I had some conversations with the wonderful Erin over my week at WotF, about gender identity. It clarified some things for me about the meltdown of my previous relationship, which I hadn’t realized at the time.
I don’t have an internalized gender identity. For most of my life I’ve just defaulted to male (poorly) and ignored the issue. Then, for a few years, I tried performing masculinity. I was pretty good at it, and it was fun. Like role-playing, and seeing just how far you can take it! It also came with certain advantages, and finally resulted in a fulfilling sex life. But it was like wearing a false identity. It wasn’t natural, it was a neat mask.
For clarity, I didn’t think of it as wearing a mask at the time–just as trying out something new, and having a lot of fun with it. I was proud that I could perform masculinity well. It’s nice to find a new talent, especially one that’s richly rewarded! And now I know that, when I need to temporarily strap on the masculinity for advantage in certain situations, I can do so. But eventually it got old, and it started to really wear on me to be wearing this mask day in and day out, my entire life. It had taken over every interaction with everything in the world, and that was too much.
Unfortunately, I had met my then-current life partner near the beginning of the performing masculinity phase, and she loved it. Trying to move away from it while in a relationship with her was like coming out as gay while being in a serious long-term relationship with someone of the opposite gender, or deconverting after marrying a fundamentalist. They’re going to be unhappy that the person they married has changed into someone else. It woulda been easier if I’d known more about gender identity and performance when we’d met, but I was just learning and starting to try stuff out then. I couldn’t have any sort of conversation about this stuff, cuz I didn’t know it myself.
This tendency of people to change over time is why I consider all relationships to be limited-term engagements. Maybe we could’ve kept this particular relationship going longer if this was the only thing complicating it. But combined with all the other issues, it could not hold.
This was a delight. It was fun to be treated special and given an award and just the belle of the ball for a day! Of course, it was apparently pretty quickly that this award ceremony wasn’t really for us. It was for the Scientologists. This was their party, for them to say to each other “Look at us! We’re helping these people at the start of their career, and supporting the arts! We are doing good in the world.” And good on them for it! They are helping new artists, and contributing to the SFF world in a meaningful way. They can have as big a party they want to celebrate that, it’s their money. I didn’t mind at all being the excuse for that. It kinda felt what I imagine being a unicorn for a couple would feel like? The experience is primarily about them, but they couldn’t have it without me facilitating, and I’m happy to serve that role to bring them that. Of course that’s probably my super-idealized fantasy of unicorning. But /shrug. I got the literary-award equivalent of that fantasy, so I’m happy. :)
While listening to others give their acceptance speeches it dawned on me that you can only really thank two people – the first person you thank, who everyone notices for being first. And the last person, who stays lingering in the silence after. Everyone in between kinda gets lost in the blur. That’s not to say that they’re unappreciated, but the first and last are the true places of prominence. So I quickly edited my acceptance speech at the table in order to shuffle the Scientologists into the middle and thank my writer’s group and peers that week on the ends. You can see it here.
Afterwards there was partying back at the hotel bar!
The next day was a multi-hour class on how to Sell Sell Sell. Which, to be practical, was probably useful. You could tell they were trying to get us to do a lot of promotion. TBH, I’m not putting in a lot of work for something that doesn’t pay royalties. For every extra copy I sell, I get an extra $0.00. So the only book signing/promotion opportunities I took were the ones I wanted to do for the joy of doing them. The Tattered Cover in Denver, because that’s a rite of passage for all Denver authors. :) And the Broadway Book Mall, a small independent store that has been a cornerstone of the Denver SF community for decades. It was an honor to be at both.
They did talk about “always dressing professional” in that class, “unless you have A Look. Like Gaiman.” Everyone knows he always wears black leather, regardless of the situation, but that is his Look. It can be good to have a distinct visual Look. And I figured “hell, I already do the Goth thing, I can make that my Look.” So boom. I guess now whenever I’m doing Authorial stuff, I shall be Goth!
After that class we were “treated” to a show just for us winners & our guests. First there was an audio drama of Hubbard’s short “The Death Flyer.” The story itself is mildly bad. They had us read it before we arrived in LA, and it’s literally just “There’s a ghost train that recreates it’s crash on the anniversary of its crash. But it was all a dream!” With purple prose and one-dimensional wooden characters. BUT! The people doing the audio drama were SUPER into it, which I guess you would be for any story written by your messiah. They added all the emotion and interest that was lacking from the story. It was actually pretty enjoyable, they did a great job! I saw in person just how a good actor can save a bad script.
Right after that we got to listen to the world’s worst stand-up comic. The guy was ancient, and apparently ran with Sinatra’s Rat Pack back in the day. Allow me to set the stage.
The Scientologists are really out of touch. They seem painfully unaware of the shibboleth of modern society, such as the not knowing one doesn’t refer to south-east Asia as “the Orient.” A couple of our winners were from Spanish-speaking countries, and one of them brought a lot of her family out to see her shine at this great moment! So when the comic opened by welcoming the audience in Spanish, I was very pleasantly surprised. I had not expected this sort of deliberate racial inclusiveness, this was awesome! Then his next lines were (paraphrased) ‘That’s all the Spanish I know. That’s all that my maid taught me before I sent her back to Guatemala. To have our kid.” Holy fuck.
The whole set was that bad, basically non-stop stuff that someone with the unthinking racism and sexism of the 50s era would find funny. It was awful. One person walked out, and I really should have, but I was so pissed I hate-watched the whole thing. OMG.
Anyway, that was the nadir of the week. It did give us something to bond over though. And as far as nadirs go, it could be much worse. But, wow. How can one be that out of touch? I mean… thinking back on it, I certainly didn’t go up and tell the comic, or anyone in the Scientologist camp, about how distasteful that was. Neither did any of my fellow winners. I guess if no one tells you, how can you be expected to know? But yeesh! Isn’t that what TV and movies are for?
Back to good stuff! For the rest of this post I’m just gonna talk about the people I met, because that’s really what it was about for me. And cuz this blog is kinda like a semi-diary thing for me. Probably the rest is boring for everyone who isn’t me, feel free to stop here. ^^ Most of these pics are lifted from the WotF website. They got great photographers.
Tim Powers, as said earlier, is a witty, kindly grandfather. Which also means he can be bad-ass protective sometimes. After our 24-hour stories, two were randomly picked to be critiqued by the whole group. As one can probably imagine, having a story critiqued is much like having you sexual technique analyzed and critiqued. It’s a very vulnerable and private thing. By this point I had forgotten we were being filmed all the time. Tim hadn’t. As the first critique started to quietly walked to the back of the room, laid hands upon the cameraperson, and said “You do not record this part.” The camera person complied and all was well, while our esteem of Tim skyrocketed.
Rob Sawyer gave an hour long presentation on how publishers will attempt to grab all your rights and screw you as much and as hard as they can. He warned us about what to look out for, and what to never sign away. He was very impassioned the whole time. It was my favorite of the guest-lecturer presentations, and very valuable. Kick-ass.
Brandon Sanderson gave a guest presentation as well. At the end of that day there was a barbeque for all the winners and their guests, as well as any of the judges and guest presenters that wished to come. I was sitting with Erin and her family when mother-fuckin’ Brandon Sanderson pulled up a chair and sat down to chat with us for an hour! It was freakin’ awesome. Erin’s mother is such a big fan that as soon as he sat down she stood up and walked away so she could quietly freakout and compose herself again. :) Brandon was fantastic to talk to.
Here’s the wonderful writer peers I met!
Cole is a gentle soul, extremely compassionate and empathic. But he can lay down serious smackdowns when he needs to, doing serious weight lifting and martial training. That’s probably why the kids at the rehab & detention facility where he works respect the hell out of him. He’s the one in front.
Jeremy is basically exactly the person I’d want teaching me history when I was in high school. Collected, thoughtful, and very knowledgeable. A damn cool dude, and I’ll be seeing with him again when I room with him at WorldCon in a few months!
When I first met Jon I was put off by him. First, the visual aesthetic of short blond hair and white skin reminds me of the 50s, and I’m not a fan, but obviously that’s not his fault. Plus it looks good on him. More to the point–there’s only room for one clean-cut office-drone-passing white guy in any given group! What’s he doing, trying to step on my turf? But I was won over very quickly by his eminent reasonableness, commitment to fairness, and being a solid good person at all times. We are now buds. Basically I guess he’s like my WotF equivalent of Pushin.
(Not sure if I mentioned Pushin before, but I was always kinda wierded out and put off by Pushin. I don’t like the aesthetic, and I just don’t get it. Then a lover of mine got a Pushin bathmat. I have poor circulation in my extremities, so walking on a non-carpeted floor in my bare feet, as one has to in a bathroom, is so cold that it’s painful for me. The Pushin bathmat saved me from that pain. Me and Pushin are friends now. ^^)
Natalka is Canadian, former Goth, and had heard of the rationalist movement! Also a pleasure to talk to, I get the feeling she has a lot of things to talk about once you can get into her circle of trust. She totally strikes me as the sort of person who’d be like “Yeah, I had to kill a man once. Fucker shouldn’t have tried to kidnap my dog. Let’s go moose-spotting!”
Vida came from the Philippines, and had quite a few /forehead moments with the previously-mentioned out-of-touch contingent who didn’t realize that there’s, you know, cities and stuff over there. The low-level stoicism of putting up with that sort of thing constantly gave her a very Daria vibe. :)
Erin was my biggest partner in crime. We spent a bunch of time together, both stressed a lot over our 24 hour stories, and man, she’s just the best! Plus she has a very soft visual aesthetic that just feels warm to look at.
Amy is just a ton of fun, and not at all what I expected from a Texas Mormon! She was often out front, leading the charge to the next thing we’re doing. It was great to have her around, and I didn’t even realize she wasn’t drinking when she was hanging with us at the bar. She has enough personality to not need alcohol! O_O
I didn’t get to spend much time with the illustrators, as the writers and illustrators were basically kept in two separate camps as we went through two separate workshops. They didn’t even mix the groups at the ceremony! That being said, we did manage to mix some, especially at the hotel bar.
Alana is the artist that drew the illustration for my story. She’s cool, and seems very excited about the future. I also LOVE the color pallete she uses for herself, it makes her look like a walking piece of Victorian art.
Sidney is the most chill mother fucker I’ve ever met in my life. You know how cool guys don’t look at explosions? Sidney wouldn’t even bother to walk away from an explosion. She’d be like “Hey, there’s an explosion. That’s cool. I’ma chill here unless someone tells me I gotta move.” She’s the one that told the Scientologists she wouldn’t be wearing a dress, and then just didn’t wear one. I am in awe of her cool.
Bruce is super put-together and professional. He wins my award for Most “Has His Shit Together” Person. While still being very personable! He has that hat as part of his look. To the point that he even has a very fancy black version of it that matched his tuxedo. :)
Duncan is talented and fun. He’s the illustrator who was most like the writers, and spent the most time with us. And by “most like the writers” I mean “extroverted.” Which is crazy, I’ve never thought of writers as an extroverted bunch. UNTIL I met illustrators. They totally blew my stereotypes, cuz I figured as visual artists they’d all be super outgoing and social butterflies. Turns out, they just want to stay with their tablets and paint all day and never look up or talk (for the most part). It was hard getting most of them to talk or open up! Except for Duncan. Maybe it’s the expat thing. :)
I barely got to meet Reyna until the last two days, but damn, look at that fierce aesthetic!! She’s a weight-lifter too. Kicked some ass arm-wrestling the other illustrators!
OK, Jazmen and Other Duncan were the two most aesthetically compelling people there. I thought they were visually interesting at first, and took their photos, but it turns out that it’s not a visual thing, because the photos don’t capture it at all. Jazmen is the living incarnation of the super-shy girl in every anime. All the writers think she just fell out of an anime last month or something. The body language, the clothing, the voice, the demeanor. One person swore she saw Jazmen dashing out the hotel door with a piece of toast in her mouth. And Duncan, her friend, looks and acts like someone who came out of a Dating Sim. He’s fucking gorgeous, and with long hair pulled back, except where it cascades down at his temples. He dresses in turn-of-the-century finery, and speaks rather formally. They were such perfect representations of their genres that I thought they were a couple, but I guess they’re just really good friends. Anyway, pictures don’t do them justice. Which, I think, is a sign of true aesthetic mastery. Something like that shouldn’t be capturable in a still image. To get the true impact one really has to be in their physical presence, with the full bandwidth that only real world proximity can accommodate. It’s almost as if people are complex, many-layered things which can’t be reduced to a picture and a few sentences. Which really puts the lie to this whole blog post. So, thanks guys, for breaking my post. >:(
But also <3
Anyway, that’s everything, I think I’m done with WotF posts. Huzzah!
Yikes, where are the days going? I was supposed to write more about this earlier!
The real heart of the Writers of the Future thing is the workshop. The trophy and award ceremony are nice, but it’s the workshop that makes this the amazing event it is. So I’m gonna dive into that for a bit.
Dave on the left, Tim on the right (as one looks at the picture)
On day one we met our instructors, Dave Farland and Tim Powers, both big names in the SF world, in very different ways. I’ve never read Dave before, whereas I’m a fan of Tim Powers, and their different styles came through in their teaching. Dave would talk about putting out 2-3 books a year, Tim talked about working on each of his for 2-3 years. Dave spoke of the joy of writing, how whenever he’s not writing he’d be writing anyway because it’s what he does for fun. Tim spoke about how stressful it is to write and how freaking hard it is, and that the only thing worse than writing is NOT writing, and so he’s forced to do it out of self-preservation. I loved it, they had very complimentary methods, and played well off each other. And of course I came down firmly on Tim’s side. :)
They had me pose for this shot
Throughout the week we were constantly being filmed and photographed, both for publicity purposes and for a future documentary. Some of my fellow author winners weren’t that happy with this, most of them are fairly private. I loved it. I was finally getting the constant adoration I always crave. :) Also I was raised believing God was watching everything I was doing, and I lost that when I realized he’s a fairy tale. It was nice to have it back for a week.
The workshop was basically like a 5-day boot camp, but for writing. The most intense day was the second one, where we were all given a random object, told to interview a random person on the street, and incorporate both things into a new story that we haven’t thought about before. And write it in the next 24 hours. Jesus that was rough. I did nothing but write for 24 hours straight, aside for 7 hours of sleep and 5 minutes to shower. I wrote something that is… vaguely story-like. It has at least one cool thing I can salvage for the future, I guess. Overall, it’s not good at all. But it did teach me that I really can sit down and just do this shit, and put out something new on demand. And now I have a skeleton of a story that I can fill in and polish up over time. I could actually envision being a professional and doing this every day as my career. Which I believe was the purpose of the exercise. It was the 2nd most important thing I got from this week.
This was not posed, we were just talking. Their photographers are really good.
The 1st most important thing was the relationships, of course. You bond a lot with the other people you’re in boot camp with. We’re all newish writers, with some work under our belts, but just getting started. And now we all know each other for life. We can trust each other and confide in each other. I was absolutely sincere when I said in my acceptance speech that this week was made by my fellow winners. This was an amazing experience. There are similar experience to be had, at workshops like Odyssey and Clarion. But those workshops cost thousands of dollars, and last so long that most people with regular jobs can’t attend them. It’s not just that the WotF workshop is free… they also paid for my flight out, and my stay at a nice hotel, AND gave me a very nice check on top of all that. Plus an awards ceremony and trophy.
Seriously, this is one of the best things out there for new writers. As long as you make sure to actually take advantage of the opportunities to bond with people. I suppose every year has at least one person who is chronically absent and won’t talk with others. That is tragic for them, and I don’t know why you’d do that, when the group bonds are really the whole point. But hey, it’s not for me to judge.
On day 3 we got to see our illustrations. There are 12 writer winners and 12 illustrator winners every year, and each of the illustrators is given a winning story and told to create a new illustration inspired by it. On the third day, they usher all the writers into a room with the 12 illustrations arrayed around it (without titles or identification) and we have to find the illustration based on our story. Hot damn is that a cool moment!! To have something you wrote illustrated is just an amazing feeling. It’s beautiful and you feel like there’s a reason you do this sort of thing. Then we got to meet our illustrators and talk with them, and I’m not sure how to say just how great it all is. And I get a framed print of the art to take home! Ridiculous. :)
The next day we had rapid-fire classes by quite a number of guest instructors. I think that overall this was the least useful day, but there was still quite a bit of good information here. We got to learn a lot about how the industry works, including what happens once a publisher gets their hands on your book (and why it takes 12+ damn months to print/publish!). Rob Sawyer spoke very passionately about how ruthless publishers will try to screw you, what rights they’ll try to grab, and what things you should never, ever accept in a contract. That was very valuable, and the whole day was worth it for that part alone.
Of course the best part of most days was the informal session afterwards, where all the writers, several illustrators, and occasionally a big author or two, would get together at the bar and socialize. There was drinking and jokes and gossip and shoptalk, and it was great. :) That’s where a fair bit of the bond-forging mentioned above was done. The epic fucking party we had on the last night before we all flew out the next day was just… amazing. I went and bought three 5ths of vodka for everyone that we could enjoy in our private cove without paying the exorbitant hotel bar prices, and it was the best money I’ve spent all year.
I recently won a Writers of the Future award for my story “Flee, My Pretty One.” The award comes with publication in their anthology, a cash prize, a nice trophy at an award ceremony, and (most importantly by far) a week-long workshop with big names in the industry.
But y’all want to hear about the Scientology thing, so let’s talk about that first. :)
1. The Contest
Everyone in the SF community knows that Writers of the Future (WotF) is funded by the Scientologists, and used by them for PR. And everyone smiles and accepts that and agrees not to talk about it in public, because the Scientologists do a good job of staying the hell out of the contest itself. All the judging and every major decision is made by respected professionals in the field, none of whom are affiliated with the church. And behind the scenes, yeah, we talk about it. When the WotF staff wasn’t around and we were all drinking, there was quite a bit of chat about it. Because it is kinda weird, and we all feel a bit weird about it. But ultimately, they just provided a huge paycheck to the SF community without asking very much in return.
One of my fellow winners even pointed out that it’s almost a scam in the other direction. The Scientologists take a lot of money from rich Hollywood celebrities, and they take that and funnel it back into funding new up-and-coming SF writers and illustrators, all of whom are mildly-to-strongly anti-Scientology. It’s a weird arts-funding program that uses Scientology money for an actual good cause (assuming one considers SF arts a good cause).
They certainly get something out of it too. The big awards ceremony, while it was certainly a lot of fun and made us all free great and important, was very obviously for them. It talked up L. Ron Hubbard quite a bit. I heard more about him in the two hours of the event than in the entire four days of workshop before then. All the content was geared at making the audience of Scientologists feel good about themselves and assure them they’re being good Hubbard disciples. But you know what? That’s OK. It’s their party. They’ve been super nice and very supportive, and they’re allowed to have a big party and feel good! So what if they’re using us as an excuse to celebrate? They’ve spent a ton of money on all of us, they’re allowed. We’re getting a lot out of it in exchange. Let’s not shit on someone else being happy.
This hangs on the side of their publishing building. I imagine most of the employees inside are pretty embarrassed by it.
2. The People
The Scientologists, at least the ones on the ground, are all super nice and polite. They never treated us with anything but respect and friendliness. And, aside from being the biggest Hubbard fanboys/fangirls I’ve ever seen, never even mentioned Scientology. There were no attempts at recruitment. We’re valuable to them as PR, not as new members.
You could always tell who was a Scientologist and who was an outside professional, though. There’s something about the Scientologists. They’re very tightly wound. They hide behind niceness and smiles, never comfortable. I didn’t like being around them, and I ended up feeling very bad for them. In my opinion, they act like people who aren’t sure how to interface with the outside world, and have been hurt by it so much that they expect only more abuse and more pain, and the only way they’ve found to deal with this is to withdraw. When forced to interact with the muggles, they smile past the fear and hope it’s over soon.
I know a lot of people like this. I used to be a person like this. This is a common experience for young nerds. Yes, it was uncomfortable being around the, because they are bad at social skills, and they’re hurt. But by god, who beats up on these sort of people? Spreading tales of how awful and creepy they are is no different from nerd-bashing. Do you talk about how gross aspies are? Then don’t do it to Scientologists.
The church of Scientology may be ridiculous and/or evil, but most of the people in it are just as innocent as most Catholics. Be kind to people. Don’t trust anyone who gives you weird vibes, of course, your instincts are a good first-defense. But man, it’s possible to treat people with decency without going into secluded places with them, ya know?
They keep display copies of everything Hubbard has ever published. Even the Lisa Frank versions.
3. The Cult
When I first saw the crazy devotion the people here have to Hubbard’s work I was downright envious. They adore him, and as long as they’re around, his memory and his works will be kept alive. In that moment I wanted a cult of my own.
It didn’t last very long though. There isn’t any real memory of Hubbard being preserved here. It’s a weird, idolized version of him, drastically disconnected from whatever real person he might have been. There’s only a story that strangers have built a community around, and recognizing him as he was doesn’t advance that purpose. This is a poor imitation of immortality-through-remembrance. It felt lonely.
Of course, when the publicity crew was following us around all week, and constantly snapping pictures of everything we do, that felt right. It was fitting that everything I do be documented, because I’m totes a big deal in my own mind. :) I finally had that “constant watching presence” that I’d been missing since I realized there ain’t no god. Most of my co-winners didn’t like it as much, though.
I will say I was surprised by how conservative they are! With their reputation as a crazy cult in the middle of Hollywood, I expected them to basically be a bunch of liberals. They don’t drink, frown on bad language, and basically reminded me of strict Christians. They wanted everyone to dress conservatively, including strongly requesting the women wear gowns to the award ceremony. That’s a heckuva an ask for 24 artsy types, you’ll almost always get someone for whom that is not OK. I’ve heard about this being a problem in past years, and they seem to have eased up a bit, because our resident “I don’t do dresses” artist ended up going in a red suit instead, which suited her very well! And it sounded like there wasn’t too much kerfuffle about it.
So yeah, I dislike their religion, they can be off-putting, and I hear their leadership has done shitty things. But the people on the ground are nice, they mostly kept to themselves, and they won me over. Given how much I distrust the media when it comes to their portrayal of weird fringe groups, I’m gonna default to not being a dick on this one.
Seriously though, what writer doesn’t want people to love his work so much they enshrine it like this?
Over the next few days I’ll talk about the workshop itself, as well as the award ceremony. Plus more pictures!
I’ve noticed a few of my FB friends still participate in Liars Day. >:(
I hate April Fool’s Day. I’m fairly trusting and I take people at their face. I consider it a better way to live and structure society. Plus, I can’t really help it, I feel like a damn puppy sometimes. Today is a day that celebrates mocking that way of life/neural architecture. It says “Haha, high-trust culture is for suckers, look at those cooperating idiots over there. What rubes. Defecting FTW!”
I guess everyone needs a day off, where they revel in turning the social order on it’s head. Mardi Gras, or Halloween, or whatever. It’s a good release valve. Or maybe today can be used to caution everyone, once a year, how horrible a world it would be if everything was low-trust. Or to remind us that almost all news on the internet is just a year-round Liar’s Day.
Whatever. I still hate the day. I’m going to go be grumpy in a corner.
I graduated high school the year before the Columbine shooting. Columbine was a neighboring high school, only a few miles from mine. That day was a bad day for me. I kept thinking “that could have been me.” In retrospect, I don’t think it could have. I don’t think I could’ve ever brought myself to do such a thing. But I understood the urge. The despair and the rage.
The initial post that started this semi-diary blog was an emotion dump after a mass shooting. I guess here’s another one.
I feel lucky to have survived high school. Many of my peers feel the same way. High school is torturous on many levels, and it’s commonly accepted that analogies to prison aren’t far off, though not to the same scale. Sleep deprivation, social gangs, enforced idleness, and helplessness rule the day. I’ve never heard anyone in high school say it was anything but various levels of awful. I have heard someone say “I wrote myself a letter about high school when I graduated, because I knew it was likely that in the future I would look back on that time with rose-colored glasses. I’m glad I did, it helps me to remember how bad that place is.”
Yes, “depression,” granted. But depression isn’t one-way. It’s not only causal, it’s also caused, and the high school experience certainly kindled my years of depression just as much as the depression made high school worse. High school shouldn’t have to be a thing that young people must survive. Even if nearly all of them do manage it.
I have a friend a couple years younger than me with a complicated relationship with Columbine. After the shooting, life in school got significantly better for [them]. Because now other social gangs were far more reluctant to engage in abuse of [their] social group. It feels disgusting to say anything that can be mistaken as an implication that Columbine was justified. Murder is monstrous. How fucked up is the situation in our high schools if an act of terrorism can make life better for a significant percentage of students?
Among all the calls for gun control and mental health services, no one is saying anything about what it is that breaks a lot of people. No one mentions this environment, which many people have to spend untold dollars and many years of therapy recovering from once they escape. No one talks about what could drive someone to pick up that gun and lash out in rage at the place and the people they view as responsible for their pain.
I know, this isn’t the only cause of school shootings, nor the only type of shooter. And even for those who may fit this template, there are many inputs that lead to this, from our American history of violence, to social contagion, to personal psychological pathology, among dozens more. Yet high school remains horrible and torturous for many young people. And it should not be this way.
I don’t have much faith in my society to fix this. We’ve known for at least a decade that simply pushing back the start time of high schools leads to improved mental and physical health for teenagers, as well as improved education outcomes. And yet we can’t even manage to take that first, simple, step. Instead, our schools become more and more like prisons every year, with stricter security and greater authoritarian control. Things are trending the wrong way.
But for the first time in my life, I think I am at a point where I can actually say this sort of thing out loud, rather than just emotion-dumping on a blog. Our schools must stop being places that damage those people we force into them.
I’m not sure what caused this. Maybe it’s because I didn’t get along with my father, and I often saw him hurt my mother (with words, never with violence, but they were deep hurts). Maybe its because during my childhood and adolescence, our hated out-group was “Old White Men.” The bastards who ruined everything, enslaved the rest of the world, grew fat with their wealth, and then rewrote history and hid all their misdeeds, never to pay for them. God how I hated them. Maybe it was because I saw first-hand how awful boys are too each other, especially in the middle-school-age demographic. It’s fuckin’ Lord of The Flies out there.
Regardless, I dislike men. The entire gender is, in my view, a collection of predators. Driven by an animal nature to destroy and defile and consume. It’s not that they’re evil, per se, it’s just that their biology doesn’t permit for anything else.
Half the reason I don’t want to have children is that I run a 50% risk of having a boy for each child-attempt. I do not wish to bring a predator into my home. I don’t want to raise a predator, to set loose upon society. And it’s considered impolite to sex-select your children in our society.
I work in an industry that’s predominantly female (accounting), and glad for it. I tend to seek out female friends. But I’m very aware that I’m an outsider from the only good gender.
Of course, I know plenty of good men. Some of them are very close friends of mine. I know these feelings of dislike aren’t rational, and that attitude is sexist. But knowing it doesn’t make the feeling go away.
I realized a few years back that I’ve been pitching my voice a bit higher my whole life in an attempt to be less threatening. I discovered that when I learned that most people don’t need a day to recover after talking for an extended period, and can often read aloud for a full hour without any pain.
I’m jealous of the trans people I know. I understand that there is a very strong sense of being female-gendered, and stuck in the wrong body, and an awful sense of disphoria. Anyone feeling those things would want to be the correct gender. But a deep, intuitive part of me keeps insisting that it’s a tactic to flee from being part of the oppressor class. And that the non-binary friends I have are doing the same thing. That it’s all to stop being the vile male sex. It feels like cheating. It feels like the thing I should do, if I had enough courage to go through with it. It feels like it’d be betraying the minority decent people left in this gender, and truly abandoning it to the predators. But I don’t want to be too slow about it either, languishing here long after there’s only animals left.
I’m starting to avoid triggers. I now refuse to read anything that headlines how awful men are as a group. Just today I saw “What To Do We Do With The Art Of Monstrous Men?” I don’t know what to do with something like that. I guess I’ll just stay silent, because I sure as hell don’t want to defend any of these rapists or predators. I’m ashamed enough to be associated with them due to my gender.
I don’t know. I don’t know how to be part of this group I can’t stand, and can’t leave.
I saw it has Harrison Ford in it, and it shouldn’t. There’s always been a large contingent of people who are adamant that Deckard is a replicant, and that this is what makes the first Blade Runner so good. Which is also why one shouldn’t watch the Theatrical Release, because that has a voice-over which basically asserts “He’s totally human.”
I don’t think it matters if Deckard is a human or a replicant, but I despise the Theatrical Release if it does assert things one way or the other (haven’t actually seen it, myself). The implication that he could be is what is important. It works so well because it doesn’t matter if he is or isn’t… even if he’s not a replicant, he might as well be. Social isolation and official mediation of experience have brought him to the point where he only exists as far as the system says he does. Reality is out of his control. Which goes hand in hand with Phillip K Dick’s general philosophy and is a theme in a number of his works. So, yeah, a version which steamrolls that to say “NOPE, DEFINITELY HUMAN!” is kinda missing the whole point.
And then I saw that an old Harrison Ford is in Blade Runner 2049. Bleh. So I simply wasn’t going to watch it. The original Blade Runner is one of the best movies ever made, IMO. We’re approaching an infinite number of forgettable sequels and remakes that should simply be considered non-canon by anyone who cares about artistic integrity. This would be just another one of those, and I’d treat it as such. Bite me, Hollywood.
And then I kept hearing how amazing BR2049 is. /sigh. Fine. Went to see it. Still had some reservations, but also some hope.
Visually it is stunning. Literally worth it to go see it for the visuals alone. And the music accompaniment is perfect. This movie has atmosphere and style galore. So very beautiful.
BR2049’s biggest failing is the villain. I *love* fiction where I find the villain sympathetic. Where I honestly can say that if I was in the villains position, I would do exactly what they had done. Roy Batty is a fucking masterpiece, and I love him, and I kinda wish he’d won Blade Runner, except then it wouldn’t be a tragedy, would it? The villain in 2049 is ridiculously one-dimensional and stupid. Like, so, soooo stupid. “Allow me to put you in an easily escapable situation while I leave you unwatched, Mr. Bond” levels of stupid. So, that kinda annoyed me.
The story’s alright. It tries hard. And it provides a good framework for the beautiful visuals. It feels a lot like late-90s anime actually. Come to think of it, I think that’s a fantastic analogy. Gorgeous, a plot that is earnest if flawed, and one glaring bad note.
All in all, BR2049 is one of the best animes I’ve seen. It’s no Blade Runner, but then again, what is? Totally worth 3 hours of my life, I like it.
I was recently selected as a winner of the 2017 Writers of the Future contest (2Q, 3rd place)! In addition to a nice cash prize and future publication, this is a fairly well-regarded award for new SF writers, because the organization hires well-known SF authors to act as the final judges. The combination of these two factors leads SFWA (the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America) to count it as a qualifying professional market.
After Asimov’s and Analog, that makes my third sale to a pro market. Which means… I’m now a member of SFWA, the Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America!! :D This has been a dream of mine for ages, I count SFWA membership as my personal mark of “being legit.” Woooo!!!
I don’t know what I was expecting from Burning Man, but what I got really surprised me. At about hour 12 of driving home–physically and emotionally exhausted, and feeling a bit light-headed from constant heat, minor sleep deprivation, and overwhelming gratitude–I realized why they say that the drive in/out is part of the Burning Man experience.
Burning Man isn’t just an event. It can be a pilgrimage. It was for me. And an important part of a pilgrimage is the road back home, where you mentally distance yourself from the strange dream-land where everything is different, and return to the solidity of the real world. A tried-and-true way of doing that involves actually putting physical distance between yourself and the dream-land. It allows you time to ruminate, and differentiates the two places.
As it stands, Burning Man isn’t remotely sustainable. The society is optimized for human social flourishing, rather than creating wealth. Trying to do work in such an environment would be extremely inefficient, if not impossible. One burns through previously-stored up wealth to enjoy Burning Man. The only way this could possibly persist is in a literal post-scarcity society, where all wealth is created by autonomous non-sapient robots and distributed to humans to enjoy.
Burning Man is also uncomfortable. This is a feature, not a bug. You no longer take anything for granted when you have nothing and the desert is trying to kill you. Even getting cold water or a brief shower feels immensely satisfying. Everything is more intense.
But pilgrimages aren’t supposed to be comfortable, or sustainable. They are supposed to be different worlds, set aside from the rest of reality. Burning Man achieves this in spades.
It feels weird to see so much effort and labor, so many resources, being put into creating a city in the desert… knowing that it’s designed to be destroyed. After a few weeks a fair bit of wealth will be intentionally destroyed in rituals of fire-sacrifice, and everything else will be disassembled and taken away again. But this extreme impermanence, the embrace of temporariness, is much of the driving force of the Burning Man ethos. It is worth the cost, to create this dreamtime for a week each year. To be in a different place, and to get a taste of what a post-scarcity future society could look like.
I strongly recommend that everyone go at least once in their lifetime. Obviously for some people it’s just not their thing, and I imagine those people already know who they are. But for everyone else, consider this some evidence strengthening your “I should try this” intuition. If you somehow get a ticket but don’t know anyone else going and are at a loss for what to do next, contact me and I’ll do what I can to provide guidance. :)
I’ve noticed a few of my FB friends still participate in Liars Day. >:(
I graduated high school the year before the Columbine shooting. Columbine was a neighboring high school, only a few miles from mine. That day was a bad day for me. I kept thinking “that could have been me.” In retrospect, I don’t think it could have. I don’t think I could’ve ever brought myself to do such a thing. But I understood the urge. The despair and the rage.
I didn’t want to go see Blade Runner 2049.
I was recently selected as a winner of the 2017 Writers of the Future contest (2Q, 3rd place)! In addition to a nice cash prize and future publication, this is a fairly well-regarded award for new SF writers, because the organization hires well-known SF authors to act as the final judges. The combination of these two factors leads SFWA (the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America) to count it as a qualifying professional market.