Calamari Icons !

( Who is Joseph Cao? )

A-AWESOME

IT'S ALREADY OUT. HOW DID I NOT KNOW THIS.

On the other hand, I was watching it going 'I really hope Lola gets to do more' and she doesn't even appear once. **sulks**

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I have never read or seen the Dragon Ball, and yet when I saw a page about the history of Honolulu on their site (.gov and everything) that mentioned "King Kamehameha I, who conquered Oahu in a decisive battle..." my mind went straight there.

**shakes head** Internet fandom osmosis is no joke.

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Wow. This is, no lie, my largest batch since Hugh Jackman in 2007 -- and there's still more imagery I wanted to icon but couldn't, since I'm catching a flight tomorrow & leaving my big laptop behind. Just means there's more coming eventually!

Either way, James Purefoy is so majestic and rugged and attractive, I can't even stand it. To me, he's like an unusual combination between Hugh Jackman & Jack Davenport & Mads Mikkelsen. I used him for a while as the NPC PB for Jackman's older brother, and I thought it worked awesomely. Iconset is a combination of period clothing & modern era.

JAMES PUREFOY


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I need to stop getting, like actually angry over the shit Allan Ball does to Charlaine Harris's books, but this just stirred up boiling anger that never left me.

Ball said the Vampire King of Mississippi is coming in season three. He provides a contrast to Sophie-Anne, the Vampire Queen of Louisiana (Evan Rachel Wood). “He’s older,” Ball said. “He’s much more mature. He’s much more methodical and grounded. She’s kind of crazy. To me, she’s kind of like Paris Hilton/Lindsay Lohan, where she has a very short attention span and she’s very, very egomaniacal and very self-obsessed and doesn’t really think about her actions, whereas the Vampire King is very much an adult. He has an agenda. He has things he wants to achieve. I think he’s much more formidable than she is.”

So basically, he took Sophie-Anne's character and gave it to a man. Who is, of course, this being True Blood, 'much more formidable.' And set her up to take a disastrous fall and have 'higher' vampire authorities PO'd at her.

I mean, he spends the entire second season undermining and sidelining Sookie--I'm not even mentioning Calypso being turned into Maryanne--and a fair amount of the first season too, so I'm not surprised, just frustrated all over again.

ALLAN BALL. SOOKIE DOES NOT NEED POWERS TO BE AWESOME. SHOVE OFF.

(Source.)


All I've been doing is complaining lately!

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I'm not sure why Uther being an asshole is supposed to surprise/alarm/set off warning bells for anyone. So he indiscriminately murders his people, but they're shocked if he taxes them? He isn't acting any different than usual, beyond fawning over Sarah Parrish, who is actually kind of awesome.

ETA: Guys, I can't help but think that saying 'Uther is good king except for the whole magic thing!' is like saying, 'he's a good boyfriend except for the bit where he stabs me in the face when I breathe in the vicinity of another man!'

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On Hating Female Characters.

For a while now I’ve been thinking about how many readers seem to hate female characters more than they hate male. Or rather that the same behaviour from a male character is okay but someone inexcusable in a female.

NO KIDDING. I read and enjoyed this post a while back, but a link popped up on my flist, and I returned to it and decided in light of some recent comments I'd read that it needs to be sung from the rooftops.

She also has a very good post here: The Advantages of Being a White Writer Highly recommended.

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My Multi-Cultural class--a class that tries to teach the students to acknowledge/understand/fight racism, sexism, hetereosexism, ableism, classism (and on)--upsets me, badly.

I walk away from every class where I have to interact with my fellow students feeling indefinably sick, with a greasy, twisting knot of anxiety, dissatisfaction and unhappiness in my stomach. I trip over my words. I get upset over the issues and can't express myself properly, especially since my tendency is to shut down and fold inward when upset; they don't even listen to statements the teacher has made five seconds earlier, they're so convinced they're right, why would they listen to me?

I went to this class because I thought it would--I don't know, teach me, be a place for discussion, and I have learned and I'm glad for it, but I just.

I feel so awful and miserable and twisted up in knots almost every class.

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There's plot! There's plot threads coming together by way of answers! There's the strong potential for some actual resolution!

There's not enough Rinali.

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Well, uh.

I made some remark about smug villains/antagonists/anti heroes not being my thing. Then I accidentally watched a clip of Supernatural! Now smug heroes are so far beyond 'not my thing' it's a little alarming.

bleurgh, Dean Winchester, why such a misogynistic sack of shit

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Wow I actually cannot believe Joss Whedon ever had the sheer gall to call himself a feminist. GUESS WHAT. YOU'RE NOT. END OF STORY.

Spoilers within, but they're warned for before they're reached.


I was remembering Nalini Singh's novella in her Angel's Blood series, one about Ashwini and the vampire she hunts on and off. In this, the angel--who is pretty much a carbon copy of Raphael--is treated the way a sane person would treat them. She's creeped out by his come-on, spooked, and hopes to interact with him as little as possible. At the time I didn't put much thought into it, but the only difference I can really come up with between the angel and archangel is that one--the one acknowledged as negative--is black.

Mm. Well.

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I was thinking about white privilege, and racism and all the -isms and the baggage that goes with it. On top of what I have as a white person, even as a girl and a feminist there have been and probably still are sexist views that I've subconsciously absorbed and not yet unearthed or examined.

A while back I was reading Anne Bishop and she made a remark about 'feminine' in her books. The quote is on my profile, I liked it so much, and it goes like this: "....the gist of it being whatever a woman enjoyed wearing was feminine and whatever she didn't enjoy wearing wasn't.""

And I had to reevaluate what I, a girl, thought of as feminine. I mean, what does feminine mean?

1. pertaining to a woman or girl: feminine beauty; feminine dress
....
4. belonging to the female sex; female

(I deleted the two between because, to be frank, they very demonstrably displayed the very cultural manipulation of roles that I'm complaining about.)

And what is our cultural view of 'feminine', especially in regards to clothing? Delicate. Pink. Satin. Lace. Frivolous. And what cultural image does all that feed into? The 'fragile' woman. The one that needs to be protected. She can't run in it, and it sure as hell isn't going to offer her any protection against the world. The one that needs the man to make decisions for her (frivolous, clothes as too important) and, for example, control her money.

So when you're talking about theoreticals, and societal views, and stereotypes and archetypes and tropes, fine. You can use feminine in that manner all you like. But what 'feminine' really means is 'female.'

And we can be whatever we damn well want to be.

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Wow, I'm crossing 'Warehouse 13' off of my viewing list.

Warehouse 13 also treats the idea of history being powerful, dangerous, and relevant today as a crazy, fantastical notion. "Who would think that? Doesn't everyone know that the past is something we tear down and lock away in the attic to make room for the new?" Well, it turns out that not everybody does think that way. Especially people, like indigenous peoples throughout the Americas and other victims of imperialism throughout the world, who had their language and/or history and/or culture and/or lives forcibly removed by colonizing powers. A power like, say, the United States government.

An assessment of the artifacts shown therein.

Twilight vs Quileute legends: Where it points out that despite Meyer stating she was telling the truth, she just appropriated the name and lied her ass off. It describes the actual legends.

Pocahontas. Ohhh, Pocahontas. Too many issues with Disney's story to count, but this one does a pretty good job. And an analysis of the second movie, too. It's like The Other Boleyn Girl for racism.

Here is the Powhatan response to the Pocahontas myth.

We of the Powhatan Nation disagree. The film distorts history beyond recognition. Our offers to assist Disney with cultural and historical accuracy were rejected. Our efforts urging him to reconsider his misguided mission were spurred.

"Pocahontas" was a nickname, meaning "the naughty one" or "spoiled child". Her real name was Matoaka. ....The truth of the matter is that the first time John Smith told the story about this rescue was 17 years after it happened, and it was but one of three reported by the pretentious Smith that he was saved from death by a prominent woman.

Yet in an account Smith wrote after his winter stay with Powhatan's people, he never mentioned such an incident. In fact, the starving adventurer reported he had been kept comfortable and treated in a friendly fashion as an honored guest of Powhatan and Powhatan's brothers. Most scholars think the "Pocahontas incident" would have been highly unlikely, especially since it was part of a longer account used as justification to wage war on Powhatan's Nation.

Euro-Americans must ask themselves why it has been so important to elevate Smith's fibbing to status as a national myth worthy of being recycled again by Disney. Disney even improves upon it by changing Pocahontas from a little girl into a young woman.

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On one hand: very pretty.

On the other: ooh, white men go into space, land on alien planet, either do a full-body 'blueface' or steal a native's body so they can gather intel on natives, and then make war. Oh, and a beautiful ~exotic~ native woman is involved in a starcrossed romance! Oh, and by doing this they 'fix' a disabled person.

I am feeling sour over this.

Especially after reading that this twit:



...is bragging about getting to use a whitewashed film about a Chinese-American martial artist and inventor as his vehicle. Here's what Tommy Zhou should actually look like:



FAIL DETECTED. If anyone's curious, it looks like the entire four-issue comic is online, completely legit at Drunkduck.com

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Y HALO THERE

Halloween was fun. I went trick or treating with three largely obnoxious boys, one of whom actually minded his behavior when asked to, and brought home about a truckload of candy. I wore fabulous facepaint--my mother drew it on--and wore a black velvet cape, so.

Fun.

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Worst Sexy Halloween Costumes

urgh urgh urgh


And the litany of people blaming a fifteen year old girl for being brutally assaulted while intoxicated has begun. I honestly didn't expect it in this particular case, which makes me too fucking stupid and idealistic for words.

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Oh good god.

The Demise of Off Our Backs

An examination--brief--of classism and racism--extensive--within a 'radical' feminist organization. The racism is awe inspiring to behold, fountaining up in a mess of hot, frothing entitlement, malice and prejudice.

Basically, a WOC calls the racist white women on their racism, and one explodes in messy rage, spiteful, appalling and horrifically racist and sexist language, and apparently is now seeking to bring charges against her. (Excerpts in the first link.)

I'm ashamed to know they call themselves feminists.

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One of--actually, a couple of--my female classmates today informed me that sexist romance novels were actually sexist against men, because they're portrayed as thinking with their dick.

Oh, yeah. Being portrayed as stronger, smarter, more capable, more important, more justified in all things and more deserving--and hey, not being portrayed as if only one of your gender (the one the man is interested in) is not evil!--and completely essential to any woman's happiness or feeling of completion in her life is so sexist! Gee, thanks for educating little ol' me.

(And yes, I know that--presumably--not all romance novels are that bad. But a frighteningly high percentage of them are jaw droppingly sexist.)

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Eva Green, why are you so fucking rad?

EVA GREEN


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A fifteen year old girl was sent to the hospital in critical condition after being gang-raped for two and a half hours. Fifteen people stood around, watched, and did nothing. Some joined in. She was only found--her life was only saved--because someone heard people bragging about it.

"As people announced over time that this was going on, more people came to see, and some actually participated," Gagan said.....The victim was found unconscious and "brutally assaulted" under a bench shortly before midnight Saturday, after police received a call from someone in the area who had overheard people at the assault scene "reminiscing about the incident."

...."This just gets worse and worse the more you dig into it," Gagan said. "It was like a horror movie after looking at the evidence. I can't believe not one person felt compelled to help her."

I don't have any commentary for this. I'm just full of pure hatred; rage and terror and concern.

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People are so astonishingly loath to admit their own culpability, even in an environment as constructive and undemanding as a classroom. (I'm sure I've suffered a kind of that reluctance in the past.) Are they simply so attached to their lofty perception of themselves as just and correct? The sheer ridiculous effrontery of a privileged person informing the oppressed that they are being 'over sensitive' if they note prejudice is almost hard to grasp. I'm left floundering as to how to speak to these people.

Can you really argue with someone who doesn't recognize logic?

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Men who never get carried away should be. - Malcolm Forbes

Go!

Guys, Max spent ten years on the run, completely alone, constantly fighting life-or-death battles, constantly undercover, becoming an extremely competent cat burglar to provide for herself and defeating highly trained operatives at every turn to keep herself free.

Alec spends the same amount of time safely locked away, being brainwashed and doing drills.

What factor of this--besides misogyny--can even remotely be interpreted to mean 'oh yeah, he is totally and obviously so much better than her!' You know, besides one throwaway comment from a biased source whose ass Max kicks in a later episode.


To think that, after spending a great deal of time immersed in this fandom, I managed to emerge largely intact as a feminist before I even knew what a feminist was. I must have been raised right.

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-write at least 1000 words a week
-write at least one completed story
-be more social
-start exercising more
-stop letting things get to me as much

I've never even seen Dexter, and I laughed out loud.

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