EXCHANGE INTERFACE

I did kind of like this series.

And then the very first non-operative female character that the author writes is stupid. As in "I'm a doctor and pregnant to a guy who has a questionable past and doesn't actually have feelings but I know that he really does, so I'll go charging into a hostage trade situation to try to make him find a third path and in the process completely fuck up his plan".

I appreciate that this is probably the kind of thing that normal people who think that everyone else is normal do, but...I don't actually want read about it.

( more rant about this )

At least the last book in the series promises a heroine who at least half-knows how to take care of herself. Maybe.

He had a knife, not a gun. It makes a difference. A woman died and another is in hospital. (And don't think that the gender is irrelevant, either. It almost definitely is.)

If the kind of weapon doesn't matter because a crime is still committed, then Americans must be piss-ass weaklings, because we Aussies disarm our armed nutjobs with a crate and a couple of cafe chairs, while Americans lie down and bleed out so their President can have grinning photo ops with the survivors.

#makeaustraliacrateagain

Is it inappropriate to joke about this? Absofuckinglutely not. Not if it saves lives in the future.

But you're not interested in lives, are you? You're only interested in your dick replacement 'therapy' and your inferiority complex that means you're only big so long as you 'have the abilty to fight back' like that somehow makes you better, instead of just more fortunate.

You can keep your guns, America. We'll keep our people alive.

Now, to stomp Pauline Hanson's One Nation and their NRA-sponsored shitstirring into the dust beneath the feet of the tourists no longer climbing Uluru...

Yes, I know, #notallamericans and I'm preaching to the choir here. But I've said this on IG and others have said it on FB, and sometimes you just need to go off.

And this is why I probably shouldn't go reading other people's reactions, because it sparks off all my own thoughts and feelings

( warnings for time travel brain breakage )

I really do miss when I could just enjoy these movies. I think I lost that later than most people – after Age of Ultron when the news for Civil War came out, tbh. Maybe that’s why I enjoyed Dr. Strange and GotG2: because they didn’t make my head hurt. (While Civil War made my heart hurt with the sheer lack of Maria in the storyline that introduced her in the comics, even as an antagonist over the Accords or something.)

I don't know if it will be the panacea for all ills, per se; you're probably wanting your favourite rather than mine, and the fixits will be coming thick and fast, but seriously, imma point you at the other side of infinity for something that yes, made my head hurt while writing, but which I'm pretty sure for which I closed all the really huge plotholes...

Oh, and ( spoiler for fic )

I have decided no more Ms. Nice Lady. I am an Australian born Australian, and if someone wants to know “where did you really come from?” I am going to ask them if they’re prepared to unload their history as an Australian-born child of immigrants, or else tell me about their Indigenous Australian ancestry.

I am done with microaggressions, even the unintentional ones.

No, you don’t get to ask me what’s my background and then say that yours is “Australian”. Mine is Australian. My mother is an Australian immigrant. My father is an Australian born. I am an Australian born.

I am an Australian-born Australian.

I am no more an immigrant than any white person in this damn country and I am going to FIGHT this definition all the way, calling people racist outright if necessary.

There are an alarming number of men who seem to panic the instant anyone says something about children being taught 'to respect others' or 'how not to bully'. The complaints of 'feminists' and 'feminazis' crawl out of the woodwork like drunks at a sporting grand final, and with about as much dignity as the losing team as they bleat about how boys will be taught to hate themselves by women who hate all men...

And not one of them seems aware of the irony that all they're saying is that their version of masculinity involves bullying and disrespecting others.

I know that there are people who feel that anyone gaining equal rights to their own must mean their own standing is diminished - that having anything is a zero sum game. If someone else has more, I must have less and this CANNOT BE ALLOWED.

I call it "Fragile Masculine Ego" Syndrome. It also commonly comes in the flavours of Fragile White Ego and Fragile American Ego, and they can be mixed to great effectiveness.

Also, the patronising accusation that "feminists need to live in the real world" is kind of amusing, considering not one of these men would survive being a woman day in, day out without losing his SHIT at being dismissed, catcalled, reduced to T&A or whether s/he was fuckable, or told that s/he needed a dose of reality.

tl;dr: apparently they're trialling a "respect for women" program in some Australian schools - cue men losing their heads over how little boys will be taught to hate themselves.

Also? This was posted on an FB page that is about safe houses for survivors of domestic violence. So the men making these comments are pretty much predators, since they're here to make the space unsafe.

MCU Civil War: 60 hours.

Still trying to be upbeat, expecting entertainment and plotbunnies.

Still angry.

( shipping and female characters )

And yes, I'm still bitter.

Why is it that so many people seem to believe that keeping a tech person in the dark is the best way to get a problem fixed?

Maybe it's just that I'm a sharing kind of person (in some cases, possibly over-sharing). But dammit, when a customer wants their problem fixed, they never seem to give me more than one-line describing the problem. No example of how they got the problem, the data they used, the example that takes place.

Seriously, an extra five minutes on their part saves me an hour on mine and they get their problem solved sooner.

I am not a mind-reader, and I really dislike being expected to read minds.

Insert your own horror stories of people who said "this isn't working" and then failed to specify exactly what wasn't "working".

Well, that was fun.

Five minutes talking Star Wars characterisation in the originals vs the prequels, with two guys, one of whom looked at the other guy for the entirety of my argument that the prequels had bad characterisation and that it wasn't entirely due to the 'protocols and structures and formality of the Old Republic'.

And then at the end I get dismissed as a "Star Wars freak" because I know the names of the Imperial officers in the original movies and was using them as an argument to say that the issue with the lack of character in the prequels is not the fact that they're in a formal structure - the Old Republic, the Senate, the Jedi Council.

Protocols, structures, and formality doesn't mean you erase all personality from characters. People still react with their personality when there are limits laid upon them. We can't help it. We're frigging human. (Yes, even the aliens depicted on our screens. Unless they're the bad guys, in which case they're depicted as incomprehensibly alien.)

I can see my future, and there is much headdesking that will be done in the next week. There's almost certainly going to be A Disussion Of Feminism on Wednesday at the Sydney Quilt Show (where the gay guy representing 'the future of modern quilting' is a major advertising point) probably with a bunch of women who simply won't get it. Or don't want to.

For heavens' sake. This work wouldn't be so long and drawn out if you'd give me the information I need - or, at least, tell me that the information isn't available and I'll have to work it out myself (painful and annoying as this is, at least I'd know I'm not going to get shot down halfway for going in the wrong direction).

eta: while writing this post they got back to me - other priorities. Which is fine. I'd just rather be told.

Aside:
This is kind of the story of my life: I can take 'no, I'm busy right now', 'no, I'm not interested', 'no, your fanworks suck', and 'no, I don't want to be friends with you'. Yes, it hurts. Yes, I may go away and quietly cry. But I'd rather people were upfront about it rather than passive-aggressive, and be left with the lingering feeling that I've somehow transgressed without ever knowing why and having it eat away at my self-confidence forever because I'm not sure if you were slighting me or if this is one of those socially political power-plays that I failed at school and consequently at the rest of life.

If I've failed and someone lets me know, I can get better. If I've failed and everyone is so busy belonging to the Cult Of Niceness, then I'll just keep on repeating what I'm doing because I won't know otherwise.

There's a reason I work with computers: they may do obstructive, frustrating, and brutally logical, but they don't do passive-aggressive. It's not that they're not working with you because they don't like you, it's that they're not working with you because they don't like humans in general.

--

But back to the topic on hand. Melbourne was pretty nice and the training course was...educational, although rather intense. I'm not sure I actually understand the new software, and I suspect I'd prefer to keep going with the old, but maybe practise and experience and a broadening of knowledge will be a little more helpful?

The hotel in Melbourne was distinctly ordinary - I think they stuck me up in one of the towers that is mentally termed 'less desirable', although that was probably based on the price of the room. Their bar food was very good, though. And I still love the Melbourne tram system, now that I've worked out how it all goes. Also, now that they have the Myki card, which is kind of like an Octopus (HK) or Oyster card (London) only for Melbourne. (Possibly just for Melbourne trams, which might be a pity.

Also, MoVida restaurant in Hosier Lane has the bestest food ever. I want to go sometime with more people than just myself, so I can order some of the larger dishes. But the individual tapas are great.

Oh, and order the 'Flan' - creme caramel with some deep fried Spanish 'donuts' on the side (like really short churros) - for dessert. Then share it, because that baby is rich.

--

Incidentally, Pornbattle 14 is up. I currently have four Steve/Maria scenarios and...complete blanks on all the others.

Whether they get written is another matter.

When the error message says "there's a problem with the server", it may just be there there is a problem with the server.

You don't need to go through my code looking for the problem. The system would tell me in no uncertain terms if there was a problem with my code.

And if there is a problem with my code, perhaps it would make sense to first CHECK THAT THERE ARE NO PROBLEMS WITH THE SERVER before looking for an alternative?