beccaelizabeth's dreamwidth journal

I'm reading a book at the moment that's one of those meet the aliens things, and it's making me uncomfortable because it's using a lot of phrasing that reminds me of cliche-China while adding that these aliens have no concept of love. Actually, even without that twist, it would make me uncomfortable to make the aliens Chinese. It's all in the phrasing with words like Auspicious and Heaven coming up a lot, and cities that have to be built in alignment with the land, and obsession with numerology. I'd like to be reading the plot but instead I'm tripping over the fakey scenery, you know? China is not alien, aliens are not china, and it's bothering me.

So I was thinking on why. It doesn't even have to be racism. When we look at other cultures we notice the sticking out parts, the glaring, the obvious. It fines it down to a stereotype fast. And we're usually unaware of the underlying reasoning, the geographic, ecological, historical conditions that made it all make sense. So we get a hollow system of glaring incongruities.

When I did cultural studies we'd look at historical literature, but whatever we learned to spot there we'd bring that to bear on current culture, and lo and behold we'd have a lot in common. So I think there's a better way to write about the Other. Look at what's foreign to you, sure, for a start, find those glaring parts, but then, come back to the familiar and find them at home too. Find the heritage buildings and the lucky numbers and trying to make your phone number spell something, and then use the familiar to make strange. Then, when you're writing your aliens, take those parts of your own culture out of context and defamiliarised. You'll have your strange Other aliens, but you'll have a lot more to draw on. And you'll have a lot of everyday language to draw on, with different social levels and so forth built in, so already it'll sound less fake.

It's like when you're looking for a Doctor Who plot. You look around your house, your office, your school, your drive in, your supermarket, and then you pick something and say 'what's weird about this'. Well, usually you say 'how could an alien kill us with this', but it's the same principle. And Doctor Who has survived on that for 50 years. So that works pretty good.

Don't present places you don't know as foreign, do it to your home town, and see what the new perspective gives you.

today proceeds as per plan
*touch wood*

Slight sequence error means washing machine is running while cleaner is here. Cleaner says she don't mind the noise, but I do, so I apologised cause it's not nice to do what you don't like. Also now it is running with the door open. Boo.

Also now I am stressed that cleaner will do things in the wrong sequence and make more messes, even though this is good cleaner who actually makes things clean.

:eyeroll:

Got the receipt from the mattress back in the post. I shall have to start again with finding a good one now.
On the plus side I am actually sleeping whole numbers of hours in a row on the air mattress now it is not squeaky. So I have time without going steadily more nuts. For that reason. Anyway.

I think my jobs for the day list is down to things other people would need to do their half of first.

Also HabitRPG continues to work. My little dude has a pet fox now as well as a pet desert wolf, and I could have a panda except all my potions now are skeletons and why have a skeleton panda? I mean skeletons in general, yaay, but pandas with no black and white patches aren't much panda any more. I like how pet eggs and potions and food are all random drops, so any task you do might get you an extra shiny thing. Also I like how often I seem to be leveling up and how quick the gold happens. I can have a shiny at nice intervals, feeling like I did work and hence get a reward, but not getting stuck sulking in between. So now I have an axe and a chainmail coif and I'm saving up again. Motivation game of win.

Food delivery is not until 8pm today because it was cheapest then. But now I have no juice, no ribena, and no Tuesday lunch, so I think this was not my best decision. I drink water and try and persuade self to eat food that is not Tuesday. :eyeroll: This is the down side of forming habits. Get stuck in them.

mind, I already had leftover quorn cottage pie and vegetable steam bag for breakfast, some time before 0600 when I went back to bed, so I'm not stuck starving or anything.

... also 'habit' and 'regular routine' are not so much samelike when sleep/wake cycle does not to 24 hours conform no matter what I do.

My life is exciting.

... actually with little RPG dude and a big world boss to slay with usefuls, it kind of is today...

Take Away Day achieved. I like HabitRPG, I got some armour for doing Take Away Day. I did all my daily tasks, and bonus points for Go Outside and Be Social. And I leveled up to where it starts dropping stuff, so I got a wolf egg and a desert potion so now I have a pet desert wolf. This is much more rewarding than simply having clean and tidy and a life that functions.

It's too hot to actually eat all the food but I already know the little triangle things taste just as good tomorrow so that'll be fine.



The house we were going to view tomorrow cancelled and rescheduled for Thursday instead. Houses are difficult. The other one that mum was enthusiastic about even though I pointed out it had an EPC E rating and said it couldn't be improved, she phoned up and found when there's a viewing, but then she looked at the pictures more carefully and there's the round things on the side of the house that are to hold the wall on, and also places where a wall has been built right next to the wall, also to hold the wall on, and basically that would explain how it's not insulated, if the wall is falling off. So we're not going to go see it after all. Which is what I said in the first place. And then there was another place mum wanted me to send her the link for, and I was explaining how it's Not Good, but she just wanted the pictures of the bathroom. Okay then.


We watched Agents of SHIELD, the episode with Akela Amador. ( Read more... )

So now I have to decide between going back to sleep and thinking of something to do. The weather forecasts have a lot of lightning on them so I'm not going to go play on the big computer cause any power flicker makes it turn off. Laptop batteries are better. I'll see if they can make the big one better that way next time I get it to a shop. In the meantime I'll probably just go read a book. I have a whole stack still.

Also reinflate the air mattress. It got better once I figured out how to stop the squeaking problem (use it upside down compared to the instructions), but mostly deflated it's not much use at all.

There are a number of people who would make their lives and mine much simpler if, when they phone, they would just leave their contact information.

Do they think it turns up automagically? Are they relying on that thing technology from the actual 21st century can do where it remembers stuff for you? Because mine isn't, so it doesn't.

So I don't know who they are beyond a first name and a promise to call me back later.
Clue: the exact same thing will happen later, just like it has the last couple of times, because I don't answer the phone without a run up.


*sigh*

This is a problem for Contacting People Day. Aka Monday. ... I needed to make a day for not hiding from messages. All days can be Contacting People Day, if I feel like it, but today I have already emailed someone who said they'd do a thing and hasn't, and phoned the mattress place to get them to take it back, arranging to have actual humans visit some time between 0700 and 1900 tomorrow. That is sufficient Contacting People for one Day. So, the rest can wait. But if I feel like that for too many days in a row things tend to go wronger, so, Monday.

I'm really quite frustrated at the moment about how difficult it is to get things to work the way they should do under the rules, the way they in many cases were working until it all went, and the way I did all my half to fix up properly.


One great appeal of hero stories is if they do their half it actually does something.
Often a very messy something involving body parts, but hey, something.



You know that thing where you've been given an assignment and you've got to work in a group and you're the only one that's done the reading, actually read the rules, and started writing your part? And you can't complete it alone? And nobody else bothers to turn up or answer messages? And, on at least one occasion, someone key slopes off with the declared intention of getting very stoned? You know that feeling?

I feel like that all the time lately.

I did my half correctly and yet nothing can happen.


Only it's worse because the people not doing the work are more like teachers, in that they assign and grade and make a vast difference to your future, and do not appreciate it when you point out it would really help if they made said difference now-ish and in a nice direction.



... is actual work like that a lot too?

... all them stories about striking out in your own spaceship and building a planet all alone make so much more sense in this kind of context. That feeling it would in fact work if you could just set it up to not need other humans. Except of course everyone always needs other humans.



Blah. Right. I've been awake since about 0200, I'm going to call that a day.

a) new mattress has arrived
b) new mattress is an inch taller than the maximum height I told him

I'm currently trying to figure out if the terms and conditions say that's tough cause I bought it in the shop.
but it didn't occur to me to get the tape measure out.

I'm also trying to figure out if it's really an important inch, given how much fuss it has been already
but the line on the cabin bed is there so you don't fall out, so it probably is an important inch, really.

Have started playing HabitRPG. The autistic/depressed version of a Daily list is kind of basic. So far it includes things like Wash, Wear Clothes, Drink Liquids, Eat Food, Brush Teeth. Cleaner Day has a detailed checklist, as does Order Food and Sunday Breakfast. My to do list includes finishing reading this novel I've spent the last week reading a chapter or so of and realising I still can't keep track of all the characters.

The Rewards section has as an example 'watch one episode Game of Thrones' for 20 golds. I don't have 20 golds yet and I just did Cleaner Day. Also I don't think it would work very well to not do fun things until I do the usual things, because thinking of fun things to do is actually something the pshrink was working with me on. The nice things were on the To Do grid as well. So I'm going to keep doing that.

Now I need to think of more things to put in my day so I can get the golds.

... starting by remembering to eat and drink more often would be shiny...

a very thin air mattress. it's in my single bed frame and there's still room to fall off.

The mattress which I have needed to replace for about a year now finally had sticky out bits of pointy metal on both sides, so I couldn't just turn it over and hope for the best again. This I discovered half an hour before closing. So mum ran up to the shops, my sibling trailing behind her, and got an air mattress, pump, and batteries. This took two trips because I miscounted batteries. I think I owe my sibling a magazine or something. I said I'd pay them back at Sunday breakfast.

it is squeaky and smells weird but is preferable to impalement.

so, mattress acquisition will occur soonest.



In other news it would really help if, when someone says they will help me look at houses, they in fact do the things. Or if there wasn't such general agreement that me going and doing alone was a Bad Idea.

hopefully the house will still be there on monday.

someone with a very deep voice is talking in the underneath garage under my bed
a bunch of children are... lets call it 'playing' rather than 'attempting murder', cause they do it every week at least... interacting with their voices in one of the upstairs flats
and I'm sure they're vocalising at reasonable volumes, but I can still hear them.

This still beats the lady who listened to 'no matter what' on repeat. Pretty sure she moved out.

but I still really look forward to the really nice house I'm going to find aaaaaany day now.

Orange & Lime juice is quite drinkable. It's not best, but it's closer to the Five Alive I drink.
If the ingredient I'm missing is the grapefruit that would be annoying, since it's grapefruit I'm trying to cut out, on account of it messing with absorption of an ever widening array of meds. I mean, it makes it a very interesting fruit right there, but it also makes it hard to know exactly how much of what will end up in one's system.

I had a plan for today, but the stuff I had planned for before 10 am only just got done by 10pm, so even though I woke up at 0500ish , that day was kind of empty.

I continue to await someone wanting to sell me their house. It's annoying, waiting. Things go away quite quickly yet checking ten times a day doesn't make them turn up any faster.

I tried red grape juice in my continued quest for juices delivered by Sainsburys that I can drink. This is not the one, I think. It tastes kind of blah and then I feel peculiar. Or possibly I'm just tired. It's weird.

See this is why I drink and eat always the same things. I try new things and then decide I basically don't like consuming. Yet I am stuck with it.

I will try it again later to see if that was a weird one off or if I like the taste on a different day, but probably I don't like it.

I don't know what is magic about Five Alive citrus juice, but I can't get anything else to taste nice.

So, my plan for tomorrow is to do the things I planned for today, except the NSFG on account of that happened tonight. I might go sit near the book club group in Waterstones. I forgot to read the book though. So that would be mostly unproductive. But I would at least pick up the books I ordered and have those to read.

I need a proper project to fill all these hours in.

Also to communicate with humans more often.

Also to have things in my brain to communicate.

There's a kind of fic that's all about how one character's relationships have all been horribly abusive and then they meet The One and find out what a healthy relationship looks like and decide they want this forever and ever happily ever after.

And, okay, I get it, for some characters it's even canon, if horrible has happened already then swooping in and making everything all okay again is lovely. Like cookies and blankets and regular meals.

It just bothers me quite a lot when the only thing The One has going for them is that they treat others like actual people with basic respect and human rights and so forth. Like, that's the bare minimum, everyone who doesn't meet that is the bad guys, but there's a world between not being a bad guy and being actually actively good.

( Read more... )

Being the best of a bad bunch is never going to be impressive or romantic, basically. If you want your white knight to look proper good they have to distinguish themselves even among a background of actually decent people.

Actually a lot of stories about bosses at SHIELD do this, they set the average boss as total rubbish, and then have Coulson be super boss just by not being actively a jerk. ( Read more... )

Some of this is just stories having a limited cast. The good one vs the bad one takes a bunch of words, adding another good but not quite as good one would take more.

But still, it bothers me. It's giving all the cookies and happily ever afters just as prizes for meeting minimum standards. It seems like best should be better than just avoiding all the awful things.

I dreamed I was wandering around having a random adventure and I suddenly realised all the incidents had the same graffiti nearby. They all said Will, some in red and some in blue and some in red and blue. I realised because the latest one had like a whole wall of Will Will WillWill WWiillll Will as red and blue fought it out for space.
... it was a battle of Wills.
... I apparently pun in my sleep.

So then, like in Fringe like I watched yesterday, I went back through scene photos and found the same lurky guys hanging around. One was played by Callum Keith Rennie. ( Read more... )

The other bit of my dream was about new houses and discovering places were cold and draughty and how much I really do not like windows, let alone them big windows pretending to be walls some houses like.

Oh, and being sold really, really, ugly furniture by that rude bloke on Top Gear.
... actually it was curvy 60s looking chairs in rainbow spots on silver glitter, and I quite liked it, but I can see how it's a bit much for a living room chair.



I need to do something useful and productive with my awake hours.