31? Do I get flavors with that?
11 February 2006 | birthday, jaschu, this | 1 Comment
My birthday’s tomorrow, but in case I don’t get the chance to sit down in front of the computer then, here’s me saying hello. Now it’s your turn:
My two-day boycott of my fantasy life
11 February 2006 | arguing on the internet, queer, worldofwarcraft | 1 Comment
A couple weeks ago, news came out that a GLBT player of World of Warcraft was given a warning for making an announcement about her guild on a public channel because she announced that the guild wasn’t “GLBT-only” but definitely “GLBT-friendly.” The classification? “Harassment: Sexual Orientation.” When she asked for clarification, the response was something along the lines of “we don’t allow discussion of controversial matters in public chat, including topics like religion, politics, and sexuality.”
No sexuality in a game with commands /kiss, /flirt, and /silly, the last one having some sexually-related jokes. I mean, “I heard if you cut off an extremity, it’ll regenerate a little bigger. Don’t believe it.” Hello? And that’s on the tame side.
If you follow the story of what happened from there, you’ll see an unsatisfactory round or two with Blizzard’s customer service team, some additional commentary about gay marriages in-game, a statement by a community manager, the involvement of and a letter from Lambda Legal, and finally an apology and statement of intent to rectify and improve the situation from Blizzard.
Wow, that was exciting. While all this was happening, I was trying to follow the deluge of weblog posts, forum threads, comments, and articles to piece together what was going on. My first instinct was that this was all a big mistake. Blizzard always came off as a gay-friendly company to me. In World of Warcraft, my male character could flirt with other men, kiss male revelers during the Winter’s Veil holiday event to get holly and mistletoe, and basically do everything the straight fictional characters could do. Even wear a dress (and to note, he owns two. That white summery thing and a slinky black number). If Blizzard didn’t want any of these things happening, it’d be pretty easy for them to code in gender-specific limitations to certain actions and items. I’ve seen it done in other games, so I know it’s possible. I just figured some poorly-trained GM probably saw Sara’s guild announcement, issued the warning, and made a bad call. It happens. It’s a low-paying job and they’re probably not given the resources to always do their job properly.
Still, if the Terms of Service was written to disallow mentions of queerness in public channels when there was so much straightness going on, then that’d be unfair, and I’m not down with the unfair. Some folks were talking about cancelling their accounts, and that seemed a viable option. But I know a bit about the economics of boycotts, and they’re only really effective if they last over longer periods of time. WoW players get billed by the month in the smallest chunks, and some players buy subscriptions in three- and six-month chunks for a discount. (I fell under the three-month chunk plan myself.) When you cancel your account, you get to keep playing until your month/three-month/whatever chunk of time is up. If this whole thing blew over in a week, most people cancelling would still be playing during that time, and assuming they reinstated their accounts once Blizzard cleared things up, there’d be no impact whatsoever.
So I posted to one mailing list I’m on that I wasn’t cancelling yet, that I was still reading opinion and gathering information and waiting to see what Blizzard would do before deciding to cancel or not cancel, and immediately got responses saying things like “If you have any pride in yourself, pull your money and call for a boycott.”
So did I mention I could /kiss the other guys. Fucking hell.
From there, list discussion devolved into boasting of activist histories, accusations that others had no pride in themselves, a couple tantrum-sign-offs, and while a lot of good points were raised, no one, or nearly so, was actually doing their research and actually looking into it. These were people who had never played the game and didn’t know that there were tons of gay groups which had existed for over a year with no problems from Blizzard staff. If they did do their research, it didn’t help that the story was getting over-inflated and people were falsely reporting that there could be no queerness and no safe spaces for queerness in the game whatsoever. (Although for the record and for fairness’ sake, both those webloggers have since revisited the issue or updated with better information once this whole thing got cleared up, dig it.)
Watching all of this happened, seeing people go off half-cocked while half-informed, made me feel years older. It reminded me a lot of myself, of what I, up until recently, would have done. And I hope won’t do anymore. It’s just not helpful.
At any rate, at some point between Caydiem’s post to the WoW forums and Blizzard’s apology, I decided that it was still an unfair situation if the ToS could be interpreted in the ways it had been, so I checked to see just when I’d be rebilled for my subscription. I checked on a Sunday, and it turned out my subscription would renew for another three months on that Tuesday. So, just in the off chance that this thing was going to draw out for a ridiculous (by today’s standards) amount of time, and feeling like Caydiem’s statement did nothing to address the potential imbalance, I cancelled. That Monday, I logged onto Cenarius for one last game with my guildies before my account was frozen. We hit Zul’Farrak, caused a lot of damage, I dinged 52, good times. I told my guildies that I’d probably be back by the end of the week, because there was probably no way Blizzard would let this fly.
When I cancelled my account, Blizzard gives you a textarea where you can describe why you’re leaving them. It’s all very “Dear John” except there’s a character limit. Due to that, I had to be brief. I put down:
I’m cancelling due to the policy regarding “Harassment, Sexual Orientation.” I’m sure you’re aware of the press one Sara Andrews has been getting and the case she and her legal advisors are putting together. After reading through much public opinion and customer relations made public to try and get to the truth of the matter, I’ve come to the opinion that the policy is biased against GLBTs, even if not intentionally. As a gay man, my conscience leads me to cancel until a satisfactory resolution is reached.
By Tuesday, an apology and clarification had been issued, and by Thursday my account was back up and running. A two-day boycott. Wow, I’m glad I participated. The cost of two days of play time works out to be about a dollar. That’s sticking it to them where it hurts. But hey, it could have all happened differently.
And the latest turn of events—much to the chagrin of all the internet people wailing that sexuality has no place in online games, I’m sure—is the new in-game event, based off of St. Valentine’s Day, in which you can profess your love for NPCs and woo them. And the guys can mack on the guys, and the ladies can mack on the ladies, you bet.
In the meantime, and even since before any of this brouhaha surfaced, I’ve been working on a new resource for GLBT WoW guilds and players. So now I have to find the time to get it off the ground. A little scary since I’ve never run a community before, but someone had to do it.
Symptoms
2 February 2006 | second person, stress | 1 Comment
Stress manifests in the body. You spend up to an hour upon waking lying on your back to stretch it out and banish any pain. Your forehead is breaking out with more zits than you’ve had at any point since high school. The latest symptom may be food poisoning. You’ve had diarrhea since this morning.
The future is more uncertain than it has been. There is a hole where several of your coworkers once were and it is unnerving. Your immediate peer is even more affected than you are for various reasons. You’ve always tried to take her under your wing at this place, but you don’t have any words of advice this time.
Your sleep schedule has shifted because you’ve had to get up earlier than normal for meetings and classes. Today, while trying to not fall asleep in class, you stare at the sawtooth cut of the vinyl of your wingtips. You picture running your fingers along the uneven edges, and imagine the sensation doing so would cause. So much so that you feel the tingling in your fingertips without even moving. You think maybe the food poisoning is altering your state of consciousness. The food poisoning is making you high.
You even looked green yesterday. Your coworkers say as much. You think about passing on dinner tonight. Stress manifests in the body: your appetite is gone, your fingertips still tingle even without the thought of sawtooth patterns. This might be a headache, or it might be a lack of food, or sleep, or both.
Blood
30 January 2006 | death, family, queer, the invisibles | No Comments
This week I picked up all but the final graphic novel collections of The Invisibles. Given that I’ve been in one of my analyze-my-life modes, I figured it’d be a good time to revisit the series, since I’ve found reading it is a good way to unfuck my head. Which says something, given that the series is something of a headfuck in itself. Really though, it’s good for reminding you that you’re in control of your own circumstance, or can be if you step up to it. Also attached to that is an awareness of authority, and how much you may have given up your own.
Another make-me-think issue was yet another death in the family. I don’t really ever discuss things in terms of capital-g God unless I’m around them, as they’re Catholic, and it’s just easier to use their language than it is to go down my pantheistic road. And really, we believe a lot of the same things, anyway, so it works out. And from talking the talk comes thinking the think, which gets me all comparitive, and I start making some mental connections based on this chapter from the book Japan’s New Middle Class (courtesy of George), the chapter being about (or at least what I’ve got out of it so far) Japanese social order and the influence of family in finding work and as a result, your general well-being. If I’m reading it right, you’d look to the head of your family to make the needed introductions to find work, even in another town. Subsequently, if you’re the head of the family, your position is secure, but only as stable as the connections you can maintain yourself, with no outside help. Suddenly, worshipping and revering your ancestors makes so much more sense.
So my uncle died and I headed back to my mom’s home town where much of our extended family lives and my youngest cousin asked me how come I only come to visit when someone dies. This is not entirely true, since she’s too young to remember some of my previous visits during the holidays, but more recently it holds. Lately we seem to have one family member drop off every year as well, so it’s not like I’m missing out on whole phases of her childhood. It’s not the best way to plan family visits, of course, but I’ve never been good at keeping in touch. Partly because for some time now, I’ve felt really disconnected from my extended family; there was a stage where I hit my twenties and all my cousins (all younger, here) were still college-aged or in their teens, and suddenly I’m different and adult and even just trying to have a conversation seemed unnecessarily awkward. Meanwhile, I was shifting into a role of fellow adult with my aunts and uncles, and my expectations on how to interact with them were also being tested. On a smaller scale, this wouldn’t be a big deal, but at the time, when I saw my family, it would be because we’d leave Chicago to head back there, and then we’d see them all at once. That meant dealing with parsing my shifting relations with twenty to thirty people at a time. Gladly, this phase is ending. My twenties are over and I’ve mostly gotten the hang of being an adult (as much as anyone does), my cousins are similarly aging and setting out on their lives and we’ve got things in common again, my aunts and uncles have gotten the hang of me and I them. I came back from this latest trip feeling more a part of my own family than I have in a long time.
One other thing that helped there was getting to spend time with one of my mother’s cousins, and meeting another one of them briefly. Both are gay and how fucking cool is it to have queer relatives? Having someone else around with whom to be catty is not a thing to be underestimated. Anyway, cousin J. and I got to hang out both evenings I was in town, having such misadventures as taking the youngest cousins to Target, the dollar store, and wherever else just to get out of the house, and critiquing High School Musical after my youngest cousin claimed the tv from 7 o’clock on. I also got to meet his partner, which was neat, having a gay couple at a family function when for the longest time I wasn’t sure how my family would even react to my own gayness. Once again I was told I should be in radio, what with my voice. It also smoothed out my view of gay Republicans, meeting J.’s partner. Granted, I’m sure we could get into political arguments (and this guy would probably argue me off the island since he’s had more experience and involvement in politics) if I felt inclined, but it illuminated for me that I’m less and less prone to think of things in terms of us/them.
Of course, that was one of the themes underlying The Invisibles; the more hellish of two metaverses being driven by an illusion of I/YOU, as the way we view ourselves reveals only part of ourselves, being four-dimensional beings being cross-sectioned by time, similar to if you were on two-dimensional planes viewing a sphere’s cross-section as being a circle, and our universe being the larval stage of a 5th-dimensional being waiting to be born… therefore we’re all connected in more than just action. But that’s just one way of looking at it.
When I was born for the 7th time
26 January 2006 | this, vague musical references | 2 Comments
I’m feeling almost weird about starting another weblog/journal. Am I forever cursed into switching domains and names of my online writing and lose readers in the process every few months or years? Identity infidelity? Yet Another Weblog Title Syndrome (YAWTS)?
I think part of what happened with Over Queersville was that I built it in a fit of unemployment and subsequently used it as part of my portfolio when I was applying for my current job. I wasn’t putting anything there that I wouldn’t want anyone at work to read, but I started to become more wary of putting anything up there because of it. Every time I made a post of a personal nature, I was cognizant that at least three coworkers would be reading it. As much as the idea of transparency in weblogging gets lauded almost evangelically, I wanted some separation of work-life and everything-else-life. I mean, in previous weblogs, I used to write some pretty out-there stuff; I don’t think I could have posted something like the tale of my haunted bulbocavernosus muscle if I knew someone at work would read it.
These are the beds we make for ourselves. This time around I’ll stick to available WordPress themes and not put any webdev mojo into it. Besides, I’m not really inclined to work on new designs when I have enough work in front of me. New weblog designs came about when I was unemployed or going through a slow period, go figure, and I’m not experiencing either at the moment, nor have I been in some time. (Work is currently sucking my will to live, but that’s another story.) Besides, everyone reads these things in aggregators/readers, anyway.
Still, “It’s a new year, it’s a new day, welcome to today,” to quote Gallagher. (Yeah, the watermelon-smashing guy. You don’t know this but he’s the guy that first unleased my boisterous laughter as a little kid.)
Another part of it dying off is I get picky about names. I expected to have a lot to say about gay culture in SF when I moved here, hence “Over Queersville,” but really I didn’t. If anything, it’s just holding on more to the “good old days” of the 70s, but just barely. Truth be told, it’s arguable that I’m happier with SF’s queer scene than Chicago’s. One thing I asked there was “why’s it gotta be bars all the time? Where are the queer cafes?” Well, they’re here, for starters. The name felt more like a weight as I spent more time living in this city. I guess as you get older, you can’t be as punk and stand-offish as you once were.
I knew if I was going to ever start again, the URL had to be something generic, the name had to be flexible, it couldn’t be something I could get sick of. “jaschu vs. the 7au” sounds ridiculous and temporary, but every good story has conflict. I’m not even sure a title is necessary. Call it what you want. The URL is solid; the given-name portmanteau-turned-handle I’ve adopted for online identity plus a generic domain name I registered years ago for reasons yet to be revealed… I can’t see how I’ll tire of it.
And let’s be honest. I’m the type who likes to run his mouth off. Not having a personal voice on the web? I was getting twitchy, just like I always do. My 31st birthday is in a couple weeks plus some change. It’s as good a time as any to try to start something new.
Everyone makes a statement of intention when they start these things. This time, I got nothing. Generic first-post denouement? Hello, Internet. I blame you for everything.