stillsostrange

Sorry guys, but this rant was too long for Twitter.

So, I'm told this obnoxious Nightwing wannabe is a character from a tie-in novel who the writers felt the need to tack onto the game? All I really know is that he is a) fucking obnoxious, and b) obviously tacked on. The game acts like he's Shepard's personal nemesis, but we just met the guy. He's some errand boy for the Illusive Man who wears a dorky mask, but the writers seem to think we care about him. We don't. I don't even want him to die, except on principle. I just want him to go away.

And, over the span of ten seconds' bitching about this, I thought of a better way they could have given Shepard a personal nemesis and an emotional connection to Cerberus, and given a little oomph to the second game.

( Cut for the five people who don't want spoilers for these games... )

Also, as much as I love Tali, the quarians are way too human under their masks. I feel she ought to have Yautja mandibles or something. Because those are sexy.

Recently I read a post by a writer of my acquaintance which said that she is reluctant to write books--in this context urban or contemporary fantasy--with female leads, for fear of not being taken seriously, or being tarred with the brush of Romance.

Reader, this makes me angry. I'm talking flames on the side of my face angry. And not even so much angry at the writer in question, who I like and whose work I enjoy, but at the fact that this is probably a valid concern on her part. nojojojo's epic fantasy books--and the books of many other female authors--have been called "Romance"*, presumably in a dismissive way, and presumably because a) the author is a woman, b) the main character is a woman, and c) someone has sex somewhere in the book. I'm guessing the only reason I haven't heard this said about The Necromancer Chronicles is because I don't have Google alerts turned on. To this fear and to the sexist fuckwits who engender it, I have only this to say:

Fuck. That. Noise.

My books are full of women. Fighters, spies, witches, academics, queens, starving artists, acrobats, whatever. They're cis, trans, lesbian, straight, bi, or asexual. They may have relationships or not, they many fall in love, fall out of love, seduce, betray, sacrifice, save the world, destroy the world, or not. Some of them may even end up happy, for a while. (But everyone dies alone.) Which is not to say that my male characters won't also do all those things, but the gender or sex of my protagonist has no fucking bearing whatsoever on the merit of my books.

My job is not to cater to sexist twits. My job is not to try to change their minds. My only job is to write the best book I'm capable of at any given moment, and by Cod the best book I can write will have women in it.

Some of them even have back tattoos.


*My deep and abiding hate-on for genre writers slagging on other genres is a rant for another day.

Cod help me, I tried watching the new Criminal Minds/Criminal Waste spin-off thing. Wow, that's bad. There is not an unstilted line of dialogue in the first episode (except possibly Garcia's). The script is so bad Forest Whitaker* can't even breathe! Michael Kelly's character backstory assaults the viewer with stupidity, like being backhanded with a fistful of dumb. Janeane Garofalo, I will buy you a new water heater!

I badly need to watch Ghost Dog and Mystery Men to get this taste out of my mouth.


* An alarming insight into my psyche: The Crying Game has forever conflated Forest Whitaker in cricket whites with orgasm for me. Yeah. Good luck not thinking about that.

38,000 words into Kingdoms as of today. Hurray for forward motion. This thing is much less streamlined than the last two books, POV-wise. I hope it turns out okay at the end of the draft.

My thoughts on bullying are as angry and incoherent now as they were twenty years ago. Like yuki_onna, I hesitate to use that word because it was never physical. It was scorn, rejection, mockery, from the ages of 9 through 16. It wasn't until after college that I could walk past a group of people laughing and not flinch, assuming they were laughing at me. The knowledge (delivered by the Schadenfreude-machine that is Facebook) that many of my "peers" who picked on me peaked at 16 and can barely spell now helps a little, but some days not nearly enough.

I'm a card-carrying misanthrope, and I come by it honestly. All I can hope for is to leave the world a little less miserable than I found it, and that often seems impossible.

I just watched The Abyss again, and then had to spend ten minutes shaking my impotent fist and cursing Titanic. And then I realized why exactly Titanic bugs me so much.

Cameron is actually quite good at romantic subplots. Sarah and Kyle. Bud and Lindsey. Ripley and freakin' Hicks. Ripley and Hicks are best couple in the world and they don't even kiss. The magic here is competent adults acting like competent adults in impossible situations and saving each other's asses. That is awesome.

And Titanic with the romance as its A-plot has a couple of boring-ass kids who I couldn't care less about.

And so, of course, it made more money than god. :P

I think Kingdoms of Dust needs to be a competence-porn romance.

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In other news, Bone Palace has grown 2,000 words since I started revising, and I have five more chapters to go.

I'm angry, and probably shouldn't post when I'm angry, but I'm going to do it anyway. This anger isn't going away. So I will leave my opinion here for posterity.

The advent of the internet makes it easier to "meet" artists of all varieties, and therefore to discover that they're people with opinions just like everyone else, and those opinions often run counter to our own. Getting bent out of shape because an artist doesn't agree with you on everything is certainly one's prerogative, but usually a very silly one.

But I draw the line at basic human rights. Including the right not to be fucking raped.

There is no moral grey area here. There is never a time when rape is maybe okay. Or not really that bad. And if anyone says there is, they have lost any respect I might ever have given them. I don't care what kind of art you make, or what your other political views are. If you think rape is okay, I think you're a waste of skin.

Never avert your eyes.

Dear Vista,

Please cease performing illegal acts with Mexican donkeys for just long enough to print my fucking document.

Noloff,

Me

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Dear Assholes Who Stole My MacBook,

If I ever find you, I am installing printer drivers in your fucking skull, with a nailgun.

Even less loff.

Kino-running:

3. Candyman. I haven't seen this in its entirety since the theatre, where it scared the crap out of me. Now I just love it (production values and tragic 90s clothing aside). I like Tony Todd like I like my women: covered in beeeeees!

Bookkeeping:

1. Black Magic Woman, by Justin Gustainis.

Here's a tip for writers. If you are going to put in an honest-to-god, no-shit, no-really-I'm-not-kidding puppy-kicking villain, please have the common decency to put in on the first page, where I would encounter it in the bookstore. If you put it on the last page, anything else you might possibly have done right will be obliterated by my burning wrath. I read nearly 500 pages, and you pull a goddamn puppy-kicking villain on me. I am now pissed off and would like my time and $7.99 back.

Fail.

Do not speak! Listen! Remedy this situation, restore the economy Criminal Minds, or you will live out your life in a pain amplifier!

Where the hell is a Guild Navigator when we need one?