Body Appreciation Sunday: Clay

As everyone knows, I love Wonder Woman. She is my favorite superpowered heroine, and I was very happy that DC gave her such a great creative line-up in the relaunch. Cliff Chiang and Brian Azzarello are doing a wonderful job with her series: beautiful art, smart, mythology-laden storytelling. I love it.

I do not love the decision to change Diana's origin from her being created out of clay by her mother Hippolyta and given life and talents by the goddesses, to being the product of Zeus and Hippolyta. Zeus has enough goddamn children, divine and mortal, and though we're probably supposed to helpfully forget this, Zeus in the past has attempted to molest Diana. Creepy! That particular plot point is simply uninteresting to me, having been told a thousand times over, and since I don't think Azzarello has ever written an uninteresting thing in his illustrious career, I will blame editorial fiat.

(Diana's birth, from Gods and Mortals)

There is a more personal level to my distaste for this development as well. Even before I read comics heavily I related to Wonder Woman; she was a beacon of peace, progress, diplomacy, and love, she was strong and reliant on herself, and--bonus--she had the same name as me. As I began reading her stories, I loved that she was created by women--her mother and a slew of talented, beautiful goddesses gave this heroine life and power and purpose. I began to relate even more to the Amazon, as someone also raised solely by a mother. In effect I have no father, my biological father dying when I was two and having no relationship of any kind with my stepfather later on. I enjoyed the bond of mother and daughter between Diana and Hippolyta and I liked that the Amazon community valued women's relationships, because news flash: American society does not value women's relationships. Sisters, mothers and daughters, grandmothers and aunts, and closest female friends are not as important as the Very Significant male/female romantic relationship; families raised and led by single mothers or grandmothers raising their grandchildren are not "real" families (according to some idiotic and prominent political figures); and lesbians are outliers who simply haven't been laid properly. Women are largely not perceived as being able to protect themselves or one another--that must be done by a male figure, a hero.

Diana the Amazon was the encapsulation of everything I thought female relationships could and should be. She is still magical and marvelous and truly wonderful, and I'll never stop reading her stories. But this change is the one that has hit me hardest, in the most personal way, out of all the many changes DC wrought this past autumn. My name is Diana and I was formed of clay from my mother's hands, brought to life by her love and the stories she and the other women of my family gave me. In my best moments I am their image and legacy and in my worst, I'm still me.

Haywire (spoilers)

If you've been reading this blog for any length of time, you probably know what my favorite things are: good-looking dudes with accents, ladies kicking ass, and action movies. So when I heard about Haywire, it was like Hollywood had tapped directly into my brainwaves and created a movie just for me! AWESOME, NO?

Actually, yes; frankly Haywire is a good movie, better than I was expecting. Its star is Gina Carano, a mixed martial artist who needs to play Big Barda as soon as possible--her supporting cast/list of people whose shit she fucks up includes Michael Fassbender (death by Carano's thighs+a gunshot to the head), Ewan McGregor (death by being trapped in a jetty with a broken leg as the tide comes in. Way harsh, Tai!), Antonio Banderas (presumably Carano kills him, but we don't see it), Channing Tatum (death by Ewan McGregor), and the adorbs Michael Angarano, who gets to live (although a deer smashes through his car's back windshield). See, Carano's character, Malory Kane, plays a former Marine who works for an independent contractor--you know the kind. The firm is run by Kenneth (Ewan McGregor), with whom Malory has just broken up (both with the firm and the man); Kenneth employs Aaron (Channing Tatum), with whom Malory worked on a job ostensibly extracting a hostage in Barcelona. However, the job was a set-up, concocted by Kenneth, bonus Mathieu Kassovitz, Michael Fassbender's character Paul, and Antonio Banderas' character Rodrigo. Malory discovers this when she's on assignment with Paul in Dublin, who works with Kassovitz to frame her for murder, and, well, thigh-choking! What ensues is her quest to figure out who set her up and why, and to put them in the ground.

The action is great and the men are hot, but what I really enjoyed was how naturally and positively the character of Malory was drawn. She isn't a mindless sexpot; she is a woman who has sex with men when she wants to and stops when she wants to. She isn't a mindless killing machine; she has training and background and a job to do which she is good at. And of course, the fallout in her life comes from men who are incapable of seeing a woman in control of herself, her sex life, and her work without needing to take that control away. Kenneth claims his plan to squelch Malory is all about money--the money she will lose him when she leaves his employ--but it's clear that it's really about how he can't handle her breaking off their relationship. If he can't have her, no one will: not in terms of work and not in terms of love. To a man, the male characters underestimate Malory, even the relatively sympathetic Aaron, and underestimation is the core of disrespect. Luckily for her, she has the power to stop them.

This is what I'm looking for when I say I want to see and read about about strong female characters. Yes, if they're PHYSICALLY strong and kick LITERAL ass, it's a bonus, but the personality and character have to be there first. I want to see competent, capable women.

GONE CORPORATE

Yes, it's true: I have found a job and it is in the corporate world. A greeting card company has its headquarters in my fair new city and, well, they needed an assistant for their library.

Enter moi.

So far it is pretty excellent. Like the last library I worked in, this one has a pretty narrow focus, collection-wise--but oh what a focus it is! Graphic design, art, typography, needlework, maps and photograph collections, fashion...pretty much everything tactile and interesting to look at and inspirational. There's also a room full of card and stationery archives going back to the 1900s, as well as a room devoted to ribbons, pom-poms, sequins, buttons, and other fun things.

AND I CAN WEAR JEANS.

I don't even know (Boardwalk Empire spoilers)

Whether by accident or design (I'm voting design), Boardwalk Empire presents a bona fide King Arthur story in the telling of the tales of Prohibition-era Atlantic City, Nucky Thompson, and Jimmy Darmody. All the characters are here: Gillian as the mother-temptress Morgause; Margaret and Lucy as twin Guenevers and Owen as Lancelot; and Jimmy and Nucky in the roles of Mordred and Arthur. The painted whore that is Roaring Twenties Atlantic City is the dark mirror image of Camelot: a false golden era replete with crime and controlled by robber barons, bootleggers, and mob bosses. Above it all Nucky looms, his fingers in every pie in existence, struggling to keep his motley array of Companions (Neary, Doyle, O'Neill, Eli) in line, and treating with rival kings (Torrio, Rothstein, the D'Alessios, Chalky White). A bootlegging, philandering, glad-handing criminal and hypocrite, Nucky embodies the trope that Might makes Right--the very opposite of what Arthur traditionally stands for.

Jimmy returns from the Great War, considering himself proven as a man on the field of battle and itching for more power and responsibility in Nucky's operation. His bastard's birthright is double, having been born of the Commodore, whose power is fading (and who represents Lot, a petty king who is ineffective and then dead in the Arthur myth), and raised by Nucky, still in his prime. He expects to inherit, and soon...and a stew of resentment begins to seethe as he sows the seeds of his own destruction. In an attempt to strike out on his own he betrays Nucky, gathering around himself other betrayers, including his father, the Commodore, Gillian, and Nucky's brother Eli. Jimmy's wife Angela can be viewed as either Gareth--the innocent mowed down by accident, a victim of the strife between Mordred and Arthur--or Elaine, a woman slain by her attempts to control her own life. His mother Gillian is the quintessential Morgause; simultaneously she is a mother figure, raising Jimmy and then his son, and a sex bomb who takes partners as she will, including men much younger than herself. The pivotal moment of incest, which in the Arthur stories occurs either between Morgan le Fay and Arthur or Morgause and Arthur, occurs in Boardwalk Empire between Jimmy and Gillian, read as Mordred and Morgause.

Into the midst of Nucky's neat operation trots Agent Nelson van Alden, the most uptight lawman in New Jersey and a man possessed by the need to take Nucky down. In the Arthur stories, the character of Maleagant (or Maleagrance) is a villain, a rival petty king who kidnaps Guenever; since Boardwalk Empire's protagonists are villains themselves, it makes sense that the ostensible "good" character of van Alden would oppose Nucky and what he stands for. His relationships with the dual Guenever characters of Margaret and Lucy cement his characterization, as he threatens the security of Nucky's throne by lusting after Margaret and encouraging her to betray Nucky, and impregnating Lucy. Margaret, in her turn, cheats on Nucky with his driver/bodyguard Owen Sleater, an act which heralds her (re)turn to religion and belief that she is being punished for her sins. The Guenever of the Arthur stories is notably barren, of course, but the functions of the traditional Gwen and the two characters we read as her avatars in Boardwalk Empire are similar: to be beautiful, ornamental, and available for sex, to complement her man in social situations, and to not comment on or be involved in business matters.

The series-wide theme of the current generation's effect on the rising generation occurs repeatedly in various guises--Jimmy's son Tommy ultimately loses both parents and will presumably have his future shaped and warped, as Jimmy's was, by Gillian; Nucky's lack of children is a thorn in his side and perhaps the reason why he takes such pains to hold onto Margaret and her children by her previous husband, and we see his effect on Margaret's son already (in Nucky's episode of arson on his childhood home); Eli's huge brood of children is arguably his only success in life, that of reproductive, evolutionary prowess; van Alden's daughter, though born out of wedlock, is precious to him and it seems that he will have the raising of her after his wife divorces him (since Lucy has no care for her daughter). So, in a phrase from The Mists of Avalon, what of the king stag when the young stag is grown? Jimmy is ready to take over for Nucky but Nucky isn't ready to relinquish the reins. Humanity spends its life fighting the natural course of things, the cycle of living and dying. No man will admit when he should retire--encapsulated perfectly in the Commodore's fight to hang onto life and his relevance to Atlantic City's community. Nucky too is incapable of giving up his power, and Jimmy's attempt to take that power for himself results in his downfall.

Season 2 of Boardwalk Empire ends with Mordred dead and Arthur still in control; but where will it go from there? The saga of Arthur and Mordred culminates in both men's deaths (or with Arthur retiring to Avalon). Obviously the show diverges by necessity at this point, and I look forward to seeing what the writers throw at us next...though clearly I will miss parsing its plots and characters in terms of my favorite mythology.

Body Appreciation Sunday: Blood

No, not more menstruation conversation (though it is That Week)--blood as in "thicker than water." Stupidest adage ever? Possibly. I'm not even sure what it's supposed to mean other than "you will spend major holidays with this set of people Or Else."

I like my family, mostly, in small doses. I love my cousins and my sister, especially now that we're almost all grown up and can do shots to celebrate the Savior's nativity. I love talking about books with my youngest cousin. I like food and eating; that's inherited, for sho, being that our most hallowed family holiday tradition is a Christmas Eve devoted to consuming desserts. I like doing crosswords with my mom and grandma. I like being at home where it's blessedly warm and sunny and there's plenty of water around, where I can wake up to the sound of Australian pines creaking and the pale stripes of morning sun on the ceiling.

I don't like being asked to attend church like the answer is going to be anything other than "no," as it has been for the last five years. I don't like waking up to the sound of loved ones discussing how the President is murdering senior citizens and gay people are ushering in the apocalypse. I don't like seeing my stepfather spend Christmas Day staring at his laptop, rather than spending time with family members he rarely sees.

Sometimes the good outweighs the bad, sometimes it doesn't. And I don't quite believe that blood is life.

Things I said while watching A Christmas Story (2011 edition)

• I wonder if Peter Billingsley knows he's going to grow up and produce Jon Favreau movies.
• Hmm, Ralphie is a terrible friend.
• I wonder if Randy knows he's going to grow up to be a stoner.
• I wonder if Zack Ward knows he's going to grow up to be rather handsome, and if that makes up for having successfully answered a casting call for "Ugly child, aged 11-13. Terrible teeth. Preferably ginger."
• HOW DO PEOPLE NOT LOVE THIS FILM OMG SOAP POISONING
• Except for the parts where the only black people are villains and the Chinese people are racist stereotypes. How come one Chinese man can pronounce 'R' and the others can't?
• I wonder if the aviator goggles kid who likes The Wizard of Oz knows he's going to grow up to be a child molester.
• BLUE BALLS HAHAHAHAHA HOW DID I MISS THAT AS A KID

Whew, I never post anymore

I guess it's being in a new place--normally that would be exciting and cool and I'd be all over the place discovering things and having lots to post about, but I'm as broke as a very broke thing and have only ventured free places (like the park) and anyway the stress of trying to find a job has made me not very pleasant to be around.

Anyway...Here are some true things.

The thing that my manfriend and I argue about most frequently is Glengarry Glen Ross. He wants me to watch it, I don't.

Raspberry jam is the best jam. With seeds in, naturally.

The new Batman might make you fear owls.

Driving in snow is less fun than you might imagine.

If I ran a chain of nerd-themed brothels, they would be called Eroticon 1-5.

These are a few of my favorite (holiday) things

Despite being a horrible Baby-Jesus-hating atheist pagan feminazi, I kind of love the winter holiday season. These are some of the reasons why.

The Snowman: a lovely little movie made from the book by Raymond Briggs, The Snowman is hands-down my favorite Christmas movie. Find the version with David Bowie's introduction if you can!

Thumbprint cookies: Definitely my favorite Christmas cookie.

A Midwinter Night's Dream: Loreena McKennitt's first holiday album. This CD features both original songs and beautiful renditions of carols and hymns; her version of "The Holly and the Ivy" is my favorite of any.

Christmas trees made out of books: Like so.

The opportunity to buy my youngest cousin books: She reads like it's going out of style, which I suppose it is. This year she's getting two excellent tomes from two excellent authors, Karen Healey and Bryan Q. Miller (Rachel, you better not be reading this)!

Body Appreciation Sunday: Some nerve!

Nerves are a good thing. They tell us when something delicious is baking in the kitchen, when the music's too loud, when someone is touching us just right. And they register heat...and cold.

Oh yes. Cold. My poor nerves are probably wondering if I hate them; otherwise why would I expose them to such strange, bleak temperatures all of a sudden? Well, brace yourself, nerves, because it's going to get worse before it gets better. 28 degrees? It's only snowed twice so far and it's only December. I promise to wrap up in hats and scarves and gloves, and I promise I'll go inside before my extremities start to freeze.

Just let me finish this wander around the park. We never had real parks at home, nerves, we must take advantage! Even if it's very, very cold out. Even if there are tiny flakes of white stuff falling on our head.

Cracked-out music theory #54

Theory: Adam Levine is trying to get into Ke$ha's pants.

Evidence: He claims he's "got the moves like Jagger," while she warns that she "kick[s] 'em to the curb/unless they look like Mick Jagger."

Verdict: Keep making songs with Gym Class Heroes, Adam. They're better.

Body Appreciation Monday: Elbows

I like elbows. They hurt worse than pretty much any other body part when you whack them, but other than that they're pretty cool: they're interestingly shaped, useful as props, and the closest thing the human body has to a natural weapon. I especially appreciate that last function, because here's the thing: doom metal fans are much less polite than power metal fans.

Happily enough, my move to Ohio was inaugurated by a Sword concert in Columbus, a mere 2.5 hours away from Cleveland (I am continually shocked and pleased by how close things are to each other up here). Now I have been waiting to see The Sword live for five years--since they were in Tampa last and played at the skatepark and I had to work that night--and so I was leapingly, terrifically happy when I heard they were going to be nearby. It was a very nice night: there was a bar conveniently close to the venue where I tried out the local IPA (good!), I met two very pleasant young men who happen to also work in libraries, and The Sword is undeniably epic live. There is nothing quite like hearing a band perform the first song of theirs that you loved; in my case, that was "The Horned Goddess." J.D. Cronise had on a Rush t-shirt, the band's demonic touring drummer is demonic, Kyle Shutt winked at me when I walked up to buy tickets before the show, and, well, "Iron Swan" for an encore? FUCK and YES. For Seventies-drenched bellbottom'd rifftastic stoner metal, there isn't a group currently touring better than The Sword.

Image from SkullsnBones

But yeah...doom metal fans. They like to mosh. Which is fine, because I enjoy elbowing people. Everyone wins!

Happy birthday, Greg Rucka!

Today is Greg Rucka's birthday, and I would be a bad fan and quite remiss if I didn't shout out my favorite comic book writer. He has written many of my best-beloved heroines, including Wonder Woman, Batwoman, the Question, Tara Chace, Huntress, Black Widow, and more. His talent is legendary and rightfully so.

So blessings and many happy returns, Greg! You continue to give me and thousands of other fans great joy.

Body Appreciation Sunday: Roots

First there was Waldenbooks (remember them?)--a tiny outlet in a mall already beginning to be run down, where I wandered in the speculative fiction aisle, touching the spines of books I didn't have money to buy yet: Green Rider, The Glassmaker's Apprentice, Vector Prime. My money had to be strictly reserved for Animorphs books, a new one nearly every month.

Then there was the brand-new Barnes and Noble, the biggest bookstore I'd ever seen, bursting with more books than even the library had. I hoarded money earned from digging weeds and cleaning the pool. I replaced my falling-apart copy of Little House on the Prairie. I bought All Over but the Shoutin' and The Handmaid's Tale for school. I stared at the strange new menu of coffee drinks which my friends bought, while I stuck to hot chocolate.

Then there were six years of discovering the joys of small, non-chain bookstores, of ferreting through narrow aisles of used books and giving my money to local business. There was Inkwood and Mojo and Wilson's, weird little stores crowded and crossed with interesting things (Dancing With Cats? Taxidermy Step by Step?), and my bookshelves at home exploded. A Wizard of Earthsea. Her Smoke Rose Up Forever. Six nearly-mint volumes of 100 Bullets. The Heart is a Lonely Hunter. Keep the Aspidistra Flying.

And now here I am, a brand-new city unfurled around me, and my great fortune is to discover Visible Voice, a beautiful bookstore in a beautiful neighborhood, a meandering shop whose exterior is shrouded in fallen leaves and bears the legend "Resist much, obey little," and whose interior is just bright enough and just wide enough and just welcoming enough. I can feel my roots going into this new Ohio soil already.

Tales from the interstate

IT LIVES.

Yes, dear readers, it's true--I have returned. And here, in a nutshell, is my experience of a few of our Union's states.

• The stretch between Ocala and the Georgia border in Florida is a Cthulhu-forsaken wasteland of anti-choice billboards and strip joints.
• Athens, GA remains adorable and full of good food and beer. Given its size, I know a disproportionately large amount of people living there who are mostly unconnected to one another (seven, at last count)
• Asheville, NC is downright magical. I highly, highly, HIGHLY recommend Dobra Tea on Lexington, and Never Blue on Broadway. Three words: chocolate assam tea. Three more: mini meatloaf sandwiches.
• Waynesville, NC is also pretty magical. North Carolina is forgiven for making me drive in Actual Falling Snow.
• West Virginia seems to be a mostly awful place. Notable highlights: outrageous toll money on the turnpike, winding mountain roads with no lights, a bucolic scene of several kittens dragging a roadkill'd and/or still-alive unidentified animal across a street. Someone speak out in defense of West Virginia, please!

And, well. Now I'm in oHIo. Hire me, Cleveland companies!

Aaaagggghhhhhhh

There were weddings this weekend, and now I am moving. Count me out of this biz for at least a week.

I know, you'll all pine and balsam.

Surfacing

Yes, dear readers, this blogge has been a graveyard for the past few days. This is for a couple of reasons, among them that my beloved Tamora Pierce has a new book out and every spare minute between last Friday and today has been spent with my nose in it, and I'm still barely halfway through because it, like Aerin Dragon-killer, is so splendidly large.

Also people are getting married (not me) and getting ready to move (me).

Life happens sometimes.

30 Characters Challenge

Each year when November rolls around I consider doing NaNoWriMo, and each year I discard that idea, because it isn't really the way I write. At all.

But this year, I am doing the 30 Characters Challenge. Draw or write character sketches for thirty new characters, one each day for the entire month, and ta-da! You have a library of characters to use in current or future projects.

If you'd like to take a gander at who I create this month (character profiles with inspiration images, since I can't draw a nice stick figure), my profile is here. There's already tons of amazing art and stories on the site.

Seriously?

This is deeply un-funny to me. Here are three reasons why.

1. It mocks a real, important campaign. This one, to be exact. USAmericans have a real problem with creating offensive Halloween costumes. Hello? Blackface is not ok. Sticking a feather in your hair, dashing on some red paint, and saying you're an "Indian princess" or, for fuck's sake, a "Poca-hottie" is NOT OK. People of color are PEOPLE, not costumes.

2. It fat-shames. Stereotypes abound regarding nerds as fat, pasty basement-dwellers completely sans social skills. This, like any stereotype about a group, is often inaccurate, and is yet another arm of our society's obsession with policing others' bodies. Think body shame doesn't touch nerd-dom? We're not immune.

3. The Doctor would never do this. On a totally petty, fannish, basic level--THE DOCTOR WOULD NOT DO THIS. This is not the MO of a thousands-year-old being who's literally seen everything. He's never met an unimportant person. He's a dick in many ways, but this ain't his brand.

Call me a humorless feminist, I do not care. There are millions of Halloween costumes in the world without needing to dip into abuse of cultures that have already been destroyed, ignored, bastardized, and stolen from. It's so easy to not be an racist asshole. All it takes is the tiniest bit of thought and absolutely no effort.

Body Appreciation Sunday: Imagination

"I don't know...I can imagine quite a bit!"

Thus spake one of the great men of our times, Han Solo. This line is somewhat of an adage for me; imagination is one of my favorite things about being human. It allows me to create visions in my mind, whether as mundane as what my manfriend is doing at the moment (carefully making green tea, wearing his superhero pajama pants and a Buzzo's t-shirt, and queuing up a DuckTales episode) or as magical as some of the characters in the current story I'm writing. Imagination is what gets me through the dreariest, quietest Friday night at work or a dentist appointment or renewing my driver's license. It is what creates dreams, daydreams, flights of fancy, nightmares, and woolgathering.

Halloween is a celebration which encourages the imagination and stimulates the subconscious. It is one of my best-beloved holidays: I love dressing up, candy, black cats, pumpkin beer, and scary stories and movies. Halloween means that, for a day or a night, you can be whatever you can imagine. Would that we could carry that particular spirit of Halloween with us always.

Film Fantasy Friday: We Have Always Lived in the Castle

It's Halloween weekend! That means I kinda have to do something in the horror realm for a would-be film today...and I've always been obsessed with Shirley Jackson, and We Have Always Lived in the Castle is my favorite of her novels, and so it goes. This story doesn't have a particularly large core cast, but it's one I would love to see made into a chilling, weird indie film.

Mary Katherine "Merricat" Blackwood: played by Mia Wasikowska, Merricat is the narrator of the story and a strange young woman, lover of deathcap mushrooms, her sister, her cat, and not much else. Since the death of her parents, she has made occasional forays into the village for grocery trips, but prefers to stay on the rambling family estate (which she protects via superstitions and sympathetic magic).

Constance Blackwood: played by Rosamund Pike, Constance is Merricat's older sister. She was tried for and acquitted of the murder of their parents many years previously. Her ostracism from the nearby village has left her with a penetrating agoraphobia.

Uncle Julian Blackwood: played by Christopher Plummer, Uncle Julian was also a victim of the Blackwood family poisoning years before, though he survived. He is demented, obsessively writing notes for his memoirs and talking about the murder with anyone who will listen.

Cousin Charles: played by Edward Norton, Charles comes to the Blackwood estate in search of his legacy, an event which touches off a fiery confrontation between him and the suspicious Merricat.

Have a wonderful Halloween, everyone. Pictures of my notably awesome Robin costume will be forthcoming.