sundries

[rm]

Patty leaves today. I'm super busy. Talk amongst yourselves.

Yeah, I totally booked a little spa thing for us at the St. Davids last night. Hahahahahahahaah. I know.

As breast cancer treatments get more effective, mammograms may be less helpful. This and the choices that go with it is the sort of stuff that keeps me awake at night.

You should read reannon's morning random today for her coverage of the impending execution of Teresa Lewis, a woman living with a mental disability. You should know I oppose the death penalty, because even if we can agree there are some crimes people should die for, it's not a business I want my government in. This case is one example of why.

eredien wrote a really long post that expands on what I was trying to say the other day about the lack of queer representation in media and how it's a legitimate part of whether or not I respond to an entertainment property with interest. I'm still really upset about that entire situation, btw, but so it goes. Let's have some Covert Affairs fandom, right here!

I may have cadged the ticket I want to the Paley Center thing, in a standby sort of way, which makes me wonder just how early I should get on that line -- it's a fine line between effective and crazy. But I'm not even sure of this much yet.

There's this random sentence in the Pam Cook book, that while making perfect sense, sort of comes out of nowhere and immediately recedes back to same. I assume there may have been another tangent that came off of it that then went away in editing, such that the sentence just hangs there:

"... cinemas as illusion, and the construction of imaginary worlds into which one could escape without being incarcerated."

Um, is that generally a concern with imaginary worlds? Also, could an Aussie tell me if incarceration implies prison or mental-health related hospitalization more in your English? Is this the author's version of referencing Snape's Wives?

Everything is performance, maybe: Stephen Colbert will be testifying before Congress, on a serious issue, and some are claiming it will happen in character.

Has anyone seen Catfish? Do I need to care? Or is this just another installment in this year's on-the-Internet-no-one-knows-you're-a-dog there's-no-such-thing-as-the-truth movie meme?

There is way too much video porn and shoe shopping spam on LJ today. WAAAAAAAAAAAAAY too much. LJ is also being somewhat uneven with comment delivery today.

This may be more of a challenge than I'm up for and not really my format (short is not my forte) or medium, but I'm still very tempted.

Comments

[weirdquark]

That's something I've never really understood either, or at least I don't remember ever wishing for more characters from [group] because I felt under-represented. On the other hand, I would often see characters from [group] and wish they were more like actual people and less like stereotypes.

It's also possible that I most identified with the "outsider" archetype while growing up, and there are plenty of books about teenagers that don't fit in.

[hoyland54.livejournal.com]

at least I don't remember ever wishing for more characters from [group] because I felt under-represented.

The only time I've ever felt this was reading Harry Potter and the characters all start pairing off--I was thinking, "Why are there no gay people at Hogwarts?" But I think I only thought that because I was getting fed up with the relationship drama/plots, so I started thinking about them, if that makes any sense.

However, the actual point of this comment was to wonder whether this wishing is done subconsciously and we perhaps only notice it when it's fulfilled. In a real life example, it really does matter to me that Owen Hargreaves plays for England, for if he is English enough, so am I. But it took me ages to realise that that's why I cared about his career. I had no idea I was secretly waiting around for someone born and raised overseas to play for England.

[weirdquark]

However, the actual point of this comment was to wonder whether this wishing is done subconsciously and we perhaps only notice it when it's fulfilled.

Could be.

But I think it has a lot to do with what interests us about stories. And if I were going to analyze the characters that I find most interesting that I've found or made up, they either have aspects of myself that I like a lot but don't let out much, or are things that I would hate to become, but could possibly. So not like me, but what I wish I was or what I fear to become. Characters that I think are actually like me don't interest me as much. I don't know if this is me not finding myself interesting (from a fictional standpoint or in general) or if it's more that I'm too familiar and I like to have my fiction be about things that are different. If I'm not interested in stories about me, I'm not going to be sad when I can't find them.

[hoyland54.livejournal.com]

I agree that, for the most part, people don't want to read about or watch their own lives. I think, also, that I'm attracted to characters much in the way you suggest. On the other hand, there's a tiny group of mystery novels with gay protagonists (with an awful lot of them sharing a publisher (http://www.echonyc.com/~stone/Contents/Backlist4.html)). The quality seems to range between mediocre and lousy. I can only assume the crappy ones were published due to what would otherwise be a nearly complete lack of mysteries with queer protagonists. If nothing else, someone noticed this lack and decided to fill it (either on the authorial or publishing level).

[weirdquark]

I remember a period in my housemates lives where we would buy really bad yaoi. It was manga with gay characters, even if "gay" sometimes actually needed the quotation marks and tends to be full of stereotypes about how such relationships work, and really, they're more like bad slash relationships because yaoi is largely marketed towards women and has nothing to do with gay men.

But we would buy it because we wanted to read yaoi, there wasn't very much of it, and everything that was coming out was crap. But then more yaoi started coming out, and some of it was good. Like, actually good, with good writing and interesting characters who acted more like people. And we now only buy bad yaoi when it's hilariously bad. (Though it did take a while to get out of the habit of buying everything just because it existed. ::g::) There is still a lot of bad yaoi, and actually most of it is still not very good. But at least we can be more selective now.