Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in Philippos Fourty-Two's LiveJournal:

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Thursday, June 26th, 2008
5:01 pm	I am not a Batman character. jbramx2 had this quiz, so I took it. By the end, I was saying, "Yeah, tell me I'm Steph." which batman character are you? created with QuizFarm.com You scored as Spoiler You are Spoiler. As Stephanie you're always setting out to prove yourself, and given any kind of encouragement, you tend to take it as blanket permission for being considered an expert. You're really only trying to help, but you're often left out of the loop (which you freaking hate) so it usually backfires on you. You're not stupid, though you sometimes act like it - you're just a little new at this. Sadly, it doesn't look like you really get the perspective you need until it's too late. Spoiler 68% Robin 65% Batman 55% Dick 50% Jason 43% Batgirl 43% Alfred 28% Barbara 23% (3 Comments |Comment on this)
Saturday, June 14th, 2008
5:49 pm	Tucker Stone closed an article on bringing back Steph with this observation: if DC's right to assume that those who were raising feminist-based criticism were just whiny fans, then resurrecting a third-rate character in a low-selling Batman spin-off was the right move. After all, they brought her back, right? But if they are mistaken? If there was something more going on with all those essays, those blog-posts, and websites over the last four years? If all of those readers were intelligent people making a big deal, because to them, this was an opportunity for DC Comics to acknowledge that some of their adult readers wanted the characters they care about to be treated with the same respect given to the ones they make movies out of? Well, then they probably should have just drawn the damn memorial and moved on. Hmmm. I disagree. The issue in my mind is that she was treated as grist for the drama mill, to be discarded once her story is told. Letting her have a memorial is a step up, in that it acknowledges the past. But killing her off is an issue in itself. So letting a female character continue in her career is even better than having her memory be a scar on Batman's past. I wonder if DC intended for Steph to suffer what happened to Kathy Kane, being ultimately retconned out of existence altogether. (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Friday, June 13th, 2008
4:42 pm	Have you seen the new Gisele Lagace strip? Menage a 3 Looks like it's in addition to <http://www.pennyandaggie.com/>Penny & Aggie</a>, not instead. That's good. (Comment on this)
Monday, June 9th, 2008
6:41 pm	One last post on this (probably) I do have one thing to thank kynn for: calling me on my crap. Look, I'm never going to make a living writing narrative. I'm not cut out for it. So whenever I say something about what I would have written, well, it's just something I thought I was going to do once. And why should any of you care? (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Saturday, June 7th, 2008
5:08 pm	Trying to cool down OK, I know I've been on the other side of this. I have a tag called "alan (spit) moore" for crying out loud. The Roulette storyline in JSA pissed me off so much that I started nitpicking everything Geoff Johns did. (Well, the reascendancy of Hal Jordan in Green Lantern helped that along.) So the whole screaming match with kynn is a bit of me sticking my foot in my mouth, provoking someone else with knee-jerk reactions, & getting a taste of how irrational I can be about stuff I hate. And my own emotional response to the whole thing (which I'm not proud of) is really from a pile-up of other people annoying me. I got sick of the snobs at grammar_whores, for example. There's one blogger I recently discovered whose position is so crazy I don't even bother to respond. But it is (unfairly) affecting how I deal with anyone with a gendered take on literature right now: allecto [wait, that may be the wrong link, that's a plausibly real LJ] may just be someone who hates Joss Whedon so much that she has to find fault with every little line of dialogue, fairly or not. But she's so extreme, it seems like a joke. I suspect that she's [or her Joss-hatred is] no more real or sincere than Sister Rossetta. One who feels the need to say "this is no means an exhaustive list" when recounting a tiny handful of the women screwed over by millennia of subjugation under men in countries across the world, by so doing, looks silly. And so I find myself subconsciously responding to all genderists/feminists/complainers instead of just one. I don't know, kynn may be a reasonable person most of the time, who just has a huge overreaction to what she considers "refrigeration." Whom I managed to piss off by some ill-considered comments, & because we're both hot-blooded types who have to have the last word, it turned into a sort of flame war, with each of us misinterpretating & thus misrepresentating the other just enough to keep the whole thing going by pissing each other off. Anyway... *Sigh* The problem with gendered critiques is that by looking at everything with an eye to fit your criteria (whether they're, "man is superior, woman inferior," "woman is victim, man is stupid," "sex is a tool of domination," my own overstatement that "British writers are bad for American comics," or any number of other preconceived notions) you completely miss the actual text & what it's actually saying. As for Tim Buckley's work about a miscarriage in CTRL+ALT+DEL, I read the three installments that kynn had such a problem with, & I think, this is how guys I know would react to it. And since that's what Tim was going for, the strip is a success. Am I going to add C+A+D to my regular webcomics I read? Nah, I'm not interested in a comic about computer gaming. But he did good here, & the haters are blinded by their own prejudices. (1 Comment |Comment on this)
2:36 am	I am full of venom now. I just left grammar_whores, because I just couldn't sit back & say, "Really, you think that? How interesting!" I don't want to be in a group of self-proclaimed snobs, they remind me of the kids who made fun of me in high school for not pronouncing the "l" in "wolf." (I thought it was like "would" & "could," OK?) (Comment on this)
2:17 am	enough! I was going to say that kynn & I are too good at putting words in each other's mouths, but now, you know, I realize she's just a troll that I was stupid to feed. Stinking misandrist loca, yet another example of why I refuse to call myself a feminist. (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Friday, June 6th, 2008
4:30 pm	In which I & the person I'm arguing with are both talking out of our asses The embarrassing thing is that I responded to kynn's post after reading only part of it. I've still pretty much just skimmed the two posts I've responded to. Note, this is generally a bad idea. But you should see me on message boards, oy. So it's just now that it's registered that not only kynn is objecting to a plot element that just came up & how it's been treated the first three times it was mentioned in a four-panel strip, but she's not even a fan of the strip, she just followed a link. So she & I are two people who don't even read the strip usually, arguing about--what, exactly? I guess she's indulging in some kind of recreational outrage, & I'm just trying to defend the idea of tragic elements in a plotline, as someone who's thought about writing in the form. So, kynn? My response to you for today is as follows: What? You just hate anyone talking about something painful in a way that isn't exactly as you would approve? Get a grip, miss. You're not his editor. *Sigh* If you knew my posting from the DC Boards, you might know that I myself bitch about death as cheap pathos. I suppose most people don't know because I haven't ranted about it in a while, but I'm a big believer in the importance & legitimacy of comedy, & think tragedy is generally overrated by "serious, literary" types. That said, there is a place for this, as for death, disease, angst, & suffering in general, in literature. But to complain about a man who's been through this himself writing about a miscarriage from the point of view of someone like himself in a manner partially based on his own experiences--honestly, I don't know what to think about that, but it's definitely your problem, not the author's. (5 Comments |Comment on this)
Thursday, June 5th, 2008
6:04 pm	If one is not allowed to write about miscarriage from a male point of view... It seems like kynn's objection to the CTRL+ALT+DEL miscarriage was that it was, so far, dealt with from a male point of view. Um, right. OK, if writers aren't allowed to write about miscarriage from a male point of view, I think I may need a list of other impermissible perspective/subject intersections: 1. I am not allowed to write about my reaction to the World Trade Center attacks as I am not from New York & have never lived in NYC. 2. I am not allowed to write about the preparing & eating of meat from the point of view of the chef, as he is neither the one eating nor (most significantly) the one being eaten. 3. I am not allowed to write about a marriage from the point of view of the married couple's children. 4. I am not allowed to write about the bombing of Hiroshima because I am from Missouri. (If any of these sound rational to you, you really need to rethink what writing is for.) (10 Comments |Comment on this)
12:57 am	miscarriage in story There's a lot of noise about the CTRL+ALT+DEL miscarriage. Huh. I have had a hypothetical idea in mind for a long time, as part of a plan for how I would write a well-known corporate-owned character, in which that character would suffer a miscarriage the first time she was pregnant. This would serve long-term story purposes; first as a way to precipitate her breakup from the child's father; & later to justify her changing her level of activity in her dangerous avocation of "fighting crime" as these superheroes do, the next time she was pregnant. It was also a story idea in itself, a way to put pathos in the strip without killing off any more of her supporting cast. The idea of using death or miscarriage as a story element, whether as a prelude to a later pregnancy, or just as a tragedy in itself, makes perfect sense to me. There is a larger picture. (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Wednesday, May 28th, 2008
7:58 pm	Hey, another off-the-wall photocomic: A Softer World (Comment on this)
Thursday, May 22nd, 2008
6:21 pm	quizzes ( quizzes ) (Comment on this)
Monday, May 19th, 2008
2:39 pm	Just an observation. I think some people don't understand that open source is not the same as public domain. (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Saturday, May 17th, 2008
2:19 am	Ah, Japan. Solar-powered bra with water pockets? I don't think you're trying hard enough. (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Friday, May 16th, 2008
4:43 pm	When I said that I didn't really want B. Obama or Hillary Rodham C. for President? Yeah, this is the guy I wanted. (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Thursday, May 15th, 2008
4:46 pm	As for male feminists: I've recently given up on calling myself a feminist because it seems like "feminists" don't really agree with each other. If I were a woman, I could define my "feminism" to suit myself, but as a man, I'm not permitted that luxury. Thus no matter what position I take, some woman who disagrees with me will consider my feminism invalid & claim that her ovaries mean her definition trumps mine. Yeah, I can be broadly feminist by the standards of most people, but for some people, that isn't enough. And I say this because of that woman who thinks that, if I don't conform to a huge complex of her opinions on sex & gender relations, if not her entire moral worldview, I'm not a feminist, just "sort of feminist lite." Therefore, I consider "feminist" to be an ultimately subjective label of little descriptive use, no matter how much I may agree with this "feminist" or that one. I have testicles, therefore I can't claim it. (5 Comments |Comment on this)
Thursday, May 8th, 2008
3:30 pm	"Into the Future": Diana & Jo So, sometime last year, I made some very preliminary notes for a Wonder Woman story, bit of a Moorcock riff, wherein Diana & several other Amazon champions from history are pulled into the future by “Jo Nathan,” master of Hypertime, & son of an alternate timeline Diana. I never came up with the main action, but the following scene, meant to take place at the end sort of flowed out: Diana: “The Amazons of this period see us as their heroes of the past. But we’re from divergent timelines, right? That’s how you keep from violating causality.” Jo: “You’ve been reading speculative theory of temporal mechanics, I take it.” Diana: “I’m a genius, Jo. I’m pretty much capable of coming up with it on my own. But yeah.” [sheepish grin] Jo: “Actually, this is still a possible future for you.” Diana: “I think you’re confused, Jo. You pulled me out of a timeline where the Amazons were turned into puppets of Circe & wiped out in an assault on America. I saw Chorenas die myself, & she’s alive here.” Jo: “Diana,” (“Mom!” he thinks.) “I brought you here, especially you, to see that there is hope. The true legacy of the Amazons is reestablished in time, in your timeline.” Diana: [upset] “Excuse me, Jo, but how can you know that? You flit between worlds that can look so much alike.” [pause] “…Because you’ve seen it. You know how it happens.” Jo:“Of course. I pulled you out of a dark time in your life, but things will come back ito place soon. And you’ve just touched upon how that’s possible.” Diana: “What? Unless you plan to put me back into a divergent timeline—” (It clicks.) “‘worlds that can look so much alike.’ That’s it, isn’t it? Not that I’m in the wrong timeline here, but that the Amazons that invaded were from an alternate timeline. That still doesn’t do much to explain why they chose such a doomed strategy, but it’s a start.” Jo: “And now you are ready for what’s next.” (Next ish: Jo takes Diana to the timeline the AA! Amazons came from.) This isn't actually how I'm inclined to “fix” "Amazons Attack!" now, but it was going in some kind of interesting places at one time. Anyway, I was looking in my folder of script( fragment)s, found this, & thought, hey, why not? Just thought y’all might like to read it. (3 Comments |Comment on this)
3:22 pm	Fic: the perils of dating mystical superwomen [This was a bit of Wonder Girl dialogue I wrote just over a year ago. It's been sitting in a folder on my computer without further development. Two short exchanges presaging a longer scene.] So there’s this guy named Chance who gets to know Cassie (Wonder Girl) & meets Anita (Empress). Chance: Hey, your friend Anita is hot. Cassie: Um, I warn you, Anita is really serious. Chance: What do you mean? * ** * Chance: So I met Anita’s parents. Cassie: Scary, right? Chance: Yeah. ( Read more... ) (Comment on this)
Sunday, May 4th, 2008
1:19 pm	Enter Liv Minister. (Continuing from here; I had one big post drafted, then was going to split in three, but now it's two, & this one probably should be two & the start of another, but screw it, I want to put this up already.) One of my unconfessed “If DC let me” ideas is a continuation of the “New Wonder Woman” a.k.a. “Diana Prince: Wonder Woman” as written by (at various points) Mike Sekowsky, Denny O’Neil, & Samuel “Chip” Delany (with art by Sekowsky & Dick Giordano). I would continue from the cliffhanger left by Chip Delany in Wonder Woman v1#203, which as far as I know has never been resolved. Ideally, I would try to get notes from the original team, & continue it as O’Neil/Delany/Giordano would have. But since I tend to treat these ideas as idle musings, or mere “someday” fantasies, instead of tracking down these people to do it, I’ve never really pursued this. And those involved may not be around much longer. :( So far, I’ve figured it didn’t matter; DC signing off on it is too unlikely, too far away. But what if they didn’t have to? ( Read more... ) And if any of the “New Wonder Woman” / “Diana Prince: Wonder Woman” creators hear about this, & want to contact me, I’d at the very least love to know more about where the series was going, for historical reasons if not to continue it somehow. (Comment on this)
12:46 pm	beyond fanfic. I’ve been thinking about it, & the conventions of fanfic really bug me. We have all these people writing based on established characters, & renouncing rights to their own work because it references others’ trademarks. Screw that. So what I want to do is write stories that are clearly & legally mine. (Or that I can put into the public domain fully if I choose, or produce with open-source characters, like Jenny Everywhere.* ) If I base a character on someone else’s character, that’s fine, I’ll just change enough defining attributes to clearly be legally a different character. In many (though obviously not all) cases, simply changing the name should be enough. And then one can say, for example, “Well this is a character of a Black Lightning type, but it’s my own version.” Which is arguably better than having to admit that your “Black Lightning” is really just your own version of BL anyway—& by creating your characters, you can actually sell the story at some point. Is there a still a place for fanfic? Sure. If you really want to do a sort of subversive insertion into the memetic construct of someone else's work, that's fine. But you're not really managing to legitimately join that work (except in open-source cases, & even then, only sort of). It seems like it should be possible to work in a tradition or genre, continuing from "something like" a previous concept, & get that effect in, without having to use other people's trademarks. Wait, "seems like it should be"? That's awfully timid, there's a tradition of this! Of course, there are questions of how aggressive & how close one can get. Some of these questions I'd like to explore in a practical sense, as in this example. *(By the way, "Barbelith Satellite".) (Comment on this)