Falling on Deaf Ears
So, today's high was 93.9F, with a heat index of 102F.
I slept late, until almost 5 a.m. Then I spent a couple of hours on the frontoparietal section for MP2 (again), chrishing this time before I have to get back to work on The Sun Always Shines on TV. The novella needs to be done by the 27th, so I am going to be aiming for a miniumum of 1,200 words/day. If I can do that, without any days when I can't get the writing done, I can make it happen.
The most interesting thing about today were two posts I made to Facebook, and I will say up front, yes, both were inspired by the way I've seen George R.R. Martin slurred and mocked over nothing in the past couple of weeks. The most childish, mean-spirited, petty shit, and often from authors I thought I respected, who I would have imaged to be above schoolyard taunts. Generally, I usually miss the stuff, Writers bore me, and I tend to avoid them online. Anyway, these two posts:
1. I swear to...whatever, I'm getting so fed up with the behavior of the fantasy and science fiction "community," mostly towards one another, often over the smallest supposed infraction, that I am just about ready to hang up my thesaurus and dictionary and spend ALL of whatever years I have left on paleontology. Of course, then I'd likely starve and have to live in a box, but...Jesus.
Postscript 1: Yes, horror is just as bad (so I am told).
Postscript 2: Yes, you get this shit in science, too, increasingly. But let me have a few fantasies.
2. And one more thing, which is really directly tied to that last thing: We are all standing on the shoulders of giants. Don't like that? Tough. We can do what we can do because someone was there before us. This is very true in publishing, maybe especially true in speculative fiction. And we should show respect to our elders (and that's what they are), even when their poltics do not align with our own. You think you'd have as many opportunities had there never been a, say, George R.R. Martin? Really? We *owe* these people. They opened doors, and, you know, if they don't fit *your* sensibilities, stop and think of all the reasons that might be. Jesus, did we forget how to cut folks some slack? I think we did. This is not about who was the most transgressive or progressive at some earlier point in history; this is about having the decency to respect those who have gone before. Egalitarianism is all fine and well, until it becomes an excuse to act like a shit.
Postcript: Fuck, I'm 60. Stop and try to imagine what it was like just getting publishers to buy stories about queer and trans characters when I began publishing in 1993...
Most amazing, there were hundreds of likes and comments, and NO ONE took to side of the Martin detractors. There were actually some very good replies, but I'm not gonna post them here, because I don't have persmission, and maybe the internet doesn't give a shit about copyright, but I do.
This is why I have never been part of this "community," why I have never even really tried. I suppose I came closest with ReaderCon after I moved to New England, but then there was some serious weirdness when Peter Straub and I were GoH in 2012, as "social justice" abruptly began to matter more than fiction, and then there was, in 2018, the fiasco when a lot of people were literally uninvited (take a moment and actually read that). We're talking guests, not attendees. Were talking names in the field, authors people buy tickets to see. Also, they just happen to be mostly (but not all) white men over 50, deemed to old and out of touch to be interesting. I asked the organizers why I had not been cut from the list of desirable guests. I was by then 50, after all. "You're trans and queer," I was told. Yes, seriously. Saved by intersectional gods. But if I ever needed a sign from on high that it was time to be done with cons, that was it. I did do a few after the summer of 2012, but not many, and I gave strict rules about the sorts of panels I would not appear on. Anyway, I bring up the ReaderCon mess because the GRRM mess feels a lot like it, only meaner.
That was supposed to be a short paragraph. Ah, well.
I leave you with the photo of the world's best root beer.
Later Tater Beans,
Aunt Beast
1:10 p.m.
I slept late, until almost 5 a.m. Then I spent a couple of hours on the frontoparietal section for MP2 (again), chrishing this time before I have to get back to work on The Sun Always Shines on TV. The novella needs to be done by the 27th, so I am going to be aiming for a miniumum of 1,200 words/day. If I can do that, without any days when I can't get the writing done, I can make it happen.
The most interesting thing about today were two posts I made to Facebook, and I will say up front, yes, both were inspired by the way I've seen George R.R. Martin slurred and mocked over nothing in the past couple of weeks. The most childish, mean-spirited, petty shit, and often from authors I thought I respected, who I would have imaged to be above schoolyard taunts. Generally, I usually miss the stuff, Writers bore me, and I tend to avoid them online. Anyway, these two posts:
1. I swear to...whatever, I'm getting so fed up with the behavior of the fantasy and science fiction "community," mostly towards one another, often over the smallest supposed infraction, that I am just about ready to hang up my thesaurus and dictionary and spend ALL of whatever years I have left on paleontology. Of course, then I'd likely starve and have to live in a box, but...Jesus.
Postscript 1: Yes, horror is just as bad (so I am told).
Postscript 2: Yes, you get this shit in science, too, increasingly. But let me have a few fantasies.
2. And one more thing, which is really directly tied to that last thing: We are all standing on the shoulders of giants. Don't like that? Tough. We can do what we can do because someone was there before us. This is very true in publishing, maybe especially true in speculative fiction. And we should show respect to our elders (and that's what they are), even when their poltics do not align with our own. You think you'd have as many opportunities had there never been a, say, George R.R. Martin? Really? We *owe* these people. They opened doors, and, you know, if they don't fit *your* sensibilities, stop and think of all the reasons that might be. Jesus, did we forget how to cut folks some slack? I think we did. This is not about who was the most transgressive or progressive at some earlier point in history; this is about having the decency to respect those who have gone before. Egalitarianism is all fine and well, until it becomes an excuse to act like a shit.
Postcript: Fuck, I'm 60. Stop and try to imagine what it was like just getting publishers to buy stories about queer and trans characters when I began publishing in 1993...
Most amazing, there were hundreds of likes and comments, and NO ONE took to side of the Martin detractors. There were actually some very good replies, but I'm not gonna post them here, because I don't have persmission, and maybe the internet doesn't give a shit about copyright, but I do.
This is why I have never been part of this "community," why I have never even really tried. I suppose I came closest with ReaderCon after I moved to New England, but then there was some serious weirdness when Peter Straub and I were GoH in 2012, as "social justice" abruptly began to matter more than fiction, and then there was, in 2018, the fiasco when a lot of people were literally uninvited (take a moment and actually read that). We're talking guests, not attendees. Were talking names in the field, authors people buy tickets to see. Also, they just happen to be mostly (but not all) white men over 50, deemed to old and out of touch to be interesting. I asked the organizers why I had not been cut from the list of desirable guests. I was by then 50, after all. "You're trans and queer," I was told. Yes, seriously. Saved by intersectional gods. But if I ever needed a sign from on high that it was time to be done with cons, that was it. I did do a few after the summer of 2012, but not many, and I gave strict rules about the sorts of panels I would not appear on. Anyway, I bring up the ReaderCon mess because the GRRM mess feels a lot like it, only meaner.
That was supposed to be a short paragraph. Ah, well.
I leave you with the photo of the world's best root beer.
Later Tater Beans,
Aunt Beast
1:10 p.m.