What makes me stranger doesn't kill me.

A little less of a fannish post, today, and a little more of a post on life in general.

So, as some of you may know, I keep up with the awesome Slacktivist blog. I'm solely a lurker, but I've learnt a lot from the discussions that pan out in that blog-- not just on religious fundamentalism, which is the main topic of its popular Left Behind Friday posts, but on everything from Norse gods to werewolf myths to the politics of job loss in the newspaper industry. It's a fascinating forum full of thoughtful minds, and even when I don't agree with them, I feel my understanding of the situation broadened by seeing people hash it out, and gain a better appreciation for both sides. Oh, and it's often pretty funny, too.

But I'm going to have to stop reading for a few days, because the current thread is bugging me too much. It's nothing big or drastic: just an ongoing discussion, which is dragging out way too long for my comfort, in which a lot of the stereotypes about obsessed fans/nerds/"otaku" are being used to justify derision and mockery towards people who lean towards the geekier side of the social spectrum.

The thing that's grating on me, though, isn't the usual bugbear that people have with this kind of rhetoric: "well, my friends and I aren't like that, so stop tarring us with the same brush as all those losers who can't hack the real world". That's the main party line that the geek side of the argument is turning out here, and I don't disagree with it entirely. Not all geeks are people who have problems handling the mundane world, and it's terribly unfair that the media and society invariably paints all geeks in the worst possible light, even if some are like that.

But my problem with the issue is that I've had friends on the end of the spectrum that most frequently gets ripped apart in these discussions, even by other geeks. People who didn't quite know when to stop talking about their comic book collection, even past the point when people seemed to be bored. People who couldn't face a 9-5 job, or social interaction, because they simply broke down every time they tried. People who would happily have become hikikomori if only they could. People who turned up to conventions smelling kind of bad.

And yes, some of the people who fall into these categories are obnoxious, destructive, abusive.

But some of the people who just aren't that good at mundane life are also some of the most compassionate, gentle, thoughtful, philosophical and interesting people I've known.

And some of the people who live perfectly mundane, normal lives are obnoxious, destructive and abusive, moreso than the weirdest geeks and nerds I've ever known.

The person who was being down on the "loser geeks" the most self-identifies as a "bitch". Quite frankly, when it comes down to it, I'd much rather talk to someone who identifies as an elf than someone who identifies as a bitch. Calling yourself an elf, unlike calling yourself a bitch, isn't a declaration that you're inherently hostile and vicious towards all other intelligent beings.

I guess it basically makes me sad to read discussions like that because when people say "it's okay to mock and attack loser geeks", they're saying "it's okay to make the lives of some pretty nice, thoughtful, intelligent people miserable just because you think you're better than them". And I know some people do think that. It just makes me sad, that's all. And I know some people will laugh at the fact that it makes me sad. To some people, the only acceptable response is to deride these people; any attempt at compassion is a laughable weakness. I don't mind, at least not when they think it of me. But I still reserve the right to say it.

The Myth of Redemptive Violence

Not normally the kind of subject I cover over here in my fanblog, but... this is absolutely fascinating, and bears mentioning everywhere.

Wikipedia article
An excerpt from Walter Wink's original essay on the subject

Even before I got to the point in the Wikipedia article where it mentions videogames, I was thinking, "this is my problem with most RPGs". Discovering this myth allowed me to locate the missing piece that's always eluded me when talking about how I think violence is too often assumed to be the default solution even in games that otherwise promote pacifism; how the concept of a "battle system" undoes the good that many games try to encourage through their storylines; how developers seem to be incapable of realising the conflict between their use of battle mechanics and the messages of their games.

They are incapable of realising it.

It's endemic. "Good arises only when you have defeated (the physical manifestation of) evil; therefore, beat the bad guy" is such a standard plot that even cartoons for very young children feature it. Sure, they'll include caveats so as not to appear too bloodthirsty, like the bad guy retreating while cackling "I'll get you next time!" rather than being killed, but the core plot remains: we mst conflict with the servants of evil, and we must triumph.

If I believed in Satan, I'd be up for saying this is Satan's biggest lie; I certainly now know how Christians feel when they make that kind of statement. Of course, the idea of Satan is in itself forged from this myth, from the idea that an entity can personify evil and that this entity must eventually be hunted down and destroyed, but the sentiment behind at least that statement-- that humanity has, for countless years, operated under the influence of a lie so seductive that the vast majority don't even know they're being seduced-- makes sense enough. We're pretty good, as a species, at telling ourselves lies; it's an unfortunate side-effect of the fact that we make sense of our lives through telling ourselves stories. We're good at telling ourselves that the current hated group of the day is really out to get us, that freedom isn't and by implication never should be free, that the good guys always triumph and, as such, if we triumph then we must be the good guys.

There's nothing wrong with good winning, but the master's tools will never dismantle the master's house, to quote one insightful individual. If we use violence to attempt to best evil, we only play into evil's hands; for there is no such thing as evil, really, other than our oppression of each other with violence in word, deed and thought.

I want to see society stop using the master's tools to try and dismantle the master's house. I want the lie that we should strive to fight evil, to maim evil, to laugh in the face of evil as it dies-- no, even to reluctantly glance back at the fallen corpse of evil, and say "it was regrettable, but it had to be done"-- to be undone. Because evil isn't a living thing; it's a concept. What lies before you is no more or less than the corpse of a being that was once alive, slain by evil itself. You can't kill evil, can't stick a knife through its heart.

And that disturbs people who've been raised on the myth of redemptive violence, because they feel powerless unless they can lash out, unless they can stab, unless they can subdue, because that's what society tells us winning is. And that's why we need to stop teaching people that myth, because it makes us feel sure that to do good, one must hurt evil, and leaves us feeling hollow when we can't hurt, when we can't attack, when we can't conquer. Most people would feel unsatisfied if they got to the end of an RPG and there was no final boss battle. We need the "satisfaction" of defeating our enemy. We need it because we've been raised on the myth of redemptive violence.

Once we recognise that this is holding us back, as a species, from resolving all of our problems, we'll finally begin to grow. I'm confident the world will come to realise it in time. After all, so many of you already do.

Peace won by the sword will fall by the sword. I've always thought this statement was profound; turns out I hadn't even realised the extent of its profundity until now. With one carefully-tuned phrase, Mir both echoes both the words of feminist writer Audre Lorde and attacks-- no, not attacks; she rebuts; see how easily it creeps into our language-- the myth of redemptive violence. Tellingly, she says this when you're about to kill her, when you take the bad path in AT1. Even more tellingly, perhaps, she says this even while preparing to fight you, even after a lifetime of fighting. She knows it's true, but she can't escape, because the myth is such a seductive one: just beat the ones oppressing you, and your oppression will be gone! But it doesn't work like that, because every act of violence is an act of oppression, and the oppressed, and those who cared for them, will strike back in turn; and on it goes.

This is the lesson Mir teaches. This is the lesson that, if you fight against her, she recognises yet fails to embrace the whole way, because someone has to drop the sword first; and if it's not you, why should it be her? Why should she concede? It shouldn't have to be any of us, we think, but it needs to be one of us, because, as the bad ending shows, otherwise the violence never ends. It needs to be one of us, even if that one is the one who was attacked first. Even if we're in the right. Even if we have every reason to want to fight back. Someone has to. Someone has to, or else no one will.

A moment of reflection

Sometimes, like all virtual worlds, Second Life is more than a game.

I can't remember how I found it, but I stumbled across this memorial in SL recently, for those transgendered people who've been victims of hate crimes or have committed suicide as the result of the conflict between what they are inside and what society says they should want to be.

For those of you who don't have SL, I took a screenshot to show you what it's like. I think this memorial was a pretty fitting place for my Mir avatar to be; I think this declaration, displayed on the wall and reprinted here for those who can't read it, is something she could easily have spoken:

For the fallen, I will stand. I will stand to oppose bigotry, fear and hatred. I will stand to educate the ignorant. I will stand for any who suffer. I will stand for the unknown soul, facing the harshest of realities, struggling against the worst of odds, trying to remain sane in a world that neither accepts nor understands. You may have been raped, beaten, shot, stabbed and scarred, your mind, body and soul ravaged by the harshest cruelties of both man and nature. Be you live or dead, may you always find peace and comfort within these walls.

- A Monument -
To the Inhumanity of Humankind

This is what Mir is about. This is what I'm about. And yes, I cross it over with my fandoms. It'd be a poor thing if I abandoned my awareness of what I think is right and good for the sake of participating in a fandom, after all.

Taking first, for the rights of Reyvateils everywhere.

So Falling Through The Generation Gap is, as of this posting, officially the number one Google result for "diquility". That's fairly impressive, considering the term is used in a lot of discussions of AT; I suppose it's that we're probably the only site that actually uses the term repeatedly and often, rather than simply mentioning it in passing.

I'm quite heartened by this, not because I specifically want traffic, but rather because I like to imagine that if there were Reyvateils out there searching for info on Diquility, they'd be able to find helpful advice straight away; and also, if people are searching for generic info on the world of AT and the first thing they find is something that treats that world as a real, meaningful place... that's really awesome, and I'm quite honoured that I could have been responsible for that.

We're also, incidentally, the first result for "reyvateil rights" (in quotes); sadly enough, though, my writings here and on my other blogs seem to be the only results for that query. A shame that no one else has considered the concept worthy of serious discussion, especially since there are such obvious parallels with the oppression of various groups in our own world throughout history. I suppose AT's a small fandom, but still, I think there's a lot of potentially enlightening elaboration to be had there, which is why Falling Through The Generation Gap exists. I hope, through it, more fans can be brought around to seriously thinking about the rights of Reyvateils when they enter that world; I think it's an issue that, if you're at all a fan of the Reyvateil characters (or even if you aren't, but especially if you are), deserves some serious thought.


Speaking of FTTGG (or the Reyvablog, as its players fondly refer to it), I'd like to re-promote this particular link and see if I can't get a few of you to spread it around. It's presented from an in-game perspective, but it was written with a dual purpose: as well as making the players aware of many of the unfair ways in which Reyvateils are treated day-to-day on the streets and in the media, it also contains a message to those of us in this world, about how the characters people idolise might feel about artwork that shows them being degraded and humiliated.

If you sympathise with a fictional character and feel uncomfortable with the way a lot of artwork treats them as objects, and want to encourage other people to reflect, for a moment, on whether the characters they love would really want people thinking of them in that way, I encourage you to link to this entry if you can. It's not about being anti-porn; I'm quite fine with the existence of works that portray sexualised situations for the purposes of other people's pleasure. I just don't like that images that specifically degrade and brutalise characters are becoming widespread and even normative, because I don't like seeing the characters I love portrayed that way and I don't like thinking that others are becoming desensitised to the idea of their casual mistreatment. If you think the same way, linking to this campaign is one way to raise your voice in harmony. It may make someone think twice.

Presia metafalica rifaien tou yor sphilar....

haounomiko just posted this touching statement for the benefit of all of those who have lost rights now that California's Proposition 8 will, presumably, be passed.

Even if you're not gay, lesbian or bisexual yourself, even if you never plan to get married, please pass this message of support and comfort around for the benefit of those whose pain at being marginalised might be eased, just a little, by knowing that someone out there cares.