Things I overheard while talking to myself

I should be in bed right now, but I had a thought. Those are quite annoying when it comes to wanting to sleep, but oh well.

I follow a comic where one particular character has gained a fairly large fanbase and a large amount of sympathy, but the creator did not intend for this and has made this abundantly clear. He says that the character lost all of her redeeming traits over time and that she wasn't supposed to be sympathetic, and he calls out the people who treat her sympathetically. Recently he updated the first chapter she appears in and made her negative traits come out much more obviously, and to me it just affirmed what I thought of the character from the start, mainly that she's an immature, whiny bitch who pushed away anyone who might have helped her and pretty much got what was coming to her.

But here's the thing: The people who like the character are angry that he did this, and seem to think that he doesn't know his own character and what she's "really" like. This strikes me as very odd and very entitled because he created the damn character and just because what he writes doesn't match up with someone's personal version of who she is doesn't mean that he's wrong.

I've been thinking about my own antagonist, and if people do sympathize with them I will be horrified because it will honestly be missing the point of who this person is and why they do what they do, so I can understand why this author reacted the way he did to people taking his character and casting her in a light he didn't intend. I know back when Harry Potter was being published there was (and still is) a large subset of people who idolize characters like Draco Malfoy who, let's be honest, are pricks or worse, and JK Rowling had pretty much the same reaction of "WTF is wrong with you people?!"

So my question is this: What "rights" does a creator have over their character, and on the flipside, what do the fans have, if anything, and do they have the right to say that the author's interpretation is less valid than their own? That's not to say that you can't tell someone that they did not write a character well or consistently, it's more whether the fans have the right to say that they know the "real" version as opposed to the person who created them.

So I realized something recently.

Good God, I'm bony. This actually came up when I was with Krys, who despite me calling him "Squishy" as a term of endearment is actually very bony himself, to the point that when he complains about his weight all the women in the room tell him to shut up (he's more or less a stick). Somehow during our ultimately unsuccessful (on his end) day of searching for apartments we ended up talking about surrogate motherhood.

Yeah, I don't know how we got on that track either. Probably some joke about ovaries/uterus/something of that nature made by me. Anyway, he made some comment about how if I were to do something like that they might actually want me to put more weight on, since despite how I look I'm actually fairly slim, I just have a curvy build and most of my weight is in my legs (specifically thighs) and butt (which according to another friend some women would kill for). I'll sometimes casually mention how much I weigh, at which point I get a shocked expression and a "Where do you keep it?!" Makes sparring fun, though, when people get hit by 20 pounds they weren't expecting.

I've gotten that comment another time when I was wearing a fairly tight (but not skimpy) sweater, which pretty much showed people that yeah, I have a bit of an hourglass figure and big hips, but my waist itself hardly has anything on it. I happen to be wearing a tanktop at the moment (just got back from the gym in the "dungeon", aka 150's sub-basement), and yeah, there's basically just skin in front of my ribs. It's a bit more obvious when you look at my wrists and the structure of my hands, which also don't have much on them.

Not used to thinking of myself that way, but basically, yeah, bony. It's just well disguised.

Reading a bit on Montesquieu for my Enlightenment class, and one passage jumped out to me:

It is generally a mistake to base civil laws on religious principles. Religion aims at the perfection of the individual, civil laws at the welfare of society... The civil laws are not an appropriate tool for enforcing religious norms of conduct: God has his own laws, and He is quite capable of enforcing them without our assistance. When we attempt to enforce God's laws for Him, or to cast ourselves as his protectors, we make our religion an instrument of fanaticism and oppression, this is a service to neither God nor country.

The sociologist in me raised an eyebrow at the word "norm" in there, since that wonderful word has the benefit of not imposing a value judgment, it's just descriptive. It is a bit troubling to realize that people got this in the 18th century and we're still arguing about it.

Interestingly, another one of my classes looks at how the Church influenced common law, and despite what some very loud people keep saying about our country being founded on Christian principles, it's true, they were influenced by religion, but even back then they were separate from Church (or Canon) law, and it was recognized even back then that civil law was an entirely different beast, and much of the work back then was about reconciling scripture with science and what had to be done in civil law.

That's actually what I'm writing a paper on later, how despite stuff like silencing Galileo and book burning the Church was actually responsible for creating the systems of scientific inquiry through universities and the like. So as usual it's not nearly as clear cut as people like to assume it is, the Church is not the de facto enemy of science, it's actually the mother of science as we know it. She just occasionally dislikes the ideas her child comes up with and tries to wash his mouth out with soap while sending him to timeout.

One thing we've been doing in our Sex and Society class is looking at how modern Americans view relationships, and considering that I'm the early stages of one of my own a lot of what I see other people my age doing frankly pisses me off.

( Read more... )

I guess it comes down to the fact that to me relationships are very much about emotional commitment, caring about each other and trusting the other person, and a lot of the behavior I see flies in the face of that.

I just realized the the appropriateness of the song on Pandora. God, that thing reads my mind.

For some reason I ended up thinking about dreams (in the sense of goals) the other day, and I realized what one of mine is.

I would like to see the Supreme Court of the United States hear a case on gay marriage and decide that banning it is unconstitutional, and therefore all of those bans other states have are invalid. If that can occur sometime in my lifetime I would be indescribably overjoyed, and if I could have some part in helping it get there even more so.

Just a random thought I had.

I don't want to be the person at college who never comes out of their room, but it might just be in my nature. Later on I'm going to talk to my RA (who seems really nice) and basically say "Help! I suck at this social stuff! Only child! From a small town! Gay! Too mature! Where can I find people like me?"

Really, it's astounding to me how (the girls especially) just form these packs spontaneously. I need some time to get to know people, and unfortunately the person I connected most with during orientation is in Spain for a year. *headdesk* I did meet a nice girl at the bookstore, and I think she picked up the deer-in-headlights look of mine and invited me to come with the reception thing at the Ritz tonight. Nice kid. :)

Well, I have a rough idea, which I have a feeling the RA will help me with:

( Read more... )

I think in all I just take more time at this than most people, and once classes and clubs start it'll be easier, though I want to scream "WHY CAN YOU PEOPLE MAKE FRIENDS SO QUICKLY?!" from time to time. But I guess it's just a matter of finding like-minded people.

Arguing the upsides of being down -- How sadness can really help us

Wilson talks to Melissa Block about why the world needs melancholy — how it pushes people to think about their relation to the world in new ways and ultimately to relate to the world in a richer, deeper way.

That makes sense to me. Now that I think about it, that's actually a very Buddhist (and overall Eastern) mindset. That's not a very common mindset in modern day America, where I think we want solutions to our problems, and God damn we want them now! I also agree with this line:

With no more melancholics, we would live in a world in which everyone simply accepted the status quo, in which everyone would simply be content with the given.

That fits in with my idea that moderation is the key to everything. I think it also speaks volumes about not wanting to accept all parts of ourselves and push out the bits we don't like.

So I agree with Wilson on that. Embrace your inner gloom, but don't let it overpower you.

One of the more amusing moments at The Plant today that didn't involve me getting soaked or someone being stupid and making me stand out in the cold occurred when we (Jeremy, The Chump and I) were talking about Jessica, the new girl, and the fact that she doesn't want to to the trash and says "it's icky". Jeremy apparently told her that "If Rosemary can do it you can do it", though I countered with an offhand comment that most teenage girls can't be held with me as a standard, since I'm not exactly a normal teenage girl.

Then in comes The Chump, who'd only been paying marginal attention as usual and only heard the end of the conversation: "But you are a normal teenage girl!"

No, no, no and no. Let's tart with whey that's totally wrong in the sense of why a "normal teenage girl" (in quotes for a reason) fits me as well as a size four dress fits an elephant:

1. The whole gay thing, which by definition crosses out the whole mess of boyfriend issues
2. The bi-gender/genderbending thing (and it's easy as hell to mess with the gender binary and people's heads)
3. The fact that I don't wear any makeup and don't give a crap about fashion
4. I hate the mall, personal drama and gossip except when I have no choice
5. "Your momma wears combat boots" isn't an insult to me since I wear them too (they're quite comfortable)
6. I have both a bokken and a shinai in the trunk of my car and I know how to use them

Granted, someone who works with me is very unlikely to know any of these unless they also know me personally, and even then The Chump is The Chump for a reason. I definitely got a (silent) chuckle out of that. :D

Interesting comment about Romney vs. McCain I just heard on Tavis Smiley:

Romney is the optimist of the Republicans, and works like a salesman: If he thinks it'll sell, he'll go for it, even if means changing his opinion later (what I think will do him in), and doesn't think the public is intellegent enough to handle the truth.

McCain, on the other hand, does tell the truth, even if people don't like it, and that's what I like about him.

I'd just never heard them summed up like that, but I did go "Oh, yeah!" when they said that. I think we need someone who can tell us the truth and can bridge the partisan gap. Sorry Romney, but you ain't it.

Picked up Gunslinger Girl volume 6 yesterday, and man... That series really taps into the pathos of the reader, and that's why I find it so intriguing.

( Wherein I wax philosophical and give spoilers up to the current volume )

In related news, I've managed to get a few more chapters of the 30_wounds challenge out, and on FF.net I've gotten a few followers who comment just about with each one. A couple I'm not satisfied with (and neither are the readers) but the entire thing's a learning experience in the first place, and overall I've happy with it. It's certainly unlike anything else I've ever done.