The Antisocial Socialist

lienne wanted to know about my masochistic tribble.

What do I say about my tribble? It was a gift from the lovely and wonderful snarkitysnarks, who I can only assume bought it from a guy named Cyrano Jones on Deep Space Station K7. Or at a con, but the other explanation is better. It has a purring mechanism. You would think that a tribble would be like a cat in that you can make it purr by petting it, but in regards to this particular tribble, you would be wrong. The way to make it purr is to spank it. Hard. On where its ass would be if tribbles had asses, which they don't. Then it purrs like a mofo.

If this is a bug rather than a feature, I'd prefer not to know, because let's face it, masochistic tribbles are hilarious.

The tribble's name is O.K. Corral because I don't care how awful everyone says that episode is. It's Star Trek TOS + Westerns and it is the greatest. Then again, I don't understand why everyone hates the space hippie episode either.

Shamelessly stolen from jvmatucha:

There is an evil alternate universe according to Star Trek.

1. How does your evil altenate self differ in appearance? (Added goatee? Exposed midrift? Taller hair? More tattoos? )

2. What does your evil alternate universe self do for a living?

3. How would your friends/family/coworkers respond to your evil alternate universe self when they were transported to this universe and took over your place?

Remember when Orson Scott Card was going to overthrow the American government if gay marriage became legal?

Now he's pleading for tolerance. Um. OSC, you're on the board of an organization that has, as pretty much its sole mandate, intolerance.

A boycott is not censorship. No one owes OSC, or anyone else, a living as a writer. No one owes him a platform from which to spew his bigotry. Man, I hope this movie flops harder than a dying fish.

A quick review, 'cause I have a long day tomorrow.

I...didn't hate it? I kind of thought I would. I didn't think it was actually a good Star Trek movie, but as a summer blockbuster with exploding spaceships, it was highly entertaining. I don't think a good Star Trek movie is actually commercially viable, and it also requires a good series, which we don't have at the moment. (What I wouldn't do for a DS9 movie, but that's never gonna happen.)

The puzzling thing about JJ Abrams' reboot is how fundamentally embarrassed it seems to be about the source material. Sure, there are winks and callbacks to TOS, but if you want an indication of what I'm talking about, calculate the actual on-screen time any of the characters are in the iconic uniforms. (Well, except for Uhura and that mini-dress. Not that she doesn't have the legs for it.) Kirk in particular seems to get into a leather jacket at the earliest opportunity. ("This can't be an official Starfleet mission!" Right.) And everything has to be constantly moving, lest the summer blockbuster audience get bored. At least he's limited most of the lens flare to the bridge scenes.

More central, however, is how the space exploration and meeting exciting alien thing—the core purpose of the original series and those that followed—is also faintly embarrassing to a modern director and a modern audience. There has to be a terrorism allegory, because sci-fi for the sake of sci-fi isn't relevant. The movie itself takes a fairly progressive stance in terms of the War On Turr, but whatever message it's trying to send is buried under the cool explosions.

(I like explosions, and so I enjoy this. But. This is why it's not a Star Trek movie.)

( More spoilery type things under here )

Since a Star Trek movie about, you know, boldly going where no man has gone before, is not ever going to happen, and since studios won't take a risk on a big budget sci-fi movie that isn't part of some known franchise, I'm going to shrug off whatever nerd rage and just enjoy big dumb movies for what they are. Be honest, it's still more fun than Star Trek: The Motion Picture. And most of the others. I admit that I have terrible taste and my favourite is actually the one with the whales, but I have a feeling they won't try to remake that one.

Oh you guys, you guys. I am so enjoying the explosion of pure nerd rage that has accompanied Chris Sprouse's decision to quit Adventures of Superman over the Orson Scott Card controversy. (You can read some of the butthurt* in the comments there and also in the BoingBoing post about it.

Now, Sprouse's actions, if you read his statement, are not particularly heroic—he's not quitting because OSC is a terrible human being with terrible views; he's quitting because of the "controversy" surrounding OSC's hiring. Hell, even if he quit over OSC's terrible views, it's hardly praiseworthy to not want to work for an actual bigot who plans to overthrow the government if gays get too many human rights. That's kind of called "baseline human decency." But in the white, male, straight-dominated world of mainstream comics, I'll take what I can get, and Sprouse has done right by deed, if not by word, making him far better of a person than the bigwigs at DC.

But to hear the nerds tell it, Sprouse, and the folks calling for a boycott of OSC's Superman run and/or the new Ender's Game movie are one step away from throwing all of the conservatives in gulags and forcing their political opponents to choose between death and mandatory butt sex. I keep seeing neckbeards screeching about freedom of speech, and how OSC's has somehow been denied.

Nerdy liberals are not helping much by pointing out that the problem is not that OSC has reprehensible beliefs, but that he sits on the board for the National Organization for Marriage and every penny you give him ends up benefiting an organization that has, as its sole raison d'être, the denial of civil liberties to gay people. I think this is because no one's read his recent books. One of my friends, who is approximately as nerdy as I am, didn't even know about his politics. I've read—well, parts of his recent books; to be honest, they're pretty unreadable—and the dude has an agenda that he can't keep out of his writing and that should be kept well away from Superman's spandex-clad buttocks, trust me. (He can't write a riff off Hamlet without working in ass-fucking.) So the issue is not just economic; it also has to do with OSC as a person and an artist. You shouldn't give him your money because he's awful.

The most hilarious bit is when the neckbeards compare the boycott campaign to McCarthyism (because OSC probably would argue that communists and fellow travellers ought to be shot in the face), suggesting that we, the nerd community, have an obligation to buy his media so that he can earn a living in the style to which he has become accustomed. Freedom, apparently, means an compulsory copy of Ender's Game and its sequels in every household. (Hey neckbeards who take this line: I'm a geek too! You are hereby obligated to help me maintain my paid LJ account; otherwise you're censoring me.)

Which—no. In a capitalist system, you are not guaranteed the right to earn a living in the profession of your choosing, even if you wrote a book a gazillion years ago that people liked a a lot. If you think this is unfair, let's talk! But unless you're proposing something revolutionary, OSC has no inherent right to not have his career destroyed over his repellent worldview.

Nor is he being "censored." OSC has every right to peddle his hateful shit on a soapbox, literally or metaphorically, without the government stepping in to jail him on charges of Aggravated Asshaberdashery. He's got a right to put his poisonous ideas down on paper without every copy of said paper getting burned or pulped. He even has the right to try and sell his raving bollocks to any publisher who will have him—but said publishers are just as free to say, "No, we do not believe your raving bollocks will sell," and we, as media consumers, are also free to say, "No, we will not buy your raving bollocks because we don't want our money going to NOM, and also because your writing sucks now." This is not censorship.

Let's briefly touch on the other argument I'm seeing a lot of, which is that an artist is separate from his political beliefs. As previously mentioned, OSC is not—both financially and in his inability to keep attacks on queers and leftists** out of his books. But let's just say he was not on the board of NOM and he was only writing books about little boys being unaware that they were committing genocide. I would still argue that his political beliefs are relevant. Look, I like all kinds of problematic art—my two favourite musical genres being opera and neo-folk—but the distinction between a geek-as-active-participant-in-media and a passive consumer at least ought to be, to some degree, critical engagement with said art. I can love Wagner, or T.S. Eliot, or Frank Miller†, or James Bond movies, or Chronicles of Narnia, despite the anti-Semitism, or Islamophobia, or misogyny, or blatant support for British imperialism inherent in the authors and/or work while still criticizing the politics they represent. If you feel a need to mindlessly defend an artist because you like their work, you are officially too dumb to play in geekdom.

Finally, to address the last defence I'm seeing, which is that anything he wrote is actually good. I'm going to piss a bunch of people off and say that, unless you're a bullied adolescent, Ender's Game is actually a bit crap, and if you're over the age of 16, you ought to see OSC for the naked emperor that he is. He's kind of a crap writer. Even if he was the greatest guy, I still wouldn't buy his books or comics because they're not that good. That's not a boycott or anything—it's just taste. If Ender's Game came out now you'd probably roll your eyes. Admit it.

I actually kind of feel sorry for OSC as a person, because I think his bigotry goes beyond simple bigotry well into the realm of mental illness. But that doesn't mean that anyone ought to indulge his delusions. He's got issues, but unfortunately those issues resonate with many theoretically sane, fascist-minded people hell-bent on oppressing anyone who's not like them, and he's got money and more of a platform to be heard than most spluttering lunatics do. For this reason, you should actually torrent Ender's Game rather than pay money to see it, if you feel the need to torture yourself by watching it, and you should totally boycott his run on Superman if it goes ahead. There are enough bigots in the world without you funding their bigotry.

* Probably a bad choice of words.

** See Empire. Or don't. It's awful; I got about 50 pages in before deciding it was too bad to even parody.

† Well, before he went to actual shit.

China Miéville, Cory Doctorow, and Peter Watts in the same room debating whether or not people are essentially scum.

( cut for pictures )

The penultimate B5 post! I can hardly contain my excitement.

( these episodes were mostly great )

Delayed due to IRL having a life and the second season of Game of Thrones. Which is fantastic. Especially the breathtaking penultimate episode that broke the internet last week. Anyway, if you want to geek out about GoT with me, I'm now caught up and currently reading the second book.

But back to B5. A favour, folks? Could we keep the spoilers down a bit? I am almost done but there is still the odd good part and I’d like to be surprised. I am guilty of soliciting spoilers with my wild predictions and begging to know if the show ever gets better, but you must all be strong and sit on your hands for just a bit longer.

Here’s a needlessly gory guide as to what is and is not a spoiler:

Not a spoiler
“Byron sucks! Fortunately, you don’t have to endure him for much longer. You’re going to love how this storyline ends.”

A spoiler
“Bester captures Byron in the next episode and transports him back to PsyCorps headquarters, where he proceeds to dissect him alive, starting with his tongue so that he can’t annoy sabotabby with his godawful dialogue. I particularly love the bit where his eyeballs go squishity-squoosh! I wonder how they got that sound effect.”

Anyway!

( not everything is entirely SFW, depending on how prudish your workplace is )

Under the cut: Horrendous working class stereotypes, altogether too much space hippie, probably too many Star Trek references, and a poll about how Byron should die.

( my thoughts on B5, let me show you them )