Eccentric Flower:201006/Certs Vamps Weres

I thought about just tacking these two items onto the end of the previous catch-all entry; but the second one turned out to seem to justify an entry of its own. Unfortunately, this leaves the first one a little bit stranded, and it has nothing to do with the second, but it's also an announcement I've been meaning to make for about four days now. So, we're just going to do it like this.

(I've learned that I can't win anyway - if I post omnibus entries like the previous one, someone will say, "Why didn't you post that as four separate items, so the comment threads could be separated out easily and it wasn't 4500 words to try to find time to read all at once?" Well, it's a fair question with more than one answer:

1. Because to me the most important part was the first part, and if I put it alone no one would read it, whereas if I put it in front of fun film/book noodling which everyone likes to read - like putting the cod-liver-oil before the lollipop - at least there was a chance someone wouldn't skip/skim it.

2. Because the two middle parts seemed to thematically belong together in one entry, although not quite about the same thing, and if I had separated them from the other two, I would have been left not just with a stray first part no one wanted to read, but an entry consisting of nothing but a set of links, which I don't like doing.)

Anyway. First an announcement and then the good stuff.

Certifiably Insane A couple of days back the certificate I use on this site expired. You may not even know this site has a certificate.

I actually paid for a certificate from Comodo a year ago in hopes that it would be a certificate from an authority the browser would recognize. This is because, in recent versions, Firefox's unknown-authority warnings have gotten ever more dire, until now they try to convince you that your browser will explode and your computer will be given syphilis if you accept a cert from a signer they don't know about. (Seriously. The language in the warning screen is not far short of hysterical.)

I understand why they want to warn people (a fly-by-night cert is often a sign you are about to enter someplace dubious), but this is at heart a scam. The certifying authorities Firefox recognizes are the ones which charge you an arm and a leg to buy a certificate every year and who have nasty, gouging, anti-competitive, corporate-overlord habits. I wouldn't want to name any names, but the worst one rhymes with "we're malign." The expensive people have dominated the market and managed to convince/bribe the browser makers that they are the only trustworthy signers.

The Comodo cert was relatively cheap, but "relatively cheap" isn't good enough, especially when apparently Firefox often didn't recognize it and put up the hysterical warning anyway. If I'm going to get the warning anyhow, I'm going to go get a free certificate somewhere.

So. My certificate has expired. This will probably not affect anyone but me, but on the off chance you use the secure login method (the only thing I have the cert for in the first place), you will get dire warnings and portents. One day I will get a new one, but until then, the expired cert still works for its sole intended purpose - that is, it forces an SSL connection (you should see some sort of little lock icon or other indicator in the corner of your chosen browser) so that the username/password are not sent in the clear. That's all I keep it around for.

(P.S. There are going to be at least two people reading this who are thinking, "You know, you can install a site certifcate from the signer and then Firefox will accept it as a known signer and not scream." To them I say: Have you ever tried to post written instructions for a user to download and install a site cert, a process every signer handles differently? I have. It is not worth the pain in this case.)

Mythologies of Forcible Power I have mentioned before, I think, that I fail to appreciate the popular appeal of the following fictional mythos/tropes: Vampires, werewolves, zombies, pirates, and ninjas. Some days that seems to invalidate quite a lot, alas.

I received an email from Estonia which I shall reproduce here, with apologies to the author, because I found it provocative and I think you may too:

I think my Estonian correspondent is spot-on here. I have always known that werewolf fiction was, at heart, fiction of the powerless obtaining power. And as such, I can see both its appeal and its merit. But it is not for me. As I replied to her:

It strikes me - and should have occurred to me years ago, but I'm kinda dumb - that this is the same problem I have with those other genres I don't care for, and that the vampires are, as Sherwood Smith notes, actually the odd ones out in this set. The other four are about the powerless being handed a means to be powerful. The pirate mythos is about rebellion, about becoming dangerous, about stealing from the Fat Cats. Zombies are about collective uprising of the faceless masses. Ninjas (and I include various sorts of assassin myths in this category) are about stealth subversion. I don't care for any of it. Werewolves are creatures of blood and throat-ripping, pirates are unwashed thieves and brutes, ninjas are people who kill for a living, and zombies are just nasty. I'm not saying I condemn these for other people; I'm just saying that I will always fail to see the romance in these tropes that others do.

Vampires are different; there aren't many myths of vampires coming from the ranks of the downtrodden. Vampires are almost always essentially nobility or powerful-enough figures in the first place. As I noted in my comment above, I would probably see the sexiness of vampire myths more often if they concentrated on the seduction side - but even then, a vampire is basically a creature that wants to drink your blood and kill you, and the "now why would I find that fascinating?" aspect tends to override the appeal of even a submissive-focus vampire story for me.

(Remember always my old online-RP disclaimer: "No blood, pain, death, or excreta. Everything else is open to discussion." Under certain specific circumstances I have struck "pain" from the line, but the rest still stands. And yes, I realize this is probably Too Much Information. Whose journal did you think you were reading?)

I think at this point I should forestall the person who is going to point out to me (her name rhymes with "give me hell") that this rejection of the seize-power fantasy milieus is essentially a position of privilege, that I can choose to reject such scenarios because I am on or near the top of the power/class structure in this country and therefore can afford to have submissive fantasies, et cetera. I will forestall her by saying I think this is right (although god knows I do not feel like a very powerful person, but I accept that I am reluctantly a white male and that therefore this carries privilege-related baggage).

In other words, if you didn't make it through the sociobabble in that paragraph, you have to be in a position of at least some reasonable amount of power and security to afford the luxury of having fantasies of giving it up. The fact that I fantasize about relinquishing mental control implies that, in the real world, I must have some mental control to relinquish.

(Note: There is a strong statistical/historical basis that it is people in positions of great power - executives, judges, politicians - who tend to indulge in/pay for specialty sessions involving RP where their power is removed or diminished. The few people who have ever bothered to analyze this mostly see it as wanting to take a sort of vacation from all that responsibility, and I agree strongly. The classic example of this is the British titan of industry who has schoolboy/headmistress or toddler/nanny fantasies. For a very good and gentle fictional treatment of this theme please see the underappreciated movie Personal Services. I might add that the Brits still do professional-level nanny or schoolteacher fetish better than any other nation, although they have been eclipsed in the infant/regression field by other nations. But, ahem, I digress.)

Anyway, so, I think my Estonian correspondent is right about the source of appeal of the werewolf mythos. But, begging the pardon of those more downtrodden than I, it does not, and probably never will, have much appeal to me.

Vampires, now, I'm willing to at least give them an airing. As long as they don't fucking sparkle.