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There were some things about LJ that have been nagging at me. There wasn't any way of tracking anything except with Technorati, so I couldn't really gauge how I was doing. Sometimes I got blog-envy and wondered if it was hard to comment on something here, or if it was something about me or my writing. If I did light stuff, or emo stuff, it clashed with the serious stuff I wrote (and I did get that comment about how my blog was dangerously close to not being constructive or whatever). I'm obsessed and neurotic like that.

Inspired by this, I decided to just go out on a limb and try this. Change your links, because I'm going to split things, all the long pretentious stuff; all the reviews; all the blockquoted articles and interesting, fun links:

http://jlg1.wordpress.com

Wordpress gives me a lot of control over things, and has the tracking stuff I was really looking for. And I copied what I thought were the best posts here over there too, because new people may want to read those too. They may have some worth.

Don't worry, I'll still be here. I'll still comment and post life stuff here. I think this was good as an outlet.

So.

Given my work as a feminist activist and writer, you might expect me to hate the crime genre. I have spent the whole of my adult life fighting male violence, and much of my work involves researching topics such as rape, child sexual abuse, pornography and murder. I talk regularly to women who have survived sex attacks, and have had to look at crime-scene photographs showing mutilated corpses of women who have been raped, tortured and murdered. It was as a direct result of the hideous brutality of a serial killer - Peter Sutcliffe, the Yorkshire Ripper - that I became a feminist in the first place. Yet, when it comes to fiction, the serial killer genre is my favourite.
...
Many writers I interviewed for this article were critical of what they called the "pointless violence" they often find in crime novels written by men. "I draw a particular distinction between violence that is gratuitous, and violence that is meaningful," says McDermid. "In some crime novels [by men], the victims are one-dimensional characters who merely exist to be slayed." McDermid writes to entertain, but also hopes that her books will, in some way, open the readers' eyes as to how and why the atrocities she describes have occurred. "I always say we get the crimes we deserve," she says.

Denise Marshall deals regularly with tales of extreme abuse in her daily life, running an organisation that helps women to escape domestic violence and rape. But after years of reading violent fiction, Marshall decided to write her own story, based on the prolonged torture and murder of a child. "Reading violent fiction affirms absolutely what I do as a feminist to challenge sexual violence," she says. "Good female writers provide us with the opportunity to feel the awful effects of such abuse, and to empathise with the victims."

Maybe another :P to lighten the mood.

Geoff Johns and Tony Daniel are both leaving Teen Titans, with Adam Beecham, notorious among Cass Cain fans, taking over.
Raven's hypno-ass notwithstanding, I really like Daniel's art. I would've killed to see him draw Pantha. He certainly has room for improvement in drawing action, but I really think he will grow into a

Maybe I've managed to browbeat it into unfortunate people's heads by now, but I don't like Johns as a writer. So the hypothetical you that might be out there would guess new that Johns is leaving the title would make me cheer.

Well. Not exactly. I'm conflicted. Because before Infinite Crisis I did like Johns' work on Titans, though to be honest, I think I was really blinded by Beast Boy's apparent rise to respectability, taking the reins as leader, and also the kiss with Raven. But then, well, Infinite Crisis and OYL. Bye bye Pantha, and Baby WB. Yay blood, death, and tears on Earth-. With Johns leaving, there are still a bunch of loose ends in danger of being dropped: Beast Boy is stuck in limbo on the Doom Patrol, the reasons behind the break-up with Raven is still painfully vague, and Red Star probably won't get another appearance after than one issue. Family died for a plot point and the worn-out theme of broken families (the ones surviving to angst and get stories about moving on, of course, mostly men). As much of a nice gesture it was of Johns to have a Steph case in Tim's little cave, there isn't one in Batman's cave. And all the cases - ones for Superboy, and his parents - are a really eerie hint to Tim's bleak Titans Tomorrow future as an evil, killer Batman.

Supposedly Johns had things planned out pretty far and will make sure Beechan knows what's still out on the table. I don't really know Beechan outside of his infamous Cass arc, but outside of that particular story, people say good things about him. Unfortunately, though, I'm wary of his involvement in Titans East and the aftermath considering how he handled Cass' heel turn, editorial mandate notwithstanding. And, to be honest about my petty fandork impulses, it would take the resurrection of certain dead characters to win me back. But I really doubt any letters I send would do anything - the Girl Wonder folks carry much more weight than just I do, and they get the courtesy fill-in-the-blanks note. Maybe only buying Cooke's The Spirit and Smith's Shazam: The Monster Society of Evil will do something - vote with your wallet, they always say.

And, sorry, I just don't buy the Superserum retcon with as much unbridled enthusiasm and instant forgiveness that many are heaping on Johns and DC. Not yet. As a fix, though, it's clever and it fits. Kudos for Johns on damage control and managing to get something that makes some sense. But the problem is that it may not fully vindicate Cass or allow for a quick redemption at the end. I'd love to be proven wrong, but killing Bombshell (even with Johns' short attention span for deaths) and being the replacement protege for a villain doesn't bode well. And it seems Cass is being set up for Rose to defeat as the final part of her reform - Cass is clearly being portrayed as Rose's opposite, falling under Slade's control while Rose escapes it thanks to Nightwing and Jericho. Deathstroke is using Cass not just as a replacement for Rose, but to get back at Tim and the Bat family. And that passivity of Cass, her being used as a tool, really bothers me, especially depending on how she gets involved with Deathstroke in the first place in the upcoming cashgrab mini-event World War III. Cass could be the lesson for Rose, of what could've happened if she'd have stuck with Slade.

And I don't really like the idea of Cass being demoted to a villain in Tim's Rogue Gallery. Isn't there Jason to fill that role? As remix17 pointed out, as well as this could've been written and turn out, there aren't that many positives to counter it and it ends up just being another cut. I mean, if you look at the Titans, I don't know if there really are any successful older Titan women around to provide something good - Starfire's been pushed out and is aimless outside of 52; God knows what's up with Donna; Bumblebee is mutated and dumped into the Limbo Patrol; Pantha's dead; Terra II is on watch; Raven was de-aged.

The reinvention of the "boys' own adventure" genre for the 21st century seems to have taken the media by storm. It has the hazy glow of nostalgia for a simpler world, a world where everyone knew their place in the white, male playground. Problem is, that world no longer exists, if it ever did, and in reinventing the ripping yarn genre (whose most enduring example is Biggles), some of the problems of the original have reappeared. Beneath the surface are racial tension and xenophobia, cultural traits that were institutionalised during the colonial era.

We are offering up a fast food menu of impoverished stereotypes to our sons, based on rigid class systems and exclusion. The thought of filling 21st century boyhood with the same stale old guff on evil foreigners and government-sanctioned assassins makes me feel tired and more than a bit concerned.

This is a scary and thrilling time to be male and I can't help but think we are shortchanging our sons. The new millennium has seen the unravelling of old, obsolete male values, and good riddance to them, too. Men have come to realise that we need new ways of being male if we are to negotiate the contemporary world of globalisation. Why do we feel the need to inflict our own nostalgia and wishful thinking on our children? Such stories offer no advice on how to survive and thrive in our increasing complex and accelerating culture, while fostering an unhealthy fear of otherness.

I'd try to tie this into comics (especially the part about someone else's nostalgia), but kids might not be reading them.

- Slate's Paul Collins reports how iTunes screws you out of great music from outside the US. It really makes no sense to me why these sorts of artificial borders are set up. Wasn't the Internet supposed to break down these sorts of things, and allow for stuff to be shared across the globe? And they wonder why iTunes is losing ground to sites like allofMP3 and torrents.

And it is as creepy as it sounds; A lot of people describe it as a corpse puppet being animated.

It's just really bizarre. I guess it's what you get when you have the founder, or a live person serve as the mascot. It's a different sort of arena then with film, since you always have to generate new material to sustain the brand, the image of the company in the media and the mind of the consumer. Cartoons have always been perfect for this, since you start with a base concept (take cereal mascots: a cuckoo bird, a tiger, a honey bee, a rabbit) and keep refining the design to fit with the times. It's easy to maintain for long periods of time, as shown by that Planters' commercial with the various designs of Mr. Peanut.

So using a mortal being is a risky venture. The Dunkin' Donuts guy retired, the Wendy's commercials had to move on to something when Dave Thomas died. KFC always stuck to an abstract design of the Colonel, sorta like with Che Guavara, flattening it to an illustration. Even when KFC resurrected the Colonel as a spokesman, they stuck to a cartoon.

But with CG managing to edge closer to reality, why is the CG Orville so repellent? It's too literal, it's too real. We can accept the posterized Colonel, or a cartoon Colonel because it's been turned into an abstract symbol. But the CG Orville commercial feels like a trick - there's nothing behind the image, and that's what's so bothersome about it. This image is trying to act like it exists in the now - holding an iPod - but the knowledge that the man behind the image is dead breaks the illusion. Even the cartoon Colonel caused a bit of a stir because it was trying to use a "broken" reference with "new" material.

the_gel

I nabbed some of my favorite fighters that I saw:

But what really got me happy was my top favorites:

Yay Makoto, Akira, and Son Son!

Although SNK's May Lee didn't get a card... :(

Good to see Phoenix Wright represented. I haven't tracked down the newly released sequel yet, but I already like one of the new characters that appear:

Cuteness overload.

Yay Eri! I really wish there wasn't a Wii shortage so I could get the Metal Slug Collection...

Good to see Capcom still using her... I always did like her pirate design. The nice thing about these sorts of games is all the odd and obscure fun stuff that they fit in. Maybe Capcom'll finally get back to making that game she was going to appear in.

Nostalgia bomb.

Fun team-ups! (especially with Felicia and Athena Concert!! one)

Is that... the French Revolution as a counter? With Samurai Shodown's Charlotte? Brilliant!

And del Toro's smart enough not to sanitize the fairy tale parts of his film. If you've ever read the actual folk tales, they are incredibly dark and gory (I remember a Czech fairy tale about a woman who has a child with a sea spirit, and when the mother interferes and takes the woman home, the sea monster snaps the baby's head off behind the house's closed door... eek). They were meant as a way to reflect the darkness in reality, and del Toro fits his mythology in with the darkness of the fascist regime.

The technical side of things is also brilliant. The designs of the film are amazing and striking. The Pale Man sequence (the monster with the eyes on his hands you may have seen) is incredibly effectively scary. It makes me wish del Toro was doing the Silent Hill movies.

( long pretentious analysis )

Communication via the Internet can mislead the brain's social systems. The key mechanisms are in the prefrontal cortex; these circuits instantaneously monitor ourselves and the other person during a live interaction, and automatically guide our responses so they are appropriate and smooth. A key mechanism for this involves circuits that ordinarily inhibit impulses for actions that would be rude or simply inappropriate — or outright dangerous.

In order for this regulatory mechanism to operate well, we depend on real-time, ongoing feedback from the other person. The Internet has no means to allow such realtime feedback (other than rarely used two-way audio/video streams). That puts our inhibitory circuitry at a loss — there is no signal to monitor from the other person. This results in disinhibition: impulse unleashed.

Things seem to go the usual route to deal with anonymous trolling, but Goleman's point seems to be addressing something larger. Some anonymous trolls are malicious with intent, safe in anonymity. The Pogue link talks about the lack of online etiquette, with foul insults leveled against him rather than reasoned, polite criticism. It's something that also came up in fourel's 4th letter post on dead comic characters, talking about pissed off fans. This is what that Penny Arcade strip about the Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory was talking about. The instant spewing of bile that's riled up by something offensive. And it really isn't that easy to paint with a broad brush - there are people who are just that way always, there are normally reasonable people who have some specific nerve struck.

But the Fuckwad Theory, Goleman's post, and what the Metafilter post bases its post about, seem to be about different things. Jason Kottke's post was dealing with a different sort of shade of poster, and brought up sociopathy and psychopathy. Kottke uses an example of a bothersome message board user - a type that plagues community sites, blogs, and boards - who "didn't pick up on the social cues of other participants or moderators to modify his behavior, and was making public personal attacks against others while complaining that others were doing the same to him, even though they were not."

Which, actually, sounds a lot like what Goleman is writing about, especially when Kottke makes sure to draw the distinction that not all users are sociopathic or psychopathic: "interacting via text strips out so much social context and 'incidental information' that causes some people to display psychopathic behavior online and fail to develop an online moral sense." Missing all that real-time, ongoing feedback from other people. And I think that's why it's dangerous to assume sociopathic/pyschopathic behavior across the board and use it to immediately write someone odd, because it seems harder to gauge things. Internet communication probably has a ways to go.

And it is hard to gauge things. Relying on how many comments a post gets, or Technorati rankings are roundabout, vague ways of trying to see how you're doing. And as mentioned before, text strips a lot out. For a while, I tried to not use smilies in chat or when I wrote, because I remember Carl Steadman once talking about how they can be confusing or be used as an ineffectual crutch. Does :) or :P or :D all have universal meanings? Heck, whether or not I choose to use a :P on boards will depend on exactly how the little icon will look. I still obsess over the exact wording of things. I don't really take the initiative in IMing people, because, for me, it feels like barging in and cornering someone (of course, I don't mind at all when others do it - I get nervous because I have social anxiety disorder, but it's still nice).

Someone might draw a similarity with the days of letter writing, but the emphasis on text and the long response time sort of acted as fail-safes. A lot of people point to the spontaneity of the immediate-acting Internet as the problem. And people have written and still write angry, crazy paper letters.

I want to think Goleman's is more onto something than Kottke or anyone else, because it just makes more sense that there's important cues that are lost in online communication. I mean, everyone falls into that trap of misreading or missing things. People think they're right and rational, and even if they are, they can get carried away. Of course, no one wants to think of themselves as "sociopathic" or "psychopathic" or "that guy" or one of those "crazies" abusing things for their "crazy aims." I worry like sick that I do end up like that, though.

But one of the things I did over my vacation here was plow through the fansubs of Haruhi that had been sitting on my drive for a while. And it was gaining a lot of good buzz (and a backlash resentment at that good buzz, which sometimes can be a gauge of buzz). It turned out to be right up my alley, dealing with weird stuff like artificial realities and time travel and such. It also does some neat, experimental things that could arguably have it be dubbed "postmodern." It was aired out of chronological order, and also pokes at anime cliches and conventions. The first episode which is Harhui's indie movie is a brutally hilarious parody of anime (and indie filmmaking too - fond memories of high school Video Doc class came back to me). Although it does get trapped sometimes with what it criticizes.

( more and maybe spoilers and such )

It's a pretty clever show, and it's got me liking it enough to get the set when it comes out. Bandai's been annoying the hell out of me with the lack of a box set for Eureka Seven (special single volume editions sure), but hopefully they won't pull something with Haruhi's DVDs...