jinian

Currently reading: Most of the way through Katawa Shoujo [link is to Wikipedia, not anywhere horrifying]. This is a visual novel the first of whose problems is the name: "katawa" is not a polite way to refer to people with disabilities. I got interested because so many people referred to it in discussions about Hatoful Boyfriend, and because it turns out to be an internet phenomenon in which people got interested in a (satirical?) piece of art and put together a game around it.

The second enormous obstacle is the premise! The idea is that the male protagonist has a heart attack and goes to attend a high school for students with disabilities, at which of course he meets a bunch of cute girls to date, all of whom have various physical issues. So we have the overlapping concerns of attraction to disability and the gross side of moe, in which incompetence is so cute because that person must need you. However, I've been quite pleased with how well the structure of the game pushes back against the intrusive caretaking impulse. No one is remotely incompetent, and, in every storyline I've played, there's at least one time when the player has to pull back and let the girl find her own way through a problem rather than smothering or micromanaging.

The sexual content is, well, pretty convincingly Japanese-style. Foreplay is rare*, though I admit that as a virgin I made similar mistakes myself. (Obligatory recent Earth Day reference!) There is some not-quite-vanilla stuff I was not expecting, though the queer threesome I was hoping for did not appear. The queer storyline is sad and a little predictable, but at least it's there.

* Personally I have decided that Lilly's storyline is the optimal one, partly because foreplay exists and partly because Hanako actually seems happier than when you date her, hmm.

Just finished reading: Tam Lin, which I read this time with completely justified suspicion toward all the boys. And a test read of a novel for a friend, which has killed me dead.

Soon to be reading: SOMETHING WHERE NO ONE DIES OR HAS DEMENTIA

Also Moby-Dick! Successful talking about its funny awesomeness with Wim occurred over dinner last night (the nautical sermon! the friendship with Queequeg! the landlady's bargain sign-painting utilization!), though he hasn't gotten to the whale taxonomy yet. Soon we'll be caught up.

"No one sensible is against giving homosexuals the rights of contract or inheritance or hospital visits. There’s nobody that wants to deny them that." -- Rush Limbaugh

Courtney Milan's 'truncated transcript'

KAGAN: Because, see, they’re still gay or lesbian. They’re still out there, having relationships with each other. They’re not going to start procreating.

(Boom! Parthenogenesis powers acquired when you remain unmarried! Actually that's sort of myth-etymologically reasonable.)

Favorite typo so far: the Supreme Curt.

Favorite part of actual transcript:

JUSTICE SOTOMAYOR: Outside of the -- outside of the marriage context, can you think of any other rational basis, reason, for a State using sexual orientation as a factor in denying homosexuals benefits or imposing burdens on them? Is there any other rational decision-making that the Government could make? Denying them a job, not granting them benefits of some sort, any other decision?
MR. COOPER: Your Honor, I cannot.

Pushing marriage as the main queer agenda is imperfect because we don't all live like that: what I want is an expansion of what we think family is, and legal flexibility that we can use to protect different aspects of different kinds of relationships. But, look at that, this fight is helping to move us somewhere I really want to go.

It hasn't been that long, but I'll get myself back on schedule.

• What are you currently reading?

Conspirator, which I managed to leave behind in a bathroom at school yesterday. Embarrassing, but I did get it back easily, unlike many places I could've left it. Return of the revenge of the doomed fishing trip! Barb being awful and Jago volunteering to "talk to her reasonably" is lovely, especially when paired with Jago saying unapologetically that she's too blunt-spoken to be the polite liaison to human family members. What would the reasonable have sounded like, exactly, Jago-ji?

It's strange to me that I like Jago's prickly jealousy so much, when I don't quite know what to think about human jealousy a lot of the time. Maybe it's the explicit dissociation of the whole relationship from human emotion and human expectations of fidelity; we did start out with Bren sort of assuming he was secondary in a relationship he thought was maybe open. I never feel like there's an unexamined notion that of course she'll be jealous, though in this one we do see it paying obvious sexual dividends, and it fascinates me that we have no real idea whether his reassurances are working as he hopes. Basically I continue to just love Jago. The little things add up over all the books to show us how strongly she just does her own thing, unusual and scandalous things included. Fancying Bren and going for it are pretty obvious, but there's definite disapproval a few times of her working for a man as work-partner to a man, when she should traditionally be partnered with and working for people of her same sex.

Homosexuality has not been addressed at all so far in these books, though of course I'm looking for it, but her social orientation is very interesting.

Return to Me, Justina Chen. A hopeful divorce book. Beyond that, I need to finish before I decide what I think.

• What did you recently finish reading?

Really just Deliverer. I used to read more when I was stressed out.

Since I'm writing in my office a lot, I'm glad to have collected a few absurd old SF novels for my shelf. I knew it would make me happy to read the spines when I needed distraction. Here they are:

The Pollinators of Eden
The Diploids (short stories; the diploids are superhuman!)
The Morphodite ("a genetically-patterned [sic], laboratory-raised human genius... its thoughts were total subversion")
The Planet Dweller (Women's Press: two collection impulses in one)

• What do you think you’ll read next?

Hopefully some of my languishing library books, though the reason they're languishing is that I'm not that into them.

I went out on Saturday night! I didn't entirely feel like it, but the Metro Club is only once a month. This month was their 20-year anniversary for holding this queer dance in Japan, so I figured it'd be worth seeing at least for a bit.

Doors opened at 10; I got there a bit before 11[*] and left a bit after 2. The place started filling up around midnight, and there was a drag and semi-stripping show shortly after that. Later it got smoky and crowded and louder, resulting in sore throat, no fun dancing, failure to talk to people, and annoyed ears. Apparently the party goes until "at least" 5, but I was done.

The music was monotonous, boring dance stuff, but getting better by the time I left. I think they saved the good tunes for later, when more people would be around. We were starting to get Men Without Hats, so I assume that Erasure, Madonna, and Gaga would have been forthcoming at some point.

People talked to me: I made friends with a maybe-gay boy from China immediately, and learned a lot about how fucking dire his situation is. He had a gay uncle who disappeared for a long time, and China is apparently rife with conversion therapy. I didn't know what to say, except, experiment while you're here and maybe you have a terrible choice to make. (Is there some online tool for Chinese homosexuals to meet each other for beard acquisition? I'm sure it's filtered out if there is, but if they're outside of China... It's all so terrible.) He offered to sleep with me but I didn't want to and I don't think he did either. He kept looking at guys and they kept having boyfriends, poor kid.

A boy from New Jersey was the first one dancing, and he was happy when I came to dance too (after a couple other people did). We shouted at each other briefly.

A Japanese girl thought I was someone else.

Brazilian guys chatted to me for a while; apparently I was straight-looking, as that's what they asked early on. Uh, no. One offered me white tablets and said they were candy. Rather a first for me. You enjoy those yourself, good sir!

A couple of Spanish-speaking boys caught me as I was heading home and complimented me, in that usual way in Japan where they first say how not-Japanese I look. (More salutary experiences for white people! Being exotic: not actually fun!) They seemed pretty entertaining, but I was outa there.

I even approached a person myself: this cute Brazilian butch in aviator glasses. Like a lot of the non-Japanese people there, she's a proper expat, been in Japan for seven years. There were a few students, too, and a lot of Japanese people, only some of whom seemed to be queer. And drag queens! One of them seemed to be the person who runs the event -- very tall, very friendly, very flaming of course. With plumes I swear this one person was eight feet tall.

I successfully hailed a taxi and took it home, despite the residence's business card not working as advertised. The driver looked at it and said "Nagoya Daigaku?" and I said sure. School is close enough. By the time we got there I was looking nervously at the meter, having been so unwise as to buy an extra drink in the bar (note: their gimlet was really great), and let him drop me so I could walk the rest of the way home.

I'd forgotten that non-Seattle places may still allow smoking indoors. Luckily I had planned to shower anyway, but my clothes got banished to the balcony. I crashed about 4am and slept until 11. (I honestly thought it was about 7 when I woke up, but it was just rainy. Yay sleep!) Yesterday was aftermath/pajama/internet-outage day -- somehow both my arms were really sore? -- and here I am back being verbose tonight.

* I had to keep watching Community until Troy and Abed made up, okay? Besides, I knew it would be quiet early on.

We passed it. Solidly. Same-sex marriage is a go in Washington State, by popular vote.

So fucking proud right now.

The Human Rights Campaign has a history of failing on trans* issues, so as a member I've been watching with interest their "tell us about yourself" web form pull-downs over time. They're still a little weird, but better:

Gender:
Man
Woman
Genderqueer
Prefer not to say

Sexual Orientation:
Lesbian
Gay
Bisexual
Straight/Heterosexual
Queer
Other
Prefer not to say

Do you identify as transgender?
Yes
No

There's a glaring absence of "Prefer not to say" on that last one, but overall it's a big improvement. I actually got to choose accurate answers for each question, though not everyone would, and unlike last time nothing bizarre is in there.

Day Nine: Two images that describe your life right now, and why.

1.


The Dyke March! The opening rally was pretty boring except for "Portions for Foxes" and the adorable rainbow-people dance number, but oh well. Lots of amazing people. Dressed as huge sparkly vulvas! Dressed as a bee! Mostly it was too cold for toplessness, but there was a bit. Note the orange barrels at right, where there's a giant streetcar-related trench in the street; an organizer was standing in it with a megaphone calling out, "I am in a hole! Do not fall into the hole!" approximately. (As far as I'm aware she did not say "hello ladies," but she should have.) The people with that rainbow flag were running around hooting and getting people to run under it, or running around them themselves.

2.


I picked and ate my raspberry bushes' first ripe berries today. It is summer.

Day One: Ten things you want to say to ten different people right now.
Day Two: Nine things about yourself.
Day Three: Eight ways to win your heart.
Day Four: Seven things that cross your mind a lot.
Day Five: Six things you wish you’d never done.
Day Six: Five people who mean a lot (in no order whatsoever)
Day Seven: Four turn-offs.
Day Eight: Three turn-ons.
Day Ten: One confession.

Day Two: Nine things about yourself.

1. When I got my first period I was ten. I knew perfectly well what was going on, but I had no idea how to tell my mom. She'd already had a hysterectomy, so there were no supplies in the house. My solution? Ignore it! Luckily I didn't bleed that much. I think I worked myself up to mentioning it three days in, and pretended to have been oblivious.

2. I am bisexual but for obvious statistical reasons have had an easier time meeting men who like me back than anyone else.

3. Someday I hope to be a grumpy professor emerita who asks beady-eyed questions in seminars. (This might also be fun at Wiscon. I can start attending the pseudoscience panels and give them hell!)

4. And then goes home to her blueberry farm and crafts and pets and family.

5. My mobile phone is a little Nokia brick (6010) so very old that I have started getting retro-hipster cred for it.

6. When my bus came the other day, I was too busy photographing a wasp (carrying a paralyzed fly!!!1!) to get on it, and waited for the next one.

7. Copyediting is both automatic and fun for me. Sometimes I screw up anyway, but typos almost always jangle my nerves and I notice. There's a P.C. Hodgell book that I have never finished because the error-alarm going off all the time is just too distracting.

8. My house now has two walls that are falling apart. I never had a satisfactory explanation for the first one, which was like that when we moved in, but the second is clearly due to the messed up gutters letting water into the wall. Wim is unhappy about this, but I'm kind of fascinated.

9. I love gardening and study plant molecular biology but am tragically allergic to several common types of airborne pollen and to contact with grass.

Day One: Ten things you want to say to ten different people right now.
Day Three: Eight ways to win your heart.
Day Four: Seven things that cross your mind a lot.
Day Five: Six things you wish you’d never done.
Day Six: Five people who mean a lot (in no order whatsoever)
Day Seven: Four turn-offs.
Day Eight: Three turn-ons.
Day Nine: Two images that describe your life right now, and why.
Day Ten: One confession.