Steve Jobs

February 24, 1955 – October 5, 2011

He died. He was a visionary; he changed the world. The iPod and iTunes did not exist, now my computer's dictionary recognizes the words. He did not invent the computer, but he did help it become common. He did not invent the mouse, but he did popularize it.

He had 56 full years. I say this not because 56 years was enough, but to drive home how much he did in his time.

You know all this, if only vaguely. I cannot imagine someone who would find this blog and not know it, by now, and I can hardly imagine this blog, this post, outlasting the memory of the man. I do not need to tell you all this, but I say it anyway, in introduction and in memory.

What I do not say is that technology has been dealt a blow by his death.

I see this statement, in too many of his obituaries. As if Steve Jobs did not push technology forward, did not act as an accelerating force, but simply kept the system of enhancement from falling apart. It horrifies me. Steve Jobs was amazing, he was exceptional, and he sped the world with his ideas, his angle of attack, and his actions. This is fantastic. This is the mark of something lasting.

I believe he wanted it to continue without him. Did he not, he would have stayed head of the company to the last day, or given up on it when he saw death so near. He did not. He named a successor. The company will continue, if changed; technology will advance; the Earth will spin on its axis.

We have lost an orator. We have lost a visionary. We have lost someone who could see something, understand it, sell it. We lost a storyteller. We lost a man.

We did not lose our ability to adapt. Leonardo da Vinci died; Shakespeare died; Steve Jobs died. These are tragedies. These are beautiful things that passed. Yet we lived without them, we grew enough to have a society where they could have the effects they did--writing, printing press, microchips. We shall continue, and all the better for the fact that they were.

In honor of him...well, as I said, we lost a storyteller. He said it better than I would.

"Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on."

Languid Grace

Post written before this week's main news-consuming event.

How you would describe the walk depended on where you grew up. Those from places without highly visible nobles would never call it the walk of a noble--he was too confident. Nobles are, literally, self-conscious. Ever step could falter; any falter could bring disaster. Even the nobles who do not fear this are aware of it. Those who are not aware are too unaware of their surroundings to be this confident. One can be cocky or naive in one's ignorance, but confidence of this sort requires experience. This is one who has passed through I have seen the world and I am not impressed, and found in its place, I have seen the world. I can thrive anywhere.

One might compare it to a noble if one had seen the right nobles. Some have that, though it is rare for hereditary titles. One needs to pass through many walks of life to find this look, and those with hereditary titles are often locked into their path too soon. But the knight who started a blacksmith's child and grew to marry the king's daughter through skill of cunning...he might have it.

Those who knew tigers might compare the walk to a tiger's. Those who knew of, as well. That same grace and quiet, and the same feeling that wasn't in your head anymore, was just a thump in your chest that froze you or said run.

And, of course, that little tinge at the back of your head, the knowledge that you are still better for having this one in front of you than behind. A tiger snaps at your neck, after all, and one who walks with this languid grace could bring your world tumbling.

You can train yourself around either fear, to face the tiger and the languid grace. And as you walk those steps, as you sharpen spear, mind, tongue, your strides lengthen, your feet quiet, your eyes watch. It's a graceful turn to your body, and one you hardly think of anymore. Each movement planned, but merely from a set you planned years ago. So efficient as to look lazy, unless you've walked paths enough to see the mirror...

To Personhood

Things happen.

Sometimes wonderful things happen, and people grab every bit they can, in a manner vaguely reminiscent of a particularly unruly group of guests just after the piñata split open: all jabbing elbows and minor prizes.

Sometimes terrible things happen, but they do not happen to us, and so we hide. "They came first for the Communists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Communist..." We may blame the victims, because the alternative--that it truly wasn't their fault, that it could happen to us--is too awful to contemplate. It may even be happening to us, and we do not speak for we fear it will be worse if we do, or we simply believe is will be no better.

But we are social animals, are we not?

Sometimes horrible/glorious things happen, and they write a line of fire across your self. Sometimes it blazes so white-hot that you cannot imagine doing aught but following this, doing this, because you are saving something important. A soul, a species, a nation, a family, an individual. It hits, and there is a person who is you, who was not there twelve seconds ago.

Sometimes wonderful things happen, and people glory in them and share them, because that is what they choose to do. Good feels good. Some people need help, some search for those in need. There is not yet perfect symmetry, but what exists is beautiful.

Sometimes something truly awful, terrible, horrible occurs and all you can do for a moment is shatter inside, because everything you hinged on, every bit of your world, everything just did shatter.

And we turn, and we reach--

We come together. Forget religious barriers; even those who do not pray can appreciate coming together to share grief and hope. Forget race; we are all people and the lines blur more every generation. Forget these barriers you have built up; the world just shattered so the walls must have done. We hope together, wish together, despair together, stand with friends, lovers, strangers. We help those who are hurting, in all the myriad ways people can hurt.

Sometimes, the world shatters.

Every time, however gradually, we rebuild.

Thoughts

I wonder, if I could go back with today's knowledge...

What if I had a little more?

I wish there were a word for this.

One of the most fascinating moments I've ever seen in my life is mild surprise. When there's shock, or terror, that overrides the person--and anyway, if the other person is that far for long enough to see well, there's probably reason for me to be focusing on something else.

But that moment where you see them go, "Oh. The world is not as I thought it was." Not getting the rug pulled out from under them. Just watching it move a little.

And one of the ways I see that, in myself, is finding that someone has had the same thought I have. In the abstract, I recognize that this is probably happening--there are probably some thoughts that many people have. Yet, somehow, it's odd to fall into the statistics.

One of the times I remember that clearly happening has to do with the first line. The idea of going back to the beginning of my life, with the understanding I have gained. Sarcasm isn't something the average six- or seven-year-old understands; adults treat children as less and this is incredibly useful for eavesdropping and getting honest answers about some topics. I remember watching two adults gossip about me when I was very little, and being fascinated with how completely honest they were being. I mistook thoughtlessness for bravery in honesty, but it was still helpful.

And then there's, I wish there were a word for this, which is not only something that I see or hear other people thinking, but realize people must have thought for the longest time. This is how languages form. This started with a Socrates quote, which, translated, reads: "I am not an Athenian or a Greek, but a citizen of the world." I remember reading it in my history book with a partial translation, the ancestor word of "cosmopolitan" was still in place. And it occurred to me that, yes, there's probably a word for what I want, however, creating words for an unfulfilled need is an art.

And yet. Even with these thoughts that almost everyone has thought, we still have such wide gulfs. Not even between cultures, just between two kids who grew up in the same town and went to the same school can simply not understand what the other is thinking. Even if I try my best to explain, and the other tries to understand, there are simply places it won't make sense. Even if someone knows me better than anyone does, better than I know myself.

Halfway across the world, someone else already understands, but here and next to my heart, this person doesn't.

Walks off, singing, "You say po-tay-to, and I say po-tah-to...

Norms

A/N: Between the last post and this one, I hit 1,000 page views. Yay!

EDIT: Because I can say this better than I can write this, I edited this to try and make it closer to how I say it. Then it didn't work. I revamped, and here you go. Still not as good as I can say it. *mutters*

Brief & even more confusing than normal: People normalize to people like them, so average people end up normalizing and other people end up with more time before they find anyone with the same amount and type of pull.

I think about this occasionally. If someone is a genius, that person is going to be weird. Really, being notably smart is probably going to make one weird.

The obvious way to explain that is that "weird" just means "not in the middle of the bell curve", so smart people are weird by the definition of the adjectives. That's probably true sometimes.

I have another idea: People at varying points on a given bell curve gravitate toward each other. Someone exactly at the peak will like people who are somewhere around the peak. People at one edge or the other will be incomprehensible to and will not comprehend those in the middle, or those on the opposite side. If people devote the energy to it, they can skip around--especially if the person isn't in the middle of some other bell curve--but the point remains that that takes energy. The default is among one's similars.

This means that, in elementary school, when social groups are forming, one of a few things happens to people far East or West of the peak: 1)the edgers do not interact with the middlers much because they stick to their own groups, creating parallel but slightly separate cultures, 2)the middlers do not interact with the edgers because they are weird--same basic thing as one, but with a little more ostracizing because individual middlers can genuinely decide to avoid the edgers most of the time, while the opposite is difficult to impossible, or 3)the edgers do not normalize to anything, because 2 is present but other edgers (on the viable side) are not.

Even in option 3, edgers will still develop patterns of behavior and ways of seeing the world; the patterns will just end up alien. They started out significantly more/less X than everyone else, and then were pushed even farther. I'd like to point out what that means to me in light of previous posts: patterns, the basis of any action a human makes, end up being alien and/or incomprehensible.

So smart people are visibly weird because they don't start out at the same baseline, and then that fact pushes them farther unless they decide to expend energy in avoiding that, and even then. People who are willing to expend that energy probably want to be able to talk to everyone. Someone who flows everywhere doesn't completely belong anywhere. The island is not the ocean, the continent not the sea.

Painting and Whitewashing

EDIT for those who don't share my lexicon of idioms: There's a saying that goes, "Too poor to paint, too proud to whitewash." That means the person/group being described cannot do something properly and therefore refuses to do it at all, even if there is another alternative available. A family can't afford to paint their house with white paint, and is too proud to use whitewash instead, even if it would look better than leaving the place to wear down.

I'll admit it; I have a certain amount of respect for someone who, when faced with the prospect of whitewashing, absolutely refuses to do anything but paint, and then proceeds to make that work. I have respect for that level of determination.

-That, by the way, is my line between determination and stubbornness: can you make it work?-

But what really makes me smile, and something that I'd want in an ally as much as a friend, is when someone looks at all the options, notes that it would be most efficient to whitewash, and then proceeds to whitewash without another word. No complaints, no seeing if this will work when painting would be harder or whitewashing better or even, just doing it.

Pride is a deadly little vice. It says, "Look, you could do this...but you could do so much better." Of course, given that this is the verbal embodiment of pride, it's probably doing something like purring or smiling or laughing. Because what good's a voice representing pride if it doesn't have a bit of cockiness behind it?

What got me thinking about this was the following exchange, which I found on the Ain't Too Proud To Beg page on TV Tropes, which is, you guessed it, going to suck your time away into the shiny vortex that is Wiki Walk.

From Farscape
Crichton: Beg.
Scorpius: [instantly] I beg you.
Crichton: That's not good enough. Say please.
Scorpius: Please.
Crichton: Pretty please.
Scorpius: Pretty please.
Crichton: With a cherry on top.
Scorpius: [only one word behind] With a cherry on top.
Crichton: [Beat] Happy Birthday. Now, get out of my sight.

That just makes me smile. And think of an Eleanor Roosevelt quote, "No one can make you feel inferior without your permission." The idea behind making someone beg in that situation is--and forgive me if I miss some of the context, I don't watch the show--either power for the person demanding, or embarrassment for the person begging, which is really just a specific fashion to gain the former.

And then...he decides it's worth it, and proceeds to do it. It doesn't hurt him, because he doesn't let it. Anyone who trots out the sticks and stones line is so naive as to be thoughtless, but the thing about words is that they don't need to hurt any more than hits do. One can dodge, one can block, one can turn the other people's momentum against them and suddenly have the upper hand. It's all in how one decides to deal with it.

Of course, wailing on the other person is a perfectly acceptable method if it works.

What? I said I had a great deal of respect for people who could whitewash, I didn't say anything about preferring it myself. Nor even being able to do it, really... It would be a nice skill. I'm trying.

Incidentally, this has been in my head for a while, and what finally got me to finish was this Harry Potter fanfiction, specifically this chapter (search "I have changed today's lesson plan in the light of recent events", and read to the bottom of the page.)

Poem #2

Forgive me if this seems disjointed. It can be difficult to tell ones own story, especially when it didn't 'happen'.

I have a moment.
But no moment stands alone.
Imagine you have fallen, because you stumbled, you tripped.
You fell off the side of the castle. Your fortress. Your family’s.
But you caught yourself. You climbed back up. One step, one handhold, one foothold, one at a time.
Then, as you reached the top, the footholds fell away. Your hand slipped. You hang there by your fingertips.
Don’t worry. Look. You’re friend’s there. You friend will help you up.
Crack.
That was your fingers breaking under a hard boot. Your heart breaking under a hard smile.
No.
And now…now you can’t catch yourself.
How could you?
How could your friend?
Here is the moment. It is that brief frozen moment in the fall. The one where you decide to let yourself fall. The one where you stop fighting, because you don’t care.
But you don’t freeze there.
You hit the water and cry out from the sharp smack on your back, the ice covering your skin.
And you can’t fight. You already decided. You’ll drown, crying.
Sobbing, gasping down lungfuls of water until you drown.
…
You wake. It’s bright, so bright. You think it might be someplace good…but the light is blinding, everything hurts…
Not the good place.
Tears well up again. You tried, damn it. You tried.
A sob tears through your chest.
Why? An enemy killing you, that would have been fine…you would have understood.
But not that one. Not the one you’ve loved like family since you were a child.
A curtain is pulled away and the light hurts even more, you whimper in the middle of a sob.
And then you hear your name. Not in anger, not in satisfaction, but almost in reverence. You hear it again, in exultation.
“You’re alive!
“Guys! Guys, guess who woke up!”
That’s the other moment. When you realize it hurts because you’re alive. Because someone cared.
You don’t recognize the one who woke you. Apparently you barely know each other.
It didn’t matter. This one saved you.

Well?
Aren’t you going to do anything?

Rant: "Well, Yeah, But You're Not Gonna Win That Fight."

One of my teachers actually said that to me. Someone who is meant to be teaching students how to deal with the world actually said that if it looks like you might not win, you should stop trying.

Context:
The set-up was that this generation is over-tested. Everyone agreed. Then, to continue the conversation, I said that I thought we were also being given too much homework in elementary school.

(As a brief aside, no one present had any connection to elementary school teachers, so none of this was a personal attack nor could it be construed as such. Well, it could, but you can also say, "Hitler liked puppies!")

She agreed with me that we were over-homeworked. She did not have any reservations there, she just flat-out agreed. Then...well, see title. She said I was not going to win because everyone has always been over-homeworked, in her own words, "Every generation has had seven hours of homework."

I stared at her for a beat. She had just said, in front of her entire classroom, the people under her authority, that she believed something bad should not be stopped because it has been going on for too long. This is a bad idea for two reasons. 1) "Don't fight if the odds are against you" kills just about every major human achievement. Why should we change? Because new ways are, occasionally, better. And the, "It's tradition" argument is always wrong. It may be more efficient, easier, people may be more comfortable...but those are the arguments. Not some random thing about how it was good enough for my thirty-times-great grandfather and so it's good enough for me. 2) If the amount of time the policy has been in place is the thing that is messing people up, then adding more time to the equation is not going to help.

Forget tradition. If someone else has a good idea, listen to it, and if you have time debate, then that's probably a good idea. But the fact that it was good yesterday doesn't mean it's good today. It just means it was good yesterday.

Nazi Propaganda

Oh, wow. I think I'd have trouble coming up with a more loaded phrase if I tried.

I am currently taking a history class in which we are studying the buildup to World War II. This includes watching some propaganda films. These are scary, because if I let myself forget what the solution he is talking about is, I want to follow him. I genuinely feel community, family, interdependence and independence blended to make a nation. It's a good feeling, like being back at Girl Scout camp, or on a choir trip.

But that is not what scares me the most by a long shot.

What scares me the most is the people around me who refuse to look at these films as anything but Nazi propaganda. They talk about how stupid these people were to follow, how obvious it is. When asked what makes it obvious, none of them have an answer better than looking offended and/or saying, "So what, you'd follow him?"

If my kids are dying? If I don't know what he's going to do to all those people? If he's turning the economy around, genuinely helping? Oh hell yeah.

The problem with these people is not that they want to do horrible things--a lot of people do. The problem is that dictators like Stalin, Mussolini, Hitler got people to follow them. Especially Hitler. Refusing to admit that those who followed him could be intelligent people, even good people, however rarely, is dooming yourself to repeat these mistakes. Because someone who refuses to believe that someone can be evil without a glaring mark is going to believe that the next charismatic malevolent despot isn't bad. It doesn't matter whether he or she is up to Hitler's level. I hope with all my heart none will be.

If someone is showing old propaganda, it is probably not so you can laugh and feel superior. It is probably so you can look at life through those people's eyes. Refusing to do so is refusing to learn the lesson. And when the lesson is on the Holocaust, it is an important lesson.

(Incidentally, good people can be charismatic, too. Charisma and morality are independent.)

Phrases

There are a couple new ones at the bottom.

From the World:
The only constant is change.
-Lots of people. It's a common thought.

A witty phrase proves nothing.
-Voltaire

What's the point of a good quote if you can't misquote it? [paraphrased. No, really.]
-?

Build high the walls; build strong the beams...take strength from those who need you.
-Tarzan, Two Worlds

The opposite of a correct statement is a false statement. But the opposite of a profound truth may well be another profound truth.
-Niels Bohr

When outmatched...cheat.
-Batman, Batman: The Brave and the Bold

No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.
-Eleanor Roosevelt

That's not just bluffing when you have bad cards, that's bluffing when you have no cards at all.
-Sergeant Colon of Discworld

“I’m not surprised. It is easy to forget that good things can happen just as unexpectedly as the bad things!”
- http://www.missmab.com/Comics/Ab_090.php

From My Life:
PLEASE COMMENT.
-Me

When sightsinging, sing as if you know the piece.
-My Choir Teacher

"Gay Marriage"

Not the issue, the term. Hence the quotes.

I understand the desire to have a simple term, but it surprises me that in this age of political correctness, no one has noted that this term technically excludes bisexuals. It is clearly not the intent, and I will accept that, but...well, show of hands if you've seen womyn (or another variant), or heard someone complain about 'man'ual labor (which comes from Latin manos, meaning hand, but that's rather my point).

I have yet to run across anyone talking about this. I haven't done particularly extensive research, but satire is one of my favorite genres, I frequent TV Tropes, I read news magazines, one would think I would have at least read some snark on it by now.

And it's particularly odd in that it's not like the black people/African-Americans, where the latter rules out blacks who aren't of African descent and living in America, not to mention being long. Same-sex marriage is a perfectly reasonable term, and is all of one syllable longer. It removes, simply by being used, any exclusion of bisexuals (or for that matter, asexual people who are romantically inclined towards people of the same gender--human sexuality is complex), and any Us and Them mindset.

Of course, something that bothers me more is that, despite actually being bisexual, it took me this long to think of this. What else am I missing?

Feel free to post some guesses in the comments section, along with whatever else.

Addictive Interestingness (TV Tropes)
Word Power

Being Broken

"They can't break me, as long as I know who I am."

-I'm Still Here, from Treasure Planet

This occurred to me a little while ago. I don't know when I finished the thought, but I do know what it came out to. We say someone is broken, or talk about breaking someone, but it's treated like this thing where you have to go through x, y, and z, and each must be done perfectly, without hesitation, and only by this manipulative mastermind.

And that's not it. Breaking someone is simply what the full phrase suggests: Breaking someone to your will (singular or plural you). If you have a specific idea in mind for what to do to someone else, then yes, you need to be a genius to pull it off properly, at least one in the ways of the human psyche. But you do not need to be up against a genius to be broken. You don't need to be strictly up against anyone. It can just be a group of neutral people who push you, pull you, shape you, until you fit their idea of what you should be.

The easiest way to break someone I've seen is erosion. You have different people in different groups with no connection, and you just hammer and wash and blow across them until they aren't themselves anymore. You're annoying, be like this. You're stupid, leave me alone. You like what? Ick.

And the thing is, once you realize that, it becomes much harder to be broken. Because, whether another person is trying to or not, if you can spot what would break you, you can fight against it. You stand up and you push back, instead of just being pulled. It won't always work--humans are social animals, so we're supposed to listen to the pack--but it helps. Who are you, where are you going, and why do you care what they say?

Tropes (as per usual, thought of afterward) (Oh, and addictive)
Break The Cutie
Broken Bird
Earn Your Happy Ending
The Woobie

Musings #2

Being a musing, this isn't quite breaking the hiatus.

If angels can fall, why can't they rise?

This, being the phrase that popped into my head that spurred this musing, is not actually that related to the post. Yeah, I know.

I have been thinking about stories we see. And we see stories where this ignorant person figures something out--that's a basic story, the protagonist changes for the better, or just changes. An especially common variant would be a coming-of-age story, which, given the above musing-starter, immediately makes me think Adam and Eve. They gain knowledge, and so they have to leave paradise and wear clothes and work for their food and place in the world.

And we sometimes have theses intricate stories about The Fall of X. Or The Rise of X. But unless X is a place or society, we don't see both. Or rather, we do, but the Fall is horribly oversimplified. Let's say John's an angel (don't look at me like that, Michael's an angel). John fell to the sin of lust. He will, naturally, fall in love to reclaim his virtue, and we will learn all about him and this new girl, let's call her Charlotte. Charlotte will be a well-rounded character, and so will John. We will sympathize with them, and maybe even come to think of John's banishment as unfair--it will probably at least cross Charlotte's mind, even if she's knows it's wrong while she's thinking it. But this girl he fell in lust with--even if they fell in love and spent her entire life together--this girl? Who's she? Do we even have a name for her? Oh. Hm. Says the author was considering calling her either Jessica or Diane, but decided it wasn't important.

(You can see why I told you up front the blog post was going to be pretty separate from the starting phrase.)

So it is easy to fall, and difficult to rise, as it is with all things. Makes sense, right? I mean, you see something, you want to sin, you sin, you're done. Right?

Right?

I hope not. If it's that easy, then anyone hoping to save any souls has an even harder job than it appears. If it's just see it, want it, sin it, then the soul will surely be lost tomorrow. If it is so easy, then it must be lost...

Of course, the point of the ordeal is that the person rises out of it stronger. It's supposed to be all about how John was weak enough to sin, and is now strong enough to resist. That may be the reason why the story of how he spent, oh, let's say twenty years with this other girl is left in the shadows--can you imagine making a story where the guy wants the girl for reasons of solely lust, they stay together for any amount of time, and you have to keep him sympathetic? There are things an audience will forgive, and things it won't...and there are a great many things they will forgive off-screen that they won't forgive if it happened on-screen. Imagine the Deathstar blowing up a planet where we have seen the people, the children, playing. Or there were some sympathetic characters, maybe even one that had a plan to stop Vader. It's suddenly a lot harder to stomach. How can you convince the audience he's changed if you've let him, in your story, do something unforgivable?

And so we get this vague idea of what John's done wrong, enough to know it was terrible, not enough to feel spiteful towards him (taking into account the character the author is showing us).

The other way around would actually be a pretty nice way to introduce a villain with a good reputation. Imagine: we know every detail of what John's done wrong, but his atonement is glossed over. So we know (to grab a few things out of my hat of mustache-twirling villainy) that John faked feelings for Diane--yes, she has a name now. We know that Diane was an innocent little thing he led down the wrong path that ended in her dying young, cold and alone, in a dark little alley, her throat cut by his blade, by his choice, by his coins, but not by his hands, because he wouldn't dirty them. And we know she deserved so much better. And his atonement? A little thing. He fell in love--but again, this is glossed over, so could be interpreted as lust--and got the girl of his dreams? That is his atonement? Oh, sure, he fought for her, but when compared to all those horrible things he did to Diane, how can we believe he deserves one ounce of the joy he feels with this nameless girl? Is she horrible enough to think that this is okay, or is she stupid and he's leading another innocent down this path?

So we gloss over parts of the history. Not because they're not important. Because they were very important. It was very important that they were overcome, and so it is very important that the audience acknowledges them. However, John is not that man anymore. You cannot blame him for sins anymore than you could blame a child. It's not that he was cruel, it's that he was lost, and there was no one there to lead him. He has found himself, and there have been years of atonement--or there haven't, but there have been years where he was not that person. A child is not given a pass because of age. A child is given a pass because the person you are moving against the next day is not there anymore. When John is reinventing himself, yes, he has to take responsibility for his past actions. But we do not show them because they are no longer defining character moments. If the author put something there in the story, there's a reason, so if there isn't a reason, it doesn't belong there.

This post started on one note and ended on another. It needs another phrase, and I think I have a good one:

"Keep in mind that people change, but the past doesn't."
-Patch in Hush, Hush by Becca Fitzpatrick (pg. 305, hardcover)

Oh, the tropes for this are fun...
Politically Correct History (This wouldn't've happened this way, but if I show it as it would have, the audience will hate this guy!)
*The Women Are Safe With Us (The heroes' men don't rape, even if they're mercenaries in medieval times.)
Deliberate Values Dissonance (Remember my note about not showing stuff unless you want the audience to hook onto it? This is when the author doesn't do that--because, at the time, this behavior was normal.)
Good Flaws Bad Flaws ("One major exception to this trope is this: A character who has a "bad" flaw is allowed to be the hero if the experiences of their journey inspire them to cast off this flaw.")
*Good Smoking Evil Smoking

Gifted Kids

I need to stop reading these stories about gifted children from people who never were gifted children. If you're not gifted and/or close to someone who is--and I don't mean s/he's in your biology class, I mean you two are best friends and share everything--then stop it.

It's a different experience. Say you're talking about the top five percent of the population. Is five percent a good cross-section of the population? No. We can note patterns, maybe, but five percent of the water in a glass may be the five percent that's different. And if there's oil in the water, then it is certainly very different.

So say you think that children in Ender's Game are portrayed incorrectly because you didn't think that way when you were a kid, and neither did any of your friends. This is an inherently flawed position for two reasons. First of all, these kids are the cream of the crop pushed to their limits. They are supposed to be the extreme, so saying that they should fit what an average person thinks like is not going to work. And we are social animals, so the people we tend to run into are those similar to us. Opposites attract, but there has to be some similarity or else the only cause is strife.

And so we have a group of kids hand-picked for this purpose and pushed to their limits. The smartest of the smartest, and adults who will not only say but mean, "Show me what you can do." This is something that just doesn't happen much today. If I had a nickel for every time a teacher told me to slow down, that we'd get to that later, or that the question I was asking was not pertinent, I would be much richer. (Or if I just had a nickel for every time my sheet was used as an answer key.) These are teachers who will not stop you and hold you back, but push you on. It's like literacy. Go back in time, scribes are well-paid and a profession that takes a lifetime to learn. Today, if you can't read and write after four years in the American schooling system, something is seriously wrong.

[Later] Also: see child drug lords. It's not quite running a country, but wow is it close. [/Later]

Don't tell me we don't think like that. I thought like that. I think like that, with a little more advanced thought behind it. You couldn't say women or blacks or whites or men or Asians or anyone else can't be smart, so don't say kids can't be. Because, yes, we will get smarter. And we'll get even smarter when we're allowed to be. Kids are kids. But what we do have access to, we have more time to focus on.

See [addictive site]: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TVGenius
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/BatDeduction for what happens when non-geniuses try to guess what these people would act like.

For the other side I'm referring to...
see comments in:
http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2108073.Ender_s_Game
and read the post:
http://www.editoreric.com/greatlit/books/Ender.html

Rebuttal?

Marriage.

Hi there. I'm popping back in for a moment to ask a question that I hope, someday, I will understand the answer to: What is this big deal about marriage?

I don't mean why would someone be threatened by having his or her religion invaded. I don't mean why would someone who has made up his or her mind to hate someone prevent them from marrying. I don't mean why do people want to get married. I am simply asking: why is a marriage in the government such a big deal?

We, as Americans (and sorry for the ethnocentrism, but to be honest, I have nowhere near enough of a grasp of the culture to comment anywhere else), have a separation of church and state. How effective this is varies, since it's not on the books, but it is there. It's a part of our cultural mindset. I regularly see in any code of conduct I have been asked to follow that you cannot discriminate based upon "race, color, religion, ancestry, national origin, immigrant status, homelessness, economic status, gender, sexual orientation, marital status, age, medical condition, physical appearance or physical or mental disability." (This is taken directly from my current planner, which my school hands out to freshmen and sells to anyone else.) Would you prevent someone from marrying because he or she was black? How about because the person was sixty? Or Jewish? Poor? Ugly? In a wheelchair?

These all sound silly, don't they? Of course you wouldn't prevent Alex from marrying Sam just because Sam was black, or Asian, or whatever else, and Alex was white. Now here I am, a bisexual female. If I fall in love with Alex and I want to marry him, that's fine, no matter who he is. If I fall in love with Alex, and I want to marry her, I don't get to. Except...I do. I get to marry her in my church, or wherever you get married according to her religion. This is not stopping gays from getting married, it's just putting terminology on the books which is odd to begin with.

And then we've got the counterargument. The one that isn't religion, which I've already gone over, saying that I don't think religion and politics should mix. The other is that there is a difference between the sexes, and that men without women (bachelors, men married to men) are dangerous to society. The problem with this is readily apparent to anyone who knows a large number of bachelors or men living with their boyfriends, etc. First of all, they're not. Second of all, even if they were, the only way they could live entirely away from women would be to live entirely away from society. And beyond that, as I have already noted, taking away someone's right to marry in the government does not take away his or her right to marry.

Back to marriage. Because I am not talking about gay marriage, I am talking about marriage. If, as too many people seem ready to claim, marriage is a religious thing, why is it in our government at all? Why is anyone being married? Hey, let everyone get married in a [insert wherever people of your religion/lack thereof would get married here]. Let people get civil unions in the government, regardless of race, color, religion, ancestry, national origin, immigrant status, homelessness, economic status, gender, sexual orientation, age, medical condition, physical appearance, or physical or mental disability. Marriage is marriage. The government has no place in a sacred union, because the government isn't sacred.

You, who believes people who wish to marry people of their own gender? You're right. You, who believe marriage is a sacred union between a man and a woman in your religion? You're right (even if your religious leader disagrees, your religion is your religion). The government, having a place in the sacred part of anything sacred? Let's not. That can solve both sides.

Comments, questions, concerns?

Short Haircuts

For about a year previous to this, I have been looking around at short haircuts, since I wanted to cut mine. During my research, I read several sites that said that people with thick hair should not get short haircuts. I also ran across some horror stories, up to and including a woman's boyfriend breaking up with her.

Well, I was on the fence, leaning toward short hair. So I brought it up around some friends. And then:

"Girls cannot have short hair."

I don't believe I need to elaborate upon the immediate reaction of every female at the table, including myself.

Next haircut appointment, I arrive a little early, flip through some magazines, and get my hair cut from mid-back down to about an inch, with side bangs.

And the horror stories? ...Not so much. I got a bunch of compliments on my new hairstyle, and the worst comment I got was that I look like my mother. Bringing this up in front of anyone while we are both in the room is a good way to get a few laughs.

I know several girls from my school were horrified at the idea of their hair being cut short, yet everyone--everyone--seemed to like my hairstyle. So my main question is...why the terror? What is this obsession with long hair? Some justifications I hear around are that long, healthy hair takes years to grow, so it means the person has been well-taken care of, that guys grow up wanting to rescue Cinderella and Rapunzel, and none of these princesses have short hair, so guys aren't going to want to 'rescue' girls with short hair, etc., etc.

My view? My neck pain's dissipating, I'm getting fashion compliments, I'm not hiding behind my hair anymore, and I feel better after running. Short hair rocks. And anyway, I'm more of a knight than a princess.

Tropes That Occured to Me While Writing This (they didn't inspire, they're just sort of related):
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/RapunzelHair
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/RapeOfTheLock
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/HairTropes

Vampires

Vampires. Love 'em, hate 'em, they're everywhere these days. It's like unicorns all over again, except people seemed to just ignore the fact that unicorns used to be this powerful, wild creature. I don't mean that unicorns were all death and destruction, but most people remember the virgin capture. It was to tame a unicorn. There was a wild creature there to tame.

So, why are some people so obsessed with vampires remaining monstrosities (because yes, any smart being who is always evil is a monstrosity)? It could be because of our most basic definitions of what a vampire is: a humanoid that sucks blood. Losing blood is a dramatic and gory way to die. Strictly speaking about pain, bleeding is not the worst way to go, but it looks bad, it sounds bad, and, if you are around, it smells bad. Scent gives a very visceral reaction.

The biggest complaint I hear is that vampires are being treated as sympathetic and/or kind creatures. The explanation I usually get is that you can see clearly by looking at Dracula, Nosferatu (and occasionally Carmilla) that vampires are evil beings. Pointing to these vampires as the original undermines the point that they are trying to make, as vampires predate the printing press by a long ways. Assyrian, Babylonian, and ancient Hebrew tradition have some written examples, and vampire myths exist in enough separate cultures to suggest a fairly universal idea. Not all these vampires were good, but as to whether they were actually evil...that's not always spelled out any more clearly than it would be for a human in a story. Not even getting into a debate of what is evil...

The secondary complaint I hear, which is usually latched onto the first, is that vampires are becoming hypersexualized. This is an...interesting argument, especially when coupled with a reference to Carmilla or Dracula. Dracula is a thinly veiled "those gol derned foreigners are comin' into our town and rapin' our wimmin!" (Apologies to anyone who actually talks like that or knows anyone who does.) [Note upon rereading: I like Dracula. I've read through it, and enjoyed the book. This is not an insult to the it.] Carmilla is a precursor for lesbian vampires everywhere. Even without that, vampires' lust for blood and lust for sex are commonly combined or conflated in one way or another. If you are saying that older is better, having borderline hypersexualized vampires is all but required.

Why does this bother me so much? Because this restricts vampires to forces, like a tornado, an earthquake or a tsunami. If a vampire just is evil, there is no motivation because there is no choice. A vampire by that definition, or indeed any being with no choice in his or her morality, is not a character, s/he is a force. Even if the vampire was good, that person is dead and gone.

The hypersexualization mostly bothers me because it is a part of the original myth. It would be like calling succubi or incubi hypersexualized. It is a centerpiece of the mythology. Making them without it is completely fine, but don't tell me that doing so is better.

In Summary: Vampires have no 'original' mythology. Don't tell me you, who probably hasn't even been around 100 years, know what happened when bloodsucking humanoid creatures were created. And please don't tell me that's the only way to write them.

P.S. Did you know sunlight didn't kill vampires until very recently? Usually it just de-powered them. True story. [Later: And, of course, really old vampires tended to not physically leave their graves.]

Tropes To Look At (WARNING: This site will ruin your life, suck up all your time, and may addict you to the point that you will no longer be able to have a normal conversation without thinking in tropes. Believe this troper. She knows.)
(Oh, reading anyway? Alright.)
[Note: None of these contain an actualy continuation of my blog post, they just are some of the tropes that got me thinking.]
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main.VampireTropes
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/FriendlyNeighborhoodVampire
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/VampiresAreSexGods
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/YourVampiresSuck
How addicting is this site? While pulling those links up I started browsing through. I got to non-vampire related tropes, and I almost reflexively linked to wiki walk. Gah!
(And for those of you who want more on that beginning bit: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Unicorn )