Entries tagged with sff

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Revolutionary Babies: In which I am persuaded not to see Snowpiercer

As I encounter more reviews Snowpeircer has gone from "science fiction film I might enjoy" to "metaphorical film I might enjoy for the story" to "metaphorical film I won't enjoy the story of" to "metaphorical film I won't enjoy whose central metaphor will piss me off". I'm sure it's very good, and I admire the intent, but nope. I can see some people finding it cathartic, and that's cool for them. But I wouldn't, so the film has no appeal.

EDIT: I should add that I had already pretty much decided not to watch the movie anyway because it has lots of bad things happening to children which I find really upsetting.

This piece of meta intended to defend it was the final straw. Spoilers for the end, because it's the end that annoys me. tl;dr: implying that true revolution relies on the ~pure youth~ since everyone else is too tainted appeals to burned out old activists and optimistic young activists but is really annoying when you're the child of activists. And I think it betrays a real lack of imagination.

( SPOILERS )

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Cleaning out my list of links

I may have already posted some of these, sorry!

Objecting to Objectification A post that really annoyed me. It basically says that queer women shouldn't, say, check out another women's breasts without stopping and thinking seriously about her ~thoughts~ and ~feelings~. Personally I am totally fine with random strangers (regardless of gender!) thinking I'm hot without wondering about my inner life, as long as they treat me like a person should we actually interact.

I really dislike the way ALL sexualisation of women is demonised within certain progressive spaces (while other "sex positive" progressive spaces are more likely to celebrate the sexualisation of women by men), meaning that there is pretty much nowhere it is accepted and normalised for women to sexualise other women. I realise that some women want safe spaces where they don't feel sexualised, but there's a difference between "Please don't sexualise women in this space" and "sexualising women is bad".

A criticism of yarn bombing

Identity should always be part of the gameplay N K Jemisin talking about how oppression and privilege are dealt with in the Dragon Age world. I know some people prefer fantasy worlds with no sexism/racism etc, but personally I tend to enjoy ones which DO have some bigotry as long as it's handled well and in a way that allows for happy endings.

The Naked and the TED A criticism of various books to come out of TED and TED in general.

The missing stair, My friend group has a case of the Creepy Dude. How do we clear that up?, “I am the Lorax, and I speak for the creeps!” Posts on dealing with creepiness (and worse) in other people

Fallacy Watch: No True Klansman Redefining terms like "racism" to refer to attitudes so heinous that nobody actually believes them, thus allowing the speaker to avoid being labelled with the term.

self-care: a buncha links, or something Not all self care can be ~enlightened~ acts like doing activism or eating organic free trade vegetables, but it's still necessary.

Lincoln Against the Radicals "Lincoln is not a movie about Reconstruction, of course; it’s a movie about old white men in beards and wigs heroically working together to save grateful black people."

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Blah Werewolves

I like romance novels. I like fantasy (more than non-speculative fiction, at least). But somehow the combination of the two is always GODAWFUL. Like, every single supernatural romance has the protagonist being a Special Angsty Snowflake. All other women are soft weak victims while she is tough and powerful, but also vulnerable. She tries dating nice guys but they can't handle her Power, she needs an even more powerful man, one who is SUPER manly and strong and arrogant and probably despises all other women as much as the narrative.

Blech. I find arrogance and misogyny super unattractive, even in my escapism. Not to mention giant men bulging with muscles.

"Bitten" by Kelley Armstrong came strongly recced, but I had a bad feeling from her being The Only Female Werewolf. Sure enough, they see all other women but her as only useful for meaningless sex and babies (there are no gay or asexual werewolves, natch) Eventually I had to check to see if she gets back together with her smug stalkery ex AND SHE DOES. Of course, he's the most obnoxious and unpleasant man in the story, he must be the romantic lead.

It's pretty well written and I like the main female character (for a start, she doesn't hate other women, woo!), but hits too many bad buttons for me. Maybe I'll skip to the end and see if I like the feel of it.

Then maybe I'll reread my Marjorie Liu. She actually has some VARIETY in her manly supernatural men. And then I will sigh and wish for f/f space opera romance.

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Thinking about disability in a "perfect" future

No Disability at the Final Frontier: Science Fiction, Cures, and Eliminationism reminds me that I've been meaning to make a post about disability in "perfect" disability-free societies for a while, waiting until I can write the Perfect Post, but I think it's time to admit that's not going to happen and just ramble for a while, with the option to return to the topic later it later.

I'm not really addressing s.e.smith's point but riffing off a different aspect of the same broader topic of depictions of disability in scifi. I also covered some of this in Disability in Speculative Fiction: Monsters, mutants and muggles.
( Read more... )

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To those who said to read "The Queen of Attolia" despite my issues with "The Theif"

You were right, that was awesome :D

I have Things To Do Today, so no actual review, and I can't tell how objectively good it is but where with the Theif I had a sinking feeling about a plot twist and was sad to be proven right with this book I was sitting there going "Could the plot really be that awesome? Noone ever writes that..." and was filled with glee when twists happened the way I'd hoped. Though overall I think her writing would benefit from not trying to so hard to have twists at all.

Now to get my hands on the next book...

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"The Thief" by Megan Whalen Turner

When this first arrived from the library I thought "Wait, Newberry Award Honor Book? Am I reading young adult fantasy? Crap.". But then it quickly grew on me. It flowed very nicely and I liked the characters and story (no female characters, but that made sense in context), and the Greece inspired worldbuilding was understated but effective. It felt like a real country, I can't think of any other fantasy I've read with a convincing Mediterranean climate(*). Also the protagonist Gen is quite dark and no big deal is made about it. But apart from the fact that I liked Gen more when I thought he was a teenager rather than an immature twenty something (EDIT: oh, ok, he is a teenager), there was one thing that I predicted early on and knew would retrospectively really annoy me if it happened, and it did.

( Major spoilers )

(*)Though this did mean that I kept imagining the mountains they crossed as the Darling Ranges

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EX-TRA-PO-LATE! Moral philosophy and the Daleks

This article embraces the ableist tropes behind the daleks and other such scifi monsters so wholeheartedly that it wouldn't take much to turn it into satire.

EX-TRA-PO-LATE! Moral philosophy and the Daleks

In the 21st century, Bunce suggests that they embody a more general fear, about the triumph of technology and science over humanity. Once creatures like us, they have mutated into something far more sinister. Inside their metal shells, they have oversized brains representing the dominance of scientific reason, at the expense of shrivelled bodies.

Shriveled bodies! How much more evil could they get? A most terrifying fate indeed.

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Thoughts on Fenris and Dragon Age 2

I've often linked to stuff where people in fandoms I'm in have made me really annoyed by being thoughtlessly racist/sexist/ablist etc. Thus I feel it's only fair to acknowledge having the opposite experience: I've been reading a lot of meta about the character Fenris from Dragon Age 2 and other fans have been consistently better at noticing and articulating problematic stuff in the text etc than I have. (I mean, not all the other fans. But often at least one or two per conversation)

No spoilers in this post, and I've tried to explain the context.
( Read more... )

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Class and speculative fiction

I just read this post: Oops, she's dead". Once more with no feeling:

I'm fed up with stories (and Buffy S8 isn't the worst example of it out there, I can also point to Torchwood, many superhero comics, and, quite overwhelmingly, Heroes) with central characters who treat protecting other people's lives as self-expression, who make no attempt to practice and improve their skills or to truly form a team that works like a well-oiled system, who demand that they be given the respect due to those who protect society but who fuck up and fuck up and have hecatombs happen on their watch and then expect us to sympathise with them afterwards because it was just so horrible for them, even tough they're usually still alive and walking at the end of it, unlike hundreds of others who weren't in the opening credits.

...and was reminded that I had a locked brainstormy post about class in speculative fiction I never got around to tidying up. Thus, a summary of the main ideas and some links since I have a follow on post I'd like to make (eventually)
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Moon Called vs Lost Girl

Enjoying Lost Girl made me decide to check out some paranormal romance-y books…which has reminded me why I like Lost Girl and don't tend to read paranormal romance.

Some vague spoilers but nothing significant.
( Read more... )

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Some Issues with Mass Effect 2

So, last week I played Mass Effect and loved it, modulo a few niggles (see these posts). I've been playing Mass Effect 2, and while in a lot of ways it's a better game it's gone for Darker and Edgier and has taken some of the problematic aspects of the old game and crossed the line into creepy badness. I'm still definitely going to finish it, but there's that element of "Why can't I quit you/how long until you upset me again" fear that is, for example, familiar to many fans of Supernatural.

Warning: contains sexual assault triggers (though very vague ones) and also spoilers (though the first section isn't spoilery, and the spoilery section is marked)

EDIT: I played it some more and the next few hours of gameplay were pretty much solid awesome. Stupid Bioware.
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Fanboys and Riot Nrrds

Saw Fanboys last night. It's not a good film, but enjoyable enough as a geek road movie (and it's not like that's a large enough genre that one can afford to be too picky) It was VERY much the story of a bunch of white straight dudes, though, the writers clearly had no idea what to do with their one female character and the homophobia was pretty intense. That said, I think I liked it as much as the geek guys I've discussed it with, since the main problem with the film is that apart from the odd quite funny scene it just isn't very good!

Anyway, it was thus nice this morning to read ‘CAUSE I’M NERDCORE LIKE THAT: Toward a Subversive Geek Identity which then led me to Riot Nrrd, a very cute webcomic about "being LGBT nerds, female nerds, nerds of color, disabled nerds, and other kinds of nerds that don’t get as much love" which is like a cross between "Dykes to watch out for" and geeky slice of life comics like "Weregeek"(*). It even has a transcript, huzzah!

There's geeky female characters in lots of webcomics, often but not always done fairly well, but I'm having trouble thinking of any I've really liked in mainstream-ish films or books. Any suggestions?

(*)Not that "Dykes to watch out for" doesn't have geeky aspects and geeky webcomics don't have any female/LGBT etc characters. But this is more concentrated.

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Thoughts on "Jeremiah Crichton"

I vaguely recall someone saying this was crap.

*get bored, stop watching, am thus stalled on Farscape for about a month*

*read blurb to remind myself*

Oh god that sounds like Avatar minus the moral and every other "white man is taken in by simple native people, local girl falls for him, thuggish native boyfriend objects" plot.

*start rewatching*

It is Avatar minus the moral.
( Cut for spoilers and aaaargh )

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Two fannish links

I am a ball of stupidity and pain today (but fairly cheerful regardless) so brief thoughts. *makes mental note to make thoughtful reply to both posts at some point. Maybe*

Iron Man 2 and the moral landscape of superhero films

I liked a lot of this, especially about how post-Watchmen (the comic) superhero films ask "Is this vigilante-ism really ok?"...but the answer is always "Yes! At least when our guy does it"

In the comments I brought up that "superhero-is-super=>he should have power and full autonomy to do what he feels is right" is pretty creepy when thought about from a disability perspective (of course like any "might makes right" argument it sucks from gender/class etc perspectives as well, but disability has extra bite imo)

Hoo boy, thoughts on yaoi (let me tell you them)

Generally speaking, "Your preferences are inherently wrong and damaging" and "My preferences are inherently right and empowering" are both problematic statements regardless of who is saying it and what they're saying it about

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Violence outside the system

There's been some very interesting discussion of violence in fiction recently, in Militarism, pacifism, fandom

naraht has some links and very interesting thoughts about pacifism.

My issue I guess with these posts is with the dichotomy between pro-military and pacifist. Because I love stories about violence, but my gut sympathies are very anti-military and while this is sometimes problematic, I think it's not inherently self-contradictory. This came up in the comments to

naraht's post but I'd like to poke at it some more.
( And now some examples )

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Disability in Speculative Fiction: Monsters, mutants and muggles

This is a somewhat expanded version of the presentation I made about Disability in Science fiction.

Note: Don't take my word for any of this! I'm still figuring this stuff out. Corrections and other input very much welcome!

I've reached a point where I Just Can't Think About It Any More, I may edit again later. Make sure to check to out the comments for other people's additions.

The fantasy examples are very much tacked on, I'm sure there's fantasy specific tropes I'm missing, plus links to the relevant Disability Tropes. Mental illness and cognitive impairments are underrepresented too.
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Ahahaha Supernatural (5.19)

So Cam was watching Supernatural and I had my headphones on listening to music instead. But he knocked on my shoulder "This is actually pretty good." he said. Yeah..guess how long that lasted.
( Cut for spoilers for 5.19 )

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Two things about protagonists

I have no deep thinky thoughts, but I found these essays interesting, especially since I encountered them close together:

Buffy S8, canon Sues, and the impossibility of socialism under Campbell: or Protagonist Privilege

Passive versus Active: DEATH MATCH, or possibly, just a cup of tea

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A non-spoilery rant about "Kick Ass"

So, on the whole, Kick Ass was exactly my sort of film. It's both a straightforward geek-becomes-superhero wish fulfillment and a subversion of it, and the violence was glorious (I quite like violence done right). I agree with those saying that the violence and swearing really aren't worth complaining about, and aren't even extra specially celebrated compared to many other films (the violence looks like it hurts, for good guys and bad). But.

I kept hearing it was good in an over the top puerile sort of way, and was ok with that, but just before watching it found out it was based on a comic by Mark Millar. As it started I was reminded of this, and of how I felt about Wanted.
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Sex and Violence in Supernatural

So in general I've found Supernatural Season 4 so consistently and absurdly sexist it's often like watching a hilariously wrong parody. This episode took this to it's logical conclusion, it's like someone wrote a deconstruction of the show and sneakily disguised it as a regular episode.

I watched the first 5 or so minutes of this episode then stopped and went to Cam.

Me: I need to know if this episode is going to piss me off as much as I think it will.
Cam: Which one is it?
Me: Well, it starts with a beautiful blonde woman who is viciously bludgeoned to death by her husband for no apparent reason. And now it looks like it's all the fault of an evil woman.
Cam: You are going to have to be way more specific.
Me: It's an evil stripper.
Cam: Let me look it up....Oh that episode. It goes somewhere interesting, trust me. You should keep watching.

And I did, and then I went "OH. I remember hearing about this one. Hee."
( Spoilers for Supernatural 4.14 )