Year: 2015

The rise of the Self-Insertion fic -Lawrence Railey

If you’re like me, much of your early childhood was spent pretending you were this or that. Perhaps you were a superhero one day and an astronaut the next. Maybe you were a Jedi or a captain of a starship. You were the hero in your own story.

But as you grew older, you became aware that the world wasn’t all about you. Your story was not the only story that mattered. Indeed, when you read a book or watched a movie, you understood that the characters were not you, and were you in the same situation as they were it was entirely possible that you would do something completely different.

Yet, the story remained enjoyable for you, nonetheless.

Puppy Kickers commonly explain that people of various ethnic, religious, and sexual backgrounds are put off because Science Fiction does not contain enough characters who are like them. Chuck Wendig explains this view for us:

“Let’s imagine that you are, as you are now, a straight white dude. Except, your world features one significant twist — the SFF pop culture you consume is almost never about you. The faces of the characters do not look like yours. The creators of this media look nothing like you, either. Your experiences are not represented. Your voice? Not there. There exist in these universes no straight white dudes. Okay, maybe one or two. Some thrown in to appease. Sidekicks and bad guys and walk-on parts. Token chips flipped to the center of the table just to make you feel like you get to play, too. Oh, all around you in the real world, you are well-represented. Your family, your friends, the city you live in, the job you work — it’s straight white dude faces up and down the block. But on screen? In books? Inside comic panels and as video game characters? Almost none. Too few. Never the main characters.”

It’s worth noting that this was written in response to the Star Wars boycott trolling affair on Twitter. Chuck certainly got taken to the cleaners by the trolls in that regard. But the issue he brings up is one frequently touted by the Puppy Kickers.

For as long as I can remember, Science Fiction has been relatively good about containing a mixture of various races, belief systems, and the like. Frank Herbert’s Dune contains a great deal of reference to Islam and Persian culture. Babylon 5 had an episode wherein the commander of the station introduced one of the aliens to an entire row of various races and religious creeds. Star Trek put a Russian on screen as a main character during the height of the Cold War (itself a more radical move, I think, than having a black woman as a communications officer). Darth Vader was voiced by a black man, and wouldn’t have been the same otherwise. Sarah Hoyt’s own Darkship series contains a gay character in a substantial role and, of course, has a female protagonist. David Weber’s Safehold series has a protagonist who is arguably a transsexual, as she changes her gender to male in order to become Merlin and blend in properly with Safehold’s population.

And I’m not even going to start where Heinlein is concerned.

Point is, the complaint of the Puppy Kickers is patently false. You can see people of your particular race, religion, sexuality, etc… already. Indeed, this isn’t even a new phenomenon. For as long as I’ve been alive, there hasn’t been a major issue where this is concerned.

But there’s a deeper point, even, than this. It’s something that I didn’t really think about until recently, too. I was reading Darkship Thieves and I was practically biting my nails when Athena was doing something I would regard as pretty ungrateful and borderline cruel. And I felt it in the pit of my stomach. I genuinely didn’t want her to do what she wound up trying to do. That’s when it suddenly hit me: I’m reading about a character who is not me. Her motivations are not mine. Her personality is not mine. Everything about her is different.

The story isn’t about me, or my perspective, or what I would do in those circumstances. It was about what Athena was going to do. And the story would not be one tenth of what it was if (please excuse me on this one Sarah) she wasn’t so damn stubborn and self-centered. Her bumbling through the first half of the book is precisely why I was glued to the pages. I just HAD to find out what kind of trouble she was going to stir up next. I liked Athena’s character because she was fleshed out, had her own motivations, thoughts, dreams and issues. She felt like a real person to me.

Sometime ago I read an article about the Twilight series of books. The title escapes me at the moment, but the point of the article was that Twilight’s protagonist, Bella, was deliberately written to be vague, nondescript and almost featureless. She was a fantasy Mary Sue. Bella, in other words, was intended to be a reader avatar for young teenage girls (and, apparently, older mothers who wished they were teenage girls). People could pretend they were Bella and attracting the attentions of a sparkling vampire, just as I once pretended to be an astronaut as a child. Bella was the exact opposite of Athena.

Chuck Wendig’s rant about people not seeing themselves in stories is perfectly in line with this thought process. If we extrapolate his line of thinking, there must be, for example, gay black characters so that gay black men can connect with the story and insert themselves into it. For without a suitable number of these characters, they cannot connect with the story. Or, in simple terms, they can’t make the story about themselves personally.

Except that this is complete nonsense to begin with. There’s a reason Mary Sue stories are often derided, and why there’s a lot of bad fanfiction written in this particular style. It’s the same reason why commercials will spout off something like “there’s just one you.” And why advertising everywhere likes to focus on how special you are. You’re all winners, they will say, the world is yours. It’s a way to feed narcissism. You can only read so many stories like this before it starts getting old and patronizing.

Adam Carolla said it best in a rant several years ago:

“We’re now dealing with the first wave of participation trophy [parenting]” when “everyone gives everyone a participation trophy and then everyone feels good about themselves but it’s not based on anything.”

To the Puppy Kickers, everyone else is the problem, but never them. They overlook the problem of a cultural trend toward narcissism, the over-emphasis on personal feelings, a patronizing notion that everything has to be personal so that everybody can feel good about themselves. Instead, they focus on whether or not your story has a sufficient number of gay characters, or black characters, or whatever particular group is currently occupying the attention of social justice.

Are they saying, then, that it is impossible for readers to enjoy a story without the story being about them? It’s actually worse than that. Again, I will quote our friend Chuck Wendig:

“Also, as it turns out, the genre is often, maybe even always, political. Even when it’s not expressly so, fiction isn’t about some rote operational telling of stories. Science-fiction and fantasy, when operating well, serve as a bellwether for the world in which we live. It’s always been that way. Through history, we examine both the small books and films and comics and also the really popular ones to see what ideas and fears and yes even politics have seeped out of the public consciousness and conscience and into the stories that the public loves and shares.”

You see, in the eyes of the paladins of social justice, fiction cannot be apolitical. It categorically must have an agenda, and just as the stories must be about them, personally, the political angle of those same stories must be their political angles. Sad Puppies understand that fiction can come in both political and apolitical varieties, and that the stories need not parrot their own worldview in order to be enjoyable.

If they truly gave a damn about the word diversity, which they reflexively lob around whenever challenged, they would discover that having fiction of a conservative slant adds to diversity, it does not detract from it. But that’s not how it works with them. Just as the books must cater specifically to their individual backgrounds, the books must also cater to their politics. N.K. Jemisin’s book pushing free birth control is considered just fine, revolutionary even. Tom Kratman’s book about war against Muslim terrorists on another planet is considered crimethink, because they don’t want actual diversity of thought, especially not in stories that are explicitly political.

Since, for them, progress only goes in one direction (i.e. towards more Socialism, White Guilt, etc…), fiction with a conservative angle, or even no detectable angle at all, is at cross purposes to what they consider the genre to be about.

It all goes back to the beginning. They view our genre as escapism, not story-telling. They want to be the hero of a grand story about the Socialist utopia, and since that’s probably not going to happen in the real world, they retreat to the fantasy world to get their fix. They want to be an astronaut today and a commissar tomorrow. So characters must either be blank templates, like Bella, that they can insert themselves into, or be so close to their particular background that they can pretend the story was written about them.

Don’t misunderstand me, to a certain extent, the occasional foray into escapism can be fun, and a way to disconnect from a dreary 9-to-5 existence. But at the same time, like any such luxury, it is best used in moderation. The reason Mary Sue stories are considered so bad is that anyone who cannot immediately insert themselves into the main character will find the story patronizing, fake, and composed largely of cardboard cutouts. Fan fiction is not universally terrible, but much of it can be because many of the fans are prone to writing themselves into the story. And while that is their prerogative, it doesn’t make for good story-telling, generally. The story will have a fanbase of one.

Unlike Athena, the characters in those stories will not feel like real people, with real motivations. You won’t care about them, you won’t want to read more unless the author is deliberately stroking your ego. So much of what the Puppy Kickers do is a sort of mutual stroking of egos. Here, you wrote a story about social justice, have a Hugo and feel good about yourself. A decade from now, nobody will remember the book, because it stunk like yesterday’s meat, but hey…

The Book of Eli is a film that I enjoyed tremendously, despite the implausibility of the primary plot device. The titular Eli was a black man portrayed by Denzel Washington. He was a morally upright character, resolved to complete his task; a modern day Christian prophet. He was totally unlike me. Yet I loved the story and it wouldn’t have been the same without Denzel Washington portraying the character. He was perfectly cast for the role.

And that’s the central thesis surrounding the Sad Puppy affair. We want artistic freedom to create characters that aren’t Mary Sues, that don’t necessarily follow some specific agenda or quota formula. We don’t think the inclusion or absence of a particular trait is important. If a character is envisioned as a gay Jewish black man, then that is just fine. If another is a white man with skin lighter than a Norwegian in a snowstorm, there is nothing wrong with that. Or, if your character is a stubborn woman whom you just want to reach through pages and yell “good God, woman, don’t do that!” to repeatedly, so much the better.

Diversity isn’t the goal. At best, it’s a side-effect. Good story-telling is the only purpose, and the Puppies believe that nothing should get in the way of that.

And, quite simply, this notion that one must share essential attributes with the main character in order to enjoy a story is patronizing, narcissistic, and stupid. A black man can enjoy a story about a white woman. And, in the case of the story I just finished reading a couple days ago, a conservative white man can enjoy a story about a transsexual robot named Merlin living on distant planet.

Books do not have to be self-insertion fics, and they do not need to push a socio-political agenda.

The fact that the Puppy Kickers don’t know any better is disappointing to say the least.

Part of the reason we tend to stay in the shadows and say nothing, while philosophies like communism run abroad in the world killing people is because those philosophies – horrible and ridiculous though they are — dress themselves in the veneer of kindness and concern for others.

Because of this, we can’t speak without seeming uncaring or worse, veritable monsters of inhumanity.

This is why the other side, in science fiction or in politics, keeps calling us “haters” or “evil.” The fact the other side of the – ah, argument – deploys such words with childish abandon (consider, please, that for defending two men using the word “ladies” to refer to women they admired, yours truly got declared half the most evil person in the world.) gives us some insight to their motives and to what we must call, lacking a better word, the functioning of their minds.

That is one must distinguish between the … ah… to borrow their wording “thought leaders” on the other side and the camp followers. The thought leaders, particularly those people whom I know to be intelligent enough and experienced enough to understand where communism or its weak sister, socialism, always lead – to feudalism, more or less, judging from everywhere communism persists and even by many socialist countries – I give no mercy and no quarter. They are evil people. Whatever in their heart was good or kind or well intentioned, has long since given way to a hunger for power, a wolfish desire to rule over everyone which has consumed any glimmer of light in their souls.

No one calls them that. In public life, in the arts, you always hear them referred to as “very nice people, but—” even by those who obey them. What follows ranges from “misguided” to my own term for the other kind of vileprog “political idiots.”

I have been privileged, if you want to call it that, to have a glimpse behind the mask of a few of them, to the point that nowadays I presume there is a mask in place and that behind it lurks the gargoyle-leer of the cowardly power seeker. One of these people I grew up with, more or less, as an older brother. He was one of my brother’s best friends, and yes, there are reasons for what he became, reasons having to do with his family structure, the same reasons that he hung around us enough to acquire the status of “older brother.”

But reasons aren’t excuses. At some point we all make ourselves. I’m sure, because I remember him from childhood, that he was attracted to the communist party by the same reasons that a lot of the followers are: he was kind, worried about people, and his horrible childhood made him long for someone – anyone – who could have imposed order on his broken family.

I feel for that kid, and for the very young man I knew. I don’t feel for the late-middle aged man he became.

He was smart enough to be advanced very quickly through the party structure, and to be admitted to the inner councils. My dad, in a similar situation, at a very young age, took a look at how the totalitarian sausage was made and ran. He ran so far that I’ve never known him as anything but a staunch anti-communist. I believe there are many stories like that on this side, some fast and some slow conversion as the horror of what the other side really means to do as opposed to what they say they want to do dawns on some well-intentioned and smart soul.

My childhood friend didn’t run. In fact, he enmeshed himself in the capitalist world, taking advantage of contacts and advancement, while still trying to promote the evil philosophy of “government by the enlightened few in the name of the masses” which is what communism boils to.

And through that he became someone else, someone willing to do anything for more power.

I know others in the same situation, including those whose political status changes depending on the audience they’re talking to. Dizinformazia. It’s nothing new.

The funny part is that many of these – if not most – were the revolution they work so hard to foment to come true, would end up against the wall. They hungry for power and they imagine that if the revolution happened they would be the ones in control. But the point of any communist (or proto-communist, like the French) revolution is that power concentrates in the hands of the very few, and the others, who are smart but not quite smart enough, ruthless but not quite ruthless enough, end up with the bullet in the back of the head. Because as self-motivated and power hungry as they are, no one in power can trust them. This is why Revolutions in Rome killed all the relatives of those deposed. The higher you were, the closer to the Emperor, if you weren’t the Emperor himself you were never safe.

Beneath them is a second rank, and I know a few of them too. They are smart enough, and they think they’re ruthless. I think they never really get a glimpse behind the scenes, though they might think they do. They might be asked to do or say several unpalatable things, and they don’t balk from them. They are… not the lion, but the hyena. They too don’t run. They too would be summarily disposed of. These, by and large, are the carrion crows who mistake “death lust” for “ruthlessness.” They will say things like that 90% of the world population dying would be a good thing if the smart survived.

They aren’t as strong or as ruthless as they think, which is why they’re never admitted to higher councils. And why if push came to shove they probably would die before being shot in the back of the head. They tend to be… unorganized evil mixed with an odd amount of fluff.

They were pulled into the evil philosophy not through the kindness of their hearts, but through fear. In their hearts they’re sure the revolution will happen, and they’re scared. Really scared. They know there’s reasons for the communists to hate them (note they’re stupid enough to both believe the finite pie theory of economics and to think that communists really want to give money to the poor) and they don’t want to be despoiled or killed.

In a true emergency they’d die fast andd ugly, but until the real emergency comes, they can be very dangerous.

Then there’s the dreamers. Most of the progressives (and communists) in my field fall under this, though some of them (the fargin idiots screaming about killing white men – being themselves white, btw – on twitter, night and day for instance) have a good deal of the second. If you tune in to their twitters, their posts, what you hear is “Mr. Wolf, please eat me last, I’ll serve up these tasty morsels for you.”

They are not stupid. Not most of them, at least, though very few people are as smart as that first group.

What they are is ineffective in the real world. Most of us are. We are, after all, the people who hang back and think, people of words, not of deeds. Some of us had a far more interesting life than we’d really like to, but even those of us are a little… odd, all things considered. There is a narrative going on in the back of our heads that makes it difficult to fully live, say, a fight, without taking notes.

In people whose life circumstances didn’t challenge them in the least, this tendency becomes so marked that they really don’t do much of anything. They just read about things and dream a lot.

To such people the temptation of communism is huge. Most of them are decent enough people. A lot of them are not very fond of humans in general. BUT they want to be seen to be caring, seen to pity their fellow beings and to want nothing else but to HELP. Only they’re conscious of not being able to do very much and not being all that active in anything that might help.

This gets us to their solution: embrace a philosophy that says it means to help the poor/disenfranchised/ Marxist downtrodden.

What you do then is talk about it constantly and shame anyone who disapproves.

The end result is… most of our field. I am not going to say what happens to them in a real revolution, because I think none of you are stupid enough to need it.

Beyond that there is a vast mass of people who aren’t even communists or even progressives in any sense of the word. If they paused and thought long enough about what is actually going on; if they paused and considered consequences; they wouldn’t give one minute of consideration to the claims of virtue of the left, or even give them the “ well intentioned” epiteth.

The thing is for at least the fifty years I’ve been alive, there has been a near total lockdown on the media, the arts, and even churches, aiding and abetting the left, from socialists to communists (and really there isn’t much of any other kind left.)

These soft people – Heinlein would call them custard heads – out there never hear of the consequences of the well intentioned programs, never hear the argument from the other side. All they see is black and white. The well-intentioned, caring left and the evil right who is for selfishness and greed and probably twirls its moustaches in the privacy of its own chambers when no one is looking.

Faced with that they go along with “caring” and wanting to help. This is how we see ridiculous things, like after the abysmal performance of some hard lefty, people saying they’re voting for him again because he “Cares about people like me.”

My side, otoh, being frankly shambling outcasts from this virtue-narrative embraces the epithets flung at them, and laughs. Which is how I come to be the Beautiful but Evil Space Princess, and Larry gets to be the International Lord of Hate. The funny thing is that the other side views this as absolutely truthful. They think we embrace these names because they represent what we are. I think a mechanism is at work here, in which, like other countries compared to the US they try to present themselves in the best possible light, and therefore assume we do the same – without irony. So when they see us calling ourselves evil, they assume we’re unimaginably worse.

As for our colleagues, this un-ironic inability to imagine someone saying something different from what they mean/making fun of an enemy’s hatred goes along with their inability to read about characters “not like themselves” and with the sheer preachy, unadulteratedly earnest stuff they write. It also explains why they think communists are good people, and that socialists “care” for people.

But those of us who think – and any of them who wish to – should consider the limits of caring and or forgiving.

Say, for instance, you feel sorry for a pedophile – not that any of them got involved in anything like that recently! – because after all the poor critter is confused, and didn’t choose to be this way. You let him/her go, or even encourage him/her with stuff like “it’s not your fault.”

What is going to happen? I can tell you. What is going to happen is that they’re going to hurt another or many kids.

Now the kids didn’t ask to be hurt, and they didn’t do anything to deserve it.

By encouraging/feeling sorry for one person, who can, after all, control him/herself or seek help in doing such, you were cruel to a vast number of innocents that didn’t do anything to bring this on them.

You can say you feel sorry for them too, but that won’t help them. Being firm with the pedophile and telling them to seek help (or making sure they got stopped, if you think their behavior has gone beyond fantasies) would have been the kindest way to handle the situation, both for the pedophile and his future victims.

Say you feel sorry for a terrorist, or a thief, or even someone who doesn’t do his work at work. In each of these circumstances too, you’ll find that your “kindness” has the effect of the most horrible cruelty.

It’s all very nice to proclaim oneself caring and kind. And then there is feeling compassion for people.

But around 12 or so, most of us realize kindness to the cruel leads to cruelty to the innocent, or even the kind. If you haven’t figured that out, you’re spreading evil in the world and it is time you stopped.

Choices are rarely between ice-cream and death. They are usually between something horrible and something slightly less horrible. Smart people vote for the less horrible and help – personally when and how they can.

Be smart, stop wearing your “caring” on your sleeve.

Caring either hides the smile of the tiger, or makes you a patsy of those who do.

Actions have consequences and intentions count for nothing. Sometimes the best help you can give someone is a swift kick in the butt. Sometimes it’s teaching them a skill. Care enough to do what it takes, even if it seem cruel.

And stop buying stupid narratives.

*Sorry, for the bfp guys.  This week is going to be insane, as … well, I’ll explain later but I’m going to be AFK except mornings and evenings for most of the week.*

Yesterday I went downstairs to watch an episode of Columbo.

It wasn’t one of my favorites, since I rather liked the guy you know is going to get killed, and this one had way more lead up to the ‘being killed’ than most episodes.

It was the chess tournament episode, and here’s the thing: the challenger is clearly Russian.  He was also a good ol’ boy and you couldn’t help liking him.  Even if, like me, you were aware that the people they let out, even “athletes” (which chess players are sort of sideways) were vetted on loyalty to an evil regime.  (Not saying all of them adhered to it.  Clearly a lot defected, but saying that they had to stealth better than I managed with all my might to stealth in a less evil regime.)  And even though this character is not showing as wishing to defect.

But he is almost little-boy endearing in his escaping from his handlers to go eat snails, and he is clearly a good person in coming to the rescue of … well… thinking he’s coming to the rescue of the guy planning to murder him.

And it got me thinking.

People are weird creatures.  Very weird.  They can believe the most outrageously evil stuff – like that people can somehow be forced to become mere automatons in the service of the state; or that those who’ve worked hard for something should be despoiled; or that a particular race/culture/ethnicity is the repository of all evil in the world; or that a particular gender is not quite human – all while remaining at heart good people.

Were there good Nazis?  Almost surely.  And I mean good people who were Nazis.  And I don’t mean just the ones who had no clue what was going on in the camps.  I mean of course NO ONE WHO KNEW THE DETAILS (the details were unforgivable) but any number of people who thought other people were “cleanly” or “Humanely” being put down and who were essentially good people in everything else.  They just believed Jews (and gays and gypsies) must be exterminated for “the greater good.”  I bet you there were people who believed this who would forego their last morsel of bread to feed a stranger, or take off their coat on a freezing night to give to their neighbor.  And I bet you some of them too KNEW Jewish people and wouldn’t approve of THOSE being killed, making a compartment in their minds called “but he’s not like other Jews.”

Were there good communists?  Of course there were and are, in the same way there are good Nazis.  These are people who think only of the end they desire.  “I want everyone to have a good meal” etc.  They look at the glossy pictures of celebrities wasting in a night sums that would support a family for a year, and they think “why do they need to do that?” From there to thinking all private property should be abolished, it’s a step.  It’s a particularly easy step if your society has long ago foregone teaching real economics or real individual ethics and teaches that all bourgeois virtues come from having bourgeois wealth.  (And also teaches that if you’re poor it’s somehow more “authentic” to be thuggish and uncouth.)

Why am I bringing this up?  Do I think we shouldn’t condemn the “good” members of these evil cults?  Do I think that their good intentions justify their actions?  Do I think we should surrender, because some of them are “good”?

No.  Quite the opposite.  I do think in the “how we got where we are” that some of the older “right wing” – republicans, libertarians, anyone to the right of Lenin – got where we are by doing exactly what I just said.  They knew these people.  They were good people.  They had good intentions.  And up through the late eighties it seemed like the march of international communism couldn’t be stopped, which led to…

The entire attitude we see in RINOS today and which makes us howl and rage, and which is “Their hearts are in the right place; maybe they won’t screw up this time; we will just try to slow them down.”

That misguided tolerance has got us where we are.  It isn’t just the left’s intent and determined long march through the institutions – though it is that too, particularly mass media and mass communication institutions – it is also the soft certainty that these people are good, we like them, and we don’t want to offend them by speaking up.  Because they mean well, really.

The problem of their meaning well is that nowhere have their well-meaning intentions come to fruition.  From Asia to Europe, everywhere communism or socialism has touched it has brought misery and poverty.  And there’s no point at all talking about societies not being “quite right”

Everywhere a touch of economic freedom has gone, even hampered by the society or the culture, or the fact it was so watered down as to be ridiculous, it has brought prosperity.  For a case study compare China and Hong Kong.  North and South Korea.

Yes, this post is in a way a companion piece to the civil war in science fiction, and to “being normal.”  The civil war in science fiction is a mirror of the civil war in the larger society.  (Only we go to battle wearing Spock ears.  Deal.)  Only I think the sides are more balanced in the larger society.  I think the left outstrips the right in science fiction, at least among published authors and those who read NOW.  Because everyone else has been run off.

In the larger society, it’s anybody’s guess, though I think if the issues were brought to point, the left has gone so far left that it commands maybe a quarter of the population and a lot of those are impaired in some way.  Compare the tea parties to the OWSers, not just in size, but in slice of the population.  (And if all you know of tea parties are the media portrayals let me assure you they’re wrong.  I attended two in my region when they first started.  Not only was it not just old white males, but more than half the people were female and we had a slice of minorities probably larger than the general population in this white bread city.  In fact, probably, the larger group was Hispanic (which is to be expected, here.))  And before you bring up the results of the last election: first – unimaginable levels of fraud.  I said it, I stick by it, I saw it up close and personal.  It might or might not have involved a fifth column in the challenger’s campaign.  I think it did, but that’s my opinion.  Second – a media which reports nothing.  Now, still, most of the population has not heard of Benghazi.  Third – the media portrayal of the opposition as the “church lady” circa 1950.  And it’s no point at all saying that the republicans shouldn’t have furnished them ammunition.  Do you have any idea how difficult it is to make sure a group that large and that diverse NEVER slips?  The same media who never mentions goofs like Guam tipping over, or the events in Benghazi is quite ready to jump on malapropisms like “real rape” when it comes from the opposition.  And for now, at least, the media shapes “normal” for a good part of the population.

As all groups that are getting suppressed, stigmatized and written off the national discourse, anyone to the right of Lenin has been getting upset.  And considering the effect that the economic policies to the left of Lenin (No?  Crony capitalism is always an effect of communism.  More or less dressing of it is the only difference.) are having on most of our lives and livelihoods, people are getting VERY upset.

I’m hearing more and more “It’s going to come to shooting.”  I have a sinking feeling in my water that it might very well come to that.  I’d prefer not, though.  Look, I have sons.  Also, we do not live in a nice world.  If our world were really the black-and-white world the liberals believe in, where the USA is the big bad wolf and everyone else is a sweet little lamb who wouldn’t hurt anyone but for fear of the wolf, a civil war might not be a bad idea.

Of course if the world really were like that, we’d be dealing with a species other than human and perhaps communism would work.  Who knows?  May be worth an SF story.

But the world is not like that, and the US even if it is rapidly flushing generational wealth down the toilet is still much wealthier than most of the world, and is way wealthier than most of the Americas.  (This btw is taken by the communists as proof of malfeasance.  It’s a religious dogma.)

While we are involved in a civil war – and let’s assume it’s only half as bloody and half as long as our last one – do you think the other nations of the world will sit still?  Forget a Chinese invasion (though G-d knows you shouldn’t) or Russia getting involved on one side or another with a  view to ruling portions of our country when all is done (and if you dismiss that, you should study the roles of France and England on the past civil war) and just think about the people who hate us and who think (and our media has HELPED this perception) all their woes are our fault, and who  think they’re accumulating virgins in heaven – and prestige on Earth – by hitting us with acts of terrorism writ large.

How many cities do you think we’d lose to random acts of revenge?

What I mean is that it might very well come to that.  But do you want it?  Talk about setting us back generations.  Yes, I know you’re furious and I’ve heard the “we have all the guns” boast.  It’s not true, okay?  Yeah, we have most of them.  And sure, we probably could win in days.  Except that you forget how many third world armies would gladly fight on the other side, once it got started.  And would be promised everything they want if they do.

Oh, sure, they’d probably still lose – but I’m predicting we’d all be wading in blood to our ankles before it’s said and done, and parts of the country would be radioactive for a century.

Again, it might still come to that.  And I think the other side wants that – probably more than even the nuts on the “right” – because part of their religion (don’t fool yourself it’s not one) is the belief that history has favorites and that they’re it.  They think in the end they win.  (They might perhaps want to consult the Norse legends, to figure out which said was believed to win in the end.  Never mind.)

But before the shooting starts – in this moment in the heart of the storm – perhaps those of us to the right of Lenin should try something we haven’t tried before.  Perhaps we should try speaking out.

Look, I’m as cowardly as the rest of you.  I spent more than twenty years, between breaking in and finally losing my mind, listening to digs about “the rich” from people who could buy me and sell me outright; I spend years at parties and meetings listening to Marxist pap and not pointing out how stupid it was; listening to public figures on the right being denigrated as “stupid” when it was obvious they weren’t, etc.  And I shut up.  Because I wanted to make a living in my chosen profession.

I’m still not half as brave as I’d like to be, though I try to speak out if I’m present.  And yes, I know I’ll pay a monetary price.  But I don’t go out of my way to look for fights, because I’ll pay a monetary price.  And also because, frankly, I know many good people on their side.  I don’t want to upset them.

But consider—

My grandmother used to say “silence is consent.”

Consider that when they say ridiculous stuff in public like “the fat cats never pay” or other bits of Marxist agit prop and we stay quiet, they don’t know that we disagree.  And they take what they’re saying for normal and tilt further left, until you get stuff like “We live in an evil patriarchy” (in a society where women are LEGALLY given preference for almost everything and while these same people stay quiet on the societies that whip women for showing ankle.)

Every time we internally go “oh, that stupid slogan again” – every time we stay quiet because we like the people as much as we despise their stupid religion; every time we shut up for the sake of peace or a job, or …  We’re allowing “normal” to be moved farther left.  And most people want to be normal and fit in.  And the truly extreme ones then feel more justified in being extreme.

Every time our silence gives consent, what we’re giving consent to is the inevitability of eventual shooting.

You know those massacres that have happened in every communist paradise?  Here the would-be victims are armed.  To quote the title of some Baen anthologies There WILL be War.

Unless we stop it now.  Unless we’re as brave with our words as we eventually will have to be with our guns, if we stay silent.

I came out of the political closet and fought like h*ll to elect a man who would have been at best as statist as George Bush.  (No, he was not my horse in the race, ever.)  I did so because I thought it would keep us from the shooting war.

Now, it might be too late.  Or it might not.  Staying quiet and cleaning your guns might be expedient.  But is it the best for everyone?  What about the good people on the left?  What about the innocents who will be caught in this?  What about the rest of the world that will undoubtedly sink if the US as we know it vanishes.

Yes, we’re all ready to take our piece of flag and head to the bunker, to preserve the idea of the US until we can rebuild it.

But wouldn’t it be better not to let it pass from this Earth?

Speak now.  Maybe we can hold our peace.

So, yesterday was a fun day.  Actually it was a fun day in many ways and an unusual too.  I got to meet a fan who is a friend of a friend and discovered she really is a “relative I’d never met before.”  In the evening we hit Jeff Duntemann’s party very, very late, and kept the poor man up till all hours (we’re sorry!)

In between there was coming home to a spate of messages from you nuts asking if I was okay, because you heard about a shooting in downtown Colorado Springs and you have a vague idea I live there.

Okay, first trust the media.  While the shooting was central-ish it was in an area I’d never have dreamed of walking in alone.  With the guys, sometimes, but even then not often. Five (?) years ago a guy was shot in his car outside the Wendy’s a couple of blocks away.

Second: three people does not a spree shooting make.  Until more information I’ll assume it was people the murderer knew.  (Though suicide-by-cop is not out of the question.)

But I ended up also being got out of bed at an unholy hour by dad, who heard about it in Portugal.

I was testy before.

Before I went to bed yesterday I found the poo flinging monkeys at Vile 770 were merrily scaring themselves with Straw Sarah.  I don’t blame them.  That chick is a jerk.

BUT what relationship straw Sarah has with me, is quite beyond my ken.

To begin with they laid question to my ethnicity.  Which is amusing.  They said most Portuguese will slug you if you call them Hispanic.  True that.  I almost did when the Social Security worker tried to put that on my form.  HOWEVER I don’t claim to be Hispanic.  The federal government sometimes call me that (it varies wildly and gets into the nitty gritty of various programs and institutions).  The Supreme Court Justice Benjamin Cardozo is considered a Latino/Hispanic Justice, even though he was of Portuguese ancestry. And the house Hispanic caucus includes Portuguese.  (For that matter Portuguese even in Portugal call themselves Latin, too.) They don’t like it?  Take it up with Uncle Sam. Take it up with the Europeans who frankly really don’t want any part of Portugal.  For years I fought to have me — and the kids — listed as Human, but they wouldn’t accept that.  (Possibly because older son looks like a Neanderthal.)  Not my circus, not my monkeys.  Race and culture are not that important to me now.  I’m an American by choice. That is my people.  However when you call me a White Mormon Male I’m going to get a little testy.

What really concerned me is that Straw Sarah is APPARENTLY a Salazar supporter.  You know, because they heard it from a friend who heard it from a friend who heard it from a friend that I once said something sympathetic about the regime before the revolution of 75.

First of all I’d like to register that Straw Sarah MUST be older than I.  This probably comes from the Luhrid One’s brilliant insight that I’d “run to the US to escape the revolution.”  When you consider I was about six when Salazar died ( I THINK I was around six because I have a vague memory of talk about how he had been dead and “in a freezer somewhere” for months, around the time I entered school.  And that talk was from my family, who, obviously loved and trusted Big Brother– I mean the government.  I don’t have time/interest to look up his date of death.)  And the revolution happened right after I turned 11.  So if Straw Sarah ran to the US to escape it, she MUST have been either at least 20 (I mean, I’m assuming like me she came to the US after getting married?) or Muslim, which is the only major religion that allows for marriage at that age.

In fact, the revolution in Portugal, which they would know if they weren’t historically illiterate, was not against Salazar, but against his successor who was trying in a ham-fisted way to be the Gorbachev of Portugal.  I.e., he was trying to liberalize.  Which they’d also understand — if they weren’t historically illiterate — is when revolutions happen.  They don’t actually happen against horrible tyranny but against “tyranny going soft.”

BUT none of this resolves the puzzle of Straw Sarah’s existence and why she must have these weird beliefs.  Yeah, I grew up in infighting among socialist and communist factions, and being myself I hated them with the fire of a thousand suns.  But what part of that means I approved of the previous regime?  I mean, I think the French Revolution was an insane waste of life, resources and minds, and scary as hell, and led to Napoleon (more on that later) but must it follow I approved of the ancien regime, which was dictatorial and crazy and capricious, as well as economically outdated and harmful?  (All of these apply to Portugal before the 75 revolution, too, btw.)

I figure part of the confusion was seeded by — at some time — my having referred to Salazar as what Roosevelt would have been without the constitution restraining him.  I forgot the left considers Roosevelt a good guy and laudable, and they forgot I don’t.  Right.  But the fact is he actually was a lot like Roosevelt, in both style (anti-bankers, greed, looking out for the little people — all this were part of his rhetoric) beliefs (racial and national purity.  Yeah, people who consider Portuguese a separate race worry me) and the idea of socialism and social engineering as a positive good.  This was, mind you, because they were both men of their time.  Salazar just got to have his way because he took over after a period of anarchy and Portugal is not the US and their freedoms had no defense.  That’s about it. He instituted single-payer health and Social Security in Portugal and I actually remember finding one of mom’s books that said that the government would take care of “the little children of the poor from cradle to grave.”

The resulting regime was crazy-cakes economically (Foreign corporations were banned and Coca Cola was the stuff of the devil) made everyone incredibly poor, and was relatively repressive, in a way that’s uniquely Latin.  You could be thrown in jail if you were a foreigner and said “F*ck Portugal” in public.

There were also laws on pornography which can only be found in Arab countries.  All the awkward covers changed to cover up a woman mildly disrobed in the original American cover?  Yep, that.  Also because Salazar was raised by Jesuits, the country was aggressively, firmly Catholic.  (Some of those laws remained after the revolution.  Dad had to go through heck to get me removed from religious education which was mandatory in the high school.)

The country was ALSO anti-communist.  (So, you see, there was some good in the regime. ;) ) This is about the equivalent of saying “I hear Hitler was nice to his mommy” but not quite, since the anti-communist policies kept Portugal from being swallowed up by Franco’s Spain.  That’s fine.

For those like the other side not fully up on history, unlike Spain Portugal sat WWII out.  I’m informed this makes Portugal an axis ally, unlike the Sainted Swedes.  Whatever.  Again, this kept Portugal from being swallowed by Spain, which for most of its existence was its raison d’etre, kind of like Canada’s reason for existence is “We’re not American, eh!”

Also a minor correction, there were elections in Portugal before the revolution.  They were the single party and the loyal opposition.  So your options ran through two parties and from National Socialist to National Social Democrat.  Right now, there, they run from Social Democrat to Crazy Cakes Ecological Communist, so as you see, the difference is vast, and things are much freer.

Things are freer, in a way — were after the revolution — for instance, you could have all the porn you wanted.  And you no longer had to be a good Catholic.  OTOH well…  Let’s just say when my nephews had to bathe on arrival to school and wear their hair a certain length it was bullsh*t no American would put up with.

In between there was the time you would get more jail for tearing down communist posters than for drug trafficking.  (Of course I did tear the posters down.  I came home from school with the scraps stuffed in my bag.  Mom would sigh and make the evidence disappear.)  The times when the headquarters of all political parties to the right of socialist were firebombed.  And the time they tried to house arrest PROMINENT SOCIALISTS, which is the origin of my “facing down the machine guns” story.  We were demonstrating in favor of the socialists to prevent the communists (Maoists, actually.  What a bag of crazy) from taking full control.

Different ideas of freedom over there, I guess.

The thing that annoyed me about this idiocy, at first, was that the Good Men Regime is in fact based on the regime of Salazar and others like his throughout the world at that time: the paternalistic, man-on-a-white-horse regimes that “will look after you.”  There are communists in that world, but they’re a weird quasi-religious sect, not the main bad guys.  And I’m fairly sure even the Vile 666 inhabitants would get that if they read the f*cking books.  (Okay, their mommies might need to sound out the hard words.)

You see, Salazar (and before him Napoleon, and right now Putin) came to power after a period of instability and cultural humiliation.  And he came promising one thing: stability.

He was, btw, an economist.  I never checked mom’s and grandma’s stories that the country had gone bankrupt TWICE before he took over, but it makes sense that in those circumstances the man on the white horse would be an economist.  AFAICT he was the least imposing of men, and could have been a weaponized Pajamas Boy who got power.

He came promising security and stability, and he delivered that the same way Singapore does, with absolutely disproportionate force.

Which brings us to why I based the Good Men on him: they took over after a period of crazy instability.  They promised security.  Their death toll (and his) were less than of explosive regimes like Communists or Nazis.

HOWEVER that’s the overt death toll.  There is the other death toll.  By keeping Portugal locked in a paternalistic regime that kept the economy chugging ever smaller at about a late 19th century level, how many people died of preventable diseases if they’d been better nourished?  (Most of my mom’s generation.  Half of my age group.)  How many people were never well enough to create or invent, or be productive?  How many lives were blighted?

There is no way to tell but I’d guess hundreds of thousands.  More maybe, if you consider the ripples of such things throughout time to the present.

The soft tyranny that promises “security” and “stability” is ALWAYS a death trap.  Which is why I’ve warned crazies on both sides who WANT war and revolution that the end result is usually the Man On The White horse and the sort of soft tyranny that gives you security, stability… and death. Long term, generations-blighting death.

It is that sort of thing that terrifies me because I see the West heading that way at a gallop as a reaction to the communists/socialists and their craziness.

So, the misrepresentation of my ideas upset me a tad.  BUT NOT NEARLY AS MUCH AS IT WORRIED ME.

It worried me first of all because of what it shows on the other side.  They’re so determined to find a protective and fatherly government they can’t conceive of someone disapproving of one form of tyranny without approving of another.  This craziness on the part of nominally educated people will be the death of the west.  It’s an infantile reaction on others to wipe their butts for them, which will lead to their deaths and ours.

And it worried me secondarily because I’ve been d*mn good lately and frankly the Sad Puppies thing is more or less dormant.  However, this week there was the loony Wired article and THIS fascinating obsession on Straw Sarah.

It still shocks me a little that large MSM publications have waded into this with a pre-prepared narrative.  And it worries me more that they’re trying so hard to create Straw Sarah.

I know what it is.  It’s an attempt to silence opposition.

These children (some of them in their seventies) think that if they character-assassinate you, you’ll hide and shut up.  And they think that’s the equivalent of victory.

They don’t realize that even if they succeeded in shutting us all up, we’d not stop resenting them.  In fact, resentment would grow.

They also don’t realize they’re NOT the hard regime who can keep rebellion from happening.  That would have been Roosevelt.  (No, really, study history.)  They’re the soft namby pamby regime who just wants everyone to say as they say and who has panic attacks when we don’t.

And that means their continuous attempts to tamp us down only make us rise up.  And that in the end we win, they lose.

Now if they could stop making sure that they push us towards turmoil and the emergence of a man on a white horse, I’d be ever so grateful.

Whether weaponized pajamas boys or pseudo right wing financiers with bad hairdos, I have no use for Good Men.

Me and mine will seek freedom.  And socialists and communists of all stripes can stop imagining we love one form of socialism and hate the other.

It’s freedom we love, and you would too, if you could grow up enough to comprehend it.

Freedom and a respect for the rights of individuals is messy, nasty and often means people will disagree with you and “trigger” you.  It means your favorite “scientific” government ideas might not carry through, even if they would be in fact better than what carries through.

And it is the philosophy of government that has made humanity for the last century and a half rise above short, brutish and nasty lives.

The choice is never between ice-cream and death.  Grown ups know this, and they treasure the freedom to choose the least of two evils.

Der Promo von der Oyster

Henry Vogel

Scout’s Duty: A Planetary Romance

Scout’s Honor Book 3

Years ago, Terran Scout David Rice crash-landed on the lost colony world of Aashla, where he rescued and fell in love with the beautiful Princess Callan. Pledging his life and sword to Callan and his adopted home world, David thought he’d never see another Terran again—until the night the sky was lit by weapons fire, as another starship tried and failed to blast its way through Aashla’s deadly planetary ring. Now, rushing to the crash site, David and Callan find they’re too late, as their bitter rival, Prince Rupor, has gotten there first…

For on a world of swords and airships, even a wrecked starship can overthrow the balance of power!

Alicia Butcher Ehrhardt

Purgatory

Pride’s Children, Book 1

WHAT YOU DO WITH AN OBSESSION COUNTS

“I, KARENNA ELIZABETH Ashe, being of sound mind, do… But that’s it, isn’t it? Being here proves I am not of sound mind…”

So begins Book 1 of the Pride’s Children trilogy: Kary immediately regrets the misplaced sense of noblesse oblige which compels her to appear, live on national television—at exorbitant personal cost.

What she cannot anticipate is an entanglement with Hollywood that may destroy her carefully-constructed solitudinarian life.

A contemporary mainstream love story, in the epic tradition of Jane Eyre, and Dorothy L. Sayers’ four-novel bond between Lord Peter Wimsey and Harriet Vane, Pride’s Children starts with a very public chance encounter, and will eventually stretch over three separate continents.

THIS IS SARAH NOW, we also have a bunch of free and discounted things for Halloween.

UPDATE: I’m very glad my friends love me and don’t want to sue me.  I should have added what follows was written and put together by Amanda S. Green.  Sorry, last night I was trying to listen to two people, arrange two events AND do this all at once.

(Reposting from Mad Genius Club)

(Updated @ 1130 hrs)

It’s the time of ghouls and goblins and things that go bump in the night. Halloween is one of my favorite times of year. To celebrate this year, some of the Mad Genii and friends are taking part in a limited time sale of some of their work. (Be sure to confirm the prices before purchasing. All titles should be on sale but Amazon doesn’t always start sales early in the morning.) Please check back later for additional titles and details. Thanks!

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A Cat Among Dragons
by Alma T. C. Boykin
$1.99
New listing

She wanted to live life on her own terms. Her enemies had other ideas. The galaxy is about to discover just what a cornered cat can do.

They started it. Her father’s people declared her a corrupt half-breed, one unfit to live. Now she’s on the run, fleeing back in time. When she joined an interstellar mercenary company, she did not anticipate becoming the Pet of House Nagali, becoming the student of a mysterious but very well connected Healer and diplomat, and fighting her way into power as the only sentient mammal in the court of a reptilian empire.

This collection of short stories, the first in the Cat Among Dragons series, begins the saga of Rada Ni Drako and her odd assortment of allies. Join the adventure as Rada takes on her father’s people and tries to keep her head, and the rest of her, intact.

***

The Kinmar
by David L. Burkhead
On sale for $0.99 October 25-31.

Kreg and Kaila, knights of Aerioch, interrupt their mission to chase down the raiders that destroyed a village. Much to their surprise, the raiders turn out to be Kinmar, the half-man/half-animal remnants of the magical Changeling War. Outnumbered and surrounded, wounded, with only the strange magic of the Knightbond on their side, can they survive, much less ensure that no one ravages the people of Aerioch with impunity?

***

Jinxers
by Sabrina Chase
On sale for $0.99 from October 27 through November 2.

Young Jin survives on his own in the streets of Thama, using his wits and climbing skills to find food and shelter. On a bitterly cold night, desperate to avoid freezing, he enters the burned wreckage of a long-abandoned warehouse searching for anything of value. Searching despite the danger—for the warehouse once belonged to jinxers, and no one knows how their magic works…or how long it remains. Jin discovers a beautiful crystal sphere in the ashes—and suddenly finds himself transported to the desert world of Darha.

His foreign appearance immediately brands him an outsider, and he must rely on his Darha friends to conceal him from the mysterious rulers of the local fort. But Jin must face the fort’s dangers—for inside may lie the key to his return to Thama…and the key to his own hidden magic powers.

***

Bolg, PI: Away with the fairies
by Dave Freer
On sale for $0.99
New listing

A humorous, satirical noir detective urban fantasy, set in a small city in flyover country, which has an unusually high population of Trolls, werewolves, fairies and a dwarf.

Private Investigator Bolg, a Pictish gentleman who happens to be vertically challenging, a self-proclaimed dwarf and tattooed so heavily he appears blue, finds this restricts him to oddball clients. In this his first case, a wealthy fruitcake who want to dance with the fairies. Most PI’s would do their best to avoid this because they know there are no fairies. Bolg would like to avoid it because he knows the fairies too well, and they’re mean.

Aided by a gargoyle informer and an ancient Celtic wizard, he sets about trying to oblige his client, and keep both of them alive. It’s no sinecure.

***

Nocturnal Lives (Boxed Set)
by Amanda S. Green
On sale for 1.99 October 29 – November 2.

This “box set” includes the first three novels in theNocturnal Lives series.

Nocturnal Origins
Some things can never be forgotten, no matter how hard you try.

Detective Sergeant Mackenzie Santos knows that bitter lesson all too well. The day she died changed her life and her perception of the world forever.It doesn’t matter that everyone, even her doctors, believe a miracle occurred when she awoke in the hospital morgue. Mac knows better. It hadn’t been a miracle, at least not a holy one. As far as she’s concerned, that’s the day the dogs of Hell came for her.

Investigating one of the most horrendous murders in recent Dallas history, Mac also has to break in a new partner and deal with nosy reporters who follow her every move and who publish confidential details of the investigation without a qualm.

Complicating matters even more, Mac learns the truth about her family and herself, a truth that forces her to deal with the monster within, as well as those on the outside.But none of this matters as much as discovering the identity of the murderer before he can kill again.

Nocturnal Serenade
Lt. Mackenzie Santos of the Dallas Police Department learns there are worst things than finding out you come from a long line of shapeshifters. At least that’s what she keeps telling herself. It’s not that she resents suddenly discovering she can turn into a jaguar. Nor is it really the fact that no one warned her what might happen to her one day. Although, come to think of it, her mother does have a lot of explaining to do when – and if – Mac ever talks to her again. No, the real problem is how to keep the existence of shapeshifters hidden from the normals, especially when just one piece of forensic evidence in the hands of the wrong technician could lead to their discovery.

Add in blackmail, a long overdue talk with her grandmother about their heritage and an attack on her mother and Mac’s life is about to get a lot more complicated. What she wouldn’t give for a run-of-the-mill murder to investigate. THAT would be a nice change of pace.

Nocturnal Interlude
Lt. Mackenzie Santos swears she will never take another vacation again as long as she lives. The moment she returns home, two federal agents are there to take her into custody. Then she finds out her partner, Sgt. Patricia Collins, as well as several others are missing. Several of the missing have connections to law enforcement. All are connected to Mac through one important and very secret fact — they are all shapechangers. Has someone finally discovered that the myths and bad Hollywood movies are actually based on fact or is there something else, something more insidious at work?

Mac finds herself in a race against time not only to save her partner and the others but to discover who was behind their disappearances. As she does, she finds herself dealing with Internal Affairs, dirty cops, the Feds and a possible conspiracy within the shapeshifter community that could not only bring their existence to light but cause a civil war between shifters.

***

Hunted by Moonlight (Hunter’s Moon)
by Ellie Ferguson
On sale for 1.99 October 29 – November 2.

This boxed set contains the first three novels in the Hunter’s Moon series.

Hunted:

When Meg Finley’s parents died, the authorities classified it as a double suicide. Alone, hurting and suddenly the object of the clan’s alpha’s desire, her life was a nightmare. He didn’t care that she was grieving any more than he cared that she was only fifteen. So she’d run and she’d been running ever since. But now, years later, her luck’s run out. The alpha’s trackers have found her and they’re under orders to bring her back, no matter what. Without warning, Meg finds herself in a game of cat and mouse with the trackers in a downtown Dallas parking garage. She’s learned a lot over the years but, without help, it might not be enough to escape a fate she knows will be worse than death. What she didn’t expect was that help would come from the local clan leader. But would he turn out to be her savior or something else, something much more dangerous?

Hunter’s Duty:

Maggie Thrasher is looking for a man, not to love but to kill. Duty to her pride and loyalty to her family demands it. Joshua Volk has betrayed pride, pack and clan. All he cares about is destroying the old ways and killing anyone, normal or shape-changer, who gets in his way. Jim Kincade is dedicated to two things: upholding the law and protecting the pride from discovery. When Jim is called to the scene of a possible murder, the last thing he expects is to discover the alleged killer is a tracker from another pride. Now he’s faced with a woman who is most definitely more than she appears. Complicating matters even more, there’s something about her that calls to him and his leopard is determined to claim her for his own. Joshua Volk is looking for revenge. Maggie killed one of his own. His vengeance will bring Maggie’s worst nightmares to life. Is the passion between Maggie and Jim enough to defeat Volk’s plans or will Maggie’s determination to fulfill her duty to her pride be the death of them both?

Hunter’s Home:

They say you can never go home. That’s something CJ Reamer has long believed. So, when her father suddenly appears on her doorstep, demanding she return home to Montana to “do her duty”, she has other plans. Montana hasn’t been home for a long time, almost as long as Benjamin Franklin Reamer quit being her father. Dallas is now her home and it’s where her heart is. The only problem is her father doesn’t like taking “no” for an answer.

When her lover and mate is shot and she learns those responsible come from her birth pride and clan, CJ has no choice but to return to the home she left so long ago. At least she won’t be going alone. Clan alphas Matt and Finn Kincade aren’t about to take any risks where their friend is concerned. Nor is her mate, Rafe Walkinghorse, going to let her go without him.

Going home means digging up painful memories and family secrets. But will it also mean death – or worse – for CJ and her friends?

***

Bloody Eden (Soldiers of New Eden Book 2)
by T. L. Knighton
On sale for $0.99.

Ten years after a nuclear war forced Jason Calvin to fight his way across Georgia and through a brutal warlord, life has settled down a bit in a town called New Eden. As the town sheriff, Jason keeps the peace.

After saving a family from a horrible fate, that peace becomes threatened when a sadistic military man shows up, claiming the family are fugitives from his draconian justice system and they’re coming back whether anyone in New Eden likes it or not…and maybe some of New Eden’s own as well.

Unfortunately for him, Jason isn’t about to just let something like that go.

“Bloody Eden” is the action packed sequel to the hit novelette “After the Blast”.

***

Bad Moon on the Rise (Soldiers of New Eden Book 3)
by T. L. Knighton
On sale for $0.99.

Sheriff Jason Calvin and the people of New Eden have managed to move on from a brutal war with a neighboring town. In the aftermath, a new government rose from the ashes to bring peace to the Tennessee Valley.

Unfortunately, there always seems to be people who have no interest in peace as a group of ruthless thugs with a personal axe to grind kills one of Jason’s closest friends. Now, the sheriff has to deal with meddlesome bureaucrats, a conniving rival, and old enemies in an effort to find the men responsible, plus the small army protecting them, and bring them to justice.

Bad Moon on the Rise continues the story first told in After the Blast and continued in Bloody Eden.

***

Vulcan’s Kittens (Children of Myth Book 1)
by Cedar Sanderson
On sale for $0.99 Oct 29^th through Nov 3^rd

12-year-old Linnea Vulkane is looking forward to a long, lazy summer on Grandpa Heph’s farm, watching newborn kittens grow up and helping out with chores. That all goes out the window the night Mars, god of war, demands her grandfather abandon her and return to Olympus for the brewing war.

Now Old Vulcan is racing around the world and across higher planes with Sehkmet to gather allies, leaving Linn and an old immortal friend to protect the farm and the very special litter. But even the best wards won’t last forever, and when the farm goes up in flames, she is on the run with a daypack, a strange horse, a sword, and an armful of kittens. Linn needs to grow up fast and master her powers, before the war finds the unlikely refugees…

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Empire of the One (Wine of the Gods Book 14)
by Pam Uphoff
On sale for $0.99 through the Halloween weekend.

Cross-dimensional espionage!

Earth and the Empire of the One have clashed twice. Once the Empire lost a colony to Earth. The second time was a draw, with neither side gaining control of a mineral rich world with a medieval level society.

Alert for intruders from Earth, the Empire’s agents are about to be blindsided by spies from that medieval world–and magic.

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Fenrir Reborn: A Sindri Modulf Novella (Architects of Lore Book 2)
by Anita C. Young
Free October 29 – November 2.

Sindri Modulf has been tested many times throughout his long life, but for every feat he has faced, he has artfully dodged countless more with easy humour and a deadly axe. Those well-honed abilities will prove useless when he is faced with one of the greatest challenges of his life; he must bring back a grief-stricken Seer from the edge of catatonia. Unwilling to let the mind of the most powerful woman in 1000 years be ravaged by Empaths and Telepaths, Sindri does something he hasn’t done for centuries: bare his soul.

***

Just added:

Neighborhood Bark-B-Q (Spooky-hoods Book 2)
by Dan Hoyt
Free Promotion for Halloween

A humorous fantasy short story by SF/F author and anthologist Daniel M. Hoyt.

Looking for a new home, Mr. Wolff? We have the perfect place for you: Moonlit Thicket, where all of your neighbors understand your special needs. Once you’re accepted, you’re pretty much part of the family, so don’t be shy! Oh? You work at Loopy’s? Great! You’ll fit right in here. And don’t forget the free haircuts!

***

ConVent (The Vampire Con Series Book 1)
by Kate Paulk
On sale for $2.99. Marked down from $4.99

A vampire, a werewolf, an undercover angel and his succubus squeeze. Whoever picked this team to save the world wasn’t thinking of sending the very best. But then, since this particular threat to the universe and everything good is being staged in science fiction conventions, amid people in costume, misfits and creative geniuses, any convetional hero would have stood out. Now Jim, the vampire, and his unlikely sidekicks have to beat the clock to find out who’s sacrificing con goers before all hell breaks loose — literally.

ConVent is proof that Kate Paulk’s brain works in wonderfully mysterious ways. A sarcastic vampire, his werewolf best buddy, an undercover angel and his succubus squeeze. The “Save the world” department really messed it up this time.

***

The Blood like Wine
by Sarah A. Hoyt
Free

Sylvie would do anything not to be poor ever again. Unfortunately, at the time of the French revolution, wealth might cost her her life, or at least her soul.

A short story.

***

Something Worse Hereafter
by Sarah A. Hoyt
Free

Dying is easy. It’s staying alive afterwards that is difficult. Catrina finds herself in hell, fighting demons for her sustenance and only solving the riddle of her half-remembered past existence will allow her to escape.

A Short Story.

***

Ratskiller (King of Cats)
by Robert A. Hoyt
Free

… Long before the bird reared its ugly beak, there was beer. And lots of it.

In the humble world of alley cats, Tom has everything he needs: interesting enemies, a long list of girl cats who’d like to scratch his eyes out, and enough beer to make sure his repressed memories and his mysterious destiny stay repressed.

Until Wild Rat microbrewery shuts down.

To restore his favorite beer to its former glory, Tom will have to fight prissy bureaucrats, streetwise alley cats, and Broxton’s most barbaric rats. And behind it all, an evil so great that even Broxton’s most hardened rodents dare not squeak of it.

***

And now for the more — with an apology because WordPress is being its usual uncooperative self and the plug-in needed to make this work the way it is supposed to is refusing to install properly. Anyway. . . .

There is a new podcast out there. It’s name says it all for those who have followed the Sad Puppies for any length of time — The #WrongFun Podcast. Among those who have appeared on it so far are our own Mad Genii Sarah, Cedar and Kate. You can find the podcast here. (I promise as soon as I can get the plugin working properly to have the podcasts onboard here.) In the meantime, go take a look at the WrongFun site.

The Perpetually Outraged will be Perpetually Outraged – T. L. Knighton

The perpetually outraged are funny to me. Oh, they infuriate me as much as the next person, but they’re funny. They’re always out there, hunting for things to get upset about. The thing is, from time to time, people give it to them.

For example, take the outrage over all the racists claiming they would boycott the new Star Wars movie. Now, none of the hateful cabal that made up the Sad Puppies said they would boycott anything. Most of us were giddy as school girls with backstage passes for Justin Beiber. But someone on Twitter was talking boycott, and that’s all it took.

Now, those who are perpetually outraged could have looked at the numbers and pointed out how pathetically few there were. They could have just shaken their heads, called those folks idiots, and thanked God (or whoever) that there would be that many fewer people taking up space in line on opening day.

But they didn’t.

You see, it was nothing more than a couple of trolls, trying to stir up stuff. Sure, plenty of outlets went on defense, claiming that the fact it was a troll attempt doesn’t negate the fact that there are real racists out there. Well, yeah, there are. Far too many of them (and one is far too many of them), but that’s not the point.

It’s like the University of Virginia rape case. Oh, it turned out to be complete bovine excrement, but the perpetually outraged, now in damage control mode, claimed that while the story itself wasn’t true it outlined a very real problem and was therefore important.

Again, bovine excrement.

If the issue was as widespread as many claim, then why was a false story needed. Why weren’t the perpetually outraged screaming about how fake rape claims make it harder for people to believe the real cases? Where was the outrage at that?

The funny thing is that, at the core, we want the things the perpetually outraged claim they want. We want our daughters to go to college and not have to worry about being raped. We want people paid equally for equal work. We want minorities to be treated properly. We agree on these things.

The difference is, we disagree about the details.

For example, we don’t just look at how much men make when compared to women. We recognize that the alleged gap isn’t because of some nebulous patriarchy that seeks to keep women oppressed. This supposed gap is because women have chosen to take on positions that simply don’t pay as much. Yet somehow, this too is the patriarchy’s fault.

Don’t ask me how, just roll with it.

Let’s talk about rape on college campuses. It’s a real problem, right? Well, that’s the allegation, anyways. However, heaven forbid you talk about avoidance tactics for young women. Nope, can’t have that. If you do, it’s victim blaming.

Of course, I fail to see how it’s victim blaming when you advise a woman to avoid drinking too much at parties, or to not walk across the dark, deserted campus alone, but it’s not to tell someone to not pull money out of an ATM in a bad part of town or to not let anyone see how much cash you’re carrying. [To be fair, we should advise young men not to drink too much at parties, either, because pictures and the internet is forever.  Is that victim-blaming too? — editorial note, SAH.]

All of those are avoidance tactics, ways to prevent becoming a victim. Women are generally warned about the rape avoidance tactics primarily because they’re far more likely to be victims of rape than men. However, we tell all genders about avoiding criminal threats. Yet only the warnings on rape are apparently wrong. Why is that?

The perpetually outraged can’t see their victories. They can’t see them because they are too busy looking for more enemies. They’re seeking out villains in everything they look at. It’s why they can’t seem to enjoy a work without filtering it through the lens of their outrage. “There aren’t enough minority characters,” or, “the minority lead character is a token,” or, “this movie full of aliens has insufficient diversity”.

Seriously, it leaves us scratching our heads. We can’t comprehend it, because we just can’t win.

For example, I’m a white dude. It’s how I was born, it’s who I am, and I’m not going to change it for any reason. Yet, thanks to the perpetually outraged, if I have an insufficient number of minorities in my book, it’s proof of racism. If my protagonist is a minority, but doesn’t conform to their idea of what that minority should act like (I thought stereotypes were bad), then I’m guilty of tokenism. If I base my book in a world based on Western Europe, I’m clearly a racist as well…but if I base a book on Meso-America, then I’m guilty of “cultural appropriation”.

And here we get to the biggest failing of the perpetually outraged.

With their constant outrage, they’ve proven to me and many like me that we just can’t win. Nothing I write will be good enough for them. As a result, I no longer care. Larry Correia has a diverse cast of characters in his work, mostly serving as heroes, yet he’s supposedly a hateful, racist, misogynistic homophobe. So, with that in mind, I tune them out.

The irony here is that I was more than willing to listen. We need more heroes of black and Hispanic descent? Make your case, but I’m inclined to agree that it wouldn’t hurt. We need more heroes who are gay or lesbian? Again, make your case. I’ll listen.

But the perpetually outraged don’t want to make their case. They want to be outraged. It’s there reason for existing. It’s their air, their water, their manna.

So, I no longer care. Neither do a lot of other people.

As a result, we ignore them…when we’re not laughing at them. We do that a fair amount too, mostly because the frothing anger gets funny. Especially when the perpetually outraged don’t know what they’re talking about.

Unfortunately, some people actually listen to the perpetually outraged. Maybe they don’t want to be the target of their outrage. Maybe they’re just gullible. Maybe they’re just idiots. I don’t know. What I do know is that there are far too many people who seem to care about not offending the perpetual outrage. Too bad for them that there’s nothing that will stop the perpetually outraged should these people accidentally offend.

It’s times like that when I’m most glad I stopped caring what they perpetually outraged think of me. You see, dealing with them is all mind over matter. I don’t mind, because none of them actually matter.

I could start this high and mighty, by saying I’m getting sick and tired of seeing all sides of the political spectrum refer to other sides as though they weren’t human.  I could.  Except that I’d have to start by removing the log in my own eye.  I think I was fourteen the first time a classmate — for good and sufficient reason (the woman had done war on the gifted-forms-that-weren’t-supposed-to-exist, including accusing us of breaking furniture in a room we’d never been in) — suggested we kill a school employee. To this day I’m not sure she wasn’t serious.  (You kind of have to have known those people, in that place.  R. M. Ballantine said there was nothing as duplicitous as a school boy.  I’m here to tell you there’s nothing quite so dangerous as a group of highly intelligent young women who actually like each other, in a culture where women are, of course, assumed to be dumber than men.)  But the way I chose to diffuse it was to say, “Lord, no.  The SPCA would be after us the rest of our lives.”

Since then the like of such statements have left my lips at least a million times.  Maybe more.  We do it without thinking and without malice.  “That dumb b*tch,” or “That worm!” or…

That’s okay.  I could preen over it, but it would be like feminists going to war against the word “too” (I swear.  Early and often.)

Fortunately I’m a linguist and I know that what passes our lips in those kind of circumstances means bloody nothing.  It’s a joke, or a saying, or just an expression of extreme annoyance.

I have a “better off gone” list that is the size of three Oxford dictionaries and would take a magnifying glass to read, if it had physical existence.  Those people (mostly politicians.  It takes a lot for a non-politician with no power over me to obtrude on my consciousness long enough to summon that level of annoyance.  Not to say some haven’t managed it, but it’s very tough) are perfectly safe from me.  All that mental entry means is “I think you’re doing more harm than good in the world, and if I heard of your death I wouldn’t cry.”  (In extreme cases I might open a bottle of bubbly.  See Arafat’s death.)

Faced with the actual person, knowing everything about them, I might still find them repulsive human beings, but they would still be human beings.  And unless I’m protecting others from imminent physical harm and/or defending my own life, I don’t think I could easily kill them.  Now, if I’d come to the conclusion I needed to kill them, and did so, I’d still know they were human, and I would carry that knowledge with me to my grave.  (Note that I’m weird enough to refuse to put down ant poison or in Portugal where window screens are non-existent, to refuse to spray a room for flies, because when I was around 9 I realized I couldn’t create life, and have felt bad about killing since.  Not saying I won’t.  In sufficiently provoking/needful circumstances I can kill, but I kill in the full knowledge I’m destroying something I can’t replace.)

What is dangerous and worrisome are the (usually extremely well educated, usually — though not always — of a lefty bend) people who want to erase the distinction between human life and other life.

This is usually done from the point of view of bringing the other life up.  You can see it in vegetarians talking about meat being murder, and in Vegans who talk about the sexual slavery of cows.

It is done, at least supposedly, from the point of view of “I want to bring all life on Earth to this peaceful coexistence.”  It at least takes on the hue of that beautiful vision of paradise where the lion and the lamb lie down together.

However because it erases distinctions and loses the shades of difference, it eventually slides into the idea that if we are to eat anything, we should eat human, because humans deserve it.  This is just like every form of multiculturalism leads to hating western culture.  Because the differences are obvious and you can’t really lie to yourself about which of these cultures provides a better standard of living for humans, so all you have left is denying that a better standard of living is important and fastening on to small flaws to drive the obviously superior culture down in others’ views.  In the same way erasing the differences between human and animal, eventually leads to erasing the capacity for moral judgement and sentience in humans (thus the new ever popular idea that we don’t do things because we think, we just think to rationalize things we did by instinct or rote.  [Yes, I know Heinlein said something like it, but the application was different.  Your subconscious does drive you to stuff you then rationalize, but it’s not your every action, and it certainly isn’t what everyone does.]  Right now there is a school of — spit — psychology that believes that humans really have no free will, and just act in pre-determined genetic/environmental ways.  Man, I’d like them to explain my trajectory that way.  Bah. Simplifiers and idiots.) And from there it leads to a purely utilitarian view of humans, which leads to “why not eat humans?”

It is a very easy route for humans to climb down.  In fact, most of our great civilizations not influenced by Judeo-Christian thought had absolutely no issues with this.  It was perfectly okay to crucify non-Roman citizens along the roads pour encourager les autres.  It was perfectly okay to cut out the hearts of war prisoners for the sun god to do its thing, because, you know, they weren’t human.

Every human tribe has a word that means “human” which in the dim past applied only to the people of the tribe.  Every word for “foreigner” or “stranger” once upon a time meant “not human.”

Against this, and to make the contact between tribes safe, there were elaborate rules for the treatment of the stranger and the guest which go back to our earliest origins.  Having done extensive reading of myth over the last few weeks, I keep finding it at the root of our oldest stories.  In fact, since we no longer have that much freight placed on hospitality, some of those stories are now incomprehensible, in the sense we don’t really “get” the cues for who is the hero and who the villain.

Because Judeo-Christian thought replaced those rules with the idea we’re all brothers and sisters, all descended from the same parents (and, look, other than the weird stuff that fell into the various regional family trees, or even counting that, we have gone through bottle necks where the human population was maybe a couple dozen pairs.  So if it wasn’t the garden and Adam and Eve and all of us brothers and sisters, with that limited a breeding population, we are at the very least all cousins.  Which where I come from means about the same thing as brothers and sister.)  Now you might say in the wars intra-Christians and in the way society treated the poor and powerless that thought was more often honored in the breach.  But if you say that you never saw two brothers fight (like Cain and Abel, my boys were at one time) and you also probably don’t know how much worse it can get.

Sure fratricide happens, but the notion of a common breed called “mankind” prevents — or prevented us — from considering others in purely utilitarian terms.  If you look outside the West, you find Asian cultures treating humans as widgets to an extent we don’t fully understand.

All of this is important, because since the ascendance of the State as a dominant force that replace both family and religion, to a large part, in our private pantheons, we’ve seen people slip back into this.

It is no coincidence that the great atheistic horrors of the 20th century racked up even more dead bodies than the neo-pagan cult of the Nazis.

And it is important to remember that — to remember that once you start think of humans as THINGS who are USEFUL and lose track of the fact that each human, regardless of ability, opinions, disability, age, tribal affiliation, religion, color or any other characteristic pertaining to a man (or woman) is still valuable simply because he’s human like us, horror ensues.

In the end, as a human I must respect others like me, to respect myself.  You start denying the humanity of others, and at the end of that road, what is left but to deny your own humanity?  What makes you special that you arrogate to yourself the right to decide which of these “non-human” things is to live or die, to succeed or fail?

Oh, sure, the people who do that end up engaging in obsessive virtue signaling, some of which ends up (to make themselves “better” than the common people) having them defend the indefensible.  And some of them “prove” they have the right by using force to reduce as many of their fellow humans as possible to the status of “things”.

But looking at them from outside, they became what they make others, and one has to wonder if in the darkness of night, in the hollowness of their own hearts, they don’t know it, and it doesn’t drive them to greater madness.

Which matters not.  In the end, history will route around them and forget them, or relegate them to the bin of bad things inhabiting our collective nightmares.

Because the future belongs to life.  The future belongs to cultures healthy enough to survive in great numbers.  That can be achieved, at times, temporarily, by killing every other culture.  But it seems to be a temporary thing.  Cultures at least in modern age that view everyone, even their members, as things, seem to have trouble reproducing.

There’s reasons for that, including why make more of these “human things” if they’re interchangeable.  These reasons — this viewing humans as humans and special — might be at the root of why Christianity spread so far, so fast.

So in the end, the future belongs to those cultures that value human life.

The others are just a momentary regressive glitch that passes.

And The Left Cried Out “No Hiding Place!”

By Christopher M. Chupik

Let me tell you the tale of two websites.

First is a forum dedicated to a famous SF franchise (no, not that one, the other one). Let’s call it Franchise X Forum. In addition to sometimes interesting discussions of Franchise X, I had also enjoyed the various “Babe of the Week” threads where posters would share harmless cheesecake of female celebrities. But all of a sudden, those threads were gone, and a pinned post warning against starting any more was in their place. The air was feeling distinctly chilly.

Politics, we were informed by the moderators, is strictly forbidden. Especially when someone says something conservative. This does not prevent numerous posters (all of the left-wing persuasion) from including political statements in their signatures and avatars. Starting a thread where the poster declares that all global warming deniers are criminals? Totally not political. Objecting to such a post? How dare you?

In one of the threads that turned political, someone posted a dissenting (non-leftist) opinion and was promptly dogpiled for it. There was flaming and name-calling, all things supposedly banned by the moderators. I could have complained to the moderators, except for one thing: one of the moderators was taking part in the dogpiling.

Politics are forbidden, it seems, except when they’re mandatory.

So I’m not a poster at Franchise X Forum and won’t be any time soon.

The second place I wish to speak of is a blog with a strong fantasy slant. Lots of retro SF stuff and a focus on Sword and Sorcery. Let’s call it Slack Fate. Up until two months ago, Slack Fate was a daily must-visit blog for me. I had it in my bookmarks and everything. There was virtually no discussion of political matters at all on this blog and I appreciated that.

And then, about a year or so ago, Slack Fate suddenly did a massive guest post on global warming and how it was the responsibility of SF writers to deal with it. It was completely out of tune with anything I’ve seen posted there before. And unlike every other post on the blog, where the bulk of it was hidden behind the fold, this long, long post had to be scrolled past. As I did so, I had the sinking feeling that my days of visiting Slack Fate were numbered.

And then, at the end of August, in the aftermath of the Recent Unpleasantness, the editor of Slack Fate decided he didn’t want me reading the blog anymore. Said editor launched into anti-Puppy tirade after tirade and personally mocked anyone who complained in the comments. So now Slack Fate is a once in a while visit, at best.

Notice a pattern developing?

Now, I do visit various political blogs, but when I’m done with those, I like to go elsewhere and read about things that are not politics. But I don’t have that option anymore. Culture war is being waged on a thousand battlefields. Doesn’t matter if they’re political or not. Want to argue if Hulk is stronger than Superman? Better be ready to be derailed into an argument about George W. Bush (Seriously, I saw that happen once).

On the Franchise X Forum, I’m sure that once upon a time, the rules were not being used as a bludgeon against conservatives. But slowly, bit by bit, the rules of the board were eroded away. Moderators began abusing their powers, acting more like bullies instead of the people who are supposed to be watching out for bullies.

At Slack Fate, I’m not entirely sure what happened. There were conservative posters at that blog and there was no real hint of the editor’s biases until the global warming post. When Sad Puppies 3 happened, something changed. The editor not only took sides, but lashed out viciously against anyone who dissented. Last I saw, he was linking more and more to Tor.com, posting about the favorite authors of Tor.com and generally trying to be Tor.com’s Mini-Me. Because heaven forbid a blog have its own unique character. This must be what the Invasion of the Body Snatchers looks like when you’re not a pod person.

In both cases, the result is the same: a supposedly apolitical forum which has become a hostile environment for libertarians and conservatives.

Now, I don’t want a “safe space”. Heaven forbid. These sites have already been turned into safe spaces — for leftists. But if your forum has rules banning politics, shouldn’t they be enforced fairly and across the board? And if you do want to discuss politics, you have to allow for the fact that not everybody has the same opinion. When posters see that the rules are enforced selectively, it encourages abuse. The fish rots from the head.

The people doing this are like religious fanatics, completely assured of the righteousness of their cause, willing to use any tool to further it. And in the process they take over institutions, no matter how small or insignificant, and turn them into temples where the only words spoken are words of praise. You’re going to hear about the Great God Mota whether you like it or not.

Systemic closure is the result. A thousand voices, all of them the same.

And the closing of the leftist mind continues.

“And Oh, My Darling, be not afraid,
We are so lightly here
It is in love that we are made
In love we disappear.” Leonard Cohen

So yesterday I was listening to this song, which I haven’t listened to in a long time but which used to be a favorite growing up.

And I started thinking about what they mean by “love.”

You know I don’t call myself an “artist” mostly for the same reason older son doesn’t call himself “someone who wants to help people.”  It’s not that at some level we don’t know we are precisely those things, it’s that so many people claim to be one or both things while what they really want to do is tear down, destroy and force others to do stuff they construe as “helping.”  Both in the helping professions and in the arts, the mentality of “tear down so we can build utopia” has done a great deal of harm.

And in a way, that’s what got me thinking about this song, and Vincent Van Gogh (who apropos nothing, except that’s why I was looking yesterday, is son’s favorite painter.)  Vincent has a unique and individual style, of course, one that is rather in vogue or was, for a while, with the left.  It was a style that overturned the previous “realistic” style and so people on the left tend to look at it as “tearing down.”  However, no one — and I mean that — NO ONE can be exposed to the man’s paintings en-masse, particularly in a comprehensive (from earliest to latest) sort of exhibition like we had here three years ago, without realizing he wasn’t about tearing down but about building.

Sure, the style he used was a complete denial of the style that went before.  I don’t know if that’s why he THOUGHT he used it, though I doubt it.  He seemed to be experimenting with all sorts of styles, trying to appease the internal hunger for expression, until he found what satisfied it.

However, it’s impossible to look at the later styles and not realize what he was doing was not tearing down, but building.

Art, as such, is a way to remove the habit-goggles through which we gaze at reality.  In a test in Portugal, because I was out of time and frankly peevish I had been asked the question (and also because I assumed I would fail and have to retake) I answered the question with “What is the difference between literature and life?” with “To understand the difference, one must go to Plato’s cave metaphor.  The reality most of us see, day to day is filtered through what we’re used to seeing and what we’re used to believing, so that we don’t really see it.  Literature is that real reality outside the cave, and the accomplished artist gets you to turn around for just a moment and glimpse the truth.”

The weird thing is that I still stand by that answer.  And if you’re going to say, “But Sarah, you say no one can judge whether what they’re doing is art, because art is that which causes an intense emotion in the reader/viewer/listener.”  Well, yeah.  And the intense reaction is because of catharsis, the reaching into something true and fundamental that takes you out of yourself, your habits, your routine.  Which is the PURPOSE of art.

Look, I’m a libertarian, so I’m not going to say that’s what artists should aspire to doing.  HOWEVER for me, as a decent craftsman, that’s the next level I aspire to, the level that peels back the layers of habit and culture and the way you learned to look at things, to show the truth beneath it.

Now, no one can fully escape the culture they were raised in (or acculturated to — in my case by choice — or a combination thereto.)  This is why we don’t really understand past eras and other civilizations.  (I’m running into this with, of all things, Portuguese politics, which is why I haven’t written about it.  Portuguese don’t understand how different their system is from the rest of the world, and Americans REALLY don’t understand how different the Portuguese system is. Even I having been away 30 years miss some nuances, which is the other reason I haven’t written about it. And remember Portugal is at least technically a WESTERN country.)  Going through an exhibit on Rome, it was amazing both the commonalities, particularly for someone like me who grew up in a descended-from-Rome culture, and the bizarre shocks.  (Like, for instance, pictures of monkeys screwing people?  TOTALLY appropriate for a living room painting.  Monkeys with huge erections?  Totally okay for children’s toys.  And let’s not go into their weird relationship with defecation and such, which were very much PUBLIC matters.)

However, good art can for a moment remove the blinders, which is why I made a point of mentioning that it was a glimpse (over the shoulder) at reality.

Now the reason this is important is that the closer you come to reality, the better your ability to make decisions that are relevant and improve things, be they aesthetic or social or purely personal things.

And right now you guys are staring at this and wondering when Sarah got taken over by the dark side.

I haven’t been.  It’s just that we (by which I mean myself and the followers of cultural progressivism, who view it as necessary to dismantle western culture in order to build utopia) disagree on what is art, what is revealing the real truth.  I think, for instance, that Heinlein books do a fantastic job of both telling a great story and removing cultural blinds.  (Though to me, as a foreign-born person, it is fascinating to see how many blinders he also retained, like believing the rest of the world was to a great extent, the US written large.)  So does Shakespeare, and to an extent even Jane Austen (who made romance comprehensible to me for the first time in my life.  A very practical and level headed Romance but there it is.)

Now if you believe you know the real truth, which is in general a problem of people who think history comes with an arrow and that it moves, inevitably, to the grand vision of a nineteenth century neurotic and bookish white male, then  you are impaired, a priori in creating great art.  Because you are not trying to glimpse reality.  You are trying to superimpose a revealed and external vision on your vision.  This revelation might be different from the cultural filters used by those around you, but it is no less artificial.

This is the blight of so much of medieval art, which imposed extra Christian/Catholic filters on their cultural filters.  This wasn’t arrived at by each individual artist, but what was expected.  In the same way the pseudo realist art of the Soviet union largely sucks for the same reasons. Because the artist is not making an effort to reach the truth, he/she is just conforming to another set of social filters.

And this is what is wrong with so much of the grey goo that passes for writing in genre since it has become infected by litchrature.  Instead of using a minimal set of parameters to “conform” to the expected experience of the genre, and then infusing the content with your own vision and passion, you are conforming to a group-think kind of vision (and in the case of our own annoyances, submitting to group criticism, ala Maoist cultural revolution.)  When that group vision requires the tearing down of the existing vision, then it becomes even crazier, because you’re trying to create while actively hating the genre, its parameters and to an extent the people who want to read it because they love the genre.

And that by itself is enough to cripple you.  Whatever art is, it is born of a restless desire to create, an infatuation with your chosen mode of expression and field that forces you to search for continuous improvement.  It is that “love” that creates real art.

No one sane would work in any artistic field and suffer both to create and to make a living.  No, it is a restless desire that causes us to try to do that.  And it’s probably why so many of us are slightly unbalanced and desperate even when we DO make a living.  Because we have to work outside the consensus, we have to reach ever farther and try to peel more of the habitual matrix, in order to see what is real and convey it to others, even in a fictional package.

Any system that has a code of rules for what you can “create” as “art” which includes respecting certain politics, certain ways of seeing the world, is not only useless but detrimental, be it the French Academy or the “Code of Progressivism.”

Art is fear and longing, it’s going out on a limb, and it’s love.  Without love there is no creation.  There is only grey goo and mannerly imitation.

Love and create and be not afraid.

Count Your Blessings – Cedar Sanderson

Count your blessings, name them one by one. I was reminded of this hymn earlier, by listening to my husband encourage a friend. It does seem that an awful lot of us have had very rough personal lives this year. And I’m not even going to get into the whole brouhaha of the professional mess many of us waded into, heart and soul. But something we seem to forget is that it’s important to stop, take a deep breath, and count our blessings.

It’s easy to dwell on the stresses that are at the forefront of our mind, sometimes it’s harder to stop and think of what good has happened. It may be that you need somebody outside of yourself to give you that pep talk. After all isn’t this what friends are for? We can reach out and make a difference even when, well, sometimes a friend encouraging another doesn’t sound encouraging from the outside looking in. Listening to two guys exchange insults might not immediately seem calming or soothing but they know what they mean.

It’s important for us to remember the good things. If we lose them in concentrating on the stupidity that surrounds us constantly, we can run the risk of losing all hope. Without hope what is worth living for? It’s being set adrift, left floundering, without an anchor in a stormy world. I found myself thinking about this, I’m in the middle of seeking A college degree, changing careers, and generally turning my world and life upside down. If I didn’t have hope, there is no way I could continue and succeed at what I’m to attempting to do. We all have goals, even if the goal is just to keep living until the year 2016 sees its first dawn. And then just to keep on keepin on.

There’s a reason that the entrance to hell is said to be signed “abandon all hope ye who enter here”. Without hope, we are lost. Feeling hopeless is all too familiar to me, and something that I am very glad to no longer deal with on a daily basis. As long as you’re alive and more or less healthy, then there is a future, all hope is not lost. Sometimes I think we put too much weight on all of the political things, the huge struggles above and beyond a daily life, the collapse of all of Western civilization. It’s more than one person can deal with at any given time, but the little irritant on a daily basis, the hard day at work, the broken car, the burns hot water heater, the sick friend, I could go on and on and on. These are the true backbreakers, the little things that mount up until finally, there is one last straw on the camel.

Fortunately there are ways to lift the little things, and keep the load from ever reaching that critical mass. So much we can do ourselves, we can take the time to take a long walk, create art, sing a song, hold a newborn baby and delight in the smell in the softness and love all wrapped into one tiny bundle that looks at you with bright blue eyes. Other times we can’t do it ourselves, and we need to have others who give us some support until we get through the quicksand our life has become. And we know that in return we will help them when the morass is too deep for them to manage on their own. Life is not all bogs and swamps, there are days of golden light and crisp wine scented air in the autumn, days of brilliant sunshine and the waves lapping at the beach.

One thing we have to learn to never do, is to dwell constantly in bitterness. The only thing worse than that, is to become an inveterate offense seeker looking for the least little excuse to take offense and to lift one’s nose into the air, and pointer finger proclaiming the wrongness of that little thing. Taking joy cannot share space with taking offense. And for me, having a sense of humor is far more important than having a sense of self righteousness. Take some time today to think about what is joyful in your life, what blessings have fallen upon you, and then take some time to talk with a friend and compare joyful remembrances. You never know who is in need of a little hope, a little comfort, and a dollop of joy to season their day into something palatable.