The Thing About Harry Potter
by V.E. on July 21st, 2011
filed under entertainment, recap/review, thoughts
I went to see HP7, pt.2 on Tuesday with one of my friends. It was… hard… tragic… emotionally exhausting… and I’ve never even read the books. It was clear to me that Harry was just… tired of fighting, tired of feeling like he was making his friends fight. He wanted it to be over, and I could feel the heartache he felt when he looked at his wounded and dead friends sitting in the rubble that had once been Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. I couldn’t help but wonder: what was Voldemort getting out of this? I mean, he wanted to rule the world, I guess—and he hated Harry Potter, the Boy Who Lived—but it seemed like he’d lost sight of his goal as was just acting out in hatred against the only person who could—was forced to—take it: Harry Potter. Where did Tom Riddle’s life go so wrong that he had to create an army by intimidating his followers and attacking a school, for god’s sake? We were supposed to hate him, but in the end, I just pitied him.
I didn’t understand some of it: I didn’t understand Narcissa Malfoy’s apparent interaction with her son, Draco; I didn’t really understand all the back story that Harry learns about Professor Snape after shit goes down; I didn’t get why and how the Death Eaters had captured Hagrid; I didn’t understand some of Harry’s conversation with Professor Dumbledore in King’s Cross Station, or really how and why they’d ended up there and not somewhere else; I didn’t really get all the characters except for probably the top five or six; I didn’t fully understand Harry’s use of the Resurrection Stone; and what was that thing with the snake? it’s suddenly important, now?; and so on. I did understand, however, that I would have understood all those things if I’d read the books. And I didn’t need the “19 years later” epilogue, either. It was tacked on and completely unnecessary. It may’ve been a good way to end the book series, but movies are much faster paced and I, at least, didn’t need the “see? everything turned out okay” moment at the end.
The first book, Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, was published in June 1997, when I was 12; and the last film, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, part 2, was just produced this month, July 2011. That’s almost 15 years of magic. I bought my sister each of the novels as they were published. I was even pulled over after buying Order of the Phoenix (I remembered the cover was blue, so I looked up which US title that was, haha) because it was after midnight and I didn’t have the car’s lights on because I’d forgotten because the street was so well lit. I frantically told the police officer that, no, I was really wasn’t drunk, I swear, and I was just getting my little sister the most recent Harry Potter book (I even showed it to him, as if that would prove anything). Whatever the reason, he seemed amiable and let me off with a warning. ^_^;;
My sister and I went to see the first movie when it came out in late 2001 and the first thing out of her mouth (that I remember, anyway) about the film after it was over was, “There was no potions room!” She was devastated—at least as devastated as a 14-year-old can be about a film adaptation completely cutting out her favorite part of the novel upon which it was based. In the film, the three kids have to successfully traverse multiple rooms with tests in each: they pass the cerberus, Fluffy; get the key from the room of flying keys; and play a life-size version of Wizard’s Chess before Harry can get to the room with the Philospher’s Stone in it. Getting past Fluffy was almost a fluke, the key room was Harry’s test, and the chess room was Ron’s. In the book, there was also a potions room that was Hermione’s test, but it wasn’t in the movie. As far as I can find, it was cut out of the script (or was never in it in the first place) before filming even began, so it’s not like it’s a deleted scene or something.
I decided right then and there, after my sister’s disappointment was made clear, that I was not going read any of the books until the last movie was produced because I had liked Philosopher’s/Sorcerer’s Stone and I didn’t want to be disappointed by future movies after having been spoiled by reading the books.
When I was living in New York, I bought a complete series hardcover box set from the UK (not cheap!) in anticipation of reading the books (and not the edited down US versions, either) once the film series was complete. When I moved home, I put most of my stuff in storage, including the box set. So, I have the books (sort of); I’ve seen all the movies. Part of my brain says I should sit myself down and READ, and then another part of my brain says, “But you have no access to the books right now.” /sob
Well, I’ve waited this long—14 years! I can wait a little longer, right?
“Harry Potter is about confronting fears, finding inner strength and doing what is right in the face of adversity. Twilight is about how important it is to have a boyfriend.” —Stephen King
“White Blackbirds” #1 & #2
by V.E. on June 19th, 2011
filed under personal, recap/review, thoughts
“White Blackbirds” (left) and “White Blackbirds No.2″
I first learned of “White Blackbirds” (#1) through Bitch‘s zine library review of it and new I had to get my hands on a copy as soon as possible. With all this marriage stuff my friends are having right about now (and I’m in one wedding in August and my brother just got engaged!), it seemed to be spot on in terms of showing up in my life at the right time, you know?
I’m just now getting to this review because, well, life happens but I made a commitment to myself to do a couple reviews on my own per month. I didn’t end up writing last month’s reviews until the beginning of this month, but I don’t want to fell behind again.
Anyway, I received the first “White Blackbirds: conversations with women who aren’t married and don’t want to be” (black cover) from Katie at The La-La Theory. I have never delved much into the world of zines, so I didn’t really know what to expect (except what I read on the Bitch article). I was pleasantly surprised. The zine is made up of standard size printer paper folded in half and stapled—and it’s held up well in the months I’ve been carting it around trying to write this article. It’s pretty decently sized, too: interviews with 11 women totaling 32 pages. The title comes from the Irish expression, “There will be white blackbirds before an unwilling woman ties the knot.”
Two pages in the first “White Blackbirds” zine
The questions poised to the interviewees were:
Why don’t you want to get married?
When did you decide this?
Are you in a relationship now?
If so, have you shared your decision with that person?
If so, how does he/she feel about it?
Do you have children? Do you want children?
Things you’re most passionate about in life
Do you have any unmarried role models?
What else should we know about you?
Interviewees—identified by first name, age, and general location—were able to skip questions that didn’t apply to them or ones they otherwise didn’t want to answer, so not all the interviews feature all the questions. Answers to the first question ranged from “Ugh, who wants a wedding?” to “I’ve already been married—and divorced—and I don’t want to go through that again.” Many women expressed their desire to stay unmarried but mentioned that it was important for each person to decide for him- or herself. It wasn’t like they were hating on marriage or weddings, they just didn’t see the need for themselves.
Katie, who compiled the first issue, put out a notice for those interested to contact her about a possible second issue because the Bitch article generated a lot of interest. I was quick to let her know that I was interested in being interviewed if she needed people. She responded to my query positively, I answered within a reasonable amount of time, and a bunch of other ladies did, too; and “White Blackbirds No.2: More conversations with women who aren’t married and don’t want to be” (white cover) was created! This second issue is chock full of more interviews (10 in total) and spans 38 pages.
Two pages in “White Blackbirds No.2″
A neat thing about zines is that the creators and consumers of said have a very tight relationship; in response to some suggestions, Katie added a few more questions to the interview pool this time around (although interviewees, identified this time only by first name and age, were still able to answer only the questions they wanted):
Do you think your cultural background has had some bearing on your decision not to marry, or your feelings toward marriage in general?
What about your religious background?
Has your gender identity, perceived gender, or sexual orientation affected your feelings about marriage?
The interview that I found most relatable was with Emily, 25, (pg. 18-22) who identifies as asexual. She really made me think when she wrote, answering the “Are you in a relationship?” question,
I know “relationship” is shorthand for “romantic relationship”, but that term has never sat well with me. Although it is rarely the intention of the speaker, it implies that romantic relationships are the only ones that matter much. I don’t mean to be a nuisance, I’m just really interested in the language people use to talk about relationships (I feel similarly about “just friends”, since for me, platonic love is much stronger than romantic love). That said, no, I’m not in a romantic relationship– never have been. Probably because I’ve always had mixed feelings about them.
(I suspect, actually, that this lovely lady who also reviewed “White Blackbirds” #1 and who was in #2 is the author of the above passage, though I have nothing to back that up except a hunch.) I really love thinking about the words we use in every day conversation and the ones we reserve as “dirty” or only for special occasions, and this is no exception. I have four best friends, the closest people to me on the planet, who I call my waterbrothers, and I have trouble explaining—even to them—exactly what this woman managed to say in just one phrase: “…since for me, platonic love is much stronger than romantic love…” I don’t identify myself as asexual, but I have found that my platonic relationships have been more enduring than any of my romantic ones.
Even though I’m in “White Blackbirds No.2″, I highly recommend it if you can get your hands on a copy. (The compiler/editor graciously offered her email address: katie @ thelalatheory . com, without spaces.) Tell her I sent you and maybe she’ll consider printing more of the second issue. There are so many great things I learned from both issues and I’d really like to read a third issue because, as Katie mentioned in her introduction to the first “White Blackbirds”, people need role models!
On changing the surname upon marriage
by V.E. on June 8th, 2011
filed under lgbt, personal, politics, thoughts
This feels like one of those things, a “as soon as I buy a purple Toyota, I start seeing purple Toyotas everywhere” type thing. People my age seem to be tying the knot as fast as they can get their hands on rope. The more weddings I attend, the more I can tell it’s not my thing. But weddings aren’t really what I’m going to write about in this entry, though they could surely take up one if I wanted to write about that.
I am strictly against changing one’s surname upon marriage. Actually, I’m not sure I’m for marriage generally speaking—that’s an entirely different discussion—but let’s assume for the sake of argument that we’ve already had the marriage talk and the consensus is that we’ll go with it for now.
For the women I’ve dated, marriage was never really a serious option because it wasn’t/isn’t a serious legal option, so it was sort of a non-issue. Of the men I’ve dated, one said he was fine with my not changing my name if we ever married, and one was against it from the start. That is, he was of the opinion that a woman should change her name to her husband’s upon marriage and any subsequent children would have the husband’s surname. For him, it was a matter of collective identity—”A family should be united,” he said once, “and a single last name for everyone in the family shows that unity.”—something that, I admit, is hard to argue with. Except to say, “Well, why can’t you change your name to mine, then, if that’s the big deal?” He, of course, didn’t like that idea at all.
That said, and as many people have noted (see my “Further Reading” section below), if you present yourself as a family, people will assume you are one, regardless of your surname(s). This phenomenon has also been noted in unmarried couples who present themselves as married. It’s not that hard to correct someone who thinks you’re Mrs. Smith when you’re actually Ms. Jones who’s married to Mr. Smith.
For me, a woman who changes her name to her husband’s is contributing to patriarchy, and that’s not a good thing. Changing the surname upon marriage is based in the same sexist traditions that have a man walk his daughter down the aisle and “give” her to her future husband, as if she were a man’s property (which, at the time, women were). Some people might argue that, well, a woman has her father‘s surname (probably), so that‘s contributing to sexism, and honestly, that’s true. But in that case, the woman in question hasn’t actively supported a patriarchal tradition because that was the name she was given at birth; she had no choice in the matter. And anyway, the name is hers now, not her father’s anymore.
By the way, I’m also against a man taking his wife’s last name. While a man taking his wife’s surname (a’la Jack White from the band The White Stripes) seems to be much more feminist, the result is actually much the same: people assume that the woman changed her name and it was the man’s all along. The same goes for couples who decide to forgo both surnames all together and create a new one. While it’s actually a subversion of patriarchy, it’s hard to tell on the surface, which may undermine the whole point in the end.
Some people have pointed out that they don’t like their family/ies and don’t want to be associated with an abusive father in any way, name included. Well, my answer to that is: you don’t have to get married to change your name. If you don’t like your family that much (which happens; I’m not saying you should just “tough it out” or something), then change your name now; don’t wait until you get married. That way, the name you choose is yours completely and you’ll be able to carry it with pride without having to connect it to another person.
But I want to connect it to another person! you say. Yes, well, I’m happy you’ve decided to take the plunge and tie the knot. But your name is your identity; especially in today’s world, it holds a lot of weight professionally, and name searches on Google (for example) would be split. But it’s a woman’s choice! you say. Well, yes, it is. And it’s a man’s, too. And if all else were equal, I probably wouldn’t care about it one way or the other. But we do not live on equal terms, here. Women are oppressed. If you don’t believe me, you need to take a class or two in gender studies.
As for children’s surnames, I don’t have a really good answer for that one. (What? I don’t know everything.) My gut reaction is let the child decide for him or herself, but even if a couple did that—at least the way the system is currently set up—they’d still have to give the child some surname in the meantime while the child grew up enough to be self aware enough to decide. Maybe you could mix it up a little and give daughters the man’s surname and sons the woman’s surname. Or hyphenate (ugh; don’t do that). Or choose a completely new name for the children that’s a combination of the parents’ surnames.
The only argument for giving the children the father’s surname exclusively that I’ve ever heard that makes any real sense to me was this. Leaving aside surrogate pregnancies, weird science, orphans, and adoptions for a moment, people know who the (biological) mother is. She’s required by biology to be at the birth. It’s easy to connect her to the child and visa versa. Not necessarily so with the (biological) father, who doesn’t need to do anything more than donate his sperm to the cause. Giving the child the father’s surname is a way of forcing the father to take responsibility for his offspring. Or at least calling attention to the fact that he’s not taking care of said offspring. But that argument presents a sad view of the state of fatherhood; what kind of world do we live in where the only way a man will acknowledge his children is if they have his surname and are therefore connected to him?
As I mentioned above, it’s not that hard to correct someone who thinks the child isn’t yours just because you have different names. (Though I imagine it would get hella tiring eventually, at least as tiring as correcting the pronunciation of a given name, as I have had to do my entire life.) Also, let me state for the record that people, generally speaking, are idiots; sometimes they’ll assume things about you that just aren’t true—like that you aren’t your daughter’s mother just because you have different skin tones—but that’s another journal entry in itself.
I want to live in a world where people who change their name do it for a real, true reason, not just because they’re getting married and it’s what you do. I want to live in a world where the people who change their names because of married are scoffed at, not the reverse, like it is now. “Oh, are you a feminist?” people ask women who haven’t changed their surnames upon marriage. (You know, as though being a feminist is a bad thing.) Really, I want to live in a world where a woman isn’t subsumed into her husband’s identity upon her marriage to him. And for that to happen, we have a long way to go.
You’ll notice I haven’t really mentioned women marrying other women or men marrying other men (or anything else that makes real romantic relationships interesting). That’s because the very act of changing one’s surname upon marriage is a form oppression that’s tied up in gender identity, gender essentialism, and completely erases gay and lesbian relationships (to say nothing of transgender people, bisexuals, and people in polyamorous relationships) because it assumes that one party (the woman) is “obviously” or “naturally” subservient to the other (the man). When two women or two men marry, that “natural” and “obvious” dynamic is necessarily thrown out. It may actually be a form of rebellion (as opposed to an adherence to patriarchy) for two men or two women who are not related by blood to share a surname, and it helps them convince other people that they are family in a world where two men or two women living together aren’t already assumed to be a couple.
Further Reading:
Why Brides Change Last Names
Keeping Your Maiden Name After Marriage
Against the Name Change: A Polemic
Things We Do for Love: Will You Change Your Last Name?
Women, Work and a Name Change
The Cost of a Name Change
Concerning Marriage and Changing Names
Lucy Stone League
Dear Angie,
by V.E. on April 11th, 2011
filed under personal, thoughts
It’s been two years to the day since you died. I don’t know where you are now, or if you’re anywhere at all. The person who hit you during that hit and run has—to the best of my knowledge—never been found. He or she may not have even realized what had happened or might have thought they’d hit an animal or a curb. I don’t know the details of it, and I probably never will.
I hope against hope that I’ll be able to talk with you again someday—maybe we can reminisce about all the awesome ways we totally fucked up our lives when we were kids. Maybe by that time, it’ll be funny. I miss you sometimes, especially around this time of year. Your birthday and death day just a week apart and then the day I found out from a mutual friend later this month. Combined with Nightlin‘s and Bunny‘s birthdays near month’s end, it has made for a very bittersweet April these past couple of years.
You share a grave with your father, David C. Reyna Jr., who died the year you were born. I don’t know how hard it is to have my father not only not there, but not physically capable of being there—and I don’t know which is worse. Not being there for one’s daughter because one’s just “not ready for kids” makes for a terrible father; not being there for one’s daughter because death physically separates the two makes for a terrible world.
Your father was younger than mine, Angie, but he died decades before (and counting, since my father’s still alive and well)—he might not have even gotten to see you before his death, though he surely must have known about you. I didn’t know about him when you were alive—I guess I always assumed he and your mother were divorced and he was off gallivanting somewhere, not taking care of his responsibility to you. I don’t know what you thought of him, or even if you thought of him—we never once talked about it.
Sitting here at your grave, I’m angry and grieving all over again. I’m mad at myself for not getting enough of my shit together to be a friend to you. And I’m mad at you for not doing the same for me, dammit. I needed people. I didn’t know it then, but I needed you. I miss you when I see a clarinet or hear one being played because that was your instrument in band when we were in high school. I miss you when I walk across a busy street because I know that’s how you died. I miss you when I lie because I remember it was you who taught me how.
I regret… many things, and yet time moves on. The grass still grows, and the rain still falls. The world has not ended with your death (as it will not end with mine). There is a piece of my heart with you here in this grave—a very small piece because I have mostly moved on, too, just like the world has. There’s a shard of your headstone lodged in my heart instead. Just a sliver, but it’s reminder enough on most days.
With death is the end of hope. And remembering your death makes me want to lie down here with you, just for a little while. You have my hope with you, Angie, and I’m not strong enough yet to ask for it back.
Maybe someday, I will be.
—————
Above, written at graveside.
Last Tuesday (April 5th), I remembered about halfway through the day that it was Angie’s birthday. She’d have been 26. Today is her death day, again. I don’t want to think about it, but I have been ever since I realized after work while I was standing in the CVS thinking about stealing some “Awesome Orange” nail polish last Tuesday morning.
I have written about Angie before, and I’m generally okay most of the time, but it’s at this time of year—her birthday and death day—that I’m especially sensitive about friendships, love, and heartache.
Thoughts on Rape
by V.E. on March 23rd, 2011
filed under personal, thoughts
Recently, I posted two journal entries that may seem to conflict with one another: “Penny Arcade” addendum and “Incubus Master” pt.1 review. The former is a declaration that rape is one of my Great Evils. (I said that rape was my Second Great Evil; my First Great Evil is drinking alcohol. Which, now that I think about it, are actually intertwined. But I digress…) Though said declaration was actually a byproduct of what I was trying to say and not meant to be the point of the whole thing, it’s sort of been what readers have focused on when responding to the two posts right after one another, perhaps because the other post also heavily involves it.
The latter, while giving a trigger warning on a piece of fiction I was reviewing, basically overlooked the fact that I gave the story a (mostly) positive review anyway, despite said story being about a boy who was abducted and kept for over a year as a sex slave before being freed. The story mentioned and depicted rape: the boy didn’t want to have sex, and his captors forced it on him anyway. The first part of Incubus Master, in fact, includes a graphic, detailed depiction of rape—something written to arouse the reader and which works as a hook for reading the rest of the plot. The narrator even tells us near the beginning of the story: “He [Jinady, the main character] picked the incubi over the succubi, but it was a choice of being raped over being killed. Each night a different demon took him to bed.” It’s hard to get any clearer than that.
Let me be as plain and to-the-point as possible. When someone doesn’t want to have sex and you force them to have sex anyway, that’s rape. If you do that, you are a rapist. Touching someone against her or his will is assault, and touching that person sexually against her or his will is sexual assault. Just because she didn’t fight back or he had a physical reaction to it doesn’t make it okay. No means no, true, but that doesn’t mean saying nothing means yes. Only yes means yes. (This idea is called enthusiastic consent.) There is no “rape-rape”, there’s only (1) sex with consent and (2) rape. That’s it. Either you have consent, or you don’t. If you don’t, it’s rape. End of story. Done. No argument.
We live in a rape culture. That is, rape culture is “a complex of beliefs that encourages male sexual aggression and supports violence against women. It is a society where violence is seen as sexy and sexuality as violent.” (See the great book Transforming a Rape Culture by Emilie Buchwald.) Don’t believe that we live in a rape culture? Consider this: there is no woman—no person, even—who has ever asked to be raped. There is no “she was asking for it” by the way she dressed/looked/walked/whatever. Or this: using the word rape in casual conversation—as in, “Damn, the ATM totally raped me with fees” or “Haha, I raped you playing Halo last night”—lends itself to not taking the actual act of rape very seriously. (Though I can’t think of many things more serious than rape; can you?) And that’s just the tip of the ginormous metaphorical iceberg, by the way. There are so many things to which rape culture can be attributed, maybe you should just read about it for yourself.
I go back and forth about whether “Avoiding Every Woman’s Worst Nightmare”-type articles are really helpful. I’m a firm believer in the idea that (1) no person deserves to be raped under any circumstances, and (2) there is only rape in the world while there are rapists who perpetuate it. Based on that, it doesn’t matter how much a person protects herself, as long as there is someone attacking and raping her, there is still rape. I guess it’s good for a woman to protect herself, but that’s like (in the mildest terms I can imagine) putting a bandaid over a splinter—it doesn’t deal with the real problem, which is the splinter. And also, as the linked article mentions at the end: protecting yourself while walking home alone, dancing in a bar with friends, not getting in some random car, and so on, only helps when your attacker is a stranger; most rapes occur between people who know each other.
Which brings me to my next point, which is an admission on my part. The only reason I’m so passionate about this—I will be the first to admit that I’m pretty lackluster about many important things—is because it has directly affected me. In December 2006, I was raped in one of the academic buildings on my college campus by a man I knew. I had, after all, dated him most of the 2003-2004 school year. I hope I knew him. I thought I knew him. Many people in my circle already know this joyful factoid about me, but this is the first time I’ve ever directly actually written out the words “I was raped” for anyone, including myself.
The story of what happened is for another time, but suffice to say that (preventing) rape (and helping victims after it happens) became exponentially more important to me after it happened to me. (That is, it was important before, but it wasn’t a priority.) As for myself, I received sympathy from some of my friends—though not even close to all of them—when they found out, but very little in the way of actual support and help. I’m not over it. I’m still triggered sometimes, and I have to find my way back to reality from a flashback again. Sometimes, I’m completely blindsided. Usually, I can handle it, but luckily for me I have at least one friend who’s talked me through panic attacks in person at three in the morning more than once. Thank gods for him; seriously.
Now, having said all that, rape fantasy seems like it’s completely and totally right out, right? Well, no. I’d rather have thousands of people jerking off to rape fantasy porn than even one person actually perpetuating rape in real life. There is something to be said, however, for the “monkey see, monkey do” theory (a name which I just made up), which basically states that the things a person takes in (in this case: describing rape in a story, as in Incubus Master, or depicting rape in pornography) influences his or her ideas about what is acceptable (or, rape). That is, as a friend of mine put it, “There’s always the idea that depictions of rape promote the act, or that these works were made with malicious intent, and can conceivably be dangerous…” (There are similar arguments related to the violence in video games consumed by teenagers.)
I tend to argue that, if the person already has the inclination to rape someone else, then perhaps reading a bodice ripper romance (or, more bluntly, watching rape porn) may lead that person to assume that forcing him/herself on someone else is okay. And, similarly, if a person has no previous inclination to dominate someone else (against that person’s will) or force someone else to do something against their will, reading a bodice ripper or watching rape porn won’t give them the impression that those fictions are acceptable in reality. After all, it’s called rape fantasy for a reason.
Now, where do I draw the line between things like Incubus Master and the Penny Arcade drama? Well, for one thing: the former is most definitely a rape fantasy, and it’s pretty clearly labeled as such in the first couple of pages of the story. It gives the reader a chance to stop, to put the story down and walk away if they think they might be negatively affected by it. The latter was a fucking idiotic joke that spiraled into downright rape apology, which is the “ideology of denying the seriousness of rape”. Also, jokes are given without warning almost 100% of the time. So there’s no way anyone who’s sensitive to the joke’s subject matter can say, “Wait! Stop; I don’t want to hear this.”
And, guys, don’t think you’re safe just joking around with your guy buds during male bonding time or whatever you do when there are no women around; one of them may have been assaulted (yes, guys are sexually assaulted, too), or he may have a sister or girlfriend or mother who was assaulted. And to everyone who says, “But wouldn’t I know about something so serious if we were friends?” No, you actually might not. It’s not like a woman is going to introduce herself by saying, “Hi, I’m Sarah. I was raped.” (And that kind of introduction is even less plausible for men because of the stigma of being gay or being “a pussy”.)
I’m sure I could go on and on, but let me end with a reiteration of my belief in “Yes means yes!” (as opposed to “No means no”). Only yes means yes. Really. As one of my closest friends said, basically summing up the entire topic for me: “If there’s a place for rape, reality isn’t it.”
“Penny Arcade” addendum
by V.E. on March 15th, 2011
filed under entertainment, thoughts, wtf
EDIT 21 MARCH 2011: I just found out that this post is now on the timeline (see March 15 or just search the page for “V. E. Duncan”). Read below for more.
————
A little while ago, I wrote a review of the first season of Penny Arcade: The Series, which is a cross between “a day in the life” of the comic’s creators and highlighting aspects of the Penny Arcade company, including how the creators make comics (“The Fourth Panel”), its employees, Child’s Play Charity, and ping pong tournaments.
Then, a couple of days ago, I found out about the dickwolves debacle. My immediate response was, “Oh, you have got to be fucking kidding me”—and not because I think that the original objection was by a group blog “with no sense of humor”… The founder beg’s to differ—and I agree with her (embedded links in the original):
The argument always, always, goes: No topic should be totally off-limits, and, you know, I actually agree with that. But context is everything.
As is the perspective from which the joke is being told, and its intended audience: After I once observed acerbically in comments that anyone can participate in discussions of sexual assault “even without the benefit (ha!) of having been raped,” Shaker Carleigh said, “You are one of the handful of people on the planet that know how to make a rape joke funny.” To which I replied: “That’s because my rape jokes are for rape victims, not rapists.”
My response was anger and disbelief because I’m tired of people—people who I may just look up to, maybe even see as (admittedly unconventional) heroes in my mind’s eye—going and pissing all over my little hero worship parade. And the people pissing on my parade are the very ones I’m trying to laud. Godsdamnit. I mean, really, does everything just have to be shitty all the time? Can’t there be just one person who is a good person who agrees with me about the two things I find most evil in the world? In Gabe, I had a person who was a good person who had never done any drugs, and in Tycho I had a person who respected his friend’s decision. (I assume they both drink, which is actually my First Great Evil, but I was willing to overlook that because I felt like they would understand if I said, “You know how Gabe feels about doing drugs because he watched his brother OD and die? That’s how I feel about alcohol.”)
And then they had to go and ruin everything by making some crappy comments about rape (my Second Great Evil)—and it’s not even the original comic I’m talking about, here. I’m talking about how they handled everything after that, including the “apology” which was really just saying, “You guys have no sense of humor and we’re rubbing it in your faces that we’re not really going to apologize. Ever.” Gabe wearing his fucking stupid dickwolves t-shirt to PAX was really just kind of adding insult to injury (see January 29 in the timeline).
So I read through all the stuff—the comic (and its “apology”), the initial objection, the timeline… everything. (I really did at least skim everything mentioned in the timeline.) I watched the video of Gabe drawing a dickwolf at PAX Prime live for a crowd of cheering spectators. (I’m not going to link the video because it just made me throw up in my mouth, especially after everything else. If you want to watch it, look it up for yourself.) I read the article about why at least one hardcore Penny Arcade fan won’t be reading the comic again (which is, by the way, completely 100% recommended reading; if you read nothing else I link in this post, at least read that article).
Taking all this information in, two things happened. First and most obviously, my heart sank. As I was watching the first season of the series, I felt like these were two guys who were relate-able (though it probably helps that they’re white and I’m white, and they present themselves as upper-middle class and I come from a similar background). Now, after reading all this drama, I want to scream at them to just fucking apologize like a decent human being would and, even if it’s late, it’s better late than never. I have a high tolerance for bullshit, but talking to me facetiously about rape is just not on the list of things I’m going to put up with for very long. (Though I suspect that my online gamer friends, mostly men in this respect, don’t exactly tell other players, also usually men, to STFU about rape—or “fags” or other hateful language—or GTFO. They may even participate in it, which makes me sick to my stomach to think about, but at least they don’t do it around me.)
The second thing that happened was, I realized, more a coincidence. This entire craptastic drama began just as I was finishing up the first season of the series. I don’t actually read Penny Arcade (the comic) very much, and I don’t really play games, online or console or otherwise. (I have played through a few notable exceptions.) And most of the disaster had somehow or other resolved itself (mostly unsatisfactorily for all parties) right before I sat down to seriously write the review for the first season in February. (Which is not to say that anything was actually resolved, just that the shitstorm around it had died down somewhat and people were moving on.) So, I basically missed the entire fiasco, and for that I’m seriously grateful. If I’d been parry to it, I would certainly not have given the the series such a glowing review, and I think that wouldn’t have been fair to the series.
I vaguely remember reading that comic when it was first posted. (It was about the time I was just finishing up the first season and putting the review in the cue on this journal.) I like to think I understood the intent of the comic because I, at least, don’t remember even noticing the mention of rape. The joke in the comic, as the creators point out, is in the absurdity of playing MMORPGs (like WoW) and not being able to have your character save all the NPCs. (Since many other posts about this entire debacle explain why saving all the NPCs in any given area is not only unrealistic, it’s also often impossible: I won’t be getting into it here.) I wasn’t offended by the first comic, but I was able to imagine, in rereading it, how someone could be. I was offended and hurt by the follow-up “apology” and all the shit that Gabe and Tycho did afterwards: selling the dickwolves t-shirt, refusing to apologize, not calling out their trolling, hateful fans, and so on. I understand that the creator(s) cannot control the creation’s fans, but they could’ve at least given it a good-faith effort.
Basically, what it comes down to, for me, is this:
Those who have never have been raped, sexually assaulted or harassed carry an inherent sense of privilege and power in a society where sexual violence has been normalized. They don’t have to worry about being triggered by words, images, or sounds that carry them back to that horrible moment when their whole life changed for the worse. Those who are privileged in this particular way never have to hear themselves being told to get a life, move on, get over it, or find a sense of humor. And they never, ever have to endure personal attacks, questions about their sanity, or death threats when they decline to just get over it.
The most insidious part of this whole sorry affair is that those who carry such privilege have no clue that they possess it, because their privilege makes them completely tone deaf to the concerns and objections of those whom they so casually traumatized. No, what is most important is that everyone recognize their personal righteousness: how nice they really are, how they would never really rape someone, how much the PA guys raise for charity, etc.
That is all.
Seriously, though, go read: Gaming, rape culture, and how I stopped reading Penny Arcade
Thoughts on Internet Piracy
by V.E. on February 13th, 2011
filed under anime/manga, thoughts
On 03 February 2011 at 6:44 PM, an article posted on the Inside AX website showed up in my Google Reader feed. Thinking it was interesting that someone from Anime Expo would be espousing internet piracy, I saved it for later reading. Below is the complete original text of the article (including the anime girl in the pirate hat):
Study Finds Internet Piracy Boosts Sales
by Taylor Locke, Staff Writer, Inside AX- Anime ExpoA recent study published by the Japanese Research Institute of Economy, Trade & Industry (RIETI) has proven some interesting results in a study which examines how internet piracy affects the DVD sales of anime. The results the researchers came to was that the piracy of anime on the internet has either no effect, or even helped increase the sales of anime DVDs.
In RIETI’s study, they examine the affect that both YouTube and the P2P-Network, Winny, had on the sales of anime DVDs and the rental of anime episodes. The results they came to were that “Estimated equations of 105 anime episodes show that (1) Youtube viewing does not negatively affect DVD rentals, and it appears to help raise DVD sales; and (2) although Winny file sharing negatively affects DVD rentals, it does not affect DVD sales.”
The effect of YouTube boosting DVD sales were seen to have happened after an anime series had finished airing, which suggests that a majority of people found out about a particular anime series via YouTube. This makes YouTube seem more like a marketing tool rather then just a “video sharing site”.
These results show that even though the effect of anime piracy has caused a decrease in the sales of anime rentals, the sales of DVDs has either had a positive increase, or no change at all.
Perhaps this will cause more anime publishing companies to realize that the internet is not a “bad thing”, and that it can be used to actually help increase their sales rather then harm them. I mean come on, us otaku that don’t live in Japan probably would not have even heard of most the anime series we know of, if not for the results of anime being shared around the internet.
Source: http://www.rieti.go.jp/en/publications/summary/11010021.html
Normally, I would quote a fair use portion of the article and link to the rest so you could read (and decide) for yourself. As you’ll see, however, if you click the link for that article now, you’ll be greeted with an apology from “The Executives and Staff of the SPJA and Anime Expo”, which reads:
An Open letter to the Anime community and creators:
We at the Society for the Promotion of Japanese Animation and Anime Expo would like to offer our sincerest and deepest apologies for the personal views expressed and the implied endorsement of piracy of Anime by one of the former contributing writers for Inside AX.
The executives, staff, officers and organizers of the SPJA/Anime Expo do not support or endorse piracy of any kind. We firmly believe that artists and creators deserve to be compensated for their hard work and piracy inflicts damage upon the Anime industry not only here in the US but around the world as well.
We have always worked hard to prevent piracy at our event and we will continue to discourage piracy within the fandom. As part of this process we will be having panels to facilitate the open discussion between the fans and representatives of the Anime industry on this topic. During the coming weeks we will be reaching out to our contacts within the Anime industry and community to invite them to participate. If you are a fan who would like to participate in this open dialog and discussion of this critical topic we will be having this panel on Saturday July 2nd in our LP1 programming room, with the exact time to be announced as schedules are finalized. We hope to see you there.
Sincerely,
The Executives and Staff of the SPJA and Anime Expo
I consider this to be self-censorship on the part of Anime Expo and Inside AX, and you know what? That’s their prerogative, whether I agree with it or not. (I don’t.) Another way to look at it would be to assume that all the writers for Inside AX also represent AX (which they do, whether they realize it or not) and to correct a mistake that’s out of line with company policy as quickly as possible (which, apparently, AX did). Taylor Locke, the writer of the original article, could easily continue to espouse internet piracy of anime—s/he just can’t do it as a representative of AX.
As for internet piracy itself, I read the first article and agreed with it. And then I read the apology and agreed with it, too. And then I realized that that is, at the very least, a conflicting message about internet piracy, so I thought I’d try to write it out to clarify for myself and everyone else.
I don’t know anyone who has never participated in internet piracy. In some cases, it’s even by accident (as when someone doesn’t know something has been pirated or they’re directed by someone else to a YouTube video with stolen content). I’d be hard-pressed, I imagine, to say with 100% certainty that all my iTunes music was obtained legally (though no one else can say for sure that it wasn’t, either). And, as the source material’s abstract said, “Youtube viewing does not negatively affect DVD rentals, and it appears to help raise DVD sales…” The source material’s statement about Winny (a peer-to-peer file sharing program used in Japan, similar to BitTorrent here in the U.S.) indicates that torrenting a file (or multiple files) leads to less DVD rentals, but no less DVD purchases.
Also, fanfiction is a type of piracy, and fanfiction is something I support because (to me, as a writer) it seems like free advertising, since, after all, the reader is going to have to have read the original work to be able to understand the fanfic, right? And, damn, I’d be flattered if someone thought my characters were compelling enough to write about. That would be so cool. But there are some writers who completely disagree with my “that’s awesome” stance and who’ve completely banned their fans from writing fanfiction using their characters, settings, and situations, etc. (Though, to be fair, it’s usually the characters to which fanfic writers cling.) And you know what? That’s their prerogative. (Haha, that’s the second time I’ve used that phrase in this post already.) And actually, it’s their right. The characters/settings/situations they’ve created are copyrighted to them and any unauthorized use of said (including fanfiction) is technically stealing. That is, just because you hop into someone else’s Corvette, take it for a joyride, and then return it unharmed doesn’t mean you didn’t steal it in the first place.
And all this I’ve said about fanfiction applies to straight up fansubbing anime and manga, and it goes for just ripping off someone else’s work. Fanfiction isn’t plagiarism, but it could argued that fansubbing someone else’s already-created work is. That is, the original content is still intact and is just translated for viewers of other languages to understand—but it’s still stealing. Just because you don’t have a way to legally access the title in your country doesn’t mean it’s okay for you to watch it for free with fan-created subtitles. Creators deserve to be compensated for their work; they’ve gotta eat, too, and if they don’t get paid, eventually they’ll be out of work and won’t be able to create their awesome stories anymore. And that‘s just a bitch, isn’t it? If we don’t support the artists and writers, it’s like we fans are snakes eating our own tails.
So, I guess what I’m trying to say is: yes, internet piracy probably brings in more fans (especially from overseas) than a book, TV show, or movie would otherwise have, but it’s only “okay” if used responsibly. And since the artists and writers have the final say in their own works: if they say, “Stop”, we should. And then we should demand they bring us their work legally.
