Leaderboard

fixed it

So, for the past couple of weeks my data feeds have been blowing up with the latest fiasco in the greater realm of Science Fiction and Fantasy fandoms, in this case whether or not Johnathon Ross was a good choice for hosting the Hugos, which basically boiled down to whether or not you thought a late night comedian has the ability to tune his act to his particular audience or whether you thought that Ross was going to re-enact Macfarlane's hosting of the Oscars and spend his entire time on stage making offensive jokes at the expense of the nominees and winners. This only a few months after the SFWA got up in arms over whether or not it is impolitic for its editorial staff to mention that someone they knew looked good in a swimsuit, Just How Exactly Offensive Is That Fur Bikini On the Cover? (Picture a psychologist holding up a paper cut out, asking, “Have you had it up to here? What about here? A little higher? A little lower? Why, yes, I did do my doctoral thesis on Freud, how could you tell?”) and not-really-arguing over who is responsible for preventing sexual harassment at conventions. (As far as I could tell the argument was between people screaming, “Sexual harassment is bad!” on one side, and people on the other side getting slammed for saying, “No shit, and that's why it is the convention's responsibility to police itself, could we go back to figuring out why people are getting screwed in their contracts?”) If that seems like an odd intro for what amounts to an opinion on criticism, understand that there's a common theme behind all the complaints being filed – representation. The argument goes that if there were more feminist heroes, more feminist storylines, more feminism in general, that all these problems would go away, or at least be forced into such a narrow space that the offenders would become more a sort of historical curiosity, as if their actions and beliefs were the sort of thing one might see posted on a plaque in a museum exhibit on ancient superstitions, right next to the bits about frogs being spontaneously generated from mud and cats being servants of the devil. As authors, our job is to keep these sort of things in mind as we craft our characters. Problem is, I don't think its a viable strategy, at least not in and of itself, because the same people advocating this strategy are the same people sabotaging it. Let's go back to the titular Frenchman for a moment. At some point in the 1960s Roland Barthe got up on his soapbox and pronounced the Author had died. According to Barthe no matter who the writer was, what their background knowledge of the materials, or what their intent with the narrative, the meaning of the text lay solely in the hands of the reader. Critics around the world rejoiced as they discovered a power over their texts that really wasn't all that new but gave them something to debate about endlessly, and gleefully spread this message to the masses, where it quickly became entangled with everything else being flung down from the ivory towers of academia. Nor was it any coincidence that it quickly got adopted by the various civil rights and social equality movements that were undergoing their own renaissance at the time. People now had the ability to decide for themselves whether or not a work fit their individual ideology. So now let's bring it back to feminism. What is feminism? Well, to paraphrase Anne Bishop, “She's a feminist, dear, so anything she does is feminist.” No? Not helpful? Well, that's sort of the point. Feminism isn't any one thing, but a collection of ideals that individuals and groups are striving to bring about. There are a few solid, concrete objectives such as equal rates of pay, but those are few and far between. Most objectives are broad, such as access to medical care. You can get general agreement that womens health is a thing and that it needs to be handled properly, but try to decide what “handled properly” means and you'll start seeing factions form around different solutions. From there everything sort of tail spins as people decide what feminism means for them...and that anyone who disagrees therefore can't be feminist. That's where a lot of problems will start for you as an author. We live in a world where the general mentality is that if you do not agree with someone wholeheartedly, that if you do not march in lock step with them and do everything exactly the way they want it done, then you are not simply someone who disagrees with them but someone who is Other, and the Other is the Enemy of Progress, and the Enemy must be defeated At All Cost. Take, for example, the two characters of Barbara Everette and Janea from John Ringo's Special Circumstances series. The first is a soccer-mom-turned-demon slayer. Master of half a dozen schools of martial arts and is good with a gun. When the big, burly FBI agents run into trouble, they run to her for help. Sic her on anything supernatural, and you know who is going to walk away the winner. Oh...she's a devout Christian who doesn't support abortion? True feminists support abortion! Not a feminist character! Ok, well, Janea then! Asatru warrior, called to do battle. High Priestess of Freya, wields a mean battle axe, and almost as powerful as Barb. And hey, no problem with abortion! Oh...she's a high priced stripper/call girl? Never mind the fact she is the priestess of a fertility goddess! She only serves to fulfill the sexual desire of men! Not a feminist character! Is your character a nurturing mother and housewife juggling seven kids and a crack pot inventor husband? Well, obviously she should be more modern and be making her way through the workplace! Not a feminist character! Is your character an engineer who finds herself doing battle with creatures out of nightmares in claustrophobic spaces? Well, she doesn't act womanly enough, so not a feminist character! Are you writing a top tier forensic anthropologist? Well, better hope you didn't give her a minor social impairment or otherwise she, too, won't be a feminist character! You could write about a high powered corporate executive who is also a single mother trying to juggle a girlfriend with her presidential campaign and still not end up with a feminist character because she put cream in her coffee when real women take it black. Oh, and don't be surprised if real world associations come back to frag your feminism. Prime example is Baen books. Baen has a reputation for being “that publisher”, as in they publish a bunch of rather politically outspoken authors including a bunch who don't so much lean to the right as they have to built fortified bunkers from which they can take all comers. So it isn't unusual to see someone like David Weber openly criticized for his lack female and colored characters. This despite: - His best known series stars an Asian/Irish/Hispanic woman. -The most powerful nation in those books is led by a Queen who is black. -The second most powerful nation is also led by a woman. -The primary spin off series stars a black woman. And that is just the primary-major characters. Going through the full cast would take multiple pages, just like the appendixes attached to the back end of most of his books. And Weber isn't even that politically outspoken. But since he shares a publisher with Larry Correia (author of the Grimnoir Chronicles, which co-stars a teenage Oakie girl in 1930s magical America) Tom Kratman (Amazon Legion, State of Disobedience, which features a woman governor of Texas running a revolution) and John Ringo (Special Circumstances, Black Tide Rising, Troy Rising post-Live Free or Die all of which center on female leads) he gets lumped in with that bunch of thuggish devotees to the hetero white man. This isn't a problem limited to Baen, though. If you support someone who says the wrong things or who has an alternative viewpoint, then be prepared to take a bit of collateral damage. So what does this mean to you, the socially conscious aspiring author? Well, basically you're fucked. On the other hand, you were going to be fucked anyway, because trying to please everyone at all times is a futile task. Even Frozen got slammed as being, alternately, anti-feminist or not feminist enough because of something Anna or Elsa did that someone somewhere didn't like. Trying to write the “perfect” feminist character according to the Social Justice Warrior types is like trying to follow the directions of a hundred different chefs, each speaking their own language, half of whom have religious objections to some of the ingredients, half of whom are allergic to some of the ingredients, and half of whom just don't like the taste of the rest of the ingredients. And if you think that is too many halves, they don't. What you should do is write strong characters, regardless of type. Don't be afraid to kill of a woman because you are afraid of being accused of stuffing people into fridges, just make sure their death has actual meaning and they don't go out like a chump. Don't be afraid to write a spiteful bitch if that is what the character calls for, just make sure that all your women aren't spiteful bitches and keep in mind that while everyone has flaws, they also usually have a redeeming quality or two. Don't be afraid to lock the princess up in the tower, just make sure she isn't doing so passively. She doesn't need to be running around judo chopping guards in the back of the neck while scaling sheer stone cliffs by her fingernails, but ask yourself, “If I was a prisoner in her position, how would I go about making myself the biggest pain in the ass possible?” Don't ask people what they want to see; instead watch them, and then model your characters off their behaviors. I'll end by noting this isn't a problem limited solely to feminism and the desires of its adherents, but applies in general to most topics of identity. As authors, we have no control over the experiences and demands of our readers. On the other hand, and arrogant this may sound, they are coming to us for entertainment. They can no more force us to write outside of our capabilities than we can force them to read what we write, and while we should always be challenging ourselves as creators we should not let that be used as an excuse to be blindly led down paths we would not be able to navigate ourselves. A good story demands diversity simply because the world is a diverse place, but trying to follow a checklist to get there results in a bland, cookie cutter product identical to everything else following that same checklist. Instead simply accept that there will be people unhappy with the worlds you create, acknowledge their arguments where appropriate, and continue to delight those who enjoy what you write.

30580 That's brilliant

I've never encountered those Social Justice folks. I'm sure they'd not have any problems with my seminal story, "Mike Rapes A Dyke."

Bless you, equine hell-deity.

I'd also be inclined to capitalize the D in "Don't," because "Don't shoot the messenger" is a complete sentence. And for the love of mods, could somebody correct the spelling in the title of this thread?

I came of age in the 70s, and honestly, the term feminism has been abused, mutated, morphed, and Photoshopped into something Gloria Steinem and Bella Abzug would poke gingerly with a stick before calling for a tactical strike (delivered by a completely kick-ass woman fighter pilot). I have no use for the SJW terrorists who run rampant waving plagiarized banners and trying to earn their metaphoric balls on the back of someone else's sacrifice. You want cred with me? Grow up and become Rosa Parks, or Marie Curie, or Hedy Lamarr. BUILD it up, don't tear it down and think you deserve praise, because you don't, not until you contribute something more than being a cyber-bully.

Hey everyone WOW! The turnout of ideas from the end of Chapter 20 has been incredible! And not just for the number of opinions both on here and in my private messages, but for the content. You've all provided very good, very strong reasoning for both sides of the issue. I think I've come to a decision on what's going to happen in Chapter 21 but I reserve the right to alter it as needed should I see an extra compelling reason in the opposite direction. What did I decide to do? Well, that would be telling In answer to what some have pointed out and asked me about...yes, I did go through a bit of what Jack does in Chapter 20 after a good friend of mine killed himself. I saw him literally less an hour before he died and it's always kind of haunted me. I didn't actually see it happen, of course, but it hit me like a sledgehammer. For Jack, I had to sit down and honestly delve deep into those feelings I had and try to imagine what it would have been like had I seen my friend kill himself. That's partly why this chapter took a bit longer; writing those parts took a toll on me and I would occasionally have to leave the computer for a while just because it was difficult to go back there. SO, dour note aside, thank you so much for the feedback and, by all means, keep it coming. I will do my usual updates with the progress of Chapter 21 and I plan on doing at least one more 'readers poll' somewhere down the line

Not only is your idea possible, but highly likely if the woman has not learned how to desensitize herself to overcome the trauma of her past. The escaped woman would be paralyzed by her past when facing her previous master without warning, especially if she hears trigger words or phrases, or sees items that she could not defend against during captivity. Post Traumatic Stress tends to blind a person to the now they are standing within, and their brain misfires so they believe they are in a much different place and time where they cannot fight back in many cases. The sight of a specific item can also cause the same extreme reaction that throws the person mentally into another time mentally when they were completely unable to protect their lives and bodies. Smells can also cause the same thing to happen. I've heard of combat vets returning from war who flip out over smelling burned gun powder used in fireworks. They think they are back in a full blown war zone without any way to escape mentally so long as the smell of gunpowder is present. If you learn about PTSD, you'll find many different triggers to choose between and utilize unfortunately. Hearing repeated phrases from a period of extreme vulnerability/defenselessness before learning how to defend herself would throw her mentally back into that period before she learned to be strong and to defend herself. I survived abuse in my marriage when I was younger. My family rescued me and my infant son. they had to make sure that as the divorce proceeded, the beast could not see me without their presence. His words and smell caused flashbacks to happen to me with my ex until I found a way to break my responses to said triggers, and heal from the past so I did not have hard flashbacks that blinded me completely any longer. Abusers love to repeat certain types of phrases as a rule, so I could totally see the scenario playing out that you suggest. The hardest part of any healing is simply learning what the trigger phrases and words were so the victim can fight the habit of losing consciousness of where they actually are at that point. Desensitizing is difficult, but it can be done. Hope that helps you out somewhat.

I may post a semi-raw chapter to give readers something to look at if I have not been posting much because of the real world situations that happen, but I replace such chapters as soon as is humanly possible with grammatically repaired versions. I tend to use human speak in dialog because people don't use proper grammar when they talk to each other as a rule. However, I am very strict with my own writing when it comes to all other elements. To my thinking, grammar checking programs are the most important tool any writer can purchase. I have never had interest in cell phones or text message programs of that classification. On facebook, I am constantly lost when I run into text speak outside of the terms LOL, ROFL, WEG, and LMAO. I avoid text speak because I have never understood what was attractive about it. Laughter is one of my favorite things, so I do tend to abuse the above terms. Also, I loved the Weird Al song. Word Crimes made me laugh a lot so thanks for sharing that one @GeorgeGlass. I have seen a number of text speak stories on various sites across the web. Because I do not know the lingo, I must back pedal to find a different story. In some respects, the lost art of grammar is a sad statement about how our society has become fixated on doing everything faster, and more efficiently to the point it no longer has any meaning at all. We are losing too much of what once made civilization great. Fast and gratuitous actions only seems to increase the pressure of consume more ideals that are sold constantly on the radio, and on televisions around the globe. Civilization is losing a lot of what made it special because of the lost art of grammar usage I believe.