When in doubt...

Getting talked into doing the Final Fantasy Project: Redux (goal: play all the Final Fantasies, I-XII, barring XI and sequel games like FFVII:DoC, in one week. Started on Thursday.) has not exactly been helpful to the apocafic. Oops.

Also, trying to write after playing FFV for n hours and drinking two glasses of beer (where "glass" = 22 oz monster glass) at dinner probably also not a good idea. Unless it secretly is. Maybe shots of Jack Daniel's will help me ignore the stupid linguistics.

(Really, I post these to entertain people.)

Girls and guns

Was looking through Metafilter, as I do every day, when I came across a link about artist Antonio Riello's art project of "turning real military items into fashion accessories for ladies".

They kind of make me twitchy. I will be the first to claim that I "fail" at a lot of stereotypical "girl" things. There is a good portion of my family who can (and will) gush and rave about Italian designers and can throw around those kinds of names in real conversation and not sound like they're faking. These are people who can put together very nice outfits, while I've given up and have a closet full of jeans, black pants, and black t-shirts so I don't have to try too hard. And I'm not being derogatory in any way, shape, or form to women (and men) who do have this kind of knowledge. It's something I don't understand, but it is still knowledge, and I can and do respect that.

That being said, these weapons make me twitchy. And not because I like the black and gunmetal blue steel that standard firearms come in. Nor is it solely that I feel that it's sort of disrespectful to the weapon to put fake jewels and leopard print skins on it, even though it is. (As an aside, ever since I stabbed myself in the hand with a new Leatherman Wave blade and it took four stitches to fix and a lot of dumb luck that I didn't lose any motor skills from it, I have had a healthy respect for weapons in all shapes, sizes, and forms. They are not toys, nor should they ever be treated as such. This is twinging on that.)

No, they make me twitchy because it feels like some underlying conception that weapons need to be made to look "pretty" in order for a woman to use them. Um, what? This isn't like the LadySmith line from Smith & Wesson, where the actual difference is a smaller grip to make it fit a woman's hand better. ( Which is acceptable because it's a biological difference there.) Maybe this is Riello's point, that there is this underlying assumption there. But somehow, I doubt it.