Zoe E. Whitten's Blog, page 68

My Skyrim rant, which may also count as a review…

Hubby got Skyrim, and after watching him play through the first few levels on the Imperial side, I chose to play the game through as a Stormcloak. What I discovered in my short time playing is that Skyrim may possibly be the worst role-play game ever. This is because no matter which side you choose, or race, or gender, nothing about the story changes. There's no role-play in this RPG. This is a ride on rails offering players no choice except not to engage in the main story, and should you choose to only play side quests, the game makers call this "choice." It is not, and the moment you decide to go back to the main quest, the story proceeds as if you'd just come back from Helgen. The game world does not suffer for your procrastination, nor does anyone else step in to fill your "role." The prophecy cannot proceed without you, so the dragons all just sit around twiddling their talons until you're ready to come and kill them like a proper hero should.

I have a long, long list of problems with this game, but before I get to the glitches, I want to talk about my experience with the first dragon of the game, and use this to illustrate how almost all reviewers are nothing short of delusional for praising this game for "offering choices" to players. To call this the game of the year implies that nothing else came out in 2011 that was better, and I refuse to believe this garbage is the best that any company can do after blowing a few million in development. Sure, Rage sucked, but it didn't suck this badly. If we just have to hand out the award to someone, why not hand it to the latest Assassin's Creed? I didn't even play a demo for that and I'm sure it had to be better than this shit.

Let's talk about that dragon. I didn't kill it. I got up on the tower, thinking it would sit in a defensible position and shout down on the soldiers like it had at Helgen. No, the dragon changed from this good tactical choice and instead opted to fly around collecting arrows from the soldiers I accompanied. It collected enough arrows to stop flying, and the surviving troops brought the dragon down with swords and axes. I went downstairs and watched a guy climb onto the dragon's throat to stab a sword through the bottom of its jaw. That dude walked off, and I'm pushed to go to the body. Then bamf, I'm hit with the dragon's soul, and from there on out, everyone talked about how I killed the dragon. Even my own journal reads, "I killed the dragon." I didn't have anything to do with it. Minstrels have more involvement with this story than I did. And yet, the story doesn't care. There's no attempt from the writers to take alternate choices into account, so no matter what really happens, the game will still project the desired outcome to keep the ride firmly on the rails.

Let's talk about race. I chose to play as a Redguard, the black people of the game. I did this precisely because I thought there had to be something to playing a character who wasn't one of the white guys. Nope, not really. While I was in Whiterun, two Redguards are told they're not welcome in town. The Redguards also tell me that they're not welcome in town while telling their story. But the same guards who stopped them at the main gate let me into town, no problem.

After that point, I realized that only one guard had checked my credentials once, and then his only reason was because the dragon was "making everyone jumpy." It had nothing to do with the fact that I was the wrong race. And even though the guard claims everyone is jumpy, nobody acts jumpy. Not at my presence, and not in general. So thereafter, I started trying to get the guards to notice me. I went sneaking around new cities in the middle of the night, acting suspicious on purpose. But when I'd run into a guard, they'd either give me a passing glance or make a random comment like, "Need a new weapon? See ___, the town armor vendor." Oh, sure, that's a logical thing to say to a complete stranger sneaking through town in the middle of the night with flames rising from her palms. But no, once that one guard in one village is placated, all the others in every village just treat me like a regular member of the village. Even if my character wasn't black, this would be suspicious. That the game seems to acknowledge the two Redguard NPC characters' race, but that no one recognizes mine, shows how little thought was put into these so-called "random encounters."

And let me debunk this bullshit idea that "anything can happen in Skyrim." You will never see anything randomly occur. You will stumble over scripted events, and those events will force you to fight and kill something. If "anything" could really happen, then you should run across a traveling caravan of dwarves who challenge you to a drinking contest, or sneak across a scene of two wood elf lovers making out on a riverside. But here, the only "anything" possible is that something else will try to eat, rob, or kill you.

But let me keep going on the race problem. In Whiterun, there's a little old lady who walks up to you and asks point blank if you want to "do a good deed for a little old lady." Setting aside the fact that I'm a complete stranger that everyone talks to like a neighbor, the fact is, an old white woman wouldn't just walk up on a young black woman and address her as an equal. Not in a real world, and not in a high fantasy world where people are at war and suspicious of outsiders.

And this is how every NPC acts, like the member of a small hick town where nobody locks their doors, not paranoid villagers in a world at war. This is lazy writing, and every encounter is the same stroll through Mayberry RFD while the writers are telling me it's really tense around these parts. Really? Because you certainly can't tell it from listening to the gossip at the markets. (And yes, I really did hang out in the market to listen to the shit dialogue. At this point, I wish I hadn't, because it's all a waste of time, and a badly acted waste to boot. In this game "vocal talent" can only be applied in the loosest of meanings.) It's not just a little oopsie that makes the world slightly flawed. It's completely unrealistic given the setting, and that few people playing the game acknowledge the disparity between what the actors are saying and how they're acting irks me to no end.

Let's talk about animals. The game makers put game animals in so you can eat meat. Fact is, you can choose not to eat anything and you'll never starve. You don't need food to complete the game, and you'll never suffer ill effects from starvation. (Or sleep deprivation, though the game claims to give you bonuses for sleeping in a bed. The sheer stupidity of a sleep bonus is bad enough, but if you don't need to sleep, adding the bed doesn't change the game. It's another pointless distraction that was poorly implemented.) You don't need food at all. Gathering meat and hunting are just an extra feature tacked onto the dragon killing game.

Which would be great if the game hunting was a satisfying experience. But watching animals scale cliff walls at a 45-degree angle to the surface they're walking on makes me realize that the animal AI wasn't even coded to recognize when animals were in an inaccessible area. Their walk cycles look fake on level ground, and they don't react to damage because the modelers were too lazy to code those animation cycles. I watched a deer walk into a river, pause for five minutes with its head under water, and then walk out the other side of the river. Who knew deer were amphibious? I saw a deer walk up to a bear and get killed without once recognizing that a dangerous animal was in the area. Yet the same deer reacted to my presence, and they do seem to react to the wolves…after being bitten.

So no, hunting does not involve looking for tracks and following them, or looking for fecal piles or using other tracking skills. No, hunting in Skyrim means that when you finally stumble over a game animal, you kill it before it runs too far away. Wow, it's just like hunting in the real world, except that it's completely unrealistic and nothing at all like real hunting.

And, by the way, If you set animals on fire, they don't continue whatever else it was they were doing until the damage makes them drop. The animals weren't coded to react to spells or to blows from weapons. Like everything else in the game, just putting in the animals and assigning default behaviors was good enough. Actually making them simulate animal behavior was too hard for a development team with millions at their disposal.

The snow. God, I saw comics and read jokes about how amazing the snow is, how even people who hated snow in Britain were mesmerized by the "magical snow." Just one problem with that snow. It looks like shit. It's a particle effect with two kinds of generators. One is making fog to hide the origin of the snow particle generators, so it looks like the snow is smoking. This is something less than magical. Also? The particles aren't coded to die when they hit the ground plane. So many particles pass through the ground before an invisible wind kicks them back into the sky.

The violent wind on Skyrim blows particles of different types around the word every season, as if trying to convince me that the wind is pushing things around with gale force. Yet the trees are perfectly still. The weeds clustered here and there to hide the shitty grass texture don't move no matter how strongly the wind blows. Characters with long hair don't have so much as a stray lock fly up. Your arrows are unaffected by the wind whether you fire with, against, or across the simulated direction. This is like every facet of the game, where the designers made only the lowest level effort at simulating an action or effect, and even if the effect looks like shit, it was deemed good enough.

Once you get outside of the towns, the only other people you will encounter are bandits. You can't really avoid them or sneak around them, because the game's compass will intentionally walk you into these battles. You have no choice at trying to talk anyone down. You just kill things.

Bandits also pop up in places they shouldn't be. Take the first dungeon, where the character is pushed to go to learn how to "shout." When entering the site, you are attacked by bandits who are already on site to look for "the treasure." This would be the artifact that a wizard has been studying, and which no one else should know about, and yet, everyone and their mother already has a working knowledge of the location and "the treasure" it contains.

You enter the dungeon, and three tunnels are blocked by cobwebs. Yet, the bandits are already inside, somehow phasing through the webs even though they don't display any magic casting abilities. Then you rescue a thief, who somehow made it past a booby-trapped, puzzle-locked door, and then closed it behind himself and reset the lock…on the other side of the room which is now completely inaccessible to him. But setting aside the impossibility of his being in the tunnel ahead of the bandits who are also ahead of you, and who already got caught by the giant spider that sneaks around the bandits to reset the cobwebs, this thief tells you, "You're a fool, I will take the treasure for myself!"

The thief then dies in the next room, killed by a mummy who has already gotten back in their catacomb home and put their cobwebs back up before I could round the corner. The dead thief conveniently has the key I need to get through the next puzzle lock. Yes, because this location is really well known in the criminal world despite the wizard who hired me saying no one believes in these obscure legends anymore. BUT EVERY BANDIT IN THE WORLD KNOWS THE LEGEND AND BELIEVES IT ENOUGH TO COME TREAUSRE HUNTING. The writers say one thing in their world-building, but in the actual world, everyone is already more aware of the situation than the writers have claimed. It's like these villagers are all wearing smartphones and they're getting news updates as they happen. *Bee-deep* "Oh, guys, we have to go to this dungeon. The boss says he sent another hero to look for the dragonstone." (My version, despite being stupid, still makes more sense than the bandits already being on site at the dungeon and knowing about the same artifact I'm hunting.)

Reviewers are ignoring all of this, and they're praising the game like it's the greatest thing in the world. I haven't even mentioned actual bugs, or the awful blurriness of the textures. I'm just covering how bad the underlying design is. The bugs and textures are inconsequential at this point, because the game, even running properly, is a dog. And an ugly, mangy three-legged dog at that.

I wouldn't be so upset if people acknowledged the flatness of the world, but players are hyping this as "great world building" No, not really. Not even fucking close, hoss. This is a desperate, awful attempt at world building that falls flat in every way because NOTHING is thought out. It's a fantasy story as written by a hyperactive five-year-old after an all-night bender of snorting Pixie Stix off his sister's ass. The game is the same no matter what race you play. The game is the same no matter what choices you make. It's badly written. The side quests are stupid, and the extra skills built into the game are all distractions meant to hide the fact that the main game is shit. Nothing about the game looks or plays well. But this is the game of the year? Why? What did it do right to deserve such high praise?

When I play things like this, and I see how other people ignore all these flaws, I feel even more isolated from others. I shouldn't have entered a bleak depression just because a game sucks. But I'm in a bleak depression because so few people seem to notice how badly the game is made. It boasts a dozen races to choose from, and then becomes color-blind and plays the game through for every race as if you're a white human male. Making a racial change won't affect what spells you can or can't get. You'll still get the same skill tree with the same skills regardless of who you pick. I didn't even have to do anything to have a fireball and heal spell by default. Everyone is a mage, even if they aren't supposed to be.

"But Zoe," you say, "If Bethesda really wrote different stories to take race, gender, and characters class into account, it would take forever to finish." But ponder this, random stranger who conveniently says what I want to help me make my points: this game took forever to develop, and this is the result that came out of the process. It's got lazy writing, bad acting, poorly designed human and animal models, a combat system that is just awful…I really could run out breath before I run out of problems. But, y'all don't care about any of that "technical stuff." This is the game of the year, enough said. Best game ever.

Well, fuck you, fanboy, because I feel cheated after listening to you drool over this pile of shit like it was chocolate mousse. I have a sour stomach from being so angry, and I probably shouldn't be so upset. But every time I start to calm down, I think how this game cost millions to produce, and nobody cares that it's a shit job for what it cost. I feel like that one kid screaming, "But the emperor is butt naked!"

And I wouldn't mind so much if the fucking fanboys didn't tell me that the real reason I don't like it is that I'm against "this kind of game." It's not true! The reason I don't like the game is that it looks and plays like shit. You've chosen to ignore everything I see that's wrong in the game. Fine. Play with shit in the catbox and pretend it's awesomesuace in an open sandbox. But don't dismiss my problems like they don't exist, or like I'm just looking down on a fantasy game. The flaws are there, and you're choosing to ignore ALL OF THEM to praise the game. So when I complain about what's wrong, you ask me, "Why can't you see the good parts?" BECAUSE THERE AREN'T ANY GOOD PARTS, FANBOY. NOT THE STORY, OR THE ACTING, OR THE BASIC GAME ITSELF. It's a shit sandwich from start to finish.

So, I wouldn't just call Skyrim a little bad. I would call it soul crushingly, depressingly awful. It's so bad, I want to erase the game from my system and never acknowledge that I bothered trying it. If someone gave me a few million as a working budget and a team of software engineers, I could come up with something better than this shit. I give Skyrim no stars, and I find it lowers my faith in humanity for all the praise it's been given. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to open a bottle of rum, get drunk, and try and crash stuff in Forza 4. (A game that looks great no matter what speed I go.)

Book Review: The Drowning City

This book started off so good, and all the way through, I was enjoying the complex plot split between 3 main POVs and one bit POV. But the final 50 pages are just awful, and the moment of denouement explaining one character's inconsistent behavior paints her as a pathetically weak character, despite her back story being that of a tough merc witch and a survivor of a genocide that wiped out her family's village.

What worked for me in this story at first because it was unique is revealed in the end as proof that all of the characters are bumblers. None of the characters are as skilled as the writer implies, so they all fail. I want to explain in excruciating detail why things that pleased me now infuriate me because the ending makes it clear that I was misreading the book. But I can't explain my irritation without spoiling the whole thing.

So I will just sum up that if a writer is going to present characters as tough and strong magic users, only to make them into pathetic NPC-like losers during their first encounter with a spirit, then they shouldn't give me a back story building up a tough character. There was a weak character who looked like she was learning strength from the main character, and I expected her to be possessed by a ghost because she was meek and pathetic, but slowly growing stronger. Instead it's the strong witch character who's the weakest of the three women. I find it sad that a woman who saw the world as a merc and fought for her independence comes home and abandons her partner of many years to join a racist hate group who murder people en masse for not agreeing with them. The excuse given for her acceptance wouldn't be so flimsy if she wasn't a powerful witch, if she was just a merc with no magic defenses. But she is a witch, and once I realized how weak she was being presented as, it started to rub on me in those final pages.

Also problematic was how the rest of the book divided POVs cleanly, and then in the final 50 pages, there's some instances of head hopping. A man who recently died is resurrected only seconds later and used as a body shield against rifles. But when the zombie is shot, the writer incorrectly says the blood is already congealing. Not with them only having been dead thirty seconds, I don't think so.

Then the second weakest female decides to commit the most pointless act of self-sacrifice I've ever seen, making a bargain that still kills lots of people, and doesn't prevent the other disaster from destroying the city. So this is a pointless, but "heroic" suicide, (which is supposedly what she's learned from the other women, that throwing her life away is a good thing) leading to a final chapter and epilogue so rotten, I had to fight not to throw the book even when I was down to the last pages.

I wanted this to be a book about courtesan spies thwarting a terrorist plot. Instead, it's a shit sandwich about three inept dumb-asses who show up in town in time to watch the racists blow up the city in their faces. I think what irritates me most of all is how well written the vast majority of the book is. The scenes are vividly described without being purple, and the fight scenes had been pretty intense. But in the last 50 pages, the quality of the writing plummets. NOTHING works right from that point forward. Even Isyllt, who had been a great character, turns into a walking stereotype. It's almost like a different person took over for those last pages, and they had no clue what they were doing. It makes me wonder if the writer had something else penned, and the editor or publisher forced this shit ending on them because it "made more sense" or something. Well in my not so humble opinion, the ending ruins the rest of the book.

I'm giving the book 3 stars for the quality of the writing, but my distaste with the ending is so strong that I'm severely tempted to give it 2. I would not recommend this book to anyone, because most people do not like bait and switch deceptions of this magnitude. The story promised a great adventure. It delivers the most unsatisfying high fantasy experience of this year.

I'll just sum up the week…

So, this week was better than last week. I've solved some of my more pressing problems, and yet I've been presented with another. GoDaddy supports SOPA. Well, I was planning to renew my domain and hosting account with them. Now, I'm not so hot on this. I'm scouting down a new host, and I hope to have the new account set up in January, making it a great month to start a new contract anyway. Still, I expect that in February, my blog might go down a few days. Also, my branded email could go down. I have a mirror blog, and a backup email at zoe_e_w (at) live (dot) com, so this is not that big of a deal. Well, I mean except my site host has taken the wrong stance on personal freedoms in our electronic age. But whatever, I'll move on without too much bitching. I will be explaining in my parting email why I'm leaving, but I will be avoiding salty words like motherfucker and cocksucker.

Amazon has not had problems putting up Blood Relations, but just as I was about to celebrate a problem-free re-launch, they put The Life and Death of a Sex Doll on hold in review to ask if I'm sure I own the copyright. Try to appreciate how stupid this is. My account at Amazon is under my name, the same name that's on the book. I'm using an email address with my full name, and they have tax forms in my legal name. The only other copy of the book they have is listed as discontinued by the publisher, but they STILL need to send me a letter asking for proof that the book is mine. My response…was not polite, and so if the book doesn't show up, I will ignore this and just publish other stuff. Two tears in a bucket and fuck it.

I am not changing my mind on the giving up thingie. This despite the fact that I got some positive comments from people who just finished older stories of mine. (And I do appreciate both you reading and commenting, y'all. Really, thanks for that.) I gave it my best effort, shot my full load, and didn't hit anybody with enough impact to create a chain reaction. I've got a lot of stuff planned and a lot in the queue, but nothing I have faith in to change my present circumstances. I thought briefly of releasing every book using the same tweet: "I released another book, or whatever: (link) Pretend there's a tag line here." But that was actually one level of pessimism too high for me…or maybe one too low. In any case, I'm more comfortable just releasing what I have and walking away from the catalog. I also gave thought to dumping everything now, without editing any farther. But I know in some cases that would result in really ugly books. And bitter as I am about this whole experience, I still don't hate readers badly enough to drop a rough draft on them. (Or even a second draft. Third draft…no, that's nearing "beta reader" stage, but it's still not "ready for primetime.")

I wish I could say that one day I might write something that's a hit, but even if I know I can continue to come up with new stuff, it's all going to be working the angles that are exciting to me, and apparently that's not working for anyone strongly enough to build a fan base on. Which frustrates me, because I really wanted to get around the story of Agrona and Miguel's second lifetime together. But there were something like 20 other episodes that would go between her story and the present timeline of Mystical World Wars, and even if several of the books got positive comments, the series has gone nowhere. At least with season one being near a closing point, I can just finish a few books and give up on it before I have fifty books in a series that no one will read, much less recommend to others.

I can't say I'll never write again. I probably will continue to write in a diminished capacity. I just know that the desire to push for a reaction is gone, and whatever hopes I had of achieving even small-scale indie success are gone. So if I continue to write, it's only because I've had an idea come up, and I'm morbidly curious to see where it leads. (Even if no one else cares to see where my mind can go once I'm in total pants mode.)

I've got a troll…

No, really, a real troll, not just the imaginary ones in my head for a change. I'm not sure which is funnier, that I've finally got a real troll after I've given up on all forms of social sites and forums for promotion, or that their only bait seems to be "I live in reality." And yet, you have so little to do in that so-called reality that you're trolling me? Are you sure that's reality you're looking at? Cause it could just be high def TV. They look very similar these days. I know my TV tricks me right up until they go to commercials. Those little cartoon dudes seem so real!

I'm not complaining, though. I'm also not telling you to go away. Yet…I should add yet. But would you mind coming up with something a little better than, "You don't live in reality"? Cause if I didn't live in reality, I could pretend that I'm really a popular writer with lots of adoring fans, instead of admitting I'm a no-talent hack who only just now managed to pick up one troll after four years of troll baiting. Frankly, it's disappointing, and the length of your insults means that by federal law, I'm supposed to throw you back and let you grow up a bit. But you're my troll, and I love you, and I'll put you in a glass bowl and call you Troll in Mah Bowl.

Tune in next week, when my troll and I go pfishing and discover a flame war in the province of Spam.

My religion has a first name; it's F – O – R – Z – A!

I picked up Forza 4 this weekend, and some other stuff happened. The other stuff may have been important before, but not now. That's cause I opened the game and played through the demo race bitching and moaning the whole time about the assisted driving. As soon as I got out of the Bernese Alps demo with the tragically wasted "fun drive" I shifted the game up to hard, shutting off the auto-braking, rewind and other features for "casual fans". Perhaps this will sound ironic coming from me, but that shit is for pussies who don't know how to handle a car and are unwilling to spend five minutes learning how to drive right.

Anywho, after setting up the game right for me, I'm not really clear on where the vast majority of my days have gone. I mean, I know I did other stuff between the races. But everything in between is somehow less important now. All that matters is the next race, and which car I'm going to pick after I level up again.

Before I review the game in full TL;DR glory, I need to give a rundown of my top driving speeds and the vehicles I was booking in. My first car was a 1979 BMW 325i, the first year that fuel injection was available. I was at the time a victim of five car crashes with my step-dad as the driver, a man who claimed to be a race car driver and yet never met a car he couldn't crash. This is why I had a phobia of speed, and at the time, the fastest I could go was 85 MPH. However, I took that Beemer to a park that had posted limits of 35 for the winding gravel roads, and I drove my car all night at 55-75 to get used to the way it felt to lose control, and then fight to regain it.

After I was rear-ended by another BMW (what are the odds?) I upgraded to a Fiero GT. In this lovely little black 6 cylinder, I was commuting from San Antonio to Austin at gusts of 120-135 MPH for a night-shift tech job. So every drive home was on an empty straight ribbon full of invitations to be bad. I'm amazed I never got a ticket. Amusingly, I broke that car driving twenty miles an hour. The rear brakes froze, but I hadn't noticed I was only using my front brakes. So I punked the plastic bumper of another car and barely kissed my paint job off. Thereafter, the car…it just dropped dead. Three mechanics tried to revive it, but that one tiny bump at 20 MPH was enough to wimp out my poor Fiero. It will always be missed, though. A really fun car, the best I've ever had.

And finally, my top speed record came in a Lincoln Continental, which I wrapped up to 185 MPH in the trip from SA to Austin, an impressive feat made even more impressive because I got stopped by a cop…for having one headlight out. Long story short, I fixed a computer problem for him and walked away with a citation. Good times.

Ah, so yeah, I've driven a few cars, at fast, fast speeds, and I know what cars feel like when the road is talking through the steering wheel. I know what it feels like to watch a 3 lane highway thin into a ribbon that feels way too claustrophobic. So….does Forza capture this feeling? Oh HELL YES. The vibrations in the controller aren't just nonsensical buzzing, like I've dealt with in older versions of Need For Speed and Driver. (Can't say anything about the new versions, cause I haven't played them yet) What you get is a real sense of feedback from the wheels meeting road. When you're running clean and without tire damage, there's just the faintest tremor that tell you you're still in contact with the road, and when the controller goes still, it means the car is floating and it's time to back off the gas, or slow down and then brake if you're floating and nearing a turn. If your tires start to wear down (A feature you turn on by moving to the expert skill level) you will feel it either as a harsher buzzing when you try to accelerate, or if you've slicked the treads, as a dreadfully smooth ride that inspires greatly diminished confidence in turns. At higher skill level, tires wear more realistically, so if you jump big in your first lap, you'll fade your acceleration away in later laps due to unevenly worn tires.

After the HORRID first race is ruined by the computer trying to do all the driving for you, the game puts you in a Golf or a similar F-class car, but I think this is a good training model, and a great way of letting each new driver coming into the game to train with a number of smaller, slower cars. Almost all of the special class cars are so insanely fast that even minor course corrections can result in spectacular crashes if you haven't ramped your way up to that elite class of cars. I twice made the mistake of jumping out of the order of races to try bigger cars before I was ready for them, and it…it was humbling, to say the least.

In four days, I've played the game all the way through to the Masters-class division, and have just now started the Elite-class races. This gives me three classes left, but I feel confident enough on the content of those that I can give a review without feeling I've missed anything except for the community and the "unicorn cars," or exotic supercars so rare that I don't even have good odds of owning them in the game world either. I've played the Autovista challenge to unlock a few exotic cars, and it's a single-lap flat run to be the first to finish. Win and you get to open up the car for a proper tour of its features. You also come to one of the major disappointments of the game, Jeremy Clarkson of Top Gear, who tries to bring pithy humor to the car monologues but mostly takes the pith…damn, that lisp came out of nowhere.

Setting aside the frustrating faux pax of a faulty fop for flummoxing narration, the Autovista tours of the cars are fun, they gave me a chance to move into the interiors of cars that I otherwise will never see in any other way. But the interior tours inevitably lead to starting the engine, leading you back to the same single race challenge. This isn't a complaint, mind you. Even after unlocking the Ferrari 458 Italia and Lamborghini Reventon, I kept going back through the same two races on the same track because damn it, those are sweet, sweet rides.

I also tried the Lamborghini Sesto Senso in free racing, and that is officially too much car for me just yet. I spent less time driving on the road and much more time screaming in panic as I shot the car off the track and narrowly avoided walls on every single turn. Essentially, it's like driving a JATO rocket, but with the ability to turn off the rocket during turns. Problem is, going that fast, brakes sometimes feel…too subtle. Which they shouldn't be while I'm on the edge of my seat screaming "OH GOD NO! PLEASE STOOOOOOOOP!" No, for a car this fast, you almost need forward-mounted rockets to slow down.

That's assuming your opponents will let you slow down. Go head, try it and see what happens. Heh.

So in addition to those two quick modes of play, there's also the ubiquitous racing game trope of collecting new cars as you earn your ranks in the world tour. Half the fun of any racing game is trying to pick which cars you're going to put in your personal garage out of the many fine selections offered each round. Gaining experience with each brand of car also earns you affiliate discounts for parts, up to free parts and payments for winning races while driving their brand.

My current love is the Lamborghini Gallardo, which handles like a dream and has the sweetest steering of any Lamborghini I've ever played in any game. Several times, I would be mesmerized by some pretty clouds, a mountain vista, or a placid roadside lake and go, "Oooh, that's just so prett—D'OH GOD, TURN!" And when you're traveling at 225 MPH, turns are often life or death. Er, well they can kill your car pretty effectively, anyway. BUT, the Gallardo's steering is so incredible that even when I would have lost control with a lesser car, the Lambo just slid through the turn like I'd meant to do it all along. I didn't even bark the tires. Brilliant. (Oh, and I'd be remiss not to mention that there's a fun painting and decals area, which allowed me to make a hot pink Gallardo with a black racing stripe. It sounds silly, but it looks gorgeous and stands out among all the obvious choices of red, yellow and black cars.)

I'm obviously a Lambo fan, but I've been amazed by the selections of other vehicles, from older classics like Pontiac GTO, Mustang Boss, and a sweet 1985 Countach 5000 to some refined modern offerings from companies I'd never seen before, like Holden, Rossion, and TVR. Every car looks great, but some are visual traps, looking great while handling like a pig in shit, which is to say very sloppy. I was delighted to finally get to drive the 2008 Lambo Miura concept because it looked so prettiful and shiny, but then I actually had to try and compete with it and ended up moaning "I hate this car" with every turn. If not for the stunning performance the Reventons and Gallardos I would have sworn the game makers just hated Lambos. (Not really, but they sure don't like the Miura, and the Countach's cornering is sadly accurate, a real problem on tracks with low-speed turns.)

And let's talk about the cars that look good and handle even better. I've upgraded my Mustang Boss and Pontiac Judge to A and B-class cars because they're just so rock solid on the track that I was loathe to let them go until I could find one of my precious Lambos. (Have I mentioned I'm a Lambo fan?) Then there's some surprising cars, like the Holden HSV w427, which looks like a white brick on wheels but flat out-accelerated everything else on the track and gave me such an incredible lead that it almost felt like cheating. Other sweet rides from complete unknowns (unknown to me, that is) have included a Bertone Mantide, a De Tomaso Pantera, and a TVR Sagaris. And I've barely scratched the surface of the game's full library of cars. Car fans, start your drooling.

New cars come with every XP level increase, so there's usually a comfortable pattern of race, race, and then pick a new car. (Sometimes you do three races, but it's usually two for me.) Every selection forces you to pick just one and leave a LOT of very sweet cars unexplored, so I expect to go back through this a few times to try out every model. I can say that even if the super fast models are fun, I'm still dropping back to E and F class races because the Golf and Fiat Punto Evo are just too much fun not to take them around the full track every once in a while. But even when there's no familiar cars to choose from, the option are all stunning visually. Whether they're as much fun to drive is the crap shoot of the game, because you're not allowed to see the specs for the cars before you pick them. But if you do get a crap car, you just park it in the garage, go back to a car you like, and never speak of that one time you picked badly. (One time? Who am I kidding, my garage already has a hall of shame for my many poor choices.)

If I have any complaints, it's only with certain levels taking place in Britain, because they game adds variation via "races" where you have to knock down bowling pins with your car. The idea is so stupid that I intentionally fail and move on. A complete waste of my time, and a waste of what could have been an awesome track if I'd been driving against someone else. Even the similar obstacle course isn't so annoying, and there, I feel like all those slaloms and gates help to get me more in touch with my car.

Two other level types don't do much for me, but this may just be because I've yet to win either event in all these different race circuits. One is a 1-to-1 race where your rival is given a 20 yard head start, never makes any mistakes, and seems to have a CB channel to talk everyone else into easing to the shoulder for them, and then somehow become race car drivers who block me when I try the same pass. Lately, I don't even bother. I just drive down the hill, admire the pretty waterfalls, and plan for the next event where I actually have a chance of winning against someone who isn't running in God mode. Yeah, okay, I set the game's drivers to be hard, but these dudes are perfect, and that does not happen in the other races. So I find it hard to believe they can have a perfect run, every single time.

There's also been one level where I was placed on a circuit track with a bunch of slower moving traffic, and was told to pass as many cars as possible. Again, I fail this without trying because the people driving at 65 MPH still act like they need both lanes to handle all that amazing highway speed. Half the time, I'm slipping past someone and bam, they decide to change lanes for better aerodynamics, or something. I can't see much point to these levels, but I can imagine some dumb ass game designer saying "We need to break up all this monotony with something different. Let's do bowling pins!" Game designers, shut up, beat yourself in the face with a bowling pin, then beat Jeremy Clarkson in the face with the same pin, and you stop thinking that a racing game needs diversions from its main purpose. You're like the rat bastards who killed MTV because someone thought we ought to break up the monotonous music with games shows and documentaries.

If I'm not clear, Forza people, in Forza 5, please drop the stupid bowling pins. This is a car racing game. I came to race. I did not come to bowl, or two play a round of Grand Theft Auto by dodging slow moving traffic. If I wanted GTA, I'd buy GTA, yo. And if I wanted to bowl with my car, I'd check myself into an asylum, because that's not just stupid. It's crazy-stupid.

Setting aside those complaints, the rest of the game is a racing fan's dream come true. The tracks are all gorgeous, some dangerously so, and while some were intimately familiar to me after years of watching car races or playing them in other games, several others were breathtaking new experiences. In future games, I may even have to drive slow and ignore the competition to admire the game instead of racing through it. But I think that's part of the devious fun of the tracks in Spain and Italy. They're just so pretty that your eyes are drawn away from the cars, away from the road, and most importantly, away from any indication that you are traveling at lethal speeds. The distant mountain ranges are eye candy traps as surely as the lakes and forests, and there really aren't any ugly levels. Even the gritty Indianapolis Motor Speedway looks beautiful under a high afternoon sun.

And there's something incredible about a morning race at Maple Valley, and you come around a turn and find the sun low on the horizon. It's gorgeous, and the effect of the sun washing out the road is amazingly realistic. So about half the time, the threat to me isn't other drivers. It's the pretty shininess of the tracks. It's my eye catching a perfect detail and marveling at it instead of thinking about the next turn coming up in 1.2 seconds. And no, this is totally not a complaint. No, this is glowing praise. And you know, if you do slow down long enough to notice the spectators in the stands, you'll note; they're moving, cheering, and making real noise. That's a nice touch, and it amazes me what my console is capable of. If this is what the current hardware does, then I can't wait to see Forza 5 on the Xbox 720, where we might get races of 20-34 cars. DROOL!

I still have three ranking classes to complete, but the races now are much harder because the top speeds of my cars exceed anything I've ever driven in the real world. In short, I'm racing out of my league, and it's starting to show in my flagging standings. In early races, I could whip out a first place finish every time. But in the Masters-class, I've run across drivers that smoke my ass and beat me to the punch for acceleration every other race. Note, I'm not saying, "That dirty rotten fink cheated!" I'm being out-classed, and I'm loving it because the races aren't so assured just because I've got a fast car. Everybody does, and some of these artificial drivers know how to use them. So when I pull past that wily bastard and then cling to my lead with scant seconds, it doesn't feel like a walk in the park, unless that park was Jurassic Park and I was wearing Lady Gaga's steak dress and carrying a keg of beer over one shoulder.

I have not tried the community, nor will I. Why? Well I accidentally hit the wrong button and ended up in the races list, and all I could hear was guys talking in German. Everyone in the room was level 29-60, and I was level 6. I also had no suitable cars to race with them at the time (All had S or R3 listed, and I had only E through C), so I just backed out of the menu and went back to my world tour races. About 3 minutes later, I get a message from one of the drivers: "Goodbye, asshole." So, nice to see that German males speak fluent douchebag. And no, I didn't hear a single other female driver in the "online party." I'd rather not play with those dudes, thanks. So if you want a review of what online play is like, you'll want to read someone else's review.

Okay, I think I covered everything except for the replay system, which works as advertised and makes some pretty highlight reels when I can avoid banging up my paint job too badly. (This is a lot harder than it sounds in theory.) As a final verdict, is Forza the perfect driving game? No. It's marred by lousy events meant to break up the monotony and instead serve to irritate me and distract from what I really want to do, which is drive fast against 8-12 other cars to see who comes out on top. But since those are only a few levels out of a lot of tracks that I love to drive, and I have the chance to drive cars that I could never touch a body panel, much less grip the steering wheel. For this ability, I consider it totally worth the full price of 50 euros. I love the game play whether I ride inside the cockpits or pull the camera up to "fly" behind the car. (There are other POV options, but I never use them.)

Oh, right, Kinect. You'll have to ask someone else about the Kinect. (And this is coming from someone who loves her Kinect dancing and fitness games.) The box claims the games will work "better with Kinect," with the system deciding when to give the car gas. It can also handle the braking, but you can stick you foot out to hald braking, and you wave your fists like a four-year-old imitating daddy driving.

Screw that shit. No seriously, I couldn't even make it through the menus without being annoyed by the UI, so I went on YouTube to watch someone else play it, and they said, "It's not about running your fastest lap. It's a bout having fun." Which translates as, "This game performs WORSE with Kinect." It may be interesting for a casual fan to wiggle their hands and avoid using two confusing trigger buttons and a steering wheel at the same time, but as a hardcore fan of racing, and of racing games, I prefer having the controller to take advantage of feeling the road through my hands.

If you think I'm overstating this point about how realistic those vibrations feel, I'm not and you likely won't believe me until you've tried it for yourself. But even if you've only driven a pickup for an extended road trip, you know what I mean about the road talking through a sterring wheel. know it's bold claim, but the game makes me feel like I have a real steering wheel in my hands, and I can feel the road in the same way that I did back in the day when I was risking fiery death with every midnight drive home. That sense of realness adds such an incredible amount of urgency to every race that I've often come off the edge of my seat and stayed in a half crouch, hunkered over in tension for the last blistering seconds before I crossed the finish line with my opponent's engine somewhere just behind me.

That's addicting stuff for a speed freak like me. In fact, last night, I was so hooked that I played until my eyes got blurry. Then I got up this morning and started driving BEFORE my tea. It's really that good. So I give Forza 4 four stars, and I recommend it to any racing fan looking for a realistic driving experience. This isn't perfect, but it will give you everything you desire in a racing game, and then some.

Oh damn it, is it time for an unscheduled trainwreck? YES

I should remember that because I have a reputation for humor and sarcasm, I need to start some entries with "I'm totally not joking" and possibly even end on it. The problem with this theory is, I'd inevitably corrupt the sentence and strip it of meaning by using it around a sarcastic post.

Never mind, the point it, I'm really, really just about done here. I'm coming up on the end of my contract with my ISP, but I'll pay for the storage for another year, and I'll re-up the domain name. But I'm going to wander away from the online world from now on and go back to talking to myself. And, if I'm being honest, I think y'all have just about convinced me to give up writing for good. Special thanks go out to Jerrod Balzer, Michele Lee, and Gef Fox for pushing me to consider quitting more seriously.

Five years I been at this, and my wrists are sore. I've worked long into every night. I JUST bought Dragon Naturally Speaking, not for the voice recognition, but for the text to speech editor, so I could fix more typos. And for a while, y'all won't notice that I'm done if all you look at is releases. That's because I'm dropping stuff I've already written, after editing it so it doesn't read like shit. I'm going to try to finish Ginger's story, and Peter's. I'm going to try and write another few books for myself. But I don't guess there's much point to writing more Mystical World Wars books if everyone is going to keep asking me "Where's the good guys?" I told you, I DON'T DO heroes. I don't believe in them, and that's not how I write. And yet every time I turn around, my books and characters are judged based on a checklist of what heroes should do.

When I give you a character who was sexually abused, who moved rapidly from one foster home to the next without any sense of stability, and who spent a year in juvenile detention; I ask you, where is that character supposed to have picked up ANY good moral habits? It's unrealistic to expect that he would have learned them on his own, so when you read Peter's introduction and STILL say, "Well gee, despite what the main character says I'm STILL expecting this to be a happy story about redemption," you're deluded.

And I don't care if that word is divisive, or if this whole screed makes me look bitter as Harlan Ellison the day after he's lost a frivolous lawsuit. What you're asking for from my story, given the circumstances, is deluded. Say it out loud: "But I think a person cursed as a werewolf who was sexually abused by his parents should still behave better than this." And if you nod and think that's a logical statement, here's your sign. It says Deluded. Because you are.

Let's talk about people saying, "Why didn't any of the adults see the warning signs?" in Peter the Wolf. Jean saw the signs early, just days after Peter moved in, and he asked Peter his intentions. At the time Peter could still honestly say that he was trying to avoid Alice. Almost TWO YEARS LATER, but only two months after Peter and Alice's relationship had changed to become more intimate, David noticed and found out that they'd made out, and he made Peter confess to Jean and Beth, and he also made Peter visit a shrink, Dr. Vasquez. Alice's parents forbid Alice from seeing Peter, and she sneaks around to see him anyway. So when she got caught by David, she was escorted home and grounded AGAIN. (Because she was grounded for six months for seeing Peter the first time. So much for "the parents did nothing.") Then if these examples of the adults noticing and doing their jobs aren't enough, the night that Peter and Alice almost kiss in front of the gymnastics team, Alice's uncle John visits Peter's hotel room and asks if they've had sex before, and he is extremely relieved to know nothing has happened yet. Then when Alice tries to sneak into Peter's room only minutes later, Duncan, the team captain, and John bust her before she can carry through with her evening plans. Duncan forces Peter to leave the team to keep them apart, and both Peter and Alice's parents again insist that the two should stay away from each other.

In short, to ask, "How did anyone not see the warning signs?" is to completely ignore the actions of every single adult in the story who did and insert your own personal narrative about "what's really going on." Or put another way, you read my whole book and didn't see anything happening. And if that's how we're going to play, I don't want to play with you people.

I mean, I do, but I have no idea what game you're playing, or what the rules are. All I'm seeing is more flaming hoops and more people telling me "Just keep going!" No. No, I think I'm done with the flaming hoops. I've been burned for the last time by a reviewer who read my whole book and didn't see a damn thing of what went on in it. (And this is just the latest. The first time was with Blind Rage, where the reviewer said "Jobe losing his girlfriend doesn't warrant this level of depression," when the story said Jobe had been abandoned by his foster child, and her brother was MURDERED because Jobe wasn't strong enough to save the kids. Oops, guess she missed reading that whole…paragraph? Page? How much was she skimming the intro to come up with this blatant misinterpretation? Doesn't matter, because the latest reviewer looked like they skimmed the whole book by comparison.)

I don't buy this bullshit idea that it's a lack of cultural sensitivity that makes it harder for some people to understand the perspective I'm presenting. Because the only other reviewer to trash Peter's book knows exactly what it's like to be abused. But it appears she couldn't express any empathy for the abused main character because the book triggered her when Alice got molested. Instead of admitting that her personal history made her sensitive to the topic, she attacked the only two other reviews that were out for not talking more about the utter filth within. She attacked them for being positive, completely removing her ability to be objective. And after she dared other people to like the book, one of the first reviewers edited their review to say that in hindsight, the book made him ill. She didn't make an objective review. She attacked other people for liking the book, and she forced another writer to edit his review for fear of harming his reputation. She made her review personal, and her review led to a shit storm with my other friends.

After that, I got attacked as a pedophile, on Twitter and on a forum. People who had formerly claimed to be friends slammed me in their favorite haunt, and rather than bother with rebuttal I just gave up on them. I was told by the same person days later that I'm a sexual predator, even though I haven't even had sex in nearly a year because my hubby (who's fifteen years older than me) had a heart attack and can't get it up anymore. I've been hit on by a bunch of teen guys during the Summer and I always turned them down. I don't even look at women regardless of age because I'm trying to stay faithful to hubby's request that I locate a suitable trio partner. (I could find someone willing to play with me, but they usually balk at hubby's hirsute appearance.) I'm bordering on being sexually repressed at this point, but because I wrote a little girl getting molested and didn't murder the molester in fictionally acceptable homicide, my hypocritical friends in the horror world chose to abandon me and attack me as gutter trash.

I want to make this last point very clear. At EVERY turn that those people had problems, I sent a donation. Didn't matter who; didn't matter what the reason was. I gave everything I had, and when I could, I helped out writers by buying their books. Some of them, I can call myself a genuine fan of their stuff. But because those hypocritical motherfuckers don't like the direction my art is heading, they've decided to break me off as a sexual predator promoting sexual deviance. FOR THE CONTENTS OF ONE SCENE IN ONE BOOK. And one of those motherfuckers completely ignored my history of donations and behind the scenes help, and they declared that I had "abandoned my people." Did the community come to my defense and say, "Well wait, Zoe has done a lot to help others, and maybe what happened in this story isn't any worse than the rapes and murders we read about in our preferred genre all the time"?

No, the community walked away from me and said I was the one wrong for taking offense at a personal attack. The writers didn't abandon me because of anything I did in the real world. They left me for writing something more realistic than they were comfortable reading. Think about that. The people who read Jack Ketchum, Wrath James White, and Ray Garton bashed me for one fictional relationship that I wrote.

(And to be clear, I'm not saying these guys write badly, as in a lack of skill. They have mad skills. I'm saying, they wrote worse deeds. Ketchum even wrote a book, Girl Next Door, based on a real case of rape and murder of a teen girl. That's writing that all my reviewers dug into. But then they turned around and said they couldn't read my "filth." Hypocritical? Sure. Par for the course? Yes. Will it ever change? No.)

I've stewed a while over this, and over other writers telling me, "Well Zoe, maybe you shouldn't say anything at all." Oh right, I should let the guys who published a story with a father molesting his daughter turn around and call me a pedophile for writing a story with a similar scene? No, I don't fucking think so. And more to the point, I'm sick of being out in public, begging people to read my stuff, only to have them whine at me that I'm not doing this right. I'm sick of trying to court horror readers, because they haven't read anything from me. I'm tired of trying to reach any and all readers. Fantasy, sci-fi, weird, dark, whatever.

You people say over and over that what you want is "realistic writing" but you DON'T judge books that way. You judge them based on their ability to appeal to your personal vanities and ideals. You ask that characters speak in ways that NO REAL PERSON would ever use. If writers try to add in a few ums and ohs to approach realism, you bitch about "unrealistic dialogue."

And people, the characters you like in fiction and praise can't exist in the real world. Because they're not heroes. They're assholes who step on other people and project their fake moral values on everyone else in their story. It's not realistic writing. It's all delusion and vanities. I'm so sick to fucking death of seeing more books about heroes saving the world, or confronting "ancient, hungry evil." I wanted to write something really, really different, something that walks away from all of that insanity that passes for "realistic" mainstream fiction.

And every single story I put out before Peter, I felt was a diluted failure. (Note, I spelled diluted right, and I did not mean to say deluded again.) Even with Little Monsters, I watered the story down in each editing phase because with every beta reading I'd get at least one "it's obvious you developed this in a vacuum." (By the third time, I started taking pleasure in telling them "Actually you're in the latest round of beta testers, and before beta testing, this story had gone to an editor.") But because of those people, Jarred's character got watered down from being a predator similar to Peter to becoming a puppet used by other people. And while I still feel the story is complex and appropriately harsh for a tragedy, I think the central question of the story loses some of its power because of all the diluting. The question was, can a reader feel something for monsters when they experience a personal tragedy? But ironically, I don't think most people make it to the tragedy. Because even after diluting, I think most readers bail on Jarred somewhere around chapter 3, for "not making the right choice" with Linda.

With Peter's story, I felt excited that for once, I'd accomplished what I wanted without diluting my character to the point of weakening their main internal conflict. I'd eschewed hero and anti-hero to present a story about a monster. And Peter isn't just a kind of fantasy monster. He's a real monster, the one real life monster that sends people into a blind panic to get away from a word. But in addition to that curse, I gave Peter lycanthropy. I didn't follow the trend for wolf pack stories, and I opted to go with an older form of the werewolf legend. I went with an original idea that pushed comfort boundaries farther than similar examples of genre writing had tried. I worked to challenge readers, and I avoided stereotypes for everyone. EVERYONE. I busted my ass to show as much as I could through Peter's limited experience, but I felt that his attitude was the best for the story. Knowing himself as a monster, he couldn't judge anyone else because of his past. So he was willing to give everyone else a chance to tell their story. Which is ironic, because it appears Peter is more willing to give people a fair chance than real people are.

And, lest you think this is all about Peter, it isn't. I've released many, many fine books in 2009 and 2010 that got great reviews, and nobody cared. Here in 2010, it's all fire and forget. My first bizarro story? Ignored. My first example of literary fiction? Ignored. My first rhyming novella? Ignored. My first YA? Ignored. I walked away from the Mystical World Wars to give people something new, to see if maybe my lows sales and lack of reviews was just that the series was too big and intimidating. But nothing sold. Oh, with every Twitter pitch session, I'd find all kinds of people saying "Wow, that sounds great, I know I want to read that!" And if I had a sale for every person who ever said that, I wouldn't be in a state of near-constant depression and questioning my value as a human being.

It's always the same. And it doesn't really matter if I write something watered down or if I strip off all the filters and try to write as realistically as possible. It doesn't matter if I offer you a monster like Peter or a virgin like Monica. It doesn't matter if I write a straight character like David or a trans character like Sandy. Nothing I write is worthy of anyone's time.

And please, don't tell me "Just keep going." I said at the start, I've got sore wrists. But I've also got aching fingers, a sore back, an empty wallet (meaning I'm STILL spending more money in my hobby than I can ever hope to get back), near-constant depressions, and still nothing to show for it. No sales, no reviews, no nothing. And when I finally do get a review after two months of silence on all my new releases, I find myself wishing I had the money to fly to them, knock on the door, take out…a copy of my book and take them point-by-point through everything they missed in their "reading" of my story. But if I had the money to do that, I might have the money to hire a publicist. Or better yet, a saner trans actress to play me.

I digress, if you're going to ignore everything I say, even in my stories, then fuck it, I'm done. I will release more stories until there's nothing left in the queue, but I'm not asking for reviews. I'm not promoting reviews when they come in. I'll blog about whatever when I feel like it, but I'm not even going to bother announcing new releases here. Nobody cares anyway. So now, I don't care either. You win. I'm done. I quit.

I'm going to wander away from Twitter and only use it to keep in touch with friends in bursts, so I don't expect to have as many activist stories to share. I am sorry for that, because some of those stories are important and need more outlets. I'm also sorry for all the people I was RTing who won't have me acting as a free part-time pimp. But I am so, so done with asking people to misinterpret everything I do and judge me as a person because I didn't appease your need to be coddled through a story.

I've been having issues…

…as outlined in previous posts, but my latest efforts to phone Microsoft's local tech support via their 800 number still got nothing. So I got on Twitter and asked @XboxSupport if there was some way that I could just email a report to the staff and hope for the best in the next update. @XboxSupport sent me a link to a chat support, and during last night, I found out that one of my problems could not be resolved due to a setting that was way, way outside the tech's power to change. The chat ended with us both smiling, and I filled out my survey with positive input. I really wished I'd save that chat with Gina too, but I didn't think about it until after closing the window.

Today, I realized I'd lost the ability to play videos through the Xbox Zune player after the update, and this WAS SO NOT COOL. So I got back onto chat support, this time getting in contact with Darragh in Ireland. What followed was a tech support chat that starts testy on my part and veers into an interview and a book sale, with me selling two copies of Peter the Wolf, one print copy to the tech, and the other a Kindle copy to the higher level tech "listening" in to our chat. The conversation got so twisted that near the end I asked for permission to do a copy-pasta of our tech chat. It's too good not to share.

If you don't notice it among the jargon and topics shifts, Darragh does fix the problem I came to him with, and then addresses another problem I'm having. So despite me having spent two DAYS talking to Microsoft tech support, I'm actually in a great mood. Apple, you only WISH you had customer service this awesome. (Amazon…just, no.)

So, without further ado, the TL;DR tech chat with all our typos and foul language unedited. (Sensitive readers are advised to avoid this whole thing or to cover their eyes with one hand, but peek through their fingers):

You are now chatting with 'Darragh'.



Darragh: Hello, thank you for contacting Xbox Customer Support. My name is Darragh. Please give me a moment to review your question.

Darragh: Hey Zoe, what did you and Gina discuss yesterday and did she fix the issue with the language change?

Zoe: No.

Zoe: What happened was, we realized it was an update related erro that couldn't be fixed at this time

Zoe: Sorry, I stepped out to make tea.

Darragh: Ha! That's fine Zoe, and she really said it was update related? Are you signed into your account?

Zoe: No, we both agreed on that after goning through many, many steps. we tried…(cont)

Zoe: Reloading my profile, downloading my profile, deleting my profile and all related market data, and dowlading the profile again. So long as the account wasn't connected to Live, all the menus were in English. The moment I connected to Live, main menus and secondary subs-menus are in Italian, and everything beleove that is back to English.

Zoe: Here on the PC yes. On the Xbox, I'm loged in with another account. Actually, that's what I wanted to talk to you about today, my new-found problems with Zune.

Darragh: Ah you see I'm just having a look at your account and it appears to have an Italian address that is why a lot of the marketplace would be in Italian you see. Its is an account region issue, I can't understand why Gina did not catch on to this to be honest. One moment

Zoe: Well no, you not aware of the full issue.-

Darragh: Ah I see, please continue

Zoe: You see before the Dashboard update, ALL the Xbox menus were in English, BECAUSE my langauge setting is in English. Makes since, cause I'm an American ex-pat in Italy. Which reminds me, you setting the stores language by Region is a terrible design choice that assumes ALL people in a region speak the same language. This DESPITE all your apps asking for which langauge we prefer.

Zoe: So in essance we get local apps in the right tongue, but the moment we have to visit the store or do tech support "Benvenuto!" Well that's great…I can't read or do anything with this unless I wait for my Italian husband to translate.

Darragh: Ah I understand Zoe, but this has happened to other users before and I have found an article that should help us fix this, now I don't understand why the update changed this all of a sudden, but I have had this before on the old dashboard.

Zoe: All right, I'll try it, but I want to make you aware, this is NOT the issue I'm contacting you about today.

Darragh: I know, you are contacting me about the Zune issue, but hey if we can solve both issues over chat today it would be better

Darragh: Clicki here and have a look at this article

Zoe: I wouldn't complain if you did, no.

Zoe: Nope, that's wrong.

Zoe: The language for my account is English too.

Darragh: The language on the account is English too?

Zoe: Echo-cho-o. Yes, the language for my account is English too. I can't read it any other way.

Darragh: How about Xbox LIVE Marketplace content and content descriptions? Xbox LIVE subscription descriptions? Messages sent from the Xbox team, such as service notifications or promotions? And Spotlight and Events on the Xbox Dashboard?

Darragh: Are they all in Italian?

Zoe: Anything sent to me from you guys is based on the REGION. I've selected English repeatedly from the setting, and your store and receipts from the store come in Italian

Darragh: I understand that is because the of the region of the account is set to Italy, and I'm afraid afraid after checking the article that the one I sent you leads on to states that Italy only has Italian as a language option.

Darragh: *I said afraid twice, sorry about that

Zoe: And that, as I said, is a terrible choice that makes using the services much much harder on ex-pats (cont)

Darragh: So if all of the things I mentions above are in Italian that is the issue we are having, its only those areas of the dashboard that come up in Italian.

Darragh: mentioned*

Zoe: I bought Win 7 Ultimate specifically so I could get my OS to swap from Italian to English. No other version would allow that. So you went to all the trouble of making region and language setting separate, only to blow it by making all online communication based on region, not on language.

Zoe: But NO, you're still wrong on the Dashboard problem

Zoe: BEFORE the update, the main menua were STILL in English.

Zoe: NOW thaey are not. If I erase my account or start a new one which does not connect to live for your region setting to corrupt the profil, EVERYTHING is in English.

Darragh: I do realise that it is not the best for ex-pats like yourself and I wish there was a better way Zoe but from what you have told me that is the issue, I'm sorry if you believe I don't understand but it is something I have dealt with a lot, all thats different is the fact that it was in english beforehand Zoe. Now the the menus would be in english when you are offline Zoe, as the console is set to English

Zoe: So no, this is not the store's fault, and this WAS NOT LIKE THIS before the dashboard Update.

Darragh: I understand and recognise this, that is the only thing that is different with this case

Darragh: Now hear me out, bear with me for a moment while I type this out.

Zoe: YES, and me and Gina already resolved this last night as a problem with the update.

Zoe: No, I want to move on to my other problem

Darragh: Okay Zoe, my apologies I didn't aim to frustrate you

Zoe: Mostly, you're just irritating me and reminding me that even if I say "You've made a mistake," You will say "I'm sorry, but we don't plan to address the problem of you and a few hundred thousand X-pats."

Darragh: It just that everything points to the accounts language settings that are set on Billing.microsoft.com

Zoe: Well gosh, thanks for that. Guess I'll just have to accept NEVER buying anything through the Zune store, because you don't care to work with us.

Darragh: Sorry, I never said anything like that Zoe. Let me just get you a guide to this other issue, I want to save you time, if you like we can also rollback the update and reinstall it, if it is an update issue maybe that will help for the language thing.

Darragh: I never wanted to frustrate you and I apologies completely I will move on to the other issue and see if I can find something to help

Zoe: No, I don't want a rollback. As I said to Gina, I will wait for another update that fixes the menus on the main menu. I didn't say it to Gina, but I will to you: I have almost no hope that Microsoft will ever admit they made a mistake in designing their stores, or that they will ever tyy to fix it so I can also shop there.

Darragh: But this is why I want to try and help fix this other issue, I don't want you waiting around for a fix if it is something that can be fixed now.

Zoe: My other problem is another that I don't expect you to fix. I want to make that clear. I just want to report the problem and hope you fix it quickly in the next update.

Zoe: Simply put, I can't play videos from my own library. Whether from my connected PC's Zune collection or from an attached USB key. After the update, Opening the video player from any menu leads to the Zune movie store. (Showing movies in the wrong language, of course.)

Darragh: Okay and what file format is the movies you are trying to play?

Darragh: Or are they mixed?

Zoe: There is no longer an option to watch videos from my memory device or from the network.

Darragh: Okay, so it would prompt to play them off the USB before the update?

Zoe: Yes, and there was a listing for PC and then another for PC (Zune Player)

Zoe: If I opened PC (Zune Player) all of my videos and songs were available.

Zoe: Zoe with the UPDATE, poof, "would you like to buy a movie?"

Zoe: Not sure where the word Zoe came from.

Zoe: I didn't type that. Weird.

Darragh: Ha! Don't worry about, there's a lot of weird things about this chat

Zoe: Wow, I dyslexied Now to Zoe…good trick.

Zoe: No, just one weird thing…me.

Darragh: Happens to be all the time, not using the word Zoe instead of now, but generally a lot of other words

Zoe: Well so anywho, as you can see, the system is on the network, or else it wouldn't be able to download profiles and log in for games and what not. But now the Zune Player seems crippled after the update.

Zoe: So it won't read files from my PC or from my USB keys. (Even though my games will see the keys as storage devices.)

Darragh: One moment Zoe, I just want to check if there was something that was drastically changed after the update in regards to Zune Player.

Zoe: Take your time. I just remembered that tea I was making…thinking it might be ready now.

Darragh: Ah yeah, you go ahead, I will be a moment here

Zoe: So yeah, I'm back.

Zoe: No, I'm not. I totally lied. In fact, I'm not even here now. Ninja.

Darragh: Damn, I had something could of tried if you are back But your probably not going to be a fan of it.

Darragh: we could of tried*

Zoe: Back now.

Zoe: And what are you suggesting that I'm not going to be fan of. Because speaking as a 36-year-old fan of Twilight AND Justin Bieber, I think it's pretty clear I have bad judgment.

Darragh: Cool, okay remember I had mentioned rolling back the update, we may need to do that at some stage

Darragh: Ha! To each there own in regards to Twilight and the Biebs

Zoe: Well, I guess we could roll it back, and then I'll wait until the next Update to try again.

Darragh: Okay first off we will work on getting the USB to work, so do you know what format its in? FAT32 or NTFS?

Zoe: I didn't mean to like the sparkles, by the way. I went into the first book saying "So I'm supposed to hate this. Grrr." But thien by page 50 I was like "Oh EM GEE Edward is so squeelicious!"

Zoe: Fat32

Darragh: Awesome! Okay and how many Movies do you have on it?

Zoe: Always use Fat 32 cause NTFA screws up hubby's mac from reading it right.

Darragh: Ah I see, personally I never used Mac so I wouldn't know.

Zoe: Um…just a small collection of Teen Wold and My Little Pony episodes in Divx format.

Darragh: Do you have anything in AVI we could test?

Zoe: Teen Wolf, not Wold. That's a different show, I think

Zoe: All the Divx files are avi.

Zoe: And they've all worked fin on the Xbox.

Darragh: Ah I see, what is everyone's obsession with My little pony? Also do you have the option media update for the Xbox?

Zoe: I saw the whole Teen Wolf series using the USB key to store them, kinda like TiVo, but without the ads.

Darragh: Good idea

Zoe: One, is silly and self-aware of it's silliness. Two, the main character is name TWILIGHT SPARKLE. I'm DHO_OMED to love the show just for that reason alone.

Darragh: Ha! One of the guys here on chat says he is a fan of it, I thought it was weird but he assures me its not.

Zoe: And three, yes, I have the optional media update. The divx files didn't work until after I got that. Same for my AAC files from That Rat Bastard Company Who Shall Not Be Named.

Zoe: *Cough*Apple*kaff*

Darragh: Ha! Anyway so the USB should be working in the system, just the dashboard doesn't pick it up, odd.

Zoe: It has a character who breaks into musical numbers, and no one else does. The first time she does it, to other ponies are like "She's not…" – "Yep, she is." I almost died laughing.

Zoe: So, rollback?

Darragh: Ha! I have to admit what Conan and you have told me it sounds pretty class, also yep, its rollback time.

Darragh: What happens is we are going to strip the core pieces of the update and then reinstall them, not really a rollback per say (I doubt I typed that right) but it is pretty easy to do and can work wonders.

Zoe: It's ace, really a great "pick me up" kind of show. Like snorting Pixie Stix and joyriding through Candy Land for half an hour. ^_^

Zoe: All righty, it's sounds less painful than my sex change, so let's do it.

Darragh: Ha! Zoe your possibly one of the coolest users I have come across in quite some time!

Darragh: Now the rollback is so obscure that it doesn't even have a proper page so what we have to do is use this random article that mentions it as a step.

Darragh: Click here and go Solution 1

Zoe: Okie dokie!

Zoe: Oh hell what is this a Konami load code? This had better give me 30 men in Kontra or I'll want my money back.

Zoe: Right, I'll try this and be right back.

Darragh: So give it a shot, and hopefully it will fix the issue, I doubt it will fix the Italian-ness (Thats right, I make up words) but hopefully it will work for the Zune player

Darragh: Also isn't it just called the Konami code?

Zoe: Hey, you can't make up words unless you plan to become a writer. That's a rule. And trust me, I was a writer, so I know.

Zoe: Also, Konami code is a lay term…for the plebes. *haughty sniff*

Darragh: I thought about becoming a writer actually, then I took an arrow to the knee (Skyrim reference if you played it)

Zoe: Console is resetting now. We'll see what happens next.

Darragh: Awesome, fingers are definitely crossed here Zoe.

Darragh: Making it difficult to type

Zoe: I've not played it, but I saw the video with all the "former adventurers"

Zoe: Also listened to the dub step remix, freaking hilarious.

Darragh: Ha! Haven't seen that yet to be honest, but will definitely look it up after work!

Zoe: And you really neet to take an arrow to the hand to stop you from being a writer. You can take one through the brain ans still do the job, though. Just look at me. Holes all through my head, and I've written 34 novels. =^D

Darragh: Really?

Darragh: The novels thing, not the fact that you have holes in the head

Zoe: Both are true. I have holes cause my Nultiple sclerosis. And I've published 34…I've written 45…in four years. It's roughly a million words per year.

Zoe: System has restarted and says "You need to update or you will not be able to connect to live.

Zoe: So, do I say yes or decline on this?

Darragh: Perfect, go ahead with the update

Darragh: Also wow! 34 books! What type of stuff do you write?

Zoe: Started the update.

Darragh: Cool

Zoe: I'm a cross genre writer. I've wrriten light sci-fi fluff, and I've written a dark fantasy so disturbing, I lost friends over it. I'm in the midst of writing a YA adventure book, only me second YA attempt ever, so I'm a leetle nervous about getting the tone right.

Darragh: Really? If you don't mind could I maybe get a name of one of your novels? I would love to have a look at it

Darragh: I'd love to be able to claim that I made a arrow to the knee joke with the author of a novel on Xbox chat!

Zoe: Nope, that rollback didn't work. Apparently, there was some security update stuff that came with the dash, cause Live won't let me on without the new dash. =^/

Zoe: Um…what do you normally like to read? That will help me steer you to something you won't throw across the room after two pages.

Darragh: Well let me see, I'm a fan of George Orwell, but I have read a lot of stuff, I'm about to start reading H.P Lovecraft's short stories after a lot of research but I mainly love anything that deals with mystery or sort of dystopian futures.

Zoe: Huh…well mI'm taking mystery to mean "the mysterious," and not "whodunnit"?

Darragh: Yes, but as I said I will read everything and anything, I don't get disturbed easily by the way so you don't have to worry about that!

Zoe: And if you'r want sort of dystopin, I'd have to suggest Wake Up With the Kiemellians, a sci-fi story about a man who wakes up from a coma and discovered that Earth was invaded by aliens while he was unconcious. https://www.smashwords.com/books/view...

Darragh: Also could I get you to try another video file type, just to check? If it still doesn't work I'd try another USB, just to rule everything out you know?

Darragh: Also thanks! Let me have a look into the book!

Zoe: I'm reluctant to offer the controversial title because the story features a relationship between the teenage main character, a victim of sex abuse, and his underage girlfriend. Like I said, I lost friends over "what I did" to a fictional little girl. =^/

Zoe: All right. Will try another video first, and then another USB key. This will take a few minutes. Hope you don't mind waiting.

Darragh: Its not a problem Zoe

Darragh: Also I can understand, but I will probably end up tracking it down and reading it just to see why, you have caught my interest!

Zoe: Then you're looking for Peter the Wolf by Zoe E. Whitten. Note the Amazon review of the guy who said he loved it, but it made him sick. He didn't say that in the original review, but my other "friend" wrote a review daring other people to "like this filth." So he chickened and edited his review. =^/

Darragh: Ha! This is definitely I have to read then, I have never read anything that would make me feel like that.

Zoe: Link, then: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view...

Darragh: Cheers!

Zoe: Loading the other memory key now, just to make sure…

Darragh: Great!

Darragh: Wow, Zoe consider this read. Also you have topped my list as the most interesting person I have ever talk to in Xbox Support, and I have talked to a lot of people

Zoe: Aw, thanks! I used to be a PC Tech, so I know how hard the job is, and I try to make this less painful for y'all when I can.

Zoe: And YES, the update rolback seems to have given me the ability to see the USB device, and there's a video player button back in the menu. YAYZORZ.

Darragh: It worked! YAY!

Zoe: Very releived on that, cause I've been enjoying using the Xbox to watch my TV shows on instead of on my wimpy 19″ screen. It's practically third world! (;_;)

Darragh: Ha! well I glad we got that working today Zoe, that's one issue resolved!

Zoe: Very hapy to have it fixed, and as I told Gina yesterday, so long as the games play in English (they do) I'm not going to be upset of a few menus using the wrong words. =^)

Zoe: I will be looking for this to improve in the next update, and if not, I will want to update y'all, maybe make this an ongoing case.

Darragh: Are you sure you don't want to take a crack at fixing this today Zoe, I have no problem if you want to wait and see if the update will fix, and I would love to hear from you again if you do so I will set up an ongoing case so we will have access to this transcript if you wish?

Zoe: Well, I'm not opposed to playing techie on my box to help you pin down possible solutions.

Zoe: But I'll make it known, we don't have to fix it for this chat to be considered a resolved issue.

Darragh: Sadly Gina was a member of the US team and I'm an Irish support agent so I was unable to view her chats (Don't think I'm being lazy I honestly don't) so I will have to get you to tell me if you have tried certain things, is that okay?

Zoe: Sure, absolutely.

Zoe: Pity you couldn't read hers, cause she said I made her laugh a lot.

Zoe: I didn't think I was THAT funny, but okay. =^)

Darragh: I also pity the fact I can't read it

Darragh: But anyway let return to the article I gave near the start, I will get it for you again.

Darragh: Follow this guide

Darragh: Now this one has nothing to do with the Xbox console itself, it is the Live ID we are working with here

Darragh: Now it does show a table that says Italy only supports Italian but I never take that table as 100% fact, I have had a guy disprove it a before for Finland I believe.

Zoe: Well for me it only has a region setting. There's no option at a language at all. And, if I can say, that is an assumption that's harming you. Think of all the Chinese, Korean, African, and US and UK immigrants who can't effectively use your services because you assumed everyone in Italy must be Italian speakers by default.

Darragh: I do realise this, and I have had this discussion many times with other users, it isn't a topic I particularly like dealing with as it can generally be a hard message, but the best way to test to show that it may be a Live ID issue is to create a free Xbox Live account with a US made hotmail address, if it still comes up in Italian then it is definitely a update issue, but if it comes up in English then it is an account issue.

Darragh: But trust me on this it something we all think should be fixed here at Xbox chat.

Zoe: Well, but here's my problem. I have two Live accounts now. Both are using a US based paypal account, but since my billing address is in Italy, my money being in US dollar from a US bank does me no good.

Zoe: You work with where I live, not with where my cash lives.

Zoe: And, now that I thinkl about it, I DID have a question about combining my Xbox and Phone accounts into one account.

Darragh: Yes, it is true, we can only accept payment from the bank the user's region is originally from.

Darragh: Hopefully I can help with this other question?

Zoe: Because as it is now, I have two different gamerscores, and my Phone is set up wrong to be used with the new Xbox comapnion as well because the phone login and Xbox login have to match.

Zoe: So, I need to Make my Phone account the same as my Xbox account. They both use the same billing infomation either way.

Darragh: I take it you are using a Windows 7 phone or are you using one of the newly released apps that are on the Android or Iphone?

Zoe: Windows 7 phone, and LG Optimus 7 running the latest OS update.

Zoe: (Really loving it, by the by.)

Darragh: Cool, okay there is a way to fix this, and this is becoming a running theme today but we will need to completely reset the phone ( I don't generally deal with Windows 7 phones but I do know this) You see the Windows 7 phone's Live ID is set up at the beginning, if it is wrong we need to return to that initial set up, let me see if I can find a guide to this.

Darragh: Here it is

Zoe: Okie dokie. And being that I'm a long-time Windows user, I am TOTALLY used to "wipe and reload" as a default answer. X^D I go all the way back to the days of Windows 3 on DOS 4. I B a dinosaur.

Darragh: Ha! I never got to use those operating system, I'm too young I think my first computer was a Windows ME or a Windows 95

Darragh: Also please do check the warning on that page

Zoe: Ew, your fist Windows was ME. I… I weep for you.

Darragh: I know, even back then I knew it was terrible!

Zoe: I just got to the warning, and this does vex me slightly. I've purchased a browser, and a few games on this account. So I need to ask, politely….

Zoe: would it be possible for someone to transfer those purchases to my Xbox account and remove them from the Phone account?

Darragh: Hmm, personally I couldn't but let me ask a supervisor, see what he has to say. Would it be okay if I leave for a moment?

Zoe: Talking the BEST OS even, Win 2K was bulletproof. I had a system run for a year straight, no reboots, no no shut downs, no blue screens. Just loved it so, so much.

Zoe: Yes, go ahead.

Darragh: Cool, one moment

Darragh: Okay, he says he wouldn't know for certain but he doubts it is possible, Windows 7 phone has a chat support that may be able to help further with that one.

Zoe: Yeah, okay, I'll make the pitch to them too, but if it's a wing and a miss, I only had a few apps just yet. So it's not time for "MY WHOLE LIFE IS IN THERE" drama yet…YAT.

Zoe: And I screwed up the punch line with a typo. So typical.

Darragh: Also Conan says he was a big fan of Windows 2000 as well

Darragh: Ha! Maybe it will work, if I had the power I would

Zoe: It was a great system. Conan has good taste in OSes. Though I gotta say, I'm really loving Win 7 Ultimate. Very nice OS

Zoe: And if you do buy a few books, you'll end up covering the cost of the apps I need to replace. ^_^

Darragh: Ha! Considered it covered I'll buy a paperback version of Peter the Wolf as well as Wake Up With the Kimellians

Darragh: Wait there is paper backs, right?

Zoe: Oh, for Paperback, you gotta go to Lulu. Sorry. But I have no choice in that. My only other option is Amazon's Creatspace, and me and Amazon are not on good terms after they intentionally hid one of my books because a major publisher had just released a new book with the same name. Then they lied to me for two month and said it was a "glitch" and they "were investigating." I had a friend working in Amazons warhouse who looked up my book and found it flagged as hidden. Amazon never answered him or me on why it couldn't be unhidden. (>__>)

Darragh: Its a bit of a break from the norm so I'm completely okay with style, I also know another chat support agent who does a lot of reading (Has on of those Sony Reader things) I will tell her about the e-books, don't worry I will do my best to get as many people to read as possible!

Darragh: Conan asked if its on Kindle store (I know you have the Amazon thing so probably not)

Darragh: Also its fine Zoe, I'm really enjoying this chat

Zoe: Well Peter the Wolf is on Kindle. Not all of my books are…but I'm going to be putting as many as I can back on at the end of December.

Zoe: YAY! Glad I'm not being "The Tech Support Customer From Hell." =^D

Darragh: Cool, consider a copy sold to Conan then from Kindle!

Darragh: Oh god no your not!

Darragh: on Kindle*

Zoe: Conan, if I ever make it to Ireland, I owe you and Darragh both hugs and a pint each at the local pub.

Darragh: Ha! We will hold you to that Zoe

Zoe: It's okay, I'm a natural hugger, and a lover of pubs. ^_^

Darragh: Then you would do fine in Ireland!

Zoe: I really do hope to come to Ireland one day. as an American Mutt, I'm part Irish. ^_^

Zoe: And part German, part Pennsylvania Dutch, and part Chocktaw. (That's an Oklahoma Native American. The nonviolent ones, so nobody knows them.)

Darragh: Ha! Well you would be always welcome over Zoe, and we mean that

Zoe: Cool! Well so I guess I need to talk to the phone support chat. Do I do that through the phone or a brower like this?

Darragh: I believe that have a chat support option like this, let me track it down for you

Zoe: And I will say, I've had a blast talking with y'all. Never expected my books and My Little Pony to show up in a tech chat. But there you go. Brilliant.

Zoe: In fact if you don't mind, I'd like to copy pasta this to a blog post. If that's okay with you?

Darragh: Ha! Its definitely a first and of course you can Zoe, this transcript is yours to keep!

Zoe: I luv you gaiz. SRYSLY.

Darragh: Ha! Well it was an absolute pleasure speaking to you Zoe! I have found the Chat support for Windows phone 7 by the way.

Darragh: Here it is!

Zoe: Great! Thank you! ^_^

Darragh: So I guess this is the end of our conversation I wish you the very best Zoe and the best of luck with Windows Phone!

Darragh: Wait if people see my chat log they will see my grammar mistakes!

Zoe: And I thank you so very much for making this a greatchat. =^)

Darragh: Thanks to you too Zoe!

Zoe: Oh, they aren't any worse than mine, and I'm a writer. So it's okay. =^D

Darragh: Its been an absolute pleasure and consider a few copies of your book sold!

Zoe: Buy, Darragh. And thanks for fixing the video player problem. =^* Smooches.

Darragh: I may even turn up on the a review site! Best of luck!

Darragh: Thank you for contacting Xbox Customer Support. To end your chat session please click the X above the chat window

Last review I'll ever post…

So, here's a two star review for Peter, by yet another reader who somehow expected Clark Kent morality from my writing. The final line about the reader wishing for a "more age appropriate relationship" stung almost as much as their complete misinterpretation of Peter, Alice, both sets of parents, and the purpose of the story itself. Which makes this review really hard to take because Peter's book wasn't judged by the writing, which the reviewer said was good. Peter was judged on the reader's preconceived notions about how abuse victims should behave. So it wasn't my book that was unrealistic. It was the reader's expectations. Doesn't matter. I lose, here's two stars, and fuck Peter, again.

I'm not thanking Gef for this review. I feel gutted and defeated. I can't get you people to talk about abuse and bullying using non-fiction in my blog posts, and based on most of the reactions to my writing, I don't think I'll generate any conversation with my fiction either. So "thanks" to Gef, I'm serious contemplating giving up altogether.

Fuck it. I'm not giving books away for Christmas. I'm not promoting anything. I'm not talking about other issues. I'm just walking away. Fuck it. Maybe I'll come back someday, when I feel like wanting to be misunderstood again.

I'm muddled on the March for Muff…

I got this next story from another writer on Twitter, N. K. Jemisin, about a protest against unneeded vaginal surgery. I want to point out first that what I'm about to talk about has nothing to do with Nora or her views on this topic, only with my interpretation of the article and its presentation of the topic. I also want to make clear that Muff March may have a more complex message that I'm not getting, and this could be a problem with bad reporting. If this is bad reporting, and I can find a better presentation of the message, or if someone can link me to one, I will update this topic.

The Muff March protest sounds good on the surface, being opposed to unneeded genital procedures, but the problem is the tone of the article doesn't make this issue clear, as in which procedures are being done for the "wrong" reasons, and it goes into some uses of sexism and fear mongering in its presentation. The article uses language meant to cast all surgeries in a bad light like: (emphasis mine)

"At its most modest, the Muff March is against the pornography-influenced obsession with removing pubic hair. But it's also about protesting against the sort of surgery that makes you cross your legs."

And:

"In the US this industry is worth $6.8m (£4.4m). In the UK the latest figures come from a 2009 report in the British Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology. It revealed that in 2008 the number of operations increased by 70% compared with the previous year: 1,118 labiaplasty operations on the NHS. (There were 669 in 2007 and 404 in 2006.) And that's just the NHS. The Harley Medical Group reported over 5,000 inquiries about cosmetic gynaecology last year, 65% for labial reduction."

Oh, my god, it's an epidemic of insane pussy tightening! Grab your genitals in fear of scalpels! The porn industry wants you to shave your genitals! The filth! The fear! (O_0)

The fuck?

Note how the statistics are trumpeted to declare how many labiaplasty operations there were, and how many more were done this year than the last, but doesn't say how many were medically necessary and how many were for soothing minor vanity issues. It doesn't say how many were transsexual women going in for their second stage labiaplasty, or how many were women coming in after having their vaginas cut during a birthing, and now need cosmetic corrections to reduce scaring. (Because scars lack enough nerve endings for proper tactile sensation and may hinder sexual function.) There is no assumption that some of these are for the right reasons. The assumption is made that most aren't needed, and therefore this epidemic must be protested.

Let me talk to you about body dysphoria. I'm a minor expert on this, having dealt with the problem personally, and having a LOT of friends with genital and body dysphoria. So I know that if a woman has misshaped labia, with one labia significantly larger than the other, she may feel uncomfortable with her body, even if she's never watched porn or thought about how all vaginas are different. Her sex partners, whether by verbal or more subtle cues, can make her aware that she is different down there. Enough poor encounters can make her unable to have sex because she's uncomfortable and can't get in the right mood for sex. In other cases, a misshaped or lopsided genital appearance makes the dysphoric person suffer even without outside validation, and they can't even masturbate without feeling awkward.

As for genital electrolysis, there are women who have hair inside their vaginal tunnel or their inner labia. Not only is this embarrassing, it can also be irritating or turn into a health problem. And even when a woman chooses to "zap" her bikini line so she doesn't have curly hair peeking outside her swimsuit, I don't see a problem with her choosing to spend her money appeasing her vanities. I also don't see how this desire to remove pubic hair instantly translates to being "porn-influenced." In fact, invoking porn here reveals an ulterior motive for the protest that has nothing to do with healthy body images, and has more to do with a prejudice against porn.

Let me be clear. If the Muff March people had pointed to a porn company that was encouraging ladies to go in for muff altering procedures, even for electrolysis of their bikini line, I would be on that story like Garfield on a lasagna. I'd be looking forward to roasting the bastards telling women that to work in porn, they had to fit a certain "vaginal look." But I have never heard of such a thing in porn, and I watch a lot of porn. Back in the day, I was a webmaster uploading porn (much like David Sands in Haunting Sins), so I had to watch a lot of porn that I might NEVER have clicked on of my own volition. (But if I'm watching it on an hourly salary, that's not too painful. I digress.) I've seen a lot of vaginas because of my porny habits, and they're all different shapes and sizes. There is no porn-default perfect pussy. Doesn't exist.

I have heard of porn models being asked to shave for certain genres of video, but hell, that's no different than asking an actress to cut her hair or dye it for a role. Women dye their hair to appease their vanities and no one feels a need to tear them down for the desire to change their heads. Where these people are really protesting is the idea that women are harming themselves in the name of a false body image. But I would suggest that women have as much right to decide the appearance of their vag as they do the length and color of their hair.

But let's get back to the porn. Some videos are themed for shaved women, but a lot aren't. If you wander more to certain kinds of Teens categories, there's a tendency to shave a small-breasted model and have her baby talk and play on sets that imply she's 12, not 18. And folks, I don't go in for that kind of porn. I've just encountered varying forms of the theme while wandering through the teens category in search of something slightly more mature. But I can tell you, the fake kiddie crap is out there. Yes, it's unhealthy, but it's just one genre out of hundreds in a huge industry where there is no default body type or "look." So to take that one unhealthy facet and say "All porn encourages pussy shaving and electrolysis in the same way" makes you just as misinformed as a conservative Christian who only listens to his pastor.

"But Zoe," you say, "Some women are doing this because they think their pussy looks loose, and they shouldn't have surgery down there. It's WRONG! Why can't you admit that it's WRONG?"

Who in the hell appointed you as the judge of how other women view their bodies? If a 38-year-old woman with four kids feels her pussy lips are a bit too loose for her to enjoy sex and tightens her labia so her husband's four-inch tool feels good again, are you going to say she shouldn't want better sensation in sex? Is her enjoyment of sex also incompatible with modern feminism?

"Well of course not, Zoe. We're only protesting the unneeded surgeries." Well that's a vague statement that risks making even legitimate surgeries look harmful in the public eye. I can give you many clear and valid examples of why women might want or need these procedures. But you can't really give examples of how porn is influencing women to have genital electrolysis, nor can you explain how labiaplasty is hurting these women. The protest only sounds logical until you think about it with a clear head. The one claim that comes through in this march is that some women's vaginas should be protected from themselves. I disagree, and I think all women should be free to decide how their body looks, even if other women think it's "wrong."

I'm all for protesting unneeded surgery. If Muff March was protesting female circumcision, I'd see that as a clear goal, and we wouldn't even need to discuss their motivations. But labiaplasty is not the same thing. It is not a harmful surgery, nor is it dangerous. The doctors' goals in this kind of cosmetic procedure includes the preservation of function and sensation, and on minimizing scar damage. I need to repeat this: the surgery is not harmful. Unlike a breast implant, there's are no side effect that can lead to lifelong complications. There's nothing to regret later. It is an outpatient procedure with almost no downtime for the patient, and will not strip a female of her sexuality the way female circumcision would.

It may possibly be used by some girls who are a little too focused on fitting in with a certain body image, but that is a problem that needs to be addressed with each girl on a case by case basis, and any girl who watched porn would quickly learn that there is no one right look to vaginas. It is only an uninformed teen with no experience who looks down on her labia (pun intended) and wonders if they somehow look wrong. Mind you, I'm not saying show your daughter porn to give her a healthy image of women's roles. I'm just saying, watching porn would quickly validate that not every vagina looks symmetrical or "tight." It would not convince them that there is a factory default vag.

More to the point, a woman's decision to have labiaplasty, for whatever reason, is not up for a matter of public discussion, especially not from a group of women who know nothing on the topic and can't be bothered to do research or to present their case more clearly. I'm all for people protesting, and I can agree that some girls go in for surgeries they don't need. But I wouldn't want to deny those girls a surgery if it meant women in need might also be denied because some arbitrary exam decided she wanted the surgery for the "wrong reasons." I don't want other women deciding what's right for my body, or any woman's body, anymore than I want a man doing it.

Feminists, you argue that women should have dominion over our female bits on the inside, that we should be for the choice to have abortions even if we don't want abortions or can't have kids. Okay, I'll agree to that pro-choice stance, but then you want to decide whether electrolysis and labiaplasty are unfit for feminism depending on the motivations for having them. That's a hypocritical stance, and it insinuates that some women aren't allowed to be feminists because they don't have the right attitude about their appearance.

Attaching this protest to an anti-porn stance also guarantees that I'm going to keep my distance. Because even if your main concern is in the right place, your ignorance on the topic and its underlying sources ensure that all you do is bark up the wrong trees. So maybe it will offend you that I'm not joining your protest. But I'll ask you something, and if you can answer this satisfactorily, I will change my stance. Can you define the negative side effects of pubic hair removal or labiaplasty? Will it later lead to shame for the woman, or to health problems? Can you point to anything that makes this a more important issue than the rising interest in female circumcision in first world countries? Because if not, I'm sorry, but I think the Muff March is misguided feminism at its worst. They have no clear goal, and they're motivated by misguided notions of moral superiority.

The ultimate in adult hypocrisy…

Let me set the scene for you before I give you the link. Imagine your child's school announces a "Stand Up to Bullying" day, and they encouraged all kids to wear a pink shirt for the day. Imagine your kid signs up for a pink shirt, and on the day of the event, he gets bullied for wearing pink by ALL the kids.

So, what would you imagine is the response of the adults who organized this event? Did you pick "be hypocrites and let the person who took a stand be bullied without standing up for them"? Because that's the correct answer: the adults who organized this event DID NOTHING to stop bullying. They set this event up—I guess to give the bullies new targets for the rest of the year—and they let it happen.

I am not the least bit surprised. With only a few exceptions, I've found most Texas teachers to be lazy about their job, apathetic in dealing with student problems, and in many cases unapologetically prejudiced. (I had a guidance counselor show me her gun and tell me she wasn't afraid to shoot niggers.) So when a story comes along that says "Teachers did nothing to stop bullies," I consider it par for the course for a group of people who think they're the most important resource in the world, but won't admit they're doing a fucking lousy job.

But the blame shouldn't all go on them. Peoples, even when you try to fake concern for the children, you can't back it up with a convincing performance for so much as one fucking day. I swear, I write down something mean and bitter about you folks one day, and the next day, I get up and think "Maybe I was a little harsh." Then I see a news story that reminds me; I'm not harsh. You're just hypocrites. There's no real concern or morality in most of you. (Doubly true for you church people. You have false morality, which is even worse than no morality.) I have a hard time believing half of you have ever spoken to your conscience for more than five minutes. Because if you did, the words "I don't owe those people nothing" would never come out of your mouths, or spring from your fingers to attack an unsuspecting keyboard with your shallow thoughts.

And it really doesn't matter which of "those people" we're talking about. Regardless of nationality or creed, we all have a civic duty to watch out for each other, and yes, to protect each other. And if you want to argue, let me pose a hypothetical situation. Your child is molested at school. Five people know it happened. You find out later that all five chose not to say anything and embarrass the molester or cost them their job…because it's the football coach, and EVERYBODY loves football, not your kid. Not one person felt civic duty to protect your kid, but they WILL protect the image of a person they know is morally in the wrong. But before you get mad at those five people for doing nothing, close your eyes and think, "Have I ever used the same logic to avoid doing the right thing for someone else in need?"

Probably yes, and you can do better. And don't look at me and whine "What about you?" I'm flat fucking broke from regular donations to people for food, bills, legal funds, charities, surgery funds…I run out of cash before I run out of causes every month. I support the artists. I donate to food drives and natural disaster funds. My blog is a long, long list of causes I've asked you to look into, so I don't just act as a financier, but also as an advocate and activist. I don't just cover my own people and their problems, and I don't try to co-opt those other causes to make points about mine. I'd love if I could lead by example, but as no one has ever taken me seriously in my whole life, I'm no leader. But the rest of you lazy and self-centered people do not get to play moral superiority games with me.

I grew a conscience and gave up my life of crime long ago. Now I feel concern for everyone, even complete strangers. If I can do that after years of being tortured and abused, then what's your fucking excuse for not caring, when you've lived a much easier and less abusive life? Why is it that living "the good life" prevents you from being good people?