A Brief Hiatus

Because Ginger Assistant is a flake who never shows up to work (she got her wisdom teeth out Friday and literally told me today she couldn’t come in today because she couldn’t walk… which makes all of the sense), we are on adventure hiatus until probably Thursday, because that’s when I expect she’ll finally drag herself back to work.

Nothing to Prove

So galleons, this post originally started as a Twitter rant after watching this video (and then reading the comments on it):

This video is quietly powerful. It gives everyone a glimpse into the stories of geek girls from all over who face adversity and frustrations from other geeks. It shows everyone the hypocrisy inherent in the geek collective (or, rather, in the very vocal jackass subset who are ruining things for everyone).

And its comments are an appalling look at the arguments from “the other side”.

As I said, I started a lengthy rant on the Twitter about this. An easy 20 Tweets. And it was then that I realized I had a lot more to say on this topic, and that Twitter wasn’t the proper forum for it. So, here we are galleons.

Let’s talk about being a girl in the greater geek community.

***

First and foremost, a lot of people pick up their pitchforks in a nerdrage when a “geek community” is referred to. Because it’s hard to tell exactly how far that community expands. It is just for gamers and sci-fi television watchers? Comic readers? Tabletop gamers? LARP enthusiasts? Anime hounds? Filk artists? Planeswalkers? Internet forum wanderers? Fanfiction¹ authors? Do you have to be part of a Star Trek or chess club in school? Must you be a math whiz? Do you need to attend conventions? If so, which ones count? If you’re a gamer, what kinds of games are acceptable to play? Will Candycrush cut it? Angry Birds? What if all you do is play CoD with your frat brothers- are you a geek?

Naturally, it’s hard to draw a definitive line around the geek community. But it’s no more or less difficult to peg down what makes one part of any social grouping. There will always be a myriad of subsets, off-shoots, and overlaps. Take, for example, the gay community. How many letters are we up to with LGBTQA-etc. now? Really, it’s a community for anyone who feels as if their gender, sex, or sexual orientation flies against the heteronorm, but each individual faction within it wants to be recognized as an individual subset. The geek community is for everyone who feels as if their interests and hobbies fly in the face of majority norm behaviors, but each individual subset wants to be recognized as a distinct entity.

And that’s perfectly natural. In fact, it is required of such social groups that you both identify with some members and explicitly non-identify with others. These types of social groups arise, not from direct personal relationships (as happens with friend-and-family groups), but from perceived commonalities (religion, profession, interests, region, etc.) among the various members.

Welcome to group dynamics, galleons.

The type of social grouping behavior we’re discussing right now is the social identity approach to group dynamics. It’s pretty run-of-the-mill psychology. Essentially, a social group arises when members are aware of a common category membership- the group is comprised of all individuals who have internalized that membership, making it part of their self-identity. This may not be the most conscious of actions- you do not have to stand up one day and state, “I am geek, hear me roar.” On a subconscious level, your brain will categorize you and place you in the “geek” grouping, whether you actively admit to it or not, if the brain believes you fit the category and will fit that into your own self-identification.

So, basically, you can whine about labels and claim to be above them all you want, but your brain is doing it anyway. Well that makes you kind of a liar, doesn’t it?

Another part of being in a social group is judging it (not necessarily objectively) against others. Ingroup bias is what happens when you compare your own social group to others in such a way that enhances the positive qualities of your own group. This is wonderful, for the record- because your social grouping is part of your self-identification, when your brain enhances the positives in your own group, it enhances your self-esteem as well.

At no point does this justify being bigoted jackasses to other groups. Emphasizing your group’s positive attributes does not mean you have to focus on and enhance the negatives of other groups in order to have self-esteem. And yet, people do it. It’s the quick and easy method of feeling good about your group and your social identity, but it’s not the only (or best) way to go about it.

Now, within social groups, strife can arise. While social groups must maintain some level of cohesion (through member solidarity, for example) in order to still be a functioning group, conflict can arise. Right now, the geek community is pointing out this conflict openly.

What we’re seeing is a kind of black sheep effect among the geek social grouping. New members (females, supposedly) are being forced to prove themselves to gain membership. The perceived boys club of nerdom past makes up the “old member”, who must be appeased before females can gain membership to the geek collective. As a result, women are increasingly frustrated by the hoops they are constantly having to jump through, as we are having to prove ourselves again and again and seem to be making very little progress toward becoming “full” members of the group. What’s particularly rankling about this is the fact that the geek community formed from a variety of social outcasts, outgroup members who formed their own group to identify with as a result. It is frustrating for women to see a group formed for inclusion and the sharing of mutual interests fall prey to these basic group dynamics, with members refusing to see the hypocrisy in their own actions.

Note that unlike social grouping, the black sheep effect does not have to occur. It often does, but it is not required in group dynamics. So, while psychology can explain why the black sheep effect occurs, it does not justify it in any way. Therefore, it is perfectly acceptable to rail against it within any community, geek or otherwise. It doesn’t have to happen.

***

And now that we’ve discussed that, I’m going to directly address some of the topics brought up in the atrocious comments to the above video (I do not feed trolls, and I do not get into comment wars on the internet, but that doesn’t mean I will not discuss these points in a forum of my choosing).

The women in this video are simply looking for acceptance/attention.

Well… yes and no.

Yes, the women in this video (as well as all women in the geek community, as well as numerous marginalized groups across the goddamn spectrum) are looking for acceptance. That is, in fact, the point of the video- that because they were born with vaginas, there are members of their primary social group who willfully will not accept them as part of said group. That they will be scorned, mocked, harassed, and insulted for having the audacity to be born with the wrong set of genitals. Remember, part of the whole ‘group cohesion’ thing is solidarity among group members. Women do not feel that solidarity, and that is upsetting. And wrong. And what we want to change.

And yes, the women in this video are looking for attention. They are trying to draw attention to a major problem within their community. By bringing it fully into the open, by sharing their stories, by standing together, these women (and men- don’t forget, most geek dudes are wonderful people who stand up for their female geek comrades as well) hope to enact positive change within the geek social grouping.

But no, these women are not doing it simply because they are whiny attention-whores who want people to feel bad for them. These women are trying to do something positive, not simply capture their 3 seconds of internet fame. They aren’t doing it so some commenter will say “the girl with the tats was really hawt” or “I loved all the girls with glasses in this video”. They’re doing it for a reason, with a positive purpose. If you truly do not see that, please please please re-evaluate how you are thinking about this video and what these women stand for. You are enabling the problem to continue- don’t be that guy.

Men face the same thing, so these bitches should quit whining.

Men actually don’t face the same thing. Sorry, but it’s true.

If your argument is that guy geeks have been facing social stigma for their interests and geekery for years, you are missing the entire point of this video. Yes, male geeks have been reviled and mocked for being themselves by those in other groups that closer emulate the majority norm for behavior. And female geeks have faced those same challenges. Male or female, you’ve likely been mocked by a non-geek just for being yourself. Which is a shame in and of itself.

But what female geeks face that you, male geeks, do not is that they are mocked, insulted, and scorned by other geeks. By their own fucking people. In a group that prides itself on being a haven for the outcasts, for the nerds, women are facing the same ridicule as they do outside the social group. And for us ladies, this hurts even worse- we are all supposed to be geeks together. This is supposed to be our group, a group of men and women with similar interests and hobbies. Instead, we aren’t accepted here, either. And that, gentlemen, really stings.

A man can go to a con dressed as a barely passable version of Ledger’s Joker, having only ever watched the Nolan Batman films, and be accepted instantly. A woman who has spent her entire life reading comic books and goes to the same con dressed as Oracle better be a red head of roughly the right proportions, have an exact replica wheelchair, and know her character’s entire history, including all crossover events. Because she will be interrogated about it. People will badger her about it, trying to unmask her as some sort of poser in Geekland.

And heaven forbid she dress as Emma Frost or basically ANY OTHER VIDEOGAME OR COMIC LADY and show some skin, because then she’s just a hot girl preying on geek guys and still a fake. Despite the fact that these characters are all drawn in these scanty outfits and that these women who probably really love Emma Frost or Starfire or Ivy or Samara are just being true to the character. And man, if the girl’s not hot enough to “accurately portray these characters”? Then she’s just a fugly bitch who should go home and cry to her Guild about how mean everyone is while eating Cheetos. But the overweight guy in the cardboard Optimus Prime outfit? Oh no, that guy’s cool- he’s obviously a real, acceptable geek.

No guys, you don’t face the same thing girls do. You don’t have other gamers instantly infantalize you the moment you say you game (“Oh, do pway Animal Cwossing? That’s so CUTE.”). If you forget the name of a minor X-Men character when describing your favorite fight scene, you aren’t instantly called a lying whore. You aren’t excluded from playing D&D or Magic with people in high school because you are a girl and wouldn’t understand it.

…For the record, yes, that actually happens. It happened to me. Because I had tits, I couldn’t be an elven ranger on a quest to Castle Greymoor to investigate the disappearance of Lady Selena. In fact, this just happened on The Big Bang Theory (which I love, but which is often guilty of laughing at geeks instead of with them and perpetuating outdated stereotypes of the community)- in the penultimate episode of last season, the girls came back to the apartment while the guys were playing D&D and Sheldon was vocally opposed to the girls playing. And when things went wrong (when the girls, giving into the apparent curse of their whimsical gender to constantly need to inject lurve and romance into all stories, put a love spell on Amy and Sheldon’s characters), what was the reasoning as to why? “This is what happens when you let girls play D&D.”

Class stuff, that.

So guys, no, you haven’t experienced the same things women have in the geek community. And it’s this sexism that is the problem. Understand?

Who cares what a few people say? Grow a spine, have some self-esteem, get over it, etc.

Who cares? WE care. We care because the geek community are our people. These are the people who are supposed to accept us, because we ARE them. And if it was just one or two people saying this stuff, we wouldn’t be calling it a problem. But there are so many men in our geeky social group that treat the women of the group poorly, who belittle and humiliate and hurt us. We do not have to stand for this kind of behavior. That is what we’re fighting against.

We have self-esteem. We are still proud of who we are. And we’re proud to belong to the nerd collective. We shrug off stuff like this daily. But we don’t have to get over hate- we can fight against it. We can work to eradicate it. To make the geek community the welcoming home that it is supposed to be for us nerds of all genders.

We get enough attacks against our self-worth from those outside this group. We don’t need it internally, as well. Nobody in the geek community should have to face this from anyone else within it. Period.

Why do they have to style themselves “geek girls”? If they wanted to stop their gender being an issue, they just shouldn’t mention it.

In a perfect world, it wouldn’t matter if you did or did not mention your gender. But because of the sexism we still face, we rally to our gender to find the solidarity we aren’t finding in our geeky social group. This isn’t a perfect world. If it was, this wouldn’t be an issue at all. This video would never have been made.

Besides, what they are “styling themselves as” is just a truth. They are geeks. They are girls. I could call myself a brunette geek if I wanted to. A barefoot geek (at the moment). A geek whose hand is falling asleep. All of these are truths. But since gender is where we’re currently facing a problem, it’s to gender that we retreat. To abolish the need for these labels, we have to abolish the gender problem.

Because right now, that’s how it’s viewed. As a problem. As in, being female is a problem. “If they wanted to stop their gender being an issue, they just shouldn’t mention it.” As in, a problem only arises if we admit we have vaginas. If we make no mention of our gender (and, therefore, are thought automatically male in the minds of the majority), we don’t have to worry about scorn or ridicule. Never mind that the moment we speak or are seen, we’re outting ourselves as women.

Curse you, breasts.

If you’re treated so poorly, why would you want to be part of a “geek grouping” at all?

It’s not a matter of want- it’s a matter of that social identity. We have already grouped ourselves as geeks. It’s part of our identity, both social and self. What we want is to be treated the same as men in the group. That’s not too much to ask.

And, for the record, not all geeky dudes are assholes who treat women like garbage. Most of them are good people. My best friend is a geeky guy. He’s awesome. He’s never marginalized the nerd girls he knows for simply having lady parts. But it’s not the good guys who are ruining the geek community for women- it’s the very rude, very vocal, very dickish minority of men who are treating women like second-class nerds and frustrating us.

Not everyone in a group is going to get along. I dislike a lot of people, geeks or not, based on them as people. But judging someone’s status in a group because of their gender? That’s not “oh, not everyone can like everyone else”, that’s “oh, I’m going to justify sexism because I think you’re being whiny and this doesn’t actually affect me”.

Fuck right off. I don’t care how small the scale, sexism is bullshit. By ignoring it, you are helping perpetuate it. That’s why we’re standing up and trying to change it.

***

It’s funny, but this entire argument can be summed up by one of the great geek kings, Wil Wheaton:

Srsly. It’s that simple.

1 LOL, I originally typed ‘fanFRICTION’ here. Which, let’s be honest, is probably a more accurate name for most fanfiction. Bow chicka Harry-and-the-Giant-Squid-pr0n-timez.

Hate is a Battlefield, Too, Ms. Benatar

Today’s post is uncharacteristically serious and topical for me, my galleons, but it’s one of those moments where I’m just full to bursting with opinions. I do that, on occasion, you know- have opinions. And, as a note, those opinions are not always entirely PC. They are also super rambly and might make no sense.

Because that’s how I roll, motherfuckers.

It all started one week ago, with a Suzanne Moore article about women, the recession, and the power of female anger (and the necessity of it). As far as self-proclaimed “feminazis” go, I don’t tend to outright hate Moore’s work (yes, that’s right- I find blind radicalism in any form, good intentioned or not, to be counterproductive and fucking tiresome). She tends to stick more to actual information than attempting to inflame the hearts/minds of the vaginal masses with gross exaggeration and misandry (just because institutional misandry is practically non-existent compared to misogyny doesn’t mean misandry doesn’t exist in other spheres).

However, this particular piece did raise the ire of one minority group. When discussing the unrealistic female body image all-but-demanded of society, Moore stated, “We are angry with ourselves for not being happier, not being loved properly and not having the ideal body shape – that of a Brazilian transsexual.”

Okay, before we hit the reaction, I want to go on record (…if this blog can really be considered any sort of reliable record) as initially believing this statement, while certainly not PC, was never meant to be hateful. And here’s where we take a quick side trip to discuss my own potentially back assward views on sex/gender (for the record, sex/sexuality/gender have so goddamn many terms now that I mostly just end up confused as to what’s going on when I think about all of them– I also don’t particularly understand why… no, you know what, that’s a can of worms for you all to get pissed at me for another day). BECAUSE OF REASONS.

I’m never going to truly understand the idea of believing yourself to be born the wrong  sex. I’m not condemning, I’m simply stating it’s one of those things outside my sphere of experience that I honestly have a difficult time imagining (To be fair, I have a difficult time with a lot of empathy-related issues as well, so we can chalk that up to my seemingly borderline sociopathic self, yes? …That’s a joke, I’m not a sociopath- I’m just emotionally retarded. Oh yeah, I’m un-PC all over the place today). I often think I exhibit more masculine traits than feminine, but then I cry over The Gilmore Girls and I’m stereotypically girly again. I think stereotypically “gendered” emotional reactions and interests are pretty much utter bullshit, anyway. We all exhibit traits of the masculine and the feminine both, some just show greater quantities of one or the other. My father is an ultra-manly, beer-drinking, stuff-building, football-watching dude who also loves to burn scented candles and take long bubble baths. I know people who listen to Lady Gaga and Metallica, wear ruffles and can handle a gun better than you, buy cute boots and enjoy a good Scotch.

We all slide between the masculine and the feminine because, despite our differing genitalia, the sexes are not black and white, this and that, one and the other. We are all people, unique, complicated, walking shades of grey (50 of them, if you are into bad literature- OH SNAP). I’m not saying society necessarily accepts this, I’m just saying that’s how it is.

And because of this belief (and despite more modern definitions of the terms), I do tend to use “gender” and “sex” interchangeably. The words, in my world, are used when describing those nigglingly different sets o’ genitals (heh, I wrote “genTITals” first). I am aware this ain’t PC, yo. But because of my views of “gender” as that sliding scale in each of us (like Kinsey and sexuality- I tell ya, I wish I could have coffee with that man, because we’d have shit to talk about), I don’t feel the need to differentiate between people’s insides in such black-and-white terms of ‘male’ and ‘female’. And yes, I know that some scientific studies have found differences between male and female brains, implying some sort of internal dichotomy I’m straight-up ignoring, and while I do admit that there have been legit differences found in the brains of the two sexes, these differences are never consistent across the board.

We could go on and on about my thoughts on genetics vs society when it comes to supposedly inherent gendered differences in the brain and development (hint: I don’t put a lot of stock in most genetic arguments because we can never study developing children brains in a vacuum without societal influence, rendering all studies/experiments fundamentally flawed), but I’m already way off-topic. Suffice to say, while I understand not feeling like you conform to a stereotypically male or female “gender”, I cannot understand feeling like you were born the wrong “sex”.

But just because something is not within my realm of experience doesn’t mean I don’t respect it. And so, if undergoing surgery (or not, seeing as not all transsexuals are post-op) to switch sexes is what’s going to make you a happy and fulfilled person, shit, fucking go for it. I’m not going to judge you for it (though I might not always use your preferred pronouns if you’re pre-op, and I’m very sorry about that, but I’m not perfect). I think all people have a fundamental right to pursue what makes them happy, so long as it doesn’t hurt others (and no, upsetting your “delicate sensibilities” doesn’t count as injury).

Unfortunately, transsexual culture and drag culture are inextricably wound together in the minds of the general populace. There’s nothing wrong with drag culture, but drag queens/kings are entertainers, basing their looks in caricatures of the other sex and their performances are comedic/satirical. Transsexuals are not caricatures- they are simply trying to live their lives in the sex they believe they should have been born to. For the most part, they are not caricatures- they are real women and real men. They wear jeans and t-shirts and business suits and cocktail dresses and ballet flats and baseball caps like anybody. Unlike drag queens/kings, trans individuals don’t fucking walk around in lime green sequined evening gowns and six-inch platform heels all the time. They are just men and women, dressing down, dressing up, having families, hanging with friends, just fucking being happy.

But, because sex/sexuality/gender is so very confusing and is confused even more by shit portrayals of various groups in media, most folks still confuse drag culture with trans individuals. And so, a trans woman has to be a 6’2″ broad with giant tits, a feather boa, and a silver miniskirt.

So, I assumed Moore fell into that trap. She was trying to give a perfectly exaggerated image of the “ideal” female body type, the type society pushes, and what she was going for when she said that the ideal body shape is “a Brazilian transsexual” is that stereotypical drag queen image people share of a trans woman. Was it PC? OH FUCK NO. It’s also straight-up wrong on most counts. But she was going for an exaggerated image of the ideal female form, and because drag queens are in fact caricatures of femininity, you don’t get more perfect an exaggeration.

At least, that’s what I assumed she meant. But she didn’t say drag queen. She said transsexual. While I was obviously being too optimistic (you’ll see why in a second), I really thought she just confused the two. As a professional writer, I think she could have simply said ‘underwear model’ and we would have understood where she was going. But I didn’t think her intention was, “HaHA, here’s a perfect example to stealthily spread my mega-hatred of transsexuals!” It was a confused and poorly chosen phrase, but I maintained her intent wasn’t hate.

But that doesn’t mean it didn’t offend. The transsexual community was, in fact, very upset by it. They demanded an apology from Moore.

At this point, Moore should have been all, “Shit, I fucked that up. Sorry, everybody, I was just being a bit of an idiot, not an intentional bigot. Swearsies.” If, in fact, she had made the mistake I believed she did.

INSTEAD, she lost her shit on Twitter. And not just in an angry rant way, in an angry, flippant, bigoted, transphobic hate spree. With such gems as:

“I dont prioritise this fucking lopping bits of your body over all else that is happening to women Intersectional enough for you?”

“I dont even accept the word transphobia any more than Islamaphobia You are using ‘intersectionality’ to shut down debate. Its bollocks.”

“!) People can just fuck off really. Cut their dicks off and be more feminist than me. Good for them.”

Okay, I think saying she lost her shit is a bit harsh. She just got nasty with people who were, admittedly, being nasty to her. She was being cyber-bullied pretty hard over this article. That being said, her response really solidified her own transphobia (whether she accepts the word or not) as it really highlights a huge issue facing transsexuals- the idea that a “natural” or cisgendered woman (or man) has more rights than them, is more important than them, and should be held above them.

It’s all some fucked up shit, really. I can’t believe our society is still all “Oh, they gets rights, but you don’t, for some arbitrary ass reasons.”

It’s become obvious, despite her explanation of using the phrase she used (“I deliberately used the word Brazilian transexual as ideal shape small hips and big T and A.”) that she is, in fact, kind of a bigot. At this point, while I’m no longer on her side, I still think the reaction to the initial phrase was a bit much…

More on that in a bit (I’m trying to keep this chronological).

So, there’s bullying going on all over the place on the Twitter, which causes Moore to /gquit that shit. I will not stand up and defend what she said, but I will say this (and I say this a lot and I do, truly, believe it): You cannot fight hate with more hate. What she said was bullshit. Calling her on her bullshit? Super just. But if she was legitimately bullied off of Twitter by people threatening her and her well-being… Well, that shit’s unacceptable. I don’t care what the bitch said.

[NOTE: I don’t know the exact types of messages sent to her. Various sources report her being ‘cyber-bullied,’ which I take to mean threats to her, not criticism of her shit opinions. But I’ve made the mistake of assuming once already in this debacle, so I hesitate to do so again. Judging by her above Twitter reactions to it all, it sounds like people were just calling out her work. Rage quitting because people are criticizing your work and your dickish views? That’s not a reaction to ‘cyber-bullying’, that’s being unable to take criticism. But, like I said, all my information here is really hearsay from later articles regarding this matter.]

I reiterate: Cyber-bullying, for any reason, is not cool.

So, Moore leaves Twitter. Which causes her friend Julie Burchill to write a reaction piece to the whole affair.

And oh boy, I tell ya- nothing I say can ever be as offensive as the shit this cunt writes. Some choice fucking snippets:

“I nevertheless felt indignant that a woman of such style and substance should be driven from her chosen mode of time-wasting by a bunch of dicks in chicks’ clothing.”

“But they’d rather argue over semantics. To be fair, after having one’s nuts taken off (see what I did there?) by endless decades in academia, it’s all most of them are fit to do.”

“I know [tranny’s] a wrong word, but having recently discovered that their lot describe born women as ‘Cis’ – sounds like syph, cyst, cistern; all nasty stuff – they’re lucky I’m not calling them shemales. Or shims.”

“And we are damned if we are going to be accused of being privileged by a bunch of bed-wetters in bad wigs.”

“To have your cock cut off and then plead special privileges as women – above natural-born women, who don’t know the meaning of suffering, apparently – is a bit like the old definition of chutzpah: the boy who killed his parents and then asked the jury for clemency on the grounds he was an orphan.”

HO-LY SHIT, RIGHT?

Oh yeah, this went over well. In fact, the piece is now the subject of an inquiry by the Observer readers’ editor. Well, no shit. Reading this filth makes me sick to my stomach. Sometimes, I am not PC. But I am not full of this vitriolic hate. Burchill tells us we should see trans women as second-class citizens to “natural” women. Buh-wha? For a supposed “radical feminist”, as she refers to herself, how can she think it’s acceptable to relegate anyone to second-class status? How can anyone think that ever? Why is it only recognized bigotry if she will benefit from triumphing over it?

I mean, this shit is appalling. Disgusting. Loathsome.

So when people blew up over it? Oh shit yeah, I was all over it. The Observer cannot allow this kind of filth to be published (how the fuck did it get published to begin with?). Even in this digital age, with online publications and less formal forms of reporting, there still have to be standards for columnists. And this kind of pure hate? It cannot be allowed.

I mean, what the ever-loving fuck?

***

There is one last thing I would like to mention. Both Moore and Burchill accuse the trans community of language policing, of quibbling over semantics. And, despite my deep reverence for language and the fact that I know semantics are fucking important (no matter what anyone says), I was feeling a little like they were making a point. As I initially argued, the original phrase, while not PC, isn’t inherently transphobic, is it?

So, why was the reaction so intense?

Then I get some context. I will admit to not being terribly knowledgeable about world trans issues- they don’t tend to show up on most major news sites (which is sad in and of itself). And so, it took an article by the well-spoken Roz Kaveney to shed some light on the issue for me and burn away some of my own ignorance on the matter:

At this point Suzanne Moore reprinted in the New Statesman a piece about female anger that complained, among other things, that women were expected to look “like Brazilian transsexuals”. A lot of people seem not to get why this upset most of the trans community.

In the first place there’s the implied dichotomy between women on the one hand and Brazilian trans women on the other – as if Brazilian trans women are somehow not women. But far more important is the fact well over a hundred Brazilian trans women were murdered in the last year alone. The failure of the mainstream press to cover the worldwide war on trans people is a significant failure – one of the major trans community events for the last few years has been the International Trans Day of Remembrance.

OH.

And now it all makes sense. Yes, this would really cut people to the quick, wouldn’t it? Looking at this, you have to wonder at why Moore specifically selected Brazilian trans women for her comment- was it coincidence, or was she jabbing the trans community, trying to bury the knife deeper? Either way, grossly disrespectful doesn’t even begin to cover it.

I get it now. She was wrong.

Moore has since popped back onto Twitter long enough to supposedly issue that apology she should have just fucking given from the start:

“I did not set out to offend and the murder of all women trans or not is clearly something I DO care about. I think readers know this?”

“I am grateful for the support of I have had from many top notch people gay straight trans who cares?”

“As I said I less concerned with peoples genital arrangements than the breakdown of the social contract. Which hurts.”

“If anyone cares to storify the abuse against me please do . I cant It was threatening, ignorant and nasty and my original points got lost.”

“Despite all this there has been much bridge building between me and several trans people who I deeply respect.”

“But I realise that my flip jokes, silliness and general way i behave on twitter is no longer possible.”

“So I do what most pro journalists do and simply self promote and never anything real or “controversial” ?”

“I am sorry to those that I misrepresented and I feel pretty misrepresent myself ( an EDL supporter??)”

“To think I am opposite side of anyone who has had to think long and hard about gender is horrible. I am not your enemy.”

“But I am not ladylike when attacked and fight with fire. Thats me. Otherwise I post music and have a laugh.”

“But for now I see must leave for a while. Really bad things are happening in the world and this is a storm in a double D cup.”

Oh, way to take the high ground there. It’s not an apology, and it still makes her look  like a total twat. “Oh, yes, sorry or something, but poor me.” Real fucking classy, Moore.

Then again, after all this, I don’t expect anything more from you.

Also, learn to Tweet, woman. You’re a professional writer- check that you’re typing your words correctly and for the love of Feynman, punctuate properly.

This whole fiasco is just sad. It’s a quagmire of hate.

Get your shit together, world. Because right now, you sicken me.

Brown Eyed Girl: A Study in Bullshit Studies

Galleons, I loves me some science (which you should really know by now). And I love to share with you lot some of the interesting, astounding, and odd research occurring around the world. But, while I’m prone to girlish squeals of glee at the mere mention of new particles and breakthroughs in quantum teleportation, I always try to remember (and remind you) that we must take all this new research with a grain of salt.

And by a grain of salt, I mean we need to apply the RULES OF SCIENCING to these studies. While established scientific theories have many years of rigorous testing and re-testing, figuring and re-figuring to verify the results of the initial studies behind them, fresh studies introducing new ideas still need to undergo that check-and-double-check process. So, while the scientists involved may have done everything they could to create a strong, objective study, other people may find flaws in their designs (the OPERA neutrinos, anyone?).

When reading science news, it can be easy to slip into a haze of joy/fear over all the studies rolling in… but if you are reading a science news site, it’s likely you are a rational being (most of the time). And so, you’ll be able to take a step back and read these things with a more discerning eye. You’ll be able to separate the quality studies from the questionable ones.

And, in the case of ludicrous “studies” like the following, you’ll get a hearty chuckle. So come, my galleons, and laugh with me at the absurdity.

***

Some folks over at Charles University in the Czech Republic decided to do a little study about what makes a person’s face appear trustworthy. An interesting idea (and one that’s probably a combination of factors, let’s be honest), but you can’t help but wonder how you’d frame an experiment to really study that.

Basically, the group created a simple little test and asked their test subjects to rate a variety of male and female faces based on perceived trustworthiness, basing their test on two features (…somehow): eye color and face shape.

According to the study’s… results, brown-eyed faces were found more trustworthy than blue-eyed (for faces of both genders), while more rounded male faces with larger mouths and chins were seen as more trustworthy than narrow male faces (apparently, female face shape makes no difference- we’re all untrustworthy snakes or something).

So then, to find which was more important (eye color or face shape), they introduced a third test. The third test used photographs of male faces that were identical except for one difference: eye color. And they found? Well, they found that both eye colors were fairly equal on the trustworthiness scale. Seems facial features were more important than eye color.

***

Now, this study is bullshit and a half for so many reasons.

To begin with, how can you make an accurate test for trustworthiness based on eye color? The supposed third test is actually the only test that can actually single out eye color as a factor- everything else has to be the same (the goddamn control of the experiment) in order to test for one specific thing. Using any other type of test, tests without the proper fucking control, make any statements regarding eye color as a potential factor for trustworthiness laughable and a strong case of correlation not implying causation. As test three (what should have been the “eye color test” to begin with) shows, eye color doesn’t seem to actually impact perceived trustworthiness. The researchers falsely assumed (from their flawed ass tests) that eye color caused a change in perceived trustworthiness, but that data was coincidental.

Or, more amusingly, as one of the researchers said, “We concluded that although the brown-eyed faces were perceived as more trustworthy than the blue-eyed ones, it was not brown eye color per se that caused the stronger perception of trustworthiness but rather the facial features associated with brown eyes.”

…Because brown-eyed people all have the same facial features, and all blue-eyed folks have extremely different features. Uh huh.

Not to mention that they were supposedly look at “face shape”, then suddenly start describing facial features. Were the tests designed to test the supposed trustworthiness of various facial features? Well, based on what we learned from the fucking eye color portion, we can assume it’s a hearty “fuck no” there.

The study is just junk. Utter horseshit. I mean, one look at this has you laughing, right? They can’t possibly consider this valid science. This is the kind of shit a bored middle school student does for a science fair project.

Remember, galleons, not everything posted as “science news” is good science. Some of it is crap. Worth nothing more than a derisive snort and an eye roll before clicking away. Don’t be drawn into their lies. Keep a level head when reading any purportedly scientific article. I have faith in your good sense and intelligence, dear galleons. Science is all about questioning the universe around you- questioning the validity of experiments is part of that.

Smart Phone Etiquette 101

Smart phone users, I have a bone to pick with you. I know that fancy little gadget that you paid out the ass for allows you to get online whenever you want, allowing you to look at shitty YouTube clips whenever you desire. I get that. And I’m not even saying you shouldn’t do so. Browse the internet to your little heart’s content.

But please

WEAR. FUCKING. HEADPHONES.

If you are in a room/on a bus/on a train/on a plane/anywhere around other people, wear headphones when you are watching your fucking videos. The people around you do not want to hear whatever crappy Dolly Parton cover you are watching. In fact, those very people are trying to carry on a conversation or read a fucking book, and have absolutely no desire to be subjected to some guy yelling weird shit at passing vehicles. Those people are, in fact, talking or reading. Now, they have to try to talk over your dumbshit noise or attempt to tune out the cacophony while trying to get immersed in their novel.

Smart phone users who don’t use headphones, you guys are just straight-up douchebags. I wear headphones when I’m listening to my iPod so that I do not bother the people around me with crazy German punk Christmas music. I would like, nay, I fucking expect you to show me the same goddamn courtesy.

Enjoy your videos, just enjoy them quietly.

You cocks.

Old Devil Moon

The full moon is steeped in mysticism and folklore. The most prevalent tales center around men transforming into lupine beasts, running amok and biting people and (occasionally) getting taken out by bullets made from melted down jewelry.

And while this all might seem like hokum (except for two guys I’ve known who legitimately think they’re werewolves… I wish I was making that up), if you’ve ever worked in a hospital/known someone who works in a hospital, you might swear up and down that the full moon brings out some of the more… beastly aspects of patients.

Even when I worked in a hospital, I thought this was bullshit. But so many people (about 80% of nurses and 64% of doctors, apparently) bought into it.

Well, thanks to sweet, sweet science, there is now proof that I was right. The full moon has nothing to do with psychological issues in people.

Excuse me while I go revel in how awesomely right I am.

Breaking away from my glory-basking, it’s actually surprising nobody’s done a study on this before. Maybe the scientific community at large thought it too silly to address.

But if we can study the physics of ponytails, we can surely study the supposed link between the full moon and an influx of crazies in the emergency room. And so, Professor Geneviève Belleville of Université Laval’s School of Psychology led a team of researchers who studied emergency room patients at Montreal’s Sacré-Coeur Hospital and Hôtel-Dieu de Lévis between March 2005 and April 2008. Belleville and company examined 771 folks who popped into the ER for chest pains for which no medical cause was determined. These patients’ psych evals revealed that many of these patients had anxiety attacks, mood disorders, or suicidal thoughts.

After comparing these admittances to lunar cycles, Belleville’s group found… absolutely nothing. There is no link between the moon and psychological issues.

“We hope our results will encourage health professionals to put that idea to rest,” said Belleville. “Otherwise, this misperception could, on the one hand, color their judgment during the full moon phase; or, on the other hand, make them less attentive to psychological problems that surface during the remainder of the month.”

Perhaps not the biggest revelation of your day, my galleons, but I relish any opportunity to be smugly superior in my badass correctitude. Also, it helps balance out the fact that I have to go in to work tonight and admit to my douchebag of a coworker that I was wrong and that Daedric armor actually does have a higher armor rating than dragonbone plate.

And why the fuck is that, anyway, seeing as dragonbone smithing is a higher tier of smithing and should, therefore, be better equipment than Daedric, because why should I even bother getting my smithing to 100 if I can craft the best heavy armor at smithing level 90, and I don’t care if dragonbone’s a little lighter, my stamina is so high it doesn’t matter, so I’m not going to wear it because Daedric protects me better, and if I was so very concerned about armor weight, I’d be a light armor wearer and learn to not walk my face right into enemy weapons…

I’m off topic now. I should go.

The Trouble With Tobermory

Galleons, I may have a hot temper, but there is very little that truly enrages me. I’m frequently irritated, sure. Often disgusted. But full-on, shaking, vitriolic rage… well, that takes a special kind of stupidity to evoke.

And sweet baby jesus, have I got some top-grade stupidity for you today. I honestly cannot think about any aspect of this story without feeling tremors of anger thrumming in my chest. One of those stories that you read and just kind of stare at, mouth agape, trying to figure out how the hell this is even a thing.

The Scottish Isle of Mull is the fourth largest of the Scottish islands. The capital is Tobermory, a quaint-as-shit fishing port sporting a population of about 700 people:

In addition to its 700 human residents, Tobermory sports your typical patina of domesticated animals, including one particular roving ginger kitteh.¹ The cat is kind of a local celebrity, wandering the town, lounging on cars, and, you know, generally being a cat. He’s like a town mascot- Tobermory’s cat:

He is, in fact, called the Tobermory cat, and visitors to the town take his picture and give him a good scratch behind the ears as part of the whole Tobermory experience. In fact, he has his own Facebook page…

Which is nothing out of the ordinary. I mean, shit, ginger ale, the LHC, and Jim Darkmagic (of the New Hampshire Darkmagics) have fan pages as well. I know plenty of folks who have made pages devoted to their own pets. I once made a Facebook group for people who wanted to quit college and run away to Europe to be part of a gypsy caravan. Rule 34 of the internet states “if it exists, there’s porn of it”. Rule 134 should probably be “if it exists, there’s a Facebook page for it”.

And so, since the Tobermory cat exists, he has a Facebook presence. There’s a page devoted to pictures of him and charming anecdotes.

Because there can never be enough cats on the internet, can there?

We now hop over to the Edinburgh region of dear Scotland, where Debi Gliori, a notable children’s author/illustrator (I have never heard of her, but then, I don’t read children’s books, so I can’t say I know any current children’s authors), receives a call from a local publisher. She’s known this man for many years, and he tells her he has an idea for a book. A book about the Tobermory cat. A Tobermory bookseller has been in touch with the publisher and is excited about the idea- it’s a great way to promote the town and give it some wider exposure, driving in tourists. After all, who better to draw folk to Tobermory than its unofficial mascot?

Gliori had never met Tobermory’s little celebrity. She popped onto his Facebook page and saw a few pictures of him, but she didn’t want to do anything with the character until she met the cat in person. So, she and the publisher traveled to Mull. They met with the local bookseller, who mentioned some local artist, Gus Stewart. Stewart had apparently set up the cat’s Facebook page (because, you know, that shit’s so hard) and was upset that Gliori and company were thinking of making a book about the cat.

Why, you ask? Why, because Stewart somehow thinks the cat is his intellectual property.

Yeah, this is where everything gets batshit crazy.

So, the publisher and Gliori meet with Stewart and tell him they aren’t stealing his… cat pictures. They say that Gliori is creating her own version of the Tobermory cat (it plays the violin or something… I don’t really care), with her own illustrations. It has nothing to do with Stewart’s fucking Facebook page.

Stewart never backs down, and the publisher and Gliori leave. Work continues on Gliori’s Tobermory cat story. Meanwhile, Stewart has starting cyber-stalking Gliori, sending messages to venues she’s going to be speaking at asking if they know one of their guests is a thief of intellectual property.

The whole situation is baffling, but I’d like to note here that Stewart never mentioned Gliori by name. These messages to venues and groups, along with statuses on the Tobermory cat Facebook page, are all those delightfully vague things that remind one of a 13-year-old girl’s status updates. You know, the girls who write stuff like “Some people aren’t worth your time and it’s best to just let them go” and “Life has a way of breaking you and putting you back together though the pieces will never again fit in quite the same way”. Stewart’s messages contain whiffs of that same faux-elite, actually attention-seeking drive to drag people into their overblown issues. For example:

Stealing creative works is not right. We wish to protect our creative rights so would kindly suggest people come up with their own ideas rather than steal or rework our ideas. We are open to suggestions for imaginative joint ventures based on our Tobermory Cat’s celebrity character but take a dim view of simple theft or derivatives which exploit the work we have done creating a celebrity cat.

Anyway, Stewart appealed to his fans, who rallied (as fans are wont to do) and started a campaign of cyber-bullying against Gliori and the publisher. Which is probably unsurprising, seeing as the anonymity of the internet seems to inspire newer, viler lows in humanity.

And why this sudden outpouring of hate? Because of a cat. A fucking cat.

No, not a cat. The cat didn’t do anything.

This is about Stewart, his complete inability to understand copy write law, “intellectual property”, or art, for that matter. And its about the people loyal to him, who blindly attack this author (without having so much as read her book, mind you) for daring to tackle a particular idea they think she shouldn’t. Not child rape, not the glorification of slavery- no, nothing so appalling. They are up-in-arms over a kitty. A run-of-the-mill ginger kitty in a small Scottish town.

This is about stupidity. This is about censorship.

***

Now, before we go any further, I think it’s important to detail exactly how Stewart believes the Tobermory cat is his “intellectual property”. Because, if you are a reasonably intelligent person, you’re probably trying to figure out just how the hell you can claim a living creature as your “intellectual property”.

“I wisheded the kitteh into existence, guyz. He iz mah kitteh- I madez him.”

Stewart seems to believe he created the character of “The Tobermory Cat” through his Facebook page. It’s apparently all part of some art project of his. Or something.

According to Stewart, his, uh, “goal” with this Facebook page of cat photos was to create “the worlds first famous for being famous cat”.

So meta.

Apparently, upon achieving this “famous for being famous” status (however you judge that), Stewart’s going to move on to branding, product placements, and merchandising. Which I personally find hilarious, seeing as it kind of flies in the face of what most artists stand for. Cheap commercialism and ridiculous celebrity are, in fact, the complete antithesis of what 99% of the creative community would consider art.

My guess is it’s intended as a playful jab at celebrity culture. One without any real artistic resonance, sure, but a cute little “gotcha” nonetheless.

What’s truly baffling about all of this is that Stewart firmly believes that the Tobermory cat belongs to him (for the record, the living, breathing cat does not belong to Stewart) because he’s responsible for its celebrity. Never you mind that the cat was already known as a staple of the town, its hijinks amusing and entertaining the locals. Yes, the cat may have been Tobermory’s unofficial mascot before Stewart, but by all the gods, he made a goddamn Facebook page dedicated to it. It fucking must be his now. The man admits he’s trying to create a cat “famous for being famous”, which implies the cat was famous before Stewart came around. So what the fuck is this about?

Stewart claims this isn’t just about cat pictures: “We are not interested in simply producing pictures of a cat, we are creating a celebrity cat in a place and with a back story.” I spent way more time than I wanted to browsing through the stupid Facebook page, and I don’t see some kind of character emerging from any of this. It’s a bunch of pictures of a ginger cat sleeping, walking around, and interacting with the town, with a bunch of mundane captions that add nothing to the cutesy photos.

So, it’s hard to see how a children’s book about a cat that does not belong to Stewart (I cannot stress enough that this is not his fucking cat) could possibly interfere with his Facebook page of cat photos and the kitsch postcards he makes from the images.

I could see him being a bit ruffled if he was releasing a children’s book about the Tobermory cat. He still doesn’t own the cat (and a physical, living creature cannot be someone’s “intellectual property”), so I don’t think he would have a case unless he could prove Gliori and co. stole the plot of the book or some character quirk not present in the real cat that he created for his own book. The cat itself remains its own entity, free to be a furry little muse for anyone.

Of course, Stewart releasing a children’s book based on the Tobermory cat is absurd. After all, when this all started back in December of 2011, Stewart posted on the Facebook page:

They intend to merchandise what we consider to be our creation by producing a kids book based on our Tobermory Cat. For commercial reasons T.C. Management really doesn’t want to go anywhere near Balamory – we preferring to work amongst the more playful adult demographic and don’t want our creation dragging off to play school.

BUT WAIT. Fast forward four months, when Stewart’s now deeply entrenched in his personal war against Gliori and co., and now he’s posting this:

our Tobermory Cat card collection was launched today. Next we intend to produce a children’s book based on the ginger tom cat character and stories we have created.

Yeah, Stewart’s a fucking artist and certainly not being a whinging little fucker just for the attention it’s garnering him. I believe it.

To be fair, Stewart old boy, you’re now ripping off someone else’s idea of a children’s book based on that kitty. By your own twisted logic, you’re the douchebag thief now.

Fucking wanker.

***

So, beyond Stewart’s glaring fucking stupidity, what really pisses me off about this story? I guess it’s the idea that we can cull and censor the very world around us, dam it up as it trickles into the pool of inspiration all artists (musicians, painters, photographers, poets, novelists, etc.) visit in pursuit of their next idea.

Artists pull from nature, from society, from the news, from experience, from history. Creative folk are struck by the slant of a sunbeam on dark brown eyes, by a cellist playing Albinoni’s Adagio in G Minor in the ruins of Sarajevo during the 92-96 siege of the city, by the unknown back stories of red shirts on Star Trek.

Once, seated outside a dormitory on a summer evening, I saw my friend Derek walking out of the darkness with a backpack on his back, fireflies flickering in the grass around him. This image inspired me to write a poem. The unnamed man in the poem is inspired by Derek, but it isn’t him. I am not creating an autobiography, I’m creating art. I was inspired by Derek, but he is not my “intellectual property” (and his wife would kick my ass if I ever said he was, heh). I do not own him.

The Tobermory cat is a lovely, large ginger kitty. He sunbathes, he explores, he pesters local wildlife. His cult status within the town is sweet and beautiful. It is, dare I say, inspiring. If I considered Stewart’s Facebook page “art” (which I don’t- I don’t consider any Facebook pages to be art of any sort), I would have to argue that it shouldn’t matter if he has this page and Gliori has a children’s book. The point of any art created around the Tobermory cat is to celebrate a living creature and his unique connection to the small town he resides in. No one person created this cat- he created himself. All any artist or fan could do is add their own little snippet to the mythos surrounding him (…like Slender Man, that creepy motherfucker). Nobody owns him. As Wright Morris said, “Cats don’t belong to people. They belong to places.”

The cat is the spirit of Tobermory, its fuzzy genius loci. Writing about/sculpting/painting/composing a jaunty jazz number² inspired by the Tobermory cat is no different than painting the Grand Canyon or writing about Cleopatra. It’s about being inspired. The Tobermory cat inspired a concept of a Facebook-centric art project for Stewart, and it inspired a children’s book for Gliori and her publisher. The cat himself, that ginger gentleman roving the streets of Tobermory, is owned by neither. There is no claim of intellectual property to be disputed.

To kowtow to Stewart’s ridiculous claim would be setting a nasty precedent. Russia may still go around persecuting people for their art, but Scotland (and most of the world) is better than that. Criticism is one thing. No one will ever please the world, and artists know this better than anyone (except maybe politicians). Criticism is useful- it helps us grow as an artist. The ever-so-talented Amanda Fucking Palmer was discussing this on Twitter this morning. A follower mentioned they were disappointed with Amanda’s last show. Amanda politely asked the follower to tell her more. Why was the show weak, in that girl’s eyes? When people started sending harsh messages to the follower, Amanda stepped up and told them to stop, that she is legitimately curious when people don’t enjoy shows she thinks were good. Amanda may be a strong and independent personality, a lady who does what she likes onstage because she loves what she’s doing, but she’s not oblivious to her fans. She’s one of those rare artists who listens to her fans and works with them. She gives us what we want, without compromising herself.

She’s got this art thing down.

But criticism is not the same as viciously attacking artists, working to undermine their credibility (as happened with Gliori), and attempting to trade mark nature itself to prevent art from being created. That, my galleons, is the most troubling aspect of this whole story. That is why I’m so ludicrously pissed off about this. I feel bad for Gliori, I feel disgusted by Stewart, but mostly, I’m thoroughly, 100% en-fucking-raged that people are spewing hate and filth in the supposed name of “preservation of intellectual property”.

You do not own the world. You do not own the people, the scenery, the animals. You do not enslave nature in the name of art. You share it, you celebrate it, you unveil its mysteries and its wonders.

Instead of attacking someone else and being a great tit about something utterly nonsensical, perhaps Stewart should just focus on his own art. Art isn’t supposed to divide us. Art unites us. It brings people together.

End Rant

1 In my half-assed research regarding this fucking cat (I am not a journalist and have never claimed to be), there are actually conflicting reports. Some refer to it as a singular cat, while some say the cat is actually a handful of similar looking felines. For the sake of this post, we’ll refer to a singular cat, though I do believe the cat in question is actually many cats.

2 On a completely unrelated note, I am utterly amused by the idea of a saucy little jazz song featuring bagpipes, to really evoke the feel of Scotland. SOMEBODY MAKE THIS A REALITY.

The Faygo Imbroglio or Why I’m Not Very Good at Being a Michigander

“Why the hell do you people drink something that looks like Easter egg dye and tastes like you dropped a cough drop sucker into a bottle of battery acid?” I wheezed as I-

Actually, before I tell you that story, I have to tell you this one. Chronology, background, context, all that jazz. You know how it goes, galleons.

When I first entered MSU, I had these moments where I felt like I was adrift in a strange land. 1000 miles away from where I grew up, I suddenly found myself trying to learn the rules of Euchre (which I did learn, but it doesn’t really matter, seeing as I find the game incredibly stupid and never play it), shopping at Meijer and Kroger for the first time, trying to get someone to explain to me what the everloving fuck “Sweetest Day” was (why yes, Virginia, there is a holiday even dumber than Valentine’s Day). But it was the Redpop that really threw me.

There is no Faygo out west. We had Shasta (turns out, they are both owned by the same company… and are both equally shitty discount soda). I’m fairly certain Shasta has some sort of strawberry soda, but I don’t know if I had it as a kid (and if I did, it was apparently underwhelming). I can tell you that there is no real fuss made over any disturbingly red carbonated beverages where I grew up. But those first few months at MSU, I kept hearing people extolling the virtues of this fucking Redpop.

I had no goddamn idea what they were talking about.

It wasn’t until a little student function that I learned the answer. Refreshments included a wide array of Faygo flavors, and as my roommate poured herself a cup of something that looked like a video game health potion, I poked hesitantly at the bottle and asked about it. The ladies around me starting exclaiming, filling a red plastic cup with the potentially radioactive substance and shoving it into my hand before I could utter a word.

Apparently, I just “had to try this stuff.” So I did.

It was caustic and too sweet, and I nearly spat the stuff all over the tittering females. Needless to say, I was unimpressed with the godly Redpop. My still full cup managed to find its way unceremoniously into the trash, and I remained that weird outsider from across the Mississippi.

But now I was an outsider with knowledge. Knowledge that Redpop is fucking disgusting.

Which brings us to today, when my coworker bought a bottle of that same sickly strawberry soda for lunch. I wrinkled my nose at it as he set it on the table, causing him to turn to me in question. When told I find Redpop abhorrent, he (and the others at the table) proceeded to wail and complain. How on earth could someone not love this ambrosia, this nectar of the cheap soda gods?

Tired of listening to this (because it was really getting in the way of me reading my book), I said I was willing to give it another shot. With an eagerness I’ve only seen on the faces of extremely stupid puppies, he pushed the bottle across the table to me.

I sat there for a moment, staring at the bottle. It was just as unnaturally red as I remembered, a start contrast against the white table. There it sat. Redpop. My great foe.

Mustering my courage (and steeling my stomach), I unscrewed the cap. Immediately, I could smell the saccharine-yet-vaguely-acidic stench that I remembered from my first experience with the stuff all those years ago. I glanced balefully up at my coworkers once, then took a swig.

“Why the hell do you people drink something that looks like Easter egg dye and tastes like you dropped a cough drop sucker into a bottle of battery acid?” I wheezed as I sputtered and choked down the hellish liquid. Everyone at the table laughed as I made faces and grabbed my own drink, trying to wash the taste of mania and regret from my mouth. The taunting went on for a while, but the aftertaste of that burning death drink lingered far longer than their laughter.

Also, I actually cared about the Redpop flavor. Because it was all up in my mouth, causing me grief, being awful and all. There even came a point when all I could wish for was a quick death of all my taste buds- anything to get that foul taste out of my mouth.

Anyway, the moral of the story is that Redpop is fucking disgusting, and I don’t know how anybody drinks it.

Before the Mass Effect 3 Ending Debacle: The Dragon Age 2 Disappointment

I’ve already gone into excruciating detail on my feelings regarding the fan backlash to the ME3 ending, so the fact that, after staunchly defending BioWare’s product, I’m about to turn around here and bitch about the failings of one of their other games might seem a bit hypocritical. Perhaps even worthy of some disdain. I’m going to ask you to roll with me here, galleons. Give me a chance to prove that my criticisms are justified, not just mindless whinging (yes, I think I’m British).

If I fail, you are allowed to mercilessly tear me apart in the comments. I’ll deserve it.

***

I really looked forward to the release of Dragon Age 2. While I didn’t enjoy Dragon Age: Origins as much as my beloved Mass Effect, I was still quite fond of the title. I will acknowledge that there were problems with it (particularly centered around combat), but what made the title so enjoyable was its throwback nature. Origins felt like the high fantasy games I’d grown up with, like Baldur’s Gate (which, given the developer, only makes sense). One hero, with their ragtag band of followers, out to slay the dragon/demon and stop the big nasty evil from overtaking the land. It was full of haughty woodland elves and misguided mages trafficking with demons and underground dwarven cities full of small bearded warriors/smiths. I fought ogres and golems and spiders and dragons and even some giant rats. I traveled with the bastard heir to the throne, the reformed assassin, the kindly healer, the drunk dwarf. It was just classic fun- nothing too new, nothing too special, just a solid, enjoyable game.

So, when DA2 was released, I expected an expansion on the sword-and-sorcery goodness of the first. What I got was… well, it was disappointing. It didn’t feel like the same series at all. And, upon playing it again now, I still feel the same way.

Here’s how DA2 failed me.

The lack of a grand scope/sense of the epic/any solid plot for a good chunk of the game.

It is basically a staple of high fantasy that there is some huge, overarching goal the main characters are striving to complete. Slay the dragon, save the princess, toss a ring into a volcano. You know, that sort of nonsense. In Origins, your character was a Grey Warden, part of a special order of warriors with the job of defeating the rise of the darkspawn (orcish creatures) every few ages (known as a Blight). You and bastard princeling Alistair are the last Grey Wardens, set out to gather a mighty army from the scattered races of Ferelden to march against the darkspawn horde, slay the Archdemon that leads them, and maybe have cake afterwards. Pretty standard fantasy goodness. So, your character travels across the kingdom, aiding the dwarves and elves and mages and men in order to gain their support for the final battle. And, in the end, your army marches to battle, you defeat the Archdemon, and the Blight is over.

Huzzah.

Then the expansion, Awakening, comes out. Your Grey Warden is now working in the province given to the order by the new ruler of Ferelden. You are dealing with increased darkspawn activity, something that shouldn’t happen with the Blight being over and all. You find some talking, weirdly sentient darkspawn who try to get you to help in their plan to free their people from the magical slavery of the Blight, so that the darkspawn race might prosper and eventually work with the rest of the races of the world. You can either agree to help or not, but it sets the stage for some very interesting future developments with the darkspawn.

And then DA2 comes out and… nothing. You aren’t a Grey Warden anymore- in fact, you are a completely different character from who you were in the first game. You are living up in another city-state as a refugee from the events of the first game. You don’t seem to have any more pressing goal than surviving and maybe reclaiming your family estate (which your uncle lost to pay a debt).

…I’m sorry, what the fuck just happened?

Da2 is split into three “acts,” three different years in the city of Kirkwall. Each year has a completely different kind of mini-goal to it, though the “goals” for the last two years are less “goals” and more “situations you accidentally become embroiled in over the course of the year.” If you were to tell me, upon starting the game, what the final battle dealt with, I would have been confused. Hell, you don’t even really meet the two people who become the two final bosses until Act Fucking 3. They have no real presence in your game until the final third of it.

The game just feels woefully cobbled together. Act 1 has you running around trying to scrounge up enough gold to go on this adventuring expedition that will (hopefully) secure your fortune and let your family reclaim their estate. Okay. I can get behind that, I suppose. Then Act 2 rolls around. You have your estate. So…? You kind of just run around doing a bunch of pointless quests because… you want the gold (even though you’re rich)? You want to help people (even if you’re choosing the mega-douche dialogue options)? There’s no fucking motivation for your character’s actions. Eventually, because of a few random quests you’ve gone on, you somehow end up involved in the big qunari (race of big dudes with demon horns who want to convert everyone to their religion/lifestyle or else slaughter them mercilessly)  vs. citizens of Kirkwall fight. You bring an end to it, everyone is happy, you gain a fancy title… Then, Act 3 happens. And, once again, you are kind of slowly, half-assedly dragged into this big war between the mages and the templars.

What. The. Fuck.

Everything feels so pieced together and tacked on. There are a few really interesting, rewarding side quests, but there is no real main quest. It’s not a sandbox, where you kind of build your own game experience, you just go around getting letters and doing jobs for people for seemingly little or no reason. Considering the game is an RPG, this is a major problem for the title.

And the game has next to nothing to do with the events of the first game. You can import your Origins save in, but all it does is influence whether or not a few cameos happen. Nothing that even remotely influences the actual story… because there is no fucking story. It takes one of the small areas of contention in Origins (the templar and mage situation) and eventually blows it the fuck up (literally) after 2/3 of a game full of shuffling your feet and misdirection and tries to pass this off as some grand story.

It’s not. It’s really, really not.

Take Mass Effect (I can’t help but compare the two series because they are both BioWare creations… sorry). Imagine Shepard had managed to defeat the Reapers in the first game. And then, instead of any continuation of the Reaper/Shepard story, the second game has you playing as a survivor of Eden Prime who, I don’t know, becomes a merc and fucks around in spaceland for a bit, eventually ending up involved in some kind of human coup on the Citadel, and finally accidentally ends up hardcore reigniting the human/turian war. You’d have been… disappointed, no? Confused, maybe?

I think the fact that the story from Origins didn’t directly carry over to DA2 would have bothered me less if they hadn’t pulled that “keep your save files, they’re going to matter” bullshit on me. My Origins decisions impacted less than nothing in DA2. Honestly, the idea of having different protagonists having different adventures across the same world is fine and dandy. But don’t bother with having me import a save if it doesn’t mean anything. The Elder Scrolls does it right- they set each game in different provinces (and at different times), you never import a save, you are playing isolated heroes. Lore grows and continues from game to game, but your old characters have no impact. And it totally works. Nobody’s complaining. Play it one way or the other, but don’t do this half-assed import bullshit, BioWare.

I know this is their story and their world and I feel kind of cheap complaining about it when I so harshly judged people for doing the same to the ME3 ending. I feel like I really have less issue with where the story went and more issue with how they got there, painfully limping along until they decided to make a point.

Speaking of the “point”…

The story got WAY too political WAY too fast.

This is a high fantasy series. At least, that’s what it had been touted as. We’ve already discussed some of what one expects when that term is tossed around. And that’s what the first game was.

And then holy shit, DA2 tries to jump into a completely different direction. By Act 3, when the thing finally decides to come up with some semblance of a plot, they’ve decided to just blow the whole mages/templars thing into a full-blown war.

In the Dragon Age world, mages are taken from their families at young ages and locked away in the Circle of Magi, a tower or something in every province where mages live and study under close watch of the templars, guards from the Chantry who are there to make sure the mages toe the line. Throughout history, mages just fucked with shit, calling up demons and using blood magic and making everything fucking awful with their sparkly magics. So, the templars keep them in check, killing the ones who show signs of possession or blood magic dabbling. The mages are essentially imprisoned. If you don’t want to live in the Circle, and you have magic, you are known as an apostate, and templars will kill you or haul you off to the Circle if they catch you using magic out in the world.

So, the mages are bitchy because they are locked in a tower their whole lives with horrible sword-wielding guards breathing down their necks and waiting to run them through, and the templars feel like they have to crack down harder as more and more mages escape/call on forbidden magics to try to escape their prison.

I mean, yeah, it’s a shitty situation. And I feel really bad for the mages.¹ But they go from mild discontent in the first game to full-on claw-your-face-off-with-lightning crazy in the second. And the templars go from being stern guards who at least attempt to be fair to religion-crazed-sword-happy lunatics. It was a situation I’d have been happy to play through and resolve, except that the two factions became so fucking insane that I didn’t want to side with either of them. Kind of just wanted to firebomb the lot and run off with the pirate wench.

Instead of gathering a giant army to face a demonic invasion of the land, I’m playing errand-boy/girl back and forth between these two whiny, completely batshit groups. No matter what I do, I’m about to help someone ignite a giant war across the world between these two factions. Try as I might to minimize the damage, in the end, everything goes to shit. I’m trying to be diplomatic and political when all I want is to go stab stabbity stab a dragon in the eye.

The game is incredibly claustrophobic.

The entire game is set within one city and a few small, surrounding areas. Mostly, it’s just this city. You don’t get to go anywhere else. Hightown. Lowtown. The Docks. The Gallows. Darktown. The coastline around the city. The mountain summit by it. A mine nearby. That’s it. So, you’re just running back and forth between different parts of the city. Again. And again. And again.

You spend the whole time feeling closed in and like you’re going nowhere (which is greatly exacerbated by the lack of cohesive plot). It’s fucking maddening.

Another facet of this is…

HIDEOUS FUCKING MAP RECYCLING

I have no idea who thought this was a good idea, but let me at ’em. I’m gonna bitch slap them so goddamn hard. There are, like, 5 (maybe) different dungeon maps that just keep getting recycled. They’ll close off a section one time, make you run it backwards the next, but it’s the same thing again and again and again.

This is one of the biggest complaints from the fan community. And with good reason. For a game that’s isolated to this one city, you feel like you could go nuts making gorgeous/interesting/complex/unique dungeons to keep things fresh. Instead, you have a handful of small, boring, shitty little maps being used again and again.

By the third time you’re canvassing the same map, you’re ready to strangle someone. By the tenth, you just want to cry in frustration. It’s the worst.

The Stamina/Mana and Cooldown Fuckery

Okay, so you have a stamina bar. That’s fine. You can only use talents until you are out of stamina, with the bigger, more powerful attacks using more stamina.

Or, you have cooldowns on your talents. You use one, then it takes thirty seconds or something for that one to be useable again. The more powerful the attack, the longer the cooldown.

But you don’t have BOTH. This is actually a carry-over issue from Origins. Not only do you have a stamina bar that depletes as you use your talents, but they all have cooldowns. Plus, your heath/stamina/mana potions all have a damn cooldown. It can make it fucking impossible to do anything in intense combat situations.

It would be like having both the weapon overheat system from ME1 and the thermal clips from 2&3. Together. At the same time. Just redundant bullshit making it unnecessarily harder to fight.

The romance options are incredibly one-dimensional.

I know this is a silly concern, but I’ve been spoiled by the ME games. Garrus. Liara. Tali. Thane. Ashley. They are all so interesting, with real personalities and humor and stories. They all feel like real, flawed, wonderful people. So, I expect BioWare to be able to create some really memorable characters like that for me in the Dragon Age games as well. And in Origins, they did. Leliana. Zevran. Alistair. Morrigan. They were all layered, interesting characters.

Then DA2 happens. I have Fenris, the broody elf with the sexy voice who is super emo and tortured because he was a slave and single-mindedly hates magic and mages. There’s Anders, the once-playful healer who is super emo and tortured because he’s an apostate and single-mindedly hates templars. Sebastian, the prince-turned-priest (sort of) with the Scottish accent who is super emo because of his complete, pathetic inability to decide whether he wants to stay a priest or go back to being a prince. Isabela, the skanky pirate wench who, bless her, is just a skanky pirate wench constantly trying to get in your pants. And Merrill, the totally naive elf mage who is actually stupid enough to think blood magic and demons are okay. The characters do not grow or change or have any real depth beyond this.

I forgive Isabela, because her wenching is hilarious. There are various scenes where she’s hitting on everyone and having to go to the healer for her STDs. She’s an unabashed tart. I can’t help but tip my hat to her.

But the rest… god, it makes romancing any of them a fucking chore. I get to the point where I want them all to just shut the fuck up. I’d rather romance the dwarf- he’s the most interesting companion of the lot. I romanced Fenris last go round and if I so much as tried to be a decent human being to a mage, he got pissed.

There’s a scale of friendship/rivalry for each character and you need so much friendship/rivalry to successfully romance one of them. Yes, that’s right, you can romance them as their rival. They hate everything you stand for, but man, then just can’t wait to jump your bones.

Most of the time, rivalmances make no sense. Then again…

Playing as one of the major classes doesn’t make any sense.

I thought about playing a mage on the play-through I just started, but I had to stop because it makes absolutely no sense that Hawke, who gets into fights all over town (including right in front of the templars at the very beginning of the game), could get away with being a fucking mage when the templars supposedly kill/imprison anyone who even smells like a mage. It would be completely unbelievable to play the game as a mage. There’s no way they’d constantly turn a blind eye to you, I’m sorry.

Then again, if I can’t figure out the motivations for my own character’s actions, how can I figure out the motivations for other characters?

***

So, okay, that’s a lot of bitching, I know. And it probably makes you wonder why I’d ever continue playing the game. Thing is, on its own, it’s not the worst thing I’ve ever played. As broken as many aspects of the game feel, there are other areas where it shines. It’s 100% BioWare in that the party banter and much of the dialogue is just great. And you have more varied options in conversations than you do in the ME trilogy- I love that sarcasm option like mad (it makes Hawke a smartass who makes really bad jokes only he/she thinks is funny… sound familiar?).

And I just really, really love slashing things to death with my daggers.

Anyway, unnecessary tirade over. I still maintain I’m not a total hypocrite. I’m allowed to dislike a game and/or portions of it. I’m not going to go around bitching and demanding BioWare change everything to make me happy. I’d like to hope they take some of their failings into account in the future (like never doing the map recycling thing again), but at the end of the day, I’m not going to love every game I play or even every game BioWare puts out. So it goes.

If you don’t buy my “I’m not a hypocrite” logic, I am more than happy to face the full brunt of your rage/disdain. I still am not sure I don’t deserve it.

1 DA2 makes it a little difficult to feel truly sympathetic for the mages’ plight, seeing as 99.9% of the mages you meet either become demon-possessed abominations or use blood magic at the slightest insult. The mages are more likeable in the first game- you meet abominations, sure, but you also meet mages who don’t run around with demons, who feel trapped in the Circle even though they are totally good guys.

The Tale of the Sanctimonious Scrivener: A Rant

There is an old joke that professors grade essays on their heft. The weightier the paper, the better the grade. Drawing from the idea that the longer the work is, the more time was put into it and the more deserving it is of a higher grade, the concept brings the flaws of human grading into focus.

Which brings us to a recent study evaluating the accuracy of computer programs created to score essays. These programs are by no means new- they have been in use for years, particularly in the world of standardized testing. With so many short essays being churned out by test takers the world over, it seemed a simpler solution to automate the grading process.

Of course, while automated grading of multiple choice tests is simple enough, cost effective, and accurate, can we really say the same for automated essay grading?

According to a study from the University of Akron and a consultancy called The Common Pool, the answer is a resounding yes. They took something like 16,000 essays (with sets that included different lengths, different rubrics, etc.) that had already been scored once by a human, then let a computer (well, several programs, actually) grade them again. The results were almost terrifyingly similar. Want proof? Here’s a chart of the scores on mean estimation… they are all so close that the lines all appear to be one goddamn line:

Of course, charting out other factors yields less impressive-looking graphs, but fuck truth when we have visual impact, right?

Regardless of potential data skew based on the most widely circulated chart from the paper, the study really did find a striking similarity between the human and computer graders. This is the first time a study like this has been done on this scale, and it does a lot to address the many flaws in computerized essay grading. Many programs favor essays with more complex lexical choices, as they are representative of an advanced vocabulary (never mind the fact that one can easily toss around a word without knowing the finer points of its meaning, i.e. thesaurus junkies). Programs also favor length, in both the entire paper and in the sentences in themselves. And, of course, they prefer proper grammar.

However, programs have been ridiculed for favoring these technical aspects at the expense of actual content. Can we honestly dole out high marks to students spouting eloquent garbage? The programs are those theoretical professors grading papers by weight, with no regard for the actual information within. A problem, to be sure.

As artificial intelligence technology advances, though, the programs have become more complicated. They are able to discern some relationships between words and phrases that help them “understand” the meaning of the essays. Last year, the University of Florida did some research on the usage of automatic grading systems using AI technology. The system in place was able to look at something like “the heart pumps blood” and find a relationship between the words “heart” and “blood,” essentially finding the meaning of the sentence by piecing together word relationships built through the rubric created by the teacher.

Interesting, to be sure, but it’s still a crude system that can, seemingly, be easily exploited by a moderately clever student. Like a child beating the square peg into the round hole until the corners break, the systems might be able to hammer out a rudimentary “understanding” of the essays, but just as that mangled square peg will never be a perfect fit for the round hole, so too will these programs never understand complex, intricate writing.

Why, then, would we let these systems do our grading for us? There are many purported advantages to removing the human component in grading. It does away with biases (personal, racial, gender-specific), which curbs grade inflation. It alleviates teacher fatigue (from which can stem errors).

There are pros and cons to both methods of grading, to be sure. And this study seems to add another entry in the pro column of computerized grading.

***

My issue with all this isn’t whether or not the Akron study is accurate. They obviously found a strong similarity between human and computer grading of these essays. To me, this is indicative of a far greater problem.

I am mere days away from completing my English degree, and there is a problem that has been gnawing away at me for the majority of my school-going years. A problem I assumed would vanish when I entered the collegiate world. But it didn’t. It continued on, this relentless march toward mediocrity.

It is a problem with the formulaic nature of writing education.

If a computer can grade an essay with nearly the same degree of accuracy as a human, this says less about our marvelous technology (sorry, but I follow AI research and know even the most cutting-edge experimental programs are nowhere near as impressive as any human mind) and more about the shabby state of our student writing. We teach our students the fucking five-paragraph essay, the rote rehashing of theses to form concluding statements. Pick a topic, back it up with two or three points, wrap it up. There is no room for creativity, for real cleverness, for anything that makes writing art and not just a series of rules to be regurgitated from the tip of a pen or onto a computer screen. As Alexander Pope wrote,

True ease in writing comes from art, not chance, as those move easiest who have learned to dance.

Our students are less concerned with writing interesting, engaging pieces exploring novel ways of thinking or delicately bending the rules- they instead hammer out blocky, mechanical essays. They present bland topics with just the right number of supporting facts to net them a decent grade. That’s it.

I have had many professors, and I have never had one that really inspired me to be a more creative, interesting writer. There was one who broke the mold slightly, but even she wasn’t really a powerful force in my academic career. I know that many others have those professors that shaped them, that really touched them, that showed them something about themselves or their course of study or the world that makes the student grateful and better for having known them. I understand that, I respect that, but I neverhad that. My thirst for knowledge, information, and creativity has always best been sated on my own, outside a traditional classroom.

And while I’m sure there are many English professors [And since when are English professors the only ones expected to foster strong writing in their students? You might have a great idea, oh mighty chemist, but if you can’t write a goddamn elucidatory (…fuck you, WordPress, that’s a word) paper to share that work with the rest of the scientific community and the world, then you are shit out of luck, now aren’t you?] out there who really work to engage their students, given my own experiences and the fact that most students, if they had an “inspirational professor”, only had one or two… statistically, most professors just teach their students that mechanical, boring writing.

I suppose it is time for me to clarify a few points here, particularly for those of you who know me and are pointing at the screen in horror, screaming about my hypocrisy. I am aware that I am known for being an exceedingly technical proofreader. Am I not just perpetuating this system I purport to despise? Well… yes, I am. Because there is technically nothing wrong with writing this way. And, in fact, I am a firm believer in understanding and utilizing technically sound writing, particularly in formal settings. And those five-point essays I was harping on about? Well, they are actually a very useful tool to teach young writers about structure. I do not think they are so much the devil as I find them a despicable crutch we are not only allowing older, more advanced writers to use, but we are actively encouraging this kind of lazy writing. While there is less room for creative flair in formal, academic papers, there should be breathing room for a personal voice to show through the formal technical aspects. It’s a delicate balance, tying the writer’s soul into the formal rules… but it’s certainly possible. But we are not teaching (or even encouraging) this kind of skillful writing. Which, I believe, is a travesty.

More on that in a second.

Just last night, I was teasing a boy for marking a diaeresis, as it’s considered rather archaic in modern English. That being said, I was only poking fun because I am a right and proper bitch (and because the two of us seem to communicate primarily in taunts, mockery, and faux arguments). In all actuality, I found the use of the diacritic strangely charming. I have always enjoyed people who strive to plumb the true depths of the English language. Perhaps that’s an English major thing.

But these finer points of language… they are not taught anymore. Or, at least, not to any real degree. Why did diaeresis diacritics fall out of vogue, anyway? Because the variants, sans markings, became more popular. And our schools teach what is popular. Which is fine, which is useful, but which becomes more and more diluted. Our vocabulary shrinks, the finer points of our language get lost, and then where are we? The loss of the flavorful bits of language, those accent marks and mellifluous phrases and cheeky verbage, cripples us. We lose more than just words, we lose imagination and creativity. And as those slowly degrade, so too do advances tied to them. Invention, discovery. This destroys us slowly, across all aspects of human knowledge and progression.

And we just allow it. That is what I have such a problem with.

Formula is a base, just as we have basic vocabulary. But as we continue through our education, we need to be advancing. We build on the base. We learn the rules, then we learn how to break them. Instead, we stop at a simple formula. After we’ve mastered this, we are done. The end of the line for our writing education. Oh, there’s a bit picked up here and there. But there’s no longer any real push to expand your skills.

Not even for English students, sadly.

Our writing can be graded by a computer program. That’s how basic it is, how fucking systematic it is.

Congratulations to us.

***

I don’t have a quick fix solution to this perceived problem. Perhaps you don’t even agree with me that this is a problem. So be it. These were just my bitter, scattered thoughts as I read about the Akron study.

Take this with a grain of salt, like you should all my posts, dear galleons.