Down with those trope traps!

So, I’ve done my part to promote others and raise social awareness all week, and now it’s time to do some whining for me. But, since we’ve developed this comfy pattern, here’s your link to provide the food for my thought. I found myself nodding enthusiastically throughout this fantastic rant about overdone and clichéd American tropes.

I want to do a couple of block quotes first:

I’m tired of the casual acceptance of violence as a valid answer to anything, of the proliferation of guns in movies and books, of how it’s always acceptable to go face the bad guys with a sword or a pistol instead of seeking a peaceful resolve.

I don’t want stories in which the main character has to be sympathetic and with the moral high ground in order to be worthwhile; in which people have to change in order for the plot to be significant;

You probably know from that second quote where this is going. But in talking about Peter, I often only talk about Peter. I don’t talk about all the other people in his story because I didn’t want to spoil the experience for you. But, since everyone decided that Peter isn’t sympathetic and won’t buy his book, I’ve decided that some spoilers are okay.

First, I want to mention Judy, Peter’s foster sister, a cheerleader with a high IQ who hides this from her friends. Working from within the clique, she tries to help people and do the right thing, even if sometimes she isn’t sure how to deal with Peter’s extreme problems. She’s both a stereotype for her looks, and yet she’s not a mean cheerleader, nor a ditz. She’s Peter’s tutor throughout the story, and he frequently acknowledges that without her help he’d be getting grades worse than the jocks. I’m quite proud of Judy for all her patience with Peter, but no one will notice her performance after Peter’s lusty appetites for child flesh are revealed.

Next, let’s talk about Josie, Peter’s best friend. Peter meets Josie through his job at the mall, and she’s a foster kid too. She was abused by her father and is now asexual and incapable of intimacy. When Peter tries to seduce her, she goes into tears, and Peter realizes that all she wants from him is platonic love. And, despite his monstrous side, he remains a loyal and platonic friend to her. But no one notices this because Peter isn’t so great in how he handles Alice.

Eyewitnesses aren’t so reliable…

One last post for today, and then I’m letting the keyboard cool while I go burn some belly fat on the Kinect. This one is a doozy too: the New Jersey Supreme court is revising rules on eyewitnesses. Why? because solid scientific evidence is proving that coerced eyewitnesses help put innocent people in prison.

The chief justice, Stuart J. Rabner, wrote in a unanimous decision that the legal system had to catch up with scientific evidence in order to ensure justice. “Study after study revealed a troubling lack of reliability in eyewitness identifications….From social science research to the review of actual police lineups, from laboratory experiments to DNA exonerations, the record proves that the possibility of mistaken identification is real. Indeed, it is now widely known that eyewitness misidentification is the leading cause of wrongful convictions across the country.”

Bolding is mine, obviously.

I hear people talk a lot about justice, and about how important justice is. But most people are talking are what they see on Law and Order and CSI, where every criminal is guilty and the cops always get their man. I realize that if Bruckheimer tried to make a series with a real success ratio of a real police department, it would make for damned depressing and dull TV. “No, sorry, no leads here. It’s a cold trail. Next case, please?” So yeah, I get why the cop shows glorify the bust.

But that’s not the real world, people. In the real world, the police aren’t so great at solving cases, and sometimes, they get desperate to produce ANY results, even if it means putting someone innocent away. So sometimes they sweat a witness: “Come on, one of these five suspects surely HAS to be the guy. You’re just not looking at them the right way.”

And this is a Bad Thing. And the NJ Supreme Court has taken an amazing step toward reason with this decision. I fully expect and await the howls of “activist judges” to be ringing through the conservative world tomorrow, with these “moral folks” never once admitting that this decision will make it harder to put innocent people in prison. But why see a good thing as a good thing, right?

Right.

N. K. Jemisin speaks out…

Read this post from fantasy author N. K. Jemisin about how her race affects her role as a writer:

But this does not in any way mean I talk about race and gender because I enjoy doing so. I don’t. It sucks up energy I desperately need to stay afloat while I’ve got two demanding fulltime jobs. And nobody really listens, anyway — for every one person I reach, five more declare me a PC Nazi and run off to lament the passing of the Good Old Days when they could be assholes with impunity.

This is a lament I’m familiar with, though in a slightly different refrain. I could talk about this from “my angle” and cover how hard it is to be taken seriously as a trans advocate when no one thinks I’m justified in being mad. But instead I want to keep this strictly a race issue and allow you folks to appreciate this problem without me trying to attach my shit to it.

Long after we fought a civil war and went through segregation and the civil rights fights, there is still a visible taint of racism in America. It is seen in white washed covers, in recent movies that purport to be about “empowerment”, in the blatantly vile social attitudes toward rap and hip hop, in dropped backhand compliments of being well spoke or a fine example of one’s people. It was seen nationally when a black college football player proposed to his white cheerleader girlfriend on television and caused outrage instead of “Aaaaw.”

The top 20 writing advice lists I won’t read

Despite my love for writers, it’s time to go here. I wrote a blog post some time back complaining about editors and writers who made the bulk of their posts writing advice or complaints about common grammar errors. This stuff is incredibly dull, and I’ve seen very few advice columns that I didn’t start skimming after the first three paragraphs.

“But Zoe,” you say, “You never stop learning, and these columns might have some new advice. And besides, part of my audience is writers. I have to cater to them too.”

Bullshit, on all counts. Advice gets recycled over and over, but is phrased in increasingly longer paragraphs. You’re not doing it better, you’re doing it longer. That’s only nice in sex.

Do I as a writer need you to devote another 1800 words to why I should “show don’t tell”? No, I don’t think so. I don’t need your list on how to make characters more believable. I don’t need your advice for what to do when I’m stuck in a scene. I don’t need your advice for what to do when writer’s block hits. I don’t care how you use social media for big impact, or that I might be making Twelve Twitter Travesties, and I don’t want to see the list of 7 highly effective habits for successful ass kissers.

Transgender Child Attacked With a Baseball Bat

This link is the kind of story that makes me want to get a picture of the victim and go door to door to show people who these victims are and put a face to the problem. So maybe then people will stop thinking this kind of bullshit is okay. Maybe then an attack like this would make the national news instead of barely making a blip on trans news sites and trans advocacy blogs.

You can’t even blame this one on those darn men, or those mean teens, because the attacker is a grown woman…hitting a child with a baseball bat because she’s deputized herself as a member of the gender police.

The amazing thing is, there’s neither any shame from people who do things like this, nor outrage from the people who claim to support diversity. It’s no surprise that I’d report on this story, because my blog is full of reports of minorities being mistreated or oppressed. But after I report on them, no one else is going to bring them up. These attacks will not stop if people continue to look away from every attack.

Let me put this in perspective for you. Today, a bunch of nerds are mad, because a “mean” lady went on a lousy date with the world champion of Magic. Despite the fact that he used this as a bragging point and took her to a play about Dahmer, I saw a lot of you nerdy dudes complaining “Hey, she should be glad he was a great catch!” Nerd, he was NOT a great catch for her. A card game took priority over his sex life, and she wasn’t willing to share time with a game.

More to the point, you’re really jumping her because she impugned the honor of your HOBBY. That is some seriously sheltered bullshit.

Did she attack the Magic World Champion with a baseball bat? No, she said he’s a nerd and not really worth dating. And, she has the right to say so. You have the right to complain too, and I have the right to point out that you are pulling some privileged and sheltered bullshit, whining that people don’t respect your collectible card game. I’m telling you to your faces as a former Magic player: fuck you and your stupid game. There are bigger problems in the world than you being rejected by girls for being nerds.

Like what? Like a complete stranger walks up to a transgender girl and attacks her because “she isn’t wearing the right clothes.” And the cops won’t even call this a hate crime, even though it clearly was.

But tomorrow, I can be sure that there will be continued net wide whining over this “attack” on a white male’s privilege, but there will be no net-wide outrage for a real physical attack on a trans CHILD made by a grown woman.

Yes, people, your priorities are fucked up. Yes, you should be ashamed of yourselves. But you really don’t care. The woes of poor nerdy white dude are more important than a group of people with a tragically high suicide rate and the highest number of assaults, rapes, and murders of any minority group. I ain’t comparing tragedies or putting down other minorities. But damn it, at what point do you people stop worrying about little shit like a fucking collectible card game player’s butthurt, and start worrying about real atrocities occurring daily in your world?

Ebook review: Frankie and Formaldehyde by M. Jones

Frankie and Formaldehyde is a strong story right from the start, and it just keeps building on those strengths as the plot unfolds.

Take a zombie nursing home similar to the kind depicted in Michele Lee’s Rot. But instead of magic animating these undead, a corporation, Osmosis, Inc. has created a compound to bring the dead back to life. But unlike most zombie apocalypse stories, Osmosis does not entirely lose control of the situation, and the undead are herded into arenas and fed. Afterward, the company is even selling the compound to grieving family members using predatory ad campaigns to prey on peoples’ inability to accept death.

Enter into this cold world an elderly woman named Frankie, who, along with coworkers Shirley and Larry, shovels rotting meat to the corpses in one of the arenas. She works constantly because Osmosis has taken over her bank and swindled her on her home loan.

Did I mention that Frankie’s husband is a zombie? George isn’t like the others, and instead of being a violent “rogue” he passes most of his days watching TV and eating bacon raw. But when Frankie leaves her door unlocked in a fit of worrying, George gets outside and begins to uncover a plot by Osmosis to strip everyone’s land. Only…George seems to have discovered this before, back when he was alive…

Enter into this mess a S.I.R. investigating office, Chuck. A retired cop now working to investigate and eliminate rogues, Chuck is rightly seen by everyone as the corporate errand boy of Osmosis. Like Frankie, Chuck is in denial about how bad things have gotten, but as the story unfolds, Chuck sees how scummy Osmosis really is. Eventually, he must come to terms with this, but not before confronting George and Frankie in a truly explosive finale.

But, this is not a fast-paced story. The cast’s ages range from 40-70 in most cases, so the pace moves a bit slower, befitting the cast’s age. But this is not to say the story is slow or dull. It unfolds at just the right pace and delivers a great ending. There’s resolution, but Shirley predicts that there can be no happy ending. And this is perhaps the most realistic assessment of their future.

So to recap, this is a great story premise, a great cast of quirky characters, fantastic dialogue, and a romantic angle that’s all about love and sacrifice and nothing about sex. The scenes were descriptive enough to rip shudders from my jaded black heart, and toward the end, I was giggling gleefully with every line from Shirley or Larry. Can I gush about this story further? Yes, but I’ll spare you.

I give Frankie and Formaldehyde 5 enthusiastic stars and recommend it to all zombie and horror fans who like a little brains with their blood and guts.

And this is a cop…

So first go check this link and see what an off-duty cop does with his free time. Let me make this clear: this, is a police officer, the person whose job it is to uphold the law, cruising for sex, and displaying transphobia when the women he solicited weren’t to his liking.

Now if this was a story about a gang banger, you could almost forgive the ignorance because they’re embedded in a macho culture that violently fears gay and trans folk. But these cops committing crimes like this are the generation who supposedly went through sensitivity training and took courses on respecting diversity. They’ve been taught to know better, and they still choose to be thugs and criminals.

And this isn’t a minor discrimination infraction like, “Hey, you look like a dude, dude.” He crashed their car and fired into the car to try to kill them. There’s no legal reason why this man shouldn’t go to prison and get a little taste of the same shit he’s been dishing out. But first, we have to wait to see if the trial judge will allow him the “trans panic” defense. If not, great, we’ll see one dirty pig fry for once.

But the jury who sat in on the rape of a drunk stripper by two police officers thought that was a-okay, because strippers are always asking for sex. And the women in the car may have been hookers, meaning the jury could decide that they had some bullets coming to them for tricking a fine officer of the law.

So no, even when the cop fires into the car, I’m skeptical that the trial will lead to an “obvious verdict.” And by the way, I’m still searching for some source of positive trans news to counter all of this doom and gloom. But for us, good news is when we win a discrimination suit and force a company to admit they were wrong for mistreating us. But when we celebrate that, we ignore the fact that all these corporation who talk shit about being committed to diversity STILL have to be sued to recognize that we have the same rights as other employees. They support diversity, as long as someone diverse isn’t trying to collect a paycheck from them.

I’m still looking for a real victory to celebrate, and lately, all I see is more reasons to be disappointed.

Oooh, a tech post! Must be a blue moon!

This is a helpful link to explain how to remove a security certificate by DigiNotar CA. I can’t get the full story on what’s going on, but apparently this is a spoofed certificate that affected people using Google services. Near as I can tell this was some attempt from someone in Iran to spy on dissidents using Google to organize protests.

The certificate has already been revoked, and an upcoming browser release will revoke and delete the certificate. But if you’re in Iran (and I actually do have a fraction of traffic from there*) it might be a good idea to delete this pronto for your own safety. So here is a Firefox article explaining how to do it. The rest of you, I doubt the certificate will do anything bad since it’s already been revoked, but if you want to remove it, the instructions are fairly straight forward.

Mr. Ed

Um…so, this is another Tumblr fiction brain fart, this time a tuckerization and a parody of Stephen King’s Night Flyer. In fact, readers of King’s short story will probably see where this joke is going before an uninitiated reader, but I hope the punch line is still good for you King fans too.

And yes, I still love him. He is teh Man, and I’ve read more of his books than any other writer ever. But the muse proposed this and I giggle-snorted and went, “Oh hell yeah. We can do that.”

So without further ado, I give you Mr. Ed

Let’s talk about Afghanistan

So first, here’s the link to a story about the statistic that no one likes to mention, unless you’re Fred Phelps or one of his detestable offspring. Y’all recall, I attempted to serve in the Army, and I got injured out. I have a lot of respect for those guys because “ours is not to question why. Ours is but to do or die.”

People who enter the military exist under a different code of law, the UCMJ, or the Uniform Code of Military Justice. A person in this system is property of their government, and as such they voluntarily sacrifice many of the rights that other people take for granted. And they do this for shitty pay.

I bitch a lot about lots of folks, and when some bad apples show up in these war stories, I’ll point them out. But you’ll never catch me saying “this is everybody in the military.” That’s because who makes up the military is a HUGE selection of people from all walks of life, religions, and ways of looking at their role as soldiers. There is no one definition of who a soldier is and how they think or act.