Category: Geekitude

Is It Okay To Dislike Gwen If I Swear I Won’t Use Misogynistic Language?

By:  TempestGeekitude
Is It Okay To Dislike Gwen If I Swear I Won't Use Misogynistic Language?

Over at GeekFeminism there is a really great post about how hating on women characters isn’t cool, especially if you’re doing so using really misogynistic language. It’s definitely worth a read. As I was going through the post, I found myself cringing at the language and hatred on display. I mean, I have issues with Gwen, too, but dear Isis, people, must we make fun of the gap in her tooth?

Scrolling down the comment thread, I saw this from Lizabeth S. Tucker: “I also believe that the reason that a large number of female characters on television series are not liked is simply because they are badly written. I always hope for a strong female character, not necessarily perfect, but one who holds her own, who stays in character.”

Yes. Absolutely yes. And no where is more apparent than with Gwen Cooper. Let it be known up front that I do not usually like Gwen. I did not begin disliking her immediately, as many fans did, but over time. After watching my favorite Torchwood episodes over and over again, I discovered that the times I really wanted Gwen off the screen were the times she was in a room with a guy she was snogging or wanted to snog. She was fine in scenes with Jack until the horrendous moment when Torchwood decided that the two of them were inexplicably in love. Anything she did when Owen was around annoyed the hell out of me until they finally got over each other. And I am convinced that I hate Rhys only because we rarely see him not with Gwen, and thus everything is just horrible all around.

When Gwen is not in a scene with a man she fancies, suddenly all the things that I find annoying about her fall away and she becomes a character I can really like and root for. So what’s up with this? I suspect that it’s because many of Torchwood‘s male writers do not know how to write relationship and sexual tension stuff to save their lives. They do not know how to make a woman be in love or in lust without being insipid and ridiculous. Need more evidence for this hypothesis? Look 3 feet to the left where Toshiko is standing.

And, as always, I blame Chris Chibnall most of all.

So really, the problem here is not Gwen, it’s the writers. And I’ll just bet if you went through every episode of Torchwood that was written by a man (with the exception of Russell T. Davies), you will find the bad writing, characterization, and awkward, bullshit sexual stuff with Gwen and Tosh (though Tosh’s stuff was limited to Owen, mostly, and her badly written character we felt sorry for). If you look at the episodes written by women, I bet the better aspects of both Gwen and Tosh come to the fore, and we feel less sorry for the latter and/or more warm toward the former.

Stupid Hackers

By:  TempestGeekitude

Late last week my ISPs server got hit by a hacker. I don’t think any of my sites in particular were compromised by the hack, but in order to protect everyone on our server, the ISP restored everything from a backup instead of trying to clean the malware the hackers left behind. The last backup was to 9/13, so I lost a couple of posts and the comments that went with them. I republished the posts, but can’t find the original comments, sorry :(. Feel free to comment again.

Housekeeping: Comment Avatars

By:  TempestGeekitude

[This is a repost. Due to hackers, my ISPs server was compromised and I lost a few days worth of posts. You’ll need to reclaim your avatars, too. Sorry :( Stupid hackers.]

Remember many moons ago how I asked folks to suggest some more characters for my comment avatar pool? Well, I finally went ahead and took many of your suggestions and added 37 new avatars to the list. Now hopefully everyone won’t end up having to share avatars so often. I’ll also try to be better about keeping the spam filter clean, as that steals avatars away for some reason.

I may add some more at some point, so keep the suggestions coming.

Also, if you see an avatar you like, you can reserve it for yourself if you comment here often enough.

Not At All Innocent or Hypothetical Question of the Day

By:  TempestWriting
Not At All Innocent or Hypothetical Question of the Day

This is for the writers out there. If you were to get the urge to write on a mobile phone (not a whole novel, say, but whenever you needed to bust out some words and it wasn’t practical to do so on a netbook), what qualities would have phone have to have to make you comfortable doing so?

I would imagine a physical keyboard is a must, but that’s because I can’t type very fast with on-screen keyboards. Others are better at it. Regardless of whether it’s physical or not, I definitely feel like a qwerty-style keyboard is a must.

Do you agree? Also, what other aspects of a phone are important? Screen size, operating system, apps?

JemCon 2010, Who’s In?

By:  TempestGeekitude
JemCon 2010, Who's In?

Okay, JemCon is the last weekend of this month. Hotel rooms are inexpensive and membership is similarly so. I want to go. I want to dye my hair purple and pretend I can play the drums. I want to recapture my misspent youth. I want to karaoke with other people who, like me, still remember the words to the songs (mainly because we were just listening to them last week).

Here’s what’s needed:

  • Someone who can drive.
  • A car.

That’s pretty much it. I have another non-driving friend interested, and we’re willing to pay for gas and such. Anyone out there wanna go?

Mass LiveJournal Exodus OMG Initial Thoughts

By:  TempestGeekitude

So apparently some shit went down this weekend or last week as LiveJournal decided to integrate with Facebook via their Connect thing. Many people have apps and such that update FB when they post on LJ or any other blog, btu this apparently goes deeper. Something about comments also crossposting and F-Locked and Private entries making an appearance without the owners say so. Plus, some weird stalking stuff that… I don’t even fully understand. I really should try, but it’s all a labarynthine mess of fuckedupness that I just want to run and hide.

Apparently tons and tons of people have left LiveJournal over this but tons and tons of people also signed up. There is screaming, worries, and a really good explanation of much of this from Cleolinda. Okay then.

My main concerns are thus: even if I don’t give LJ permission to integrate my journal with FB, can other people do so? Like, can someone like or comment on a locked post, thus exposing its contents to people on FB? Even if it’s only a snippet or the beginning of the post, I am not at all down with that. Given FB’s horrid privacy policies and their penchant for letting other people put all your business on the Internet (i.e. Places lets you check your friends in to locations, tagging a picture puts that on your wall and photo album without your express permission, etc.), I think this new mess does not bode well for the semi-privacy of the FLocked content.

But I moved all semi-private operations to Dreamwidth long ago, so there’s not as much stake for me. For others maybe so. I guess this is why so many people moved over there.

For right now, my strategy isn’t going to change. I’ll still cross-post to LiveJournal but ask people to comment here. All of my Dreamwidth posts are restricted to my access list right now1 and there’s an RSS feed of this blog there. The only change I can see happening is that I might start cross-posting from this journal to my actual DW account and not just the feed and maybe allow comments.

I don’t plan to leave LiveJournal because there are still plenty of people there. But I long ago stopped giving them money directly and I hope everyone who views my journal there uses ad blocking software. It may take a while, but I think the community I care about is going to end up on Dreamwidth as well as spread out over Facebook, Twitter, and other social sites. What I like about right now is that there are ways to aggregate these disparate social networks so you can keep up with someone no matter what. But I understand the longing to keep the community at LiveJournal intact as it is something special. I just wish the company wasn’t making it so damn hard…

At any rate, for those of you who just moved to Dreamwidth, you can find me here. Please introduce yourself if you subscribe just so I can match accounts/people in my head. Here’s the feed for those who want that. I have some DW codes if people still need some.

Footnotes

  1. BTW, I really like this feature. For those who don’t know, on Dreamwidth there are two levels of following/friending. There’s subscribing to someone’s journal — wherein you can read their public posts on your FList — that can go either one way or be mutual. But even if I decide to subscribe back to that user, she does not automatically have access to my locked posts. I have to grant her further access to those if I choose. This means I can follow someone without worrying whether they are the type of person I want reading my locked stuff. Everyone is happy. [⇧]

Things I Want To Do

By:  TempestGeekitude
  1. Go to SmallCon. I probably can’t, though, since I’m going to World Fantasy at the end of that month.
  2. Go to JemCon. Do not judge me. Again, I probably can’t go since I need to reserve the vacation days for World Fantasy. Still, it’s very tempting to try and go just for the weekend. I would need someone to go with me as I’ll know no one there. And transport. Sigh. SIGH, I said.
  3. Go to World Fantasy. I’m covering this for the day job, yet I sill have to use vacation days. I am making this face –> :/
  4. Go to DragonCon. Can’t go, have to go to Germany, instead. I know, life is hard.

What do you want to do?

30 Days of Blogging

By:  TempestGeekitude

About a month or so ago Cat Valente challenged herself to write a blog post every day for 30 days to combat the creeping Twitterficcation of the blogging world1. While I do enjoy Twitter way more than I thought I would2 and think Facebook is an excellent social aggregation tool even if they’re shit on privacy, I do agree that I wouldn’t want to see long-form blogging fall by the wayside. Blogging has been really important to me both personally and professionally. But I’ve fallen off doing it for the past couple of years. Not because of Facebook or Twitter, but because I have allowed my job (which includes blogging) to eat me up somewhat.

In the past few weeks I have made a point of carving out time for writing and socializing with my writer friends to combat this. And now that I’ve had some short-term success in that area, I think I’m ready to try getting back into regular blogging again. Plus, Cat told me to.

I’m going to put a bit of a twist on the challenge since I have a million blogs I’m supposed to be contributing to or maintaining. My blog post a day for 30 days will stretch across more than one blog: Tempest blog, ABW, Chicktech, Geek Feminism, FeministSF, Tor.com, and probably whoever I’m supposedly guest posting for these days (Sorry, Jeff!). At the end of the week I will be sure to point to all the various posts so you can keep up.

As per Cat’s own rules, the posts for this will be substantive. I don’t know that I’ll have time for huge essays every day, but it won’t just be “Look at this damn shit over here, OMG.”

I’m sure I’ll find plenty to write about, but if I run out of ideas I’ll ask you all for help. Maybe you just want to see me go on and on about puppies and kittens for a month.

Footnotes

  1. Mostly she’s not happy that everyone wants to leave LJ, which I can understand in a way. I still think Dreamwidth is better and wish I could just transplant everyone there and move on. [⇧]
  2. Yes, Mary, you may laugh at me now. [⇧]

When You’ve Had It Up To Here

By:  TempestGeekitude

Earlier tonight I was taking the subway home after an evening hanging out with Nora. Since it was after midnight when I got on, there were several seats on the train, so I sat in an area where just two seats were available and put my bag in the other one. A few stops later a man got on the train who was very, very loud. I noticed him more because he seemed to be helping a physically disabled person maneuver onto the train and was actually about to offer my seat when I saw that the guy had a walker with a built-in seat and wanted to settle in that. I went back to playing my smart phone game.

And then I noticed that the loud guy — who was apparently the brother of the dude with the walker — was sort of haranguing some people near us. He was insisting that this young woman sit down in the empty seat next to him even though she said she was fine, was getting off in a few stops, etc. But this dude was so fucking insistent and belligerent about it, going on about how his wife also never wanted to sit down on the train (?), that I think the woman acquiesced and sat down essentially to get him to hush up about it, because he was That Kind Of Person. Not asking her to sit to be polite, but essentially bothering people because he could.

This is all standard NYC subway fare, honestly, and I wouldn’t have paid much more attention, except after the woman sat down the loud guy said to her still-standing boyfriend that if we were in a different place and time, he’d make “that fat bitch move her bag” so he could sit.

People, I have never made a more intense WTF face in my life. Continue reading “When You’ve Had It Up To Here” →

This is what I get for not updating my plugins enough

By:  TempestGeekitude

I just now noticed that JournalPress now allows users to choose which LJ icon they want to use. Yay! So now you won’t always see my fan icon (though mostly you still will) and posts from the tech blog will have a different icon so they’re easier to identify/skip if you want.

Now if only someone would update/rewrite the plugin that allows comment syncing between LJ and WordPress, we’d be in business.