Navigation is Needed

Posted on by Sarah A. Hoyt

*Before we begin this post, management has a small announcement:  New cover and free on Amazon  Where Horse And Hero Fell. This is one of the weirdest stories I’ve ever written, not in what it is, but in the sense that I’m not sure how it happened or how I thought it out, or….  You see, it was… (counts) 11 years ago, and I’d just passed out in the bathroom (we’ve never figured out why, but pure tiredness might have done it.  I’d flown to a trade show — courtesy Berkley — to promote the Shakespeare series — and came back to a notice it was being taken out of print, but never mind — then came home to organize and set up the younger kid’s 8th birthday party.  And then, after the party, I sat up for a while, and had a glass of wine with husband.  When I went up to get ready for bed, I collapsed.  The problem is I hit my head and gave myself concussion and added a diopter to my glasses prescription.  Anyway, for about six months, I was also completely … weird.  Not that I’m not weird normally, but I don’t normally careen between dialects of English or even foreign languages mid-sentence.  And I don’t normally have fugue states lasting hours.  The scariest part of this was driving through this REALLY nice neighborhood and thinking “I’d love to live here” before realizing I was a block from home.  As for what I did in my fugue states?  Mostly grocery shopping.  Anyway, in the middle of this I got a phone call asking me to write for Places to Go, People to Kill on short notice, because they had a hole.  So, I did.  Six months later, I got the contributor copy, and I had NO clue what I’d written.  I mean, not one word.  So I read it.  Not a bad story.*

You know the old saying, about man not being an island onto himself?

It is wrong, of course, in many ways. In many ways, we are islands onto ourselves. Look, no matter how much I write about other people, how much I love other people, even how much I live with other people; no matter how much I struggle to develop empathy, at the end of the day, it’s just me, Sarah, in the voice behind the eyes.

I can by an intellectual or emotional exercise, see and feel what other people are seeing and feeling. I can say “well, I’ve been there, and it was awful, so if the kid has just had his heart broken, I’ll do my best to ease his life these next few days.” I can say “Well, you know, the people who were just hit by the hurricane need food and clothes, and I’m going to make sure they get it.” But this doesn’t make me them. And what I think they want might not be what they want. Heck, what I think they need might not be what they really need. (Which is why the old pablum about “To each according to his needs, fromo each according to his abilities” is not just stupid but also evil – because who decides what your needs or abilities are, tovarish? Your level of unhappiness, perhaps your very survival hinges on the ability of some bureaucratic stranger to know you better than you know yourself. Would you care to lay a small bet on the results?)

For instance, while we were living in South Carolina, with a baby and two mortgages, and coming up short every month, someone might have thought what we really needed was baby food (someone did think that, which made me sigh at the box of it) but we didn’t use baby food at all. Robert was breastfed till one and a half. Someone might have thought what we really needed was baby clothes, but I’d got a couple of boxes from Portugal, and I was good. Someone might have thought what we needed was adult food – we did need that. But there were farmers’ markets almost year round and cheap fish markets in the least savory parts of town. We survived.

No, what I really NEEDED was a $40 book of Leonardo DaVinci’s art. Because we had no TV, couldn’t afford any entertainment, and I was circling the drain of post-partum depression. Fortunately my husband knew me well enough to buy it for me, and it did more to get me functional again than all the food and clothes in the world could have. But that’s because it’s my husband, and we live as close as we can (but still not one person) – not some government bureaucrat who’d never met me.

So to an extent we’re all islands. But whoever coined the thought had an odd idea of islands as perfectly isolated. They aren’t. There are boats, and there is radio communication, and there are, occasionally, bridges. In metaphor, the bridges would be really close relationships, like my husband and I. He’s lived with me for years, and just by observing me and my reactions, he has to have a pretty good idea of who lives there, behind my eyes.

Radio and boats are our friendships, but more importantly – or perhaps, but also – books. I tend to joke I had to learn to be a woman from books. In a way it’s an exaggeration, but to learn to be a modern woman and not a village termagant which is what was modelled to me, I did have to learn from books. Note the fact that I had a vagina didn’t confer upon me instant understanding of such things as the games women play. Flirtation was an unknown art. Conveying to someone I liked him (other than by a real close attention to everything he said) and the other things that go into the game between men and women – or even between women in a public relationship of work or power – was a complete mystery. Reading about it in books told me how someone else (often male) thought about it, and it was the beginning of realizing that ignoring guys did not tell them I was interested. (Who knew?)

Which brings us to the current politically correct handwringing, moaning and general bitching about how we are both supposed to write more people of color and different sexual orientations, but how doing that – if you’re not of those colors or political orientations – means you’re “exploitative” and “imperialist” and the Lord alone knows what.

Twaddle. Racist/sexist and homophobic twaddle at that.

Oh, yes, I know, in the glittery minds of the idiots (some of them well known authors) proclaiming this nonsense, the idea is not that more white people (or whatever) should write these characters, but that writers of these backgrounds should write them.

At which point one scratches one’s head and wonders what passes for thought and logistics inside their minds.

Look, no matter how many “opportunities” you provide and welcome mats you extend, the DESIRE to write (let alone the ability, since the two aren’t always correlated) and the desire to write more than one book are not evenly distributed.

Hells and damnation, I’ve been known to say I wouldn’t wish this on my worst enemy and I was only half joking. For the amount of time and effort I expend on these boks, if I put that into any other business, I’d be at the top of the ladder, and have a beach house in a tropical island.

I know this comes funny from someone who always has half a dozen mentees trailing, but those people, when they come to me are already lost cases and I can’t talk them out of writing. Same for the sons. And if you can’t dissuade them, they might as well make money from it.

So if what these warriors for the proper distribution of characters mean to distribute literary INTEREST let alone talent evenly among all minorities, I wish them luck. It’s a little more mad than a government program to place tarts in lakes to hand out magical swords, and the sheer magnificent insanity of it would make it funny to write. I’m not sure it would mesh with real life, though.

Even if it did, the distribution would be skewed. I mean, minorities are minorities for a reason. (Except women who are actually the majority and used vagina-foo to get classed as a minority.) I’d guess that even if proportionally distributed the number of lesbian writers of Polynesian ancestry will be vanishingly small.

So, what if you want to read about a Polynesian Lesbian and there’s no books available? Well, don’t even think about writing one, because that would be racist and also stealing victimhood.

It’s that stealing victimhood that brings us to the knot in the thinking of these supposedly rational people.

See, it’s perfectly acceptable for me, as a straight Latina to write books about straight white people (and Latinos, I presume.) But if I write about a gay person, or someone of a darker hue than I, then I’m a racist. People of other “more oppressed” races are totally opaque to me and besides I’m exploiting them by writing about them.

WHAT?

Either everyone is completely opaque to everyone else – we’re not – or we’re all equally transparent in the same amount.

Unless the people who spew this nonsense can truly and rationally believe that white people are never discriminated against (they do) which means none of them ever heard of the skinny, non-athletic boy getting pounded into the ground at recess, or of the cute girl being presumed to be stupid, or….

They can’t believe that rationally, in the sense that they can’t reason themselves into this. No one could.

The idea behind this is that there is a hierarchy of oppression; that you can understand it upward (towards lack of oppression) but not downward (towards greater oppression) which is a Marxist idea, BUT also that your exterior characteristics dictate your interior ones. That is, from navigating near the island, you can tell what the thought pattern behind the eyes is.

This is the old idea that culture is genetic – something Adolf Hitler would have loved – but with a new twist. According to the ah… shibboleths (no one can call it thought) behind this theory of “exploitation” by “writing the other” is the idea that your culture is conferred by your appearance.

How many kids do you know who are a different apparent race from their parents? Believe it or not, these kids (adopted or not) are supposed to have a different interior life from their parents and (if darker) be completely opaque to them. (This reminds me of the Latino group – never mind, there’s more to it, but not for the blog – who was recruiting at an event where both Robert and I were in line. They picked him out and said “Hispanic?” He said “Half Portuguese.” They said “Portuguese counts.” He said “My mom is Portuguese.” Keep in mind, I’m standing RIGHT BY HIM. And they look around, bewildered and say “Is she here?” – by the rules of PC, my son has a completely different culture from me, and is more oppressed than I am.)

The insanity of this is obvious. Say you are a very pretty and slight young man, whether you actually like women or not, you’ve been endowed with gay culture. (Until you reveal yourself straight, which immediately puts you in the never discriminated against bracket. Sorry.) Or say that like me at 14, with an affro (it was popular) and after a month at the beach, everyone thinks you’re black (my features are actually like a collision between the Middle East and Africa), does this confer black culture on you, or doesn’t it?

Where the rats got in the heads there is the whole idea of “group victims.” This is distinctly Marxist and like most Marxist ideas hinges on treating people as things.

To an extent understandable. They thought it was a “scientific” way to run society, which means that they had to have scientific classifications of people. Always tricky if you go person by person.

So they went with historical oppression which generally moves in the direction of darker skin color and smaller minority. (Every society always treats its smallest groups worse. Even those you’d think would have power, like geniuses. Because society is always geared to ‘average.’)

The problem – do I need to point that out? – is that who you are is only marginally influenced by your skin color, your orientation, your external characteristics. I bet all of us have known people whose life history, etc, dictated they should be helpless victims sobbing on the floor, and who were, instead, standing tall and holding a pretty effective cudgel for self defense.

I know that I, personally, as Latina, immigrant, with a liberal arts degree, have never now nor will ever be a victim. Some people have victimized me, but that doesn’t mean I’m a victim. It’s the willingness to lie down and take it and assume you can do nothing about it that makes you a victim. (And those who’ve taken advantage of me weren’t doing it because of my skin color or gender, but because they could.)

Anyway – so, some better known writers than I are wringing their hands about how difficult it is to write minority characters without offending people, and about how you can enver know someone else, and is this stealing their victimhood or their culture, or…

They should stop wringing their hands and start typing, and forget all that politically correct claptrap.

Look, I write the characters as they come to me. Some will be darker, some will be gay, some will be women, and some will be men.

Will they be real men, as they exist in the real world? Real gay people? Real—

Oh, please. Books aren’t REAL. Books are an intersection between how the voice behind your eyes views people and the archetypes of how society views people. For the longest time, I couldn’t write women, because my experience of being a woman is so weird, that people went “what?” or (my favorite) told me I’d never met a woman (I was using a male pen name for that one book.)

I’ve learned. I’ve learned by observation, by talks with my female friends, by reading other people’s idea of women.

BUT my women aren’t that archetype, either. They’re the intersection of who I am and what people expect (just enough of what people expect to make it understandable.) And so are my men, who are my observations, what the story needs, and just a little bit of archetype.

The same goes for any minority I write.

Will my gay men mortally offend some gay guys? Probably. But my fan mail and the many whispered “thank you for Nat and Luce” I get at cons tell me that for a large amount of gay males, they are just right, too.

This is because humans are not widgets. Being gay, or black, or brown, or purple or polka dot doesn’t make you the same as everyone who is gay or black or brown or purple. (It might make you the same as everyone with polka dots, because you might be a minority of one.)

And being gay or black or brown or anything doesn’t rob you of your essential humanity. When I write a character who is different from me, I’m not trying to make him/her something of a culture which never did get genetically transmitted (or we’d all be living just like in Ur of the Chaldees) but to make him/her human and to connect with him/her at that fundamental level of humanity.

What I’m doing in fact, is the same thing I do when I try to help my kids or be a good wife. “I’m not him, but this is going on in his life, and so—”

Interestingly, this whole idea of other races/genders being opaque to everyone else and of trying to bridge the gap being exploitation, negates the collectivists’ ideas of government from the top. If we can’t know each other, how can we be governed?

And curiously, I’m the one telling you that’s bullsh*t. While you can’t know people well enough to dictate their every need and want, which is why government should be small and stay out of people’s lives as much as possible, we can know each other well enough to connect at the level of fundamental humanity and to experience friendship, love, and yes, common human empathy across genders, races, and everything that divides us.

Because we’re human. As someone or other said “If you cut us do we not bleed…”

In other words, every man might very well be an island, but thank heavens, there’s telephones, radios, telegraphs, row boats and occasionally bridges. And writing and reading are definitely ways to navigate the space to the heads of those people who aren’t us… no matter their race, creed or gender.

There was a – communist as it happens – Portuguese song that ended with “To navigate is needed, to live is not needed.”

I’m not sure what they meant by living not being needed. But I’m all with them on the navigation.

Send a flotilla, a barrage of radio signals.

Carry forth the message of our common humanity. And let the idiots who think that race, gender, orientation make people into inhuman widgets eat their hearts out.

If they’re good, someday, we’ll send them some coconuts to their barren little islands.

263 thoughts on “Navigation is Needed”

  1. This gave me some insight as to why the left reacts so violently to conservative blacks. By their lights they must be aberrations, failures to properly fill their assigned roles as victims.

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    1. No, they’re threats to the left’s political relevence. If the Democrat party loses a fairly small percentage of minority votes (somewhere betwteen 5-15%, depending on the minority) they’ll never win another national election.

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      1. Both.

        The Dems need it to win; the folks who are following them, who believe them… if they’re wrong, then they’ve made a horrible mistake.

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        1. Which is why people like Clarence Thomas, Thomas Sowell, Alfonzo Rachel, Herman Cain, and Colion Noir need to be ignored or marginalized.

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          1. The consummation I had in mind was the death of the Democratic party. “Minorities” never voting for the dems ever again.

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            1. Yeah, I know, and I agree with you. I was just thinking of those who don’t – especially in the media – and their response. Sort of forgot that part.

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  2. Thank you for another of many heartfelt and thoughtful posts.

    That said;

    I cannot help but think (as I have commented before) that the core reason that whitebread storytellers are getting criticized for writing non-whitebread characters is that the people doing the criticizing are so self-centered that they actually CAN’T project themselves into somebody else’s head. That furthermore they end up writing mind-numbing stories about White Liberal Intellectuals like themselves who have White Liberal Intellectual angst, and nobody wants to read such tripe. Their best efforts disappear without making a ripple outside their own tiny ponds, and they HATE THAT. And writers like you attract attention by doing what the White Intellectual Liberal Twits can’t do – write an engaging story – and that’s NOT FAIR; WAAAAAAH!

    Tom Wolfe said all of this much better than I can in his essay “My Three Stooges” in the collection HOOKING UP.

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    1. I happened to read a comment this morning (followed a link to a place I’ve never been and going by memory) where the owner said something to the effect of (and I’m including what I inferred so for what it’s worth) that these white male mega-sellers sticking some diversity in their white male mega-seller novel didn’t count. And I think that in general you’re on to something because I do think that a subtext of it was that it wasn’t the same thing as opening the genre to, lets call it, non-fictional diversity… which is only going to happen if (and I’m assuming the writer actually wasn’t white, but certainly of the same liberal intellectual self-identification) the writer can understand humanity well enough to write something universally appealing.

      But is it that they CAN’T project themselves into someone else’s head? Or is it that the social pressure exerted by their “tribe” is that universal appeal is the mark of not-art?

      I think that there is a lot of social pressure of the same sort just in politics and “multiculturalism” and not just in fiction writing but the actual handicap, I think, is caused by that and not so much by inability. Not “can’t” but instead, “won’t”.

      (Knowing exactly what it’s like inside a white-male head, however….)

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      1. Ah, well, judging by what’s going on in twitter where tw&ts are claiming that Larry is someone who wants to “rape me and kill me” I think they can’t get MALES let alone white.

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        1. sounds like they’re projecting or are terminally clueless. I mean how in hell would Larry know this twit and why would he want to rape and or kill her? Unless she was brainwashed into believing that all men have on their minds is lust and murder.

          I’d definitely go for the projection answer.

          I wish they’d put on their big girl panties and act like a woman and not a mewling babe.

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        2. Where would Larry find the time to indulge in rapine? And how would he stop Mrs. Correia from killing him (or the twidiot) first?

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        3. I suspect Larry has better taste than to touch most of those twidiots with a ten foot pole.

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      2. I think this is why the whole “It’s a _____ thing, you wouldn’t understand,” sayings are so bad. It’s saying that the other person has no way of gaining an understanding of what the other person wants or is feeling. No amount of study, discussion, or empathy can possibly bring someone who is not them to any level of understanding, and it’s therefore pointless to try.

        Makes me want to throttle people when I hear it.

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        1. It’s why part of me wants to play up my ADHD and dyslexia, just so I can start shouting down these people with their “ableist” crap.

          The fact that I may well be outselling most of them (and that’s not because I’m breaking any records, let me tell you) is just icing on the cake.

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        2. I don’t mind the “it’s a ___ thing, you wouldn’t understand” as a shorthand for “…and I don’t feel like explaining it until you do.”

          In some cases it’s a lack of time, and in some it’s a matter of realizing that there’s no way they’d be WILLING to understand.

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          1. Right. “It’s a computer programming thing, you wouldn’t understand,” because I don’t have the five hours it would take to explain it to you from first principles. Or perhaps because you’re one of the N% of the world that doesn’t have the aptitude to understand it. I don’t know what the value of N is, but my guess is around 80. I do know it’s significantly greater than zero.

            OTOH, just because you don’t currently understand doesn’t mean you don’t have the aptitude to understand; I’ve also found that aptitude and education are orthogonal. In teaching computer principles to people who’ve never used a computer before, I’ve found that there are some who need their hand held every step of the way and never truly “get it”, while there are others who just need to be pointed in the right direction and they’re off and running. They had the aptitude all along, and it just took a bit of explanation to unlock that aptitude.

            Don’t know what point that proves, but I’m sure it illustrates something.

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            2. Reminds me of then i took Avid I…(Editing course using Avid Xpress, for those not familiar with it)
              I’d take the video we were supposed to edit, look at the tapes to find continuous timecode, (some tapes had broken timecode) and set up a batch capture to get the clips i wanted, then mostly spend the rest of the class helping others with computer problems. Or when we were actually cutting the video, I’d get my cut put together, set it to render and… help with computer problems. Some of the people in the class were barely computer literate, and yet (in a couple cases) somehow thought they were going to be editors.

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            3. I started to type that I was an N’er, but rereading it decided I really didn’t want to say that.

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    2. I got wordy and lost my point… which I had intended to be, that no one makes a ripple beyond their little pond if they never *go* beyond their little pond… but I don’t think that this involves an *inability* to write for a wider audience, but a *refusal* to write for a wider audience.

      For reasons.

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      1. Of terminal stupidity, yes. At the risk of causing them to think I’m threatening them, I’ll quote RAH “Stupidity is the only capital crime. The punishment is always death. There is no appeal.”

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        1. Unfortunately, I have to disagree with RAH here. Our current society is preventing the penalty from occurring. [Frown]

          Now if our current society has a break-down, maybe the penalty will occur. [Sad Smile]

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                1. Isn’t it always a good time for a Kipling post?

                  On Fri, May 2, 2014 at 3:43 PM, According To Hoyt wrote:

                  > accordingtohoyt commented: “Exactly. And is it time for another > Kipling post?” >

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                  1. The Three-Decker
                    “The three-volume novel is extinct.”

                    Full thirty foot she towered from waterline to rail.
                    It took a watch to steer her, and a week to shorten sail;
                    But, spite all modern notions, I’ve found her first and best –
                    The only certain packet for the Islands of the Blest.

                    Fair held the breeze behind us – ‘twas warm with lover’s prayers,
                    We’d stolen wills for ballast and a crew of missing heirs.
                    They shipped as Able Bastards till the Wicked Nurse confessed,
                    And they worked the old three-decker to the Islands of the Blest.

                    By ways no gaze could follow, a course unspoiled of Cook,
                    Per Fancy, fleetest in man, our titled berths we took
                    With maids of matchless beauty and parentage unguessed,
                    And a Church of England parson for the Islands of the Blest.

                    We asked no social questions – we pumped no hidden shame –
                    We never talked obstetrics when the Little Stranger came:
                    We left the Lord in Heaven, we left the fiends in Hell.
                    We weren’t exactly Yussufs, but – Zuleika didn’t tell.

                    No moral doubts assailed us, so when the port we neared,
                    The villain had his flogging at the gangway, and we cheered.
                    ‘Twas fiddle in the foc’s’le – ‘twas garlands on the mast,
                    For every one was married, and I went at shore at last.

                    I left ‘em all in couples a-kissing on the decks.
                    I left the lovers loving and parents signing cheques.
                    In endless English comfort, by county-folk caressed,
                    I left the old three-decker at the Islands of the Blest! . . .

                    That route is barred to steamers: you’ll never lift again
                    Our purple-painted headlands or the lordly keeps of Spain.
                    They’re just beyond your skyline, howe’er so far you cruise,
                    In a ram-you-damn-you liner with a brace of bucking screws.

                    Swing round your aching searchlight – ‘twill show no haven’s peace.
                    Ay, blow your shrieking sirens at the deaf, grey-bearded seas!
                    Boom our the dripping oil-bags to skin the deep’s unrest –
                    And you aren’t one knot the nearer to the Islands of the Blest.

                    But when you’re threshing, crippled, with broken bridge and rail,
                    At a drogue of dead convictions to hold you head to gale,
                    Calm as the Flying Dutchman, from truck to taffrail dressed,
                    You’ll see the old three-decker for the Islands of the Blest.

                    You’ll see her tiering canvas in sheeted silver spread;
                    You’ll hear the long-drawn thunder ‘neath her leaping figure-head;
                    While far, so far above you, her tall poop-lanterns shine
                    Unvexed by wind or weather like the candles round a shrine!

                    Hull down – hull down and under – she dwindles to a speck,
                    With noise of pleasant music and dancing on her deck.
                    All’s well – all’s well aboard her – she’s left you far behind,
                    With a scent of old-world roses through the fog that ties you blind.

                    Her crews are babes or madmen? Her port is all to make?
                    You’re manned by Truth and Science, and you steam for steaming’s sake?
                    Well, tinker up your engines – you know your business best –
                    She’s taking tired people to the Islands of the Blest!

                    Rudyard Kipling

                    Which is as relevant to present day kerfuffles as “Gods” is.

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          2. Unfortunately, I have to disagree. What RAH means is blood lines, not individuals. Further more, even if you win the personal genetic bingo of a longish healthy life, you still die in the end. We haven’t scienced death out of human existence yet. These are people too stupid to reproduce, and too stupid to be responsible with their desires… so wind up tearing up their inheritance at an abortion clinic.

            Apparently, stupidity is a right that must be lauded as brave.

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      2. It isn’t clear to me whether the Western Intellectual Twits CAN’T write about anything other than Western Intellectual Angst, or they decline to do so. Wolfe makes the point that American Literature had taken bold stops into the novel of reporting with Steinbeck, Hemingway, Dos Passos and company, and then turned its collective back on the broad, vulgar, incredible American scene and focussed on the neuroses of the academic intellectual. Maybe the American scene scared the piss out of them. Maybe the talents of Steinbeck, Hemingway, and Dos Passos scared the piss out of them.

        I do think they are threatened by the fact that even their biggest Names cannot get on the best seller lists. John Updike comes out with BECH AT BAY. All the Right People hail it as Great Literature. And it hits the market and vanishes without leaving so much as a trail of bubbles. They are right that an awful lot of tripe gets Bestseller status, but the fact remains that you cannot attract an audience of any size with a show of contempt for the common man. That only appeals to a tiny minority, and a lot of THEM use libraries instead of buy.

        So the consciously Literary have to watch as people like Larry Correia get the sales. Of course what REALLY burns them is that people like Rudyard Kipling STILL outsell them, but Kipling is dead, and no amount of Liberal grousing is going to make KIM a fraction less than it is. So they vent at Larry Correia. And then they vent that Mr. Correia didn’t just dumbly take it while staring at his shoes; he actually had the gall, the UNMITIGATED GALL to call them on their bullshit.. Hey, Literati! Want a nice soothing ointment to go with that butthurt?

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            1. Satire is a legitimate use of SF.

              It is, of course, the one mundanes are happiest with, because then the SF really is about the mundane world.

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              1. Yes, but satire is a legitimate use of a lot of things besides SF, and a lot of SF is not satire. The presence of satire is not the factor that distinguishes SF from non-SF.

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                1. Of course. They want to force everything to be really, in essence, mundane. Some will haughtily admit that perhaps it might be pure escapist entertainment otherwise. None of them seem to realize that they are arguing from the premise that something’s serious in direct relation to how closely it is to being about them.

                  In the country of the blind, they practice sculpture. Tactile sculpture. When they come to the land of the sighted, they do not really believe our silly chatter about “sight” and evaluate all our sculptures as if they were tactile. Unsurprisingly, their evaluations are rather different from ours.

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          2. I’ve got to cut down on my link following. It’s stressing the poor vessels in my brain.

            In reference to Soylent Green:

            This scenario bears a striking resemblance to our present food arrangement, where most people eat non-nutritious, genetically-modified food, either out of economic necessity or ignorance. Today, it’s a privileged position, almost a boutiquey pass-time, to consume healthy food.

            Packed full of unexamined assumptions and astounding provincialism. Simple blindness to the unimagined wealth of the culture he denigrates, and the remarkable value modern corporate activity has brought, not only to his native culture, but to the entire world.

            That folks in many unfortunate corners of the world would kill to provide their families with a fraction of the “non-nutritious, genetrically-modified food” consumed by the poorest in our society — apparently irrelevant to the smug superiority felt by the intellectually bereft author.

            The rest of the piece does not improve my mood or assessment.

            Blech.

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            1. Funny how scientific studies have, to date, found not a single point of nutritional superiority between “organic” produce and the regular kind.

              Of course if they REALLY want to impress me, then they can show me an INORGANIC banana.

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              1. Well, there’s a company selling Carbon-free sugar. Which I guess is just water, but at least it’s inorganic.

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            2. If it’s grown as a food crop, it was genetically modified somewhere along the way. The which these idiots either don’t know, or argue “that’s not the same thing, it was done *naturally*!

              I’d like to see them switch to teosinte for a while, whether they liked it or not.

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              1. I’m inclined to think they don’t understand that food crops have been tinkered with for as long as they’ve been food crops. Extensively and repeatedly. Foolish children.

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              2. The ones that claim they are “allergic to GMO foods” are the ones that make me lose hope. (and sanity, but that was arguably already lost)

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                1. Well, you know that they don’t understand physiology and how digestion works. Kinda like the hard-core vegan who swore she/he/it (I really could not tell) had suffered a major physical reaction because someone accidentally used gelatine instead of agar to make veggies-in-aspic.

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                  1. It’s not like our digestive enzymes go “What is this? Fish protein? I thought we were eating corn. Why is there fish protein? ARGH! CANCER ALL THE THINGS!”

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                    1. Yours don’t? Mine do. They send little complaints, and I burp threatening messages “NO TO BE EATING THE BAD CARBOHYDRATES, MISSY”
                      (runs. Really fast.)

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                    2. Well yes, but it’s not like they send different messages if the carbs happen to contain some trace chemicals that insects find particularly unpalatable.

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                    3. Actually my body just processes carbs weirdly and then my sweat causes the skin to break out in eczema. It’s not the digestion as such, as what happens after. Though I do get heartburn from heck.
                      And yeah.

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                  2. Hey, check out the free short story on the Baen front page.

                    The stomach knows… it KNOWS!

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                  3. Hyperventilating and falling to the floor in screaming hysterics could be considered a major physical reaction.

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                  4. I know someone personally who *would* have a serious reaction. Near-instant migraine-level headache and crushing fatigue. She’s allergic to nearly all beef products, including gelatin. You wouldn’t believe how many things have beef derivatives as ingredients; it’s almost as bad as shopping for someone with celiac (I’ve done both). Just being around cooking beef is enough to set her off… which makes barbecue season a joy for her. Even worse, she’s not an eco-nut at all, she actually loves meat! She just has to plan to take the rest of the day off when she allows herself a burger.

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                    3. So far as I know, it’s strictly beef. I know chicken and pork are fine. However, I am not a doctor, I do not play one on TV, and I have never stayed at a Holiday Inn Express. It may in fact be a red meat issue, being as beef is the vast majority of red meat that Americans use.

                      Do you have a source for cougar? I have family that will be up your way for the summer. If you can send some back down with them, I’m sure we could come to some… beneficial arrangement. :D

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                    4. Sorry, the only way people leave my place with cougar meat is in their belly. I’ll give away practically everything else, but it’s simply too good to give away. :D

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                    5. I wasn’t thinking “give”, more like “sell”. Ping me by email if that’s an option; we’re way out here on the end of the threading, which is kind of a pain.

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                    7. I gather that Kit Carson endorsed cougar meat as “the best.” I read it in a Classics Illustrated comic book, so you know that it must be so!

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                    8. It is a white meat like pork, only leaner and a lot better.

                      And since this is AtH I will point out that I am talking about the cat. ;)

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                    9. Because we all know that anthropophagy is frowned upon in this establishment. (Which is just as well, given the reputation for bad taste some of us have.)

                      Apparently there’s a disease carried by the so-called Lone Star tick (also a Lyme carrier) that triggers a hyper-sensitivity to proteins in beef.

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              3. While I recognize a difference between selective breeding and gene splicing, if these guys were serious they’d be freaking out about the radiation/chemicals used to force mutations for selective breeding.

                I figure it’s a matter of being careful, not of some sort of ritual impurity in the method. Killer Bees came from a tradition hybridization, after all.

                They don’t recognize this because they are, as a lot of ag orgs have noticed, people are incredibly divorced from their food source. My mom heard MULTIPLE high school students, in a fairly rural area, that argued “milk comes from the store.” Mom’s good at sensing BS. They were serious. (Why I don’t disbelieve the story about “hunters should get their meat from the store so no animals have to die.”)

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                1. I was on a chicken list for a while and every so often someone would explain that their wife/husband would eat eggs from the store, but they wouldn’t eat the eggs from chicken butts.

                  Sometimes I think that stupid really should be mocked… even when it’s someone you love.

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                  1. Perhaps they would have been copacetic with eggs from chicken hoo-has?
                    (Ouch – nipped my tongue on that one!)

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                    1. Only if they were glittery. Hey would the eggs come out glittery then? If they did you wouldn’t have to decorate them for Easter.

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                  2. I can see it making an emotional difference if you KNOW the chicken butt.

                    Sort of like making a pet of the dinner chicken makes some folks unable to eat it.

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                2. …………………………………….WHAT.

                  Okay, that amount of isolated stupidity is too much. I watched a pig slaughtered and butchered when I was a tot of three years of age – for my then youngest brother’s birthday celebration. I love eating meat and the experience did not turn me off eating meat. Was our generation simply of greater spine and fortitude?

                  I wonder if there’s a way for me to get the kids exposed to understanding that meat comes from animals where I live.

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                  1. While butchering animals where you live may not be feasible, you could probably buy fresh fish or something that needed cleaned and prepared. Then of course make the children help you, so that it penetrates.

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                    1. My almost 5 year old is sooo close to making the connection. When we talk about what meat we are eating, we use the animal names as well as the meat names (pork and pig, ham and pig, steak and cow, etc) Sometimes she gets this puzzled, frustrated look on her face as she begins to make the connection, then it clears as she ignores it and moves on. Sometimes she asks if the chicken comes from real chickens, and wants to know what part, but she clearly doesn’t believe it since it doesn’t LOOK like a chicken.

                      I’m hoping there isn’t a Lisa Simpson moment when she finally internalizes that the animal is killed and eaten (unlike eggs).

                      I have had to reassure her that ‘we don’t eat our friends’. (her world is full of animal friends)

                      Should be interesting when the penny drops.

                      zuk

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                    2. We’re a little more direct. My father started, and we have continued, sometimes referring to the meat at dinner as “old dead xxxx”. It kind of makes it obvious.

                      My sister-in-law had a different moment one time, however. Now, she was quite familiar with the notion of where meat came from, but she didn’t really realize that pork rinds actually were made from pig skin. Until one day when she saw some color on one of them and asked someone what it was. When she was told that it was the FDA stamp, it dawned on her, and I don’t think she has eaten any since.

                      Mind you, this is a woman who is perfectly fine with having to trim the mold off a country ham before eating it. Some people have some strange squick moments.

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                  2. You might see if you can get a chicken or turkey with the giblets included (heart, liver, the usual) and do a fun mini-dissection lab. That’s what my Mom did one Thanksgiving.

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                    2. Perhaps this is just one more venue in which a certain category of the populace exemplifies an excess of sentimentality. I gather that Romantic Ideologues are prone to that.

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                  3. No, our generation doesn’t have superior fortitude; we just weren’t exposed to the same level of propaganda and brainwashing. I’m fairly sure that if you had taken your story to school the next day you wouldn’t have been called an accomplice to murder; today’s kids probably would be, even in rural areas.

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                  4. *grim smile* This IS our generation, CLD– some of these happened before my mom was married, although some were after I was born.

                    And they didn’t know anything because their parents would’ve spent a half hour yelling at yours for scarring you that way, not realizing that kids are a lot less freaked out by that stuff than grownups.

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                    3. *cackles* My dad did that. While it was roasting, he related a story of how his dad said that burning human smelled like roasting pork. Grandpa fought with the Americans during WW2. A couple of the younger folk looked… somewhat horrified.

                      Us kids: That’s interesting. Are there people who eat people?

                      Yeah, *eyeroll* clearly so traumatized omg *meltysnowflakes Q_Q *

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                    4. Eating people is wrong.

                      If the Juju had meant us not to eat people He wouldn’t have made us of meat.

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            3. The base absurdity of this bozos assumption that the act of grafting one gene from some donor plant onto, say, the corn genome to make it immune to one of the many blights that used to regularly reduce the annual corn harvest by a significant fraction, and that used to require the application of lots of fine chemicals to combat, somehow changes the sugar content of the corn kernels is absolutely astounding to me. And then this scholar conflates a complete misunderstanding of what “genetically modified” actually means with the astronomically astounding belief that any life form that consumes “non-nutritious food” would survive at all, let alone become obese as so many in the lower economic strata outside his “privileged” “boutiquey” consumers of proper, bug infested organics from Whole Paycheck do today, just blows my mind

              And this sage presumably graduated from an institution of higher learning, I’d guess most likely with a graduate degree.

              Some days it’s hard to keep up my optimism.

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              1. Yeah, but remember, we’re the ones that are anti-science.

                Whenever some brain-dead yay-hoo starts running on about the gen-mod food scare I’m immediately reminded of the golden rice debacle. Ill-conceived ideological opposition grounded in the inability to understand genetic modifications (which are totally different from hybridization via cross-fertilization. Tots.) trumps correcting grievous dietary deficiencies for a significant portion of the world. Because Gaia.

                It is rather hard on the hope and faith.

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                1. There are also several cases where countries in famine have turned down food aid from the US because it was GMO and could hurt their agricultural exports to Europe. The Green Party has plenty of blood on its hands.

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  3. In all these cases of mentees they were hopelessly lost cases before they came to you? Lady, you actively recruit and think everyone is a writer! :D

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    2. Just because anyone who wanders in and says “I had this idea that someone ought to write . . . ” is immediately told to start writing . . .

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        1. No, there are people who can try pressing their ideas on other people for years — alas. At least we have yet to garner one that offers to split the take.

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          1. Heh. I’ve had people telling me their ideas for years (and heck, I tell tales to anyone who’ll listen), and I just thought everyone did that because everyone has a story in them.

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            1. Everyone has a story in them, but you don’t get to read it by cutting them open. Don’t ask me how I know this.

              As for me, I’ve been writing for ages, but this crew convinced me to try publishing. (Which was immediately followed by a creative drought.)

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      2. In your defense, it makes at least as much sense as the original. Rather more, now I think upon it.

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      3. Doesn’t seem that stupid to me, makes a lot more sense than the more common version.

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        1. And maybe I should scroll down to see if someone has already made my point, before I reply.

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  6. “It’s the willingness to lie down and take it and assume you can do nothing about it that makes you a victim. (And those who’ve taken advantage of me weren’t doing it because of my skin color or gender, but because they could.)”

    WOOT! I hereby publicly and proudly proclaim my victimhoodedness. Mrs. Hoyt and her dastardly well written works have repeatedly victimized myself and my wallet and I am totally powerless to prevent it.
    *SNORT*

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  7. I chuckled at your bringing up the “from each, to each” concept. Over the past thirty years of playing a central role in the management of an intentional community nominally founded on the vision Heinlein laid out in Harsh Mistress, I’ve come to see this as one of the fundamental principles that enabled us to survive. I also understand that it’s a principle which can only work in a context in which each person is intimately known and engaged; it’s not something that works with strangers or casual acquaintances.

    Everyone who comes through our door is in a sort of volunteer with things to offer and needs to be fulfilled. In order to grow, we have to ask them to do things for our mutual benefit. We figure that it would be foolish to ask them to do something they were unsuited for, or for us to not capitalize on their ability to do other things.

    Conversely, if they find that they aren’t getting their needs met here, there’s nothing preventing them from pushing on to try and get those needs met elsewhere. If we reward their efforts with things they don’t need, we’re going to be wasting resources to no avail, and they’ll move on.

    Creating sustainable community is a capital intensive undertaking, and in order to thrive, we have to pay close attention to the abilities and needs of the people who make up this band of folks crazy enough to want to live in the sort of world that Heinlein described.

    We’ve found that a key point is to focus tightly in on the difference between a need and a want. Our premise is that by working together as a team, we can meet our core needs more efficiently that we could if we were working alone; that efficiency then frees us up as individuals to pursue our personal wants. It also allows us to create internal alliances in which people join together in pursuit of the wants they have in common.

    Anyway, just wanted to note that our survival as a community for more than three decades now has been very closely founded on our skill at engaging people’s key abilities while ensuring that their core needs are met.

    In closing, I’m getting a lot out of these columns and the comments threads, but I’m wondering if these interim reports from folks crazy enough to take Heinlein’s work as more than great entertainment is of general interest? Should I keep commenting on what I see as interesting connections between the ideas and what we’ve experienced while attempting to put his thoughts into practice?

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  8. OK, I’m not firing on all cylinders today, so first I was visualizing a room full of writers, all collaborating on a book. Sitting around the table we have, one each: White male, single, het. Black female mother of twins (Hey, like someone who hasn’t dealt with twins could get it right?) Asian male, Black male, White woman, Hispanic . . . OK you get the picture. Because then I thought . . . if all I can write is white females . . . this planet is probably not going to be a viable colony. We need to get together with all those other planets, with their colonies of Asian men, Hispanic women, White men . . .

    Good grief.

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    2. Really, all you need to find is the most oppressed individual, and then consult them. They can tell you all about everybody else. Including white women, of course.

      :|

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  9. You know, it might be difficulty with empathy that’s causing the usual suspects to put out all those nastygrams about the Baen fantasy short story contest.

    If the contest is asking for “heroes to cheer for,” and if nobody can possibly write anything good about someone who isn’t just like you, it may sound to the usual suspects like Baen is asking for heroic writers instead of heroic characters. And of course, if heroes don’t really exist (as many of the usual suspects believe), or if heroes are just stuck-up absolutists on a power trip (as they may also believe), Baen is either asking the impossible or looking to hire scary people.

    Of course, a lot of the usual suspects have no problem writing people with magic powers or superpowers, and obviously don’t think that’s appropriation or escapism or what have you. So one wonders if they really do believe that their wishes are sufficiently powerful to make things come true; or if their better writer selves are using the fantastic to escape their rigorist politics (an exit door that would obviously be needed) and so they’re not asking themselves any questions about how the exit door works.

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    1. Nastygrams about the contest? Already? Can you point me in the direction?

      I’m working on a story for that contest, if the chatacters will cooperate.

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        1. There’s humor in there , more for the outlandish characterizations than for any intentional funniness. Am I broken, that I snort and go on, rather than clutching this ‘hurt’ to my breast and bemoaning my victimization?

          And who’s writing all the SF/F porn over at Baen, ’cause I guess I’m missing out. Sarah, you got another pen name we don’t know about?

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          1. If I ever write porn, it will either be m/m or tentacle porn. Why? Because I’m a prude. I can’t write sex I could actually DO. So… If Baen is publishing some hot guy on guy action, yeah, that’s me. Sex with squid or octopi? Probably me. Guilty as charged. (RUNS. REALLY FAST. She knows CACS has the garum supersoaker.)

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            1. I would pay for octopi porn published by Baen just for the joy of the confounding. I wouldn’t actually read it, mind (probably not), but I’d support the endeavor with capitalist zeal.

              And I’d smile quietly knowing the kittehs were eating off of the proceeds of randy squids.

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              1. I’d not only would I buy it, I’d read it. Would kitten on kitten action squick you? You could write it under a pseudonym and title it The Secret Sex Lives of Cats.

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                1. How about tentacle porn from Doc Freer? Ichthyologist. Should be easy for him. Or dolphin slash.

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                  1. DO NOT TALK TO THAT MAN ABOUT HOW ANIMALS HAVE SEX!
                    We used to have these late night discussions (late night for me, really early for him) and he’d tell me about the depravity of ducks and the perversity of fish. This is how we came up with the imaginary press name Necrophiliac Duck Press. The emblem was supposed to be a duck skull smoking a cigar.

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                    1. Have you ever watched ducks? I swear these people who think they are being “edgy” writing twisted, depraved erotica have never sat in a park and watched ducks for a couple hours.

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                  1. Well, I’m not about to write it. I suspect if I tried to open their bedroom door, they’d both just stand there and glower.
                    However, in a couple of days I’ll need betas for the novella about 8 years after AFGM. No sex, but a lot of pathos. It’s for KJA’s five by five thing.

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                    1. Can’t write lesbians. a) it’s something I COULD do. (I wouldn’t, but I COULD technically as for accountable parts.) b) In my gut I don’t believe in it. I barely believe guys fall in love with girls, and that only because I live with one who did, 30 years ago, and claims he still is in love with me (girl last I checked.) Women falling in love with women? That’s too unlikely. EVEN IF I HAVE LESBIAN FRIENDS. I believe it intellectually, but not emotionally.
                      And besides, I’ve only watched like half the original stargate. I’m not very good at TV series.

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              1. Curiosity… (You know, I’m not finding a word to indicate an increase of curiosity that doesn’t lend itself to dangerous response.)

                Lemme try a different tack: Ringo made bunches of money off of BDSM. Just sayin’.

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                1. Sword and Blood is a vampire novel, published under Sarah Marques. It starts with the poor man tied up to an altar. One of the biggest battles in the book is won via masturbation. Weirdly, it’s the most religious story I’ve ever written, but you’d only know if if you read the three books, which you can’t because I will not write two and three until the rights to the first revert to me.

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                  1. Ah, thanks! I’m going to hope the rights revert, that sounds like an intriguing trilogy arc.

                    That book is going on my ‘to read’ list, by the by.

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                    1. Yeah, it was…uh… different. Good, I liked it, but couldn’t take a steady dose of it.

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            2. Hm. Well, I… Erm.

              I’ve read all of the Paladin of Shadows (even the dreadful last installment), but somehow I didn’t think of them. Odd.

              I’ll go on to say I don’t think there’s any way to take those as reflective of the entire Baen stable. Or any other single book you wanted to pick out.

              But, yeah, John Ringo.

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              1. No, they’re not reflective. And to be frank, I don’t know that it’s even fair to point him out. Several years back I grabbed a random urban fantasy novel off the shelf at my local B&N (which just closed down at the end of 2013 Y_Y ), paid for it, and took it home. The novel (whose name I can’t remember) was nothing special. But midway through it was a multi-page sex scene. That made my eyes glaze over and caused me to skip ahead until it was finished. And while I haven’t read much urban fantasy, I get the impression through random bits I overhear that the fact that entire Harry Dresden novels (which I have read) go by without the protagonist having graphic multi-page sex is somewhat unusual in the urban fantasy genre. So there are times when I wonder if what Ringo writes is really so far out there given much of what *else* is quite possibly on the bookshelves at the local bookstore.

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                2. Oh, Ringo’s fairly tame compared to some of the “Paranormal Romance” I’ve seen. Fortunately, where I go looking for things they usually do separate the PR from Urban Fantasy. I’m an UF fan going back to early Charles de Lint, but some of what they’ve done in the sub-category is — yeesh! Not from a prudish angle, really, just from a practical consideration: Is now really the time to ignore the incredibly dangerous situation you are right in the middle of to speculate on his ass and the resultant piston-power promised by those thigh muscles? I can understand brief asides, because the brain does shocking things under stress, but pages long digressions?

                  As a result, I’m careful about picking up new UF these days. Sarah’s spot on with the “porn fantasy.”

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                    3. I’m not sure a discussion of a guys “piston power” should be deemed, good taste.

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                3. Check the covers. Note that the Seamus McGuire’s heroine October Daye gets covers like Harry Dresden, not like the romance clinch, and it also forgoes those scenes.

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                  1. Good rule of thumb– also suggests WHY I haven’t found any good female UF stuff since the one I kinda liked a decade ago got all stupid. (Come on, ALL the gals on books these days look like romance– or “romance”–novel covers.)

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              2. Paladin of Shadows (even the dreadful last installment)

                You mean the one with the repeated, extended, lovingly detailed descriptions of what fabric the characters shirts were made of?
                In the middle of the dangerous intel gathering scenes?

                You really can’t blame what the coauthor wrote on Mr. Ringo. It’s my understanding he’s expressed disappointment on how that book turned out himself.

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                1. I don’t really blame him, except for the decision to hand a co-author an outline in a series that takes Ringo’s particular touch to pull off. Mike is not a nice guy, the only way he’s readable is with Ringo at the helm. IMO.

                  And now I understand the next book is to be written by yet another co-author. Hrm.

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                  1. As I understand the process, the dominant author outlines the novel, the subordinate author writes the first (and perhaps second) draft, then the dom author goes over it for the final draft — so any flaws that make it through the process probably do fall at the dom’s feet.

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                    1. Y’know, “junior” and “senior” might be better applied to this conversation, considering Ghost and its sequels. “Dom” and “sub” just bring so much baggage with them. And I’d really rather not apply them to most of the authors I know. Just sayin’

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                    3. I would like to say I haven’t any idea what you’re talking about, but until I do something about this mouth full of butter I have I must limit my statements.

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      3. In the minds of (at least one) of the persons responsible, it was just a case of tossing fun jokes back and forth… which I can project myself into a different viewpoint well enough to understand happening in an internet dynamic, if we didn’t have snotty jokes on the internet, what would we have?… so jokes about what would be the perfect benighted cisnormative guns and muscles “Baen” worthy submission. (The “best” of which must have been much funnier in context or under the influence because, meh.)

        Hines thought it was mean spirited enough to feel compelled to issue a “waitaminute, many of my very good friends write for Baen and they are wonderful people and don’t deserve this”… at which event he was accused of betraying the sisterhood… or something… and risks being thrown in the same pit of shame where they’re keeping Scalzi. He may avoid that fate, however, as he quickly issued a “wait, it’s LC… carry on.”

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          1. When the privileged see the hoi polloi have a chance to move into the public notice, the privileged quickly belittle it. Instead of encouraging new writers to get exposure, they do their level best to discourage them — or they are so busy hating on Correia that they don’t care if they discourage new writers.

            And everyone else is the group that has the sense of entitlement and clings to privilege? Seriously?

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            1. I guess it just proves I’m a contrarian. This just encourages me to keep writing.

              Of course, much of it sucks time away from actually writing, but still.

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    2. Ran across a complaint about the gendered nature of the heroes, declaring that the use of “damsel” shows that. Of course it didn’t occur to them that “damsels in distress” can also be rescued by women, or “damsels who can’t be bothered to be distressed” might be heroes. . . .

      Looking over my stories, the two candidates that I had been prepping for self-publishing that might go here (others being too long or less likely to fit) are both girl rescues guy.

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      1. The “Damsel in Distress is actually a dude” was kind of beaten to death in the Chicks in Chain Mail collections, and I’m pretty sure I’ve seen it around elsewhere.

        Probably upset that it’s usually played for humor.

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        1. There’s an entire fairy tale genre of “girl fights monster/witch,” “girl rescues captured guy,” and “girl rescues captured brainwashed guy.” I’m pretty sure that some of the originals somewhere were “girl rescues guy who brainlessly cheated on her with a witch,” but obviously that’s not a favorite one in kids’ collections.

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          1. Oh, one of my favorites– Snow White and Rose Red!

            I don’t know why I liked it so much, the original didn’t make much sense, but they beat that nasty gnome in a very FEMALE way!

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              1. I loved how Kate jolted Christopher back to reality at the end. Also, his proposal of marriage was great.

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            1. And The Quest for the Lost Husband here:
              http://www.surlalunefairytales.com/eastsunwestmoon/other.html

              Alas I can not point to a handy list of The Girl Helps the Hero Flee, but as its title shows it’s the Mad Scientist — oops, the Ogre/Witch’s Beautiful Daughter ensuring his escape. Frequently followed by the Forsaken Fiancee type, in which the hero is given amnesia and goes to marry another.

              Plus of course you get gender flips like “Kate Crackernuts”.

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  10. I probably would not try to write somebody like a black character who grew up in modern Detroit, not as a PoV character anyway. Getting local color right can admittedly be difficult, and I am a bit too lazy to go for the kind of research which might guarantee some sort of real accuracy.

    So if I write characters who live, more or less, in our current era I will stick to just rather generic humans with a fairly generic, probably sort of middle class, background, and keep the place where the story happens sort of generic too, something which might fit lots of places (if that place got supernatural problems or something else weird happened). (Until I write something happening where I live. I probably will, at some point.)

    But a black character who grew up on a colony world a few thousand years from now would probably not be going to have much at all in common with that Detroit fellow anyway, nor with any other black people living today, except for the things all humans share, so why not. And whether that guy grew up poor as a church mouse in the slums, or stinking rich, or something in between, yes, any alternative. I think I can imagine what any might feel like, and when it’s not our current era I’m not going to be tripped up because I gave him the wrong brand of clothes or something.

    And considering how things like those outward racial characteristics are inherited, even if you were to play with the idea of inherited cultures it’s also quite possible that the future colonist might have as many ancestors from any or all the other groups living today as he would have ‘pure’ black ancestors, so why should what he happens to look like define him otherwise? His culture might be anything.

    And then, when it comes to pure fantasy worlds, well, it’s easier to stick to humans who look like the humans we are familiar with, and why not have all kinds of looking humans, but also hey, it’s fantasy! So if I were to have a culture in the tropics with people who rather look like our Africans (well, dark skin does seem to have some obvious benefits for people living in the tropics so it still makes more sense to have the African looking people at least originating from there), but have a culture which is a lot more like that of, lets say, ancient Cambodia than any which ever seem to have existed in the African continent, and then give those people some quirks which never existed anywhere, why not?

    So yes, I am both too lazy and a bit scared to try writing modern world characters who are too different from myself, but fantasy and science fiction are a whole different game since there is not much risk anybody from the kingdom of Neferra is going to come to complain that I got it all wrong. And if you are not from Neferra your complaints don’t count. :)

    (And now there is this character from Neferra who comes to complain to the writer that she did, in fact, get it all wrong… argh!)

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  11. Maybe someone should republish “Atlanta Nights”. Even though it was intentional dreck used to prove a point, it’s bound to contain something to outrage someone who won’t actually understand the joke.

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  12. You know, I read this post and I wish I’d had a sheet of paper handy to jot down notes. Sooooooo much I want to comment on, so I’m going to try and remember it all.

    First, regarding appearance. My father is dark skinned. We’re not really sure why, because I’ve done some tracing of my family tree on that side and see nothing that would bring that on. However, he is.

    He is a retired police officer. Ages ago, while he was still patrolling, he would get so dark of a tan that he actually could pass for black. One story in particular has always stuck with me. A black female officer, new to the force, had a husband who committed suicide. My mother, who was head of the women’s auxiliary, took a pile of food over for the poor officer. While trying to describe Dad to this officer so she would know who Mom was exactly, Mom saw the light of recognition dawn in the woman’s eye a moment before she said, “Oh, he’s that light skinned one.”

    Yes, a black woman mistook my father for a black man.

    However, at no point did my father identify with black culture. Sure, he picked some up, because my town is majority black and he was a cop. You gotta understand the people you’re working around, so he had to know both white and black culture (we didn’t have much of a Hispanic population back then).

    As far as white people being discriminated against, here’s a story relayed to me by one of the advertising sales guys for the newspaper I own. He came in and told me about this store he had visited to try and sell advertising to. Inside was a black woman, who he figured was the owner, and a black man, who he figured was the woman’s boyfriend. My sales guy is was a black man.

    So, my guy makes his pitch, and the woman seems kind of interested until the guy pipes up. “We need to support black businesses,” he said. My guy was stunned. That’s why he came back to the office to tell me about it.

    So, rather than buy inexpensive advertising with the second largest paper in town (and it’s not a small town by any stretch), you’re going to skip it because the owner is white? Really? How is that any different than refusing to buy advertising from another paper because the owner was black?

    What’s especially amusing? Two-thirds of my staff was black. Either way though, I was the victim of discrimination, but apparently I wasn’t because white folks can’t be discriminated against (a discrimination all on its own).

    I’m sure there was more I wanted to address, but…well…damned if I can remember what it was. Oh well, I’ll think of it later. :)

    Like

    1. On your dad’s dark skin — some day I’ll have the genetic test, but I don’t pay much attention to genealogy otherwise, because look, all you have is who great grandmama said the father was. Did you know her personally well enough to trust her? Supposedly I have black blood, but it came onto the family in the male line. The features seem to support it, but who knows? I’ll get the dna test, then I’ll know.
      As another, my husband is supposedly Scotts, Irish, some German, some French, but both he and I passed a trouble gene onto the boys that is endemic in Iberean Jewish populations (not as much as trouble as the gene our Northern cousins got from the same issue — cousin marriage! but annoying anyway.) How? How do I know? Maybe one of his gggggggggrandma’s really liked this olive skinned guy who came by one night and it was raining, so he gave him her bed, because it was the only one that had room?
      Also, older boy expresses more Amerindian genes than husband does (which is to say SOME) so the rumor of Amerindian blood might NOT be just a rumor. However, the family tree sure doesn’t show it. ;)

      Like

      1. A fair point. We’ve long suspected – and legends in distant arms of our family support – Creek indian being in there somewhere, which would explain a few things. Particularly why it would be hidden and HOW it could be hidden.

        When I’ve got the cash, I’m getting one of those DNA tests myself.

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        1. If there is any Creek, there is very likely where the ‘black’ came from. Creeks were one of the tribes that a lot of slaves ran off and lived with and intermarried.

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      2. I mentioned the DNA test I had earlier, but this comment brings it up again.

        Besides the higher-than-average Neanderthal level, the results just don’t make a whole lot of sense. It pegs me at nearly 80% Northern European, about 18% Southern European, and small infusions of East Asian (Yakut), Amerind, and Ashkenazi.

        Now, I tan like a maniac (went 3-4 shades darker in one afternoon outside a few weeks ago), I have high cheekbones, big lips, nearly black eyes, and dark brown hair. Now, the Northern European (and Neanderthal) does tend to explain the fact that I have a massive skeleton, but that’s about it.

        I also sent the results to Promethease, which came back and most of my appearance markers came back that I should be fair skinned and blue eyed. I’m just a huge anomaly.

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            1. For the time being I’ve given up. Maybe I’ll try again in the summer but the kids won’t eat what I need to me feeding my husband and myself and I feel like I ought to make meals at least occasionally and it’s the end of the semester….

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        2. Data point: one of my great great aunts on my mom’s side was a notorious madam. She shows up in local black history texts, but she wasn’t actually black at all, from the few pictures I’ve seen. In childhood, my mom was mistaken for an Indian from India by an English lady who’d lived in India. In Odessa as an adult, she was picked out as obviously an Odessan Jew, right down to the pattern of her salt-and-pepper hair.

          We have a fair handle on the genealogy of that side, and it’s all Swiss/German Protestant descended from French Huguenots descended from French Jews. That side also varies from very dark to very fair among siblings.

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          1. Here she is! One of the few sources that points out that she wasn’t black. Also, if you gotta be bad, at least be good at being bad….

            Sadly, after her retirement she lost most of her money and real estate in the Crash and Depression, but she was still pretty land-rich when she passed away. My grandfather (who specialized as a kid in visiting all the rival factions of the family via the bus system and collecting money and goodies thereby) used to go visit her in her office and be given money to use at the nearest movie house. Which she also owned.

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          2. French Jews had a good amount of Portuguese blood. In one of the earliest throw-out-the-Jews fits, so many of them ran to France that the name for Jew in France in the fourteenth? Fifteenth century? was “Portuguese.” I have the book around here somewhere. Shocked me a bit but explained grandma’s family’s wanderings.

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  13. So are you allowed to write Arabs, since they’re kinda sorta dark but often not all that dark? You can write about Koreans, who have very fair skin, but they can’t write about you?

    Oh, whoops! Silly me. I forgot. You’re on the right side of the political spectrum, so you’re white. Regardless of what you’re lying eyes might tell you.

    :P

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  14. I think that the rule to “write people” is the right one.

    I saw a link to a writing workshop (it was on Writing Excuses) on “How to write the Other” and I thought… I don’t trust them. It’s not that there couldn’t be a whole lot of good things said about writing the Other that would help us all be better at it, but I don’t trust them. For one thing, no one writes (or at least they shouldn’t!) “groups”… and I suspect that anyone motivated to put on such a workshop is presuming groups instead of individual characterization.

    I recently read a novel where the male characters spoke like female relationship coaches. I don’t see that as a failure by a female author to write a male character… because it was just a failure of an author writing a character of any sort. Because the female characters also spoke like female relationship coaches.

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    1. It’s not that there couldn’t be a whole lot of good things said about writing the Other that would help us all be better at it, but I don’t trust them. For one thing, no one writes (or at least they shouldn’t!) “groups”

      This. OH-SO-THIS!

      Not every black man, or Hispanic woman, or bisexual disabled half Latino-Chinese transgendered person, or whatever will have the same experiences. Some will have reasons to be extremely bitter over how their life has gone while others will have no reason to complain. Hell, I know white folks who run along both of those lines…and, as with all other groups, almost every possible point in between.

      Write about people. Screw the Other crap, since it means you think you can boil down the experiences of an entire group into a workshop. Never. Gonna. Happen.

      Like

  15. So in my somewhat masochistic quest to read all the free Tor Hugo nominees, I’ve finished “The Lady Astronaut of Mars”. It’s an alternate history, where DC was hit by an asteroid, and spurred a Mars colonization effort. In the 1950’s. With punch cards and mag tape. And a secondary character named Dorothy who lives in Kansas with her Uncle Henry and Auntie Em. And, no, I have NO IDEA why the characters from Oz are there. It adds nothing and is a pointless distraction.

    Possible spoilers:

    “The Lady Astronaut” is tapped for a one way mission, in her old age, that would have her gone away while her husband finally dies from whatever debilitating disease he suffers from. What little story there is consists of her internal struggle with her desire to return to space vs. her desire to stay and comfort her spouse while he dies. Mix in some regret for not having children (choosing career over family.) So– whiny angst, selfishness, and regret along with some random Oz. Can’t recommend it.

    The author has won several awards and is the VP of the SFWA. From her biography, she has written a bunch of well received stuff, and has actual accomplishments outside of writing as well.

    HOWEVER, I’m pretty sure she’s NOT an aging astronaut living on Mars, so HOW DARE SHE presume to write such a character????!!!!111 eleventy!! And some of the other Tor nominees such as Wakulla Springs co-authors–white!! Middle class!! And yet all the viewpoint characters are BLACK, and mostly dirt poor. How DARE they presume to know what it was like in the ’30’s segregated South??

    [Actually, that last one does bother me a little since the first part of the story has a lot of “negro” dialect. When Twain wrote in it, it was contemporary, and he heard it every day. These two, not so much. Maybe they listened to archival tapes?]

    So at least some of our Hugo award-nominated authors have no problem writing characters that are unlike themselves. And their community seems to have rewarded that. (On the other hand, John Chu is possibly/probably of Chinese decent, may be gay, and who knows, his story might be autobiographical, outside of the “no lying or you’ll get a soaking” thing.)

    So what’s a fella to think? Are they rewarding writers for writing about the “right sort of things/people” or are they rewarding “the right sort of people” for writing? I guess I’ll keep plugging away at it and see if it becomes any clearer…..

    zuk

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      1. I would consider it a great honor to write a guest post, but I really don’t think I’m gonna make it thru this little exercise. Real life keeps intruding. Of course, reading in small chunks helps the medicine go down, but it does string out the process. The voting might be finished before I get done :-)

        With your kind permission, I’ll keep chiming in wherever and whenever it seems to fit in a thread.

        zuk

        PS, I actually tried an (ersatz) sarc tag for the appropriate paragraph, but I guess WordPress strips unknown tags.

        PPS, what would a style manual say about ‘a’ vs ‘an’ before a parenthetical?

        Like

        1. WordPress does. Of course you should report in threads.
          And style manuals vary. I have issues with it because it’s different in US vs. England, and I learned both.

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    2. I’m amazed she can use the word “lady” and not be lynched like Resnick and Malzberg were.

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  16. But this doesn’t make me them. And what I think they want might not be what they want.

    RE: “NOBODY knows how I feel”: Early in our marriage The Spouse and I watched this episode of The Dick Van Dyke Show, episode 17, Title: Stacie Petrie, part. 2, and have often referred back to it as part of our conscience understanding. This section is pt.2 of 3; where Stacie, Rob’s brother has decided to tell the girl he wrote to for a friend (al la Cyrano de Bergerac) that he is the one who wrote those letters and loves her —

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W647FH_xEtg

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  17. The whole “usurpation of victimhood” thing is something I’m trying to deal with in a current (They won’t stand in line and wait their turn dammit!) WIP of mine. The problem is that it is conceived and written with the whole merry band of misfits theme and (being a fantasy story) one of them is human. Also along for the ride are two dwarves, two halflings an elf and a gnome. Here’s the thing:

    This is not really conceived to be written as a political story. I do have another work that more or less crosses 1984 with A Brave New World with a dash of Obamanomics thrown in for leavening that is HIGHLY political and may never see the light of day because it’s way too politically heavyhanded to sell. Then again, if I don’t write the thing it’s gonna make me batty, but I digress. The story in question does have some politics to it, I guess but it’s more of a coming of age story. Not just for the MC either. It’s a group of young people thrust into the world due to circumstances beyond their control. Think Lean on Me meets Lord of the Rings only less wordy. (And maybe not as good either, but hey, why dwell on the negative?)

    My problem is that my human, whose name is Rargh son of Flargh, has always felt a little…ummmm… Amerindian-ish. He grew up living close to the land, hunts and fishes for dinner, uses some copper and some stone tools/weapons, knows all kinds of woods-lore, etc. He’s also dark skinned with brown eyes and black hair. He dresses in buckskins. He doesn’t understand some of what these damn city-folk do sometimes because he doesn’t have the frame of reference. Of course, he also makes all those same city-folk look downright stupid in the woods, but…

    Yeah.

    Once this thing gets published (It’s going indie whether indie likes it or not.) and IF anybody reads it and a leftist gets hold of it…

    Yup, eaten alive by leftoid GHHers whining about stereotyping. Here’s the thing: I don’t really give a rat’s ass if they’re little feelings are hurt. I don’t. They can shove their offended reaction up whatever orifice they find most fitting. But what is this crap going to do to my sales? On one hand, a little notoriety may not be such a bad thing. Seriously. If people are hating on my book, at least they’re talking about it. OTOH, when I refuse to apologize (and believe me, I _WILL_ refuse to apologize if I ever get the chance to) there could be a pretty huge backlash. UGH

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    1. But how will you feel if they _like_ it? I have a horror of that happening with mine. . . not that I wouldn’t take their money . . .

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      1. Their money spends just as well, and think of the inner chuckles as they hand you awards and call you “sensitive” and “diverse” and other platitudes . . .

        Like

    2. I don’t think you necessarily have to worry. Mercedes Lackey has not one but two cultures based on various Native American tribes, and as far as I know, she gets a ‘pass’.

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      1. Sorry, but white female authors can do such things especially if they have the proper “group think” which Lackey has.

        Mind you, she has written some good reads mostly because she hasn’t written message fiction.

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    3. The true beauty of indie is that there is no middle man to get in the way. You’re putting your work out there for Ghod and everyone to do with what they will. There is no publisher to interfere because they didn’t like your message, your attitude, or your politics.
      In that respect anything that causes a stir, gets the attention of the reading public, is all to the good. Love you or hate you, as long as they read your work you’re golden.
      A writer writes for compensation, fame, to get a message out, or to quiet the voices in their head. As long as you succeed in satisfying whichever combination of those comprise your motivation it’s all good.

      Like

  18. Conveying to someone I liked him (other than by a real close attention to everything he said) and the other things that go into the game between men and women – or even between women in a public relationship of work or power – was a complete mystery.

    My first experience of observing how a girl expressing an interest in a boy occurred in middle school. It was decidedly strange. She would chase him around the classroom trying to hit him in the head with her pocketbook. I think that we all kind of knew that it wasn’t because she held a disliking for him, other than the fact that she was annoyed by the fact that he ignored her having not yet caught on to the fact that girls might be of interest. At the same time we understood that something about this means of expression was off-kilter.

    Whatever, the more I think on it the more I am certain that you could never pay me enough to be in middle school — or in high school — again.

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    1. Great googly-eyed goblins, yes. Save for the books and the learning stuff, high school pretty much sucked. Same for the two years before. Children that age are not kind to those who don’t fit in -to *any* category. Makes it tough to learn those social cues one is supposed to be learning at that age.

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        1. Eh. I got myself put in coventry by not fitting any category. Wouldn’t be bullied, wouldn’t be a bully, laughed at the beautiful girls, etc — so I just sat in a corner and read a lot…

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          1. If you were able to pull off ‘wouldn’t be bullied’, you had a feebler lot of bullies than I had. They used to set on me at odds of five or six to one.

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            1. No. I was just huge. at five seven and a size seven by 12, I was bigger than the male teachers. Also, I berserk. Trust me, farm boys aren’t weak. They just dislike being hit with chairs and desks.
              I did have a cohort of small, shy friends who followed me everywhere, though.

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              1. Oh, then you did have a feebler lot of bullies than I had. These were the guys who had been held back one or two grades because they would rather smoke weed than do any work – most of them sold the stuff out of their lockers. They used to brag to each other about how many classes they failed, and I think most of them fully expected to reach the legal dropout age while still in junior high. They were big, mean, stoned, and stupid, but they had one comparatively small, wiry guy who was the brains of the gang. They used to do things like bar the entrances to the school so I physically could not get into the building, so that I would get suspended for repeated tardiness. (They didn’t care if they ever got to class or not. I don’t know why they hadn’t been expelled.)

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                1. In middle school, our oldest held back was 19. He tried to ambush me in an empty classroom. I broke his rib. (Not on purpose. I berserked.) I THINK he meant to rape me. And I think drugs might have been traded, but I was very innocent.

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                  1. And I think drugs might have been traded, but I was very innocent.
                    ————————

                    That reminds me…

                    When I was in junior high, someone (who I didn’t know) asked me if I wanted some weed. My mother had made me work in her garden while I was growing up, so the fact that I was being offered drugs didn’t even occur to me until much later.

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      2. yup… try being a nerdgeek who is good with computers, decent with programming, but is also a fair artist, and can write… so didn’t fit in with any of the customary geek groups.

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                1. I forget how long ago it was when I heard this … stripped down to essentials:

                  Three brothers decided to go in together and bought a cattle ranch. For weeks they couldn’t decide what to name it and so, finally, they wrote their Mum and asked her recommendation; She promptly asserted that they should name the ranch “Focus.”

                  When asked “Why?” she wrote in reply: “Because that’s where …”

                  Oh heck, I should let somebody else have the fun of finishing that.

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  19. Sounds like a book I’d like to read!

    And if you think he’s feeling a little too Amerind for your fantasy world, differentiate him by culture. If you want him to be Native American or partly, go for it. Feel free to invent a tribe or pick a dead one. (There are no Erie around to argue with, thanks to the Iroquois Confederacy. There is a certain amount of archeological and historical evidence for their culture.) If you want him to be a frontiersman-type or mountain man-type in his world, again, differentiate by culture. There were a lot of dark-haired, dark-eyed frontier white guys too.

    Like

    1. Thank you! Once I get this thing done you’ll be seeing it here on the Saturday promotion post. And don’t talk too loudly about liking to read it. I may find myself in need of beta readers at some point.

      Like

      1. I’m up for beta reading if you need somebody!

        And re: frontiersmen who are dark, from a local book about the history of Dayton, Ohio’s Wayne Avenue in the 80’s and 90’s: “Now we come to the pump shop” [literally — he sold mechanical pumps] “of Mr. Daniel Boone who was lineal descendant of his namesake of Kentucky pioneer fame. Mr. Boone was a tall, gaunt, raw-boned man with jet black hair, dark eyes and an aquiline nose of noble proportions. He sported a huge black handle-bar mustache of which he was inordinately proud. He was boastful of his superior strength and stamina and was never more happy that when he could dramatize his power and energy.”

        There’s also a funny cat story in the book which is too good not to share: ” The only concession made by the Dover drug store to then accepted merchandizing methods was a glass display case holding an assortment of seven or eight boxes of nickel cigars, two-fers and three-fers, -all hand rolled and all produced in Dayton cigar factories. As part of this display was a gas cigar lighter which possessed a unique shut off valve. When hoisted to neck level, the valve opened automatically and a long thin flame resulted; after the cigar was lighted the lighter was again suspended at a lower level, automatically closing the valve so that only a small jet flame remained, no higher than the protective shield which encircled it. Many a magnificent handle bar mustache was singed regularly whenever the owner attempted to light his cigar.

        “As a concession to sanitation, Mr. Thomas C. Dover kept a cat which was expected to keep the premises free from vermin. During the early Fall Mr. Dover made a trip to northern Maine and when he returned he brought with him a beautiful half grown cat. This animal, though the offspring of a common house cat had short tufted ears and a bobbed tail. It was the expressed opinion that the beast was sired by a wild cat or perhaps a Maine Lynx. In the months before it achieved full maturity it was extremely playful but as it grew older it developed some vicious traits. The cat usually lay on the top of the glass cigar case and on several occasions when a customer attempted to pet it, it would spring at the customer’s throat. For some reason the adult cat took a fancy to me and when Mr. Dover found it expedient to dispose of it he suggested that I take it home. Against the advice of my parents I made quite a pet of it and from me it accepted not only petting but actual mauling. The cat made a home for himself in the horse barn and it assuredly kept the stable free of mice and rats. Biologically speaking, this cat must also be considered a success since during the first Winter and Spring of its adult life, he killed nearly all of the neighborhood male cats and the summer crop of kittens had more than a fair sprinkling of lynxfaced and bobtailed kits.”

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  20. “From Each according to his Abilities, To Each according to his Needs” is a pretty sweet deal, if you’re a needy incompetent, but it makes a slave of the capable and independent. Advocating such a position says an awful lot about the individual who does so, and which side of the equation he expects to be on.
    — Richard Chandler (10/15/04)

    I said it 10 years ago (almost) and it’s held up very well. You never hear the guy who’s going to be worse off under Communism asking for it. Of course, the ones who are demanding it think they’ll get to be party leaders, even if really, they’re going to be the first ones up against the wall after the revolution.

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    1. I like to ask people things like “what if whoever is in charge decides your abilities are to pick up dog crap in the park?” or “do you really NEED that computer you’re using?”.

      I don’t get many answers. Well, at least none that are relevant to the questions.

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      1. Exactly. “You don’t really need _________.” An airplane. A house that big. That fast car. Any car at all. A computer. A gun. Two kidneys. Two eyes. Your spleen.

        The end of that path has been proven again and again. I know I’m preaching to the choir here, but “…you don’t really need…” is the start of it all.

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      2. Isn’t it odd that so many overlook that getting to be in charge of deciding what people need and of what they are capable is a pretty sweet job? Gatekeepers typically do very very well so long as there are limited alternate routes.

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  21. If you an only write what you are, then Peter Watts, who retold “The Thing” from the creature’s point of view (“The Things”), needs to be hunted down and burned with fire before the invasion really gets going.

    The foolish aspect of this argument, or rather one of them, is the belief that historians should only write what they are. So men can’t write “women’s history,” no one who has not been in the military should write military history, Anglos must stay away from everyone else, and so on. I’ve mentioned before that woman grad students have to be able to say ‘Yes, I can teach women’s history” on job interviews. You can pad it by adding “since it’s not my specialty, I’ll need a semester to become familiar with the literature,” but to flat-out refuse is almost a kiss of death. Arrrgh! I’d rather do legal history than hyphenated history! (No offense, SPQR, a chunk of what I write is a form of legal history, just with shootings and other fun stuff. Ah, water law.)

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    2. Hey TXRed, did you do a great post on water rights (and flows) wrt the collapse of society on another blog? There can’t be THAT many folks around who could address the issue, surely?

      zuk

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      1. If it was fantastic, insightful, beautifully written, and of breathtaking scope, than yes. Otherwise I probably didn’t, unless my academic alter-ego has been ghost posting without telling me.

        OK, serious answer: No, I didn’t. I tend to shy away from the collapse model stuff, mostly because I don’t have a broad enough background to do it justice. (Not that that stops many people, right? )

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        1. It was pretty thorough and well written ;-)

          And very interesting because it is one of the things you might not think about unless you knew how extremely the rivers in the west were being managed. Stop managing, and let stuff revert and you have water where it wasn’t recently, and you don’t have it in places that had it. Like the river your escape cabin is located near….

          Or, maintain the ability to manage, but eliminate the social and legal compacts that currently govern, and ALL the water gets diverted early.

          Just one of the many ‘infrastructure’ things that I don’t think the prepper/survivalist/etc community really understand. Lots of folks posit a return to 1800’s tech, but don’t realize the huge infrastructure that supported those homesteaders. Railroads, eastern manufacturing, catalog sales, general stores, even imports from Europe. Hard to be a blacksmith without iron and coal.

          It would be interesting to see some of that reflected in stories. (John Barnes does some in Article 51, but there is a lot of ‘armwavium’ employed.)

          zuk

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          1. When Ted Turner and Co. proposed “rewilding” the Great Plains by “returning” elephants, lions, gazelle, and camels to replace the Pleistocene fauna, or when followers of the Poppers’ Buffalo Commons idea espouse doing the same with bison, I want to ask, “But what will they drink?” The activists assume that you can stop all irrigation and pumping, leave the dams and other things in place, and all the critters will have enough grass and water to survive. That might have been true prior to 1955 and the invention of the center pivot irrigation system, but not any more. There are d-mn few waterholes left, and irrigation has dried up some of the smaller streams and rivers. As you say, a lot of people don’t realize the huge hydrologic changes humans have made to western North America. [Hey, where’d this soap box come from?]

            [Exit stage left, pursued by a Bison Antiquus]

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      2. There can’t be THAT many folks around who could address the issue, surely?

        A surprising number of ranchers– especially retired ones– are online. Especially when the (great) grandkids are cross-country.

        Then one of the kids gets them started on these “blog” things…..

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  22. “There are too many Western white settings in fantasy!”
    “Okay, I’ll write a non-Western setting.”
    “You can’t do that! That’s cultural appropriation!”

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    1. “Did you see that? Help! I’m being culturally appropriated!”
      “Shut up!”
      “Ooh, now I’m being oppressed! Help!”
      “Oh, just hit him on the head so we can get going.”

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      1. When you are in the middle of a park without trees and pavilions, and it starts to rain, you get wet. The wise thing to do is accept this, and not struggle futilely.

        but they get peeved when you realize there is no door out and start treating criticism as background noise.

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  25. As for “not knowing what is happening inside oteher’s heads” — most people don’t honestly know what is happening within their own head. We lie about our motives, first of all to ourselves.

    Odd how that works.

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    2. (Not to start a fight.)

      Is there a solution. How do we see our own blindspots?

      That’s what I’m strugling with.

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