(no subject)

Re: Hub geography
there's two ways from main hub to reception that we've seen, lift and stairs
therefore a way for people to miss each other going in/out
if one set of them for some reason used the stairs


there's a lot of stairs

so it seems unlikely

but possible within known geography.

imprecise gender meta

Don't think I wrote this down yet
... can't decide if it's worth writing down
but have nothing better to do with my time.


Buffy and femininity

To start with the tension in Buffy's life was between wanting to be a stereotypically feminine girl and being the kick arse powerful Slayer. The whole thing with the pink dress vs honey I'm home. Old fashioned femininity says life should be about men, dating, clothes. New empowered women get to do all kinds of neat stuff and also wear clothes. But Buffy spent the first few seasons seeing the powerful stuff as a bit of a burden.

So then she embraces her own power - kinda, sorta. But she does it so other women don't *have* to. She's protecting their innocence. They don't have to worry their pretty little heads about it, and somehow she thinks this is a good thing. And while she is the kick arse Slayer, she's the exception. She's Joan, pope or saint, the one you hear stories about because she's the only one. And for many reasons she likes it that way.

Which is where Dawn is central and essential. Buffy coming to accept her own power means accepting that it's okay for other women too. She starts off giving Dawn a phone, the yell-for-help power of the traditional horror movie chick upgraded for the modern age. Buffy protects Dawn's presumed-powerless state, and tries to keep her innocent. But by the end of the season she's giving her a sword, because being a bit Slayer powerful is actually pretty cool. And she isn't the individual exception, she's the exceptional family.

But the end of season 7 is the best bit. Buffy accepts her power, decides it's actually kinda kick arse and cool, and not only is it okay for family and friends to be like that, it's okay for *all women*. She shares the Slayer power with everyone who can stand up. (Which, okay, there's a disability tangent in there, but not this paragraphs point.) Suddenly she's not the one and only, or the one line, or the one family - she's one in thousands, maybe millions.

She's *normal* - because she redefined normal so it is powerful.



So I love that the series leaves it there. Because if they have another season then the Slayers will be an embattled minority again, and then what? Less normal. Sad.

As it is, it redefines feminine so it includes 'doing everything you want to'.

Which, you know, cool.



What I want to do with writing Ripper is partly to have a look at masculinity in the new setup. Because ( Read more... )

Women and children are not plot devices.

I've been reading some more books that I think I liked ten years ago.
... I was a very different reader then.

They're very clearly written by someone who spends waaaay too much time playing level-based RPGs. The kind where you get a castle if you go up enough levels. And it treats women and children as Dependents ie sources of plot motivation and therefore jeopardy.

What it never actually does is treat the female characters as *PCs*. They're not players, they don't do things for themselves. Sometimes they don't even get any lines. There's one woman who exists to be called dangerous a lot and then killed. She never speaks a word. She just makes plot happen by her violent death.

I've had enough of that shit from comics, you know?

Women and children are not plot motivators. They're people. Sometimes mini people. But if they keep on getting killed offscreen to get the (rich white male) player characters into action then it gets all kinds of creepy.

And having a wider ethnic mix is cool, yes, *but* if all the non-white characters are effectively NPCs, if the only reason they ever do anything is because one of the pov PCs tells them to, that winds up mega creepy too. I mean at some time the author must have thought it was a cute learning experience to have a poor colored kid have serving a rich white guy as their highest aspiration, and the tragic death is a staple of the fantasy genre, but if you stack it all together you get something that kind of turns my stomach.

Furthermore simply identifying someone by their probable ethnic background, on first sight and all subsequent identifications, and never elaborating on any aspect of their character, comes across as way creepy. I mean for a start they're writing about cities where all these ethnic groups mix together, so they can get that exotic far off lands adventuring experience, but they're identifying them all as being from and/or of or fundamentally just being the ethnic group indicated by their skin color. So, no mixed race marriages in fantasyland in their few thousand year old empire then.

Having random color provided by inventing a race that keep their women naked and in chains is also not scoring any feminist points whatsoever. It isn't even like they're the bad guys, they just wander past to have people stare at them.

Then there's the other genre staple, the 'secret son of nobility' thing. It's that whole 'blood will tell' thing hiding in there. Add it to the 'I happily die for you master!' stuff and the 'crazy ethnic mystic' stuff and the 'dark skinned women who coincidentally happen to wander around with no clothes on and want a lot of sex and yet never produce mixed race offspring for reasons the text will never bother getting into' and...

The only reason I liked these books in the first place was I was reading them with my eyes closed.


There have to be better books than these. Ones where women are fully featured player characters with motives of their very own. Ones where what happens to the babies is actually a Thing and not just a 'now we skip twenty years so we can write about more white male teenagers again' thing.

... every time I read more of this rubbish I'm rather put off going to look for them, you know?

I mean sometimes I try a new author and get something shiny, but sometimes I try a new author and find half way through the first book the strong female character I was quite liking at the start has ended up impregnated with shapeshifter babies who might kill her. By her half brother.
(I don't know how that book ended. I think I threw it away. The scary part is it seemed to be the start of a series.)


another thing: On the whole, babies don't kill you. I mean, difficult and dangerous pregnancies happen, yes, fine, but quite often the only thing that happens between 'start pregnancy' and 'baby arrives' is you get much bigger around the middle.
... er, people who've actually had babies can point and laugh now, of course.
What I mean is, demon babies? Really not the point.
Sometimes people have babies because they want to. And then they raise them because they want to. And there's no rape or incest or demonic shapeshifting lifesucking involved *at all*.


Yes, this even applies to males. Yes, even mpreg. I realise all that artistically wasting away as they prove their love via dying so the child of their union can live is... well, happening in plural of stories, so presumably worth the time to someone, but dear god is it annoying. Making more life is all about life! Where the heck did this =death bit come in???

Also, and I realise this ends up a swipe at the whole hurt/comfort genre but I'm on a roll now so I'll just be cranky in public... when I back out of this sentence and start over... ahem...

Also, I do not think that the thing where someone is dying and someone else is caring for them is in fact a good basis for a solid lifelong relationship. Granted, if the dying part actually happens then it will indeed have lasted for life, but I don't read deathfic if I can avoid it so I mean those miraculous last minute save times. The dying/caring thing - those are some pretty well defined roles there. And once they're out of those roles they're in effect in a completely different relationship. In any pairing I seek out they're back to a relationship of near-equals in a working partnership.

Having and raising babies? Plus the near-equals working-partnership thing? Could be incredibly cute.

I mean really, this is the kind of real life challenge that most people face - they've got all these skills and talents and this relationship that's rolling along pretty well with the two of them, and then there's a baby, and they're faced with a whole new challenge, being three with a whole new focus and work that maybe doesn't divide in convenient ways and all the compromises involved with that. And, oh yes, possibly defeating alien invasions or keeping the forces of darkness at bay and all that. Balancing the needs of the many against the needs of the few, or the one.

How is this not cool?

Why aren't there more stories about this?

I can understand on TV, because they'd have to hire babies and that doesn't work so very well.
But word-writers lack budget and time constraints.


But then there's the other thing, where babies exist for daft plot reasons. Like I read one where there's a time travel story a bit like Back to the Future where the kid has to go make sure her parents shag. I don't remember which set of parents those were. Given that I at least started to read it either they were two guys or I was really desperate for fic that day. But in Back to the Future the protagonist is the kid who travels and they have this whole arc... I think, I haven't watched it in an age, but a finding themself thing going on, yesno? But in this fic the character was not the protagonist and all she existed for was to get these two other characters together.

How messed up is that?
Because again: Women and children? Not merely motivation for others.


I realise making a baby or a five year old exist as a person in their own right is a tad bit difficult. But it bugs me. Not even tiny people should just be a means to an end! Especially the end of getting two parental units to get or stay together. I mean how often and how badly does that go wrong? Besides which, I've never found 'oops, pregnant, must marry!' a particularly romantic resolution.

My absolute least favourite though is when there's "oops, false alarm, no baby". Because then there's no baby. There was +1 person and now there's -1 person and just because they're fictional doesn't mean I can't get upset.

I haven't read that often though. And one time the presumed-baby had tentacles. Apparently getting rid of tentacle things is supposed to be different.

... I think I've read far too many stories where people come equipped with all kinds of parts, including tentacles, to actually feel that.

... this is also a drawback with the demonic pregnancy thing. Because if demons are people too, then it's just sad either way.




/rant
or more like slightly incoherent trailing off of rant.
I should probably sleep soon.