Aliens in the mind
Jul. 25th, 2013 12:32 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beccaelizabethToday has been kind of fail with a tiny bit of win at the last minute.
Fail: doing anything I'd planned to, though I did email again to the people I need to help me do the things I planned to.
Win: Booking an ASDA delivery for tomorrow when there was only 15 minutes to spare on the next day delivery bit.
Once that arrives I'll have cleaner wipes and can start untangling the stuck things.
Well, the ones about me and my house. The ones about admin papers employees hiring advertising housing etfc I still must rely on others to sort.
On the other hand, I have been doing quite well at the homework the pshrink set me, Do Something Fun.
(I like this kind of homework)
Tanya Huff's Smoke series is awesome. I re-read the Blood books a bit ago, but I like these different, possibly better. I most recently re-read the Summoning books and those are awesome. And I finally finished Wizard of the Grove, which I'm pretty sure was her first book cause it's... not-awesome. Really quite a lot not-awesome. There's people that cry sparkly gem tears and have epic woe is me I don't die and a lot of the first book keeps jumping around talking about characters who end up only being ancestors of the protagonist and then the plot mostly happens because nobody told the destined saviour what she was meant to actually do. But, all the books? Awesome women. Smoke series manages to have awesome women while the protagonist and all his love interests are male. And people happen in varied skin tones. And saving the day is often as much about the connections made as the weapons accumulated.
I'm soon going to have re-read all the Huff books :-(
I'll have to look for more books since last time I was book acquiring. They wouldn't have shown up in the book shop on their own any more.
(Many awesome women being awesome lots of different ways! *hugs books*)
I've also been listening to a radio thing that has taken a few weeks to accumulate, Aliens in the Mind by Rene Basilico based on an idea by Robert Holmes. Starring Vincent Price and Peter Cushing, it's clearly meant to be sci fi horror, and it is epically creeping me out, but not in the way probably intended.
So far, all the women have been fridged. ... actually no, there's two housekeeper/assistants who survive, but there's two women who burned to death and one who died scared and screaming, so it feels like all the women.
The main characters are men, who discuss with other men what should be done about all their problems, which thus far means what should be done about powerful women. Powerful women who can get men to do things without them even knowing or noticing that is what happened. Scary, huh? :eyeroll: And so far so bloody typical witch stereotype, but it's the more mundane level that really gives me the creeps.
The two main characters are a medical doctor and a professor of the paranormal. They're the highly educated rational chaps who go to investigate the weird things happening in the wilds. They're probably meant to be heroes. But they're epic creepy, and I don't just mean because Vincent Price could read the phone book but after enough of the scary radio stuff it would still be plenty creepy. No, they're being creepy by being obliviously patriarchal.
There's a young woman with some kind of mental illness or intellectual disability who the medical doctor tries to remove from her guardian's home by saying she has a brain tumor. She doesn't and they know she doesn't, they just want to take her away For Science. So the guy says no, and they insist that she's of age and can decide for herself. At that point it sounded hopeful, like they would help her escape her also epic creepy guardian, but instead they basically kidnap the woman. After making a point of insisting she's old enough to make medical decisions they at no point try and get her informed consent. They drug her, repeatedly, against her will. They take her away from her home when she's begging and screaming to go back. And then they drag her around London to have medical tests done when they know there's not a damn thing wrong with her and really they just want to see if their machines can see telepathy.
They're creepy about it in a really sweets from strangers way too, one of them calling himself Uncle Cornelius, and promising her trips to the zoo, the other buying her wine and then putting a mickey finn in it.
And then she gets killed.
And that's half way through the story and is probably all about inspiring her newly discovered father to go hunting for who killed her.
If the story knows how creepy it's being in its protagonists I can't find a clue there. Like, they've been set up for crimes to get them out of the way, which would be the perfect time to accuse them of kidnapping and immoral conduct and violating medical ethics with this young woman, but instead they're accused by powerful men of messing powerful men around. As far as I can find the story just doesn't know they've been creepy, because after all she's a young woman and disabled, so why would they ask her opinions or permission for anything?
C R E E P Y.
There's one part left to listen to, and I'm going to finish listening if the iplayer works.
But the only acceptable ending at this point is if the parallels are deliberate, if the 'hero' doctor and professor come to realise they've treated this young woman the exact way they accuse these 'controller' women of treating others, taking away all her choices and ignoring she has a life of her own.
It's like they've had thoughts put in their heads they don't even notice, prompting them to act in weird and creepy ways. Programmed by the patriarchy.
Really, it could still turn out to be the point.
... but I won't hold my breath.
ETA: No, it was another Evil Controlling Woman. Again. A totally random person, so I don't know what the point was, it wasn't like we had clues and could figure it out, it was just tada there's another witch behind the curtain. So it was boring and sexist as all hell.
Any witch story that doesn't acknowledge that women's routes to power were severely curtailed and manipulating men is the only thing patriarchy leaves for them is missing the entire damn point. As this one did.
But they fixed it with another being killed. So hey, men can rest easy, knowing that random manly persons with guns can shoot unarmed women for them.
Fail: doing anything I'd planned to, though I did email again to the people I need to help me do the things I planned to.
Win: Booking an ASDA delivery for tomorrow when there was only 15 minutes to spare on the next day delivery bit.
Once that arrives I'll have cleaner wipes and can start untangling the stuck things.
Well, the ones about me and my house. The ones about admin papers employees hiring advertising housing etfc I still must rely on others to sort.
On the other hand, I have been doing quite well at the homework the pshrink set me, Do Something Fun.
(I like this kind of homework)
Tanya Huff's Smoke series is awesome. I re-read the Blood books a bit ago, but I like these different, possibly better. I most recently re-read the Summoning books and those are awesome. And I finally finished Wizard of the Grove, which I'm pretty sure was her first book cause it's... not-awesome. Really quite a lot not-awesome. There's people that cry sparkly gem tears and have epic woe is me I don't die and a lot of the first book keeps jumping around talking about characters who end up only being ancestors of the protagonist and then the plot mostly happens because nobody told the destined saviour what she was meant to actually do. But, all the books? Awesome women. Smoke series manages to have awesome women while the protagonist and all his love interests are male. And people happen in varied skin tones. And saving the day is often as much about the connections made as the weapons accumulated.
I'm soon going to have re-read all the Huff books :-(
I'll have to look for more books since last time I was book acquiring. They wouldn't have shown up in the book shop on their own any more.
(Many awesome women being awesome lots of different ways! *hugs books*)
I've also been listening to a radio thing that has taken a few weeks to accumulate, Aliens in the Mind by Rene Basilico based on an idea by Robert Holmes. Starring Vincent Price and Peter Cushing, it's clearly meant to be sci fi horror, and it is epically creeping me out, but not in the way probably intended.
So far, all the women have been fridged. ... actually no, there's two housekeeper/assistants who survive, but there's two women who burned to death and one who died scared and screaming, so it feels like all the women.
The main characters are men, who discuss with other men what should be done about all their problems, which thus far means what should be done about powerful women. Powerful women who can get men to do things without them even knowing or noticing that is what happened. Scary, huh? :eyeroll: And so far so bloody typical witch stereotype, but it's the more mundane level that really gives me the creeps.
The two main characters are a medical doctor and a professor of the paranormal. They're the highly educated rational chaps who go to investigate the weird things happening in the wilds. They're probably meant to be heroes. But they're epic creepy, and I don't just mean because Vincent Price could read the phone book but after enough of the scary radio stuff it would still be plenty creepy. No, they're being creepy by being obliviously patriarchal.
There's a young woman with some kind of mental illness or intellectual disability who the medical doctor tries to remove from her guardian's home by saying she has a brain tumor. She doesn't and they know she doesn't, they just want to take her away For Science. So the guy says no, and they insist that she's of age and can decide for herself. At that point it sounded hopeful, like they would help her escape her also epic creepy guardian, but instead they basically kidnap the woman. After making a point of insisting she's old enough to make medical decisions they at no point try and get her informed consent. They drug her, repeatedly, against her will. They take her away from her home when she's begging and screaming to go back. And then they drag her around London to have medical tests done when they know there's not a damn thing wrong with her and really they just want to see if their machines can see telepathy.
They're creepy about it in a really sweets from strangers way too, one of them calling himself Uncle Cornelius, and promising her trips to the zoo, the other buying her wine and then putting a mickey finn in it.
And then she gets killed.
And that's half way through the story and is probably all about inspiring her newly discovered father to go hunting for who killed her.
If the story knows how creepy it's being in its protagonists I can't find a clue there. Like, they've been set up for crimes to get them out of the way, which would be the perfect time to accuse them of kidnapping and immoral conduct and violating medical ethics with this young woman, but instead they're accused by powerful men of messing powerful men around. As far as I can find the story just doesn't know they've been creepy, because after all she's a young woman and disabled, so why would they ask her opinions or permission for anything?
C R E E P Y.
There's one part left to listen to, and I'm going to finish listening if the iplayer works.
But the only acceptable ending at this point is if the parallels are deliberate, if the 'hero' doctor and professor come to realise they've treated this young woman the exact way they accuse these 'controller' women of treating others, taking away all her choices and ignoring she has a life of her own.
It's like they've had thoughts put in their heads they don't even notice, prompting them to act in weird and creepy ways. Programmed by the patriarchy.
Really, it could still turn out to be the point.
... but I won't hold my breath.
ETA: No, it was another Evil Controlling Woman. Again. A totally random person, so I don't know what the point was, it wasn't like we had clues and could figure it out, it was just tada there's another witch behind the curtain. So it was boring and sexist as all hell.
Any witch story that doesn't acknowledge that women's routes to power were severely curtailed and manipulating men is the only thing patriarchy leaves for them is missing the entire damn point. As this one did.
But they fixed it with another being killed. So hey, men can rest easy, knowing that random manly persons with guns can shoot unarmed women for them.