Final Crisis: Some Thoughts

Final Crisis #7 summed up in two words: holy %$#& (insert the expletive of your choice).

I was somewhat disappointed by the first two issues of this major event miniseries. Once writer Grant Morrison hit his stride in the third issue, it just got better and better, culminating in a mindblowing finale that only Morrison could have crafted, and one that exceeded all of my expectations. It’s so wonderfully weird and cosmic. The parts I didn’t like about the first two issues make sense now that I’ve read the entire story in all of its brilliant glory.

Morrison is one mad bastard of a writer, and I mean that in an entirely positive way. I love his work (although it took me awhile to forgive him for killing off Jean Grey again). I’ve been a fan since he worked on Animal Man in the late 1980s.

And, really, how can one not love a comic where Captain Carrot makes a cameo appearance?

I’ve had quite a few disagreements with people today because I loved Final Crisis #7 and the miniseries as a whole. The majority opinion in fandom seems to be that this issue, and the miniseries as a whole, was confusing and, well, just too damn weird. I didn’t find it to be confusing. Challenging at times, yes, and most definitely weird, but those aren’t necessarily bad things. Then again, I’m someone who appreciates things like surrealism and the films of David Lynch.

Final Crisis writer Grant Morrison has admitted to heavy use of psychedelic drugs in the past as a way to expand his consciousness and once said that he thought David Lynch films reflected real life. Some of his stories in Doom Patrol were inspired by Dadaism, and his later work on The Invisibles was influenced by Robert Anton Wilson, Aleister Crowley, and William S. Burroughs. Although he’s also written more mainstream comics, like JLA and New X-Men, Morrison at his best is a mad genius who likes to challenge his readers.

I don’t think Morrison tries to be deliberately confusing, he simply applies his own internal logic to his works. Lynch refuses to explain his films because he believes that it’s more interesting to see how viewers interpret them for themselves. I think Morrison needs to be read the same way. Neither creator is talking down to the audience, they actually want the audience to think.

Final Crisis is far from perfect, but Morrison’s occasional stumbles are still far more fascinating than most other comics writers at their best. This is the kind of gleeful mind crack that dares to do something different than just another run of the mill big superhero event. Any writer can do those. It takes a brilliant writer to do a Final Crisis.

I’ll have more thoughts on this series to post at a later time. I still have much to cover, including various cameos, the surprising misuse of Wonder Woman in the story, and a look at my favorite moments.

Agree? Disagree? Think I’m as crazy as Morrison? Let me know!

– Danielle Ni Dhighe

Danielle’s New Comics – 28 Jan 2009

Hello there. Danielle here, the new contributing writer on this blog. I’m sure we’ll get to know one another better as you read my posts and I read your comments. I’m honored and thrilled to be asked to contribute here, and I look forward to doing so.

I’ll post some more content heavy posts in the near future, but I’d like to begin with a list of the comics I purchased this week. Feel free to share what you bought this week or to suggest titles the rest of us might want to check out.

Jack of Fables #30, Unknown Soldier #4, Greatest Hits #5, Ferryman #5, Fringe #2, Final Crisis #7, Final Crisis: Revelations #5, Superman #684, Batman #685, Wonder Woman #28, Trinity #35, Marvels: Eye of the Camera #3, Runaways #6, X-Force #11, X-Men: Worlds Apart #4, Young X-Men #10, Captain America #46.

Geek Girls Rule! #75 – Big News

News!  I’ve got news!!!

Three things, really.  The first is that I’ve started a Zazzle.com store for Geek Girls Rule! gear.  Seriously, even if I’m the only person who buys any of it, that’s ok.  I’ve been having fun designing things.   Right now there’s a cami and a sticker set.  More will be forthcoming.

The second is that I will be doing a monthly show on Gaming Radio Network with Sophie Lagace, called Geek Sisterhood.  Once I get the first show done and sent to them, I’ll let you know what our timeslot is.

The third is that I’ve decided to start adding other contributors.  And the first is Danielle Ni Dhighe.  She’s followed Geek Girls Rule! for some time, and we’ve been reading each other’s Livejournals, so I thought she’d be a good fit.  Also, she keeps on up comics and other media in a way that I just haven’t been able to lately, and I thought you all might like a change from “gaming, gaming, gaming, grumpy feminism, gaming, gaming…”

I’ll let her describe herself in her own words:

“Danielle Ni Dhighe is a geek girl of long duration.  She’s also queer in many different senses of the word, which inevitably leads her to seek out the different and the unique.  Seeing Star Wars in 1977 was her first step on the Path of Geek, a journey that continues to this day and hopefully will continue for as long as she draws breath.  Comic books (she has a collection approaching 7,000 issues), science fiction, and fantasy are her lifeblood, and she earns money to feed her geeky addictions by working in the field of technical support.

“Favorite comics include anything featuring the X-Men, Superman, Batman, or Golden Age characters.  I’ve been reading the X-books since 1980, so I tend to favor characters like Cyclops, Kitty Pryde, Colossus, Storm, Nightcrawler, and Wolverine.  Jean Grey in all her incarnations is my favorite comic book character of all time.  Most of my Internet aliases have Phoenix in them somewhere.  I’m also likely to enjoy just about anything published by Vertigo, and the occasional manga.  My collection is approaching 7,000 issues after three decades of collecting comics.  My bedroom looks more like a comics store.

“I watch far too much television for my own good.  I’ve been an obsessive fan of “Doctor Who” for over a quarter of a century.  The Fourth Doctor is and always will be my Doctor, although the Tenth Doctor is a close second.  I also enjoy its spinoffs, “Torchwood” and “The Sarah Jane Adventures.”  Especially “Torchwood.”  In a world where genre television seems to be almost entirely heterosexual, “Torchwood” is defiantly and cheerfully bisexual/omnisexual.

“I’m also a fan of the “Star Trek” and “Stargate” franchises.  I think I’ve seen just about every episode of every “Star Trek” show to date.  The re-imagined “Battlestar Galactica” is easily one of the finest exercises in science fiction in television history.  Brilliant is a word I use often in reference to it.  ”Smallville” may not be in that realm of greatness, but I always argue that it’s an important piece of the Superman mythos in its own right.  Toss in “Supernatural,” “Fringe,” and “Sanctuary” to the list of shows I watch.  I still miss “The X-Files” (or at least its first eight seasons).

“Joss Whedon’s shows and comics are a category of my fandoms in their own right.  I loved “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” and “Angel,” and still mourn the early passing of “Firefly.”  I can’t count how many times I’ve watched “Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog,” and I always end up singing the songs for days afterward, albeit badly and off key.

“I haven’t read as many novels in recent years as when I devoured a dozen a week when I was a teenager and plowed through the works of Asimov, Bradbury, and Heinlein, among others.  I started reading Tolkien and Lewis even younger.  I don’t remember when I first read Lovecraft, but I was hooked.  One of my current favorite genre writers is Jennifer Fallon, best known for the “Demon Child Trilogy.”

“Other literary fandoms of mine include Sherlock Holmes and Philip Marlowe.

“On a personal level, I’m bisexual, trans, and a feminist, not to mention a good old fashioned socialist.  Issues of gender and sexuality, and the blurring of the lines of both, fascinate me.  It’s the contradictions that make things interesting.”

That’s all the Geek Girls Rule! news for now!  Keep an eye here for Danielle’s writing, and on the Zazzle store for new gear.  I’ll keep you posted on the Gaming Radio and podcast fronts as well.  Live Geeky!!

Geek Girls Rule! #74 – Growing old Gracefully: Not just for women anymore.

Ok, by now you’ve all seen this:  Lt. Starbuck… Lost in Castration.  Yeah, I know.  It’s been making the rounds ever since the new BSG started.  Dirk Benedict has his knickers in a wad because the new Starbuck is a girl.  ZOMG! NOES!!!!  I was trying to ignore this, but apparently he’s recently reposted it at Big Hollywood, where old asshats too conservative for the Scientologists to deal with go to shoot what’s left of their careers loudly in the foot. 

This is really disappointing to me on so many levels.  For starters, I am old enough that I watched the original Battlestar in first run.  I had a huge crush on Dirk Benedict as a young girl.  In the late 70s Scholastic had a magazine you could order through the weekly book club thing they did, called Bananas.  And one of those issues had a Dirk Benedict as Starbuck poster.  I think it’s still in a box at my mom and dad’s somewhere.  It lived on my bedroom wall until such a time as Duran Duran and Motley Crue supplanted Dirk Benedict in my daydreams.  I loved him in “Scavenger Hunt,” a fantastically goofy movie about “Milton Bradley’s” heirs competing for his fortune in a scavenger hunt, per his will.  I ADORED the A-Team. 

But this is like a slap in the face, this misogynist screed using the updating of a show and a character as an excuse to spew this hateful crap.  The original BSG was bad.  It was poorly written, played for laughs, no pathos.  I loved it, yes, but I was eight.  The new show is not just a transformation of a relatively shallow show into something new, but an entire re-invention.  It barely shares a skeletal structure with the original.  Mr. Benedict is pissed because they’ve “castrated” HIS Starbuck by turning him into a her, that they’ve castrated the entire show by having strong female characters.  “Men hand out cigars. Women “hand out” babies,” is one of the least offensive things he says.  I am deeply saddened that I once harbored a crush on this hateful boor.

I have news for you, Mr. Benedict.  A lot of those young girls, like myself, who daydreamed about you when they should have been paying attention in class, we didn’t just want to date Starbuck.  A lot of us wanted to BE Starbuck.  My daydreams about that character didn’t involve me sitting around on the big ship waiting for him to come back to me.  In my daydreams, I was the first female fighter pilot, out there fighting the cylons with him. 

I know I cannot be alone in this.

I LOVE the new Starbuck.  Kara Thrace (played by Katee Sackhoff) is awesome.  I wish I’d had her as a role model when I was that age.  Hell, I fantasize about being her NOW.  I don’t know that I’d let kids as young as I was when I saw the original watch the new one.  I mean, “33″ scared the hell out of me, and made me cry.  But apparently young girls are watching the show, and writing her fan mail.  And I’m glad.  I’m glad that they don’t have to imagine they’re the ONLY female fighter pilot.  I’m glad that their fandom comes with a place for them built into it, instead of them having to imagine a way they could be the exception. 

That, and as I’ve said before, when we were watching the miniseries, and the scene where she punches the Colonel happened, the Mister looked over at me and said, “Honey, she’s you!”   I don’t think they’ve written her as a “man with tits” as so many have complained.  And maybe I’m biased, because I’ve been hit with the “man with tits” label so many times in my actual life.  But I find her realistic, engaging, a nuanced and complex character.  She breaks the trope of female heroes by having had something happen to someone she loved, instead of to her.  I find her guilt over his death, in all its manifestations, very real.

And seriously, Mr. Benedict’s screed sounds more like a cry of “I could still play that role!” than a legitimate beef.  And I think most of the people who’ve read it feel the way I do about it.  You are not Starbuck, Mr. Benedict.  You are an actor who happened to play that character for a season.  In making Starbuck a woman they have not castrated, or even attempted to castrate, you.  Had they left Starbuck male, you still wouldn’t have been tapped for the role.  You’ve aged out of it.  What would you have railed against then?  And quite frankly, this screed has probably ruined any chance you might have had to cameo on the show at all.  Seriously, Dirk, growing old gracefully?  It isn’t just for women anymore.

I apologize for the lack of content.

I’ve been busy.  In the interim here:  http://www.wickedcoolstuff.com/mopyblknplba.html

It’s a Monty Python, Black Knight backpack. 

I want this so badly I can taste it.  Hilarious?  Check.  In Poor Taste?  Check.  Probably utterly impractical?  Check. 

Gimme!!!!

What the Geek Girl What Rules is Doing this Weekend: Conquest NW 2009

http://www.conquestnw.com/

I will be there Saturday, helping to run the Story Games Lounge.  The Mister will be there both Saturday and Sunday.  I need at least one day a weekend to write and do laundry.  My co-host for Geek Sisterhood, Sophie Lagace, who you heard in podcast #7 talking about Emerald City Gamefest, will also be in town, and we’ll be trying to record the first episode of Geek Sisterhood. 

I look forward to seeing some of you there.

Geek Girls Rule! #73 – Going to be all Humorless Feminist at you for a bit.

Ok, I have totally slammed “Confessions of a Part-Time Sorceress” here and on podcasts.  I find the excerpts I’ve read to be banal, vapid and irritating to the point that they make me want to hit something.  I’ve called it twee, I’ve called it awful, but one criticism you will NOT hear me make is about the attractiveness of the author.

A. I have no idea what she looks like.  I mean, it is entirely possible I’ve met her, but I couldn’t tell you because I don’t know.  I haven’t sought out any pictures of her, and here’s why:

B.  How attractive she is has absolutely no bearing on how well she can write and how well I am able to withstand her written “personality.”

Seriously, how attractive to you a given woman is has absolutely no bearing on her intelligence, nor should it have a bearing on whether or not you find meaning in what she has to say.  Personally, I find the tendency for most people to judge the weight of someone’s opinion by how they look to be one of the stupidest, most inane tendencies of the human race ever.  If there’s a programmed racial suicide in the future of the human race, that is it.   And that goes for men, too.  I swear, if I had heard one more idiot tell me that “George W. Bush looks like the kind of guy you could have a beer with,” I was going to truly get medieval on their ass.  Fortunately, the egregious behavior in his second term managed to put paid to most of that crap.

And before they get started, “Hey, Evo Psych guys, suck it!”    Twice. 

There, got that out of the way.

Yes, I know, studies show that people are more inclined to give jobs to, be nicer to, blah blah blah, people that they find attractive.  If you really want, google it.  There’s millions of them from quickly and badly done “experiments” by the media, to actual scientific studies with actual protocols and standards.  The thing is, it is your job as thinking, intelligent beings to tell your lizard brain to shut the hell up when it starts in on that crap, regardless of your gender or the gender of the person talking to you. 

Seriously, Ann Coulter is conventionally attractive to many people.  However, she’s also raving batshit crazy and wouldn’t know the truth, compassion or good judgement if they ganged up on her in an alley and took all her lunch money.  THAT is why I don’t listen to Ann Coulter.  Not because I do or don’t find her attractive, but because she’s a fucking loon. 

And as far as Shelly Mazzanoble is concerned, I  continue to have no idea what she looks like, but I know without guaging her attractiveness that I don’t want to hang out with her.  At least if she is indeed the person she portrays herself as in the book.  Believe me, I like a good pair of shoes as much as the next girl, and I’m sure that some people find my insistence on organic, cruelty free beauty products just as annoying as I do her apparent lack of concern in that arena.  But none of that has anything to do with her physical attractiveness quotient.   

Recently, I have seen critiques of Ms. Mazzanoble’s looks bandied about the intertubes as part of the criticism of her book and subsequent articles, and that’s just wrong, stupid and when it’s done by women, even more egregious.  Seriously, we’ve already got ranks of mouth-breathing tools spewing misogyny from every pore, do we really need to be tearing each other down as well?  The answer to that is no.  I’m not a big believer in the solidarity of sisterhood, because I’ve seen it self-destruct too many times under the weight of the different personalities involved.  But we do not need to be complicit in the misogyny heaped on us by the unwashed masses. 

We’re supposed to be smarter than that.

Geek Girls Rule! #72.25 – Why I am not yet on COH/COV

When I got my laptop, it came with Vista.  Vista and I have issues.  A lot of issues, so we wiped it and installed (legitmately) XP.  Now, I’ve known for some time that some of the drivers weren’t right, but it didn’t affect what I was doing, so I didn’t worry about it.

Not so anymore.

I spent THREE hours updating my videocard drivers.  And would you like to know why?  Because ATI doesn’t support my card for XP.  At all.  Except (thanks to one of the techie forums) at some point Intel made them do it for, I think, Compaq.  So the driver does exist for XP, except I had to download a driver updater that won’t work on my machine, let it try to work, and then go in and install the driver manually from the files the unsuccessful updater installed on my hard-drive.

That is what I did on Saturday night.  For HOURS.  Because like a fool I went to the manufacturer’s site first…  Sigh.

So it runs now, but really, really, really, “get killed in the face before you can say hello” slowly.

In all likelihood I’ll spend tonight figuring out what other drivers need updating, uninstalling a bunch of superfluous crap, and contemplating bumping up my RAM.

I’m also seriously entertaining thoughts of moving over to Linux, because I can’t afford a Mac.  The Roomie*  says according to the forums CoH/CoV will run on it with only occasional glitches.  I don’t know.  We’ll see how this little experiment goes.  Or maybe I’ll just install it on the desktop.

*The Roomie is a Linux programmer.

Geek Girls Rule! #72 – Help me pop my cherry.

I have a confession.

I have never played an MMORPG.  Never.  Never ever.  Never ever never.

Tonight at the Mister’s work (very postponed because of the Seattle Snowmageddon) holiday party, I became the proud owner of both City of Heroes and City of Villians, as well as three free months of play.  I decided what the hell?

So, my Geeks, tell me, what’s fun to do in City of Heroes/Villians?  The best servers, best bonuses, best powers?

I still haven’t decided which machine to load it on, the laptop or the desktop.  The desktop is probably safer and less likely to get me back from lunch later during workdays.  However, the laptop is most likely to get played so as to capitalize on my three months of free play.

Basically, you people have three months to convince me that this is a worthwhile use of my extremely limited free time.  Go.  Once I set up the account, I’ll post it here so you can hara… I mean, find and help me.

The other loot we picked up tonight included a Champions On-line t-shirt, the PS 238 rpg and1, 2, 4 and 5 of the graphic novels, we also got the Heroes System book The Mentalist, a huge book of American History, a t-shirt from a game controller company that has pictures of the different controllers and says, “Contrary to popular opinion, these do not make me a killer.”  There’s some other stuff, but I forget what.  Essentially the company uses the party to get rid of the schwag that accumulates during the year.  We have an auction with play money, and the bidding gets really heated for some items.  And very, very silly.

That’s about it.  Have a good night, and I eagerly await your advice on CoH/CoV.

Geek Girls Rule! Podcast #9, Part I – Attack of the Girl Gaming Podcasters

This is the first half of a two hour skype discussion that I had with Meg of The Brilliant Gameologists, Kristin of This Modern Death and Jenn of The Trap Cast.

Podcast #9, Part I

In it we discuss how we came to gaming, what we’re playing, the bad female gamer stereotypes, the health of my various pets and say “vagina” a lot.  Please see the podcast page for links to their various podcasts, or google it.  It’s late and I need to get to bed.  Enjoy.