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shadowkat1. Found this on FB, during an interesting discussion about how rewarding social media can be. It can be, depending on how you handle it.
Because of social media -- I've been able to reconnect with old college friends, roommates, an ex-boyfriend, family, and stay in contact with friends I met via an internet fan board. Also, I've met some people who became close friends. Social media got me through a difficult time in my life, and supported me when I had to leave a toxic employment situation.
But by the same token, if you aren't careful -- it can be toxic. As many of you probably already know by now? I have a very dry and at times snarky sense of humor. I think I've inherited from my father's side of the family. My grandfather had a biting wit as well as my father and most of his siblings. As does my brother -- you should see us go at it. I mock everything, including and especially myself. But as my father stated once -- "this doesn't always go over well with your fellow human beings." And it doesn't always work well online, when tone becomes an issue and you can't hear the laughter in my voice or see the mischievous twinkle in my eye. Or know that I'm making fun of myself too.
I'm also opinionated and stubborn. And have little to no tolerance for certain political stances. (I'm moderate liberal, swinging towards progressive. Which basically means, I'm pro-immigration, pro-diversity, pro-universal health care, pro-choice, pro-same-sex marriage, pro-gender rights, anti-racism, anti-death penalty (well except for confirmed serial killers and crazy cult leaders - who personally, I'd shoot and ask questions later, but they rarely get the death penalty).)
I've learned not to discuss politics online -- the hard way. Also learned, the hard way, not to engage in shipping wars. (Actually this appears to be an on-going lesson. I'm a bit dense.) Or to give unasked for advice. Make snarky comments to others posts. Or comment on their posts in my own journal -- and make snarky comments about them. (All good ways to get yourself into a heap of trouble.)
In fact it is best NOT to comment on what other people post on, unless you can be really nice and kind about it. Always be kind. You'd think this would be easy -- it's not. I have my demons, I admit it. And after a difficult day at work -- they raise their ugly heads and snap at things like snapping turtles.
Another thing I've learned, don't overshare. Or if you do -- lock the post. And whatever you do? Don't talk publically about your workplace with your actual name attached to it and in a public post. Lock that sucker down. Particularly if you have a public workplace that is in the news, a lot. This is a rule I've never broken.
One of the things I love about DW is it is below the radar. It's not a heavily frequented site or popular. And we have pseudonymes. FB is not below the radar, although I friends locked my page ages ago, and only have 126 people on it. Also I do not say anything on Twitter. Nor do I have many followers. I maintain a low internet profile. If you don't? Copy Neil Gaiman -- in how you go about it. He's careful.
Or...you could end like Ashton Kushner, who had to leave Twitter after amassing over a billion followers. Or this woman.. Popular Mommy Blogger Life Ruined By Internet.
2. Picked up the latest Un-canny X-men #18 (2018) - by Mathew Rosenberg and Salvador Larroca -- his story arc is rather controversial -- or so it appears by some of the reviews.
For one thing -- it's not action packed, but dialogue heavy and character focused. (One of the reasons I love the X-men and Marvel comics -- is the emphasis on character and social justice themes. The writers really do tackle political issues in an interesting way.) This issue is basically a funeral. One of the characters has died and in a ...less than stellar way. She wasn't killed in battle or fighting super villains. And for many fans of the comics this was hard for them to digest or take.
I don't tend to analyze things from an emotional perspective so much as a logical one, I think logically. I was trained to logically break down story and theme and analyze it in a logical manner. Emotion comes in -- but usually later. Which is why it is often hard for me to understand people who do it the opposite? I ran into problems on various fan boards -- because I saw how the story was going to play out logically. They were going to kill this character because it was the only way to propel the story, theme, and various other arcs forward. Did I care that the character was being killed off -- eh, not really, I'd already figured out that the character had to be killed off for the rest of the story to work about a year ago, so stopped investing in their arc. I'm not that masochistic. I wasn't upset Spike was going to die in Chosen, because I'd already figured out that they had to bring him back in Angel due to how they were killing him -- nothing else made logical sense. This doesn't mean I don't feel the emotion -- I do. I'm an empath. It's just that I see how the story is going to play out.
It also means that I don't tend to think or analyze in socio-political terms. In other words, I'm unlikely to care or notice that the a gay character was killed or a woman was killed to futher the plot -- because I think, wait, the plot needed to be furthered by killing them. Example? Tara's death in Buffy. I knew two years before they killed her off that they were going to do it. Just as I knew they were planning to turn Willow. It was heavily foreshadowed in S3 and S4. If OZ had stayed -- they'd have killed him off. So when fans did the whole lesbian cliche analysis, I thought, sorry no, this would have happened regardless, and to not kill her off just because she was female or a lesbian and people might see that? Seemed silly to me and illogical.
Now, this is not to say that I do not critique things for how they portray socio-political issues. I was heavily critical of Buffy S6 and 7 for how the writers clumsily dealt with these issues. Whedon's handling of the classic soap opera rape trope, was clumsily done. (General Hospital, which he referenced at the time, did a far better job with it -- in part, because it had more time to look at the story/plot from multiple angles. Whedon didn't bother to go very deep. And clearly didn't get it. His inability to understand the affect of sexual violence on the female gender is demonstrated in the Avengers, Dollhouse, and Firefly. He gets it from a male perspective, but not a female one, and it is disturbing.] Also his handling of racial inequality was clumsily done -- demonstrating he's a privileged liberal white guy who doesn't get it. (Why should he? He was raised in rich white Hollywood, with opportunities aplenty.) But I didn't think he was clumsy with Willow and Tara...although there was a bit of heterosexual fanboy fantasy there. It's notable that neither Xander nor Andrew were shown as Gay in the series. And he never really did a male gay storyline, so much as subtextually refer to it between Angel and Spike. This is often true of heterosexual writers -- they will often entertain doing homosexual stories about the opposite sex, but not the same-sex. While non-hetersexual writers seem to be more diversified in their writing. Not all heterosexual writers however -- since Shondra Rhimes has written both male and female homosexual relationships in her series Grey's Anatomy and Scandal, not to mention Station 19 and For the People. She also has possibly written among the better and more stable ones, and tackled with aplomb bisexuality.
But, I tend to be lenient, unless I think the writer is obviously trying to make a point and has frakked it up, big time. Clumsy and lazy writing from professionals, annoys me. Also if they go about it in an illogical way -- that is offensive. I also will get upset, if it is obvious to me that they are making a point that I strongly disagree with and feel furthers a culture of hate and discrimination. As my friend Wales pointed out to me a while back -- story tellers can heal others, help others, and give people a release. I think as writers we do have some responsibility for what we write. That said, I do not think we should be held accountable for a reader's misreading of the text, or how they choose to perceive it -- let's face it we all bring our own garbage to the proceedings. And we're all insanely judgemental about crap that rubs us the wrong way. When I read or view a story, I try to separate myself (which is largely impossible) and try to see what the writer is trying to tell me. The point of telling a story is to pull the viewer/reader into another perspective, in other words to see the world in a different way and learn.
Some stories can change us, or change how we view the world around us. Which is why stories can be seen as dangerous. But we have no way of knowing how they will change people or if others will perceive or see it the same way we do. It's a bit arrogant to think we can see that -- when we clearly can't.
That's what makes reviewing any medium a dicey exercise to say the least. You really don't know how the other person will view it. It's almost as if we are reading and watching two different things. I say tomato, you say tomatoe, let's call the whole thing off..
So, in Uncanny X-men #18 -- we learn that long-time character Rahn Sinclair has died horribly. (I had troubles caring. For a couple of reasons -- one, the character had disappeared from the comics I'd been reading and I forgot about her. Two, she was never a favorite -- she's basically a Scottish Werewolf. And the comics never knew what to do with her. For a while she was in love with Rictor, then it was Alex Summers, and then ...God knows. She and Dani Moonstar were connected, or so I'm told here -- but it's the first I knew of it. I always found the character a bit whiny, to be honest. I'm not a fan of the angry werewolf trope in fiction. Wolverine sort of grates on my nerves in the same way. Three -- the character had pretty much given up on being a hero and wanted to live a normal life. Which seemed sort of..I don't know, insane, given what she'd been through and knew of the world. Honestly she turns into a werewolf when provoked, and has never had great control over her powers. Does she really think she can live a quiet life in NYC? Give me a break. She's safer with Cyclops and company. Plus she just got healed from an alien virus. This just seems like a dumb move all around. And I have no tolerance for people with super-powers whining about wanting a normal life -- what's normal? Buffy always got on my nerves for this reason. You have superpowers -- own it. Whiny characters annoy me. Add to all this...no one stays dead in this books. I'm sorry they don't.)
Comics Beat reviewer was offended because they decided it was a Trans Panic Murder and Rahn was a metaphor for a transgender female and Wolverine was a metaphor for a transgender male -- mainly because...you got me. Their logic did not work for me at all. I'm sorry I just don't see it. Rahn's trans because she turns into a werewolf?
Wolverine is because he's short and hairy -- and that makes him feminine? Alrighty then. They also felt that because Rahn was killed by a bunch of normal boys ganging up on her, and she refused to fight back -- this was an offensive version of fridging or something or other. What I saw was --- how does one handle violence in this world? The whole story was about that. Wolverine and Cyclops main argument over the years has been how far should you go? At one point they flipped roles, and Wolverine was the peace-maker, anti-violence, and Cyclops the proponent of violence to achieve his ends, except of course when it came to Hope Summers -- who Wolverine felt needed to be killed, and Cyclops went out of his way to protect. Now, they've flipped back again -- Cyclops keeps telling Wolverine not to kill people. In this issue, he wanted him to go to the funeral and be there for the others. Instead Wolverine went off with Kwannon to kill the people who killed Rahn in an act of vengeance, which most likely just made everything worse.
That's the thematic structure. Rahn made the choice not to fight back -- because she was tired of killing, tired of fighting. The question the book asks is should she have fought and killed the four guys, would she have been able to? It's a question asked in various issues. From the very first one -- where Cyclops is attacked by a mob and finally caves and lets loose with his optic blasts, to where Blindfold is almost killed, and he saves her from a gang. To Kwannon who chooses to kill Joseph for the greater good. It's a counter-point to the Age of X-man, which is strongly anti-violence. Both are dark in their own ways.
Do I agree with the thematic structure? I don't know yet. It doesn't appear to be pro-violence. Because each time the characters give in -- they make things worse.
But it does show the reality of living in a violent world and not fighting back.
I'd say that women are treated harshly here -- but, we have Hope Summers who can give as good as she gets. And Kwannon. And well Illyana and Dani. Also the person injured in the last issue was Cyclops, when he refused to fight back and tried to stop Wolverine from attacking Hope. If Wolverine hadn't attacked Hope -- Cyclops wouldn't have lost an eye. Wolverine's manner of handling things doesn't make it better and isn't heroic. It's easy. And I think the writer is showing that.
And no, I don't think any of the characters in this book are metaphors for transgender. Not everything is about gender politics. The reviewer is obviously trans and projecting their issues onto the work.
Because of social media -- I've been able to reconnect with old college friends, roommates, an ex-boyfriend, family, and stay in contact with friends I met via an internet fan board. Also, I've met some people who became close friends. Social media got me through a difficult time in my life, and supported me when I had to leave a toxic employment situation.
But by the same token, if you aren't careful -- it can be toxic. As many of you probably already know by now? I have a very dry and at times snarky sense of humor. I think I've inherited from my father's side of the family. My grandfather had a biting wit as well as my father and most of his siblings. As does my brother -- you should see us go at it. I mock everything, including and especially myself. But as my father stated once -- "this doesn't always go over well with your fellow human beings." And it doesn't always work well online, when tone becomes an issue and you can't hear the laughter in my voice or see the mischievous twinkle in my eye. Or know that I'm making fun of myself too.
I'm also opinionated and stubborn. And have little to no tolerance for certain political stances. (I'm moderate liberal, swinging towards progressive. Which basically means, I'm pro-immigration, pro-diversity, pro-universal health care, pro-choice, pro-same-sex marriage, pro-gender rights, anti-racism, anti-death penalty (well except for confirmed serial killers and crazy cult leaders - who personally, I'd shoot and ask questions later, but they rarely get the death penalty).)
I've learned not to discuss politics online -- the hard way. Also learned, the hard way, not to engage in shipping wars. (Actually this appears to be an on-going lesson. I'm a bit dense.) Or to give unasked for advice. Make snarky comments to others posts. Or comment on their posts in my own journal -- and make snarky comments about them. (All good ways to get yourself into a heap of trouble.)
In fact it is best NOT to comment on what other people post on, unless you can be really nice and kind about it. Always be kind. You'd think this would be easy -- it's not. I have my demons, I admit it. And after a difficult day at work -- they raise their ugly heads and snap at things like snapping turtles.
Another thing I've learned, don't overshare. Or if you do -- lock the post. And whatever you do? Don't talk publically about your workplace with your actual name attached to it and in a public post. Lock that sucker down. Particularly if you have a public workplace that is in the news, a lot. This is a rule I've never broken.
One of the things I love about DW is it is below the radar. It's not a heavily frequented site or popular. And we have pseudonymes. FB is not below the radar, although I friends locked my page ages ago, and only have 126 people on it. Also I do not say anything on Twitter. Nor do I have many followers. I maintain a low internet profile. If you don't? Copy Neil Gaiman -- in how you go about it. He's careful.
Or...you could end like Ashton Kushner, who had to leave Twitter after amassing over a billion followers. Or this woman.. Popular Mommy Blogger Life Ruined By Internet.
2. Picked up the latest Un-canny X-men #18 (2018) - by Mathew Rosenberg and Salvador Larroca -- his story arc is rather controversial -- or so it appears by some of the reviews.
For one thing -- it's not action packed, but dialogue heavy and character focused. (One of the reasons I love the X-men and Marvel comics -- is the emphasis on character and social justice themes. The writers really do tackle political issues in an interesting way.) This issue is basically a funeral. One of the characters has died and in a ...less than stellar way. She wasn't killed in battle or fighting super villains. And for many fans of the comics this was hard for them to digest or take.
I don't tend to analyze things from an emotional perspective so much as a logical one, I think logically. I was trained to logically break down story and theme and analyze it in a logical manner. Emotion comes in -- but usually later. Which is why it is often hard for me to understand people who do it the opposite? I ran into problems on various fan boards -- because I saw how the story was going to play out logically. They were going to kill this character because it was the only way to propel the story, theme, and various other arcs forward. Did I care that the character was being killed off -- eh, not really, I'd already figured out that the character had to be killed off for the rest of the story to work about a year ago, so stopped investing in their arc. I'm not that masochistic. I wasn't upset Spike was going to die in Chosen, because I'd already figured out that they had to bring him back in Angel due to how they were killing him -- nothing else made logical sense. This doesn't mean I don't feel the emotion -- I do. I'm an empath. It's just that I see how the story is going to play out.
It also means that I don't tend to think or analyze in socio-political terms. In other words, I'm unlikely to care or notice that the a gay character was killed or a woman was killed to futher the plot -- because I think, wait, the plot needed to be furthered by killing them. Example? Tara's death in Buffy. I knew two years before they killed her off that they were going to do it. Just as I knew they were planning to turn Willow. It was heavily foreshadowed in S3 and S4. If OZ had stayed -- they'd have killed him off. So when fans did the whole lesbian cliche analysis, I thought, sorry no, this would have happened regardless, and to not kill her off just because she was female or a lesbian and people might see that? Seemed silly to me and illogical.
Now, this is not to say that I do not critique things for how they portray socio-political issues. I was heavily critical of Buffy S6 and 7 for how the writers clumsily dealt with these issues. Whedon's handling of the classic soap opera rape trope, was clumsily done. (General Hospital, which he referenced at the time, did a far better job with it -- in part, because it had more time to look at the story/plot from multiple angles. Whedon didn't bother to go very deep. And clearly didn't get it. His inability to understand the affect of sexual violence on the female gender is demonstrated in the Avengers, Dollhouse, and Firefly. He gets it from a male perspective, but not a female one, and it is disturbing.] Also his handling of racial inequality was clumsily done -- demonstrating he's a privileged liberal white guy who doesn't get it. (Why should he? He was raised in rich white Hollywood, with opportunities aplenty.) But I didn't think he was clumsy with Willow and Tara...although there was a bit of heterosexual fanboy fantasy there. It's notable that neither Xander nor Andrew were shown as Gay in the series. And he never really did a male gay storyline, so much as subtextually refer to it between Angel and Spike. This is often true of heterosexual writers -- they will often entertain doing homosexual stories about the opposite sex, but not the same-sex. While non-hetersexual writers seem to be more diversified in their writing. Not all heterosexual writers however -- since Shondra Rhimes has written both male and female homosexual relationships in her series Grey's Anatomy and Scandal, not to mention Station 19 and For the People. She also has possibly written among the better and more stable ones, and tackled with aplomb bisexuality.
But, I tend to be lenient, unless I think the writer is obviously trying to make a point and has frakked it up, big time. Clumsy and lazy writing from professionals, annoys me. Also if they go about it in an illogical way -- that is offensive. I also will get upset, if it is obvious to me that they are making a point that I strongly disagree with and feel furthers a culture of hate and discrimination. As my friend Wales pointed out to me a while back -- story tellers can heal others, help others, and give people a release. I think as writers we do have some responsibility for what we write. That said, I do not think we should be held accountable for a reader's misreading of the text, or how they choose to perceive it -- let's face it we all bring our own garbage to the proceedings. And we're all insanely judgemental about crap that rubs us the wrong way. When I read or view a story, I try to separate myself (which is largely impossible) and try to see what the writer is trying to tell me. The point of telling a story is to pull the viewer/reader into another perspective, in other words to see the world in a different way and learn.
Some stories can change us, or change how we view the world around us. Which is why stories can be seen as dangerous. But we have no way of knowing how they will change people or if others will perceive or see it the same way we do. It's a bit arrogant to think we can see that -- when we clearly can't.
That's what makes reviewing any medium a dicey exercise to say the least. You really don't know how the other person will view it. It's almost as if we are reading and watching two different things. I say tomato, you say tomatoe, let's call the whole thing off..
So, in Uncanny X-men #18 -- we learn that long-time character Rahn Sinclair has died horribly. (I had troubles caring. For a couple of reasons -- one, the character had disappeared from the comics I'd been reading and I forgot about her. Two, she was never a favorite -- she's basically a Scottish Werewolf. And the comics never knew what to do with her. For a while she was in love with Rictor, then it was Alex Summers, and then ...God knows. She and Dani Moonstar were connected, or so I'm told here -- but it's the first I knew of it. I always found the character a bit whiny, to be honest. I'm not a fan of the angry werewolf trope in fiction. Wolverine sort of grates on my nerves in the same way. Three -- the character had pretty much given up on being a hero and wanted to live a normal life. Which seemed sort of..I don't know, insane, given what she'd been through and knew of the world. Honestly she turns into a werewolf when provoked, and has never had great control over her powers. Does she really think she can live a quiet life in NYC? Give me a break. She's safer with Cyclops and company. Plus she just got healed from an alien virus. This just seems like a dumb move all around. And I have no tolerance for people with super-powers whining about wanting a normal life -- what's normal? Buffy always got on my nerves for this reason. You have superpowers -- own it. Whiny characters annoy me. Add to all this...no one stays dead in this books. I'm sorry they don't.)
Comics Beat reviewer was offended because they decided it was a Trans Panic Murder and Rahn was a metaphor for a transgender female and Wolverine was a metaphor for a transgender male -- mainly because...you got me. Their logic did not work for me at all. I'm sorry I just don't see it. Rahn's trans because she turns into a werewolf?
Wolverine is because he's short and hairy -- and that makes him feminine? Alrighty then. They also felt that because Rahn was killed by a bunch of normal boys ganging up on her, and she refused to fight back -- this was an offensive version of fridging or something or other. What I saw was --- how does one handle violence in this world? The whole story was about that. Wolverine and Cyclops main argument over the years has been how far should you go? At one point they flipped roles, and Wolverine was the peace-maker, anti-violence, and Cyclops the proponent of violence to achieve his ends, except of course when it came to Hope Summers -- who Wolverine felt needed to be killed, and Cyclops went out of his way to protect. Now, they've flipped back again -- Cyclops keeps telling Wolverine not to kill people. In this issue, he wanted him to go to the funeral and be there for the others. Instead Wolverine went off with Kwannon to kill the people who killed Rahn in an act of vengeance, which most likely just made everything worse.
That's the thematic structure. Rahn made the choice not to fight back -- because she was tired of killing, tired of fighting. The question the book asks is should she have fought and killed the four guys, would she have been able to? It's a question asked in various issues. From the very first one -- where Cyclops is attacked by a mob and finally caves and lets loose with his optic blasts, to where Blindfold is almost killed, and he saves her from a gang. To Kwannon who chooses to kill Joseph for the greater good. It's a counter-point to the Age of X-man, which is strongly anti-violence. Both are dark in their own ways.
Do I agree with the thematic structure? I don't know yet. It doesn't appear to be pro-violence. Because each time the characters give in -- they make things worse.
But it does show the reality of living in a violent world and not fighting back.
I'd say that women are treated harshly here -- but, we have Hope Summers who can give as good as she gets. And Kwannon. And well Illyana and Dani. Also the person injured in the last issue was Cyclops, when he refused to fight back and tried to stop Wolverine from attacking Hope. If Wolverine hadn't attacked Hope -- Cyclops wouldn't have lost an eye. Wolverine's manner of handling things doesn't make it better and isn't heroic. It's easy. And I think the writer is showing that.
And no, I don't think any of the characters in this book are metaphors for transgender. Not everything is about gender politics. The reviewer is obviously trans and projecting their issues onto the work.