Lethal Empathy

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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People who know me or have seen pics know that I have floofy curly super-fine Crazy Irish hair that is about five inches longer when straightened, will stand straight up with little provocation, and will 'fro if it's cut too short. It's usually impossible to deal with--it floofs with hair spray, it floofs without hair spray, it floofs within hours of having been relaxed, it floofs with or without special shampoos, and if I beat down the floof with gel? I look like a drowned rat.

So when I tell you, dear internets, that I've come across a shampoo that can tame the infamous Crazy Irish hair, I need you to know that this is akin to a light-from-the-sky chorus-of-angels miracle that blatantly and completely defies the laws of physics.

And it's even hippie-friendly, too. :D


I really wouldn't have believed it if I hadn't tried it myself--but now that I have, I'll probably never buy normal shampoo again.

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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Okay, not too sure on how I feel about this, but I defintely know something wrong happened here...

( Cut for a case of discrimination... )

By the way, if you find any information that'll help me with this issue (such as accurate, non-biased info on the Nazi party) I'll be very grateful.

.

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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Re: Paranormal Activity

Thingie: *goes bump-tap-skritch-thunk-screech-"O hay thar" in the night*

Guy: I am a big manly man and, armed with my camera, I will handle this wtfery on my own with my cunning plan! What plan? Who knows!

Girl: I AM FREAKING OUT AND WILL CONTINUE TO FREAK OUT AND WILL STAY RIGHT HERE AND FREAK OUT LOUDLY.

Me: You guys are so not good at this*.





*Perchance I've run into a few too many things that go bump-tap-skritch-thunk-snore(yes, it snored)-"O hay thar" in the night . . . But I've got the feeling this movie will be to people who've actually dealt with ghosties/poltergeists what "Let's split up and hide from the axe murderer in different rooms of this creepy old house!" is to most normal people.

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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Yesterday I decided I'd be healthy and go for a run/walk with Oni. Okay, so it's less a "be healthy" and more a "In a month I have two back-to-back workshops with Rachel Brice and Mardi Love. If I intend to survive and/or not have the workshops close with me laying on the floor crying and them toeing me every so often and telling me to STFU and deal, I need to severely up my cardio."

So on my good-intentioned adventure I turned my ankle (again) and ended up hobbling two miles home, and Oni got a tick that ended up partially embedded in his ear, requiring a $50 vet visit. FML. :P

He talked to the vet too much and she muzzled him. I can't really say I blame her--he does have angry eyebrows, a jaw that hinges at the back of his head, and a tendency to sound ferocious. After it came off, he seemed mortified (and thus was silent) for almost ten minutes.

Almost ten. Then it was back to normal . . . well, as normal as he can get.



A hop on the vet's scale showed that Oni now weighs in at sixty-eight pounds--almost twenty-five pounds up from when we got him at the shelter back in '04. This information prompted me to be insensitive--"Damn it, you giant fat hairball, stop stepping on me!"--and prompted zen_of_nihilism to tell terrible jokes: "He's not fat, he's husky! Ba-da-dum-ching!"



One week until Nekocon. I have way, way too much stuff to make--though the steampunky rings have come out fairly interesting thus far. :P So we all know what time it is . . . Bulleted list time!

To do:

Clean not-made-by-me merch from merch wheelie

Check bank balance, mail etsy orders, make byz and half Persian bracelets for local store

At least fifty hair forks: 5 purple/silver, 5 purple/orange, 5 blue/silver, 5 blue/orange, 3 bronze/geary, 4 silver/gold, 4 green/orange, 3 green/silver, 4 fall, 3 calico/geary, 3 gunmetal, 3 gold/geary, and whatever else I turn out.

Hair sticks. Lots. Like 100+ lots. This might require a

trip to Lowe's for a new dremel drill bit.

Finish flower & steampunky rings

Figure out how many supplies I really need to take--I'm tired of lugging an Oni-sized wheelie around.

Paperwork things

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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