sundries

[rm]

I left work early yesterday with the worst headache ever. I slept for 3.5 hours, emotionally melted down to Patty when she got home, took care of a couple of things online, ate dinner, went back to bed. Today I feel almost human. It was/is I think a combo of a sinus headache, a tension headache and the obvious barometric pressure drop going on outside. Today I'm going to work as fast as I can and go home to chill as fast as I can, although hopefully in a more chill, enjoyable way.

Also, fuck you, major pharmacy chains that no longer carry Tylenol and only your generic brand of acetemophin, which contains "starch" and it's not labeled what type of starch. When I can barely walk a straight line my head hurts so bad, it's very hard for me to deal with gluten issues you don't even understand.

I won't have the bulk of my Dragon*Con schedule or firm times for anything for probably at least a month, but I found out this morning that I did get accepted to the academic sister-conference with "The Illustrated Dead: Fan Mourning in Response to Character Death in Comics and Manga."

Often frowned upon outside fan communities, audiences sometimes engage
in mourning rituals at the deaths of fictional characters. This
presentation will address fan mourning in response to the demise of
characters in both manga and western comics.

In “Tangible Reality of Absence: Fan Communities and the Mourning of
Fictional Characters,” which addresses book and television narratives,
I argued that through mourning fans “stake claim to otherwise
inaccessible desired bodies while also creating a dialogue that
eroticizes the deceased” and that these acts are a “partial
defictionalization, moving the desired bodies of personal and
narrative fantasy into a tangible reality of absence.”

In the case of comics and manga, however, these mourned bodies are
representations of flesh as opposed to flesh themselves, so mourning
fans not only defictionalize what was lost, but also engage in acts of
self-fictionalization that allow union with the source material.

By looking at fan responses to Asao Takamori and Tetsuya Chiba's
“Tomorrow's Joe,” Wendy and Richard Pini's “Elf Quest” and Ellen Kushner's
illustrated chapbook “The Man With the Knives” I will compare fan
mourning for characters in illustrated stories to those in other media
while also examining narrative features that provoke these acts of
eroticization.

In a moment of hilarity probably only hilarious to me, it turns out Patty and I will be in Chicago for a wedding the same weekend as Chicago ComicCon. I doubt we'll go, but I may need to wander by just to examine logistics re ConSuite (which is set at a multi-fandom con in Chicago, but one that is not intended to be ComicCon, but hey, what do I know).

In case anyone missed the epic fail over in Supernatural fandom: someone used the Haiti earthquake as their setting for AU RPS about two white dudes getting it on, and that's not even the failiest part of the whole thing. No, no, that was the fact that it was seen by multiple people, including betas and artists and no one caught how not only was the general premise really fucking insensitive but the whole thing was laden with hideous racial stereotypes. Since then, there's been some not getting it apologies and the fic has finally been taken down. Meanwhile, this list of quotes from the fic are pretty much a map of how not to write PoC.

coatkneedee is 20 and homeless due to a host of family issues. Details here if you're inclined to help.

The anti-gay policies of the Boy Scouts are about to be in the spotlight again.

Live stream on Prop 8 trial closing arguments. Starts at 8am PST.

Elton John finally has something to say about playing Rush Limbaugh's wedding.

NYC Subway Rats Eternal. Confession: I sorta like watching the little guys run around on the tracks.

American man in no-fly list limbo in Egypt.

The I CAN HAS CHEEZBURGER empire. EMPIRE. In my mind's eye I can see the LOLCats in their little spaceships right now.

Come fandom, come pros, participate in this cracky, cracky discussion about a couple of photos of John Barrowman and the mic wiring we can't understand.

I'm always saying New York is a 19th-century city. Here's proof.

Problematic article about the longer road to adulthood. Yes, the lack of clear definitions of adulthood in modern US culture is a problem. But to blame it on students being allowed to stay on their parents' health insurance until 26 (they would otherwise join the ranks of the uninsured in our barbaric system) and women choosing to delay having children in order to have education and careers is just vicious and weird. I do not have children, and I am an adult, thank you for playing. elainasaunt found Mark Morford's response.

Comments

[gement.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I've looked up the Girl Scouts pretty thoroughly and they're awesome. Several of my well-informed liberal friends and acquaintances went through the system and are now supportive leaders there.

Their curriculum (they have one!) is explicitly filling girls' heads with critical thought on how women are shown in the media, what being female means to you personally, examining religious assumptions and defining personal faith or lack thereof, emotional regulation techniques, caring for the environment, and learning about historical women who kicked ass.

[brewsternorth.livejournal.com]

Wish I could've been part of that! (I was in the UK Girl Guides, which did talk about teamwork, and Doing Awesome Stuff, but its curriculum was weaksauce by comparison.)

[rm.livejournal.com]

My mom was our Brownie Troop leader in 3rd grade. Our play was Peter Pan and I was a Lost Boy. I had a small stuffed teddy bear tied to my dungarees. I thought the part was crap at the time, but in retrospect, Girl Scouts was the first time I got to be a boy (lost, indeed), so I sorta dig that now.

[tsarina.livejournal.com]

I wish that had been the Girl Scouts/Brownies when I was a kid. I got kicked out because I didn't go to church, and didn't fit in with the other girls making pillows and painting sticks.

[stardragonca.livejournal.com]

My sister went winter camping in the Canadian Rockies*, which is something not everyone can do for lack of winter or Rockies, but it's the sort of thing young girls should get to do.


*This lead to unfortunate and inappropriate hilarity when, at the start of the Afghanistan war, a U.S. official patiently explained to assembled press that it was like fighting in the Rockies in winter...