Author: Alex

Categories
fashion gender

Sharp Dressed (wo)Man (2)

When I was thinking about the awesomeness of wearing ties, something else struck me: I’m really lucky.

I’m lucky that I’ve got a couple of stores I can go to that have “masculine” clothing that’s cut to fit my proportions. (Thank you, Brooks Brothers and Saint Harridan.) And other stores I can go to for men’s suiting that have always welcomed me. (Thank you, Men’s Warehouse.) Brooks Brothers and Men’s Warehouse are just mainstream retail stores; they aren’t specialty stores that cater to women who basically like to cross dress. (And here I mean cross dress in the sense of simply wearing clothing considered to be for the “opposite” apparent gender rather than the performative sense of drag.)

But that’s because it’s still way more acceptable for women to cross dress in the US. It’s more acceptable for us to adopt “masculine” fashions. Sure, here and there you might get called a dyke or get some weird looks. But I have a lot of male friends who cross dress and transwomen friends, and it’s so much more difficult and even dangerous for them. It sucks, and it’s total bullshit.

I guess we’re all supposed to want to be manly men, and it’s cute when women want to try but hey it’s harmless we’re just trying to hit the pinnacle of humanity or something. I don’t know. It’s all artificially drawn lines that ultimately serve no purpose except to try to control other people. The more people I know, the more I’ve seen that sexuality and gender are sliding scales, and very few of us actually fit inside those harshly delineated boxes.

What harm does it do to anyone, if my male friend wants to rock that super sexy dress? But think of the children! Maybe one of those kids would like to wear that dress some day and not have a fucking complex about it. I have yet to hear a justification for censure on this regard that didn’t amount to “Because reasons!”

Fuck your bullshit, controlling reasons.

This utter societal stupidity was a major source of personal misery for me from high school on, because I never felt like I fit in the “girl” mold. It’s a sad statement that it took me thirty years to realize that I don’t have to. It’s okay that I don’t like dresses and skirts and makeup. I don’t have to. It’s okay if I’d rather walk barefoot over nails than wear cute women’s shoes. I don’t have to. If anyone else doesn’t like that, they can fuck off, because it’s my life and none of their business.

And if someone’s daughter sees me and gets it in her head that it’s okay to be a dapper sir, I will be happy to give her advice on how to properly do a half Windsor (because women normally have such narrow collars we can’t do a full) and be overjoyed she doesn’t have to waste decades hating herself in the mirror.

I know how amazing it feels to me, when I get to wear something that makes me feel truly like myself. I finally feel like I’m wearing my clothes, instead of like my clothes are wearing me. It upsets me in a deep way that my male and trans friends sometimes face a lot of nastiness because they want that same, simple thing.

Life is short. You should be able to wear whatever the fuck makes you happy. Wear what makes you feel like you and you know what? You will look amazing in it.

And for anyone else, they should be asking themselves what goddamn right they have to try to suck even one drop of happiness out of the world. And then they should shut the fuck up.

Categories
fashion gender

Sharp-Dressed (wo)Man (1)

In case you hadn’t noticed, I like ties.

IMG_20130831_180740_749I really like ties.

While I was on my tie binge during Worldcon, I had several men (including Jim Fiscus–love ya, Jim) ask me the same question: I’ve been trying to escape wearing ties all my life, so why are you willingly wearing one?

Because I like ties.

I guess you could see some of the lure of the forbidden in there. There are some fairly masculine cuts for women’s clothing these days, but you generally still don’t see women in ties unless they’re upscale waitstaff. And men, on the other hand, are required to wear ties at certain times… which if you don’t like them or don’t like the level of formality that denotes, makes them a miserable experience.

I don’t know why I like ties. I don’t think it’s just a desire to thumb my nose at gender expectations, but I can’t really sit down and write you a list of reasons why I like them. But why does anyone like the clothes they enjoy wearing? It’s all in the murky depths of our psyches, preferences and aesthetics we’ve formed that I think aren’t entirely conscious.

Why does anyone like wearing what they do? Because they like how it looks on them. I’ve been told time and again that a dress or a skirt or a blouse looks good on me, but when I look in the mirror I just feel awkward. I feel silly, like I don’t look like myself. I look like someone else’s idea of what Rachael Acks is supposed to look like, because hey that’s what girls wear, amiright?

I know it always sounds kind of funny when I talk about Project Runway, because let’s be serious. Fashion and I have never been friends. And the fashion on PR? Very not my kind of fashion, since it’s all skirts and purses and heels and the few times they attempt mens fashion it’s always a hilarious disaster.

But the one thing that show has done for me, season after season, is send the message that clothing isn’t supposed to be a punishment. Clothing is supposed to be something that makes you happy. Clothing should allow you to express yourself. Ideally, clothing should make you more you or more who you want to be.

So I guess the thing with the ties is that I’ve finally figured out how I want to express myself and who I want to be. For the first time in my life, clothing makes me feel good. For the first time in my life, I care about styling and colors and actually playing with my clothes, coming up with combinations and outfits. They make me feel bigger than myself (but in a good, standing tall way) and not like I want to shrink away and not be noticed. I actually want to be noticed now, because I feel damn good, I feel happy, and I want to share it.

I put on a button shirt and a tie, and I feel powerful. I feel like me.

Categories
gaming gender

My life as a female gamer (a quick and incomplete summary in 10 questions)

Remember this survey my friend is doing? Here are my answers. If you’d like to participate, there’s still a little more time!

1. How long have you been gaming?

Since high school, I’d say. My family actually played board games fairly regularly when I was growing up, but it didn’t quite feel the same.

2. List the games that you enjoy or have enjoyed playing (table top or on line rpgs, computer/videogames, MMOS, board games LARPS or others)

All right, it would be a long list, but if we’re literally just going with games that I have enjoyed: (off the top of my head, the ones I found most memorable)

  • MMOs: Ultima Online, Final Fantasy XI, World of Warcraft
  • LARPS: Vampire: the Masquerade, Mage, Werewolf: The Apocalypse, Changeling
  • Tabletop: Serenity, Mage, Werewolf, Shadowrun, a couple different homebrew games, Legend of the Five Rings, Paranoia
  • Videogames: Anything Final Fantasy (except for FFVIII and XIII) but particularly Final Fantasy Tactics, All Silent Hill but 3 and 4, All Fatal Frame games, Katamari, Heavy Rain, Trauma Center, Suikoden 4, Harvest Moon, Bioshock, Portal, Soul Caliber, Kirby’s Epic Yarn
  • Board/Card Games: Pandemic, Arkham Horror, Ra, Settlers of Catan, Cards Against Humanity, Things, Dominion, Munchkin, Ticket to Ride, Small World, Carcassone, Twilight Imperium, Agricola, Puerto Rico, Mansions of Madness

3. Tell the story of how you started, what or who drew you into gaming? How were your first gaming sessions? Etc. etc.

I think what really got me started was Magic: the Gathering in high school. I was a lonely nerdy kid at the beginning of high school, and having a permanent seat at the M:tG table meant that I had a social group that always welcomed me. So that’s what really set up gaming as a way to socialize with other people, and it gave us a starting point to start bonding because it was a springboard to talk about other intensely nerdy things.

4. Do you enjoy playing with others or alone the most?

I prefer to play in a group, and I actually like team-based games the most.

4b. If you have a clear preference, could you please motivate why you prefer one over the other.

For me, gaming is very much a social activity. I’d rather just have other people around for it, whether they’re competition or not. And I’ve felt that way more and more strongly as time has gone by. I used to play a lot of video games, and most of the time those are solo endeavors. At this point I’d rather just hang out with someone else and watch them play a video game (or play while they watch) rather than just mash buttons by myself. I played WoW for years and years and was part of a fairly tightly knit guild. That meant even when I was doing things solo, I was still always socializing with others, or felt like other people were around.

5. If you play or have played in groups, do you have any preference on gender balance in a gaming group? (somewhat equal in gender ratios, mostly females, mostly males) Please motivate why you have a preference, if this is the case.

It really depends more on the other people. At this point, I’m used to playing with all male or predominately male gaming groups, because that’s how it always was from the beginning. In high school, 90% of the time I was the only girl playing M:tG during lunch. But I’ll admit that it’s nice when there are other women in the group. And actually in the case of MMOs and LARPs, unless I’m in group with nothing but men I know, my preference is to have several other women in the group. It means you have someone to watch your back if the guys start being jerks. In an environment where I know all of the other people really well, the gender mix is less of a matter for concern.

6. Have you ever experienced, in any gaming setting, being treated differently as a gamer because of your gender. Please tell the full story if the answer is yes.

God yes. I have more examples than I could really share in this space. So I’ll just bring up a few major ones.

To begin with, the reason I ended up with the M:tG nerds in high school instead of the D&D nerds (and in the high school nerd hierarchy, D&D actually rated above M:tG) was because I wasn’t welcomed into the all-male D&D group. And some of the M:tG group played D&D as well, and the interest I expressed in it was pretty soundly smacked down. No one ever came out and said it was because I was a girl, but that was the feeling I definitely got. Though who knows, maybe if I’d been a girlier girl instead of a flannel and combat boot wearing wannabe dyke, I would have been more welcome. I don’t know.

I got creeped on occasionally when I LARPed in the Camarilla, and that normally only occurred when I was playing a character that required me to wear a corset. Go figure. That really wasn’t so bad, particularly in comparison to how some of my friends who were less physically intimidating were treated at times.

Where I’ve encountered the most gender-based treatment has been, without a doubt, in MMOs. I would say that’s likely because it’s a much larger sample size, and also because in the smaller worlds of organized LARP and the lunchtime M:tG table, someone being that much of an asshole is harder for the group to ignore. (Though I have seen it happen.) When it’s the huge player base of an MMO, and particularly when you’re doing random groups and can be fairly certain you won’t encounter someone again, I think that takes the brakes off.

That said, in the course of doing random dungeons and raids in WoW, I’ve been called every name in the book. I’ve been kicked from groups specifically because I was a girl. I was repeatedly skipped for loot because I was a girl and none of them were my boyfriend. (No, really, ask your boyfriend for that armor you need.) I’ve had my intelligence insulted and heard more dick “jokes” and rape “jokes” than I care to repeat.

It got to the point that when I was doing randoms and the group insisted on voice chat, I just told everyone my mic was broken. A lot of guys play with female toons, so that often got me out of the worst bullshit. Though a lot of people also assumed I was a woman when I was playing a healer because, I don’t know, healing is girly? And even when I didn’t own up to being a girl, I got to listen to a lot of shit talk in voice chat where, if I made a mistake, they immediately began to guess it was because I was a girl or had girl-like qualities. Or if I didn’t manage to heal the tank, it’s because I was a stupid girl and not because he pulled too much trash at once. And all girls suck at playing games because I made a mistake. Or the guys would just shit talk at each other about things like, “Oh that mob just pounded me so hard, my vagina hurts.” I actually dropped several groups because I just couldn’t handle listening to them talk any more, it was too gross.

And of course, it was also always fun when we pulled non-guild members in to raids and they started trying to talk shit, before they realized that the raid leader (normally me) was female. I had several alternate characters in other guilds, and I noticed that guys tended to be a lot less free with their misogynist trash talking when the guild leaders were women. I also seem to remember at least one of our guys getting a ration of shit for being in a guild where the top two officers were both women, but don’t quote me on that one.

I played FFXI before I ever played WoW, and I never really had those same problems. I don’t know if that’s because the crowd in the game was just different, but I also normally played a character that was male in that game. (As opposed to WoW, where I actually liked the female character designs better, even if they had the most stupidly skimpy armor.) I was a tank in FFXI and even when I screwed up, I don’t recall anyone ever pinning that on the failings of my ladybrain.

7. Do you think there is a general difference in style or culture between female gamers and male gamers? (if yes, please elaborate)

Yeah, female gamers are a lot less likely to talk about their vaginas than male gamers are about their hypothetical ones, as far as I’ve observed. Honestly, most of the women I’ve ever played with in MMOs were a hell of a lot calmer than the guys, and less likely to turn into ragey assholes if someone made a mistake. (Though I’ll own up to getting frustrated at times when I was a raid leader. However, one thing I never did was insult someone’s gender because they fucked up, though I don’t know if that’s a woman thing or a just not being an asshole thing.)

I’ve seen some women engage in classic trash talking, but it was actually fairly unusual and mostly occurred in PVP (something I avoided). Particularly in WoW, there was definitely a feeling of women trying to stick together. I had some really sweet (but incredibly sad) private chat conversations when there was another woman in a particularly dicky group and we were both just trying to get through and ignore what the guys were saying.

8. What about the games themselves, have you ever experienced that games or game developers cater to a specific gender? (if yes, please elaborate)

Seriously, just look at the T&A in every videogame ever. I might swing both ways like a garden gate, but those character designs were most definitely not made with my gaze in mind. (And no, the over muscular male character designs do not count. I challenge anyone who has ever claimed that to actually find a critical mass of gamer women who actually find those attractive.) Most of the videogames I have ever really loved (exceptions: Portal, Fatal Frame 3, Silent Hill 3) have had male protagonists. In most RPGs (with exceptions I can count on one hand) the female characters are secondary to the male, and their personal plots are really just there to help the male main character develop… if they don’t just get made outright into damsels in distress.

There’s also a lot of stuff like what happened in Heavy Rain, which was a game I actually liked. But the one female playable character, Meredith Page, starts the game having an incredibly rapey nightmare that involves her running around in her underwear, which wasn’t something that happened to any of the male characters, and ends up with the main character in two of the endings. I just get really tired of rapey stuff and breaking down and crying stuff; it’s something that really never happens to male characters.

9. Recent studies have shown that about half of all gamers are female, and yet some male gamer groups have expressed surprise at these statistics. Why do you think this comes as a surprise to many? Could female gamers be less visible in various settings, and if so, how come?

Well, I’d think we’re less visible in a lot of MMOs if nothing else because we’re flying below the radar in order to avoid being badgered by people while we’re trying to relax. I’ve also done some board gaming at conventions, though it’s been a few years. Back when I did do that, most of the gamers were male. I don’t think that’s necessarily because more gamers in general are male; I think it’s because male gamers in general are more likely to be willing to be gamers in public, and to game with groups of people they don’t know.

There were quite a few women in my WoW guild, and several of them would not do random groups because they just didn’t want to deal with the toxic environment; they stuck with the group of people, male and female, that they knew and trusted to not be jerks. I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s like that in real life at conventions and competitions as well.

Games are supposed to be fun. Feeling like people are waiting for you to make a mistake so they can tell you to “go cry about it, little girl” or make declarations about how women can’t play games because you lost is very not fun. Hell, even listening to men insult each other by basically calling each other women is upsetting. It’s stressful. Why be stressed out when you want to have fun?

10. Would you please share your favorite gaming anecdote here, if you have one.

To this day, the most fun I’ve ever had gaming was at an ICC when I was still in the Camarilla. It was at the werewolf game, right before this epic final battle. I’d gotten special approval for my character to do a ritual that would basically give everyone who participated one free willpower retest during combat. And we did the ritual for real; I walked around to every played and put a streak of black down their nose and said the words and by the time I was done, I had no goddamn voice left. And then we all howled. To an outsider, it was probably the dorkiest thing that has ever occurred. I felt like I could take on Hell itself, and I hope everyone else did too.

Categories
convention

The FenCon Schedule has arrived!

And boy is it a full one!

FenCon X – October 4-6

  • Friday  9:00-10:00 PM  Under Pressure: Conquering the Oceans of Earth and Beyond
  • Friday  10:00 -11:00 PM  The Geek Nation Goes Mainstream
  • Saturday  10:00 -11:00 AM   Antagonists: More Than Just Villains
  • Saturday  2:00-3:00 PM   Tao and Again
  • Saturday  6:00-7:00 PM   The Moon be Domed!
  • Sunday  10:00 -11:00 AM   Ask A Scientist
  • Sunday  11:00 -12:00 PM   Women in Science
  • Sunday  2:00-3:00 PM   How To Capture and Tame a Wild Asteroid
  • Sunday  3:00-4:00 PM   Cynicism vs Idealism in SF&F

That’s nine panels! Whew! No reading, which makes me a bit sad, but it looks like I’ll be plenty busy. And five of the panels are science track. Guess it’s time for me to show I earned my degree–and to work for any food I weasel out of the con suite (because I really don’t like eating out often any more). Thankfully I’ve got a week and a half until the con, so I can try to do a little research to brush up on the more space-oriented panels. (Oh my fellow science people, if you have any recommended reading for any of these, please let me know!)

This will be my first FenCon, so I’m even more excited because it’s a new con, and a whole new region of the country. Everyone I’ve interacted with on staff has been incredibly friendly and responsive, so I can’t wait to meet them in person!

And if you’ll be at FenCon, I hope to see you there. Drop me a line if you want to try to meet up. There are always the evenings.

Categories
tv

[Liveblog] Agents of SHIELD

The post game commentary, generally non-spoilery:

You know what I love about this episode? They came up with some bullshit retcon to explain why everyone in Avengers during the Battle of New York was running around and talking to thin air. Nicely done, Whedon. Nicely done.

Agent May (Ming-na) is my new senpai. That is perhaps all you need to know.

But really, this first episode was everything I could have wanted. It was playful, it was full of nerdery and comic book references, there were badass fights. It followed the tone of the Marvel movies well. So if you like those movies, there you go. I also felt, weirdly, like it had a somewhat more PG Torchwood vibe to it. This is not a bad thing, trust me. I liked Torchwood a lot. I cannot WAIT until next week.

And… the Agent Coulson thing. (Oh come on, that isn’t really a spoiler. They’ve been waving that one in our faces since the first advertisements.) I still feel conflicted about it. Agent Coulson was amazing in the episode, and it’s clear that he’s going to be the heart of the team… just like he was in Avengers. If he weren’t there, they’d need someone just like him. But there is part of me that just always resents the “no one ever dies in comic books” thing. Now there’s a bare hint that there’s more to what happened than just Nick Fury being a lying dickbag, so we’ll see. I’m curious where they’re going with this and…

Ugh, I just love Coulson. I can’t help it. Damn you Clark Gregg. DAMN YOU. I can deal with the story fuckery so we can have Agent Coulson, ultimately, even if I’m mad about getting my emotions jerked around in Avengers. I know, I’m the first person ever to complain that Joss Whedon didn’t actually kill a character.

Anyway, liveblog below the fold!

 

1900: OH MY GOD IT’S STARTING MY BODY IS READY.

Continue reading “[Liveblog] Agents of SHIELD”
Categories
tv

[Liveblog] Sleepy Hollow, episode two

Well, I think it will be liveblog-ish. I’m actually kind of excited about this episode. We’ll see if I’m disappointed. (Though I already know Sleepy Hollow will never disappoint me like The Following did, because there is always sassiness in it.)

Aaaaand here we go!

Thank you Ichabod voiceover for reminding us what happened last time.

2001: Running through the woods, you’re running through the woods, chased by Blucifer’s family.

2002: Ah, it’s a nightmare. You know, if my dreams foreshadowed plot like seems to happen in TV, I’d have gone to work naked and chased my cats endlessly through the Kroger while being peppered with thrown shoes.

2003: Ichabod’s dead wife is now explaining the whole plot again. You can tell she’s a witch because she’s wearing a sexy black dress. And what do you mean one of you? Didn’t she try to make the point she wasn’t an evil witch?

2004: Hello no shirt and… slightly floppy poopy drawers.

2005: Seriously, they’re claiming that John Cho ran into the mirror so hard he turned into a pez dispenser? DO YOU NOT KNOW HOW ANATOMY WORKS?

2005: The recap continues as we point out what a fish out of water Ichabod is, but that’s okay because he’s being adorable and unable to figure out how showers and lights work. I do love the sticky notes everywhere.

2006: Abbie has been sternly warned to not embarrass the Captain while he’s gone. I smell the inevitable embarrassment coming.

2008: Ichabod likes him some donut holes. Abbie, this is really not the time to go dissing the man’s dead wife.

2009: Ichabod’s main functions, I think, are to look adorably confused and say dark and portentous things while staring moodily at the camera.

2009: Welcome back, Pez Dispenser Cho. He has wrinkly old lady neck now. The vague grodiness of this is weirding my housemate out. It’s lovely.

2010: I like the title sequence, but could we have a color other than gray please?

2013: Someone needs to explain inflation to Ichabod. And I look forward to the foreshadowed story of why his dead wife didn’t like him. And I love his outrage at a 10% tax. I can tell the writers are having some fun with that.

2015: Apparently the healthcare plan you get with being a demonic minion doesn’t come with a plastic surgery option. Poor evil John Cho.

2016: In which Ichabod figures out the thing the audience knew immediately.

2016: What I want to know is how the demon can raise John Cho from the dead and make him barf up a necklace, but can’t manage to put a necklace on a post and deliver his own damn cryptic message.

2018: Geeze, now random people are making evil John Cho feel self conscious about his old lady neck.. Rude. (Though he does look nicely gross and dead, doesn’t he. Apparently so gross and dead that he killed the starter in this guy’s car.)

2019: Well known fact: witches summon their own theme music with their auras. (Hm, I can already smell a music collection for this series…)

2021: More review and backstory, this time about the sheriff. Oh wow, Abbie had a shady past. That’s kind of neat, how she got to be friends with her old partner.

2023: Ichabod apparently knows way more about this supernatural shit than he let on before…

2027: THERE’S BODIES EVERYWHERE CHOPPER GO CHOPPER GO oh wait, wrong thing.

2028: Serilda? Cerelda? She has a name that is impossible to spell, she must be a witch. And an evil witch.

2029: Well, hello man in tight black shirt who is randomly hostile. Hi Luke, have you pissed on the door frame yet? Geeze what a portrait of wounded and back patting masculinity. (Oh, he’s the ex. Oh. Blahblahblah.)

2031: Oh wow, they keep nice toys in their fire cabinets. None of this plain old fire axe bullshit.

2032: It’s a tunnel, Abbie. Isn’t that kind of obvious?

2037: A cache of gunpowder. I’m sure this will not be significant later in this episode or a future episode. Just in case something needs to be blown up. As you do.

2038: Evil John Cho, you are the creepiest police officer ever.

2039: “It’s getting dark.” *puts on sunglasses*

2039: Ah, today Ichabod got eidetic memory from the Power Of The Month Club.

2040: Oh dear… they made her an evil witch and Romany. Er.

2041: OH SHIT THE NOISE WAS JUST THE CAT RUN KID FUCKING RUUUUUUUN

2047: The kid is saved by adoption. COP OUT.

2047: Oh god Abbie never do that again.

2048: Poor evil John Cho. You just can’t catch a break. And all he wants is some thanks from the evil undead witch but nooooooo.

2048: “We’ll cover more ground if we separate.” Okay Ichabod has an excuse, he’s never seen a horror movie. BUT COME ON ABBIE.

2049: Evil John Cho can just stop his bitching now. He might have old lady neck, but he can apparently disappear at will. FAIR TRADE.

2053: And we have returned to the gunpowder cache. That was quick.

2054: HOW ARE THEY NOT COVERED WITH BITS OF WITCH?

2055: Aww, Ghost Sheriff. NO ONE STAYS DEAD IN THIS GODDAMN TOWN.

2057: Well, at least he’s sassy. He’s incredibly unhelpful, though. Number 49, really? COME ON.

2058: Ah, her sister is in room 49.

2059: She’s doing chin ups. That’s how you can tell she’s a tough girl. Getting a definite Sarah Conner vibe from her, and there is absolutely NOTHING wrong with that.

And that’s it for this week. I’m looking forward to next week. If that’s the demon guy, they’ve made him look nicely creepy.

Categories
movie

[Movie] Salinger

I’ll note right now that I went into this documentary absolutely blind. I know nothing about JD Salinger beyond the fact that he wrote Catcher in the Rye and fought in World War II. So I honestly can say nothing in regards to the veracity of anything that was said in the documentary. I can, however, tell you if I liked it.

And… I mostly did. The focus was definitely more on JD Salinger himself than on his works, which makes sense. There were quite a few interesting interviews, which covered his more reclusive days, his lingering trauma from the second world war, and his (in my opinion) incredibly creepy thing for really young women. What I found most interesting about the people discussing his reclusive tendencies was the divide between those who really saw him as Howard Hughes in author form, and those who pointed out he wasn’t a true recluse, because he still reached outside his own world and seemed very conscious of the power behind his name. (And used that power on the aforementioned really young women.)

Really, the best and most powerful piece of the entire film was the portion about Salinger’s experiences during World War II… and the fact that he continued to write through all of it. The continued struggle to keep writing no matter what is something I really appreciated as a writer (though obviously, I have never experienced that kind of adversity, and hope that I never will). Also, his determination to be published in the New Yorker really struck a chord. (And nice to know rejection letters really haven’t changed much.)

I also found notable the interview with a fan of Salinger, who had gone to the man’s home and wanted to speak with him. Going in to Salinger’s antagonistic relationship with his own fame was something I found fascinating, particularly the way people would feel as if they had a deep connection to him because of the way they related to his work and felt they were entitled to his time.

While I still don’t think it was anything close to a full portrait of the man, it did all add up to a very multidimensional picture of a human being deeply wounded, intensely flawed, and beautiful.

So all of that was excellent, and kept my attention.

Unfortunately, there was a lot about the documentary I didn’t like. All of the above that I spoke of was done with interviews and fairly sparing analysis from the director. But there was a lot of flash and bombast that kept making me ask why is this necessary. The music was often intrusive and frankly annoying. There was also reenactment footage (way too much of it, in my opinion) which really did not add any value; rather, it was more distracting than anything else. Seriously, the movie didn’t need minute upon minute of a man, smoking, clacking away at a typewriter while the music pounded home that something portentous had happened.

If you’ll have a hard time concentrating on Catcher in the Rye with the knowledge of the more sordid aspects of the author’s life banging around in your head, I’d recommend skipping this one. And if you’re hoping for more depth about Salinger’s work, this documentary won’t cut it. Salinger might have believed that a writer should be known solely through his work, but the documentary was determined to find out as much as possible about the man himself. If only it could have worked on that question without the music.

Categories
movie

[Movie] Prisoners

I have very conflicted feelings about Prisoners as a movie. I’m going to say there are some mild(ish?) spoilers in this one. I’m not going to go in depth on a lot of the plot points. (Honestly, if you watch the trailer you already know 90% of what I’m going to be talking about.)

I will say one thing flat out–it’s a very well put together movie. The cinematography is excellent. The way the movie was shot really adds to the suspense, and makes it feel very enclosed and claustrophobic… which of course goes with the entire Prisoners idea. There were several scenes where I hunched over in my chair, covering my mouth with my hands because the movie did drag me along into a dark and terrible place.

The entire reason I wanted to see Prisoners was because I thought it looked like an ode to vigilante torture porn, basically, which is normally how kidnaping movies go. You know, kids get stolen, police can’t find them, someone (normally super manly dad) takes matters into his own hands, goes vigilante, saves the day, and we all live happily ever after.

For all the very real problems Prisoners had, that was surprisingly not one of them. There are some bloody and intensely discomfiting scenes where Keller (Hugh Jackman) beats and tortures the man who he is certain kidnapped his daughter. Perhaps the only payoff on this is that the ending in no way justifies what he did; him torturing the mentally disabled Alex Jones does not really help him find his daughter.

Rather, what saves her in the end is the continued efforts of Detective Loki (Jake Gyllenhaal and seriously Detective Loki???), and I’d even argue Keller’s activities actually delay Loki solving the case. And the point is brought up subtly and largely ignored by the other characters that ultimately, Keller was torturing a victim. (In fact, Keller’s wife Grace, who has spent most of the movie in a sleeping-pill-induced stupor, tries to convince both herself and Loki that Keller is a good man and what he did was somehow necessary.)

So Prisoners didn’t, to my relief, overtly lionize what should be considered an appalling act. And there are some interesting points it raises along the way–like when Franklin (father of the other abducted girl, played by Terrence Howard) tries to talk Keller out of torturing Alex, and basically gets steamrollered by Keller’s utter certainty. There’s definitely something there to the way Keller drags more people into the horrors he’s perpetrating… and then ultimately is left to his own devices as Franklin and his wife Nancy (Viola Davis) refuse to participate but also refuse to actually stop him.

Keller is also presented as a very stereotypical religious hunter/survivalist/gun nut–the movie opens with him taking his son hunting and reciting the Lord’s prayer before they shoot a deer. Which I’m sure will rub some people very much the wrong way, but it’s also very believable he’d be the sort to talk tough about trying to make like Jack Bauer and beat someone half to death until they tell him what he wants to know.

There’s a lot of mileage you could get out of how Keller dehumanizes Alex (he even literally says, “he’s not human any more”), or how he seems to be a very weak man desperately trying to be strong and take control of a situation that is by definition uncontrollable by means of violence. There is even a point in one of those oh god I can’t watch this scenes were Keller screams at Alex, “Why are you making me do this to you?” I honestly think the movie is at its (horrified cringe-inducing) best when it’s focused on Keller’s transformation into something monstrous.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t stay on target. Instead of keeping with the true horror of the film, it goes off into serial killer conspiracy symbolism land, and that’s kind of where it started spinning off its axis. There are several instances in the plot where the choice to make it that much more convoluted really added nothing to the story and just created more loose ends that were never satisfactorily tied up. I also think those plot decisions meant that details got lost in the shuffle.

This is not a movie I would tell people to go out and watch. It was creepy and made me cringe in my seat and not because it was bad. I don’t generally go out of my way to watch movies like this one. But I will say that I thought the cast was really excellent (and Jake Gyllenhaal specifically, though I’m still not sure about his spasmodic blinking) and obviously it made me think a lot. This one is going to stick with me and keep making me feel deeply uncomfortable for a while.

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liveblog tv

[Liveblog] In Which I Watch the First Episode of Sleepy Hollow

Technically speaking, spoilers for the first episode follow.

As pilots go for shows, I felt like this one was incredibly well put together. The show knows what it wants to be, who the main characters are, and laid out the major over-arching plot and premise for the show. Ichabod (Tom Mison) and Abbie (Nicole Behari) had incredibly good chemistry considering that this was the first episode. The special effects are a bit cheesey, particularly whenever they bring in cgi, but they didn’t actually lean on that too much. I thought the writing was pretty good, the dialog was mostly snappy (though it got a bit stilted and you’re trying way too hard to be clever in a few places) and it ought to be fun the same way Supernatural is fun.

And that’s because the concept is silly in the same way Supernatural is delightfully silly. Same Book of Revelations quasi-Biblical stuff, which I know is a wonderful mine for supernatural fun. The Headless Horseman is no longer a nameless Hessian who is just pissed off he took a cannonball to the face; he’s now Death himself, doing his part to end the world. Ichabod is now linked to the Horseman with some sort of magic, and he was also married to a witch apparently, though she never told him. (You can tell she’s a real witch because later in the show she appears in one if his dreams wearing a low cut black dress.)

Considering one of the selling points touted for this show was that it had writers who previously brought us Transformers and the new Star Trek, my expectations were admittedly not high. But I certainly enjoyed the pilot more than I enjoyed any of the Transformers movies. And no one ran away from an explosion in slow motion, so there’s that too. (Okay, I know that one was probably Michael Bay’s fault, not that of the writers.) The characters certainly had enough dimension to keep me interested even if the tropes made me roll my eyes a little now and then. (Gosh, thank goodness Abbie’s partner wad a Scrapbooking Guy so we could hey the back story info dump out of the way.)

What I honestly struck me the most was I felt the show did make an effort to have a diverse cast. One of the main characters is a woman of color, and there were other prominent non-white characters. (This has been on my mind thanks to the recent #DiversityinSFF talk if nothing else.) And I’m really excited about Abbie as a character because Nicole Beharie gave her some depth right off the bat. I’m looking forward to seeing her develop more. I’d be interested to hear the thoughts of others on this point, for certain.

All right, Sleepy Hollow, you’ve got me. You had fun, and you have sassy characters and some silly supernatural bullshit. AND A HEADLESS GUY WITH AN ASSAULT RIFLE. That’s really all I expect out of a Monday night tv show. I’ll keep watching.

(Liveblog below)

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Just a Little Follow Through

Just for the record, on September 5, I said a thing on Twitter:

tweet

And now it’s September 15, the day the magical royalties elves at Musa Publishing send me the money I’ve earned with my steampunk adventuring over the last month.

royalties

money conversion

donation completeEasy as that. Do what you say you’ll do. I really wish the royalties had been bigger this month, but I am still the smallest of all possible potatoes. (And remember, if all the small potatoes band together, we shall construct a mighty anti-kaiju wall of potatoes.) Maybe next month. If you would like to donate toward UNICEF’s fund for the children of Syria, go here.

And now back to the writening! (And hey, if you want to help the royalties be bigger the next time I do a double donation, tell your friends to give Steampunk a try and have a novella-length adventure.)