Halloween D&D

Ms. Jubilation Apogee
Castling Press
Foundry City, Diora

Update incoming on events astounding Sweetgrove town borderlands watch post

Rutherford Banjo

Charge to Mr. R. Banjo
Sweetgrove, Diora

(Also available to read here)

Trudy posted this link and I think everyone should see it

http://money.usnews.com/money/blogs/outside-voices-careers/2012/10/29/8-workplace-rights-your-employer-might-not-tell-you-about

The big one to me is actually:

5. Your employer can't stop you from discussing your salary with your co-workers. The National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) says that employers can't prevent employees from discussing wages among themselves. Many employers have policies against this anyway, but these policies violate the law.

Talk about your wages with other people. Make sure you're getting paid fairly. Are you getting paid less than them? Why?

This is something that has annoyed me for ages, so it's nice to know it's ILLEGAL that people tell me I'm not allowed to talk about how much money I make with someone else. It's not a case where coworkers are actually going to get jealous-- I talked with a guy at my job who's been there for four or five years and does a different position than me, and he makes more than double what I do. I'm not jealous of HIM, but I am suspicious of the company's policies with regards to myself and all other recent hires, because I KNOW they're not paying us as much as they should.

Which is something I and everyone else at my job has a fucking right to know. For fuck's sake.

Unfortunately, Jacqueline Hatch isn't on my ballot of judges to decide if they are retained

That is to say, the judge mentioned back in this post here.

Wreck-it Ralph

I wasn't actually very impressed by Paperman (the animated short preceding the film) for a few reasons:

-Musically, it felt cheap
-I was extremely disappointed that the animation was cel-shaded 3D and not just 2D animation. I know 3D is cheaper, but it's just a short, guys. Would it have been so hard?
-The really stereotypical gender roles established even by this simple, five minute short were really offensive to me. Let's list them quickly:
*the man was required to initiate the romance
*the man's face is not traditionally handsome; he has a big nose, and normal-size eyes. He is drawn to look like a skinny, tall, gawkish person. He's stylized, but mostly looks human. By contrast, the woman has the same demure petite perfect hourglass figure as every Disney princess. She also has eyes much larger than makes sense proportionately for her face (in what is actually a more classic Disney style) and no facial imperfections at all.
*while the man is stubborn and has to be dragged into things, the woman is portrayed as immediately going along with the mystical "event" that brings them together for the romance that the man wanted.
*the entire thing is a male-oriented wish fulfillment story, since the woman is not portrayed as having any interest or further thought about the paper. She is more concerned with making her train than the paper that blew into her face.

I am actually particularly annoyed that the woman is portrayed as immediately going for the mystical whatever crap. I am really sick of the stereotypical assumption that women are "wise and faithful" while men are "intelligent and strong".

As for Wreck-It Ralph itself, the movie was all right, but I was unfortunately sitting next to a little girl who shit her pants halfway through the film and spent a large part of it trying not to breathe while her parents ignored her noises of complaint and desire to alleviate her problem. I particularly hate her mother for slapping her hand away when she tried to grab mommy's arm to explain that she had had an accident. Argh.

Wreck-It Ralph features yet another kinda clueless dumb guy who's not good at expressing his emotions and just wants to be loved by everybody else. He's too passive aggressive to just straight up tell them what he wants, and because of the way that gets framed, a very legitimate complaint (you all treat me poorly and intentionally exclude me because I'm different, for reasons COMPLETELY BEYOND MY CONTROL) gets not only ignored, but thrown back in his face at one point of the movie by one of the privileged characters who he has temporarily inconvenienced.

I will say this now: despite this, Wreck-It Ralph isn't the main character of his own story. Which is good, because I felt like the device set up for his character growth was a little half-assed. Wreck-It Ralph is actually the story of Vanellope von Schweetz, who is adorable and voiced by Sarah Silverman.

Things I liked about the film:

-the buddy relationship between V and Ralph
-the cameos of actual video game characters (though I was a little sad at how small some of them were, but that's completely okay since it means an actual movie was had, and not just a parade of out-of-context references)
-the focus on Ralph's desire not to run away from home like a child, but to return home as someone he could be proud of. Despite my problem with his inability to articulate himself, I really liked that Ralph's response to a negative part of his life was to desire to improve that part of his life, rather than run away from his problems or deny that they ever existed.

The story wasn't particularly new (especially since Winnie the Pooh, The Velveteen Rabbit, Toy Story, Monsters Inc. and so on already exist and have tread extensively the ground of imaginary things that have special secret lives when we're not looking), but it was still fun and covered the kind of ground that can still be enjoyable even if you've heard similar stories a hundred times. I really liked that the "outside, there are real people looking in!" POV character was a young girl gamer instead of a boy, (setting aside the secondary complaint that she was a white, blond girl in a movie that had two non-white characters total, as far as I could tell. Baby steps, I guess.) because it meant that the movie did touch on the fact that video games appeal to people regardless of gender. I was a little disappointed that the plot went where it did, but to tell you why I'm going to have to go into spoiler mode, so check out under the cut.

The one big thing I didn't like about the film was that Lady Marine fell into a traditional romance with Fix-it Felix. (She had a name but I can't actually remember off of the top of my head, which I think is important to note because if it had been said more than three times in the film I might have remembered it.) Yes, that's right, once again the stereotype has been replayed that the badass action hero lady ACTUALLY secretly is a tender weak female inside who desperately wants a man to take charge and be her hero.

Of all the tropes that have come from attempts to actualize the idea of female heroes, this is the one that angers me the most. It's NOT that women can't have romance without suddenly losing their badassery, mind you-- it's the false implication that there is ONLY one acceptable way to have a romance, and that that is between a man and a woman, wherein the man is the "hero" (dominant, decision-making partner) and the woman is the "damsel" (submissive, compromising partner). This is just a straight up unequal and unhealthy style of relationship. If they could at least have had her CONTINUE to be in charge while having her romance with the man (pulling them out of danger instead of being pulled; initiating the kiss without having one "stolen" first; ALL the little body language things that turn a fictional relationship into a heterosexual male oriented fantasy) it would have been fine. But what's being played for laughs here just isn't funny to me, because it's not a joke-- it's just the reality for every female character in every movie, tv show and video game I see, these days. It's depressing.

Anyway, down to the muck and grime of my big disappointment in the plot.

( And let me preface this by reminding everyone who might think this means I hate the movie with the very true statement that Disney makes good movies and great movies; the problem with this movie is that it's only good, and could have been better. )