beccaelizabeth's blog

Today I slept very many hours of unsettled dreams.

Tue, 22 Dec 2009 17:12:36 GMT

I dreamed I was on the bus back from Norwich but fell asleep and woke up somewhere unfamiliar. I asked the driver where we were and he said just outside Dereham going towards it, be home soon. But the journey kept going and going and I didn't recognise anywhere and it weren't where I wanted to be. And when I asked again the driver got all cranky about it.

The driver was RTD.
My subconscious maybe have issues with where he been taking the story bus.

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Defying Gravity

Tue, 22 Dec 2009 03:01:50 GMT

BBC2 played the rest of the unaired eps of Defying Gravity, two at a time the last few days, so I've now seen the lot.
I've also deleted the lot of my recorder box.
I'd decided to stop watching, but the recorder box didn't get the memo. I should have stuck with it. It's very frustrating.

They have so many women in the cast it seems like a good start. And there's a spaceship. And pretty shiny stuff. And everyone's messed up in the head, so you'd think it wouldn't be sexist when the women are messed up.

When the men have issues it's because of violence, and usually because of following orders.
When the women have issues it's because of sex, and children, and about breaking rules.
It's glaring, huge, and annoying.

And they structured the whole story around the relationships and the baby thing and all that, but still the men come across as more work oriented and the women get a lot of relationship stuff, a bit of deceit, and a tiny footnote of an actual job.

And even when it started out looking like a female character would have a story that was actually unrelated to sex and children, with the pilot who was about religion and work, she spends most of her time doing her space classroom thing ie talking to invisible children, and then the religion thing gets tangled up with something nasty in her childhood that ends up being about... well, you can guess. And, nasty. And why?

Plus there's the thing where when bodies are physically messed up and bleeding, they're female bodies. I'm pretty sure it's disproportionate. And creepy.

Of the guys, arguably Donner's story is about sex and relationships. All of a tangle with his work stuff. And then there's Rollie and Ted and that partner dance thing. But there's still a bunch more men who have stories with no sex in them. Wass, Ajay, Arnel, Goss, they're all just doing jobs. I can't name a female character who just does a job.

Also there seemed to be some imminent disability fail. I'm not sure, it was a thread that wasn't tied in. But comments from the makers suggest things were going to get more of a tangle. And the potential mess with... is there a word for making a mess with intersex or nonbinary gender? I don't know.

So it was glossy, shiny, in space, multi stranded storytelling, some attempt at actual physics as well as the shiny whatevers, multi ethnic, gender balanced... and still a frustrating mess.

I think I want to go back to reading about space marines and space merchants and space ship captains all written by and about women. Getting things done. I like stories where the point is getting things done.

my first rejection letter

Mon, 21 Dec 2009 09:16:57 GMT

Got my script back from the BBC today. They do not want.
Which is a bit of a relief, actually. I thought the thing had a problem with being a bit shit. It was just also the best I could manage in 2009. Well, I haven't written anything since, so, clearly. I'll have to start again next holiday.

The script went in October 7th ish, the card arrived by October 23rd to say they had the script, and the letter that says they read ten pages and didn't like it was dated December 14th.

Also the envelope looked like it had been through the wars, was held together with good wishes by the time it got to me, and the metal thingies holding the script together had gone all vicious and hooked, so methinks packing and that needs rethinking.

... yes the important part is sending a script that is not in fact shit, but it can't help if it attacks people and falls apart on the way back.

So. Now I need a place to file rejection letters. :-)

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hates it when I forget why I'm not watching something

Fri, 18 Dec 2009 19:10:45 GMT

Constantine was on TV so I figured I could pretend it was called something else and was just a random derivative horror film. And I watch plenty of those. So. Recorded, I watch.

Slight problem. Magic crazy people.

See in the comics Constantine was a cocky bastard who screwed up and couldn't face the consequences, so he went mad. And it went the worse for him, not because treatment in general is bad, but because they thought he'd killed a child, and he agreed with them, whatever it was he'd set out to do, she'd ended up dead. So, he had magic, and he went mad, and it was a bit hell on earth, and then he got over it and was a cocky bastard again.

In the film, people who have hallucinations are secretly psychics who can see real true demony things, and treatment just makes it worse because it's real true demons and anyway of course hallucinations are treated with electroshock and its the treatment that messes brains up and did I mention, secretly magic?

There is a *very large and important difference*.

So this film is a load of shit even pretending it's its own thing.

Also, you know the kind of horror film that's secretly an excuse to bully women? Possibly also queer and gender non conforming people? Not quite every horror film ever, but, pretty close. I'm really sick of those.

I miss Buffy the Vampire Slayer. It wasn't perfect, but it seems to still stand alone.

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Jim Butcher, Princeps Fury

Fri, 18 Dec 2009 03:33:17 GMT

Was this an involving book? Well it's past three in the morning, and here I am just finishing it, so I guess it was.

Was it as involving as previous books in the series?

Hmmm.

I think all my reservations about this book come from its place within the series. It's the almost-last book. It's the darkest before the dawn time. So things happen for those structural reasons, and it don't grab me.

Specifically, (skip)it felt like everything kept rolling but nothing really changed. No character faced new and character defining choices, just made solid what they'd already chosen. Nobody we ever got to know changed sides. Nobody changed directions. It was all consequences, all dominos falling. Enemies stayed enemies, or died. Allies became closer allies, or died. It was consolidation, not change.

And the structure again is responsible for the disatisfying lack of progress for Octavian. He's sidelined, as far as Alera is concerned, while some of the other characters deal with home. He gets more allies, and he crunches into the hard limit on the let's be friends policy. He kind of sort of wins, but he doesn't do so by discovering new resources, becoming a leader to new people, growing into more of himself. He's afloat and buffeted, and the part where he spends days being sick while the others battle a storm feels like the book in capsule. And I know why, because this is where we build up tension for the grand finale. His rise is not unstopable. We know the title of the last book, but we don't know for sure it's him it will apply to. We will be right there worrying about him now, because it's all to play for.

But... but... but. I was left with a feeling of made-of-middle, of something that is necessary to get where we're going without being ... well, particularly interesting in itself.

Maybe I'm just grumpy with what seems to be turning into a cold, but it just felt like one big indrawn breath, and I want to know what the shout will be.

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snow! and possibly fire! ... or not, silent night again...

Fri, 18 Dec 2009 00:51:05 GMT

So I was reading and then someone else's fire alarm went off.
I can't be sure that's what it was, but it sounded like one of the other divided up bits of our same building had the alarm going.
But since it wasn't my bit of the building it wasn't appropriate to run away, which turns out to be good because the snow I was hiding from is definitely here. White stuff. all over the place outside.

So I packed my backpack with an emergency change of clothes, on the theory that I don't got to use it for college for a whole bunch of time, but might have to run away today.

I didn't get the emergency blankets I thought of last time we had to stand around outside in the cold dark. Those are still a good idea.

I realised that if there was any smoke to smell I'm probably not in good state to smell it, since my shirt has a great big goo patch of vaporub and I barely could smell that.

Winter adds layers of awkward to any emergency.

Not that there's an emergency this time, I think. Everywhere gone quiet again. Good.

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happy dance, happy dance

Thu, 17 Dec 2009 13:20:41 GMT

My student finance letter arrived! :-D
... this year has been a teensy slow, and not much of it me.
They will pay for my studying still this year :-)
(This was not guaranteed because I'm studying real slow because disability means not turning up every day)

Plus my funding for my employee got all sorted out for a whole year more :-)

And the cleaner is here and doing the weekly cleaning magic
(pause to keep fingers in ears and rock, cause the vacuum cleaner makes a BIG NOISE and makes me all *hides*)
and the cleaner will be here next week and the week after too :-) :-)
... I feel a bit guilty employing someone on christmas eve and new years eve, but she says that's how it works, no worries, so, okay, I can have clean for the holidays :-)

I am still waiting on the Tesco shopping but hopefully that will be a good thing too.

Also today I ran the dishwasher and filled the laundry and just now started the laundry. Am cleaning my cardigans. I hope the rainbow stripe stays bright. It's rainbow on black so it's difficult to know what it would be safe to wash it with.
... though everything I own just goes in the wash together unless I remember something made particularly interesting dye patterns, so *shrugs*

I remembered to check the dates on the stuff in the fridge before the cleaner left.
... I had of course forgotten to actually eat things before they went past date, but, now they're cleaned out anyway.

All this on a day set aside for hibernation.

ETA: Tesco food did arrived on time
and I found the other button I was looking for :-)
... technically the cleaner found it and left it on the worktop where I could see it, but then I found it, so that works out.

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Jim Butcher, Captain's Fury

Wed, 16 Dec 2009 21:19:15 GMT

It's all very well having titles with a unified theme, but every book has 'Fury' in it and there's another C and I tend to get muddled. But I checked. This one is where Tavi is a Captain at the start, so, Captain's it is.

I like this series. Roman style military plus a style of magic which is versatile within themes, so innovative uses combine with old reliables. You know enough of what they can do to be excited when a new application turns up. Plus of course plain old engineering still works.

The way the main character levels up in every book reminds me of Sharpe, or the Vorkosigan saga, and as I understand it is a standard feature of military series. It's great, because you're rooting for him by now, but you still can't see how he'll survive getting there from here. It's a tense ride even when you've already got the next book in the series in your hand.

The only nagging problem in this particular book was persistent use of the word 'insane', in a sloppy and never defined way. There's a female killer, and she's 'insane'. You can tell, on account of the look in her eyes and the thing where she kills people a lot. :eyeroll: (skip)She's eventually defeated by Our Hero telling her her daddy never loved her.
... no, I'm not kidding. That was it. He told her he never loved her and he never would and she got real angry and forgot to be the deadliest sword that ever lived.
Tavi made a wild guess that it would be her ouch spot, primarily because that's his issue, so it weaves in with the themes... but it still twinges the sexism thing some. Not badly though.
There's a lot of female characters, and while some are motivated by Their Man, some are merely using a man for camouflate, or simply supported by him. Strong characters in lots of different ways. So I think it's doing fine at feminism... though come to think I'd need to double check for Bechdel. There's a memorable two woman conversation but it might be about the man they both know. Hmmm.
The ablism inherent in just using the label 'insane' and figuring That Explains It though is... *sigh*
Mentally ill people are more likely to be victims of violence than neurotypical people. Does that get in the books? Not so much.
But insane-killer almost seems like it goes without saying.
ick.

That said, I'll shrug it off and read the next book in the series. I'm looking forward to the next book. Any fail twinges don't bother me enough not to enjoy the books. So I guess that works out.

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No more new coat

Wed, 16 Dec 2009 18:40:43 GMT

Today sucks.

I have cough, I have sore throat, I feel uck, but I get up and go out anyway because coat is done at the cleaners and mum said she'd put the buttons back on. So I take the coat to mum.

She take one look at the coat and makes a bad face and spends the next hour, maybe two hours, going on at me in detail about how it is a Bad Coat and Does Not Fit and Makes You Look Like A Bag Lady and, and this is new and not fun at all, "Why don't you just wear an aerial on your head and hang a sign saying mental patient?"

Mum makes my clothes all about my diagnosis? Thanks a sodding lot.

So waaaaay sooner than an hour in I decided it was way more than £10 of aggravation and said have the coat, take the coat back, fine, you said all these ways it no fit, take it. But mum kept telling me. Which involved counting the ways and naming the parts and really, I'd stopped arguing, why was it still a great big argue!

And then she got out the books, the What Not To Wear book, and it was all Trinny and Suzanna this and Gok Wan that and according to this stupid book I should be accentuating my femininity. They what? I'm a 32J, I'm already a walking Carry On joke! There's precisely two bras that fit me! Anywhere! And it's a knock on problem to get these knockers into any clothes whatsoever. I find a coat that can close over the top of them, I think it fits just fine! What else is the point anyway?

My criteria for a coat are: Warm, dry, Not Black Or Fog Colored.
I found a nice thick 80% wool long red coat that was warmer and drier than what I had on, which is the warmest thing I own. I figured, big win!

Mum says, Bag Lady, Mental Patient, makes you look like a square red penguin with a dowager's hump (WTF???)

Mum brought some of her coat to show me what I should wear. Her coats stupid! Pockets in the wrong place, can't put your hands in them, couldn't put anything in them with tits on top. Don't cover your arse. Who wants a cold arse? There's places the wind should blow, and those places are Not There. Fabric half the thickness and less than half the quality. Mum argued it wasn't half the thickness, I was just pinching the lapel, she knows how coats are made. So we did random pinch tests all over both coats. Only thing she agree with me on today, finally agreed coat I have is double the thickness of coat she show me. Her coat have a hood, a stupid big windcatcher, couldn't pull it tight, with crackly lining, getting in the way sounding bad when I move. Mum seems to think 'sounds bad' is another symptom thing. Who wants crackly clothing? She says my coats should have hoods to draw the eye up. I don't like hoods, have hats. She says doesn't matter, draws the eye. I say, what's the point then? If you like, you can draw a hood on. Mum thought that was a weird thing to say. But if it's only the look of it that's a thing, make a thing that looks. Also mum's suggested coat has weird pointless straps with big buttons that don't undo. I'm all for straps, and I can see how big buttons can be shiny, but the point of straps is they make things tight, not that they make a line above your arse and make you look thinner. I don't want to look thinner! I want to be warm and dry and visible!

Mum said she was disappointed because I'd told her it was a dufflecoat and it wasn't. Mum made up dufflecoat in her head cause I'm pretty sure I wouldn't call it that on account of it not being a one of them.

It was long (mum said three quarter length, but if it's a three quarter length coat then I'm a three quarter length human). It was warm. It had a stand up collar, kind of like Captain John's coat, black on red. It was snug on my neck, that collar, no cold gap down the front. It had pockets where my hands go in. It was proper coat shaped coat.

Mum says I should wear v necks and scarves to keep warm with. What's the point of that? Scarves get soaked and don't keep warm half as good as actual coat!

I'm fed up of what mum says. So mum has the coat now, coat all gone, no buttons on it neither cause I couldn't find the other one that came off it.

Mum says she loves me enough to tell me when I look bad. I know.

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Today worked! Yaay!

Tue, 15 Dec 2009 14:52:49 GMT

This morning I was grumpy and had a sore throat and didn't want to go anywhere
but had already put off jobs for a day and needed to. Grump.

So I took my new red coat to the dry cleaners, where they will clean it by 3pm tomorrow and I must remember to go and get it. Also I hope I put the receipts somewhere useful. ANYway. They had to take the buttons off because it said so on a label inside. That's okay, I have to move them anyway. So I went to the shop that sells buttons and many other things and tried getting some new shiny metal buttons. They sold me some that will probably work and said to keep the receipt and they'll refund if they don't work. I think if they don't work I'll probably just keep them for later, because you can never have too many buttons, but that's a very nice shop that is.

I went to Dereham Computer Services and they reckon they can fix my laptop, but they're not taking any more computers until January 2nd, because of having many and having a holiday. That's okay, I can wait. But if they can fix it, who have been reliable thus far, I don't have to send it back to the same place as screwed it up. Yaay!

I did the rounds of the charity shops and found a celtic knotwork brooch (in a very mucky wrapper which I have now thrown away) and a very swish purple shiny jacket which turned out to have matching trousers. I may find the trousers a bit tight, but I'd have paid that much for the jacket, and that's plenty big. Happy!

I bought a small loaf of bread at a bakery, because the supermarket gets ever more overloading this close to christmas. I should remember to book my Tesco shopping. I hope they don't get all booked up.

Then I went to the shop just behind my flats and found a cardigan with BIG SHINY BUTTONS, three different button shapes, very shiny. It said £12 and I was :-/ but then I turned the label over and it said £8 :-) So now I have a cardigan plus three big buttons.
... the way I wear cardigans the buttons may find another home, so I'm pricing them seperate. Very good bargain that way.

Now I am home. I have bread. I can have soup with bread in it.

And best yet I got an email to say an admin thing that was all a tangle has been sorted out for a whole year, and I was only expecting 6 months that just happened, so that's like a bonus year. Excellent!

There will probably be snow on Thursday and Friday, the weather warnings said so. They say so on my Dreamwidth page now cause I got the feed on there. Computers are cool.

Hopefully I will pick up my coat on Wednesday and mum will sew the buttons on (she already said she would, I'm not just assuming) and I will be warm even if there's snow.

:-)

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I unpost

Mon, 14 Dec 2009 21:38:42 GMT

I know it's wanky to say a thing and then hide it, but, I have decided I want no more to do with Children of Earth. It makes me all wound up and unhappy, so logically I should just leave it be.

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Mon, 14 Dec 2009 17:43:22 GMT

I watched a documentary based on the book 'Guns, Germs and Steel'

I now have this urge to apologise on behalf of my entire continent. Colonising: not a nice idea.

And as for what smallpox did... *shudders*

Also the bit at the end made me decide to go send all my charity money for the year to fixing malaria. Which is easier said than done. There's a mosquito nets gift on the Oxfam gift site, but if I'm spending it all at once I could get the essential medicines set. Usually I just spend on clean water. Water also important.
They're supposed to be gift cards to give out, but the message that sends seems complicated, so no.
There's other charities. I could do more research and find one that does something particular. But Oxfam has the advantage I can take my charity coin stash, walk in the door, and pour it in the collection box, though I don't know if I can get Unwrapped gifts that way.

Sometimes I watch a documentary and I get angry I didn't know that stuff before. Seems like important stuff.

Between this and the one about 'how many people can we fit on the planet' (answer: depends, how do you want to live?) I've been getting that feeling.

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rambly morning thought

Mon, 14 Dec 2009 13:29:18 GMT

I was reading blogs about people of color, and blogs about people with disabilities, and thinking about words for white or neurotypical or all them other groups. You know, the ones that aren't 'minorities' but aren't, if you look at the numbers, an actual majority. They're the dominant cultural group, right? So with people of color it's abreviated to poc and people with disabilities to pwd, so I guess, dcg. But that's not exactly sayable. And it can't be doms, because that's a good word already. Maybe ants?

... ants is useful. Because the thing with all this stuff that gets 'minorities' down is, any particular bit of it is usually pretty small. You can get great big lumps of racism or whichever, but most times most days there's just little little little things all in a row. And mostly people are all 'lighten up! is only a little thing!' But if you have ants in your house, then yeah they're little, but ants! Everywhere! Little little little and many and following the same way in and around and not going away!

So, you know, annoying. Persistently. Even if they're tiny.

And also kind of icky.

But that's where there's a problem, because people, even annoying ones, are not icky bugs, even ones with complex social whatsits and a nice side. People are people. Hence the 'p' at the start of the other abbreviations.

People with privilege is kind of every people depending which way around you look at it.

So, wow, look, there's not a word for one big monolithic group of annoying, because people don't work like that.

... except when we're talking systemic whatsits, when, er, kinda do?

So today has not resulted in useful new thoughts. Eh. Nothing new there.

... my modernism essay still hasn't started. I should probably think more thoughts about that. Except 'more' implies 'some' and, really, not. *sigh*

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Tanya Huff, Valor's Trial

Mon, 14 Dec 2009 00:16:33 GMT

Space Marines again :-)
Women in space with guns, being competent and professional, and getting things done. Fun!
Even more sorts of aliens this time. And a prison break. And Grand Galactic Consequences.

The only part I had a problem with was the Consequences.
(skip)
When the Confederation setup was explained, with the really long war and the very busy universe full of many many many species with convergent yet conflicting biological imperatives, I thought that fully explained the persistence of the conflict. They fight, they keep fighting. Too many people, not enough in common, not enough real estate cause space is big but really populous.
Therefore the grand reveal that Secretly the Goo Made Them Do It was less than convincing. I mean, since when does it take secret puppetmasters to start a fight? I'd be more convinced if the puppetmasters were only ending one.

The characters were vivid and interesting and the story kept charging along and both playing fair with the clues and having a bunch of surprises. It's a good read.

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436 pages?

Sat, 12 Dec 2009 23:15:20 GMT

I read some people talking about it, I poked the internet, I found that report with save ianto plastered all over it.

I'm not going to bother reading it. I started with the references. Except there aren't any. Just a list of websites, a plain text list that isn't even made of links, to the .com level of a website, not individual pages. No quote goes to an individual page. No links anywhere. *boggles*
... no, wait, there's some links... off usernames... to a .com level.
and then there's screencaps. with chunks deleted out of them.
There's screencaps where links would be massively more useful... like, say, of videos. Why??

How could someone who writes their name with a B.Ed (Hons) write such poorly referenced scruffy tat? livejournal.com is a publisher, not an author. It's like I took my entire bookshelf and attributed every quote to Routledge. *Shudders*

Harvard referencing! Ask any librarian! There are methodical accepted easily read ways of referencing websites. Every essay I've written for years uses them, and the little leaflet out of our college library even uses Torchwood for its examples. There are other accepted styles, but this wasn't using any of them. Which makes it absolutely and completely useless. If it's meant to be a source of information.

If it's meant to be a doorstop I can see how that would work.

Oh FFS - I tried some basic google use to get a source for one quote.
on page 134 all the 436doc says is televisionary.com
but it turns out the quote is in a comment thread

Quote starts "Even the fantastic performances of Gareth David Lloyd, John Barrowman and Peter Capaldi couldn't save this story."
google leads me to
http://www.televisionaryblog.com/2009/07/pillar-of-fire-televisionary-talks-to.html
find then gets me to lins // 7/25/2009
yes, a 4 letter commenter, no link to an email, right above an anonymouse, in what seems to be an unmoderated comments thread.
attributing the quote to televisionary is very much like leaving a comment on the BBC or Guardian and attributing it to those old media giants.
... hang on, BBC and Guardian articles were in the references list. They wouldn't, would they?

... well searching within the thing only has the word guardian in that list of websites that passes for a reference list. so it will be difficult to check.

next quote down
135, attributed to afterelton.com, starts "And once again RTD misses the mark."
google and find it: http://www.afterelton.com/node/28025 Submitted by argess (30 points) (9 posts)on Tue, 2009-08-25 10:22.
another commenter in a comment thread, this time with a stable username and other posts on the site. But again, calling that a quote from afterelton.com massively misses the point.
... I almost typed misrepresents...

135, says afterelton.com, starts "Nevertheless, Julie Gardner has gone so far as to say that Gwen would never be taken out of the series, since she is the 'real person perspective' or something along those lines."
google and find it: http://www.afterelton.com/TV/2009/7/buffy-versus-torchwood?page=2,3
Interesting Point
Submitted by Patrick (200 points) (43 posts)on Tue, 2009-07-28 20:10.

another comment thread. oh very dear.

I've only checked 3 quotes from pages 134-135, but they've all been in comment threads, not even top level posts.
However google can find them, so it would be possible to reconstruct a proper set of references for this thing... *shudders at the amount of work*

... no, have tried some more, some quotes are invisible to google.

others say they're on livejournal but turn up in the comments on afterelton.com

I've continued the quote hunt in the comments on dreamwidth
it's... interesting

... and really winding up the academic in me...

ETA: Right then. It is nearly 0300. I have been googling quotes for some time now. I have looked at every quote the PDF search function could find that was attributed to livejournal.com without a username. Past a certain point they stopped being findable at all... unless they were in fact afterelton.com quotes. Every quote I looked up was from a comment thread, not a top post... that I can remember right now. Check out the dreamwidth comments where I show my working. After 'I give up' I did not in fact give up but stopped typing up quotes before googling and failing to find them. I went to the very last page.

The blasted thing is a right mess of misattribution, bad cut n pasting, quotes from several sources squished together, repeated quotes from a single source scattered liberally without names attached... basically every way I could lose points for proper quoting they've done it. And probably more. I only looked up the unattributed LJ stuff.

I'm going to bed.

No, I'm going to have juice and chocolate and unwind and go to bed.

very poor quoting.

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why people are sure they aren't ignorant

Sat, 12 Dec 2009 22:36:18 GMT

I've been reading on the Guardian and the authors blog something about man made climate change and how, despite the science being agreed on by basically everyone studying it, a whole lot of people not studying it are sure they know better. Lots of people say there's no climate change and if you read comment threads a lot of them are very angry about it, and keep on saying it louder even if you happen to have data that says otherwise.

The angry bit is interesting. and the shoot the messenger approach. someone says there is a problem that needs fixing, the people they're talking to don't want to do that thing so there of course isn't a problem, they get mad at people for telling them what to do.

Kind of like when I set the fire alarm off and later there was in fact a fire.

Or, kind of like when people point out racism or inaccessibility or sexism or any them other problems. The people being told get all angry because clearly there wasn't any problem before these other people came along and started making this noise. :eyeroll:

I think mostly people are pretty good at the things they need to do in their existing lives. If they're not, they'd go do something else. (I'm leaving out the subtleties and the people who don't know how bad at things they are.) So they're rolling along in their lives reckoning they know what to do and how to do it, because look, life! Happening in an ongoing way!

And then along comes someone and goes

UR DOIN IT WRONG

... nobody likes that bit.

And then the thing kicks in where things that work short term and in a limited way for the individual concerned are making problems long term or outside of that corner or for other people. And the people who already see the problem are all jumping and waving and wondering why people can't see the crash? And then they get yelled at for making a fuss.

The thing is, this works pretty well, for those individuals, in the short term, in their corner. People don't have to notice they're ignorant because things mostly keep working.

And even when they don't... my dad was quite sure that alcohol was the solution to all problems, even the problem where he was getting sick from the alcohol. Some patterns have quite a powerful resistance to being changed.

I reckon though that this explains also my willingness to be told all the ways I'm doing it wrong. I'm quite ready to accept that the planet is being spoiled and there's racism and sexism and ablism and what all else. This is because my life, on the whole, small scale, limited ways, for this individual, doesn't really work very well. Seeing that, I can see bad patterns when they're pointed out to me.

I think one problem is that even if all the people in the world who think their lives aren't so much going well get together, the people with the power are in the other group. Sort of by definition. Powerful people are pretty much thinking their way of doing things works, because look, power!

In opposition to this is only the force of reason, persuasion, and logic.

... we're doomed.

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Tanya Huff, The Heart of Valor

Sat, 12 Dec 2009 21:43:02 GMT

I like this one. Not only a 'women with guns in space' story, which is of late my favourite sort, but a 'competent women' story. Win!

It had a whole lot of fighting without making it seem boring. Instead of just boom boom boom it makes combat a series of logic puzzles. Plus explosions. So your brain is there for the interesting puzzles, which are played fairly so you can try and figure but not easy so you aren't ahead of the characters, and you know the characters and are in the pov of someone who cares professionally but intensely if they live, so that keeps you involved emotionally, and also, KABOOM! ... I like kabooms. So now I want to watch it with FX and surround sound.

... re-reading that, the 'interesting fights' thing seems a pretty basic necessity of the genre, but, you know, I've read some that really didn't have the hang of it.

I like the alien races and the way the alien thought patterns interlock to make problems and solutions. Okay, so there's one that's all about eating and one that's all about sex, which doesn't seem very much like a fully realised alien race, but the stories add twists and shades, and you can grasp the basics right quick.

I like how it turns out to be a mystery and it is giving you clues and plays through fair but isn't obvious until it happens.

I like this book. A lot.

And the best bit is I have the next one right here already :-)
... oh, unless I want to ration it. Once I read it I'm all caught up. Quandry.

I want to write good stories like this one, except I don't know the pieces well enough. I want to RPG scenarios like this, but I think I'd screw up and die a lot. If I want to do military type stuff I need a whole lot of studying first.

... well, duh.

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brain error, reboot

Sat, 12 Dec 2009 13:28:33 GMT

my brain has gone wonky today. I keep bouncing between 'forgot something' and 'deja vu'. I'm not sure I am forgetting anything, but if I am I'm forgetting it a lot. :eyeroll: Also lately I think my memory for faces is full and using too few points of comparison. Many false-recognition errors.

... either that or the 4th Doctor really was wandering around Norwich, and it's probably better for the safety of the universe if I just figure no.

... I'm wearing my TARDIS key jic anyway...

today's dreams involved a three way war between spacefaring humans with ultratech and the supernatural beings they'd stopped believing in when they left them behind on Earth, the vampires and the demons.

Vampires were dead dudes that drink blood. They were very up themselves and fanboyish about their lineage and all that. They'd decided that the maximum density of vampires that could be supported by a farmed human population was 10%, and here in space humans had conveniently farmed themselves.

But demons had also come up from Earth, and since a demon inhabited human could not become a vampire, and a vampire that tried to feed on one would get a mouthful of demon and have all kinds of bad consequences, they were fighting each other.

Demons were not seperate beings, they had to possess humans. And they had to have permission. But not informed consent, just permission. They would do anything you asked, in a very literal sense, with no take backs. And the price was always more than you were willing to give, even if you thought you'd thought it through. With the permission and all they were the most ethical version of demons I can think of, but their eventual goal was total erosion of free will. By giving you all these shiny things they'd persuaded you you couldn't get for yourself they got you to hand yourself over to them completely, and then to work on similar conversion for others. Probably most like the Denarius entities from the Jim Butcher novels I cannot currently remember the main character name... aha! Dresden files. See? Forgetting things. Had to hunt that off a shelf.

... no demon is eating my brain, it just feels that way sometimes.

Demons wanted to get rid of vampires because demons could not possess vampires. And farmed humans would be no fun at all. But they wanted to get out into space and eat all these ultratech humans fast because technology was giving out all the things the demons had traditionally used as bait. Humans were escaping them not just with distance but with imagination and engineering. Sufficiently advanced science really pisses off those who use magic.

... I'm tempted to make a union joke but, er, can't make it funny.

So my character in the dream was trying not to get ate by any side, knew more about the vampires and the demons and the old magic than any spacer did, and was in fact centuries old. Had either a whole lot of willpower and a very frustrated demon granting just that one wish, or was the effect of a wish her boyfriend made.

Dream also involved shagging Ethan Rayne. For win.

Except Ethan the chaos worshipper getting in a tangle with will eaters would need fixing. He wouldn't want to be handing over bits of himself, he'd have just been persuaded he could be himself bigger with a bit of a power boost.

I think that has all the ingredients of a story there. I'd have to figure out if the ultratech spacers were purely good guys or some kind of a problem themselves. Three way fights have plenty of room for twisty politics. And if vampires have problems with being way retro then that's got a bit of the time tourist thing to it, seeing the future with a perspective that can explain the unusuals on account of noticing them.

What it's saying politically ... the vampires are easy, nobs exploiting the workers, as usual. The demons seem to be handing all the power to individuals but they're really exploiting their imagination until they've sucked them dry and get to use all the fruits themselves. So what's the spacers problem? Or have they figured out utopia?

I'd need more than the two characters. Vampires as played by Londo Mollari? Hrm. Now I'm wondering which characters to pull in for each team. File the serial numbers off later. Play it like xover now. Which vampires really need to meet the future like that? Who would have great fun with a wish demon? Which spaceship riding folks would know just what to do with those sorts?

... brain full of bunny.

... I should really get around to writing proper story again soon.

... right after I figure out what to write for modernism. January 4th isn't that far away.

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Things I have learned today

Fri, 11 Dec 2009 22:57:32 GMT

'Assault' as a legal term does not mean hitting people. Hitting people is 'battery'. 'Assault' means doing something to make people afraid they're going to be hit. Like yelling at them.

I looked it up in several places but since that's so different than I expected I'm not sure I got it right.

http://www.cps.gov.uk/legal/l_to_o/offences_against_the_person/index.html#P92_3540
An assault is committed when a person intentionally or recklessly causes another to apprehend the immediate infliction of unlawful force.

I looked it up because I read a thread where someone got hit by police and charged with assault. He reckoned he never because he never hit them. But if assault means Being Scary At Someone then ... well, practically anything can get included. Yesno? That's a weird idea.

... If I want to write a future dystopia I don't have to make stuff up, I just have to line things up a particular way.

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Today: shopping and stuff

Fri, 11 Dec 2009 20:09:22 GMT

Today was day out with employee day, for goign to new places I would not go on my own. First we tried John Lewis, which turns out to think that 'reduced to clear' means £180 for a coat, and the regular price of £300 is perfectly reasonable. I think we stayed there about ten minutes before deciding it was Not For Us.

£300? For a coat? Maybe if it was a James Bond coat that transformed into a glider or something.

So then we went charity shop hunting in Anglia Square.
Turns out there's a reason we didn't go to Anglia Square before.
The car park let us in for £2 for the afternoon, but then most of it was closed, and it seemed to think lightbulbs were optional. I would not call it a car park. Also I understand why they take the money on the way in, not out.
There were a whole bunch of charity shops in a small area.
I got two pairs of trousers and a big red coat :-)

And then when we got back to the car my employee got a phone call that someone had died, so it was not a good day any more :-(

She drove back and dropped me outside the library. I went in and pretended to be a writers group for an hour or so. They've taken the posters down and I don't think anyone ever heard of us so that didn't work at all.

Then I walked home. My new coat needs cleaned but it's very warm.

... it is possible I look silly in big red coat, but I spent all of £20 today and got garments I've been looking for for months, so call it a win.

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BFA Companion Chronicles: Ringpullworld

Thu, 10 Dec 2009 21:30:57 GMT

Turlough :-)

I been saving this one up because once I've listened to it I've listened to all his stories again.

It started out funny and silly and very meta.
By the end I was sort of... you know when you're eating popcorn and not looking, and suddenly your hand comes back empty? And you probably don't munch on your fingers but you poke the empty bag a bit and possibly turn it upside down and shake?
Yeah. That.

Ending? Where story go?

spoiler explanation:
I thought everything from the mention of prolepsis on needed some kind of payoff, something to say that letting a storyteller do your thinking for you isn't a grand idea, and reality isn't going to match the story, and you can never really tell what someone else will say, let alone think, just by making up a story about them. But instead it goes to flashforward and goes back to Turlough in the cell and... stops. Stops? Did I mess up the download? No, there's the end credits... is there another disc?
So it presents three possible endings, and since two of them involve Turlough and possibly the Doctor dying we know those don't happen, so are we meant to conclude the third is what ended up happening? Except, no, because, making up the story and living it do not match.

so the ending did not satisfy, and after that it sort of retroactively unravelled, so instead of feeling like a story it felt like an immature plot bunny with good voices.

:-(

I am not sure I like the Companion Chronicle format. I like the full adventures much better. But I wasn't impressed with the story in this one, however it was told.

The telling seemed to be the point though.

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Big Finish Audio 82: The Settling

Thu, 10 Dec 2009 18:24:56 GMT

I just listened to the other half of The Settling, with 7 and Ace and Hex. And Oliver Cromwell. It's in a bit of history I hadn't heard of before, but the web page goes as far as to cite sources, an approach to historical fiction I rather like. The time traveling alien bit is new though.

This one deals with the idea that you can't change history. It doesn't just chuck in a sentence or have the Doctor rabbit on about it, it throws the three of them at history and watches the bounce. It's all about good intentions.

... yeah, we know how that goes.

I like it really a lot. Proper follow through on the setup. Proper use of history, rather than just being a set of jokes. Tells a story you couldn't do in an aliens or present day setting. Let alone the far future.

(You can't change history set in the future? Who would do a thing like that? :eyeroll: )

(sorry, I can't let that alone)

Everyone is in character (probably, I can't figure Cromwell without doing a lot more studying and some guesswork, though he's perfectly plausible here). And it fills out and adds details to character. This isn't a little run around corridors adventure, this is a clash of at least 4 different agendas, all played through. Proper storytelling.

Granted it's deeply depressing, but with the bit of history it is set in, that's appropriate.

Good story. I likes. I'll listen it again later.

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ethics and science and writing

Thu, 10 Dec 2009 13:27:42 GMT

something that has been niggling at me about science fiction with wonky physics just came clear.

Bujold quote: http://blogcritics.org/culture/article/bujold-and-the-essence-of-engineering/
"This is the most important thing I will ever say to you. The human mind is the ultimate testing device... There is nothing, nothing, nothing more important to me in the men and women I train than their absolute personal integrity. Whether you function as welders or inspectors, the laws of physics are implacable lie detectors. You may fool men. You will never fool the metal."

Whether it's reversing the polarity of the neutron flow or traveling through a black hole, a lot of the wonky physics is used as a get out of jail card. It's all about men fooling the metal. And if people believe they can do that they're just dangerously fooling themselves.

Flip side, what of the advances of the last century could we have achieved, if we hadn't dreamed there was a way to fool materials, gravity, or death?

There's got to be a balance between dreaming big and throwing out the whole idea of testable properties and hard limits.

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books books books cds mp3s

Thu, 10 Dec 2009 12:59:15 GMT

some of my Amazon order arrived today. not the ones I could start reading now, the later ones. naturally.

someone mentioned the Big Finish Short Trips books. because they don't got the licence any more they won't be able to sell them after the end of the year. So now I've got this terrible urge to spend £150 and buy every single one of them, even though I've never read one and don't know if I want to.
... it's the collector thing. It doesn't have to make sense. It just decides things are a good idea anyway.

While at Big Finish I found this months downloads are up :-)
129 Plague of the Daleks 5 and Nyssa
4-1 Death in Blackpool 8 and Lucie
and
An Earthly Child - 8 and Susan!

:-) :-) :-)

Subscribing rocks.

Now I have to decide if I shall listen to them all now or save them for later.
Listen now has obvious appeal, but then I have to wait.

Also, my cleaner is here and shortly things will be clean. And later Tesco will deliver.

My life's pretty cool.

... when I don't try and do things and run into walls, or have to run out because of the fire alarm, or all those things.

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Kelley Armstrong, The Summoning

Wed, 09 Dec 2009 20:15:35 GMT

I've been trying to decide if this book is merely a bit rubbish or actually actively dangerous.
I think it's dangerous.

Not because it's advocating black magic or any of that rubbish. Go magic, use magic, whatever, do it responsibly and it's all cool.

It's because mentally ill people are not magic, yet somehow media continues with massive fail in noticing that.

Also, psychiatric and care staff are not evil and, importantly, your diagnosis is not a conspiracy.

Honestly, it's shit like this, accumulated and layered in with discrimination and bad information about mental illness, that stops people getting treated. Just layers and layers of message that say the treatment is worse and as long as you don't think about the label it doesn't apply and lalala Look, Real Magic, and people can die of this stuff.

Don't tell me it's only fiction. The message gets out there pervasively, the fear of treatment, and it's harmful in the real world.

This book starts with a young woman hitting puberty and getting hallucinations, freaking out, hitting teachers, getting sedated, and getting taken to hospital. There's tests, there's talking to psychiatric professionals, and then there's a diagnosis of schizophrenia. They start her on meds, which stop the hallucinations. They send her to a group home with other teenagers with psych problems.

The start of the book looks like it's being reasonable, saying that mental illness isn't a personal failing, fault, thing one brings on oneself, or any of that shit. When someone's mother yells at her for not trying hard enough to get well it is clearly because she is Evil. There's a variety of difficulties with each teen, but once the point of view character gets over her initial fear, the other teens are just people. It's doing okay.

Then it turns out that, one and all, they're Secretly Magic. All their symptoms, and all the violence and harm done to others, is because of this Secret Magic. Not because they're ill. They're special, you see. And then it turns out to be a conspiracy of pshrinks, who are out to harm them all, with Science. And the pills are the problem, stopping their superpowers (because the hallucinations are Real and Special) so they must stop taking the meds. There's instructions on how to fake out observers and cheat on urine tests to make it look like you're still taking meds.

To be clear, the point of view character hurt a teacher who was trying to restrain her, the one diagnosed with pyromania burnt her mother, there's a character who says a poltergeist is moving things but her teacher says she threw a pencil at her eye and it cut her, and there's one boy who broke someone's back. They've injured people. Danger to themselves and others is the reason they're locked up.
But Secretly it's because of teh Magic.

One guy throws the point of view character across the room, but she doesn't tell anyone. She was bruised badly, but she doesn't tell on him. She tries to hide it even.
And then it turns out that Secretly he's a tortured good guy who just wants to protect people. Secretly he'd never hurt people he cares about, except for that time he did. Secretly he shouldn't be locked up there either.
And also the point of view lingers on descriptions of his muscles, and not in a Scary sort of way.

So basically it's a handbook on how to ignore mental illness and start an abusive relationship.

Actively dangerous.

I realise that it's written in a 'verse that does have real magic and every type of power in this book is solidly within the rules of the established verse. That was the only reason I had to think about it and didn't just throw it across the room when I realised what they were setting up. But it doesn't matter. It's not a book where magical powers are used as a metaphor for mental illness and they have to learn to live with and control them the way that mentally ill people need to learn to control their conditions. That book would be a useful sort of story, disabling conditions that can be managed with help and appropriate care. What this book is about is how teenagers are Right and pshrinks and carers and hospitals and parents are all Wrong, even when the teenagers have done violence. And that's as unhelpful as can possibly be.

It did give me some ideas for writing though. One problem with these magical worlds, and the big appeal of them for me, is having a set of perceptions that don't match those around you, yet are high stakes if correct. It's a useful metaphor for living with domestic violence or being the only one who takes smoke alarms seriously or seeing racism or a lot of other things on a lot of other scales, but when applied to mental illness, it gets dangerous if it encourages believing in what everyone else calls hallucinations. Plus if someone is wandering around seeing ghosts and unsure of what is physically real they are hallucinating, in the sense of not being able to distinguish between real dangers or taped ones. The only way to be sure would be having two different people who could compare notes. Preferably with a third who could be a bit objective about it, instead of having an interest in searching out which bits matched. So you'd get teams working in threes, two perceivers and a mundane who could read their notes. The mundane would also be the one with the science suggestions. Two Mulders and a Scully really, but it makes a lot of a difference to have two. And then you'd have a wider society based around these units. Maybe getting 4 teams together with a mundane to coordinate them all, for larger tasks, with different specialities. Instead of a lone hero you get a network, precisely because their perceptions don't match the commonly accepted norm. Support groups for the mystical. Including doctors and pshrinks who could try the medical explanations. And, importantly, Scully being right sometimes. Plus sometimes someone getting mentally ill in a way that wasn't just a misperception of their powers but was only about how 1 in 4 people do get ill.

The other way is irresponsible writing with only a negative impact on the world. Sometimes you're the first to notice something, but if you stay the only one, carrying on anyway isn't actually heroic. Especially when everyone else reckons you're ill.

... it's a horribly embarrassing moment when you look back and realise why they've been telling you that for years, but it is one that makes it a lot more likely you'll be able to start making your life work. Charging on regardless just digs a deeper hole, and makes the eventual day that much worse.

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