Halloween

I have a love/hate relationship with Halloween. 

For starters, I’m a big ol’ Goth.  I have so much black in my wardrobe that light bends towards my closet.  My house is decorated with bats, black cats and ghosts year round.  I love excuses to dress up.  I love fall.  I love the cool crisp air, crunching leaves under my feet and everything pumpkin.

Ok, so where’s the hate coming from?

“Educational” Halloween programs.  If I never have to see Laurie Cabot, the Official Witch of Salem it’ll be too fucking soon.  According to these shows all Wiccans call themselves “MoonShadow Ravensfury,” waft about their backyards skyclad waving swords and talking about being “one with the creative power of the Goddess and the Universe” in breathy voices reminiscent of porn stars. 

i hate these shows

Mr. Geek Girl What Rules has declared that I am not allowed to watch them, because he is sick and tired of my standing in front of the television screaming, “Where do you get these assholes?  You’re making us all look stupid!  Stop it!!!!”

Oh, and don’t get me started on the “Vampires” who live their lives on the “Dark Side.” 

Seriously.  I was a bouncer and a bartender in a Goth/Fetish club for 8 years.  Most of the people you find there are awesome, relatively witty, intelligent people with a keen fashion sense and twisted senses of humor. 

Most.

As for the rest… Seriously, dude, a bolo tie is NEVER Satanic, and I don’t care how big the Baphomet’s Angel inscribed on it is, you still look like a tool.  Add to this the fact that, by and large, I think Satanists are just tools in general.  You’re just Christians trying to piss “Daddy” off, get over it.  And quit doing it in my clubs, wearing my clothes, making the rest of us look bad. 

There’s a reason we’re all snotty to you.  We figured out inside of a month that you had poor hygeine, little to no social skills, and the manners of a horny chimp on crack.  It is NEVER ok to touch someone without their express permission, let alone try to suck on their finger, because you’re “darque and mysterious.” 

The only mysterious thing about you is how you’ve managed to hold down your security guard job this long while claiming to be a Master of the Darque Arts.

Wow, that got awfully specific, now didn’t it? 

But back to Halloween.  You always get these shows with “witches” and “vampires” living the “lifestyle.”  GAG!!!! 

Look, here’s the scoop:  Most Wiccans are boring.  We are.  We have jobs.  We have hobbies.  We have lives.  We keep our clothes on.  We pay bills.  We do everything you do.  Really.  That’s it. 

As for the “Vampires…” I’m ok with a little blood-play between consenting adults in a safe and hygienic environment.  That’s all well and good.  A noisy, crowded, filthy bar is neither safe nor hygienic. 

I did a panel at a Sci-Fi Con last year about what sort of BDSM things in the Laurell K. Hamilton books were feasible for mere mortals and which were not.  My stock answer for the night was, “Why can’t you do that?  You are not a Vampire and it will kill you.” 

While I appreciate and understand an esthetic focusing on the darker and more macabre aspects of life, if you ask me to call you Vlad when I know full well your name is Tom, I’m going to laugh until I puke.  I can appreciate that role-playing is fun, and LARPs are great fun.  But that is not real life. 

Oh, and girls, he has NOT cast a spell on you.  If you feel compelled to obey his every whim as if he were your “Dark Master” (actual words from actual floozy in the club), seek fucking help.  I mean it, you are obviously not in a good headspace and could probably benefit from some fucking counseling.

Wanted: The Movie

Ok, a friend just pointed me at the trailer for Wanted:  http://movies.yahoo.com/movie/1809878244/video/4771511/standardformat/

 It looks pretty.  It looks fun.  It isn’t the comic book.  Instead of a kabal of evil supervillians who have killed off all the heroes and divvied up the world between five gangs, they’re a group of assassins who kill select people to make the world better.

Insert straight-faced emoticon here.

It’s been a couple of years since I read the comic, but the whole point of The Fraternity of Supervillians was definitely not safeguarding humanity through select assassination.  It was enjoying the fruits of being the evil fuckers who ran everything.   

I don’t know if you’ve read the comic.  I loved it.  There’s this guy, and he’s a pathetic loser.  He has a dead end job, his girlfriend’s cheating on him, he hates his life.  Then one day he finds out his Dad was the greatest killer ever, code named the Killer.  The Fox who knew his father, biblically as well as professionally, finds him, and his training begins.  He is taught to be the baddest killer ever.  The comic is peppered with references to, mostly, DC comics; for example there’s a chunk of a red cape in a glass case.  The Fox is pretty clearly Catwoman “inspired,” Shithead = Clayface, you get the idea.

Granted, as a buddy of mine says, there’s no way anyone would attempt to market that movie in the mainstream.  Not a chance in hell.  It’s full of bastards and murderous scum.  Not ot mention the potential for copyright and trademark infringement cases, although if the The Tick could get away with der Fledermaus and Bat Manuel, maybe not.  

I probably will go see the movie.  Angelina Jolie actually looks pretty convincing in the Fox role.  I’m not so into the Tomb Raider stuff, but I enjoyed her in Mr. and Mrs. Smith.   Granted, the Fox in the comic is African-American and I find it hard to believe they couldn’t find an African-American actress who was equally if not more bad-ass.   And like I said, the movie looks pretty as all get out.  The special effects look awesome.  I’m kind of curious to see how they managed to make heroes out of that group.  And, I believe I spied Liam Neason in the trailer.*  Me-ow.

*ETA:  Apparently I did NOT see Liam Neason, but Thomas Kretschman(?).  Methinks it is time for new glasses.  Crap.

  

The Love I have for my friends knows no bounds!!!

Seriously, I did not set out to surround myself with nasty, sarcastic… Oh, who the hell am I kidding?  I totally did.  My buddy Mukdaddy made me this because he loves me so:

Geek Girls Rule! #26 – Unhallowed Metropolis Part II

Okay, it looks like the review is going to turn into a three-parter, mostly because it is absolutely impossible to create characters for seven people, using only two books, with a wholly unknown gaming system in anything even approximating a reasonable amount of time. 

Last Thursday Loree from the Girl Game came over and we sat down to make her character for Unhallowed Metropolis. It took us about an hour and a half, mostly because I had to keep looking stuff up. The point system for Attributes, Skills and Qualities is pretty straight forward. In feel, it is quite similar to GURPS, where you have Impediments you can take in order to give you more points for Qualities. These read much like Advantages and Disadvantages. The main difference from GURPS being that you may not use the points from Impediments for anything other than Qualities. 

To begin with, everyone has one level in every Attribute. You get 25 points for raising your Attributes and they are spent like this: To raise an Attribute from 1 to 2 costs 2 points; to raise an Attribute from 2 to 3 costs 3 points. Basically, it costs the amount of the level you hope to attain to increase the level. Human Attributes top out at 5. Any points you have left over can be doubled and spent on Qualities.

Skills are bought from a pool of 25 points as well, and they are spent the same way. It costs the amount of the level you hope to attain to buy the Skill up. The pre-established character concepts have Skills that you get automatically at certain levels. And for some Skills, for each level you have it, you also get a Stunt in that Skill. It sounds rather more complicated than it really is. Basically for every level you have in, say, Pistol you get a nifty thing you can do with pistols. 

Human characters begin with a point of Corruption in one of the Paths.  

Then you spend points on Qualities and Impediments to round out your character, buy stuff with the money that comes with your character concept, and come up with backstory.

Friday, everyone showed up and after a flurry of gift-exchanging (we have a tendency to buy each other stuff just because it reminds us of the person in question) and food prep (roast chicken, cheese-stuffed dates wrapped in bacon, Dal (probably spelling it wrong), potato-leek soup, calamata olive and whole wheat breads, gingerbread cupckakes and a pumpkin trifle… oh, and fresh guacamole and chips) we got down to making characters for everyone else. On a side note, we welcomed the newest member of the group, Lisa. The kitties thank her for the hand-knitted kitty toys. 

There are six character type templates: Aristocrat, Criminal, Dhampir, Doctor, Mourner and Undertaker. In our group we have one Dhampir (half-vampire), two Mourners, one ex-Mourner/Aristocrat, one Doctor, one Undertaker, and one Criminal/Manservant. One of the girls was out sick, so we’ll add her later. Currently everyone except Jilli and I have their books on order. We got most of the characters, or at least the concepts, fleshed out pretty well. Or at least they know what they want to be and where in the book they need to look to figure it out. There’s going to be a bit of Skill and Trait-juggling at the beginning of the next session to round everyone out.   

The character generation isn’t difficult, but I think most of us were struck by a great big case of “Oooooo, shiny!” while trying to figure out what we were going to do. Or rather they were; I was just struck by shiny every time I happened upon something else really neat while looking for applicable rules. This gamebook is not for the easily-distractable.  

Another plus that is a minus to creating characters in a timely fashion is that the creators urge you to come up with your own skills and qualities to fit your characters. This can be a problem with some people. It can be a little too much freedom. Sometimes too many choices are as bad as not enough choices, although we did appreciate the freedom to come up with concepts like Jilli’s ex-Mourner/Aristocrat, or Kate’s Criminal/Manservant. And I think those two character concepts are brilliant, with a phenomenal amount of potential. 

This group is big on backstory for their characters. Seriously, if you ask any one of them why their character behaves, thinks, or dresses some way, they will have an answer for you right off the bat. And the setting for this game, coupled with the fact that most of us really dig on Victoriana in the first place, means I’m going to be seeing some in-fucking-credible backstories and character histories. Have I mentioned lately how lucky I am to have these girls? Seriously, Jilli showed up with no idea what she wanted to play at all and, within about half an hour, had come up with an ex-Mourner who had had to leave the order because the rest of her family had died off and she needed to remarry to continue the family line. 

So, that’s my basic review of the character gen process: it can be a little involved when dealing with the “ooh, shiny” syndrome, but it’s fairly straightforward, and not at all difficult for my rule-challenged ass to figure out with just the book to guide me. And you also get a look at what sort of spread we put on for gaming around my place. 

The next Girl Game is November 9th, so hopefully after that I’ll be able to tell you how it plays and how well the combat mechanics work. 

Also, next weekend is AmberCon NW in Portland, OR. Odds are good this column will be late as I intend to be drunk and/or gaming for five days. I can’t wait. I’m running two games and playing in four or five others.  

Am I mean?

A friend of mine made this for me:

I have the most awesome friends in the whole world.

Geek Girls Rule! #25.75 – The Thing About Tygra and my Thoughts on Horror Movies.

Here’s the thing.  If the plot calls for her to get beat up, sure, no problem.  No one I’ve been reading has a problem with that.  What they have a problem with is the fact that she doesn’t even ATTEMPT to defend herself.  She acts like a victim in a horror movie.  She’s a fucking AVENGER, for Gods’ sake.  If the script calls for her to get beat up, to lose the fight, great.  I can believe the Hood got a lucky hit in, or something.  I can believe something slipped under her feet and she fell and he capitalized.  What I can’t believe is that she did NOTHING. 

This is one of the things that drive me fucking batshit about most serial killer movies.  Serial killers are guys.  Just guys.  He chases the heroine into a kitchen, a room full of fucking knives and other stabby, pointy implements and she screams and flails and does nothing useful.  Or even better, a garage.  This leads to me screaming at the screen yelling, “Pick up that tire iron and beat him like a rented mule!!!  Make him call you DADDY!!!” 

Here is how the opening scene of Scream would have gone had The Geek Girl What Rules been the Drew Barrymore character:
“What’s your name?”
“Why?”
“I like to know the name of the people I watch.”
“Oh, you’re watching me are you?”  Walks to bedroom, gets gun.  “Are you watching this?  Yes, this is me loading my gun.  Now I’m going into the bathroom which only has one entrance, and I’m going to wait with this gun pointed at the door.  Now, I have a question for you:  What are you going to do?”
“Um, I’m going to go bother the sorority girls down the street.”  Click

And this is why girls who were raised in relatively redneck families don’t make good horror movie victims. 

The “helpless girl” trope really pissed the fuck right out of me.  Seriously, I think people, regardless of gender, have a far more highly developed survival instinct than that.  Particularly when they are Super-fucking-heroes. 

The Kukuxumusu notebook I love so much

I  hope I managed to do this right.  For Gods’ sake, I just figured out how to do this on LJ.  This image cracks me up.  The poor little Batman fleeing with a look of terror on his face, while obviously aroused.  I mean, nice package little cartoon dude. 

What do you guys think?

Geek Girls Rule! #25.5 – More Critique on the Critique of Feminist Critique of Comics.

Say that three times fast.

Anyway, I essentially wanted to address two quick points. 

1.  Rachel pointed out that my list could discriminate against some folks I don’t wish to discriminate against, so here is the updated version:
                    1.  Do you identify as Female?

I don’t mean “identify WITH females” I mean “Identify AS female.”  Are you either biologically OR gender-wise female.  If not, then step off for a second before you go marginalizing everything we say because it makes you “feel bad.”

And that leads me to Point 2:  Perhaps if women pointing out that there’s exploitive and misogynistic bullshit going on in comics makes you feel bad or attacked, then maybe, just maybe, on a subconscious level, you know it’s fucked up even as you desperately try to justify how it isn’t. 

Really, you need to let go and realize that you can love something even with all it’s faults.  Adults do that.  It’s ok. 

Also, if every time you say something to any female blogger you get “hostile” responses, I’d take a look in the mirror, sunshine.  There’s only one constant here, and it ain’t us.  Contrary to popular belief, we aren’t a “hive-mind” and we don’t all think alike.  We are individual people with different life experiences and backgrounds.   A lot of times I read other female comic bloggers and roll my eyes so hard they threaten to fall out of my head.  And I’m more than sure some of them feel the same about me.  

It’s just like I told a friend of mine who was bitching about her latest boyfriend being a lousy lay after they broke up, like she did about EVERY guy she ever broke up with. 

I looked her in the eye and said, “You know, sweetie.  I’ve slept with a fairly representative sample of guys and I have to say, I’ve not had NEAR the number of lousy lovers that you seem to rack up.  So, I’m gonna go out on a limb here and suggest that since you’re the only constant, and you get out of sex what you put into it about three quarters of the time, I’m gonna suggest that maybe the problem here is you.”

Geek Girls Rule! #25.25 Something about feminist critiques of comics.

Feminists who critique comics are not a unilateral whole.  There are as many opinions on what constitutes exploitation and misogyny as there are women who read comics.  While I may not agree with everything every woman who critiques comics has to say, I can generally squint at the big picture a little and figure out where she’s coming from with it.  I still may not agree, but I don’t have to.  That’s the beauty of critique and opinion. 

However, almost every time the subject comes up you get some guy who comes in, claims to be a feminist or feminist friendly, blathers on and on, and then sums up his statement by essentially telling all us over-emotional little gals that we’ve got it all wrong, and there really isn’t anything to get upset over.  Or that we’re taking the wrong tack. 

I had one in the LJ comm I started for discussing women and comics, and when I countered that his paternalistic attitude was unnecessary and unwanted, I was informed that I obviously didn’t want to discuss things rationally, but instead just wanted people to agree with me.  The funny thing is that in the big post of his he linked to, he made my points for me twice while overall disagreeing with me.  I don’t get it. Reading comprehension, not so much.

Seriously, before you go telling women that what they are feeling and how they are feeling it is wrong, perhaps you should take a deep breath and ask yourself the following questions:
1.  Do I have tits?
2.  Do I have a vagina?
3.  Do I have a uterus and/or ovaries?

If the answer to any of these questions is “No” then perhaps you should take a step back. 

A couple of years ago I got raked over the coals by my male friends for grandiosely (and wrongly) announcing that vasectomy couldn’t possibly be that big a deal and that someone who was whining about it needed to shut the fuck up.  And honestly, I shouldn’t have said that.  I do not own testicles or a scrotum.  I can not know what it feels like to be vasectomized.  But by this same token I’ll thank men to keep from telling me that cramps can’t be that big a deal, as well.*  I don’t know where the guy bitching about post-vasectomy swelling is coming from, and guys don’t know where women who have been acculturated differently from them are coming from. 

Now, my second pet peeve about critiquing comics:  “You just hate comics, you big frigid lesbian prude bitch.” 

sigh

First, I don’t hate comics or I wouldn’t be wasting my time on them. 
Second, I am neither frigid, lesbian nor prude.  I am, however, big and a bitch so maybe two out of five isn’t bad.  Well, ok, being bi I can maybe give you the lesbian thing at a half a point: being correct on 2.5 points gives you a pretty good major league batting average, I guess.

As I’ve said before, liking something does not preclude you from noticing the things that are wrong with it.  I have a buddy of mine whom I adore, but when he’s on the net he’s a dick.  Ok, I have a lot of friends like that.  Sometimes you like things that aren’t entirely awesome 100% of the time.  That’s called life.  But ignoring the problems doesn’t mean they go away, nor does learning to live with those specific problems. 

I love comics.  This means that I buy them, I read them, but it does not preclude me from bitching about what’s wrong in them.  And sometimes I have to make the hard choice to not read a certain title anymore because the bad has started to vastly outweigh the good. 

The comics industry needs to realize that Geeky Girls dig on superheroes, too.  We don’t want “Barbie” comics, or comics about ponies and princesses.  We want strong, super-powered women kicking ass and taking names and doing it in REASONABLE clothing, among other things. 

Ok, I’ve blathered enough.  Maybe there will be more later, or maybe not.  I’m finally recovered enough from my surgeries to experience the nookie again so it’s kind of eating up a lot of my time right now.

*One time in a fit of pique I offered to beat my husband across the lower back with a 2X4 to demonstrate to him exactly what my cramps felt like.  Funny.  He declined.

Geek Girls Rule! #25 – Will the Watchmen make a good movie?

I decided to do this as a quickie before I do the second part of the Unhallowed Metropolis review, as the Girl Game will be playing it this Friday. I’m hoping that the one member of the game is going to show tonight for board game night, and that I can commandeer her to make her character tonight for practice. Which reminds me, I need to print out character sheets. Crap.  

Now, is the Watchmen movie a good idea?

I love Watchmen. I adore it as a graphic novel. I really enjoy Alan Moore’s writing, sometimes, I feel, in spite of his personality. But I have to say that I don’t think Watchmen is going to make a very good movie.  

I am gratified that they haven’t cast any big names for this. And not because I think it’s going to tank. But because since they aren’t blowing all the money on a name, there’s a better chance it’ll get spent on other things, and I’m hoping one of those things is writing. While the first two X-Men movies, the Spider-Man movies and V For Vendetta have given me a new optimism towards Hollywood’s ability to do comic movies, Catwoman and Elektra have destroyed much of that optimism. When you add to the mix the fact that Watchmen really isn’t an action-filled comic, I have very little hope that it will be done right.

Watchmen is mostly dialogue, talking, soul searching and Rorschach’s inner voice/diary. There’s some action, but nowhere near enough to satisfy your average Hollywood director. And certainly not enough action to appease the comic-book movie fan who is not also an actual comic fan, or more particularly, an Alan Moore fan. What I fear most is that the movie is going to become a disjointed, loosely strung together montage of the few action scenes, and my soul is crying just thinking about the myriad of ways they could fuck up the ending. I mean, the giant Lovecraftian squid thing is neat and all, but I can feel from here the urge of Hollywood producers to spend the entire budget on that. Kind of like they did with the special effects in Mortal Kombat II. 

Another problem lies in the plot of Watchmen. It is a deconstruction of the superhero myth. ”Who watches the watchers,” indeed? It is a treatise on how absolute power corrupts absolutely and how, with some mental gymnastics, it is surprisingly easy to convince yourself that decimating an entire population is a beneficial thing. One of two things is going to happen with this deconstruction. Either they are going to be so amazingly heavy-handed with it that all of the subtlety of the plot will be lost to the hammer blows of “Power is EVIL” or they’ll ignore it entirely and just turn Ozymandias into a straight-up villain.

And do not let me get started on what I suspect is going to happen to the Silk Spectre. I mean, it isn’t like she’s a hugely empowered character in the first place. But in the hands of Hollywood…? I think I just gave myself the full body shudders.

So, yeah, I’m dreading this film. I really am. I enjoyed the Wachowski Brothers’ adaptation of V For Vendetta. I love Watchmen, I really do, but unless they buck all comic book movie tropes ever and film it as a costume drama, it just isn’t going to be Watchmen. Let’s hope they prove me wrong.