(no subject)
* Tianjin Disaster Update: 3 and a half thousand people are homeless in the blasts in China. The extent of the toxic contamination, the composition of the chemicals released, and the ongoing danger to humans is unknown.
* "Say goodbye to the weirdest border dispute in the world:" https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2015/08/01/say-goodbye-to-the-weirdest-border-dispute-in-the-world/?tid=sm_tw
* "11-year-old rape victim who was denied an abortion gives birth in Paraguay:" http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/ct-11-year-old-baby-paraguay-20150814-story.html
* "13 Photos Capture How Exhausting It Is to Deal With Daily Discrimination:" http://mic.com/articles/122928/13-stunning-photos-capture-how-exhausting-it-is-dealing-with-micro-aggression?utm_source=policymicTBLR&utm_medium=main&utm_campaign=social
* "Reminder that journalists know exactly what they’re doing:" http://gwydionmisha.tumblr.com/post/126741446992/reminder-that-journalists-know-exactly-what
* "Animas River: EPA's Colorado mine disaster plume flows west toward Grand Canyon:" http://www.denverpost.com/environment/ci_28608746/epas-colorado-mine-disaster-plume-flows-west-toward
* "Why Are Hundreds Of Thousands Of Salmon Dying In The Northwest?" http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2015/07/29/3685149/dead-salmon-pacific-northwest/
* My body was being incredibly inconvenient on top of Hector stealing sleep.
* Rosewater is so good, it breaks my heart hardly anyone saw it. The story is important. What happened in Iran in 2009 is important and what is continuing to go on is something we should be paying attention to especially with the bombardment of commercials lying about the Iran Deal and intended to demonize the Iranian people, turning them into a cartoonish monolith, instead of a country full of human beings with different opinions and motivations. What happened to Maziar Bahari is important, as is the oplight of journalists held and often tortured in countries all over the world. It is incredibly important that we talk about torture and detainment, as a country that still has people in Gitmo. It's a world wide problem, but we are assuredly part of it. I think as a country we need to look at torture with open eyes and remember that torture is flat out wrong and why.
You would think it would be triggery, given my long history with interrogation, but I am actually grateful for media that does it well. Ordinary Americans have so little experience of it. As stupid as it sounds, it was a huge help to me when TNG did the Captain Picard being tortured episode. It finally gave me some common ground, some common language with regular people. I am absolutely not saying what happened to me was as bad as what is done to adults. They were not allowed to touch me. They did not have complete physical control of me and I could go home every day after it was done, and the multiple times a day intensive interrogation designed to break me only went on for four years. After that it was sporadic, and the sexual threat ended. At thirteen being interrogated only a few times a week was no big deal (although there were periods when it was intensive again through out my teens), and again, what was done to me for most of a decade was nowhere near as intense as what is done to adults in prisons all over the world. Still though, it is oddly validating to see the same techniques used against me are condemned elsewhere as human rights violations. It is strangely validating to see other people's resistance techniques. Just as it was validating as a an adult to see techniques for both interrogation and resistance to interrogation laid out by actual interrogation and resistance professionals who went public once my country started torturing prisoners. I have always been proud of my nearly a decade of resistance, of my survival, of not having been broken. It was amazing to see that at eight I was able to derive for myself so many of the rules professionals suggest for surviving such a thing. i know none of this will mean anything to any of you. I know from long experience that no story can make ordinary people understand what it feels like to have so many people with so much power over you set on breaking you down, what it feels like to live that truth, that there is no rescue coming and that the only control you have is to not give them any handles to use to lever you open. The only control you have is over what reactions you show. How can I possibly make that real to someone who's never spent few months being endlessly interrogated over stupid felt tip pen marks on a calendar? How can I explain that I was thirty before I could make myself write anything on a calendar even though I knew no one was going to do that to me again in a way that is real and visceral to a listener? I was a child who invented my own language in middle school so i could write fiction without fear of anyone using my words against me, because any open expression of thought or feeling could be used by interrogators. even when I started writing English again, I deliberately fictionalized everything and always made true things look like fiction. It was safer. Still, all these decades later, each true thing I say about myself in livejournal is a quiet act of defiance, a survival rule broken on purpose. I am what my resistance made me, and I can not imagine the person I would have been without it. But no matter how often I tell this story, I know that it will mean nothing. It will sound like lies and exaggeration, so seeing something I can identify with on screen that can speak to people, can be listened to and on some level understood, is as much validation as I will ever get in this life for the strange shape of my childhood.
* Big Eden turned out to be delightful. It's a gentle Romantic comedy that happens to have gay protagonists and takes place in a small town with a northern Exposurish feel. I think my mother would have loved this. I was not sanguine, but the tumblr review is glowing and by the time I was done sewing my sheets back together I was in utterly charmed. This isn't my genre, but it made me happy. Every time there was an opportunity to make the movie worse and less interesting, they did something else. I know that this sounds like faint praise, but it's not. I really sat there thinking, oh no! This next moment is when they will ruin it! And then they didn't! This film had a light touch I wasn't expecting. I came because I was promised a gay Native American amoung the main characters and some Tim DeKay, I stayed for a movie that was way more nuanced than I was expecting from something that looked to be standard. Eric Schweig's performance was quietly seductive. Why have I never heard of him?
This film was made in 2000, and I had never heard of it, despite my keeping an out for LGBTQA stories in TV and movies my whole life. I wish that there were more movies like this, films where the gayness and in one case Nativeness of the characters are important to who they are, but not the most important things about them. Pike is shy, generous, kind, thoughtful, quietly clever and observant, an amazing cook. He also happens to be gay and native. All of those things happen to matter in this story. We need stories about our history and about coming out, sure, but so often that's all there is as far as movies, if you exclude gay best friends and desexualized comic relief. It's been getting gradually better over the course of my life, but I still say we need more variety and more kinds of stories. how is it 2015 and the only movie we can give our transmasculine teens to watch is "Boys Don't Cry?" Again, our history is incredibly important, but where is the transmasculine rom com, the transmasculine action hero, the transmasculine police procedural detective, the trans masculine superhero? Where is the transfeminine spy thriller, the transfeminine hospital Drama, the transfeminine romantic lead in a fluffy rom com where no one dies? Where are the bi characters doing anything but being unreliable seducers? Why do they take the few canonical asexual and hyposexual fictional and real life historical characters and insist on making them sexual and giving them love interests? Why the fuck can't we have some stories with no fucking so asexuals can see themselves on the screen for once? Things are getting better for Gay and Lesbian characters, but there are still relatively few stories that end happily with the queer characters still all alive at the end. Things like Big Eden are important because they are ordinary, and there is still so little ordinary for our kids to see on TV and in the movies.
* "At Times, It is Almost Hard to Believe That Women Still Feel Unwelcome in Geek Spaces:" http://seananmcguire.tumblr.com/post/125985058230/at-times-it-is-almost-hard-to-believe-that-women#notes
* On Gender Bias and Pen Names: http://seananmcguire.tumblr.com/post/125972703630/thank-you-for-your-thoughtful-answer-i-was-going#notes
* "Some Things Your Local Librarians Would Like You To Know:" http://seananmcguire.tumblr.com/post/125985640725/some-things-your-local-librarians-would-like-you
* Ebays, 5 auctions, 2 No Bid:
Bewildered in a Dream 2014 (LE, Ligeia): (Company says: A disorienting eddy of French lavender, black tea, orange blossom, sharp green tea leaf, pink flowering thorn, and a blot of inky resins). At shoulder.
The Traveller 2010 (LE, Bards of Ireland): (Company says: A wanderer, poised at the point where three great countries meet, ruminating on government, nationalism, religion, and personal character: boot leather, pipe tobacco, and the dust of soft resins, herbs, and soil-flecked gravel picked on long, solitary travels). 1/2 Full. http://www.ebay.com/itm/301709355383?ssPageName=STRK:MESELX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1555.l2649
Lindworm 2012 (LE, DragonCon, Event Exclusive): (Company says: Smoky green leather smeared with crushed grasses and wild herbs). 3/4 Full. http://www.ebay.com/itm/301709360613?ssPageName=STRK:MESELX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1555.l2649
Halloween In The Miskatonic University Library 2012 (LE, Halloweenie): (Company says: The silence was soothing, though, and the scent of the yellowed books and polished oak tables reminded me strongly of my childhood home. I found myself a table, and set to work.... His breath smelled like pumpkin lattes, and there was a faint trace of cologne swirling around him. He quoted Byron, I told terrible jokes, and in the end I nearly failed my paper, but I fell in love. Top of Label. http://www.ebay.com/itm/301709362964?ssPageName=STRK:MESELX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1555.l2649
(Not So) Penitent (Mini) Magdalene 2014 (LE, Lilith): (Company says: Candle wax, smoke, red sandalwood, a dusting of kitchen spices, and a dribble of vanilla ice cream). Just below Shoulder. http://www.ebay.com/itm/301709364680?ssPageName=STRK:MESELX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1555.l2649
Gingerbread Poppet 2010 (LE, Lilith): (Company says: Warm, cozy gingerbread spiced with nutmeg, clove and cinnamon). Below shoulder. http://www.ebay.com/itm/301709365994?ssPageName=STRK:MESELX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1555.l2649
* A list of LGBTQA Charities to donate money to instead of seeing the racist Stonewall Movie that decided to portray a black trans woman activist as a cis white man. http://awkward0w1.tumblr.com/post/126399233673
* Want Game of Thrones without the creepy? We desperately need new players. We are very inclusive. "Game of Bones MUSH:" gobmush.wikidot.com
* Trying to stay afloat until September: http://www.gofundme.com/cuovws or Lethran@gmail.com
This entry was originally posted at http://gwydion.dreamwidth.org/551062.html. Please comment there using OpenID.
* "Say goodbye to the weirdest border dispute in the world:" https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2015/08/01/say-goodbye-to-the-weirdest-border-dispute-in-the-world/?tid=sm_tw
* "11-year-old rape victim who was denied an abortion gives birth in Paraguay:" http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/ct-11-year-old-baby-paraguay-20150814-story.html
* "13 Photos Capture How Exhausting It Is to Deal With Daily Discrimination:" http://mic.com/articles/122928/13-stunning-photos-capture-how-exhausting-it-is-dealing-with-micro-aggression?utm_source=policymicTBLR&utm_medium=main&utm_campaign=social
* "Reminder that journalists know exactly what they’re doing:" http://gwydionmisha.tumblr.com/post/126741446992/reminder-that-journalists-know-exactly-what
* "Animas River: EPA's Colorado mine disaster plume flows west toward Grand Canyon:" http://www.denverpost.com/environment/ci_28608746/epas-colorado-mine-disaster-plume-flows-west-toward
* "Why Are Hundreds Of Thousands Of Salmon Dying In The Northwest?" http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2015/07/29/3685149/dead-salmon-pacific-northwest/
* My body was being incredibly inconvenient on top of Hector stealing sleep.
* Rosewater is so good, it breaks my heart hardly anyone saw it. The story is important. What happened in Iran in 2009 is important and what is continuing to go on is something we should be paying attention to especially with the bombardment of commercials lying about the Iran Deal and intended to demonize the Iranian people, turning them into a cartoonish monolith, instead of a country full of human beings with different opinions and motivations. What happened to Maziar Bahari is important, as is the oplight of journalists held and often tortured in countries all over the world. It is incredibly important that we talk about torture and detainment, as a country that still has people in Gitmo. It's a world wide problem, but we are assuredly part of it. I think as a country we need to look at torture with open eyes and remember that torture is flat out wrong and why.
You would think it would be triggery, given my long history with interrogation, but I am actually grateful for media that does it well. Ordinary Americans have so little experience of it. As stupid as it sounds, it was a huge help to me when TNG did the Captain Picard being tortured episode. It finally gave me some common ground, some common language with regular people. I am absolutely not saying what happened to me was as bad as what is done to adults. They were not allowed to touch me. They did not have complete physical control of me and I could go home every day after it was done, and the multiple times a day intensive interrogation designed to break me only went on for four years. After that it was sporadic, and the sexual threat ended. At thirteen being interrogated only a few times a week was no big deal (although there were periods when it was intensive again through out my teens), and again, what was done to me for most of a decade was nowhere near as intense as what is done to adults in prisons all over the world. Still though, it is oddly validating to see the same techniques used against me are condemned elsewhere as human rights violations. It is strangely validating to see other people's resistance techniques. Just as it was validating as a an adult to see techniques for both interrogation and resistance to interrogation laid out by actual interrogation and resistance professionals who went public once my country started torturing prisoners. I have always been proud of my nearly a decade of resistance, of my survival, of not having been broken. It was amazing to see that at eight I was able to derive for myself so many of the rules professionals suggest for surviving such a thing. i know none of this will mean anything to any of you. I know from long experience that no story can make ordinary people understand what it feels like to have so many people with so much power over you set on breaking you down, what it feels like to live that truth, that there is no rescue coming and that the only control you have is to not give them any handles to use to lever you open. The only control you have is over what reactions you show. How can I possibly make that real to someone who's never spent few months being endlessly interrogated over stupid felt tip pen marks on a calendar? How can I explain that I was thirty before I could make myself write anything on a calendar even though I knew no one was going to do that to me again in a way that is real and visceral to a listener? I was a child who invented my own language in middle school so i could write fiction without fear of anyone using my words against me, because any open expression of thought or feeling could be used by interrogators. even when I started writing English again, I deliberately fictionalized everything and always made true things look like fiction. It was safer. Still, all these decades later, each true thing I say about myself in livejournal is a quiet act of defiance, a survival rule broken on purpose. I am what my resistance made me, and I can not imagine the person I would have been without it. But no matter how often I tell this story, I know that it will mean nothing. It will sound like lies and exaggeration, so seeing something I can identify with on screen that can speak to people, can be listened to and on some level understood, is as much validation as I will ever get in this life for the strange shape of my childhood.
* Big Eden turned out to be delightful. It's a gentle Romantic comedy that happens to have gay protagonists and takes place in a small town with a northern Exposurish feel. I think my mother would have loved this. I was not sanguine, but the tumblr review is glowing and by the time I was done sewing my sheets back together I was in utterly charmed. This isn't my genre, but it made me happy. Every time there was an opportunity to make the movie worse and less interesting, they did something else. I know that this sounds like faint praise, but it's not. I really sat there thinking, oh no! This next moment is when they will ruin it! And then they didn't! This film had a light touch I wasn't expecting. I came because I was promised a gay Native American amoung the main characters and some Tim DeKay, I stayed for a movie that was way more nuanced than I was expecting from something that looked to be standard. Eric Schweig's performance was quietly seductive. Why have I never heard of him?
This film was made in 2000, and I had never heard of it, despite my keeping an out for LGBTQA stories in TV and movies my whole life. I wish that there were more movies like this, films where the gayness and in one case Nativeness of the characters are important to who they are, but not the most important things about them. Pike is shy, generous, kind, thoughtful, quietly clever and observant, an amazing cook. He also happens to be gay and native. All of those things happen to matter in this story. We need stories about our history and about coming out, sure, but so often that's all there is as far as movies, if you exclude gay best friends and desexualized comic relief. It's been getting gradually better over the course of my life, but I still say we need more variety and more kinds of stories. how is it 2015 and the only movie we can give our transmasculine teens to watch is "Boys Don't Cry?" Again, our history is incredibly important, but where is the transmasculine rom com, the transmasculine action hero, the transmasculine police procedural detective, the trans masculine superhero? Where is the transfeminine spy thriller, the transfeminine hospital Drama, the transfeminine romantic lead in a fluffy rom com where no one dies? Where are the bi characters doing anything but being unreliable seducers? Why do they take the few canonical asexual and hyposexual fictional and real life historical characters and insist on making them sexual and giving them love interests? Why the fuck can't we have some stories with no fucking so asexuals can see themselves on the screen for once? Things are getting better for Gay and Lesbian characters, but there are still relatively few stories that end happily with the queer characters still all alive at the end. Things like Big Eden are important because they are ordinary, and there is still so little ordinary for our kids to see on TV and in the movies.
* "At Times, It is Almost Hard to Believe That Women Still Feel Unwelcome in Geek Spaces:" http://seananmcguire.tumblr.com/post/125985058230/at-times-it-is-almost-hard-to-believe-that-women#notes
* On Gender Bias and Pen Names: http://seananmcguire.tumblr.com/post/125972703630/thank-you-for-your-thoughtful-answer-i-was-going#notes
* "Some Things Your Local Librarians Would Like You To Know:" http://seananmcguire.tumblr.com/post/125985640725/some-things-your-local-librarians-would-like-you
* Ebays, 5 auctions, 2 No Bid:
Bewildered in a Dream 2014 (LE, Ligeia): (Company says: A disorienting eddy of French lavender, black tea, orange blossom, sharp green tea leaf, pink flowering thorn, and a blot of inky resins). At shoulder.
The Traveller 2010 (LE, Bards of Ireland): (Company says: A wanderer, poised at the point where three great countries meet, ruminating on government, nationalism, religion, and personal character: boot leather, pipe tobacco, and the dust of soft resins, herbs, and soil-flecked gravel picked on long, solitary travels). 1/2 Full. http://www.ebay.com/itm/301709355383?ssPageName=STRK:MESELX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1555.l2649
Lindworm 2012 (LE, DragonCon, Event Exclusive): (Company says: Smoky green leather smeared with crushed grasses and wild herbs). 3/4 Full. http://www.ebay.com/itm/301709360613?ssPageName=STRK:MESELX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1555.l2649
Halloween In The Miskatonic University Library 2012 (LE, Halloweenie): (Company says: The silence was soothing, though, and the scent of the yellowed books and polished oak tables reminded me strongly of my childhood home. I found myself a table, and set to work.... His breath smelled like pumpkin lattes, and there was a faint trace of cologne swirling around him. He quoted Byron, I told terrible jokes, and in the end I nearly failed my paper, but I fell in love. Top of Label. http://www.ebay.com/itm/301709362964?ssPageName=STRK:MESELX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1555.l2649
(Not So) Penitent (Mini) Magdalene 2014 (LE, Lilith): (Company says: Candle wax, smoke, red sandalwood, a dusting of kitchen spices, and a dribble of vanilla ice cream). Just below Shoulder. http://www.ebay.com/itm/301709364680?ssPageName=STRK:MESELX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1555.l2649
Gingerbread Poppet 2010 (LE, Lilith): (Company says: Warm, cozy gingerbread spiced with nutmeg, clove and cinnamon). Below shoulder. http://www.ebay.com/itm/301709365994?ssPageName=STRK:MESELX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1555.l2649
* A list of LGBTQA Charities to donate money to instead of seeing the racist Stonewall Movie that decided to portray a black trans woman activist as a cis white man. http://awkward0w1.tumblr.com/post/126399233673
* Want Game of Thrones without the creepy? We desperately need new players. We are very inclusive. "Game of Bones MUSH:" gobmush.wikidot.com
* Trying to stay afloat until September: http://www.gofundme.com/cuovws or Lethran@gmail.com
This entry was originally posted at http://gwydion.dreamwidth.org/551062.html. Please comment there using OpenID.