing yourself, changing your world. You're doing things you've never done before, and more importantly, you're Doing Something.

So that's my wish for you,and all of us, and my wish for myself. Make New Mistakes. Make glorious, amazing mistakes. Make mistakes nobody's ever made before. Don't freeze, don't stop, don't worry that it isn't good enough, or it isn't perfect, whatever it is: art,or love, or work or family or life.

Whatever it is you're scared of doing, Do it.

Make your mistakes, next year and forever.

I want to add/respond to that by saying that sometimes the biggest mistake is NOT to do something that you need to do. Don't make those mistakes.

When OS X breaks Java apps

grenacia — Thu, 17 Nov 2011 21:10:09 GMT

This is partially for my own future reference, and partially in case someone having a similar problem needs to Google it up:

There is some kind of battle going on between Apple and Java, and all I really know about it is that whenever there is a OS X Software Update involving Java, I lose functionality in my Java-based imposition and platemaking app at work.

I thought it had completely uninstalled the older versions of Java this time, but I did some digging and found they had gone to:

System\Library\Frameworks\JavaVM.framework\Versions\disabled

So I dragged them back into System\Library\Frameworks\JavaVM.framework\Versions

and then went to Java Preferences and dragged the compatible versions back to the top (I've heard there are better ways to manage what Java modules are used on an applicatino-specific basis, but this works for me so far).

And my app worked again, yay! (Now I need to do this on the other computers that use this app).