Wake the Sun

 I just rewarched the Psych episode with the cat witness - you know the one - and am in the middle of a Suits fic. Both are awesome and both make the same mistake: they have a male calico cat. It's bugging me.

Calico and tortoiseshell are colors, not breeds, and they're linked to the sex genes. You only get 'em when a cat's XX (female) or XXY (very, very, rare, and probably sterile). You can't have a 'calico mix' and if your calico is miraculously male your vet's sure as heck going to comment on it. The more you know!

Stay tuned for next time on Animals In Fiction, when I'll explain why it's impossible for a galloping horse to pace a walking human.

I didn't originally think this needed comment, but I've seen it linked a couple of places now and the Wrong is making it hard to focus on dinner. So.

There's a post, titled On the difference between Good Dogs and Dogs That Need a Newspaper Smack, that's being passed around the atheist blogosphere as a good Privilege 101 teaching tool.

It's not - not a good tool, that is - and if this is the level the progressive folks are at I can start to see the problem.

The fact that people are stupid isn’t news, however. And actually that’s kind of why the concept of privilege is important – because privilege isn’t about being stupid. It’s not a bad thing, or a good thing, or something with a moral or value judgement of any kind attached to it. Having privilege isn’t something you can usually change, but that’s okay, because it’s not something you should be ashamed of, or feel bad about. Being told you have privilege, or that you’re privileged, isn’t an insult. It’s a reminder! The key to privilege isn’t worrying about having it, or trying to deny it, or apologize for it, or get rid of it. It’s just paying attention to it, and knowing what it means for you and the people around you. Having privilege is like having big feet. No one hates you for having big feet! They just want you to remember to be careful where you walk.

This is the main issue throughout the post - the idea that privilege is just something that happens, like big feet or a thick fur coat. Privileged people are born with an advantage (true!) and it's not their fault the world is set up to support men/white people/straight people/the able-bodied/cisgendered folks/etc/etc/etc, that's just the way it is. Like magic (false!). You should be nice to people who don't have your privilege because it's the right thing to do, but don't worry about getting rid of it.

No. Privilege is a constructed reality, it exists because humans created it. Because of a long, terrible history of deliberate and non-deliberate choices/actions setting one group over another. It is constantly perpetuated by the people who benefit from that history, i.e. people with privilege. We should absolutely be working to tear it down. To tear white privilege, cis privilege, straight privilege, male privilege, able-bodied privilege - the whole damn kyriarchy - apart.

Back to the post, which consists mainly of a parable:

Imagine, if you will, a small house, built someplace cool-ish but not cold, perhaps somewhere in Ohio, and inhabited by a dog and a lizard. The dog is a big dog, something shaggy and nordic, like a Husky or Lapphund – a sled dog, built for the snow. The lizard is small, a little gecko best adapted to living in a muggy rainforest somewhere. Neither have ever lived anywhere else, nor met any other creature; for the purposes of this exercise, this small house is the entirety of their universe.

The dog, much as you might expect, turns on the air conditioning. Really cranks it up, all the time – this dog was bred for hunting moose on the tundra, even the winter here in Ohio is a little warm for his taste. If he can get the house to fifty (that’s ten C, for all you weirdo metric users out there), he’s almost happy.

[...]So one day, she sees the dog messing with the A/C again, and she says, “hey. Dog. Listen, it makes me really cold when you do that.”

The dog kind of looks at her, and shrugs, and keeps turning the dial.

This is not because the dog is a jerk.

This is because the dog has no fucking clue what the lizard even just said.

It goes on like that for a while. Again, no.

Men and women, queer folks and straight folks, etc etc etc, are not separate species. Our needs are not wildly divergent, we are not incapable of empathy and understanding. The house does not simply exist. People who abuse their privilege are not dogs that need a smack on the nose.

If you want posts that actually work as Privilege 101:

* White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack
* Finally, A Feminism 101 Blog
* Privilege is "not."
* I Didn’t Dream of Dragons
* White people, its not all about you, but for this post it is
* "comfort the disturbed, disturb the comfortable" is not just a bumper sticker for me
* All of starkeymonster's 'for clueless white people' tag
* The Dos and Don'ts of Defending Muslim Women

Additions or corrections are welcome in the comments - I know other folks have made better link lists than this, but I can't remember where. Fixing typos and closing logic gaps will wait until the morning; it's somehow 11pm and past my bedtime.

Finished watching The Tourist with the family. Now I want epic threesome with Chaucer the Interpol dude because you can never turn the shipping off. Not that I'd want to.

Seriously, he was incredibly invested in their relationship.

I've been reading a lot of Inception fanfic, as you do, and I have noticed a trend. In fics taking place in the canon'verse, Yusuf is often regulated to the background or used (with Ariadne) as a greek chorus, if he's present at all. He's around in most AUs, where he's usually cast as greek chorus (with Ariadne) or a stoner (or a cook. Mafia AU, I’m looking at you).

It is (wildly) out of character for Yusuf to be:

1) A stoner
2) Manic/careless/irresponsible/in need of supervision with his work
3) A stoner

To be blunt: fandom is taking the only brown character, one of only two characters of color (Saito gets better treatment but not by a lot), and turning him into a caricature. Warping and dismissing his character when its not ignoring him entirely.

Which, just. No. No. We can do better than this.

~*~

It’s an easy fix - we get about the same amount of information for him as we do for Arthur and fandom has shown that is plenty. Let’s sit down and go through it.

Dileep Rao describes Yusuf as “an avant-garde pharmacologist, who is a resource for people, like Cobb, who want to do this work unsupervised, unregistered and unapproved of by anyone. Yusuf obviously has a monetary interest in helping Cobb, but he is also motivated by a burning curiosity. He has been experimenting with this stuff for so long and now he wants to see what it’s like.”

“The role of the chemist was particularly tough because you don’t want him to seem like some kind of drug dealer. He’s absolutely not,” says co-producer Jordan Goldberg. “He’s someone who is committed to the art of dream sharing and making it work in ways it hasn’t before. We needed Yusuf to be funny and interesting and obviously smart, and Dileep is all of those things.”

These are basic things we know about Yusuf: He's a chemist and pharmacologist. He lives in Mombasa. He's desi. He has an Arabic given name.

( Those are just the essentials, though - there’s plenty more to be picked up from the movie )

( Obligatory Fic Recs )

Yes, I spent all day on this. No, no one is interested (except possibly zanzando. Zan, it grew). Regardless, I present:

( My Shipping Manifest* )

This does not include all the pairings I read in, all the pairings I OTP, or all my favorite characters. Just the couples that have moved into my head.

* I couldn’t help myself.

You all need to go listen to this podcast (you can also find it on iTunes) and then come back and tell me if Mary/Elizabeth AU rivalslash is a great idea or the best idea. Go on, I'll wait.

Better yet, anyone know if it's already been done? As profic, maybe, or on Yuletide?