Not Anonymous

I feel as though anecdotes from the week are a wee bit boring for others to read.
Then again, I read other people's lives and can only assume you all don't hang around this little Junk Yard o'Words for the scenery.

So this week was/still is iCon and a pretty fun one it was for me. I'll not be going to the last day tomorrow as it is my Daddy's 64 birthday tomorrow later today and we are going to picnic elsewhere, away from the Suburbia and Urbania of the Centre.
Last year I pretty much skipped and this year it was great to reconnect with all the people I don't get to meet that often IRL *waves to those who didn't miss me this week because they actually saw me*.
And of course make new friends, which is always fun.
Buffy talk is, as always, the Fun.
Not enough Doctor Who and Torchwood; it may be a little too fluffy? Though I'm not sure why... could just be a culture clash, as Americana and Israeli-Centric work is far more common than Britannica.
I'm really obsessing Torchwood.
I can't get enough of Ianto Jones.
He's just... *gibberish* Fictional men rule! *fist*
Some coherent thoughts on Torchwood will probably come along with my queer analysis of "Iron Man", my queer analysis of "Harry Potter"'s Lupin and Tonks' Lavender Marriage and a comparative analysis of the DCU and the Buffyverse, specifically how Angel correlates as Batman, Riely correlates as Superman, Buffy correlates as Wonder Woman and Spike correlates as Catwoman (thank you nurint for talking to me about it... will email you soon, hope you have time to read LJ!).
And Oi! No stealing my ideas! Well, you know... you can... I mean, this is the interwebs!

I also ate sea-food.
With tamara_russo.
It was tasty.
That woman is the incarnation of the Snake in the Garden of Eden... giving into culinary temptation never felt so good.
Meat has no appeal and I'm beginning to lose my enjoyment of dairy products... though I don't know if I'll ever be able to give up ice-cream.
There's always soy-milk for coffee.

You want more? Well, I'll just hope you can be happy with this little snippet of life at the 'mo.
Hope to get back into the swing of regular updating over the next few days.
Isn't it strange that a week of not updating seems long?
My LJ is going to be three next week and it's become a constant in my life.
I don't know if that's good or bad.
It's most certainly a fact.

There is a great disadvantage in living outside the US and UK when it comes to fandom.
I'm not hugely active in fandom in Israel because I find it limiting, I enjoy many, many things, it's one of the reasons I never renewed my Sunnydale Embassy membership, never joined the the comic books "club" or any of the other big fanclubs.
Thus I'm always feeling a little out of date, always a little behind.
Even being a member of numerous fandom community and reading a huge amount of fandom blogs outside of LJ seems as though I've missed the party because I'm in a different timezone.

Which is true.

So I keep updated on when the different events are, and I don't mind forking over more money because I'm not a member of anything, all the money goes to a good cause and most of the time I'm really not disaapointed from the content and people of Israeli Fandom.

The Sunnydale Embassy is wonderful, but I don't feel as though I need it any longer. I mean I've been a buffy fan for almost a decade. I don't need any affirmations that yes, the show is good and that Joss is a earth-bound "deity".
I suppose I feel the clubs, being as they are clubs, are exclusionary of multi-fandom. I never really liked Firefly *ducks out of range of flying objects* and many times was told, by people in buffy fandom, that I was a "traitor", obviously they never meant it seriously, because c'mon people, I didn't say I think Joss made a huge mistake with the show and that his writing sucked. GD forbid. But Serenity was an good movie, because the acting and writing was good, but I didn't feel it had any real oomph, the way Buffy or Angel did.

I'm a Farscape fan and I love everything the Jim Henson company does.
There isn't a huge following of Farscape in Israel, despite it being the most intelligent sci-fi show to hit the screens since Star Trek and Buffy.
I also find myself marooned, abandoned, in comic fandom. There are two comic book stores in all of Israel. I go to one, the one that doesn't always participate in fandom activity. Neil Gaiman was invited to Israel by the comic book store I don't frequent.
There are two reasons for that: 1) It's father away by bus and 2) it's more expensive on the whole.

It's not easy being so very multifandom, having many, many loves and concealing your disdain to the blind following many fandoms have simply because they are the continuation of a legacy (i.e. Star Trek: Enterprise).
Also concealing the fact that I'm a huge trekkie.
That I've written Star Trek Fanfiction.
That I discuss Star Trek Philosophy with my brother.
I don't like the stigma of Trekkies in Israel and women trekkies are very much a minority so every time I pass a booth with ST paraphernalia I feel the boys eyes on me.

I'm now stopping this stream of consciousness, since I'm going out to get my hair done in a way in which I don't feel like tearing it out.

Ya, really.

One of the better things about having a world renowned Comic Book writer come to your local Con (*squee*Neil Gaiman*squee*), is that you get a chance to really talk and converse about the stuff that you really want to talk about, with people you haven't seen in a long time and with new people you may or may not see ever again.

I know why I like Neil Gaiman, he opened up comic books for me and I liked his prose as well, so I got his stuff, meeting the man very much validated my love of his work, it was also nice seeing that he really is a very nice person in general; incredibly patient and tolerant!

I like Alan Moore, I wish I had read him before Neil Gaiman.
Really, had I read "Watchmen" before "Sandman" I would have appreciated the Modern Age a whole lot more, at least in DC, Marvel was always a little ahead of its time, though my love remains for DC, in general, Marvel is better at the giving us "reality" so to speak.

Both in DC and Marvel, the "reality" is, men are big and strong, women are small and despite being strong are not as strong as the men, and if they do happen to be stronger than the men, then there is something seriously fucked up with them!
And that is the reality of our everyday life here; women can hold positions of power, but heaven forbid if they are more influential than the Man and if they are, well, they're overpowering, uber-bitches.
Right.

We're in the year 2006 people, despite Comic Books being the successors of pulp fiction, this isn't the 1956. Misogyny should not be the underlying message anywhere! Women having their bodies contorted in weird and peculiar ways should not be the norm and if it is, the men should be double jointed as well. If men have bulging muscles, I was to see a bulging package too, since the women have smooth lines and bulging bosoms!

I don't want to be any body's party pooper, but telling me that Frank Miller empowers women is a crock o' shit and that the ridicule of Powergirl by Jeph Loeb is anything other embedded sexism and misogyny you will hear what I wrote.
It's 2006.
1956 sucked the life out of people back then as well.

Why haven't we evolved?

I was introduced to comic books fairly late in life and I was far more loyal to the cartoons of my favourite comic book heroes than the books, which to me at the time seemed like a waste of time.
But when your eyes are opened to the beauty, mastery and utter genius of this medium you do your best to find the genre you enjoy the most, the characters you like best and you tend to stick with it, at least me.
But the comic book community in Israel is still very much a "boy's clubhouse", I mean when I walked into Comikaza the proprietors took one look at me and said "Neil Gaiman?" I smiled and answered in the affirmative, took my money for the pre-ordering of stuff for iCon and asked me if I was interested in anything else.
I was about to say "Batman" when one of them said "Give her the Jill Thompson little Death book".
It sounded interesting so I accepted the offer and rifled through the little book, I didn't bother to read it, because really Jill Thompson is not my favourite and the art was too Manga for my taste, so I gave it back to them and told them I didn't like the art work so much.
One of them stared at me as though I'd grown another head, I then asked if they could show me some DC stuff.
"You prefer American Comics?" The one who stared asked
"Yes, I don't like the art in Manga that much"
"But, but that's what makes it better than American ones"
*shrug* "I don't like the large eyes"
"But you're a girl!"
A death glare of doom was given to him.
"What does that have to do with anything?" he was obviously new to the business, because the other one rolled his eyes and was about to interject when the new guy said "All the girls like Manga and Neil Gaiman".
I gave him a frosty look and said "I don't think you hang with a whole lot of girls if all the ones you know like Neil Gaiman and Manga, when in fact a majority of the young women I know much prefer the American style comic books for a variety of reasons, in fact, and this may come as a shock to you, most girls actually like not only Neil Gaiman, Manga and Comic Books, but cartoons like Transformers and shows like Star Trek, Farscape and not just *gasp* the Joss Whedon stuff, which I'm sure *all* the girls like".
The new guy gave me a look which basically dismissed everything I had just said and went back to the counter without addressing anything I had mentioned.
The other proprietor shrugged and said he hopes to see me at iCon.
Nice man.

I don't understand this stereotyping and classification of girls and young women within this little community of sci-fi, fantasy and fandom.
Boys like Neil Gaiman, Manga, Star Trek, Transformers AND DC & Marvel, Buffy, Firefly, Anime and more, but girls aren't expected to have more than one or two fandoms, at least 'round here.
What? I like other sci-fi shows that have nothing to do with Buffy other than the fact that they appear in jokes. What? I know the difference between a Galaxy class ship and a Sovereign Class. What?! I know that there were FOUR Robins! Four! Not three, four! Two of them dead. And guess what; I even know their names.
And so girls, young and old are marginalized in the Israeli comic book community, not because there is a lack of presence in the sci-fi community, far from it, as I've stated the sci-fi & fantasy community is very egalitarian and has a very strong female presence, not so in the Comic Book.

What really gets me, is that this isn't really true, at the Animation and Comics festival I went to a few weeks ago there were a ton of girls and many booths run by both men and women and one or two run exclusively by women, but there were still more boys than girls and I couldn't help but feel a bit isolated while I was riffling through Marvel comics searching for something worth while discussing Slash with one of the guys standing next to me, while at the other end of the table there was a group young girls "ooohing" and "Aaahing" into yaoi Manga. And the other girls at the Americana books giving me suspicious looks, because They are the only girls who know Comic Books.
And there are those few who know I've seen Anime and tell me that of course I like Manga, no people, I watched a few Anime shows in High School that were good and even had a crush on Integral from "Hellsing" for a while (thank you Shira for showing me Anime and thank you Taly for showing me Integral), but anyone who will look at my book case will notice a lack of anything Manga-ish.

Maybe I'm over reacting, maybe I'm overly sensitive.
Maybe I'm just observant.

Today I went to the 6th annual animation and comics festival in the Cinemateque in Tel-Aviv.

Ooooh, so many things to see and buy! I unfortunately learned about the Festival very late so I wasn't able to go to any lectures or view any of the Animation, but there were a lot of caricatures, mainly of the political kind (what else, especially in Israel). I think due to this war there is finally a consensus in the country about how crappily the whole situation was handled.
It was so tragically humorous.

And I bought a bunch of stuff; one independent comic, four short stories by a local Israeli artist whose name is Dotan Goldwasser, very talented guy, it's not that avant-garde, but very good. An Israeli action comic steeped in Israeli Machismo, but the plot, characters and the whole presentation is very good, it's called "Uzi, an urban legend" - עוזי, אגדה אורבנית. Yeah, there are Uzi guns in it as well.
X-Men: House of M, finally got it! I've been dying to have for years and now it's mine!
And my favourite "A little Endless fairy tale" by Jill Thompson. To any of you Sandman fans, remember in "Fables and Reflections" there's a story where Cain and Able tell young Daniel a story ("Parliament of Rooks") and one of the stories is about the Young Endless, well here's an entire book!

I'm very, very pleased

I just got back from the live performance of "Once more with feeling" at the "Tzavta" hall at London Mini-store.
While the show itself was good (a broader review tomorrow when I can concentrate), it is not okay that they started it an hour behind schedule, it pissed me off and ade me rush to the bus.

I do not enjoy running in Tel-Aviv in the middle of the night.