Enough already!

I can't tell you how many times I've been on WoW or a similar MMO and this question comes up in a group: "(name) r u a girl for real?"

It happens a lot. Often this is apropos of nothing more than the fact that my toon is female.

I almost always play a female character, because in most games the males just don't appeal to me. So sue me, I don't find roid-ragey lumps of muscle with pea heads and ugly faces attractive in any way. I've been known to play them in games where you can adjust the body's proportions and been derided as "gay" by power-fantasy craving alpha male wannabes, but that's another matter entirely.

The fact is that it doesn't matter if I'm male, female, or a hyperintelligent radioactive mongoose inexplicably trying to understand humanity through an online game. The only things that matter are that I know and perform my role, follow directions, and am not a complete asshole in group. If I'm here to DPS, I'm going to DPS the hell out of everything. Here to heal? So help me, nobody in this party is going to die. Tank? Well...I don't tank anymore. It's not worth it.

It seems sometimes like these guys have an absurd little checklist of "tells" that help them discern who's really in possession of a vagina in meatspace and who isn't. The way I type, for one. My grammar and spelling are too good, and I use certain words that guys usually don't. Must be a girl! The race I choose in-game ("Oh my god, a female orc! Must be a girl!). The fact that I don't tolerate rape jokes, period jokes, or sexual harassment? Girl. Girl girl girl. Must harass her for her name, location, and pictures now, even though she's made it clear that this sort of behavior annoys her.

Oddly enough, my tendency to use profanity in chat disqualifies me as female in some of these guys' minds. I guess in their world, women are always giggly and perky, and never ever curse. Hey, if it keeps them from asking me to be their online girlfriend, fine with me!

Guys who ask for "single ladies" in chat also make me laugh. It's like they think they're smooth or something. No sir, phrasing it like that doesn't mask the loneliness and desperation oozing off you at all. It makes it all the more apparent, and all the less likely a female player will go "Here! Look at me hot stuff! I'm a giiiiiiiirl!"

This is not to say all guys act like sex-starved slimeballs in groups. A lot of times nobody will say anything in party chat, let alone ask me if I'm really female. I actually prefer that to being pestered for details about my gender.

I've seen a fair number of guilds implement a "No Girls Allowed" rule, due to the "drama" we cause. It doesn't matter that the "drama" often stems from socially-awkward males who don't take no for an answer and refuse to accept that we're not there for hook-ups. It's sad that they feel that females are the problem, rather than addressing the issue of some males refusing to conduct themselves properly.

The bottom line is I'm here to play a game. I'm not here looking for dates. I don't want to be hounded for pictures, my phone number, my location, my e-mail address or anything else. Stop. It.

Now if you'll excuse me, there's a dragon that needs killing.

Tea!

Tea. I love tea. Tea is wonderful.

You can drink it hot. You can drink it cold. You can have it with sugar, or honey, or milk, or lemon, or nothing at all.

Tea's one of those things I enjoy no matter what time of day it is. Morning, afternoon, night, I don't really care. Tea puts a grey, rainy day into perspective. It makes a warm, sunshiny day all the better. It helps me wake up in the morning. It helps me wake up again when I'm a mid-afternoon zombie. It helps me when I'm not feeling great. Winter, spring, summer, fall, it doesn't matter.

Black tea, white tea, green tea, flavored tea, chai, all of it's good.

What I'm saying is that tea is awesome. Yay for tea!

....but not herbal tea. Herbal tea is a lie.

Monsters: Part 1 1/2

Picking up where I left off. Rambling on about vampires! Right.

Anyway, it would become quickly obvious that there was something not quite right about the recently-turned. The constant excuses, avoidant behavior, sleeping all day, never seeming to eat or drink anything, all of that would ring alarm bells in people's heads. And what if their devoutly religious Great-Aunt Gertrude, who just happens to wear a crucifix at all times, showed up? It'll be really hard to explain why they suddenly recoiled, hissing, and may or may not be clinging to the ceiling like a cartoon cat right now.

Again, this seems to be why most vampires in fiction are shown to either have lived for centuries or simply don't have anyone important to them. It negates the problem of having to try to hide things from living friends and relatives. I'd imagine that eventually the stress of hiding it would cause some people to snap and start acting like Nicolas Cage in Vampire's Kiss. Well, that'd be one way to get it off your chest at least. Or get yourself institutionalized. Either way.

Vampires are immortal. Our vampire is going to have to spend a lot of time moving from place to place, or else people are going to question why they still don't look a day over twenty-five...thirty years later. Good genes, healthy living and plastic surgery can only go so far, and eventually even the most skeptical skeptic is going to suspect that there's something abnormal about them. Friends and family would need to be cut off entirely after a certain point, and faking your own demise will probably come into play. Which brings me to my next point...

Assuming an entirely new identity is hard. We're long past the days where mixing up the letters in your name and calling yourself "Mircalla" instead of "Carmilla" is enough. There's the question of ID, birth certificates, school records, Social Security, passports, and all that fun stuff. Convincing people that you are Bob Joesmith and certainly not Joe Bobsmith will take more than just saying so. It's my understanding that using a false identity is something the authorities frown on once they learn that you are doing so. That said, our undead friend would find themselves in a lot of trouble if they hadn't the resources necessary to make this at least somewhat easier.

I'll just assume all those centuries-old vampires do this through a vast network of connections they've built up over time.

What about the victims themselves? Unless a vampire's feeding exclusively on people who've got nobody else in the world, someone is bound to miss the person. Family, friends, significant others, employers even. People can't just up and vanish without someone taking notice eventually. Also, say a panicky fledgling vampire leaves the body where it can be discovered. Even if they lick the wounds shut, wouldn't an autopsy reveal that the body's short on blood? For no good reason at all? Don't you think that'd be the least little bit peculiar? Even in Dracula, they took note of Lucy's continuous and inexplicable blood loss. Also, what if someone saw the vampire with the victim before they were found dead? Or there were traces of their hair, or saliva, or anything on the body. Whole lot of trouble, right?

I understand how we get around this as writers. They're supernatural, they're monsters, they have powers mortals don't. But again, I just have too much fun thinking about how things would work if you don't just hand-wave everything away.

On characters you hate.

I'm not talking about someone from a TV show, or a video game, or a movie that you don't like. No, I mean characters you yourself have created, and you hate their fictional guts. Hard.

Do you find them difficult to write for? Why or why not?

For me, it's a challenge. Often the hated character will run counter to my own ideals, and it irritates me to have to get into their mindset. I'll use the main character in a piece I'm currently working on as an example. He's an affluent male living in Victorian England. He's accustomed to all the privileges enjoyed by a white male in such a place and time, and he thinks women are inferior to men. Don't get me wrong, he cares deeply for his mother and sisters, but he knows them to be "good" women. Subdued, obedient "Angel in the House" types. He would find an educated woman highly suspect because everyone knows that women aren't supposed to be able to think. 


I hate him like you wouldn't believe. But I realize that if I wrote him as a feminist who believed strongly in the capabilities and rights of women, he wouldn't fit with the setting. People in his social circles would find him more than a little off in the head, and that would be disastrous for him. Also, it would make him nothing more than the author's mouthpiece, and even people who don't know me well enough to realize that chauvinism makes me furious would be canny enough to realize that.

It'd be forced, and that's no good when you're trying to tell a story. Your audience is going to fixate on that one out-of-place element rather than everything else you're trying to do.

Believe me when I say I'm clenching my teeth trying to write this guy. I have to think like him, and it disgusts me. Yes he's fictional, but the fact remains that people did and often still do think the way he does. My one comfort is that I'm planning to have something terrible slowly and inexorably happen to him, and it will drive him to madness and back. Without saying too much, of course it will be of a supernatural nature. That's my bag.

I won't say the challenge isn't welcome. I want him to be unlikable, but not one-dimensional, so I need to throw in a few sympathetic traits here and there. It's much harder than writing a character you think is awesome in every way. Not everyone can do it well; I've read enough bad fanfiction to see it. Hell, I've seen published authors write a wonderful hero, while the villain is so flat and Snidely Whiplash-like it's ridiculous.  There's no way to empathize with the unlikable character in that case; they're simply unpleasant for the sake of being unpleasant. Of course, some people will always side with a character like that even if they really don't have any redeeming qualities, as they think it makes them somehow "edgy".

I already have the end written out for my little friend. I'm nowhere near that point in the story, but I have it. I know which direction I'm taking him in, all I need to do is do it convincingly. It'll be hard to get him there without just deciding that he explodes in a spontaneous fireball, but I'll do it.

So tell me: how is it for you?

Smile, honey!

I hate it when people say that, you know? It's always for no reason in particular. You can just be walking down the street, or shopping, or on line at the store, or on the subway, anywhere. Without warning, someone will yell that line at you.

"Hey, smile honey!" It's always with some asinine reason attached, like you'll look so much prettier if you'd just smile. Smile right now, because this person, a total stranger you don't know from Adam, commands it. Make no mistake about it, it is a command. "Hey" is meant to grab your attention, and then the order: smile. The phrasing itself makes it clear: you will smile because I told you to do so.

Why would you want someone to smile when they themselves don't want to? I've seen myself with a forced smile in pictures; my mouth is smiling, but my eyes are not. The overall effect makes me look like I intend to plunge a knife into you. How is that appealing to anyone? Bravo, you got me to smile, but there's no actual joy in it. A lot of loathing, yes. Happiness? Not at all.

So why should I smile? To make you feel good? Tell me something, random person who I will likely never see again: why do I care about how you feel today? It's the same as people who spout off things like "You'd be so much prettier without your glasses." and then look at you expectantly, wanting you to gasp and go "Oh! You're right! Let me take off these glasses right now! Sure I need them to, you know, see, but what's compromising my visual acuity compared to making myself that much more aesthetically pleasing to you?"

I'm sorry, but I don't feel that I need to make myself decorative just for you. If I were say, working in a customer service position that would be a different story. Being smiley and "happy" is par for the course, and losing your job because a customer didn't think you looked pleasant enough would be bad. But, random person on the street, you're not my employer or a customer, so no smile on demand for you.

Honestly, what would you think of a person who's just vapidly smiling into space all the time, no matter what they're doing? Would you think "Gee, they're awful happy"? Probably not. More likely it'd come across as a little disturbing.

Maybe, just maybe, that person you've decided to tell to smile has got something on their mind. Maybe they're hot, or cold, or tired, or hungry. Maybe they're mentally planning out a list of things they have to do. Perhaps they're worried about something or someone. Or maybe they've been standing on the subway platform for the past half-hour waiting for a train that just refused to come. Maybe they just don't feel like it. There are countless reasons why that person you decided to single out isn't smiling. They are all valid reasons.

Your desire to make them smile just to please you? Isn't a valid reason at all.

Monsters: Part 1

I love all things creepy and monstrous. I didn't always, but I have for a good long while now. However, sometimes I feel compelled to pick things apart. It's probably because when I write fiction I like to take a monstrous character and throw them into awkward situations for my own amusement, or at least think of how day-to-day trivialities really would be hard for someone trying to blend in.

I'll probably do a few of these, but for now, let's start with my favorite ones: vampires.

Say someone's become a vampire. A hungry bloodsucker just treated them like the most disturbing juice box in the universe and surprise! Now our hero is also one of the soulless undead! What will they do now? Well, that's the million dollar question, isn't it?

For argument's sake, our new vampire is a normal person. Not royalty or nobility, not even particularly well-off. The kind of person who's got to work for a living. How are they going to manage to keep their job? Granted, when one's diet consists solely of blood food bills are no longer a concern, but a vampire does require shelter from the all-consuming rays of the sun. Ergo, rent money is still necessary. To my understanding though, many jobs have daytime hours and vampires are kinda allergic to sunlight. They'd have to find a new line of work, which may or may not allow time for them to find victims to feed from.

Or maybe our vampire has an internet-based job and never sees the light of day anyway. There's a metaphor somewhere in here, but I just don't know where. Hrm.

This is the sort of thing I find has been avoided in fiction by having your vampire be a person of means, or at least be sired by one. If they've had centuries to accumulate wealth and power it's a different ball game entirely. They needn't worry about the mortgage on Stately Vampire Manor, because Stately Vampire Manor's long since been paid for. Similar deal goes for the new fledgling who's the personal pet of a wealthy old vampire. Unless of course, wealthy old vampire grows tired of them.

Then there's the moral dilemma. Pretty it up all you want, there's no escaping what vampirism really is: cannibalism and murder. They've gone in one fell swoop from Average Joe to fanged corpse with a hankering for hemoglobin. After sinking their brand new pointies into someone's throat and slurping away until the victim gasps out their last feeble breaths, the gravity of the situation will hit them. Assuming that they've never killed anything bigger than a cockroach before, this is going to be one hell of a shock. Undead or not, I'd assume a new vampire still identifies to a large degree as human. You and I both know how much the guilt this causes the fledgling in most settings; it's been done to death. If you feed, you kill someone. If you don't feed, you'll probably kill someone you know and care about. Someone who has a reason to be around you often.

If it's typical for the vampire to truly have no "soul" and suffer rapid humanity loss, thinking of their former fellow humans as no more than food there's no problem here. Ones who are not "soulless", however, are the first reason why characters that jump at the chance to be vampires kinda irritate me. You know, like teenage girls with vampire boyfriends.

Unless our hero's got no friends or family, their newfound condition will make social interaction hard, won't it? Reason two that characters who jump at the chance to be vampires irk me. You can only make so many excuses as to why you can't meet someone during the day before it looks like you're avoiding them. "Sorry Mom, I'm a nocturnal undead horror who thirsts for the blood of the living" isn't exactly something your mother's going to buy.

...well, my mother might, but that's neither here nor there.

Let's also factor in the awkwardness of going over to someone's house and being totally unable to eat any food offered. Or they might be concerned about why you've become so pale lately. Or why you keep glancing down at their neck and biting your lip.

As this is getting to be longer than I originally intended, I'm going to stop here and pick up in another post.

An attitude I've always disliked.

I've been a gamer for most of my life. At the risk of dating myself, I'll mention that I got an NES when I was about seven years old. I grew up watching the Super Mario Brothers Super Show, and especially could not miss the Legend of Zelda episodes on Fridays. There would be Hell to pay if I missed one, and the wrath of a seven-year-old child can indeed be terrible to behold.

To this day, "Excuuuuuuuse me, princess!" makes me chuckle. It also makes me wonder why Zelda never punched Link dead in the face for being an obnoxious little jerk, but whatever.

If it was a video game cartoon, I watched it. Captain N: The Game Master, Super Mario World, Pac-Man, later on the Saturday morning Sonic the Hedgehog series, and Mega Man. I watched them all.

I ate Pac-Man canned pasta and Nintendo cereal. One was overcooked slop in a can and the other was sugary dyed cardboard, but I was somehow convinced, in my child mind, that they would improve my game. I would bomb so many dodongos it wouldn't be funny. I collected Nintendo scratch-off trading cards.

As far as I was concerned, gaming was for everyone. It was just another fun thing to do, right? Sure I had my girly things like Barbie and My Little Ponies (I still like My Little Pony), but I also played video games, watched Transformers, Voltron, and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. I mean, come on. Who didn't like the Ninja Turtles? Granted, I was aware that mostly boys seemed to be talking about and playing video games in grade school, but there were a fair number of girls too. Since my best friend's house was closer to the school we'd run to her place afterwards to watch the aforementioned Legend of Zelda episodes on Fridays.

It wasn't until I got older that I was exposed to the "Video games are for males" mentality. Every time I went to an arcade, there were a ton of older guys. I was the only girl there, and I'll admit it was uncomfortable. I felt like I was being stared at, although that was probably due less to me being a twelve-year-old girl, and more to me being a twelve-year-old girl playing Mortal Kombat. Other girls would go "Why are you playing those? They're for boys." and other such comments.

Who said? Am I going to spontaneously combust if I touch a controller? Is the Anti-Female Gamer Patrol going to burst into the room and escort me out if I so much as glance at a disc or cartridge? It's ridiculous to think I am somehow incapable of understanding or enjoying a video game simply because I am in possession of a vagina. It is a mentality that has angered me ever since I have learned of it.

I'll admit I grew to really like bruising egos and wounding pride as a teenager. See, I like fighting games. Arcades were full of fighting games in the 90's. Street Fighter and Tekken were my thing, and there was nothing more fun than beating the ever-loving shit out of some loudmouthed cretin who swaggered up to the machine, assured of an easy win because I was just a stupid girl. It was always great to see them turn red and mumble excuses when they lost, like the buttons or joystick being broken, or me being cheesy.

Really, Mr. Only-Throws-Fireballs? I'm the cheesy one? Yeah, sure.

I remember the one time I picked up an armload of games, all of them gory, at Gamestop. As he was ringing me up, the guy at the counter said "Oh, your boyfriend's going to love you for these!". I just gave him a flat look and said "They're for me."

Is it really so hard to believe that? Kindly show me where it says "For Males Only" on the cover of a game. Go ahead, show me.

The sexism's only gotten worse, not better. I've been playing MMOs for the past few years, and I've lost track of the amount of rape "humor", the times I've been told to "go back to the kitchen", or the inferrences that I don't know what I'm doing because I'm a woman that I've been subjected to. Even if I'm the best tank ever, or I out-DPS everyone else by a mile, it's always "lol ur a girl". And if I'm not being dismissed, I'm being hit on. I don't know what I hate more.

I get it, boys. You don't want women in your special clubhouse, unless of course, they're willing to please you. Here's the thing though: there's a lot more of us than you think, and we're not going anywhere. No, not even with your repellent behavior. We're here to stay, and you're going to have to share your little clubhouse whether you like it or not.

Besides. Pissing you off is fun.

Obligatory intro post.

The hardest part was naming this thing. You see, titling anything has never been my strong point, which resulted in a lot of journals with "dark" and "edgy" names that I was terribly embarrassed of later down the line. Couldn't help it; I had to show absolutely everyone in the universe how goth I was.

...well, I'm still a goth. It's just now I don't think of myself as some sort of dark and misunderstood soul shunned by the masses of society. No, I realized I'm just a grumpy chick who doesn't like people very much and loves black ruffly things. And monsters. And video games. And tea.

So I decided to go for something clever and tea-related, playing off "Tea and Sympathy" and the fact that I am a surly little curmudgeon. Tea and Lack of Sympathy? No, a quick Google search brought up a Will and Grace episode, and I'd hate people to think i was referencing something I've never even watched. Damn.

Tea and Snarkiness didn't roll so well. Just a little bit clunky. Tea and Snarkery? Yes! That sounded good, and didn't seem to have any connotations I'd rather avoid.

At last, this thing got a name I won't hate later. Next time, I'll have something to write about that isn't nearly so boring.