I've been watching a lot of movies lately, mostly because I'm on vacation this week and ratzeo and I randomly decided to spend it with holed up at home with a stack of dvds from Scarecrow.

Actually, the kick-off to my movie binge was seeing ( Captain America: The First Avenger )

Since I became solidly enthusiastic about the Marvel Cinematic Universe, next I saw ( Thor )

To complete our viewing of the Avengers-related movies, we rented ( The Incredible Hulk )

We also rented ( The Losers )

This morning, we watched ( Monsters vs Aliens )

Also in our Scarecrow haul are RocknRolla (also on starbird's recommendation, though I have to admit that it jumped up my priority list after I noticed that Idris Elba was in it ...), Blade Runner (because neither ratzeo nor I have seen it, even though it's a sci-fi classic), and Nine (to scratch my musical itch).

Stay-cations are awesome. :D

A new, unspecified "anime project" has been green-lit. It's been years since I watched Kenshin, but this takes me back to my teenaged fannish days and fills me with all sorts of nostalgic glee.

Also, I'm linking to this page instead of the original announcement because the poster added a piece of fanart by Julie Dillon, who is awesome, and is also doing the cover for the Royal Archivist universe guidebook, and that's awesome.

5 days left! $430 to go!

Please consider chipping in! Even $10 will help us get closer to the goal.

(See my earlier entry for details.)

I wish I didn't have to root for the sidekicks so much. Granted, there are ways in which it's easier to make peripheral characters more interesting than the main one(s). Sidekicks can be enigmatic, or pop up occasionally to do something hilarious or awesome, whereas the main character gets the most screen time and we see him in all his mundanity along with whatever awesome he has.

(I remember a comment that Megan Mullally - I'm pretty sure it was - made about the show Will & Grace. Her character, Karen, and a character named Jack were sidekicks to the titular characters, and were more outspoken and flamboyant, major scene-stealers. Someone commented that there should be a Jack & Karen show, and she responded that if there were, there'd be another "Jack" and "Karen" who were more popular than them.)

All that said - in The Cape, I find Max and Orwell much more compelling than Vince, even with the above qualifying information.

Take Max. ( character spoilers through episode 3 )

I've gotten to the point where I haven't posted anything in so long that I feel like what I do end up posting ought to be significant in proportion to the amount of time I haven't blogged. But then I feel intimidated, so I don't write, so I feel like my next post should be even more significant, and so on.

So I'm just going to write down one-paragraph thoughts, rather than sitting around and hoping they grow into full-fledged posts.

( On food )

( On naive characters )

( On 'The Last Airbender' and my pet peeves against certain protestors )

The World of Goo Soundtrack is available for free download from the creator's website. If you've played World of Goo you know how strangely compelling this music is; but even if you haven't, I recommend downloading the music. Just imagine little goo-balls bouncing along to it.

The people and their cultures: POC and the movies: With the movie "adaptation" of Avatar, a lot more people are becoming aware of the problem of whitewashing in the media, or, as unusualmusic puts it here, "stealing our stories and retelling them with white people. Dressed in our cultures. Which are then considered exotic." What people then need to understand is that The Last Airbender is part of a pattern - a tradition - of white people hijacking other people's stories for their own glory, and Avatar is just the most recently high-profile example of this. However enraged The Last Airbender makes me, it's ultimately only one of many such battles.

If anything I said above comes as the slightest surprise to you, you would do well to read this article. It's beautifully thorough, and explains why this is too persistent to explain away as "unintentional," or "not a big deal," or "just looking for the best actor to play the part."

The Terrible Bargain We Have Regretfully Struck: This is how casual misogyny from the men we love pushes us to make the call of "Swallow shit, or ruin the entire afternoon?" on a daily basis, and how the result is to make us - not hate, which would be easier both for us and for the anti-feminists - but mistrust them. We're "[n]ot fearful; just resigned - and on my guard."

This dynamic translates almost point-for-point to other oppressions, as the writer herself points out. If you are male, white, cisgendered, straight, abled, and/or middle-class, please read this and think about the people you love who are female, of color, transgendered, queer, disabled, and/or poor.

I love you, but there are times I have to defend myself against you.

I know you love me, but there are times you have to defend yourself against me. I will do my best to make myself trustworthy every day.

People of color/non-white fans of sci-fi/fantasy/speculative fiction, please stand up!

This roll call, from deadbrowalking, is a response to yet another white SFF writer displaying ignorance of the long-standing presence of fans of color - not yet six months after RaceFail '09. You don't have to write anything lengthy or clever - this post is merely an attempt to get a (however incomplete) count of fans of color, after the nth time a white writer/reader said, "Wow, there's non-white people in SFF?"

And people wonder why we need to specify "'09" after "RaceFail" ... The ignorance is here, again, still.

This wasn't how I intended my first post on Dreamwidth to go. Ah well.

( Some personal background explaining the reasons behind this post )

1. For those who are still asking, "What is RaceFail '09?" the briefest answer I can manage is: what started as another instance of the discussion about misrepresentation/lack of representation of people of color in science fiction and fantasy has resulted in a particularly public and particularly ugly backlash from (often white) writers and readers.

For a timeline of specific events, please start with this summary by Avalon's Willow. Further events occurred later, as described here by rydra_wong, who has also painstakingly collected all the RaceFail-related links she could find, under this tag

If you're ready for further detail, please see my LiveJournal memories for (what I consider) some of the important posts.

And finally, please refer to this guide to the positive, productive actions taken by POC and allies in the face of RaceFail. Not because of. In the face of.

Read as much as you can. Learn as much as you can. If you take nothing else away from this, remember these two things: This is not "just another wankfest," because it's about race, racism, and representation - not individual personality clashes and this or that book. Also, this is not the first or only such conversation, even if it's the first time you've heard of one like this.

2. One of the best responses to RaceFail has, by far, been the creation of Verb Noire, an e-publishing company dedicated to written works by and about people of color and/or queer people. Please support them by donating.

3.I've posted this before, but remember: if you are an Asian woman or an ally, please contribute to the first Asian Women Blog Carnival. The deadline is tomorrow.

4. This is not a new study (it was published in 2007), but it's highly relevant: Subtle Discrimination is More Taxing On The Brain. Instances of ambiguous racism were more detrimental to black test subjects than obvious cases.

"Interestingly, white volunteers were more impaired by overt racism than by the more ambiguous discrimination. Salvatore and Shelton figure this is because whites rarely experience any racism; they do not even notice the subtle forms of racism, and are thrown off balance when they are hit over the head by overt acts. Many blacks, by contrast, have developed coping strategies for the most hateful kinds of racism; it's the constant, vague, just-below-the-surface acts of racism that impair performance, day in and day out."

This is why I'm more disturbed by expressions of privileged ignorance from people whom I have some trust in, rather than dude-on-the-street spouting a racial slur. This is why I care more about creative works that fail in race or other areas when they come from creators who should know better, based on their previous performance (Joss Whedon, I'm looking at you).

5. This is not race-related, but it's important: March 31st was End the R-word Day, a day dedicated to ending the use of "retard"/"retarded" as a derogatory term.

I have succeeded in removing the word from my vocabulary, but I've utterly failed in speaking out to the people around me. There's no excuse for this. I wouldn't tolerate people using "cunt," "pussy," or "gay" as insults to me, so I can't tolerate "retard" used in the same manner.

I will start by resolving to respond to derogatory uses of "retard"/"retarded" by saying, "Please don't use 'retard'/'retarded' as an insult." That's all. It's just a start.

I'm trying to figure out how to get back into my New Year's goals, and, well, I've decided to try making more goals. Last year (prior to the new job), I got pretty comfortable making daily or weekly to-do lists, and that generally kept me on track with what I wanted to do.

Because I'm still feeling my way around regarding the levels of time, energy, and skill I can call upon, I don't want to make the goals to constricting, so I'm organizing them by category. Each category is something I want to engage in on a (nearly) daily basis, though the exact activity can vary. So I figure if I just set the goal of "one from each category" every day, that should guide me toward spending my time the way I want to, without bringing in an excessive level of obligation.

It's also a way of keeping track of how I spend my time. That's why I'm including activities like spending time with ratzeo - these aren't "tasks" that I need to have "done," but they're worthwhile things I am happy to spend my time on, so I want to acknowledge that.

( More details below, probably tl;dr )