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For the sake of peace of mind, I think I've decided to conclude that the anonymous comment calling me a bully was a random troll.
Because it has been rather bothering me, and I have no idea who it could possibly be otherwise. Discussing it with my housemates, the people who've shared my daily life for something like the last five years (and been my friends for far longer), we have come up with not a single plausible candidate - we had one vague idea for someone who might think I'm a bully based on an incident about six or seven years ago, but she's Australian, and the IP is American. (Also, I don't think she's likely to be obsessively still following my journal, and seriously, I haven't spoken to her since that incident.)
All pending further information, obvs, but in addition to really not liking the idea that I've hurt someone that badly at all, I find it difficult to imagine that it's possible to bully someone without even being aware of any kind of pattern of negative interaction with them.
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Of sorts, at least. On the theme of intra-community censure and the power dynamics of speech and silencing - I'll come up with a more coherent way to express that when I start organising my data, this is just kind of a call for data submissions.
Essentially: If you, or someone you know, has been intimidated, or silenced, or in some way pressured within fandom, by a perpetrator or perpetrators who are protected in some way by fandom's hierarchies of status and personal relationships, please tell me about it.
(And please spread the word, if you can! My journal isn't that widely-read.)
Comments here are good - I'll re-enable anonymous comments, although I'll leave them screened. If you want your comment to be left screened, or specifically UNscreened, say so; please identify, too, any information that you specifically want to be kept out of my public discussion/publication of this data, and anything you're specifically okay with being made public (since I intend to err on the side of caution with anything that can be connected back to a specific person).
Alternatively, e-mail me: sonnlich@gmail.com (if you don't get a reply saying at least "thanks for your input!", resend just in case of spamtrap, since I'm terrible at checking my spam folder) is easiest. Or, I just checked - sami@dreamwidth.org is totally a valid e-mail address, apparently. Sweet.
ETA: Because why didn't I think of this earlier, all comments are now screened by default.
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US officials travelling with Secretary of State John Kerry said Washington wanted Beijing to evoke "a sense of urgency" in its talks with Pyongyang. - source.
I hope those dudes get demoted and transferred to the Paperwork Filing Department. Do they want a war?
China has already been making definite moves to shut down North Korea's current attack of bellicose stupidity. This will make it harder for them to do that. Because if China is perceived to be doing something because the US says so, then they look weak, and lose face. If North Korea thinks China is telling them to cut this crap out because the US says so, then North Korea is more likely to ignore them and tout their resistance to "US imperialism". At which point China loses a *lot* of face.
Now, if China succeeds in pulling North Korea back, there'll be some American officials (and politicians) all ready to take credit for it, and everyone knows that, and China loses face.
It is beyond stupid to make it harder for people to do the thing you want them to do that they were already doing, which this does. Face is always important in diplomacy - national pride is a touchy, touchy thing at the best of times.
When you're dealing with countries whose culture includes centuries of tradition of face being the only thing that really matters, then you must, at all times, pay attention to the implications of what you say regarding whether you put them at risk of losing face.
Seriously. I don't know who those US officials are, but they need to be dropped from any kind of diplomatic service ever, because letting statements like that reach the press suggests they have the delicate touch appropriate to approaching neurosurgery with an axe.
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Not helping, Yokohama: Accidentally tweeting that North Korea has fired a missile. Seriously?
Meanwhile, these interview excerpts with Kim Hyun-hee, the former spy who bombed a South Korean passenger plane in 1987, is a good reminder of both how horrifyingly evil the North Korean government is, and how terribly, tragically innocent the North Korean people are.
At first, Kim says she refused to give in to her interrogators, but it was not until they took her driving through the streets of Seoul that she realised all the lies she had been fed by the North Korean regime.
"I saw how modern it was," she said.
"I listened to how the agents around me spoke so freely. This contradicted everything I'd been told in North Korea. I realised then I'd taken innocent lives and I expected to be given the death sentence."
She was, but she was pardoned, ruled a victim of brainwashing.
"I once heard a story that a defector saw my family in a concentration camp about 15 years ago," she said.
"But to this day I have no idea what happened to my family."
She believes the latest sabre-rattling from North Korea is all an effort for the untested leader, Kim Jong-un, to play the tough guy in front of his domestic audience.
"Kim Jong-un is too young and too inexperienced," she said.
"He's struggling to gain complete control over the military and to win their loyalty.
"That's why he's doing so many visits to military bases, to firm up support."
She says the effects of the regime and what it compelled her to do will haunt her for the rest of her life.
"I regret what I did and am repentant. I feel I should not hide the truth to the family members of those who died," she said.
"It is my duty to tell them what happened."
In a way, I admire the strength it takes to acknowledge wrongdoing on that scale, and live with it. Historically, the general course of action for people who have done something that terrible, and subsequently realised how wrong their action was, has been suicide. Instead, it seems that Kim Hyun-hee has spent a quarter of a century acknowledging her crime, owning her guilt, and accepting it as a burden she must carry, to live as a witness to the circumstances of such a terrible, terrible event.
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Kaesong is closing, but...
"No-one should be allowed to throw a region, even the whole world, into chaos for selfish gains," Chinese president Xi Jinping told the Bo'ao Asia Forum in southern China on Sunday.
Although he did not mention North Korea by name, Mr Xi's remarks were taken as a clear warning to Pyongyang, which is hugely dependent on China's economic and diplomatic support.
Things that could be predicted: China being seriously irritated by North Korea's current bout of Braggadocio Fever. Use of the word "chaos" (assuming accurate translation, obvs) is promising, because China is the best bet for reining in North Korea, and chaos is very much a thing China Does Not Want.
It's China. China wants stability and order. China always wants stability and order; China does not want a new Korean War just outside its borders, or a sudden mass influx of refugees across its borders, or nuclear weapons going off anywhere near it. All these things are disruptive to order and stability.
So. I am waving my mind-pompoms for China managing to get North Korea to calm the fuck down.
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Autotune annoys me, for a number of reasons. I don't like how bland it makes voices - it strips out all the depth, to me.
But, you know, some people like that, and some careers are kinda built on it. The price, of course, is that prefab pop princesses who can't actually sing will get mocked for that.
Except then Autotune became a thing, where denatured vocals somehow became some kind of "normal", and so you get more of it, and you also get a lot of undeserved hate forming.
It irritates me when I see people sneering at Miley Cyrus (as a major example) for being talentless and Autotuned. It also annoys me that she's Autotuned.
Party in the USA: Miley Cyrus, notably Autotuned to standard prefab pop princess levels. Standard video clip; she's distinguished from every other young singer product by the well-worn cowboy boots in which she has faint hints of boot-scooting, and her relatively age-appropriate clothing.
So, people presume, she's just another prefab, and the faint hints of country in her dress and dancing are because she's the daughter of Billy Ray Cyrus, and everyone still faintly resents that stupid stupid song of his anyway, so hate on Miley Cyrus, because misogyny anyway, and stuff.
Except that Miley Cyrus is talented.
You can know, because of things like her duet of Jolene with Dolly Parton. (Which I also love because it's kind of adorable, not least because of how much they clearly adore each other.)
In that clip, she's singing "Jolene", she's not autotuned, and she's singing it very well. Now, does she get outperformed by Dolly Parton? A bit - but then, given that Dolly has been doing this since several decades before Miss Cyrus was born, it would kind of reflect badly on her if she didn't have the pipes to outsing her goddaughter. But Miley Cyrus still does it well, and sweetly.
Although it's not as cute as this.
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Misogyny, Sexism, and Why RPS Isn't Shutting Up.
John Walker is pretty darn awesome, actually.
One of the things that's interesting, to me, is this:
To remove the accusations of “linkbait”, I’ve put a complete version of this article on Pastebin – people are welcome to link to that instead should they wish to complain about it without providing us hits. And with this specific article you’re welcome to copy and paste the words anywhere you want, to avoid having to direct any traffic toward us. This is the best method I can think of to get away from the accusation. I want to communicate, not garner some hits on a graph.
Because the thing is, I can't actually think of very many men who are taking up this discussion, seriously, on an ongoing basis. John Walker is something of a rare treasure that way.
(Comments on the post in question are turned off, but I can assure you, he's copped AMAZING hostility in comments threads on previous posts.)
I have complicated thoughts about the importance of people who aren't affected by varPrejudice but are opposed to it actually voicing that opposition, but I'm up too late and really tired.
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I try not to be an intellectual snob about grammar. There are some grammatical concepts I acknowledge are difficult for some people, especially if they're writing in haste, and homophones can trip people up even if they do know which is which, and some people find apostrophes tricky, and so on.
However.
If someone is making somewhat sneering remarks about the literary merits of different books, and has used as phrase as insufferable as "entertainingly competent" to dismiss an author (particularly one I like), but in the same blog post uses the construction "her's"?
My sneering superiority will be manifest. Because you've set yourself up for that. And because that's never a correct usage.
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I am now wholeheartedly in favour of legalising marijuana - in edible form only, while possibly increasing severity of penalty for smoking it, or something.
Because the only problem I actually have with pot, as a concept, is the "smoking". I am sick of, and genuinely nastily sickened by, second-hand smoke. Marijuana can be taken in food form. This brings it back into the category of "not hurting anyone else".
(Because someone else's right to smoke (anything) seriously ends, imo, when it conflicts with my right NOT TO.)
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"Crepitus". That is, apparently, the technical term for "joints making noise".
It's on the report I got with the knee x-rays I had taken yesterday. Since I regained walking after breaking my leg last year, my left knee has tended to make a crackling sound when I bend my left leg with weight on it (e.g. when I go down stairs). It also is rather hurty. My right knee is silent under bending, and only gets hurty under compensation strain occasionally.
I've had a referral for an x-ray for a while, but what kinda prompted me to actually get around to doing it is a) a doctor's appointment tomorrow and b) the discovery that taking up regular walks to strengthen all my muscles does not, in fact, improve my knee pain, but rather worsens it considerably.
Most of the report on the x-rays is largely incomprehensible to me. With the aid of Google I've determined the following:
- The fracture of my fibula, last year, has healed up with "cortical bony thickening". I'm pretty sure this is normal. My fibula is STRONGER and MORE BADASS now.
- There's a cyst on my patella, apparently? This is somewhere on a spectrum from "no big deal" to "hey good thing we caught this cancer so early".
- There is fluid on Hoffa's fat. Obvs I am looking this up, but I kind of want to just be all WHO IS HOFFA AND WHY IS HE LEAVING HIS FAT IN MY KNEE. MY KNEE IS NOT FOR OTHER PEOPLE'S FAT.
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"I am 32. There is no situation in which beating up a six-year-old is a morally valid choice for me."
Now I feel like I am a failure at imagination because I can't come up with that hypothetical what
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I had a very satisfying experience recently: bringing enlightenment to the unenlightened.
I came across a post on a gay news site, discussing the recent decriminalisation of sodomy in Virginia.
Now, one of the things that kind of infuriates me in general is people cherrypicking Bible quotations to support an ideological point of view, while blatantly disregarding the rest. (For a particularly high-profile example of this general approach to Christianity, see the Catholic Church criticising a group of American nuns for paying too much attention to helping the poor, and not enough time to hating on gays and single mothers. What would Jesus do about the Vatican? Well, there's a story involving some money-changers in a temple that establishes a precedent.)
Setting aside the flagrant hypocrisy of most sodomy laws - the majority render oral and anal sex between married, heterosexual, consenting adults a criminal offence, but they only tend to use them against same-sex couples - we come across my own personal bugbear about it: "sodomy" totally should refer to something wrong, but it does not mean what they think it means.
The word sodomy, after all, derives directly from the Biblical story of Sodom and Gomorrah. The people of Sodom sinned so deeply, so offensively before God that He obliterated the city entirely.
This is clearly something which is immoral. In general, legislating morality is problematic, mind you, but that's a whole other topic. What's important for the purposes of my argument is exactly what sin the Sodomites committed.
The Bible is, in fact, pretty unambiguous on this subject.
Ezekiel 16:49 (NIV):
Now this was the sin of your sister Sodom: She and her daughters were arrogant, overfed and unconcerned; they did not help the poor and needy.
Arrogance. Being wealthy, yet failing to help the poor.
Had the Lord not entered a new covenant with humanity in the interim, Mitt Romney's speech about the "47%" who "feel entitled" to food, shelter and health care would have copped him a meteor strike to the face.
(I read, a while back, that there was evidence suggestion a reasonably substantial meteor strike that could possibly-arguably equate to the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. One of the things that puzzled me at the time was certain evangelical atheists declaring that this was proof of the non-existence of God; that even if there had been ancient cities where Sodom and Gomorrah were thought to have been, then their destruction had a totally natural explanation. It puzzled me because: Assuming God wants to annihilate a city, why exactly couldn't He do it with a rock? Is there a specific way that smiting has to be done in order to qualify for divine wrath? As any GM or roleplayer can tell you, "Rocks fall. Everyone dies," is about as thorough as divine vengeance gets.)
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So, this Las Pegasus Unicon brony convention meltdown thing.
I can't help wondering if the "real" problem is that a lot of bronies don't really seem to have much past experience with being in fandom, or something, and don't/didn't get that setting up a convention is kind of a big deal. Because, seriously, there seem to have been so many red flags going in to this that it's sort of astonishing that it seems only to be drawing notice now.
I mean... first year convention, calling in two dozen pro guests? Claiming they expect about 2,000 attendees, but have room for 10,000?
No. Right there, your costs are already out of hand, and possibly out of control. That's an expensive rack of attendance fees, and you are spending way, WAY too much on your venue.
Add in vendors expected to accept a con-specific fake currency with not even a contract to back it up that was also hand-drawn and who apparently accepted that and, wow, bronies. Your trust is kind of touching, adorable in the way the faith of small children is adorable, but... aren't most of you supposed to be grown men?
Tara Strong, unpaid pro guest at the con, said on twitter that the organisers had ruined it for all first year cons, but no first year con should really be attempting this kind of scale of event, so I'm not sure I agree, really.
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Reading something about Munchausen by Internet; was struck by something. One of the tell-tale signs is supposed to be that posts about Major Traumatic Events can be made by supposedly-other people with similar writing styles.
My first thought: "You know, when I broke my ankle, ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png) velithya made posts about it on my journal for me. And she does so in a way that could be seen as superficially similar to my own writing style..."
NO-ONE THINKS ONE OF US IS A SOCKPUPPET RIGHT
Of course, you probably want to go with more than one sign of :fraud:. And if we were sockpuppeting, it would require quite the spectacular network of sockpuppets, up to and including setting up some complicated internet hostmasking, since, say, flamebyrd knows both of us IRL and would have to be a sockpuppet too and has been posting for some time from Canada. As would all the other people who've met more than one of us. Or... you get the idea. And this planned trip where both of us go to a con would be an interesting trick to pull off.
I'd like to think no-one actually considered there was any other possibility than, "I was injured in hospital, and we live together so she was definitely among the first to know, and also has access to my laptop," but you know, it's people like us who make the Munchausen by Internet people plausible, clearly.
I don't know if I even have a point here.
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So, I've started making a proper effort at getting back into something resembling shape.
It's really driving home to me how self-reinforcing injury can be.
For three months, I couldn't put weight on one leg at all, and being on my other foot moving around represented a high-risk scenario for serious further injury, so I avoided it as much as possible.
I got back to the point where I could walk around the house, somewhat, but then I sort of stalled. Getting sick here and there didn't help, depression doesn't help, but ultimately it boils down to this: spend enough time immobile, and standing, walking, anything, becomes incredibly difficult and painful.
I feel shame to admit this, but at the moment, I literally can't stand up for more than a couple of minutes, tops, without something to lean against. I start experiencing pain all over - my back, my abdomen, and my ankle are the worst.
I can walk on a flat surface barefoot, but wearing shoes, or walking on any kind of slope, gives me ankle pain within a few steps, generally. Which makes me want to avoid it, which means... it doesn't change.
So I'm working on it. I've started going for walks with my housemates - short walks, so far, but walks, outside, where the street outside has a slope enough to work the muscles that a flat floor doesn't. I'm making a point to stay on my feet a little extra, any time I get up, to work on all my standing-up muscles.
It's harder than it should be. And it's sometimes disconcerting. Take standing on tiptoe, a not-at-all weird activity I didn't think twice about before I broke my ankle. On my right foot, which retained all the strength plus some thanks to doing the work of two for several months, it doesn't cause me any issues. I can stand on my toes, even on one foot, until I either overbalance or my calf starts to cramp. (Static muscle work is still static muscle work, after all.)
On my left foot? Not only does it still feel like effort, but I get *out of breath*. That is a weird and disconcerting thing, because it just feels like it shouldn't happen. I don't feel like "standing on my toes" should qualify as that much exertion, and yet, for my left ankle, it totally does.
But the point is, it's a start. I will get back to the point where so long as I can maintain my natural pace, I can walk all day without a problem. I will get back to the point where the limit to how long I can comfortably stand around is defined by when my feet get tired, not by when the rest of my body gets tired of supporting itself.
Hell, I will get back to the point where I can walk at my natural pace, where the muscles in my left leg and ankle can support the stride I once had. I still walk timidly, taking careful steps half the length of what my steps used to be.
I WILL WALK LIKE A GROWNUP AGAIN.
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So, earlier this morning I was looking at options for renting a motorcycle for the few days I'll be on my own in the US in October - contemplating getting a bike and seeing some of America that way.
However, I've come to realise that that's just not a good plan, for one simple reason:
Bikes have a higher chance of an accident, or at least a higher chance that in the event of an accident, you'll be injured.
And the thing is? While I've been injured before, and even injured in motorcycle accidents, and I could handle it, those incidents all happened in Australia. Not only did this mean that I had my family and/or friends to help me deal with recovery, it meant that any professional intervention I required happened in Australia, too.
I truly dread the prospect of having to deal with the American health care "system". Yes, I'm getting travel insurance - because you can't guarantee you *won't* need health care - but I just can't take the risk on a bike.
I'll save my Amazing Motorcycle Holiday Dream Journey for Tasmania or New Zealand, still. Because I pretty much trust Medicare - my badly-broken leg was treated excellently - and New Zealand's system is relatively similar to Australia's. (Plus New Zealand is near enough that it is conceptually feasible that if I were injured there, I could still make it home again even while I was still recovering.)
I have a sense of breakability I didn't used to have, since 27/12/11 marked the first time my body actually, truly broke - always before I'd been injured, but largely structurally intact. That had nothing to do with bikes, but I'm aware that I *can* be hurt that badly on a more visceral level than I used to be.
Nothing I've ever heard about the health care experience in the USA suggests that, really, any part of the process of treatment and recovery I went through would have been handled even close to as well as it was handled here.
And even if the medical staff were exactly as kind, exactly as pleasant, and exactly as competent, even if somehow the astronomically-higher medical costs were handled by the insurance without being stressful for me (which I doubt) and didn't cost me anything out-of-pocket (ditto), I think it would be vastly more stressful and unpleasant and difficult to deal with just because I'd be in a foreign country, which has to it an inherent level of alienation.
Here, I got treated by people with familiar accents and familiar cultural preconceptions, and while I was in hospital I was visited daily by family and friends.
Somehow I don't think as many of my most beloveds would make it to my bedside on another continent.
So. Bikes are too high-risk for tourism outside of Oceania. I have decided.
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So tonight Sharon Needles is performing at Connections, IN PERTH. velithya is there, with someone named Melody, and not with me. She was GOING to go with me, except I HAVE A COLD. And somehow I don't think walking around Northbridge, then seeing a show in a nightclub where it will be all loud and crowded, is going to help with my constant headache. Or wooziness. Or tiredness.
So now I'm GOING TO BED INSTEAD OF BEING AT THIS SHOW I REALLY WANTED TO BE AT, because I got a stupid cold and it's probably velithya's fault ANYWAY because I probably caught my cold at the doctor's office when I DROVE HER TO THE DOCTOR'S ON MONDAY, because she is a JERK with her STUPID VERTIGO that she had, and basically, SHE SUCKS AND EVERYTHING SUCKS BECAUSE I WAS REALLY EXCITED ABOUT THIS AND NOW I CAN'T GO BECAUSE I HAVE A COLD.
And I really just want to throw a tantrum at, I don't know, the universe.
(For the record: velithya wasn't going to go, because I was all sad about not going, but I told her that she should and I wouldn't be annoyed with her. Obviously, she's still a faithless betrayer and a terrible friend and this Melody, whom I've have never met but assume is perfectly lovely, is an evil, friend-stealing bitch. But see above, re: tantrum. Also, Melody isn't going to the USA with velithya this October, now is she?)Current Mood:  disappointed Current Location: AT HOME, SICK, AND NOT HAPPY ABOUT IT
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So, velithya and I are now definitely planning to visit the US in October. We'll be attending a con in Las Vegas (I can't believe I'm going to Las Vegas, what is happening to meeeeee, I thought I had standards), but we're arriving in the US a few days before it starts.
Currently, the plan is to spend a few days at Yosemite National Park before we head on to Las Vegas. Hopefully our brains won't explode at the transition from nature! to neon.
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This morning velithya and I went rollerskating (me)/blading (her).
It didn't go entirely well. There's a muscle in the ankle somewhere that's vital to making the push motion for skating that doesn't appear to be working, but which doesn't show up for walking.
I haven't skated in about fifteen years, but I did it really, really a lot as a child, from a really quite early age, and my right leg picked it up again pretty much immediately.
However, every third step, precisely, I staggered, because my left leg just couldn't get it, at all, and then I fell over.
I was wearing kneepads and wristguards. Falling didn't *hurt* at all. But I nonetheless found myself shocky as all hell - hyperventilating, momentarily fainting a few times, struggling to stay upright at all.
It occurred to me, this evening, that it's pretty much the first time I've genuinely fallen since I broke my ankle. What with the moving super-carefully while my leg was broken, then moving slowly and carefully as I regained the capacity to walk, and so on, I just haven't done anything physically adventurous enough to result in falling in a heap in the last year.
Apparently, my PTSD tendencies are not okay with the concept of "falling over" at the moment.
Anyway, velithya and I declared that a test run, and now we've formed a plan to get me skating fit by something like the end of the year.
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Today I broke 2,000 unread e-mails in my inbox.
:psy:
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