Betrayal

This is not a post (solely) about writing. It’s also about politics, but first we have to get there.

Yesterday I was talking with a group with friends who also happen to write. (Look, there’s writer-friends, who are mostly friendly acquaintances because that’s at the center of what we have in common. And then there’s friends who are friends for a million other reasons and would probably be my friends even if their mind had never spun a single tale.)

Anyway, in this the topic of “Betrayal” came up. More than one author (some my friends) have had their fandom turn on them, suddenly, when they found out the author is actually not a raving, lunatic lefty. Or not a swinger. Or not a fur or in one remarkable case male. How they could have missed he was male is inexplicable, though I think that’s just like fandom turning on Heinlein suddenly when being male became the equivalent of being anti-woman. (In the heads of the deeply indoctrinated. Not any sane person.)

These situations are always profoundly wounding, because the fandom feels betrayed — even if they were talked into/spun into feeling betrayed. That’s something I don’t fully understand, because if I were capable of reacting that way I wouldn’t have arrived at my beliefs. But I know it happens — and the author is usually sucker punched and really, really, really feels betrayed.

Writing is weird and weirdly isolating. There is a reason writers need to have writer friends. When I wake up and realize I dreamed all night of an imaginary world, for any non-writer this would be alarming and possibly a sign of psychosis. For me it’s Tuesday and an occupational hazard. Other writers just sort of nod and sigh.

So writers have writer friends, but almost all of us who have some measure of success, even beginners with a knot of five or six readers, have fans they rely on. Because writing is communication. When I talk about my alpha readers (I promise, guys, you’ll get Chinchilla of Hope T-shirts before the end of the year. You poor sods earned them) I’m talking about the people who see stuff fresh off the brain. Sometimes their reactions tell me if I’m giving the wrong impression, which will need to be corrected, or when things that were merely okay to me will ellicit a “wow.” My own group for that is small, though the paid subscribers to substack serve as beta readers (THANKS YOU GUYS for not running screaming when I started posting No Man’s Land. That would have stopped me cold.) And then there’s a larger group of fandom I’m not that close to or close with. I like a good number of them, and if they ALL decided they hated me it would have a bad effect on my bottom line, but we’re not emotionally entangled.

To an extent I’m envious of the writers to whom the larger group is like an extended family, at least on the fans side. There’s a lot of support there, and it helps you and buoys you through the rough stuff. But then there is the risk. Specially if what you write is not–

How do I put this? It might be impossible for writers to write something they don’t believe in. Which is why I don’t tend to write aliens, except in short stories where I can get away with it without thinking too hard. My aliens tend to be modified humans. And I don’t think I could write a functioning, happy communist society. Because I can’t believe in it. At the same time it’s possible for incidental things in our writing to be things we don’t like, don’t approve of OR MORE IMPORTANTLY would never do in our daily lives. For instance, much to the relief of all and sundry I’m not a nudist. (I don’t disapprove of it, I just find it in general unaesthetic and it makes the furniture smell.) I don’t kill people left and right. If brooms existed I’d never, in the history of ever get on one to fly around (fear of heights AND no sense of direction.) I also have never — to date — turned into a dragon. And for the record, I would never kill a bunch of strangers to lay my eggs in them. Er. If I lay eggs. Which I don’t. Oh, and though I have gay characters, I’m not gay. In fact I am hard-core monogamous. (I was going to say I’m only attracted to men, but more and more every day I’m only attracted to man — and he’s sitting there, right now, being sick as a dog with a head cold. Ah well.)

However, because books are the closest we can come to living in someone else’s head, we tend to think of the character as the author. The right (broadly) is better at knowing there’s a difference and appreciating the writer anyway, because for decades all we had was well… commies who inadvertently wrote stuff we liked.

The left doesn’t have that experience. The people who fall on the broad left are also way more … socially conforming. (Not incidental, leftism has been a positional good for decades. So it attracts the socially conforming.) and therefore seem to identify HARDER with stories and characters and project them on to the author/director/actor.

So, when they find out this person is not in fact of them and doesn’t have the characteristic they love in the character, they become furious. They feel hurt and betrayed. And they go to war in the way of the socially adept.

Which in turn wounds the author because this is the author’s SUPPORT that suddenly turns and bites him/er on the butt.

I was thinking about it, and realized I’m not like that for various reasons. One of them being because I’ve been betrayed so often I have calluses. There really have been a lot of these. Some politics, some just because I’m oblivious about social duck speak, and will obliviate (totally a word) past the first two, three, ten warning signs, then be shocked at the sudden yet inevitable betrayal.

I’m not saying if my alpha group suddenly ejected me and started telling nasty tales about me I wouldn’t be hurt like a teen girl who finds her boyfriend kissing the cheerleader, but probably could be cured by rocky road ice cream and a week of moping. And then I’d find other alpha readers. It’s happened before.

Then I thought part of the reason of course is that my fiction writing which isn’t political (Oh, yes, look, it has my ideas in it, and to the extent everything including a character shooting someone is now political, that is inescapable, but–) I mean, I’m not writing to promote a political idea. I’m writing the story that won’t shut up. Political points come from being written by me and my being a political being.

Most of the betrayals and messy break ups have come from the political side. And I even GET that. My beliefs have … evolved. When I wrote Darkship Thieves (13 years before it was published) I was a far more red-meat Libertarian bordering on anarchist. But times go by and things happen to and around you, and you change. I abandoned open borders at 9/11. I hadn’t yet realized the cultural risk, but I realized the military/terror risk. And I had kids. So that became a “no” really fast. Then in the last ten years I’ve come to understand the cultural risk, because we’ve all been living with it. (Also seeing my kids grow and cope with visits to Portugal highlighted the difference cultures make.) I’ve — kicking, screaming and under protest — become less of a free market absolutist. Oh, no. Not inside our borders, but outside. Look, there is no way you can separate “trading freely with countries that aren’t free” from undue political influence and money used as weapons, and for the love of all that’s holy, ending up with our chips and our medicine being manufactured by people we can’t trust.

I guess my opinions change, as things happen. I’ve become a lot harder in some ways. Scar tissue in the soul will do that. (10/7. I’ll never be okay. It hardened my opinion that some cultures are not fixable.)

Thing is, I also know the right has experience betrayals, and I understand that too. There have been people on the right who carry the flag for a while and then change, inexplicably over night. And none of us knows the risk factors other than that most of them came from the left, and there’s a chance they are a minority or otherwise belong to a group claimed by the left.

It’s never fully explained. The person themselves don’t seem aware of having changed. And the readers/listeners/watchers are left contemplating a transformation sudden and complete that we can’t help but experience as betrayal. This is not gradual change, like what I’ve gone through over the years, but sudden screaming fury.

I’m not going to hypothesize. I mean anything from possession to blackmail is on the table, though it’s probably particularly for those going against type just the attrition of being hated — really really hated. They bring the hellfire forge out for us — by the left, and distrusted by the right. Humans are social creatures. Isolate them and at some point they break.

I broke long ago, and am not sure I can break further.

Can I prevent you feeling betrayed? Probably not. A lot of people felt betrayed I didn’t think Russia is wonnerful TM. (Look you, I’d never think a totalitarian regime is wonnerful, even if it seem to support “right” values. Also, I’m afraid I know too much about Russian History and culture to even think their values are our own. I also won’t think China as currently constituted or in any form possible in the near future is wonnerful. I also think blackpill fights on the side of the enemy and I’ll never swallow it. Insert bit from Heinlein about being free even if chained. Will never surrender.)

What I want to say is that the problems I’ve had getting in arguments with long established fans are because either they’re trying to convince me of something I know is impossible, or because they are in violent agreement with me but refuse to realize it. And I have very little patience for being yelled at. I get enough of that from the cats, thank you.

But even when I get very upset, it’s not because they — or I — changed completely overnight.

Will I have the same opinions in ten years or twenty, supposing I’m alive? no. Things will happen and as facts impose upon my thoughts, my thoughts change.

However barring brain injury I’ll never change overnight. And if my opinion changes, I try to explain why. And some people — Foxfier, RES to name two — have pushed me back from forming and weird convictions by beating me with facts and figures which after research and investigation proved correct and my opinion wrong.

Anyway, not sure if any of this makes any sense. Just: I understand betrayal hurts. I’m a multiply-scalded cat, which is why I’m less likely to break completely.

As for the rest of you? Carry on. Even when betrayal breaks out heart, we must carry on.

Or as my grandmother said “Make your gut into a new heart and forge on.”

You’re allowed to be tired, and despondent, and eat rocky road ice cream even though it’s bad for you. But be not afraid. Through fire and betrayal, through falling and picking ourselves up: in the end we win, they lose. Even if not today.