(no subject)
A terrible thing: when you get that sinking feeling of "This is written by a guy". Not the I-am-slightly-curious feeling where a twist on prose or focus makes you go "Oh, hey, is this written by a guy? No/Yep, ah, okay". I mean "I'm pretty certain a guy wrote this and I have to live on the same planet as him and I find this OBJECTIONABLE and the worst part is, he is hardly the only one with this pattern of thinking. Aaaauuuuuugh."
Yeah so, recently I finally saw how people get sucked into TV Tropes (I was really bored at work), and I went on the original-fiction recs page, where there was a story the reccer described as gritty. Having now read ("skimmed" might be more accurate) said story, let me clarify that what the reccer meant was "RAPE RAPE RAPE 5-45 YEAR OLD FEMALES LINE UP, RAAAAAAAAAAPPPPPPEEE". Like 3 of the female characters, minor and major, aren't sexually assaulted, and like 3 of the male characters don't display the tendency to sexually assault. The author doesn't gloss over the trauma, which was why I tried to give the story a shot to see if it would hit its stride and live up to the reccer's enthusing. But it's no better to have lovingly detailed brutality with the footsteps from behind and then she ran faster and then he said and then his friends and then she fell and then the knife over and over for every other character. That's fetishising it in the other direction.
And then the romance for the main character comes in. She's an emotionless genetically-enhanced assassin with ultrafine control over her emotions, you know how it goes, and then she gets a crush and there goes all her strength and reserve, he is so strong and dependable, when I am with him I go weak and it's all I ever wanted even though THIS IS EXACTLY OPPOSITE TO EVERYTHING I HAVE BEEN FEELING FOR MY ENTIRE LIFE, AND I HAVE KNOWN HIM FOR A WEEK.
(I suspect romance might be one of the most difficult things to write. Or, perhaps, to write into a story with a pre-established priority ... I dunno, what I'm trying to say is, often I'll enjoy a story and then uhduhrr, the writer tries to convince me that This romantic coupling makes sense and screw over any number of other themes and characterisation in the process. I'm thinking JK Rowling, here, as one of a relatively recent and certainly wretched example.)
Obviously it's not that women don't go in for writing gratuitous rape - take a pick out of BL manga or trashy romance novels. In one of the ongoing webcomics I follow, if you don't get raped and/or eaten, order optional, you aren't allowed to be a main character. It feels different in the latter, at least, possibly because it's liberally sprinkled over the entire cast, regardless of sex. Even with BL and Harlequin, EVERY woman isn't there to be grossly degraded. At any rate I don't come away thinking "Women are only here to get raped, thank you for reaffirming my thoughts. I bid myself goodnight and good luck." I hate to come off as a wide-eyed innocent because no shit, misogyny exists, but sometimes I can't help but be surprised again by how difficult it can be for people it seems to see others as people.
And then in a hilarious coincidence, today I found the origin of OH JOHN RINGO NO. Hilarious.
Some men.
It's beyond me.
Two things that have gone some way to cheering me up:
The Cape Town stadium for the 2010 World Soccer Cup is almost done. The cranes that surrounded it are all gone. It's slightly less lit up at night, so even whatever nighttime work needed doing has been completed. It makes me so excited for next year, I can't even say. It's going to be wild.
http://www.herorat.org/ - Trained rats that detect landmines and TB. Rats! Who'da thunk? It would be nice to see more information on the success rate, but the page says that the project has been licensed by the Geneva International Centre for Humanitarian Demining and the National Demining Institute in Mozambique so it seems to be for real. And to work. Dang. (Found via Google's 10100 Project.)
And on another note entirely. It's been a year since I started working at this publishing company, and perhaps this particular hate-on meme is dead; but since it was so strong at the time I started working, I couldn't help but keep track:
The Twilight saga has been #1 on South Africa's Nielsen Bookscan ratings for that entire time. And prior to it, of course, since it was on the list from before I started at the company.
The real reason I don't plan on reading those books is because I'm dead scared I'll like them. Everyone who's not on the internet does! (Okay, there's two real reasons. Spine-snapping demon child delivered with the aid of babydaddy's teeth in the uterus: not endearing. And when a grown man falls for just-delivered demon child, WELL.)
Yeah so, recently I finally saw how people get sucked into TV Tropes (I was really bored at work), and I went on the original-fiction recs page, where there was a story the reccer described as gritty. Having now read ("skimmed" might be more accurate) said story, let me clarify that what the reccer meant was "RAPE RAPE RAPE 5-45 YEAR OLD FEMALES LINE UP, RAAAAAAAAAAPPPPPPEEE". Like 3 of the female characters, minor and major, aren't sexually assaulted, and like 3 of the male characters don't display the tendency to sexually assault. The author doesn't gloss over the trauma, which was why I tried to give the story a shot to see if it would hit its stride and live up to the reccer's enthusing. But it's no better to have lovingly detailed brutality with the footsteps from behind and then she ran faster and then he said and then his friends and then she fell and then the knife over and over for every other character. That's fetishising it in the other direction.
And then the romance for the main character comes in. She's an emotionless genetically-enhanced assassin with ultrafine control over her emotions, you know how it goes, and then she gets a crush and there goes all her strength and reserve, he is so strong and dependable, when I am with him I go weak and it's all I ever wanted even though THIS IS EXACTLY OPPOSITE TO EVERYTHING I HAVE BEEN FEELING FOR MY ENTIRE LIFE, AND I HAVE KNOWN HIM FOR A WEEK.
(I suspect romance might be one of the most difficult things to write. Or, perhaps, to write into a story with a pre-established priority ... I dunno, what I'm trying to say is, often I'll enjoy a story and then uhduhrr, the writer tries to convince me that This romantic coupling makes sense and screw over any number of other themes and characterisation in the process. I'm thinking JK Rowling, here, as one of a relatively recent and certainly wretched example.)
Obviously it's not that women don't go in for writing gratuitous rape - take a pick out of BL manga or trashy romance novels. In one of the ongoing webcomics I follow, if you don't get raped and/or eaten, order optional, you aren't allowed to be a main character. It feels different in the latter, at least, possibly because it's liberally sprinkled over the entire cast, regardless of sex. Even with BL and Harlequin, EVERY woman isn't there to be grossly degraded. At any rate I don't come away thinking "Women are only here to get raped, thank you for reaffirming my thoughts. I bid myself goodnight and good luck." I hate to come off as a wide-eyed innocent because no shit, misogyny exists, but sometimes I can't help but be surprised again by how difficult it can be for people it seems to see others as people.
And then in a hilarious coincidence, today I found the origin of OH JOHN RINGO NO. Hilarious.
Some men.
It's beyond me.
Two things that have gone some way to cheering me up:
The Cape Town stadium for the 2010 World Soccer Cup is almost done. The cranes that surrounded it are all gone. It's slightly less lit up at night, so even whatever nighttime work needed doing has been completed. It makes me so excited for next year, I can't even say. It's going to be wild.
http://www.herorat.org/ - Trained rats that detect landmines and TB. Rats! Who'da thunk? It would be nice to see more information on the success rate, but the page says that the project has been licensed by the Geneva International Centre for Humanitarian Demining and the National Demining Institute in Mozambique so it seems to be for real. And to work. Dang. (Found via Google's 10100 Project.)
And on another note entirely. It's been a year since I started working at this publishing company, and perhaps this particular hate-on meme is dead; but since it was so strong at the time I started working, I couldn't help but keep track:
The Twilight saga has been #1 on South Africa's Nielsen Bookscan ratings for that entire time. And prior to it, of course, since it was on the list from before I started at the company.
The real reason I don't plan on reading those books is because I'm dead scared I'll like them. Everyone who's not on the internet does! (Okay, there's two real reasons. Spine-snapping demon child delivered with the aid of babydaddy's teeth in the uterus: not endearing. And when a grown man falls for just-delivered demon child, WELL.)