The Pure

Posted on by Sarah A. Hoyt

This morning the ADHD is exceptionally strong. I’ve been up since 8, and been running side quests, one after the other, because anything will distract me.

While reading the news in bed — no, not a usual thing, but I got distracted by a text message, then flipped over to Bongino reports and it tells you something I haven’t even finished reading the headlines there — I came across an article where Harris’ advisors are lamenting that they have lost the culture war by relying on legacy media.

The implication that the culture has left them behind is paved in with the certainly that they will start their new hip shows on the net and… show us how it’s done.

You and I know it won’t happen, but it bears examining why it won’t happen. It’s important to examine why in fact they had their own Tom Poole and their own Joe Rogan. They were the same people, and were shoved out. They had their own Elon Musk too… And they lost him over the fact they refused to accept jokes made by the Babylon Bee.

The problem they’re facing is not a change in media. I mean, it absolutely is that, in the sense that the alternative media had ended their supremacy of the culture which should NATURALLY have ended a good fifty years ago.

The change in the media, and the appearance of blogs wasn’t only the precipitating incident of the appearance of effective cultural opposition to the left. It was also the inevitable result of how repressive leftist culture had gotten and how iron-clad their control on the traditional forms of the communication-industrial (including the arts) complex had become. Like indie publishing’s success is, sure, contributing to traditional publishing’s failure, but it only got a beginning because trad pub was already failing. Because it was part of the industrial media communication complex and had been (and still is) captured by the left for decades, with the grip tightening.

If this were only about how the left is losing its grip on the culture (It’s lost it, really. We’re now at the moment when everyone realizes it, is all) I wouldn’t have bothered trying to work through extreme ADHD to write about it. I could just post a picture of me doing a little dance, or perhaps a meme about my schadenboner.

But that’s not what I want to talk about.

Look, we’re not the left and they’re not us. If they’re similar to anything it would be an authoritarian theocracy. Which I suspect is why they adore Islam.

They did “conquer the culture” by questioning what was there, and mocking the established norms. But once they took over, all they had to offer was rigid, doctrinaire interpretations of everything from a story wrapped around the news, to literature needing to affirm their core beliefs. And the more those core beliefs proved wrong — particularly after the fall of the USSR — the more they felt a need to push it into everything, and police everything that questioned it.

I’ve often mentioned that the only difference between the early nineties and the late oughts in literature was that in the early nineties they allowed you to maybe give a casual nod to one of their principles, but write the rest of the story as you pleased, while by the late oughts they were policing every detail of the story to see if you’d slipped in something that might oppose them. And then it moved wider. Over the next decade they, obscurely aware that the control wasn’t enough, moved on to try to police the fans. To try to demand people have fun the RIGHT WAY while genuflecting to the latest shibboleths pronounced from on high by the left.

And that’s my reason for writing this today: because if they are losing the culture war (they lost it long ago, in my opinion. It’s only now people are becoming aware of it though) it is because of that move. Of trying to control everything.

The linked article says that Kamala going on talk shows would be viewed as political and that was bad, but the truth is this is what the right has labored under for decades. Their point of view was “Just normal” and ours was “political” and political was bad. This is de facto true in a lot of left-leaning work places and groups today. You protest something overtly political being said and get slapped for being “political” because to their minds they’re not. They’re just repeating what they’ve heard in the whole culture forever, therefore they’re not political. And this assumption — later on he talks about their just being “normal” or something like that, reverting to base mode — is what is making them so profoundly unappealing.

Look, I don’t care if someone has an ambition to star in a Broadway play. I find it a little odd, to say the least, for this to be an ambition for a Supreme Court Judge, but whatever. I find most Americans are more into acting than I am, and would be tempted by something like this. That’s fine. Except go and read about the play Kentaji Brown thought was worth participating in. Go on, read about it. I’ll wait.

It’s not just that the whole thing sounds unbelievably, mind-bogglingly paint-by-the-numbers leftist-obsession infused, no. It’s that the whole thing sounds unbelievably stupid. And for its utter and stultifying nonsense, it relies on…. Shakespeare. I mean, look, you want to make a play about someone running off with xyr/xer/candycone and leaving a guy behind, go ahead and do it. It better be amazing, because I think it’s the fifteen hundredth done this year. But whatever. But to do it by taking one of the archetypal plays of our civilization and then overlying this puerile…. preachy fantasy on it? That’s pathetic. That his is even on Broadway, let alone that a Judge, no matter what a dim bulb she is, thought “Oh, yeah, I must be in this?” It’s pathetic. It’s sad.

Note, I’m not saying that classics shouldn’t be touched or reinterpreted. Or that a lot of those reinterpretations won’t be stupid. I’m saying this one is particularly boring, repetitive, and OMG haven’t we seen a million of these before? The abandon the heartthrob guy at the altar and run off with the unlikely goes all the way back to The Graduate, which was not that shocking to me at 16. That the unlikely is now “Gender neutral” is…. well. I yawned while typing that.

In fact, at this point if you wanted to shock me, you’d have a woman wanting to get married and have kids. Even Disney has stopped having a romance at the end, opting instead for “empowering” its girl boss heroes. And supposed rom coms often end with the woman going off to “find herself.” Which is why Hallmark eats everyone’s lunch, but that’s something else. (Yes, repetitive and boring — look, I have someone in the house who loves Hallmark Christmas movies — but they’re NOT PRETENDING TO BE ART AND GROUND BREAKING. They don’t demand applause.)

Look, I don’t think we’re at danger of becoming them. For one, the individualists, as always, fail to organize.

But it is important to know in these days, as we breathe in and take a pause, to realize that yes, already, there are people running around screaming that you have to “be this way”, “write this way”, “play this way” to be “on the right.”

It’s very very important, while we stand on shaky ground, to reject that nonsense. First of all, the call to “normalize” a single vision is the call of a dying vision. Only those who are unsure want to control every expression of the culture.

Even traditionalists wrote things that made other traditionalists raise their eyebrows, before the left went all ascendant. And sometimes it was the truly odd things that started conversations.

Look, I’m not saying this because I write what I write, and because the novel being slowly and excruciatingly edited is … well, the most normal character is a gay male. (And no the book isn’t in the slightest sexually transgressive. Mostly because I’m not even sure how to write that and make it fun in science fiction.) The entire book is a sociological exploration of important topics of being human (yes, sounds about as fun as shredded lettuce, but trust me, it’s also a gonzo adventure involving firefights, sword fights, baking and as my betas informed me, an absolutely gargantuan number of babies. Babies as a good thing. I told you I was a weirdo.) and gee, I am cringing at the thought of what “some people” theoretically on my own side will say.

This is a problem. I mean the fact I’m cringing. It betrays the first signs of people running around trying to define “the right” according to rigid parameters, and trying to make it so that artists can ONLY express themselves within those parameters.

I didn’t write the book (any of my books) to be transgressive. I know some very good writers, even on our side, can be motivated by that, but that’s not how I work. I tend to start from “what if” and at some point the whole bolus comes to life, and sometimes it’s even compelling and makes sense.

But I’ve been yelled at in the past because people — and yes, I do get some of this is trauma, too, on THEIR part — assume anything that is “what the left would have done” (but is it really? REALLY? Think about it) is an attempt to make them “like the other side” and to disrupt their thought.

I was yelled at about Witchfinder because I had a “fated queen” at the end. Even though the world build is bog standard fantasy, and therefore “the king and the land are one” is a thing. (And like other magic, fails to work in real life.) Because apparently it was a disgrace for a “libertarian” to write a monarchy.

I was yelled at from BOTH SIDES about A Few Good Men, because people on the left decried it as homophobic since the main characters are gay, never engage in what a reviewer I like very charmingly described as “exchange of precious body fluids” on the screen, and spend a lot of time debating and fighting for the principles in America’s Founding documents. I was decried by the right, because, well, they’re gay and this is obviously my attempt to preach social Marxism (which makes about as much sense as musical Marxism, but never mind. Social Gramscianism makes more sense, but not much since his fixation was not on sexual minorities but racial ones. Never mind. It’s something people have convinced themselves is a thing. On both sides. Kind of like institutional racism.)

So why were the characters gay? Well, there’s a ton of reasons, if you analyze the book, including the layering of a culture of secrecy in a world where it is sometimes a death penalty matter (though not where/at the social class they are.) It explains a lot of their isolation and how they might not have figured out what is going on behind the scenes.

Is that why I did it? Oh, heck no. I did it because that’s the way the characters were in my head. Because that’s how I work.

In the same way the new book is not the way it is to make you consider sex and gender issues, and the cultural implications of it in reproduction, or the innate characteristics of hormonal expression (in other animals, since this doesn’t work in humans), or the horrors of utopianism and designing humans to be “perfect”, or… I mean, all those things are there. They fell in. And from them logically came the discussions about what to do when a re-barbarized culture is discovered by an advanced one, and how and if it can even be integrated, when there are other biological differences, or if they should be preserved, like zoo animals, in a way. These are, of course the questions that science fiction used to ask, before it devolved (in the major houses, guys. I know Baen doesn’t do this) into endless just-so stories depicting the imagined racial and social oppression of the 21st century over and over again, in costume for the “science fiction” part.

But I wrote it because at 14 I read The Left Hand of Darkness thought “This is wrong” (Well, I was fourteen) and overnight got afflicted with the entire world and had to write it. But I couldn’t, because my first attempts taught me no one would buy it. And I swear, this world there, in my head, was shutting me completely down until I wrote it.

Is it the best thing since sliced bread? Well, husband thinks so. And before you say “Well–” no, that’s not a given. There are things of mine he doesn’t even read, and a lot of others he’s like “Well, that certainly was a book.” Some of my first readers seem to agree.

But the act of writing it has done amazing things for me, personally and enabled me to finally enjoy writing again.

So– Will you like it? I have no idea.

But I think we need to learn that if we don’t like it, we put it to the side of the plate and eat around it.

We’ve been in a position of defensiveness so long that we scrutinize everything for signs of “not being on the other side.”

It’s time to relax that. Look, most of the art on the other side isn’t even art. It’s just preaching and will turn you off anyway. Stop thinking they’ll sneakily get in your brain and convert you. I read an awful lot of communists growing up. Some were fun. Most were… communists and forgettable. But the art isn’t inherently trying to sell you a point of view. The good one will have some ideas leaked from the writer, but is other than that just a story (or art.) The bad one is preaching and not art.

Again, if it personally and outright offends you, set it to the side of the plate. But don’t go on a crusade for a purity spiral.

Recently I blocked someone on his first comment on this site. Now, part of the reason I blocked him was based on a misunderstanding. But afterwards, examining it, I still went “yeah, no. There’s at least one lie there, and the rest is some of that shivying towards a purity spiral, which sucks and which is out of place on a first comment on this site.”

The comment was that this person “borrowed all your books from the library.” I assumed he meant MY books apparently in error, since this was put on the Sunday book promo. Fans corrected me that he meant books I promo in the post. But “Come to a standing still and it takes me an hour to recover when I read the phrase “his husband” or “her wife” and I would like a warning at the beginning.”

I accused him of lying, because I don’t think I’ve ever used those phrases in my books. Yet. Though I make no promises. And since it struck me as utterly bizarre a comment, blocked him.

So, do I repent blocking him? No. Because you know what, he can’t be borrowing all the books I promo from the library unless by library he means KU, in which case he can get most of them. And because at the top of the promo post I say I don’t read all these books.

But mostly because what kind of candy-asses are we becoming if we need “trigger warnings” for those phrases?

I fully understand wanting trigger warnings for full on sex on screen (I only mention the word penis in one book ever, and it’s not sex as such. Well, it’s vampires.) I mean, no, I don’t understand it, but I’m willing to believe some people might need that. (I’m a child of the seventies, and stumbled on full on orgies in the middle of otherwise innocuous science fiction books, and the worst I did was flip past them because most written sex is boring and doesn’t advance the plot.) But needing trigger warnings for passing mentions of homosexual marriage, which already exists, and is likely to continue in the future at least in places (or at least as likely as to go away) is… weak. And dumb.

And hectoring other people about it is an attempt and stampeding people who are just realizing they can create whatever, and the boot of the left is starting to lift from their faces, into creating only one way and repeating only one message. WORSE into believing that ALL ART is message, and that’s all it is.

… That’s ultimately what creatively castrated the left, and demoted it from culture-bestriding colossus to… Echo chambers filled with resentment.

Let’s not go there.

Look, artists — I’m at 62, slowly, coming to accept this title for myself. Reluctantly — are strange people. We are moved by weird compulsions. (This week… making houses out of gourds, with pieces of pine cone for stone work. Perfectly normal for a sudden obsession, right? And thanks to Stephen for sending me the pine cones from the Missouri woods ;) ) and things we write and paint and create cannot be confined and cannot be interpreted as a “message.” There might be a message in there. There often is. Its relevance is likely to be “This is a fruit of its times.” And the message each of us finds in a book might be completely different.

But don’t start off an attempt at a cultural revolution (A real one, not the Maoist caricature) by forcing us to sing from the same hymnal and support the things you think we should believe (That’s the Maoist caricature cultural revolution.)

Let us be our weird selves. If we are pro-liberty this will leak in weird ways into the most unlikely pieces of work. And our questions, our prodding, our strange ideas and thought experiments will all contribute to liberty and the prosperity it engenders.

Demanding utter purity from your artists just makes people want to break the walls, even those that are holding up the ceiling.

And we all know how that ends.

134 thoughts on “The Pure”

    2. Agreed. The individual might have been having One Of Those Days, or might just really suck at expressing what was meant, but usually the first impression is the most likely to be accurate.

      Liked by 2 people

  2. So, being weird, I really like the snow sculpture in the header pic.

    Looks like what the Polish Winged Hussars would build on a snowy off-day.

    Liked by 1 person

      1. I spent some brain cells figuring out how to build that in real life. And then wanting to do it in marble (or cultured marble) in a garden…

        Liked by 1 person

      1. Yes! Had sufficient snow for something yesterday, but we have Melt going on; high temp of 39. Didn’t go below freezing last night. The trees are happy, but no idea if it’ll last. OTOH, White Christmas’s are overrated. White Halloween? That’d be awesome. And possible. Nov 2, 2003 was the first snowstorm we encountered up here. Major storm, too. “Missed it by that much.” h/t Maxwell Smart.

        Like

        1. North of the 49th, a white Halloween isn’t anything exceptional — it’s one of the rites of passage for elementary-age youth, wearing a heavy coat over your costume while going door-to-door.

          And, yes, the snow spiral is amazing. I had to look several times to suss out the actual shape.

          Like

        2. By all reports the passes are getting nailed (20″ new snow). Which means Willamette Pass and Hoodoo Ski slopes are getting that much more. For two enterprises who are lucky to open between Christmas and New Years, most seasons, they have to be thrilled.

          That Ashland Ski resort is also open bodes well for snow accumulation on the Siskiyou’s and water depth for Shasta reservoir recovery, already well onto recovery in 2024.

          Like

          1. And here in Wyoming, we’re all giving the stinkeye at the fact that it still feels like September (it’s been in the 40s for *weeks*) and have had hardly any snow, which–unless it changes very dramatically come january (a definite possibility)–bodes for a miserable, smoky summer…

            Halloween this year was actually chillier than it was yesterday, but not snowing, so kids didn’t HAVE to wear coats over their costumes for once :D

            Like

            1. It’s the “hardly any snow” that gets me worried. Looks like we’ll be OK this year, but we’ve had a lot of dryer winters than we’d like to see.

              Snow is melting quickly; it’s in the mid 40s right now. Of course that means any driveway ponds water that don’t soak in or run off will be literal* ice rinks tomorrow morning. The forecast low is 23F. Whee.

              ((*)) Not that I have any skates. Not for many decades.

              Liked by 1 person

          2. Well, we’ve already had snow, twice, which is early, but the last two days have been a warm spell, so I’m enjoying the walks.

            Like

  3. Am I excessively obsessive when I insist that the proper English is ‘heroine’ for a woman and ‘hero’ for a man? And the same for ‘actress’ and ‘actor’.

    It is demeaning to women to insist that they conform to male centric words.

    Like

    1. No. You’re not. But language is not message.
      I will not use “actor” for an actress. Hero… depends if I’m speaking in the generic, as I don’t think there’s a heroine journey. Mostly I talk about main character, not hero, though.
      BUT yes, I also think that making women use the male form of the profession or whatever is anti-woman. I might be alone one that, but I’ll continue fighting the fight.
      Get in the trench beside me. Here’s your thesaurus. (What? It’s a war of words.)

      Liked by 1 person

      1. I hope we can reclaim two sexes for humans, and “gender” as a linguistic concept.

        Also: Yes! Science fiction is supposed to be weird and mostly unpredictable (I say “mostly” because, well, experienced readers of any genre can become very good predictors.)

        Liked by 2 people

          2. <snort> <snort>

            <pedant mode> Although at least in Latin declension and gender are disjoint. Most first declension nouns are feminine (with some weird exceptions such as nauta, agricola and poeta). 2nd declension nouns are either masculine (-us) or neuter (-um). Third declension being mostly borrowed words are whatever seems appropriate (e,g, meretrix being feminine) </pedant mode>

            Like

      2. It’s interesting and likely cultural, but I have seen instances where hero and heroine implied rather specific roles and behaviors, such that in one (Japanese) instance where a male character was described ad the heroine, the writer felt compelled to then note it was not a typo…

        Liked by 2 people

    2. On the other hand, there is no reason a woman can’t be Chairman of the Board.

      I’m less sure about fireman, policeman, or postman. (One place we lived, the post woman’s truck had a licence plate saying FE-MAIL. We laughed at that.)

      Liked by 2 people

      1. I’m less sure about fireman, policeman, or postman. 

        Think of it in terms of “post-man” vs “post-dog” or “post-pigeon” and it might get easier.

        Liked by 1 person

      2. For what it’s worth, Robert’s Rules specifically states that Chairman is correct for both men and women. The same is not true for the others.

        Liked by 3 people

        1. I almost got fired from a job because I asked who the chairman was of a task force I was the recorder for.

          Fembot Leader of Fembotism: “That’s Chairperson! Do that one more time and I’ll get you fired!”

          Me: “Okay, who’s the Chair for the task force?”

          Glaring burning eyes of hate. But couldn’t say anything about it because technically ‘chair’ is non-genderific.

          And this was back in the late 90s.

          Liked by 1 person

  4. Chuckle Chuckle

    Some idiot on Baen’s Bar apparently believes that the “Right” wants to ban the Oz stories because of Princess Ozma.

    In case you’re wondering, in “The Marvelous Land of Oz” we meet this boy named Tip and we follow his adventures in Oz.

    Well, it turns out that one of the witches of Oz had turned the infant Princess Ozma into an infant boy. IE Tip.

    So at the end of the book, Tip is changed into “his true self” Princess Ozma. Thus since the Right are Transphobic, we would hate the Oz stories that contain Princess Ozma. 🤣🤣🤣🤣

    Liked by 2 people

    2. Deep sigh. The usual prog-lefty berks don’t actually really know what conservatives think and desire. All they know is the warped caricature of a conservative in their heads, which has very few connections to reality as the rest of us know it.

      Liked by 1 person

      1. They *know* we’re all ignorant, mouth-breathing Christian fundamentalists, which also makes us narrow-minded bigots. As Sarah says, they project like an IMAX.

        (Though I must admit, the Oz books disappeared periodically from the children’s section of the library, apparently when a parent got a bee in their bonnet about, “magic.” But they’d reappear at equally random intervals).

        Liked by 1 person

        1. Some on the right do live down to the leftist stereotypes. In the cases I’ve seen, there’s frequent overlap with what I call “drinking the leftist Kool-Aid” where a certain faction on the right takes a basically left-wing position on this or that issue and then applies a right-wing coat of paint over it.

          Like

    3. Let me guess. They never read the book.

      (It’s not like Tip wanted to be a girl. And despite Baum and Ozma’s assurances to the contrary, Tip and Ozma are separate characters, who happen to share a memory. Besides, Baum gave her at least two more back stories.)

      Liked by 2 people

      1. “Beauty and the Beast” is about a girl and her Furry lover, and how the Power of Love lifted the horrible curse of his being a Furry.

        Like

    6. Heh. Those idiots never do grasp that our ISSUE is them trying to force their delusions on *reality.* Fantasy is fine. Count Dono is, in fact, one of my favorite characters in the Vorkosigan saga–science-magic made her ACTUALLY into a functioning him (they even explain that, while Dono’s overall DNA is indeed still female, the bits that went into the reproductive organs are definitely male, remain male, and can in fact reproduce). Same with Ozma. It’s magic!

      It’s when a she-male who is very obviously NOT a she demands that I refer to him as a she (without even a token nod at the barbaric surgical attempts to render him a she) and that I give him access to my private spaces, etc here in reality that I get irked.

      (Now. Someone like Blair White? If I didn’t already know she was a he, and just met him/her on the street, I would have assumed he was, in fact, a she. Because Blair White passes. And also doesn’t insist that the entire world conform to his opinion of what he is. Even Ben Shapiro admitted that, if he didn’t already know who Blair White was, he would have had no issue referring to him as “she.” THAT is fine. It’s not bothering anyone else at all. And they still can’t grasp the difference.)

      Like

      1. Yeah, I like Count Dono too. Ivan’s reaction was priceless! But we are a long way from Betan body mods today.

        One of my main characters is a woman with no memories, dropped into our world with technology far more advanced than ours. Takes her a while to figure out how to use it, but then she offers to use genetic engineering and medical nanotech to actually convert a man into a woman, indistinguishable from a natural born woman, fully capable of having children, and not needing to be ‘supported’ with drug and hormone treatments for life.

        Naturally, the ‘trans’ activists attack her with hysterical fervor. Actual women are nothing new, and don’t allow them to force the rubes to accept surgically modified freaks as normal.

        Like

        1. I rather expect that would be *exactly* how the trans movement would react if we had the ability to actually change a person’s gender. It would suddenly flip to “You’re erasing us!”

          It’s the mental illness–and the ability to inflict it on and use it to control children–that seems to be the primary goal here. Forcing everyone else to bow to your delusion–it isn’t gender dysphoria for that bunch, it’s straight up narcissism.

          Liked by 1 person

      2. (:Thinking:) I’m fairly certain that the Betans have completely open sports leagues *and* women-only sports leagues *and* herm-only sports leagues. They might even have officially men-only sports leagues, although the “open” leagues will effectively be that (:shrug:)

        Like

      3. The interesting part about Dono is that I would categorize him as someone who, at his heart, is actually gender-neutral. As in, “this is what I have to do to get what I want; sounds interesting, let’s give it a go.” Which throws a wrench into the gears of people who are simultaneously holding in their hearts that men and women are different, but also the same.

        Like

    7. There are no doubt teachers who would make me wary of letting them teach children The Marvelous Land of Oz.

      Then, the cure is remove the teachers, not the book.

      Like

  5. As to the left’s astonishing discovery of alternate media, ah, remember Air America? Neither do I. It was just a money pit for some billionaire currency manipulating Bond villain until he discovered that it was much easier to pay to elect a hundred district attorneys. The ROI on causing chaos via the second method is much higher.

    I give BlueSky about a year, maybe a year and a half because so many leftists are such slow learners and they don’t care about losing money. Making money is for evil capitalists like Elon Musk. Please, please, gather all the cancellers together and let them fight each other to the death over, “My socialism is purer than thou’s!”

    The marxists got cocky after Obama and have really overplayed their hand. It was easy back in the day to take a movie or book with truly human values and turn it into leftist dreck with just a small turn of plot. See Cameron’s Avatar. Just make the villain an evil corporation instead of a ruthless socialist government, and, voila, you’ve snuck a plug for socialism into a story of heroism. They thought they had won, so they dispensed with the subtlety, and now they’ve dispensed with story, and, as all good socialists do, dispensed with actual humanity. We all know, “Some animals are more equal than others,” so please do collect yourselves together to tear each other apart. I’m happy to leave you to your own devices.

    Liked by 2 people

    1. Funny juxtaposition of Soros and Musk in your post. Spent the last fifteen years listening to people complain about Soros using his wealth and influence to make America worse and we should get rid of him in Minecraft, and the response from the left was we were just nasty violence prone Neaderthals and probably Nazi anti-semites to boot. (I remember an entire PBS special lecturing the audience that any and all resistance and dislike to Soros and his agenda in his native Hungary was based purely on bigotry) But now that Musk has expressed his double-plus-ungood thoughtcrime and uses his wealth in ways they don’t like suddenly they’re all “Tax him to death! Eat the rich! All billionaires are evil!” When I ask them where the hell they were when Soros dropped a few million to buy my county’s DA seat to install his crime-loving puppet and generally step on us little I get the irrefutable leftist reaponse of “Shut up fascist!”

      Liked by 1 person

    2. ….remember Air America?

      Yes, it was a cover for CIA air operations in South East Asia.

      Oh, THAT one. Had forgotten all about it until you mentioned it. I do remember getting a chuckle out of the types that raised holy hell about CIA’s “secret” wars less than 20 years previously choosing that name.

      Liked by 2 people

    3. I had my lifetime supply of Air Amerikkka on a road trip in 2005. Was going through Wyoming, and I had choices: Catch static on either AM or FM, listen to the current station, or sing to myself. My singing is pretty bad, so that was the last choice. So, radio.

      One station had Air America. Not sure who the person was (R. Madcow?), but they were doing a “comedy” bit on the Minute Man immigration group. They thought it would be fun to do “Burning Minute Man”. Something about sitting in a chair, waiting for illegals, but naked. Sigh. The left not only can’t meme, they don’t even do good insult humor.

      I switched to singing to myself.

      Liked by 1 person

      1. I wonder if the station outside Asheville, NC that yearned for the “war crimes,” trial of Geoge W. Bush was AA.

        Asheville is a bright electric blue dot in the NC mountains, but the surrounding area is another matter.

        Like

          1. We have two cousins in the region. They aren’t all bad. For that matter, I appreciate the craft store downtown run by aging and apparently apolitical hippies.

            Liked by 1 person

            1. I certainly like the region, our NC “High Country” is wonderful.

              Some of my acquaintances in the area are less than thrilled with Asheville. Some of my encounters there are …. suboptimum for travel.

              Like

  6. Whether your husband is correct about “The Book That Finally Escaped From Your Brain” is something that only its publication will be able to answer. However, I agree with his assessment based on what you’ve released. Sure, it was definitely a work in progress, but that’s making me all the more anxious about what it will look like when it’s all cleaned up and everything gets tied together properly.

    The only other book I’m as eagerly anticipating is the ILOH’s sixth and final volume in the Sons of the Black Sword. At least in my house, you’ll be keeping good company.

    Liked by 2 people

      1. I am *fascinated* to watch and see what comes out of your brain next, now that this world has finally been born and has left so much space in your creativity. And how you pick up anything else to finish it.

        I will be taking notes.

        ….And from what I’ve seen, I’m going to really enjoy all 3 volumes of “something that has nothing to do with strict genre conventions and the tropes as currently enshrines at TV Tropes.”

        In the meantimes, I’ll keep writing the randomness I do, whether it’s acceptable to those who want to strictly define a genre that was always about pushing boundaries. I’ll have people yell at me whether it’s about having petroleum use in the future instead of something handwavium, about having realpolitik in scifi instead of The Good Guys and The Bad Guys, about having improper politics in my realpolitik because they (wrongly) assume who the Empire & The Fed “represent”, or just wrinkling their nose and sneering about getting Romance in my military scifi thriller.

        …and if they want my stories to be different to suit their baggage, they’re welcome to write their own.

        Like

      1. A sort-of local author does police procedurals based in “Kurak” county (stand-in for Siskyou in very northern Cali). His first few books were single volumes, but the last needed two volumes. to do. 1100 pages. Interesting, too.

        Three volumes of The Book That Escaped Sarah’s Brain? I can deal.

        Like

  7. Maybe a little tangential, my brain remains canted, but the purity obsession clicked:

    Caitlin Clark of recent basketball fame was named Time’s Athlete of the Year. In the accompanying interview she said some things that might be ‘woke.’ (No! A 22yo college grad may have soaked up some nonsense? How can it be??) Meh.

    But more than one righty type journalist jumped on it. OK, call it out, I get that. But the Federalist author tossed out “abandoned” and “betrayal” and closed with this gem:

    She doesn’t deserve the leftist hate thrown her way. But she shouldn’t expect conservatives to come rushing to her rescue next time it does, either.

    And I thought…she doesn’t deserve the hate shouldn’t we, conservatives, libertarians, just people, go rushing to her rescue out of principled humanity??

    Nah. She ain’t towing the precise ideological line. :|

    To bend my tangent back towards a point:

    I don’t wanna read artificially constrained stories, no matter which socio-political group crafts the constraint. Constraint inevitably excludes the strange, the other, the outsider, the Odd (I’m probably all of those). We start chopping the unexpected, the shocking, the surprising from our stories…it’s gonna get boring fast.

    I want to read human stories, and humans ain’t pure. Or ideologically consistent. Or uniform.

    No purity spirals.

    Liked by 2 people

    1. A 22yo college grad may have soaked up some nonsense? How can it be??

      At the University of Iowa? UC Berkley’s Mid-west campus? Naaahhh!

      Like

    2. I think rather Ms Clark was a 22-year-old desirous of reaching 23 and not being in a body bag or wheelchair. She’d also like to continue to be paid for her sports abilities while she can be. Some of her fellow competitors were abusing her pretty badly and it was a bit dicey at times. Not brave, but very comprehensible.

      Like

      1. ^This. I was initially going “Really, what was she thinking” and then saw all the shrieking coming from her so-called fellows in the WNBA about how she shouldn’t have gotten the award at ALL and only got it because she was white, and such awards shouldn’t be given out unless they’re going to be given to black athletes who have been in the league longer or given to the entire league and so on and so forth.

        Frankly, I think Caitlin Clark would be smart to give the WNBA both middle fingers, take the money’s she’s already gotten and invest it wisely, and go do find something other than basketball to make her happy, because these people aren’t going to stop until they’ve destroyed her.

        Like

        1. Might well be the smart thing, and I think a big chunk of the league deserves both fingers.

          But really, she could express the sentiment with far more force by quietly leaving. The WNBA would then fall back into its previous obscurity. The fingers would be superfluous punctuation.

          Like

          1. At this point, I think superfluous punctuation is necessary. Because just leaving quietly, not making a fuss–we’ve been doing that for decades, and all it’s done is embolden the looneys. Time to openly defy them, call them out for what they are, and refuse to play the games. :)

            Liked by 1 person

            1. Fair point.

              Maybe she could snag a job in sports commentary, covering the NBA (a number of players/ex-players seem to appreciate her) with a side gig commenting on the obscure antics of the WNBA…

              Liked by 1 person

              1. I predict that if she did an independent YouTube/similar channel and a podcast doing just that, she’d do quite well. (The MSM is likely to make her apologize for being too white as well, after all)

                Like

                1. The MSM being why that content avenue is exploding in popularity, particularly in the younger demographic.

                  She’d almost certainly make more than the $75k a year (I think) she’s making now.

                  Like

          2. It might be smart but it would be VERY hard. This young woman has been focused on her sport for probably half her 22 years. It clearly gives her joy, and even if it is NOT a huge payday it gives her a huge jump on using her marketing/communications degree. The perspective of we older types is hard to attain when you are a fresh college grad and are at the top of the world and got your dream job.

            Like

      2. Entirely plausible. I stuck to the indoctrination angle for brevity. But her treatment in the league surely counts for significant pressure.

        That she’s borne much of that abuse with some measure of poise has earned her some credit in the whole mess.

        And, yet..a random private citizen with a bit of a profile is expected to hew close to someone’s political line to remain deserving of defense against the outrageous?

        Nope. I’m all for holding political representative’s feet to the fire, consistent ideology oughta be a prerequisite. But average citizens get to be the intellectual messy stew of human life without the purity test.

        Liked by 1 person

  8. Last year I was reading a book about Viking culture and how it developed. A lot of it was fascinating, based on solid archaeology and cultural studies, and clarified some things I’ve wondered about. Then there was the attempt to have the Vikings be both very strict on sexual roles, and very tolerant of homosexual males and cross-dressing and living women. Which categories of people were rare and common at the same time.

    Nope. Pick one. Since it is a culture that apparently developed because of horrible climatic conditions that made farming impossible in Scandinavia for three years, with hard times lasting longer, history suggests that the “men are men, and women are women, and men that act like women are at best very suspect” was far more likely. No matter what modern academics and radicals try to claim.

    Liked by 2 people

    1. Title?

      I always remember the cases of the Amerindian tribes that HAD societal roles hammered out for men-who-felt-they-were-women and vice versa. Now, I read about these in books written fifty years ago, before the modern hogwash rolled over the topic.

      But apparently SOME tribes had roles for them. A “man-souled woman” or vice versa, could take on that role. Female warrior, a man who was initiated into the women’s secrets, they did happen. But once that choice was made, that was IT. The female who went out raiding couldn’t choose to switch back and become a wife. The man who learned the women’s mysteries couldn’t decide to sit at the warriors’ fire the following month.

      It is remotely possible that the Norse culture had similar practices. I say “possible”, not “probable”, because the books I read long ago emphasized that this was SOME tribes, by no means ALL.

      Like

      1. One small quibble. Such things still exist, but it wasn’t “felt”. The role was dictated by the family or tribe needs. A family with all girls designated one male, and vice versa.

        Like

      2. I liked Tolkien’s take on it for the elves: most men had particular roles, and most women had particular roles, but if a male elf, for example, really wanted to be a healer, or a female elf felt really called to be a warrior, it was fine. And some, like Elrond, did both. So, in short, social equality. People did what they liked and where they felt their talents were most inclined. And no one insisted that any male elf who opted to become a healer was actually female. (Which is the current trans lunacy–if you’re a girl who likes traditionally boy things, well, you MUST be a boy! and vice versa.)

        And the left claims Tolkien was a sexist misogynist. Heh.

        Like

        1. I once saw an interesting discussion about people who played with feminine/masculine things in 1980s — Boy George, anyone? — and someone observed that it helped protect against trans-insanity because it made it clear that you could do stuff that wasn’t typical of your sex but you were just not conforming to stereotype.

          Like

      3. Price, The Children of Ash and Elm. Overall excellent, and summarizes a lot of material that you otherwise have to pull from a half-dozen different disciplines and languages. But some of the modernist moments had me blinking and thinking, “Say over???”

        Like

    2. The “Marriage of Freya” is in the Elder Edda, and any reader who sees it as *normalizing* cross-dressing, rather than as *using* it as a bawdy comedy trope, needs to have his head examined, as he’s clearly suffered an acute comedectomy.

      Like

    3. The “Marriage of Freya” is in the Elder Edda, and any reader who sees it as *normalizing* cross-dressing, rather than as *using* it as a bawdy comedy trope, needs to have his head examined, as he’s clearly suffered an acute comedectomy.

      Like

  9. (Yes, repetitive and boring — look, I have someone in the house who loves Hallmark Christmas movies — but they’re NOT PRETENDING TO BE ART AND GROUND BREAKING. They don’t demand applause.)

    There are whole classes of print fiction like that. Or at least, there used to be. If you picked up a Carter Brown or Doc Savage novel you knew what you were going to get – undemanding engagement for a few hours, and everything wrapped up at the end.

    Roundly hammered by critics, but the Great Unwashed insisted on buying and reading them for decades, while Great Literature wound up on the remainder table.

    Liked by 2 people

  10. “…  while by the late oughts they were policing every detail of the story to see if you’d slipped in something that might oppose them. And then it moved wider.”

    As many here are likely aware, Brandon Sanderson’s fifth novel in his planned series of ten “blunt force object weapons” dropped just last week. I’m about halfway through the novel. And even though Sanderson is one of the best selling fantasy authors right now, and sells amazingly well, I’m getting suspicious that he’s coming under a lot of pressure from Tor (his publisher) in this particular area.

    Based on some of the things that I’ve read so far.

    Maybe this is stuff that he would have included if he’d written this novel twenty years ago. But I doubt it.

    Like

    1. Yeah, I’m seeing a lot of folks saying “Er…why the sudden influx of (still relatively minor, but obviously there) identity/sexual politics…?” in regards to the latest.

      For me, I can take or leave Mr. Sanderson. He’s a shrewd businessman, and I begrudge him not one of the dollars he has earned, and I do like some of his books (specifically, the 4th-6th Mistborn books. I tried to read the 7th, which follows those characters further, and couldn’t get into it. Stuff was neatly wrapped up in book 6, and book 7 feels like a “because so many fans wanted more, but I haven’t really got a good story for it”) I would think that Tor wouldn’t be *able* to pressure him into putting preferred-identity crap in his books, but you never know. And maybe it was under his own volition, in which case I go “meh” like I do several of his other books :p

      (I don’t actually care about characters being gay, provided that’s not their only character feature. Or because they are there for THE MESSAGE(tm). I liked A Few Good Men quite a lot–but it’s also one of the only ones I’ve encountered where the characters did NOT feel like they were gay for THE MESSAGE(tm) and it was one feature of well rounded characters. I won’t say an unimportant feature, given what the catalyst was, but not their only feature, and I liked that.)

      Liked by 1 person

      1. Mistborne 4 was the outlier that wasn’t supposed to exist (but he ended up writing anyway). 5-7 were conceived of as a trilogy after he wrote 4. They might have ended up replacing the Mistborne books that were supposed to have the “modern” setting, so he might go straight to the sci-fi Mistborne books with Hoid.

        I haven’t finished the most recent book yet. But so far –

        A very minor character is suddenly giving hints of being non-binary. A character who has never appeared before and likely will never be seen again reveals that she filed papers to change her gender to male. And finally, a very prominent supporting character who has been in all five novels so far has suddenly been revealed as gay despite having never so much as hinted at it in the earlier novels. He’s also secretly crushing hard on another supporting character, and I’m screaming inside right now hoping that character doesn’t reciprocate.

        This isn’t the first gay character. There’s a gay couple composed of very minor characters. But the stuff in this novel feels (so far) very ham-fistwd and “box check”, if that makes sense.

        Like

          1. Tor can pressure him however they want. So long as they keep it low level, it’s probably not enough to push him away (as one of their best selling authors, they probably provide a lot of perks for him). But by the same token, a constant stream of low level “suggestions” might have influenced him to throw a bone, as it were.

            Dunno.

            Ranette in the Wax and Wayne books was intended from the start to be a lesbian. And once I got tipped off to the fact that there was a character with same sex attraction in Alloy of Law, I was able to easily figure out it was her, even though she only had a brief – and grumpy – appearance. To the best of my knowledge, there wasn’t been even a whisper about the newly revealed gay character, prior to the sudden revelation in this novel. In fact, back when I used to hang out on the official Sanderson fan forum (which afaik he does not visit himself, to help avoid reading fan “suggestions” which run a little too close to what he actually plans to write), there was a female commentor who was very openly smitten with the character in question.

            He’s apparently also mentioned in the past that he was redoing the sequel to Rithmatist because of sensitivity issues involving the Aztec(!)-influenced culture that’s supposed to exist where the novel is set (It’s an alternate history world, with a vastly different geography in North America. And just for fun, he decided that the Joseans had conquered Eurasia. He served his LDS mission in South Korea.).

            And iirc, he’s been involved in a long-running podcast with Mary Three Names, though I don’t know if it’s still going. It might just be the company he keeps has influenced him into adding woke.

            Like

  11. But I wrote it because at 14 I read The Left Hand of Darkness thought “This is wrong”

    I was a few years younger (I found it by looking for more Heinlein in the local library) and just found it boring. Not sure I even finished it.

    Like

    1. SF Book Club for me. Got that, the Lathe of Heaven, and something vaguely Arthurian. Don’t recall much of the last, and it’s not worth looking up. Books went elsewhere years ago.

      Liked by 1 person

      1. I gave up with, “The Dispossesed,” and I was stuck in a hospital bed after major surgery. Went back to reading Ian Fleming and my girlfriend’s (very explicit) Man from UNCLE fan fic.

        Liked by 1 person

        1. Hmm. I read that too. but the details are really foggy. (Correction: the Arthurian one was MZB’s Mists of Avalon. Don’t recall finishing that book.)

          Read a few of the Uncle books. Went well with the Fleming James Bond books. (Tried a couple of the reboots; OK, but not screaming “Buy the sequels!”)

          Like

          1. David McDaniel wrote at least five UNCLE books, all good, some with characters from previous books. And he had fun – The Vampire Affair was, of course, set in Romania and The Rainbow Affair dropped multiple British spy/mystery characters in under aliases. (At one point Napoleon and Illya meet John Steed and Emma Peel in passing. One of them comments, “Well, I hope we don’t run into 00-what’s-his-name.” )

            Like

      2. Heh. My parents had a subscription to the SF Book Club. There were quite a few stinkers, but more than a few of my most favorite scifi/fantasy books were discovered via that club.

        Like

        1. I belonged off an on (tried a stint with Literary Guild, but the wall beckoned to too many of those), but I was keeping the subscription while I was working full time and getting an MS part time. When the TBR stack stayed high, even in the summers I wasn’t in class, I figured it was time to quit.

          Life got in the way for several years before I started reading SF, or any fiction again. Dropped the subscription to Analog, and never restarted. After Spider Robinson stopped doing the reviews, didn’t like the new columnist. Nor his own fiction. Oh well.

          Liked by 1 person

    2. Read Left Hand of Darkness in a sophomore High school sci fi class (yes weird private high school) at 15. Thought the story was somewhere between meh and OK. Beat reading say Leatherstockings, but just barely, Biology/evolution concepts seemed totally messed up. Clearly Ms LeGuin was doing this solely to make a point, although I felt it failed at that. Ran into The Dispossesed and Lathe of Heaven about the same time. Liked the latter and PBS did a 3 part series of it that I thought was perhaps even better than the book. The Dispossesed I found unreadable.

      Like

      2. The Lathe of Heaven series was surprisingly good, plus faithful to the original.

        (Premise, a man realizes his dreams actually come true. His unscrupulous therapist proceeds to “program,” him into dreaming about things like “reducing overpopulation,” and it turns out as badly as you’d expect).

        Like

        1. And doing something like that on a 1970’s PBS TV budget was genius. We could us 1/100 of that focus on story in Hollywood and get movies and TV that are at least enjoyable and don’t condescend to the viewer.

          Like

  12. As to the aforementioned play, I’d much rather watch a continuous loop of “Tromeo and Juliet,” also starring Lenny, a motorhead, from the great Troma Studios, than watching this bad girl-love fanfic riff off of one of The Bard’s greatest hits. At least Troma’s movie is fun to watch, for values of fun that actually equate to fun.

    Hmm, looking at my ‘soon to watch’ pile of DVDs I spy with my little eye Zeffirelli’s “Romeo and Juliet.” Must watch this to get rid of the eye-bleach image of a Supreme Court Justice dressed like a teenager trying to be hip in a combo of 70’s and 90’s chic clothing. Blargh.

    Like

    1. The original Romeo and Juliet left a bad taste in my mouth because of the way everyone insists insists insists on forcing it on high school students because “It’s got teens in it! So MUST be something that teens will totally love!”

      But as TPratchett put it “similarly, Moby Dick is popular among whales.”

      As near as I can determine, the play was intended as a “Look at those stupid young people being stupidly stupid!” farce. And so when young people express the attitude of “If this is Shakespeare, then we hate Shakespeare,” everyone is shocked – shocked! “Why don’t those high school students love it? They ought to love it! WHY DON’T THEY LOVE IT!?”

      And then the remakes and fix-attempts haven’t been any better. They’ve sometimes been bad in different ways, but I haven’t seen any that I consider good.

      Like

      3. And let’s face it: Shakespeare just adapted an already long-extant and popular story. He just turned it into something that made him quite a lot of money.

        I always joke that if Shakespeare lived now, he’d be in the same group as Steven Spielberg (before woke) and George Lucas (before people stopped telling him to let other people write his Star Wars scripts). He did blockbusters that appealed to the masses! (The only reason he is LITERATURE now is because his stuff actually survived. But English teachers forcing kids to read the plays, instead of watching them performed as they ought to be, is killing that fast.)

        Liked by 1 person

        1. The only reason he’s literature is because his stuff more depth and heft than similar writers. So, Joss Wheedon (Sp?) if he had the slightest idea what he’s doing and didn’t fly on art alone.
          BUT yeah, he was a hack. A good one.

          Like

          1. There we go! Whedon is a better comparison.

            And Shakespeare was and is a damn good hack. I especially love the comedies, which is where i think he really shone.

            Like

        2. When we did Julius Caesar, the teachers snagged a copy of the movie version. Wiki says it would have been the 1953 version with Marlon Brando, James Mason, and John Gielgud. Wiki says it was pretty faithful to the play.

          Didn’t see any movie versions of the others.

          For MacB, we did a fair number of the scenes in class. Mrs. S was really into that and Julius Caesar. (Had her twice. She had her quirks, including transferring to be sort of near her son as he went through classes and schools.)

          Like

      4. I actually got a giggle out of the movie “Rosaline” – which was billed as “Romeo’s ex-girlfriend” – a girl who was seriously miffed at being dumped by Romeo, in favor of her prettier cousin.

        Liked by 1 person

      5. I am one of those weirdos that liked “Romeo and Juliet” in 6th grade. Way preferred it over “Moby Dick” or “The Scarlett Letter.”

        I preferred the Zeffirelli version in Junior High over watching “Ms. Jane Pittman” for the hundredth time.

        Liked by 1 person

        1. I enjoyed Romeo and Juliet, but really, perhaps Much Ado about Nothing might be a better introduction for Shakespear?

          I also enjoyed The Scarlett Letter, but could not get into Moby Dick. It wasn’t required, but I thought I’d try it, and couldn’t get past the point where he explains in detail how a whale is really a big fish.

          Like

      6. We had a few in high school: Merchant of Venice, Julius Caesar, and The Scottish Play. Those got the most attention, but I also recall Taming of the Shrew* and possibly Hamlet. (Junior year was strictly American Lit, so we had Our Town.)

        We never did Romeo & Juliet.

        ((*)) There was a teen center somewhat affiliated with the HS, and for a combination fundraiser and show for elementary school kids, they’d do adaptations of various plays. Our 6th grade intern (football player, big and fast) got/had to play Tinkerbell in “Hook, Line, and Tinker”. In high school, they (the theater kids) did a slapstick version of Shrew. This probably was the same year we studied the play in English.

        Like

    2. That was supposed to be ‘also starring Lemmy from Motorhead.’ Yikes, how silly that I looked at the wiki citation and still screwed it up.

      Like

  13. Oh, do definitely keep writing the randomness you do! Yes-yes.

    And if they want your stories to be different…I have words for them. Several. Harsh. Unprintable.

    I just want your stories to be…on my Kindle.

    Liked by 1 person

  14. I make a distinction between speculative fiction stories that have a Thing as a counterfactual or as the result of a counterfactual in the story-world, while avoiding any suggestion of “We ought to try this Thing in the Real World.” And those that do make an implicit or explicit argument for “We ought to try this Thing in the Real World.”

    The first sort of story I can enjoy even when I believe that the Thing would be horrible if attempted in the real world. The second sort sets my teeth on edge when I disagree about the Thing being a good thing – and sometimes even when I agree about the Thing.

    Like

    1. S.M. Stirling’s Draka stories fall into that class for me. Interesting worldbuilding but that culture is just all the nasty bits of humanity (particularly one of the nastier ones Eugenics) rolled into a burrito of evil. Col’ Kratman’s Caliphate similarly shows a horrific alternate history and the US have to warp to contend with that evil. Stories like that can be very disturbing.

      Like

      2. Isn’t that a Flying Squirrel? :-D

        Dorothy: keeping squirrels out of bird feeders is a hard, hard task. Check out some of the Yoo Toob videos of squirrels running elaborate obstacle courses to steal bird seed.

        Those are not trained squirrels; they just figured out how to defeat each obstacle in turn as the owner added them.

        Like

  16. Some of the more refreshing anime’s have the female support characters all wanting to have the male protagonist’s child. Barely a handful with a female lead have that woman desiring to have any children with her Prince Charming stand in.

    Liked by 1 person

  17. I’m listening to the Whisperers (which I think, dear hostess, I picked up years ago on your recommendation). I keep having to switch to something else because it’s makes me so *angry*! (Alternating between The Two Towers and a true crime memoir) And part of what makes me angry is the ridiculous “we shall be FREEEEEEE!” combined with “we have to give up any hint of individuality and creativity, because That Is Bad, but it is for the Future!!(tm)” and the utter, UTTER insanity of it. And there are a worrying number of people who STILL WANT THIS. And somehow aren’t absolutely horrified by it.

    And I look at all the lefties on tv/the internet, who are still scratching their heads and throwing temper tanturms, because they cannot figure out why the peasants didn’t vote for them, and comfort myself that at least, at this point in history, they are also near-complete morons.

    Like

      1. It’s also very possible that it was another commenter here who recommended it :D

        Also, if you haven’t read it…unless you are in need of rocketing blood pressure, don’t. (The author is in no way sympathetic to Marxism, it’s just that even the basic description of the crap pulled after the October Revolution is likely to make any sane person’s blood boil!)

        Liked by 1 person

  18. Sarah, I almost never comment as your regular commenters do a great job, but when I got to the “dancing with a schadenboner” line I just starting laughing. I thought “now I have to comment”. Really great line! Keep up the great work.

    Like

Comments are closed.