cry havoc

I manage/design/dev an NFP's site for their annual festival. Last year the traffic was MASSIVE, and we nearly shut down the servers. I told the NFP we'd need to switch to a REAL hosting service, one with mirrored servers who could handle a million hits in the course of eight hours.

Well, they waffled and put it off, and were like, oh, yeah, but still. I ran into issues with the service in October, November, and December, and said, no, we really need to switch. They finally got around to dealing with it early January. After some deliberation, I suggested Dreamhost to them -- should've gone with my own isp, 1and1, even if it's more expensive & doesn't have NFP breaks, WHATEVER -- and it was hell doing the step-by-step process to switch hosting.

EXCEPT. The domain reg company WOULDN'T TRANSFER THE DOMAIN. Even when the domain owner paid $15 and faxed in info to update her email (whut!?), and talked to them ON THE PHONE and when we'd put the request through from Dreamhost, it'd get denied. WHUT!? We tried twice, and finally the NFP was all, oh, we can't deal with this right now, it'll be fine.

Hello, it's 830am on the day of the festival, DO YOU KNOW WHERE YOUR SITE IS.

It's down. Crashed. Gone. Unobtainable. Error establishing a database connection KTHXBAI.

( stab stab stab stabbity stab stab )

CAPLOCKS OF RAEG DOES NOT EVEN BEGIN TO DESCRIBE ME RIGHT NOW IDE

ETA: guy messages me on facebook.

Guy: Hi, I'm a manager at [largest server-farm hosting company in city]. Looks like you're having trouble with your hosting. Get in touch with me, we'd love to help out!

Me: NOT NOW JAMES WE'RE BUSY.

(no, actually, I was nicer than that but the general ALL CONNECTIONS BUSY PLEASE TRY AGAIN IN A FREAKING WEEK was probably pretty clear.)

From an interview with the author:

Q: I’ve studied Japanese for six years and been to Japan yet still may not have been able to execute a Japanese-inspired world as real and sensational as yours. What was the research involved in bringing the world of Stormdancer to life? Or did you drink some magical sake and try your luck?

A: I’ve had a few people say that, and it’s really flattering, but honestly I think most of my research was done via osmosis. I’ve always had an interest in Japanese cinema and manga, so I absorbed a lot of knowledge through that over the years. Wikipedia was really my go-to source for information, plus a few specialized sites dealing with the Tokugawa age.

The cool thing about writing a setting that’s inspired by Japan, but not actually Japan, is that you can take what you want from history and mythology and leave the rest. Take thunder tigers, for example – there’s nothing close to griffins in Japanese folklore. But without thunder tigers, there would be no Stormdancer.

My theory has been that if you want a place inspired by Japan (or anywhere) that's not actually Japan (or wherever), then you must avoid all non-English words that are not long-standing loan-words, for starters. At the simplest level. Otherwise, you're obviously writing about a certain place because the non-Englishness is going to act as a red flag, and pull people back into the concrete this-place that's the analogue to your wherever. This is why authors make up their own words & phrases in fantasy and science fiction, except in those cases where they specifically want you to be thinking France, Japan, Mozambique, or wherever.

But I'll let other folks do the talking, since that's hardly the only thing wrong with this story. Oh, Goodreads, why do you recommend stuff that just makes my blood boil?

http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/365384575

Discounting manga/anime, I can count on two fingers how many Asian-inspired fantasies I know of. Stormdancer gets the middle one.

( Have a small link roundup. )

And some useful posts, for you guys and also for me:
http://whatfreshhellisthis.tumblr.com/post/5261084308/whats-wrong-with-cultural-appropriation-i-mean-i
http://thesadnessofpencils.tumblr.com/post/3485124248/do-you-have-any-guidelines-on-how-a-white-not-english

I have an interview tomorrow. (Nothing big there, been on the search for a few weeks now, but that's another story involving many complaints about the "hot new title" in my industry and the number of managers who seem to be renaming all sorts of non-title jobs to the title, and wasting my time in interviews.) This position is not confused (as far as I can tell, at least) about the title/definition, but it's...

Well, it's a lunch interview.

Y'know, there's a reason I use my initials on my resume and my portfolio and my online site. Not just the basics of not letting anyone have the option of assuming that because I am Gender A or Gender B that I can (or can't) do the job. But also because I've done my share of interviews-in-bars, and interviews-at-lunch, and while I'm not 18 anymore (so I doubt it's necessarily the exact same dynamics), I can't forget those lessons. Lunches are what you do with friends, and dates. You are not on a date with your potential employer, and the casual situation makes it too easy for some guys (already in a position of power via gender, and then as potential employer) to make things even murkier.

Sign me up so very not.

On top of that, I did a search for restaurants around the office's location, because I want to know what else to suggest in case the primary suggestion is Italian. (Pasta, you're great, but you attack people who eat you, and same for you, Pho.) Oh, look, it's nothing but bar food. Independently owned, but you can't tell me that Joe's Bar, Logan's Bar, and something-or-other Bar & Grill, times ten, is going to be anything other than, well, bar food. I loathe bar food. Not because it's bad, but because it's boring. Life is too goddamn short to eat bar food.

(And life is way too goddamn short to eat what American bars believe passes for Irish food. You Irish on my flist, you know I like you, but the American bar concept of Irish food leaves a great deal to be desired.)

Or we could walk the two blocks to the nearest acceptable restaurant -- a Thai place. A quarter-mile away (about two blocks and hang a right, go a block). In 101F heat. For a fucking job interview.

And then I must ask: am I going to be expected to pay for my half? Why? I didn't ask to go on this fucking lunch date. I'd be just as happy not having to walk anywhere in 101F heat at 1pm, thank you, and I'd be just fine sitting in a nice, cool, air-conditioned conference room for an hour. And I wouldn't even have to pay for the benefit of being forced to stomach bar food.

Oh! And I could do it WITHOUT HAVING TO TALK OVER THE UBIQUITOUS TELEVISION IN THE GODDAMN BACKGROUND.

I mean, I don't mind going out to eat. But if I'm going to pay for it, then I want to eat something I enjoy eating, and on top of that, I want to eat it with someone I want to be with. That list of people is really fucking short, and it does not include -- nor will it ever include -- an employer, let alone a potential employer. I am not interested in a fucking social life as part of my job. And I sure as hell don't want to be fighting to keep my attention solid, while choking down bar food, and trying to hear someone (or yell at someone) over the goddamn background noise. Is this an interview, or the equivalent of an introvert's stress test? And I'm supposed to pay for this pleasure?

I really hope I get word in the morning from the second interview with that other company. The one that -- ironically enough -- has offices within walking distance of one of the town's best sushi restaurants. I'm addicted to their sushi. But I still wouldn't go there for an interview.

I've been sitting on this rant for awhile, but what-the-hell, I'm going to post. If you like to play the oppression olympics, don't read this. If you react favorably to the following statement: "immigrants have it the absolute worst in the US," then you probably won't want to read this, but maybe you should anyway. Just consider it walking the length of this post in my shoes, with citations.

Clover, Carol. Men, Women, and Chainsaws: Gender in the Modern Horror Film. Princeton University Press, Princeton, New Jersey, 1992.

One of Clover's chapters, Getting Even, discusses a concept she calls "urbanoia". She defines it loosely as the (horrorific/horror) archetype of the civilized city-dweller's feelings against/about the uncivilized (savage, primitive) country-dweller.

An enormous proportion of horror takes as its starting point the visit or move of (sub)urban people to the country. (The eternally popular haunted house story is typically set, if not in the country, then at the edge of town, and summer camps set in deep forests are a favorite setting of slasher films. ...) ...That situation, of course, rests squarely on what may be a universal archetype [in which the non-city] is a place where the rules of civilization do not obtain. People from the city are people like us. People from the country (as I shall hereafter refer to those people horror construes as the threatening rural Other) are people not like us.

She gives several examples of just how the rural Other is different: adult males with no immediate family connections, or extreme patriarchal rulership (with the occasional extreme matriarchal rulership), and abnormalities like "psychosexually deformed children", with "degenerate specimens [as] the material expression of family wrongness..."

She goes on to summarize the basic appearance of the rural Other, in terms of the standard elements of the genre convention:

...country people live beyond the reaches of social law. They do not observe the civilized rules of hygiene or personal habit. If city men are either clean-shaven or wear stylish beards... country men sport stubble. Likewise teeth; the country is a world beyond denistry. The typical country rapist is a toothless or rotten-toothed single man with a four-day growth. ... As with hygiene, so with manners. Country people snort when they breathe, snore when they sleep, talk with mouths full, drool when they eat. The hill people of The Hills Have Eyes do not even know how to use knives and forks. Country people, in short, are surly, dirty (their fingernails in particular are ragged and grimy), and slow ("This ain't the big city, you know, things take time," a local handyman drawls to our city heroine in The Nesting, and the city invaders of Pumpkinhead refer to the locals as "vegetables"). What is threatening about these little uncivilities is the larger uncivility of which they are surface symptoms. In horror, the man who does not take care of his teeth is obviously a man who can, and by the end of the movie will, plunder, rape, murder, beat his wife and children, kill within his kin, commit incest, and/or eat human flesh... No wonder, given their marginal humanity, country people are often nameless or known by cognomina only.

CP brought this book to my attention after I spent one dinner ranting -- and I don't mean the usual annoyed complaint-airing, I mean truly angry ranting... about a map. There are weeks where I should know better than to follow links, but I was curious, and that right there should've been a sign, but still: a map that assigns movies to states based on "one movie set there that seemed reasonably typical". (h/t: wordweaverlynn)

Some of them are relatively obvious: Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Raising Arizona. Some of them require you be aware the filmmakers would be State Cultural Treasures (if there were such a thing): Maryland has Jon Waters (Pink Flamingos), Rhode Island has the Farrelly Brothers (There's Something About Mary), New Jersey has Kevin Smith (Clerks). Others have region as distinctive aspects of the film, like The Wizard of Oz for Kansas, Dances with Wolves for South Dakota, and A River Runs Through It (in which Montana should've gotten top billing, if you ask me, for providing such backdrops). A few make no sense to me at all, like Glory for South Carolina, a film that's about the 54th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry. So a big battle takes place outside Charleston... it strikes me as odd that a film "reasonably typical" about South Carolina would star, well, yankees. But anyway.

I didn't expect that many surprises, and you probably won't see too many yourself, if you go look at the map. While you're there, take a look at the state that's down near the bottom-right, in orange. ( Go ahead, I'll wait, just making conversation over here while you go see. )


NOTE: if you are considering a comment in which: you say that you, personally, have Southern friends and they make jokes like this all the time, I won't reply because (a) this post is NOT ABOUT YOU and (b) you're blurring ingroup/outgroup humor and maybe you need to think about that more. If you raise a defense via attacking on the topics of slavery, slave-ownership, redneck-analogies, or how Others have it worse, I will DELETE your comment as oppression olympics and/or derailing.

[continued from part 1]

Ms Lindholm, you wrote: "The only person in my extended family who ever took drugs for his condition long term did not achieve any success until he weaned himself off them. Is that unique? If your brain is wired a certain way, is it truly an illness? Or is it ‘artistic temperment’ [sic]?"

( Continued from the original post, now broken in two. )

Dear Hollywood:

It's not just that you suck. You do that, plenty (and you always have, as has the vast majority of any entertainment anywhere at any time, if we're honest). It's that you spend so much freaking money on things that suck. The result isn't that I'm mad that you suck, I'm mad that you suck in ways that leave me out.

I don't mean in the sense of "I don't see myself on the screen". I sure see plenty of stereotypical representations of myself -- well, I used to, and then I turned 30 and any actress my age who couldn't continue to pass for twenty-two effectively dropped off the screen. (Not counting the few lucky ones who resurfaced in their mid-40s as token powerhouses.)

I mean in the sense that, well, I resent the hell out of what you produce.

It's glorious! It's ground-breaking! It's absolutely breathtaking and awe-inspiring! The CGI, the 3D, the blue screen is a thing of the past and we're into full surround-sound green-screen worlds-only-in-my-head now on the big screen. If Cocteau were alive today, I don't know whether he'd be having apoplexy at directors' inability to do any tricks in-camera these days, or whether he'd be kicking Cameron's ass for Director Most Likely To Spend 98% Of The Budget On Effects.

But I resent it, because what's a glorious visual is absolutely the most incredibly mediocre -- if not outright pathetic -- story. ( It's like, somewhere along the way, you guys forgot that your job is to tell *stories*, or you just got tired at how much that's, y'know, HARD WORK, and you figured if you just threw a whole bunch of *pretty pictures* at us, we wouldn't notice the big honking lack of STORY. )

I can forgive a lot (okay, up to a certain degree) when it comes to storylines between a man and a woman, because I know an author can only push the gender structures so far before the average reader would start to balk. That's just a fact of how we, as people, internalize the gender constructs of our society. (This goes for most societies, not just Western, so I don't think it's a massive over-generalization.) What I can't forgive is when an author is trying to tell me a character has a dominant personality, but picks the wrong way to illustrate this and ends up writing the character as a jerk, instead.

Recently I was reading a story by an author who usually has a decent sense of characterization; her plots tend to be straightforward, but she has a good handle on pacing. That combined with a deft hand for the psychology can make up for a lack of complex plotting, but then, I suppose not everyone reads for unexpected twists. Plus, this author usually does a pretty good job of exploring the psyche in power exchanges, whether these are the implicit kind or explicit as in BDSM. But a recent release by the author had me gritting my teeth. One tiny -- but oft-repeated -- detail underlined a subtle but crucial behavior that is not 'dominant', so much as a sign the character is a damn prick.

It's all in the nickname.

Main female character, we'll call, hmm, Elizabeth. A solid name, not that unusual. She introduces herself as Elizabeth, and in narrative and in dialogue, is referred to as Elizabeth through most of the story. (I believe there's even a snippet of dialogue where her manager calls her by her full name, as well.) In walks Mister Dominant, who's been wanting a chance to convince our dear Elizabeth that he could be The One.

And then he calls her Bethie.

No, she corrects him, it's Elizabeth.

He just smiles... and spends the entire rest of the story calling her Bethie.

( Dear reader, I wanted to punch him. )

It is, in a nutshell, privilege, and I can't stand it, nor can I respect anyone who plays that game. It's nothing more than belittling or demeaning another as the sole route to making oneself feel greater in contrast. That's not being a Dominant. That's just being a goddamn asshole.

Reading urban fantasy. What book? Doesn't matter, because this isn't the first time I've seen this or similar. (Aside: publication date is 2008.)

White witches weren't so bad, though maybe that was only because most of them [weren't very powerful]... Black witches gained power by killing or torturing things: from flies to human.

Yes, I do find those adjectives to be hugely offensive. A writer's stock in trade is the power of words, and thus one best equipped (and possibly expected) to ask: is this really the best word for my purposes? Especially when, as in this case, the answer is a resounding FUCK NO.

I mean, let's say you argue that white and black are 'just colors'. Why must it be those two? What about Orange Witches and Purple Witches: what's your first impression of which must be good and which must be bad? How about Chartreuse Witches and Puce Witches: no value judgment and probably even less of any meaning, thus demonstrating color in and of itself does not dictate a thing's morality.

The story even adds that on the whole, witches are untrustworthy regardless; the only reason White Witches aren't scary Black Witches is because the former type isn't all that powerful. Implication being that if a White Witch could be more powerful, s/he would immediately fall into Black Witch territory and go haring off on torture and death sprees, which takes the fail to even greater levels.

Plus, this good/bad division ultimately makes no sense in context; the good guys don't even like witches. They consider witches a necessary evil, and the operative word here is evil, though they may cooperate with certain witches when needed. What's the logic here, then? Good guys can't ally with (bad) witches, so we must minimize the evilness of the not-worse witches? Hmm, let's call them white — because white is automatically less-bad/better than black. Righto!

This is like saying, "well, he murdered, but y'know, it was just that one time — it's not like he murdered lots of people!" Even when we have need (eg for state's evidence), we don't dance around with euphemisms: a murderer is a murderer, be that once or many (serial) times. We don't label the former as less murderous; we label the latter as more murderous.

That's why I say it's not just racist, it's racism by dint of inertia. It's falling back on the status quo, same as defending the use on historical grounds (black magic and white magic). It's equally historical to use left-hand/right-hand, sinister/dexterous, dark/light, night/day, even clockwise/widdershins, to name a few. The black/white dichotomy is hardly the only cultural set of monikers to designate magical morality. Furthermore, I'd say it's ingenuous (if not outright disingenuous) to protest that 'history' justifies ignoring a term's modern meaning. 'Cunt' may have once been a compliment, but that was a thousand years ago — and if you call a woman that now, don't come crying to me after she punches you in the face.

TL;DR version: the predominant rationale for white=good and black=bad is based in racism.

It's not that hard to try something else. It just requires a few seconds' thought (although that does require a willingness to be arsed enough to be aware of the need). In this story, frex, if a witch gets power from controlling life, call that a Life Witch. If it's via torturing living creatures to death, call that one a Death Witch. There, see? Two seconds' thought and I came up with a descriptive term that actually tells me something — and doesn't require I tap into racist slurs to grasp the text's meaning.

Our language has millions of words. I refuse to believe that the inadequate and essentially bland color-adjectives are an author's only freaking choices to describe bad and more-bad, and I further resent being made to feel a silent accomplice in the text's racist undercurrents. If the combined gatekeepers+author never stopped to even realize what's being said in the text, that's idiocy. If they realized but didn't see it as worth addressing, that's reprehensible.

But if they didn't see reason to change it because they figured I'd never realize or care, I find that the most offensive of all.

---

note: if you comment anonymously and don't sign your post, I reserve the right to ignore your nitwittery. Have the decency to stand behind your words.

[note: there are some minor errors in here where I conflated things -- like mission statement for org, vs mission statement for awards, whoops -- and I need to get around to editing or at least adding clarifications. until then, however, you'll find all corrections and discussions of such in the comments.]

There's a massive kerfluffle ongoing about the Lamda Literary Foundation (LLF) and its recent alteration to its rules of inclusion for its annual awards (LLA, or Lammies). After contemplating, working through a few kneejerk reactions and taking a big step back, this is me eating some of my original reactions now that I've got some distance from the original messengers, and it seems to me that the one bearing fault for this to-do is, unfortunately, LLF -- but not for the reasons most people are going on about.

In fact, the original fault, I would say, is actually that of a few authors (and by extension, their publishers), but LLF compounded this fault and poured gasoline on the fires of wank by some badly-chosen words and failure to communicate effectively.

Before I get into that, I should clarify something. If you read the thread about this at Dear Author, it may seem to you that I do a lot of the complaining myself that I may seem to be condemning, here. I do have a chip on my shoulder about the LLF, which is only somewhat relevant here but does tend to color my reactions when anyone mentions the foundation. However, my disagreements with the wider LGBTIQ† community -- of which I am a part -- does not in any way validate a non-member's disagreements. My complaints do not constitute giving you, the non-member, a right to use me as example or justification for your conclusions -- ones which, I can pretty much guarantee, I won't agree with. Why? Your premise will be faulty: you are not a member. Simple as that.

Secondly, the vast majority of my own complaints are, and always have been, centered on being a marginalized minority within the LGbt (little letters on purpose) community. Where I, and mine, are not invisible, we are treated as though others wish we were invisible. The few places in literature you may find us, we are nearly always stereotyped, caricatured, completely mis-represented, if not outright dismissed. So, yeah, I gots some complaints about my community, but I have the same damn complaints about the greater mainstream society. I'm not picking sides; I think pretty much both suck equally, some days. Just so you know.

---

Now that's out of the way, let's talk about literature.

In an academic/traditional sense, a 'body of literature' -- lesbian, black, Chinese, gay, women's, native american, ethnic, etc, etc -- is made up of writing by members of that group. For instance, "lesbian literature" is, by definition, a work whose author is part of the lesbian community. A piece of "black literature," then, is a work whose author is African-American, African-European, African-whatever: the author is black.

Their Eyes Were Watching God is 'African-American literature', having been written by a black American woman (Zora Neale Hurston). In contrast, Gone with the Wind may have significant black characters, and has sold probably a bazillion more copies than Hurston's book ever has or will, but Mitchell's book is not 'black literature'. And if you were to try arguing that it is, you would probably get laughed out of any decently-educated gathering, and rightfully so. Same thing would happen if you tried to argue that "The Lone Ranger" is Native American literature. You wouldn't get much farther than your opening statement and then you wouldn't be able to hear yourself talk, because everyone would be on the floor in hysterics at your absolute stupidity, if not ready to throw you out for your unmitigated gall.

( This is where LLF went wrong. )

I will continue the rest tomorrow, most likely. Yes, there is more. That's how irritated I am.

( Also, free bonus text: the obligatory footnotes! )

continue to part II: random thoughts and follow-up commentary

( Yes, this is when I started laughing because the only other option was to throw things at the screen: and in sum... ) bloody freaking cripes, people. Get a clue already.