Fus Ro...Nah.

I'll be the dissenting voice in the crowd. I don't like Skyrim. I know this is heresy within the gamer hivemind, where general consensus is that Skyrim is the Best Game Ever (until a new "Best Game Ever" comes along, as always), but I just don't care for it.

Don't get me wrong. I wanted to like Skyrim. I tried very hard to like Skyrim, and in fact, it was fun for the first week or two after I got it, but the novelty of the game wore off shockingly fast. One can only hoard brooms and raise cows as undead minions to wreak havoc on small villages for so long before it gets old. And despite what you may think, yes, it does get old.

The scenery is lovely, yes, but it's also monotonous. Vast, open meadows, snowy mountains, the occasional ruin, castle town, or village, and that's it. Also given how far apart many places are the world feels quite empty indeed. I spent a lot of time running along or riding one of the slowest horses in all of creation in near-silence. Occasionally I had to deal with a few bandits, a wolf or two, or the random dragon and then back to nothing. The emptiness didn't create the same feel of loneliness that say...Shadow of the Colossus does. It's just boring.

Sighing and going "Am I there yet?" while progressing through a game is a bad thing, don't you think?

The NPCs are dull. I've met lobsters with more personality than just about anybody in the game. When you think of the characters as only "that guy" or "the other guy who's kind of a jerk", there's a problem. I couldn't find it in me to care about either the Imperials or Stormcloaks that much, since one's a generic military empire and the other's a generic band of rebels. They just happen to hate anyone who's not a Nord. I ended up siding with the Imperials solely because they didn't bash my character for being a cat.

The plot's also appallingly bare-bones and smacks of laziness. Destined hero kills evil dragon, saves world. End of story. Why? There's so much lore there to use! Why not bother writing a really good story with it that'll make the world more interesting?

...oh right. Because shiny graphics trump everything. Silly me.

Then there's obtaining materials for things like alchemy, blacksmithing and the like. Considering that I play World of Warcraft, I'm used to leveling crafting professions and gathering the required materials. Here's the thing though; WoW has a handy little feature that goes with the gathering professions, like "Track Herbs" or "Track Minerals". They'll appear as yellow dots on your minimap and sparkle in the field, like a big sign going "Hey! You can grab this!". There's no such thing in Skyrim. I had to learn to recognize different kinds of herbs by sight, or wander up to them and see if they were pickable if I was in an unfamiliar area.

I went through an entire dungeon once without realizing that there was mineable ore. It didn't grab my attention in any way, and it was only when I was trying to sneak around that I noticed that I could mine a chunk of iron ore. Once I'd slaughtered everything that moved, I went back and started looking for iron. The difference in the wall was ridiculously subtle, and it was no wonder I overlooked the mineable spots the first time.

One would also think that, with all the detail put into character creation, Bethesda could give you hair options  that looked like hair and not lumps of clay. I can adjust the amount of dirt on my character's face and the color thereof. I can give them scars, wrinkles, war paint, make them taller, shorter, leaner or heavier and mold their facial features however I damn well please, but hair that looks like hair? Madness!

The two biggest offenders were the twin buns and pigtails. They looked like they were designed by someone who had never actually seen either style. No, scratch that. Whoever designed them had no idea how hair even works. I ended up rolling a Khajiit not only due to my love of cats, but because their short braided hairstyles were among the few that didn't look awful.

I suppose I learned my lesson with this game. Normally I don't go for games based on the hype surrounding them alone, or for seemingly-cool mechanics like fighting dragons as a werewolf. I did this time, and I hated it.

More Lord Creepy than Prince Charming.

I really don't understand the appeal in possessive, controlling male leads in fiction. I wouldn't be swooning over a guy who pulls some of the crap they do, I'd be on the phone hysterically sobbing to the police about the stalker who's after me.

People have tried to explain this to to me by saying that women want to feel secure and protected, and thus they need this big, strong man to be at their side all the time. Okay first off, thank you for the irritating generalization. You will be receiving one face-punch in the mail. Secondly, how can anyone feel "safe" when the person who is supposed to be keeping you safe controls your life, tries to keep other people away from you, is prone to fits of jealousy, follows you wherever you go, and is a general creeper. It's like having a demanding child for a jailer.

The male wants you to associate with nobody but him. If you have other friends you want to spend time with, he throws a jealous temper tantrum, or tries to guilt you by moping that you "don't love him enough". He may remove the engine block from your car so you can't go anywhere, or watch you in your sleep. He may claim he was born to be your lover, and obsessively search for you. You may or may not still be a child when he begins this search, as I saw in one book.

This? This is not relationship material. This is the villain in a psychological thriller! There's nothing romantic about any of this and I can't fathom why anyone would think otherwise. If I were Bella Swan, I would have hired a vampire hunter the moment I saw Edward Cullen a'sparklin' my way. Or possibly taken a stake to him myself. Jacob would have been subsequently greeted with a faceful of silver bullets.

Come on, Bella as a hunter of the denizens of the night! Humanity's last bulwark against the undead scourge! Awesome, no? No? ...alright then.

I mentioned a man who searched for the heroine since she was a child, and claimed he was born to be her lover. I speak of Daemon Sadi, "hero" of the Black Jewels books and one of the creepiest male leads I've ever read about. He gives ol' Eddie Cullen up there a run for his money in sheer stalkerific lunacy. Honestly, I have many problems with the themes and implications in the Black Jewels trilogy. Daemon is just one of them, but boy is he a big problem.

To be accurate, Daemon's search actually began a thousand years before Jaenelle, the heroine, was even born. A witch prophesized the birth of Jaenelle, savior of the world, and well...Daemiepoo is obsessed with being her lover. Note that she doesn't actually seem to have a choice in the matter. He called dibs, now she's his whether she likes it or not (and of course she looooooves it). To that end, he spends most of his free time stalking her. Hunting her. Waiting for her to appear. He tracks her to her family's home for God's sake, and immediately begins hanging around her every chance he gets. Grooming her, one might argue, to feel affection for him.

This continues in the next two books when she's a teenager and later an adult, with a time gap in which Daemon is not present. It culminates in a contrived sex scene that occurred because Daemon was moping about Jaenelle not immediately doing the do with him when he recovered from insanity. Of course, one of the other characters has to make her feel bad about this.

I'll say it again. It's the sheer lack of choice that galls me. What would Daemon do if Jaenelle had fallen for another man in the interim period when he wasn't constantly hovering over her? Kill him? It doesn't seem to be beyond him to do so, considering the number of people he either kills or thinks of killing in the series. Kill all her potential suitors until every man within a thousand miles is afraid to venture near her, and only Daemon is left to comfort poor, sweet Jaenelle? If he were painted as a villain, that would be great. It's the fact that he's supposed to be a hero and would still do so that makes it weird.

Or, what if Jaenelle just flat-out said "Daemon, I don't love you. In fact, I find you frightening." What would he do then? Kill himself? Kill her? Kill both of them so he can have her forever in death? None of these sound too farfetched for a man who views violence and killing as acceptable solutions to most problems. I somehow doubt he'd reflect on his behavior, quietly apologize and be on his way. At the very least, she'd have a relationship with another man and he would be portrayed as laughably, stereotypically one-dimensional and cruel to make Daemon look good in comparison. They must be together because destiny wills it so!

Sad that men such as Daemon Sadi and Edward Cullen are portrayed as desirable. Ideal, even. Even worse is the fact that young girls are reading these books and thinking so.

Objectification and why it sucks.

As a female geek, I'm subjected to overly-sexualized female characters wherever I go. Ridiculously big breasts, collagen lips and perpetual bedroom eyes, panty shots galore. Short skirts, scanty outfits, platekinis, you name it. It gets really tiresome after a while.

I'm really not so much of a comic book fan, but I've determined that there is some sort of rule in place that requires that women stand with their ass pointed towards the reader 95% of the time. That usually means horrible, spine-twisting positions that one wouldn't want to hold for more than a few seconds, if at all. Chiropractors must make a good living in superhero-land.

I'm much more of a gamer, but it's not really any better there. The whole selling point of Tomb Raider was Lara Croft's gigantic breasts. We've all heard the story of how one of the guys working on the game accidentally gave her those breasts and was told to keep them that way. Dead or Alive is known less for its gameplay and more for its ridiculous jiggle physics. Tifa's a strong, competent female character, but her victory pose still involves doing a stretch and sticking her chest way, way out. If Rayne so much as turns slightly to the left or right in a cutscene her breasts jiggle uncontrollably. There are so very many more examples, but I'd be writing an insanely long post if I tried to list them all.

It sometimes amazes me how armor (usually chainmail or plate) in World of Warcraft can magically change from full-body coverage on a male to a skimpy bikini on a female. The Outland gear is by far the worst, with my poor Death Knight running around wearing plate pants that looked like bright purple garters and stockings and a chestplate that resembled a bra. I'm a horrific undead abomination, once part of the Lich King's mighty army. I've cut down innocent townsfolk and seasoned warriors alike. Why the hell am I forced to prance about in lingerie? It doesn't make sense! Male or female, I still need the armor to protect me and it can't do that if it's barely covering me.


Of course, while the Wrath and Cataclysm sets are for the most part much better, some of them still make me shake my head. Much as I'm fond of my Saronite War Plate and use it for mogging purposes, I can't help but notice that males are fully covered while females have their midriff and upper arms showing. What, you just couldn't have an outfit without skin showing? Oh sure, she's a fearsome Scourge soldier, but we still have to show that she's a woman. Mmmmm, sexy necrotic skin. Never mind the fact that such a design would offer two nice vulnerable points. Skin! Sex! That's all that matters.

When it comes to some of the races, the sexual dimorphism is ridiculous. The males are huge, hulking beasts and the females are always curvaceous and pleasing to the eye. Even tauren women are perfect hourglasses. It's just the rule: men are large, powerful and imposing. Women must be sexy. Female trolls were originally going to be long-armed, ugly slouching monsters like the males, but the alpha testers whined so much that they and the tauren were not sexy enough that we got the models that are in-game today. If I'm going to be a troll, I want to be a slouchy monster and not a funny-looking elf with tusks, damn it.

It's very telling that male Blood Elves, who are normally considered the most aesthetically pleasing to women, are constantly derided and mocked as being "too feminine" by male gamers. The simple fact that they're a little smaller, less muscular, have nicer hair and don't act like chest-thumping ogres seems to upset these guys. Or, alternately, consider female orcs. Orc women are muscular. They have gruff voices. They're just as warrior as the males are. I always hear guys calling them unfavorable, derogatory terms whenever they're clogging up Trade with drivel on whichever race's women are the most "hot".

Imposing, strong woman = bad. Imposing, strong man = good. That's the basic attitude here.

People will claim that this is because most gamers are male and developers need to cater to their audience. Bull. Female gamers aren't nearly as much of a rarity as everyone likes to pretend. In fact, forty percent of the gaming population is female. Thirty-three percent of that are women over eighteen. This is significantly more than the eighteen percent that teenage boys make up. You know, the group that everyone loudly proclaims is the "majority" of gamers out there? Something to think about, huh?

The sad thing is that I know most guys won't actually think about it. They'll never go "Yeah, it is a little creepy how women are portrayed, isn't it?". No, they'll huff and puff and stomp their feet, fling insults and accuse women of being "too sensitive". I forget that we're supposed to like being treated like meat. We're supposed to like being ogled, groped, and pawed at. We're supposed to like the sleazy comments, the rape jokes, the obsessive focus on T&A. We're supposed to accept that a man's value lies in his capabilities, while a woman's is based on her appearance alone.

And if we don't like it, we're supposed to just shut up and take it, or else we're insecure prudes who "need to lighten up". Or of course, the classic "you're just a man-hater" retort.

It's somehow every woman on Earth's fault that these guys don't have a date, and in their eyes that makes it right to dehumanize all females. It never occurs to them that if they'd stop spewing misogynistic bile, or acting as if women somehow owe them sex, or dropped that damn "Nice Guy" act and treated us with some respect, then maybe they'd have somebody.

Unfortunately, as long as they continue to react with hostility to the notion that women are people, and as long as geek culture continues to propagate the idea that women = sex objects under the mistaken assumption that their audience is mostly male, this will never stop. And that's just really, really sad.

The curse of the cat.

I think my cat Belle is somehow anti-gamer. I'll tell you why.

Belle, like many cats, likes to jump on things and be as big a nuisance as possible. She knows she can get away with it as she is fuzzy and adorable. The funny thing is that the only time she ever jumps on my computer desk is when I am playing WoW. I don't know how she knows, but she just does. I will venture once more into the world of Azeroth, dead-set on getting that one piece of gear I really, really need for my Death Knight and all of a sudden...

...cat. On the desk. Standing in front of the monitor and blocking my view. All I hear from my headphones are the sound of things hitting me and the odd, echoing yelps of my undead spacegoat. All anyone else in the room hears is me going "Ffffff Belle get down! Belle no! Bad cat! Come on Belle, get down. Get down. Get down!" and her meowing. This will eventually result in me just picking her up and putting her on the floor, followed by her jumping back on the desk.

Again. And again. And again.

Sooner or later, the furry little tyrant will take pity on me. "Pity" in her case means merely laying across the desk instead of standing on it. So, I will be able to see most of the screen, but not my skills at the bottom. Her back end is also always perfectly placed to prevent me from moving my mouse. Most people would probably think she's watching the game, but no. She's often looking up or back at me, staring at me with a cute little face as if to say "Hahaha, I am impeding your ability to play, and there is nothing you can do about it."

Treats, petting, and catnip only amuse her for so long before she once again returns to the desk, determined to hinder me in any way possible. If she wants to be exceptionally mean, she will wait until I'm in the middle of a dungeon, preferably during a tough boss fight, and then jump back in my way. Nothing like having to explain to the other four members of a party that the wipe or near-wipe we just had was caused by my cat's bad timing.

And sometimes she'll just go to the computer plug and rub her head against it until it comes loose, shutting the machine down entirely. She's done the same thing to the cords for the Wii and the PS3.

If she senses I'm getting annoyed with her, she'll go sit on the kitchen table and meow pitifully at the ceiling, as if to say "Meow meow. Oh I am so lonely. I am fuzzy and adorable, yet nobody will play with me. Oh why, oh why won't my human play with me and not that noisy tappy thing? Meow meow." This always works, and she knows it.

Right now, as I'm writing this, she's fast asleep on the loveseat. Or at least, she'd like me to think so. If I know Belle, she's waiting. Waiting for me to log on, just to do a few dungeons or level an alt. Just for a little bit. She'll give me a few minutes, just to lull me into a false sense of security. But soon enough, there she'll be once more, the fuzzy, adorable impediment to all game-related activities. 

Oh, for shame.

The first character I ever created was one I am now deeply ashamed of. But here I am, about to tell you all about it, internet. Don't you feel special?

You see, I had been an avid reader in my childhood but not, at the time, so much of an avid writer. I didn't really write fiction unless a homework assignment called for it. "Write a story using this week's vocabulary words" was a common assignment during my grade school years and the bane of my family's existence. Many long nights were spent at the kitchen table, arguing over those terrible, awful, ridiculously annoying to use words. It's a surprise I like to write at all, considering how much I hated those assignments. 

Anyway, when I was a teenager role-playing piqued my interest. AOL had a whole slew of chatrooms devoted to it, and a friend of mine and I thought it would be fun to try. She and I both made characters for the purpose; hers an ice-and-water-manipulating "mystic", and mine a blue-furred, purple-haired catgirl.

You can see how fun this is going to be already.

Now I would use the term "Mary Sue" to describe her; one of those powerful, special characters who are created solely to fulfill the wishes of their creator, to be all that they deem "cool". She wasn't beloved by all or sweet and gentle like most Sues, however. No, mine was an Angsty Sue. She had the requisite tragic background; orphaned at a young age by a rampaging army of Evil People who killed everyone she ever loved and a lot of people she probably didn't even know, and burned her entire village of peaceful catfolk to the ground for good measure. The lone survivor was, of course, my little blue-furred, purple-haired ragamuffin. How the Evil Army of Death and Hatred missed a child with sky-blue fur and deep purple hair is beyond me, but they did. They totally did because I was fourteen and didn't care about plausible backstories at the time.

Don't judge. This is even more painful for me than it is for you.

My newly-orphaned catgirl swore vengeance of course, and had the power of fire to help her achieve it. See, I picked fire because my friend always went with water. Also it was tragic and ironic in my little teenage mind that she should command the very element that destroyed her home. Sob sob, cry cry and all. Somehow, she ended up in the care of an ancient, powerful dragon. Since I was a rabid Final Fantasy fan at the time, that dragon was Bahamut. Go ahead and laugh.

Despite the fact that Bahamut is traditionally a non-elemental summoned beast and probably wouldn't have an interest in tiny blue catgirls beyond being a snack, he took her in and taught her how to master her fire magic. He also gave her a little red jewel which resembled a Summon Materia more than a little bit called the "Fire Stone". This was somehow magically unstealable. For some reason, this catgirl raised by an all-powerful dragon decided the next logical step was to become an assassin.

An assassin in a black leather dress and high heels. Carrying a broadsword with the requisite cool name, a bladed boomerang shamelessly cribbed from Rei-Ginsei of Vampire Hunter D, and a "three-bladed knife", which later on I realized was my own misinterpretation of a katar. The more I look back at this, the worse it gets.

My friend and I also thought it would be good to have her character be of the race that wiped out my character's home, and have them be friends anyway. Oh, and she was similarly trained and had a similar stone courtesy of Leviathan.

Sure we had fun with them at the time, but looking back on the character, I just cringe at how poorly developed she was. She was all anger, vengeance, typical "antisocial badass" behaviors and not much more. However, that first venture into creating characters is what got me to write. Since then, I've learned to produce better than that. Or so I hope, anyway.

Monsters: Part 2

Welcome to part two of me putting far too much thought into how a fictional creature would deal with daily inconveniences. Last time it was vampires, this time it's werewolves.

Instead of a bloodsucker, this time our poor, put-upon protagonist has been chomped on by a livid lycanthrope. Horror of horrors!

...I'm sorry. I had to. 

A werewolf might have an easier time of it than a vampire in some ways. First off in that the transformation is not instantaneous. I don't think I've ever seen or read anything in which the soon-to-be werewolf changes right after being bitten. It's usually the next full moon. The victim will usually believe themselves to have been attacked by a large dog, and seek treatment for such. After that they'll resume life as normal, maybe with a few "tells" like their senses of hearing and smell becoming much more sensitive, or increased strength and stamina. They'll know something's different about themselves, but not exactly what until the big night.

It goes without saying, but I'm ruling out the variety of werewolf that can change at will. I know they're becoming increasingly popular, but it makes things far too easy. It's also less of a curse for these guys, and more of a superpower. They don't count.

Anyway, a werewolf's only a werewolf on the night(s) of the full moon, right? Once the afflicted gets over the shock of abruptly transforming into a slavering hellbeast the first time, they have a full lunar cycle to prepare for the next. If you don't know when that'll be, a quick Google search will bring up a calendar of lunar phases for the year. Or, if this is a setting where computers and the internet are not available, they'll use whatever means are present to figure it out. The point is it's not really going to take our werewolf by surprise unless they're careless and forget when that all-important night is.

I always found that funny, you know? When a werewolf looks up fearfully at the sky and says "It's a full moon tonight." Like you didn't know? Full moons don't exactly sneak up on you; it's easy to determine when they'll occur. The moon doesn't just jump from waxing crescent one night to full the next. If it did...well, I'd think we all have bigger things to worry about than your problem, werewolf guy.

In the end, a werewolf knows when they are going to be a snarling monster, and can plan accordingly. Locking themselves up for the night in a sufficiently werewolf-escape-proof room  is common.

Usually it's wolfsbane that's the go-to plant for an aspiring werewolf hunter's garden, but I've heard tell that mistletoe drives them off too. If that's the case, Christmastime must be the most awkward holiday season ever for these guys. Just think about it: wherever mistletoe is hung, the lycanthrope cannot venture. They're repelled by it, cowering and growling, possibly bristling with fur as the hated plant forces them into their unnatural form. This is the sort of thing that can easily blow your cover. How exactly are you to explain your aversion to this simple plant? Allergies? In a more modern setting this might work (provided you're not revealed as a monster), but in a less-modern one, people will be looking at you funny at the very least. At worst they'll know what you are and start grabbing torches.

I've also come across a belief that rye will ward off werewolves. I don't know how common it is, but I'm not going to be the one who chucks rye bread at a snarling man-wolf in order to find out.

The werewolf's allergy to silver can also be a dangerous giveaway. Silver doesn't normally burn one's flesh as if it's a hot iron, now does it? So there goes all the silver jewelry one might possess, and what if someone who's wearing a silver ring offers a handshake? Or maybe a hug from someone wearing a silver necklace? Even the most skeptical skeptic is going to realize that something is amiss when our lycanthrope is burned by cold silver, and it won't be long before the silver bullets start flying. I suppose one could claim they had a silver allergy before coming in contact with it ("Oh, is that silver? Could you take it off? I'm allergic."), and that would have you covered. Who's going to dispute the fact that you're allergic? And technically it's not a lie, now is it?

A werewolf's feeding habits aren't exactly exclusive. Yes, the're known to kill and eat humans, but they go for animals too. Unlike the vampire, your food bill is probably only going to increase as you spend more of your budget on meat to satisfy that craving. It might not seem as "cool", but it'd certainly be easier on a guilty monster's conscience.

Also unlike the immortal vampire, a werewolf usually has a normal human life span. There's no need to worry about remaining static while everyone around you ages; you do too. In that, the werewolf could probably avoid the perpetual loneliness that plagues the vampire. With enough care and creative thought, lycanthropy really could be one of the easier supernatural afflictions to manage.

...well, provided you don't get loose on the night of a full moon, of course.

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.