My Inner Bitches

I have this old friend, you know. Amazing that I managed to hold onto her for as long as I have, but I have. We don't get together much - last year we got together for a bit of Christmas Nostalgia, but that was it for the last ten years or more.

However, we do chat on AIM from time to time, and last night I was complaining about some things and she said "Come now Kelly," (you can tell what an old, old friend she is by the fact that not only does she call me Kelly, but that I let her get away with it) "Let your Inner Bitch out for a while and tell me about it."

That's an amusing statement in and of itself. And somewhat inaccurate. I have many Inner Bitches and they compete for my time.

Inner Bitch #1 - Ermengarde

Ermengarde is my writing bitch. She has two functions of which I'm aware - the first is to nag me about writing. I can't believe it's been three months since you worked on that novel! Your plot is wasting away because you have writers block. Oh, how tres boring that is! She's been quite outspoken lately and I have silenced her recently by doing some unrelated work on a short story.

Her second function - and here is where she's been really vocal - is to complain about other people. She has a few pet peeves; the sloppy writer and the "oh, I always wanted to write."

Oh, and I always wanted to be a brain surgeon! Look, if you want to write then write. If not, shut up about it. Writing is hard. Writing is a lot of work. However, there's no easy way to do it. To write means to write. You must write or you are not a writer. (By the way, KT, this means you, too. You may no longer claim to be a writer unless you WRITE SOMETING DAMNIT.)

Her second peeve is people who say things like "Oh, well, I'm a writer too," and my response is "Well, your journal/blog/emails are crap. Don't you know what a period is? How about capital letters? Is sentence structure a foreign concept to you?" "Oh, well, I only worry about that for important writing."

Excuse moi? All writing is important. Bad habits are easy to get into and hard to break. I'm not saying your post-it notes have to be letter-perfect or anything, but if you habitually use crappy grammar and half-completed incomprehensible sentence fragments, it makes writing something "important" that much harder. Besides, I hate spending 15 minutes trying to puzzle out someone's crappily written email or blog post.

Blake, however, is my inner Feminist. And boy, is she blowing her top recently.

Ok, let me first state that Blake and I have no problems with people who cross-gender in gaming (or in real life, for that matter.) What we have problems with is people who do it badly.

I cross-gender on the Meadehall (heck, at least half of my Hall characters are male) and I cross-gender on EQ (where I got the most excellent comment the other day that I was being "such a guy"). So I understand the interest in playing someone of a different gender.

What pisses me off is the people who do it badly. If you want to play a girl, play a girl, not an over-sexed, slut-child, spandex-wearing whore. If you want to do that, by all means, go play Fallout II and stay out of my house. It drives me nuts. I mean, honestly, jackass, have you ever actually talked to a girl?

I don't know anyone who randomly announces in a conversation to almost total strangers that "Oh, he likes it when I get naked." Well, yes, he probably does like it. But most women I know don't talk about it with people they don't even know.

Part of it is sheer exasperation. The other part of it is that it's insulting. Is that really what you think of women? Or is that the only thing that interests you about women?

I guess it just boils down to: You don't see me playing a guy who does nothing but scratch his balls and breaks things while trying to be manly and fix them, do you? I recognize that men have actual personalities and think actual thoughts. Now, if you can't allow women the same courtesy, don't play them, ok?

Posted by tisfan at November 21, 2004 10:10 AM