Adventures of the Gray Goth: Memoirs of a Fat Dancer

Good morning, my minions!  Enjoy your Thanksgiving?  Mine was a little chaotic - I hosted two dinners, because I'm crazy and I have weird, obsessive hostess tendencies.  I was going to post the menu for the second dinner - it was all Polynesian and, if I must say, fairly impressive - but time wasn't with me.  Trust me when I say it was lovely, and aside from learning the hard way that Okinawan sweet potatoes are dryer than regular varieties, a good time was had by all.

However, this is not why we're here today!  We're here because I came across the following picture in my Pinterest feed recently:

I tried to find the original image, and was taken through several Tumblr accounts and a British porn blog, but no luck.  So I cannot credit the original photographer - my apologies.  The image search is not what I wished to discuss.  I wanted to talk about why and how this piece spoke to me.  In order to do that effectively, however, I should give you some background.

I was in my first dance recital when I was four years old.  I have the picture floating around here somewhere - a very small me in a pink leotard with a silver sequin bandoleer sporting fluttering chiffon scarves in a variety of pastel colors.  Since then I was in and out of dance classes for a hefty chunk of my childhood.  My favorite was ballet - I thought ballerinas were so pretty, and so graceful, and I wanted to be on stage in a beautiful, sparkly tutu and do all the things they did.  I took ballet, and later jazz, and while I would often stop for a while (in part because we moved a lot) I would always go back.  It continued like this until my freshman year of high school.

We had recently moved to Stow, OH and as part of the on coming holiday festivities we went and saw "The Nutcracker" at The Ballet Theatre of Ohio.  I adore "The Nutcracker" (as I believe I've said before, but it bears repeating), and fell in love with it again at that performance.  I was electrified to learn that the studio which performed the ballet was nearby, and there was much cajoling for classes.  My mother, being a good mom who wanted her children to follow their interests, signed me up.

All went well, until it came time to audition for the next production of "The Nutcracker".  When I went to secure an audition slot, I was taken aside by Madame Kristen and informed that there wasn't much point in auditioning.  Confused, I asked her why, and she told me that I wouldn't fit the costumes.  They used the same ones every year, you see, and little size 12/14 (at the time) me wouldn't be able to squeeze in.  Madame Kristen proceeded to tell me that most of the girls had a 19 inch waist, and the only outfit she thought I might have a chance of fitting was the maid from the opening scenes.  Yet even that was doubtful.

Having moved from confused to more than a little hurt, I went home.  I think I went to class once or twice after that, and then never went back.  I have given a lot of bullshit excuses for why I left ballet over the years, my favorite one being that I wasn't enough of a masochist to do that to my feet, but the truth is I left ballet because at 14 I was told I was too fat to be in "The Nutcracker".

I didn't dance for years.  Then, at age 24, after two children and a lot of life, I went back into the studio.  Pikes Peak Community College had a dance program, and the teacher Danika was smiling, encouraging, and never once said I shouldn't be there.  I did modern, and very much enjoyed my return to that fluidity of movement.  I thought about ballet, but didn't do it.  Even still, dance did wonders for me - I felt better, I started losing the weight I'd gained from having kids without even really trying, and my confidence (which had been shattered by a broken marriage and a number of life mistakes) began to inch its way back up.  I also took belly dance, which was fun and felt very natural to me on a number of levels, though it wasn't as satisfying as modern.

Two years after my return to dance, I dislocated my left knee.  I spent a year or more needing a cane to walk anywhere.  Trips to the mall or grocery store required a wheel chair or one of those scooters.  I did not have insurance.  An X-ray was taken, but never an MRI, and there was no physical therapy.  There was certainly no more dancing.  Almost ten years later, the knee still gives me trouble, but I do what I can.  I can't run, and I certainly am not capable of the movements required to get back into modern or ballet, but I have taken a couple belly dance classes, and that at least is something.  It also doesn't help that I've regained the weight I lost (plus a little extra, ain't that always the way?), which is hard on my knee.  Yet I also can't manage the sustained movement for aerobic exercise to lose said weight.  It's cyclic and frustrating.

So, background out of the way, let's go back to the picture.  I was just stopped by that image, of a heavier woman en pointe, all done up in an artistic shot.  If you really look at the image you can see she's got some cellulite, she's not at all what a ballet academy would consider ideal, but I bet she doesn't care.  She's up there anyway, going "Damn right, I'm sexy", and I know from experience that holding your leg like that long enough for a photographer to get a good shot takes strength and determination.  She is what 14-year-old me needed to see, but sadly didn't.  But maybe 34-year-old me can take something from this anyway.

I don't know if I'll ever dance again.  I can almost guarantee I would need surgery to repair my knee, and I would certainly need to lose a fair bit of weight so as to not hamper the healing process.  I have medical insurance now, but it's not very good, and certainly won't cover something like knee surgery without meeting the rather high deductible.  I imagine I'll continue to look for a belly dance class that I like (not that I don't like the one I took, it's just a bit of a drive), and that will be a good way to get some exercise, but the way ballet and modern feel cannot be matched by ATS.  And it certainly doesn't build muscle the way other dance styles do.

So I don't know if I"ll ever be the girl in the picture above.  But I could be.  And for some reason, that makes me smile a little.  It reassures me in a manner I hadn't realized I needed.

Adventures of the Gray Goth: Being Mom

Good evening, my minions.  I actually had a humorous bit about the Fall Sports Banquet that I had been wrapping up to post tonight, but things change.  I'll still post the other bit - it's pretty funny, and gives a nice example of how I tend to interact with other parents.  However, I need to write about something else first.

For those who haven't been paying attention, I have kids.  Two of them.  They are beautiful and precious and all the things you expect a mother to say about her kids.  Except mine really are.  I could write about them for hours, until the hours turned into days.  Tonight, though, I specifically want to talk about my son.  Not that I don't have anything to say about my daughter - she's wonderful, and infuriating, and sprinting towards puberty like it's an Olympic event - but tonight it's the boy's turn.

If my daughter is the shining sun of our family, then my son is the North Star.  Ever-fixed, easily outshone by his sister, but you will always find yourself looking to him.  He loves chocolate, Legos, pizza, and dogs; if Beasty had the sense and patience to join forces with him, they'd probably punch a hole in my "no pets" policy pretty quickly.  He is also autistic.  He's about mid-range on the autism spectrum - limited communication and comprehension, mild self-stimming, but very social and loves people.  I mean he really loves people.  He's physically affectionate, he adores parties, and nothing makes him happier than having all of his important people together in one room.  Well, except maybe Legos.

He is thirteen years old, turning fourteen in January, and already 5'11".  Possibly taller at this point, he hasn't been measured in a bit.  It's causing some small problems - mostly from people expecting the behavior of an older child from him, but also him not understanding how his size and the strength that comes with it changes interactions.  He really likes younger children - after all, they'll play tag and chase with him - but I see other parents get nervous when he tries to interact with their much smaller (and they're presuming much younger) kid.  He also has boundary issues.  As in he doesn't understand them.  Personal space is a foreign concept to my son.

We had a boundary issue tonight.  My daughter is twelve going on OMGTEENAGER, and is wanting more privacy than she ever has before.  My son wanted to play with her, specifically with a bouncy ball she had, and so he was looming outside her closed door waiting for her to let him in or give him the ball.  She shouted for him to stop "stalking" her, and I told him to just leave her alone.  It isn't the first time we've directed him to back off when she needed space, though her reaction was perhaps a bit dramatic.  He went into his own room, and I stopped worrying about it.

A half hour later, I came around to tell everyone to get their pajamas on.  My son was in his room still, with a blanket over his head, and I figured he was just being quirky so I turned on his space heater (the bedrooms in our house don't heat well) and told him to get his pjs on.  That was when I heard the sniffling.  I paused, and gently pulled the blanket off of his head, asking what was wrong.  He had taken his glasses off, so it was easy to see that his eyes were shiny with tears yet unshed.  I asked again, and sat down next to him.  At which point he turned to me and wrapped his arms around me before proceeding to sob into my shoulder.

I held my son and rubbed his back and asked him again what was wrong, not understanding what could have moved him to this.

"I a bad guy," he finally said between choked sobs.

I said no, he wasn't a bad guy.  Assuming this had something to do with the earlier exchange, I tried to explain that his sister just wanted to be left alone sometimes.

"No, I am.  I a bad guy," he repeated, still crying hard against me, and clinging to me in a manner that has become increasingly more rare as he's gotten older.  At this point his sobs had attracted his sister's attention, who left her room to satisfy her curiosity.  I asked her what she had said to him, thinking there must have been more to it, but she just repeated the exchange I had overheard earlier.  Through all this my son just keeps crying, holding on to me as if for his life, as I rock him and rub his back and continue to tell him he's not a bad guy.  My son understands what bad guys are, and it has crushed his soul to think he might be one.

After another minute (and a quick head jerk from me), my daughter stopped standing awkwardly in the doorway and sat down next to us.  She hugged her brother and repeated that he wasn't a bad guy.  We both held him, and the crying slowly stopped.  I told him how sweet he was, how kind and thoughtful, and that he was a good boy; he just needed to listen when people wanted to be left alone.  Once the crying had become little sniffles, his sister started tickling him, and the moment had officially passed.

Now everyone is in bed, and I'm sitting at the computer, and now I'm crying.  Because my heart broke under the weight of his sorrow, and because I have no idea how to keep it from happening again.  I do not know how to explain to him that his sister is probably going to get worse before she gets better - it's just a part of growing up.  I've tried to explain that the looming thing is annoying/creepy, but the behavior has persisted despite my best efforts.  I don't know how to explain that life is going to be eternally unfair to him, even more so than the average person, and that we'll just have to keep doing our best.

But I can tell him that I love him, and I know he understands.  He understands that I love him, and his sister loves him, and Beasty loves him (and his grandmother, and grandfather, and a great many other people).  He may not know the depth of my commitment to him, or how hard I will fight for him, but he knows that I love him.  And maybe that will make it okay when all my explaining cannot.

Crushed by Pumpkins

It is fall, my minions!  I'm sure you've noticed this already, provided you live in the Northern Hemisphere and in an area where the seasons actually change.  I know, I know, the first day of fall was close to a month ago, but I've been busy.  There are various different signs that autumn has arrived which appeal to us more or less depending on our area and interest.  School starts, football is rampant, the leaves are changing, stores are preempting all over holidays by putting out their Christmas displays, that sort of thing.  And, of course, from coffee shops to candle stores, we have pumpkin EVERYTHING.

I'll admit, I like pumpkin.  A lot.  Not just in pie.  I love pumpkin bread, pumpkin cookies, my friend Eve's pumpkin soup (which is not sweet at all and very tasty), and I'm a pretty big fan of pumpkin candles.  Also, I confess that autumn does not truly begin for me until I have my hands on a non-fat, no water, Pumpkin Spice Chai (3/1 on the Chai to Pumpkin Spice ratio, with sprinkles, but no whip) from Starbucks.

Special thanks to the Downtown Edmonds Starbucks.
I love you guys.

That said, I think we may be over doing it just a bit.  And the number of pumpkin-y products seems to be growing with every year.  In fact, just last week USA Today was remarking on the rise of pumpkin-related sales, noting that breakfast foods have been seeing a big increase.  To demonstrate my point, I'm going to subject you to my personal pumpkin run-down.  As of today, I have had:

• Starbucks Pumpkin Spice syrup - Obviously I'm a fan, but it's easy to use too much of it.
• Pumpkin Spice M&M's - A vile mistake if ever there was one.
• Pumpkin Cereal Bars - These were a nice idea, but they don't really taste like pumpkin.
• Pumpkin Cream Cheese Muffins - Quite tasty.  Go have one.
• Pumpkin Scones - Also delicious.
• Pumpkin Cookies - Best if moist, and if not moist you made them wrong because there's PUMPKIN IN IT for pity's sake.
• Instant Pumpkin Spice Chai - This was disappointing, I am sad to admit.  While it tasted all right, the smell was off putting.  Too much anise, maybe?
• Pumpkin Spice Truffles - I see chocolate and pumpkin in the same light I see chocolate and bacon.  Both are delicious, but if you combine them their powers of deliciousness cancel each other out.  I had both dark and milk chocolate truffles, and while I felt the milk chocolate better balanced the heavy, rich intensity of the filling, I'm not going to buy them ever again.
• Pumpkin Pie Bagel - Oddly heavy and dry for something that should contain a moist, pulpy squash.
• Pumpkin Yogurt - This failed on so, so many levels.

And that's where we're at just as of mid-October.  Pumpkin-product season isn't over until at least mid-December, and even then it will linger through the winter holidays.  I am sure I will eat and encounter many more pumpkin-y things.  I'm sure I will regret about a quarter of them.  And then, at the end of the winter holiday season, when I cannot bear the thought of having one more thing with pumpkin in it, they'll take all the products away until we're all just rabid to have them back.  At about mid-September.  Like they do every year.

Adventures of the Gray Goth: The Explanation

Good morning, my minions.  Today is the first installment of a segment I have decided to call Adventures of the Gray Goth.  What is a Gray Goth?  Well, that's kind of how I've taken to describing myself.  But what does it mean, you ask?  I will explain.

Disclaimer:  If this term is in use elsewhere on the internet, in social circles, etc and possessing of a different meaning, I don't care.  I didn't look it up.  This is my little corner of the universe, and I will reappropriate as I see fit.

I started using the term "Gray Goth" because gray is a point between black and white.  Like most people, I don't fit securely into just one subculture, but Goth is probably the one I have the most ties to outside of Geek.  I wear an awful lot of black.  I have a deep love for Depeche Mode, The Smiths, Sisters of Mercy, Covenant, Wolfsheim, and so on.  I like old cemeteries, ivy shrouded mansions, and abandoned castles.  I have a fascination with vampires.  Halloween is my favorite holiday.  Walking out into sunlight has made me hiss on more than one occasion.  And I'm pale.

I know there are a number of stereotypical items being thrown around in the above paragraph, but that's kind of the point.  How do we identify a subculture?  Well, generally, by its stereotype.  The above paragraph is also just a lot of things that describe me.

Now for the tidbits that make people want to revoke my Goth card.  I have an obsession with pink these days that terrifies some of my friends.  That obsession lends itself to Candy Shoppe pastels in general (so can include mint, lavender, cotton candy blue, and so on).  Pink is just my favorite.  I pretty much live in blue jeans.  Not that I wouldn't love them to be black jeans, but I challenge you to find a good pair of boot cut black jeans in my size for less than $100 (boot cut is the bit you'll have a problem with).  Much as I would love to pretend I dress like this all the time:

The Anne Jane dress from http://www.gothikas.com.

you're far more likely to find me in blue jeans and a black t-shirt with some graphic relating to a video game or comic.  Which is what I'm wearing right now, actually.  I only dig out my eyeliner for special occasions.  I used to go to raves with Beasty back when we were younger.  I have an equally deep love for Sting, U2, Madonna (90's to early 2000's), BT, David Guetta, Florence + The Machine, Cindy Lauper, and so on.  My second favorite holiday is Christmas/Solstice/whatever and I adore The Nutcracker.  My favorite work of fiction is probably Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, and I'm more than a little fixated on how people have interpreted the work and all the different stories, games, movies, and so on inspired by it.  I love spotted toadstools, and whimsy, and pastel rainbow unicorns.

In short, I'm not hardcore.  I'm not even softcore.  I'm just kind of hanging out on the fringes.  And I'm okay with that.  Most of my friends seem okay with that as well.  It does, however, leave me lacking a short description of my preferred aesthetic.  I bandied around the phrase Gray Goth in a conversation with a friend some days back, and they laughed saying it was perfect.  So what the heck.  We'll run with it.

(Not So) Visceral Games and Dead Space 3 are on my list

Good morning, my minions!

So, it's been a very long time (again), but I am not apologizing.  What I am doing, however, is reapplying myself to my writing once more.  I have such a love/hate relationship with writing, which is sad since it is my profession.  We're seeing a counselor.  I think it'll work out.

Today we are getting back on the horse and breaking the long silence with a moment of nerd-rage.  I'm not going to try to dignify this as anything else.  If you're being diplomatic, you can think of this as a review.  Bit of a late one, as Dead Space 3 was not high on my priority list.  However, I had become attached to poor Isaac, and wanted to see what this final (ha ha, right) chapter of his saga had in store.  So let us begin.

And the cover looked so promising.

Oh, it is worth remarking that this review/rant/whatever is going to be rife with spoilers.  Just so you know.

The game actually opens with a military maneuver on some far off planet.  Some poor grunt retrieves a "codex" from an exploding ship, only to be shot by the commanding general who then deletes the information in the codex before offing himself as well.  Terribly mysterious.

We then rejoin Isaac Clarke back on Earth, having survived two pretty horrific encounters with the abominations known as Necromorphs (during Dead Space and Dead Space 2).  He is living alone, in relative squalor, and you learn fairly quickly that his fellow survivor and later girlfriend, Ellie, has recently left him due to his inability to move past the previous events.  Can you blame him?  Really?

You're not there long, however, before John Carver (the co-op character) and his captain, Robert Norton, break into your crappy apartment and drag poor Isaac off to go fight the Necromorphs again.  All while being hunted down by Jacob Danik, the leader of the Unitologists (you know, the religious psycopaths from the previous games - like Scientology, only the higher ups actually believe what they tell the masses).  You dodge snipers and suicide bombers, and eventually make it off planet with Carver and Norton.  Oh, it is iimportant to mention that Norton obtains your cooperation largely by telling you that Ellie ran off on this mission first, and since Isaac still loves Ellie, you're going along.

So off you go!  Some thrilling incidents in space, and you eventually find Ellie!  Yay!  Oh, wait, Ellie is with Norton now.  He failed to mention that.  Begin Norton's career as a passive-aggressive douche with jealousy issues.  Well, you're here now, time to get to the planet and save humanity!  You might as well, right, they dragged you all this way and your ship blew up, so it's not like you're getting back.

And seriously, every time Norton opened his mouth, I felt like Torgue needed to pop up and yell, "IS IT JUST ME OR IS HE GONNA BETRAY THE FUCK OUT OF YOU!?".  The foreshadowing is laid on with a trowel in this game.

Now this is where the story actually gains some interesting details that really could have been utilized to make a great game.  They weren't, but they could have.  Isaac finds himself on the planet from the first scene of the game.  It turns out 200 years ago, the Sovereign Colonies Armed Forces were camped out here studying the Markers and the Necromorphs.  Isaac along with Ellie, Norton, Carver, and two non-military experts get to trek their way through a frozen wasteland in search of answers and a way to disable the Markers.  The frozen planet makes for an interesting, new environment.  All sorts of monstrosities pop up out of the snow, and you need to be concerned about your body temperature.  In the beginning, at least.  You eventually find cold weather gear after ransacking the SCAF buildings that litter this planet.  After watching one of the civvies nobly freeze to death.

This is the first of several scenes that are supposed to evoke pathos, and fail miserably.  The aging, somewhat hobbled Buckell, expert on all things SCAF, is found huddled in a building that has lost its doors with no power.  He is almost frozen when you find him, and manages to mutter something about volunteering to stay behind because there weren't enough cold weather suits to go around.  He tells you there are more downstairs, but the elevator isn't powered and it sounds like there are Necromorphs in the lower levels.  Then he dies.  I felt kinda bad about this, until we stepped into the next room and found the generator.  Which you can turn on and suddenly the room is heated and the elevator works.  Right there.  And we didn't have to do anything special to get to the generator.  Just step into the next room.  Sure, you need Kinesis to turn the generator on, but at least two other people in the previous group have that.  So really, Buckell died because a writer at Visceral went "Oh, shit, this is a horror game, we need to kill secondary character!  Sure you technically just met and so aren't really attached yet, but we need feels!".

And the award for most pointless death goes to Austin Buckell!

It's a shame these bits of the story are so weak and so poorly executed, because the game really needs them.  And it needs them because the horror element is, while not lacking, certainly not putting in as strong a showing as it needs to.  The first Dead Space was pretty scary and creepy as all get out.  It made me uneasy, and after spending an evening playing it I was glad I didn't have to go to bed alone.  Dead Space 2 jumps the shark pretty early in, and so loses some of its scariness (because when you see a guy's face melt off as he turns into a Necromorph RIGHT IN FRONT OF YOU in the first twenty minutes of the game, it's all pretty much down from there), but was still creepy as hell.  Dead Space 3 is...well...horrific in concept but not as much in execution.  The secondary characters are basically picked off one at a time, but you don't really care because no time was spend building a rapport or fostering emotion.  Except when Norton dies.  I may have cheered.  Because he is a jealous douche-canoe, and he totally betrays us.

Also, you see every death coming.  At one point in the game, Isaac scales a frozen mountain to find an ancient winch in order to bring up the rest of the party.  As everyone is unloading, the last of the civvies, an engineer named Santos who is some sort of expert on how the Markers work, stays on the platform sorting her things while everyone else gets off as quickly as they can.  If that makes you immediately go, "Well, she's dead", then you and I have something in common.  And that something is called being right.

The last third to half of the game is spent digging through labs and an archaeological site full of alien technology and remains.  Which should have been awesome.  It was interesting, sure, but lacked detail and consisted largely off "go this way, kill everything, pick up artifact, go that way".  And sure, you can make the argument that lots of video games consist of that, but what I am trying to convey is that the action felt that dry.  There was no real suspense, you knew exactly what was going to happen (in this case, final confrontation with the villain who escaped death one too many times already), I just wanted to hurry up and get there.  There weren't even any fun alien secrets to learn, and the few that they give you have no use.

So, conflict with Danik, tearful goodbye with Ellie where Isaac shows that he has found closure and clarity of purpose (and I did actually like this bit, it felt good), and Ellie flees to a shuttle while Isaac and Carver go off to kill the giant ass monster.  We win (duh), and Isaac and Carver fall to their death on the broken, frozen planet below.   Ellie is shown flying away in tears, after having confirmed that the Marker signal has indeed been shut off.  Fade to black, roll credits.  And just as I'm turning to the Beasty and saying that while the game was kind of boring, at least it ended decently and we can all move on, there's a radio crackle on a black screen.

"Ellie," asks a very tired and damaged sounding Isaac amidst static, "Ellie, are you there?"

Now you're just fucking with me.  Seriously?  He survived a fall through atmo after being beaten to hell and having his helmet destroyed, I might add, which means he was seriously short on oxygen during that joy ride down.  But no, there's DLC, Dead Space 3: Awakening.  There is NOTHING I hate more in games than, "give us more money for the real ending".  Which, for the record, is why I'm not giving Capcom any more money ever again.  The irony is that reviews say DS3: Awakening actually contains the horror and tension that DS3 was missing.  I'm never going to know that, though, because I'm done.  That's it.  I'm taking my toys and going home.