irreconcilable differences

 In which I ramble and spout thoughts.

Back when things were fun.

Yesterday a very good and dear friend came to hang out, chat and do that coffee / cake thing. It was awesome. I'm glad to see her start to get her mojo again. She went through a really rough time ( not my story to tell) and had more than a few people tell her some really mean things, again not my story to tell.  We met through the SCA and about 80% of our conversation was about the SCA. I realised after she had gone home that I didn't really have a lot of nice things to say about this hobby and where it currently is anymore.

I've been playing SCA since I was 19 more or less and I'm 46 now so do the math. When I started I was a wild thing more interested in fun, booze and boys than anything else. My relationship with this hobby for the first 8- 10 years was mostly pure fun. Then I had a falling out with a couple of people who hurt me, deeply, so deeply that it still hurts and I still wonder why they did what they did to me. It's ancient history and I've mostly let it go but that sting, that twinge of why didn't you guys just be honest and say something up front is still there. I remember clearly feeling very betrayed by EVERYONE and I walked away, I also had other things to worry about, like school and stuff.

Now I am sure I've also hurt my fair share of people and done more than my fair share of really stupid things so I try to keep this in mind when I get on an SCA  downer but I must admit lately it seems to be getting harder and harder for me to just enjoy it.

My favourite SCA times are from Newfoundland, the shire with the unspeakable name at the edge of the world. In my memory, in spite of some major lows, these were the very best years ever. The whole shire brunched together every single Sunday and were were friends, lovers, mates, etc.... we were family and I think my biggest problem is I want THAT feeling back.

It occurred to me as I lay in bed this morning thinking about this that my biggest problem right now is I feel as though I don't belong any more. I'm an out dated fossil whose time has passed. I don't think this is actually true but it does sum up how I feel. Displaced and out of time ( as in wrong place and time).

It's hard to be in the SCA in Germany. The central region seems to be all tiny groups and divisive bitching. People vying for awards and pats on the head.  Many people seem to view the award system with being important.  The more shinies you have the more important you are. I think this has been a problem in the SCA for a long time but it's very prevalent here and I wish people would understand that really no one is important and everyone is important. This is a hobby not a job. ( at least it shouldn't be a job at all)

There's no real sense of community here. We had that once when we first formed the shire, there were six of us, close friends and working together. The stars on the Shire device represents each of us. Every time I see the shire device I am reminded of where we began and why and when I see what we have become it makes me sad. I am partly to blame though and I know this but changing that seems to be too big of a task and I don't want to be caught in the middle of a never ending struggle for power brought on by jealousy.

Aventiure: the six stars for the six founding members Skarf, Leo, Marcus, Maeva, Ele and me. It's black and white to remind us that everything story has two sides and that while it may appear so not everything is black and white.

My lack of enthusiasm and my unwillingness to change seem to go hand in hand with the general malaise. I would hold A&S stuff at my house but quite honestly there are people I just do not want in my home. Is this evil? I don't think so, maybe it's me being mean but at least I think it's an honest answer.

But groups grow and divide as is their nature and couples split causing lines of division. Alliances shift and change and somehow things never quite seem the same. Right now, for me, here in this place it's like white noise in my head. I'm not the only person who has noticed this club, our hobby, isn't what it once was. law suits and risings costs, rules and regulations, and a general lack of ability to keep up with the technological times seem to be huge issues. One only has to look at the websites of many kingdoms and shire to see just how lacking we are. Given that the first impression of a club now is their webpage, who the hell would join us? When I compare how we present who we are and what we do with how the 501st does I truly despair. We look like a bunch of boring, disorganized bureaucrats.  We don't really present the club's strengths and it doesn't surprise me that we don't pick up new members all that much. We don't really show off an enticing, exciting face. We have so much going for us as a club but oddly enough on first blush all people really see are the dull bits.

the 501st

http://www.sca.org/

http://www.drachenwald.sca.org/index_new.php

So I pare down my SCA dealings to good friends and my SCA family, when I get a chance to see them, or hear form them as they are all over the known world. I took on one office to pull friends out of a bind but really in retrospect I shouldn't have. I asked for advice and help and got none. Then when help did come, surprisingly from an unexpected source I no longer cared. It angers me that I've let my apathy creep in. I don't like doing a bad job of things yet here I am doing a bad job. So what did I do? I took on a second job. I took on Signet but that will be fun, it's a job I know and like.

So I'm drifting.  I feel as though I no longer belong, as though I no longer have a place. I am aware that the only person who can really change this is me and that all of my ennui is entirely my own. I am aware that only I can make myself happy and only I can enjoy the hobby at hand. I stay away from events because I don't feel the need to infect the world at large with my unhappiness. I stay away from events because the last few times with one exception it felt to me as though I were an unwelcome annoyance ( not true I'm sure but perception is everything sometimes) We create our own reality. I certainly create mine. Irreconcilable differences. After such a long time I wonder if it is possible to just go back to holding hands and laughing at silly things.

pennsic 15. When we were young and life was less complicated.

Friday...

One of the things I hate being told is that "This is the way X is so you will just need to accept it."

It's a bullshit statement and if everyone just accepted the way things were we'd still all be living in caves banging rocks together. Change happens because people want to move beyond the constraints of the now into something better. Women got the right to vote because a small group demanded change and started a movement that we are still fighting for to this day. Slavery was abolished, religious freedoms are more widely accepted and so on but all these changes came about because someone somewhere said hey hang on a minute this isn't right and fought against the status quo.

Telling me to accept things the way they are, telling me that my fight is useless because things are the way they are and they won't change no matter what I do is a red fucking flag.

You know what it's a bullshit statement from a scared majority who don't want things to change because they are perfectly happy with the way things are, they way things run in their favour and change scares the shit out of them.

When I played Star wars Galaxies I railed vehemently against the "NO TRADE" aspect of the game and time and again got told I should just give it up it's never going to change. Well I and the group of people fighting this with me didn't give up and eventually we won. The no trade items were reverted back to tradable. It may have only been a game but what it showed me was that no matter what other people say if you, as a human, want change to come, you have to fight for it and you have to be stubborn and persevere.

And this is how I feel about sexism and the objectification of women. Yes sex sells, though not as much as it used to. Women,  well people actually, are slowly growing tired of this. And men, smart men see through it. I get that some males of the species are led by the lower brain but I and many others don't buy into this BS that this is THE ONLY way to sell stuff, to entice guys to read books or get them interested in a particular subject / object / etc.... I think most men are actually smarter than that.

In the world of Sci-fi and Fantasy the myth that it's a totally male dominated arena is slowly being busted. Girls and women are a huge force to be reckoned with and while it may be that the jocks with cocks think they rule the roost I think they'd be surprised. Women spend a lot of money on books, clothes and toys and if there were more items available I think they'd see how much more they could make if they start marketing and catering to the female market as well. Until then I will fight for it. I will push against the norm. I won't accept that I have to take what's given even if it puts women down or marginalizes them simply because (some) men prefer tits and ass to well written, well thought out, strong female characters. I get this is an uphill battle, I get I may not see significant change in my lifetime but that doesn't mean I won't rail against it anyway.

So telling me that this is the way things are and it's never going to change is only going to strengthen my resolve to initiate and fight for change.  I know change is scary but it's worth it in the end.

ps. I also tend to get testy when people say I can't do something because I'm a girl and I've fought this one long and hard as well but this would be another post for another day. 

The Gender game.

For a little while now there has been a growing push of people, mainly women who are discussing on twitter and through blogs the issue of gender in science fiction / fantasy mainly focused on Star Wars.
 It started here The GFFA Needs Women: The Disappointing Nomi Cancellation in a post by Nanci, then Chris wrote his rebuttal: EU Action/Reaction: Let’s Stop Thinking About Gender 
This post from Club Jade says it very well. Why do we want more women highlighted in the Expanded Universe?  And so does Tosche Station Why Star Wars Needs Women – Now More Than Ever.

One of my Twitter friends asked why women were so mad at the moment, well I think partly the post from Chris over at the EUC didn't really help matters and also I think that we're seeing several things collide at once not the least of which is probably a subconscious push against the misogynistic tendencies going on the e USA at the moment. There's a war on women and it's spilling out onto the streets ( but that's another post for another time)  

Does the Star Wars franchise need more strong female characters? Yes I think it does. While one can argue that SW is full of women, for the most part, as characters, they are not treated very well nor are they, as characters, written very well either and this is part of the problem.

Yesterday, when asked to pick out a strong female character in the scifi / fantasy world the 1st person that came to mind was Ellen Ripley. She is the standard by which I personally set the bar by. After that Zoe and Inara from Firefly also came to mind, both incredibly strong characters but for vastly different reasons. Olivia from Fringe, and let's not forget to mention half the cast of BattleStar Galactica. There is a wealth of strong female characters in today's sci fi, movie and tv. Women who are tough, smart, sassy, vulnerable, emotional and essentially human and very believable. And this is the point. Many of the female characters in Star Wars are two dimensional and personally I don't give a rat's ass about them, although in all honesty I feel the same way about many of the male characters in SW as well.

So I thought about this a lot and I think the issue is not so much a lack of female characters, because there are actually quite a few in the SW universe, but rather the incredible lack of really good writing. I've touched on this before but I think it bears saying again. Most of the SWEU books I've read are crap. While reading the NJO ( the new jedi order series in which an entirely alien and brand new to the SW universe bad guys set out to destroy all) I had to restrain myself from having a  good old fashioned book burning.   Honestly I've never read a worse set of books. There were one or two exceptions to this ( Matt Stover being the one that comes to mind) but for the most part I wanted to toss the set out the window. Waste of money. Why? Because they were awful. Bad plots, terrible and unbelievable dialogue and for the most part boring as hell. Evil bad guys vs out numbered jedi yeah what ever... And don't get me started on the Killik series which featured giant bugs and a bunch of the stupidest ideas I've ever read - ever. ( even worse than the NJO)

Well here's the thing. I find that Star Wars in general as of late has become a great deal about merchandising and tie ins and less about story and substance. ( in many but not all cases) It's a money maker. I get that, it's a business and it needs to make money. If something has the lable Star Wars slapped on it people WILL lap it up like cats at a cream bowl. I've seen people buy anything you can think of just because it's SW related. The same goes with books. People are so desperate for anything Star Wars related many don't care and or don't notice how badly done so much of it is, especially in novels.

Now there's a rising vocal group who want more. We clamour for well written books. Well thought out, in depth, clever plots with characters we can identify with, male and female. No more rehash of the movies, no more recycling the movie lines. Let's have more thought provoking situations with complex adversaries not some variation of keystone cops and overly empowered super jedi with some gratuitous harlequin romance thrown in for good measure.

When I wrote my fanfic I did so because, honestly, this was the book I really wanted to read. Something where the Imperials were not all mustachio twirling idiot megalomaniacs hell bent on destroying the universe before letting it fall into the hands of the enemy. ( Isard and her stupid plan to poison Courescant...really? Come on.) I wanted characters I could love and hate. People I wanted to hang out with and be friends with or shoot. These are the reactions I should get when reading books. Good, well written books make you feel. You fall in love, you feel pain, you learn to hate a little, you clamour for revenge and so on. You go on a ride along and if the book is really good, for a short time you're totally transported to another time and place. You should not be aware you're reading a book because you have been transported into the book instead.

Why is it that a single jedi can slaughter an entire battalion of battle droids and not get a single scorch on him. What is the point of all these super battle droids if they can't hit their mark at least once? Maul comes back as mechno man? Plot holes as big as the Atlantic and more all add up to YAWN as far as story telling is concerned.  What made Palpatine such a great bad guy is he WAS clever and evil and luckily for us portrayed by Ian McDiarmid in such a way that every time he was on screen he game me goosebumps and not in any good way.  Palpatine was evil, clever and subtle. In this respect we were shown not told.

There are a lot of awesome things about Star Wars and I love it in spite of its failings but I think there is a lot of room to improve and grow. So let's set aside all the weird gender issues. Star Wars is not just for boys and finding some great writers who would be willing to create or write really well rounded believable female characters in books with decent plots and worthy adversaries would go along way to helping this.

What if... ( a rant about Star wars books)

@Tosche_Station (twitter) asked the twitterverse what #SWEU books would we love to see. You can check out the page with some of the answers here: https://t.co/vCEsTCnS 

But it got me thinking about Star Wars books in general. First off I have to admit that I stopped reading most SW novels after I finished the NJO. It sucked. Sorry to all who loved that series but I didn't. In fact with the exception of 1 book (Matthew Stover's Traitor )I don't even remember most of what was written although I do recall wanting to toss at least one of the books in the series out the hotel window I was staying at when I was reading it, I couldn't actually tell you which book that was now. My biggest problem with it all, I think, was that it was essentially a huge rehash of the original movie stories with a larger than life set of bad dudes and a whole bunch of lightsaber waving. I'll probably have to re read it because everything deserves a 2nd chance.

I'm a hellishly picky reader. I LOVE to read but I find that I get bounced out of books easily when author intrusion or just bad writing ensues. If I read a book and find myself going...eh hang on a sec that's not right.... then for me this is NOT a well written book and in the star wars universe of books this happens A LOT.

I don't really care much for the Jedi of today. When Star wars first came out they were mysterious and magical, they had powers but were not supermen/ women in bathrobes. Now we have it all explained, the force is actually microscopic beings that invade  symbiotically live inside a person's body. Midichlorians . When this tidbit of info was dished out during The Phantom Menace I remember sitting there going wtf? Really? To this day I do not really get why we needed an explanation at all. People believe in a form of God every day and as far as I know there's still no actual proof he /she/it /they exist but we still believe. But I guess George felt an explanation was important so we got one. meh.

(where was I ...oh yeah jedi...and books)

This universe, this Star Wars universe is vast and full of very cool characters most of which get bit parts and maybe one or two lines then exit stage left or worse get offed so that the holy three and their offspring get to live another day. ( Unless your name is Anakin then you're screwed)  Yet repeatedly we see the same characters doing the same things over and over again. I read the reviews of the new books that come out and I am glad I don't spend any more money on them. One of the few ( I thought) cool stand alone books that came out, Tatooine Ghost was referred to by the author as chick lit, why? Because it was a predominantly Leia oriented story, charcter driven, not so much warfare and shooting and had more than just a hit of romance in it.  My mind kind of boggled at this. Club Jade does a nice write up here about the whole thing and says it better than what I can about how I feel about the whole deal.

Really if a SW book features a mostly female and or character oriented story it's chick lit? How dismissive and narrow minded. As a woman, I don't need a book full of "I love yous" although George did see fit to put a bunch of this soppy puppy love BS in the prequel films, but I get insanely tired of war, conflict, lightsaber waving super jedi. And don't get me started on the whole giant bug theme. Tell me a story do not give me a giant blow by blow narrative on war.

What I wanted in Star Wars books I could not find ( so I wrote my own - a whole other blog that is). I wanted well rounded, meaningful stories about people. Real people. I wanted to see all sides of the galaxy not just the all Imperials are stupid, evil or maniacal mustachio twirlers ( Thrawn being mostly the exception). I want to read about non jedi characters and their lives and how they entwine through the already established galaxy. Give me a full on book about Soontir Fel and Syal Antilles.  What an amazing love story that is, what an amazing war story that is as well. combine it in a well written, thoughtful manner I'd buy it in a heart beat.

I am so tired of all the clichés. Watching all 4 seasons of TCW back to back is a form of hell. Really who the fuck writes this stuff? The stories are on occasion okay but the dialogue is PAINFUL.  My husband's theory is that it's actually a computer programmed with all the movie dialogues and it just randomly spits out a script on a weekly basis using only these lines. Now, when we watch it, we play a drinking game with having to take a drink every time a character utters a line from the original films. Thank god we are drinking water or else we'd be in a hospital suffering from alcohol poisoning.

So yes I have more than a few ideas about what I'd love to read / see in the star wars world of books etc... I want character driven stories that are well written and make sense.  I want strong female leads that don't wind up marrying or becoming a jedi only to be killed off because they are expendable.

Some of the best stories are actually to be found in the comics, along with some of the coolest characters as well. I'm trying to track down the Omnibus collections now since that seems to be one of the best ways to collect them all. And as for the books well, I'll borrow them from friends I guess, because I'm loath to support something I think has been turned into nothing more than a money making machine with no thought towards what the fans really want.

So my last words to all the Lucas Arts peeps out there if you are listening is dare to be different. Take a chance on new authors and new stories that break the mold. Step away from the same old- same old, cast of thousands, super jedi waving light sabers muttering about their bad feelings.

I'm looking forward to see what Timothy Zahn does with his new stand alone Han Solo novel but as for the rest...it doesn't look promising but as a die hard Star Wars fan I keep hoping.

Pantsdance and other internet delights...

So the other day while sitting at home, watching Aliens on DVD, editing my star wars fanfic hanging out with my darling husband all the while watching my twitter feed when I noticed @thebloggess tweet about her #pantsdance. An open invitation to a party being streamed live from her bathroom with Dr. Pants a band playing live. So I joined in.

It occurred to me that this internet thing is pretty amazing. We facebook, we tweet, we message, we share photos, and we somehow become joined. We have this virtual world in which there are no borders and everyone gets to play ( well mostly). We share, it is in our nature to do so. We want to belong and we build communities just so that we can.

It has been fun to read the tweets of other writers. I am enjoying being a part of this lively and encouraging community. I'm writing at the moment instead of creating art. I'm editing the DOTE books so that I can get on with the next book I have burning up my brain.  I know that DOTE is just a fanfic so in the eyes of many writers not real writing at all but that's not true. Writing is writing and stories no matter what are stories.

Lots of good advice to be had.

I also read, fairly often, that one has to sell one's work to be of worth because giving it away for free means it's worthless. I have to disagree with this. Self worth doesn't come from monetary value, at least not for me. I get my self worth out of knowing I did something well. It doesn't matter if it is my art or my words or even doing the laundry. I watched my dad try to sell himself and his art to galleries and it was something I swore I'd never do. He was a brilliant artist with water colours ( and I don't just say that as his kid)   but for me watching him try to get accepted like this was painful.

 I don't much care about that side of things and I never really have. I know it irks people when i say that but I really just like to make art and write stories. I give my creations away because it makes me feel good to share art. And fanfiction should never be sold anyway especially not star wars fanfics unless one wants one's ass sued to the moon and back.

I'm lucky in that I don't have to make money off my art to live but even if I did I would probably have a different job and still do art on the side. I love being creative and I don't want it to be a job. I have already experienced that once or twice and decided long ago that was not for me.
This doesn't mean I won't or never have sold my art but it's not a driving force for me, neither is being elite and famous.

So it annoys me when I see people write that giving it away for free = being of no worth. I don't think that's true. I create beautiful things and I write wonderful stories and I share my works freely so that people can enjoy it. Art wants to be free and it should not always be over priced and exclusive. Now... before the angry hordes come down on me I am all for people making a living off their art. I BUY art, music and books regularly. I try to support the people who DO make a living from their creativity. We make a living in all manner of ways I just choose not to do so from my art. Now my words on the other hand... if I ever get past the DOTE stuff and write my own worlds then we'll see but it doesn't make what I do of no worth just because I don't stick a dollar sign on it.

in the mean time I am enjoying the mad interwebz it gives me a sense of belonging when I am on my own and procrastinating.