Cat Rambo's Blog, page 11

Rambo Academy Campus Calendar for March 2021

Zoom links will be available on Patreon, pinned in #localannouncements on the Discord server, and available via the !calendar command on Discord.

How do you get access to these events? Details are here, but basically you can subscribe through Patreon or Paypal. There are free scholarships.

Event explanations:

Unmoderated co-working. Log on and work with other Chez Rambo peeps. Does not have to be writing. Structure is up to the participants.Moderated co-working. Cat or designated other will lead three thirty minute sprints, with check-ins to say how we’re doing in between. Does not have to be writing.Chillax and chat:. Hang out and craft or clean your virtual or real workspace while we talk about stuff.Story discussion group. Story changes every two weeks; titles and links will be posted on Discord and Patreon. Additional resources will be in #thepanel channel on Discord.Writing Games. Bring a prompt if you like. We all write for 10 minutes to the same prompt, then people who want to share theirs. Then we do that a couple more times. Great jolt of creativity.

All days
12-3 AM Midnight co-working (unmoderated)
8:30-10:30 AM Morning co-working (unmoderated)
1-3 PM Afternoon co-working (moderated, weekdays only)

Weekly Events:
Tuesdays/Thursdays:
6:30-830 PM Evening co-working (unmoderated)

Wednesday:
11-12 PM Story discussion (1st & 3rd Wed) or writing games morning session (2nd & 4th Wed)
4-5 PM Story discussion (2nd & 4th Wed) or writing games evening session (1st & 3rd Wed)

Friday:
10-11 AM Chill and chat

Upcoming Classes

The Freelancer’s Toolkit: Turning Writing Into a Business with James L. Sutter Session I, Saturday, March 6, 2021, 9:30-11:30 AM Pacific Time.Flash Fiction Workshop with Evan J. Peterson, Saturday, March 6, 2021, 1:00-3:00 PM Pacific Time.Project Management for Writers with Jennifer Brozek, Sunday, March 7, 2021, 9:30-11:30 AM Pacific Time.Book Promotion on a Budget with Catherine Lundoff, Sunday, March 7, 2021, 1:00-3:00 PM Pacific Time.The Freelancer’s Toolkit: Turning Writing Into a Business with James L. Sutter Session II, Saturday, March 13, 2021, 9:30-11:30 AM Pacific Time.Tarot for Writers Workshop with Monica Valentinelli, Saturday, March 13, 2021, 1:00-3:00 PM Pacific Time.Six Slippery Sins: Good Advice That Goes Astray with Kay Kenyon, Saturday, March 20, 2021, 9:30-11:30 AM Pacific Time.TV Structure for Novella Writers with Margaret Dunlap, Saturday, March 20, 2021, 1:00-3:00 PM Pacific Time.CLASS IS FULL; WAITLIST ONLY Reasonable Consequences: Building a Better Alternate Universe with Seanan McGuire, Sunday, March 21, 2021, 9:30-11:30 AM Pacific Time. Waitlist will receive advance chance to sign-up for the next class given by McGuire, which may or may not be this topic.Beyond Bipeds: When Aliens Look Nothing Like Us with Evan J. Peterson, Sunday, March 21, 2021, 1:00-3:00 PM Pacific Time.Leveling Up: Ten Things to Try When You Keep Hearing No with Kate Heartfield, Saturday, March 27, 2021, 9:30-11:30 AM Pacific Time.

Video: Twitter Basics for Creatives

What’s Coming Up In Early March, 2021

Here’s what classes are coming up for the Rambo Academy in the next couple of weeks.

Systems of Magic: How to Use Your Magic to Enrich Your Worldbuilding with Cat Rambo, Saturday, February 27, 2021, 9:30-11:30 AM Pacific Time. Witches Are People Too: Writing Well-Rounded Pagans and Spellcrafters with Evan J. Peterson, Saturday, February 27, 2021, 1:00-3:00 PM Pacific Time. A Mixed Bag: Combining and Manipulating Genre Conventions with Tracy Townsend, Sunday, February 28, 2021, 9:30-11;30 AM Pacific Time. Writing Masculinity with Sam J. Miller, Sunday, February 28, 2021, 1:00-3:00 PM Pacific Time. Class is full; waitlist only.The Freelancer’s Toolkit: Turning Writing Into a Business with James L. Sutter Session I, Saturday, March 6, 2021, 9:30-11:30 AM Pacific Time. Flash Fiction Workshop with Evan J. Peterson, Saturday, March 6, 2021, 1:00-3:00 PM Pacific Time. Project Management for Writers with Jennifer Brozek, Sunday, March 7, 2021, 9:30-11:30 AM Pacific Time. Book Promotion on a Budget with Catherine Lundoff, Sunday, March 7, 2021, 1:00-3:00 PM Pacific Time.The Freelancer’s Toolkit: Turning Writing Into a Business with James L. Sutter Session II, Saturday, March 13, 2021, 9:30-11:30 AM Pacific Time. Tarot for Writers Workshop with Monica Valentinelli, Saturday, March 13, 2021, 1:00-3:00 PM Pacific Time.

Live classes are taught online, are limited to 15 participants, and require a reliable Internet connection, although in the past participants have logged on from coffee shops, cafes, and even an airplane. A webcam is suggested but not required.

Find more registration details here.

Opinion: More Fuel for the Recent Baenfire

In the couple of days since I first spoke about the furor evoked by Jason Sanford’s criticism of a specific subforum of Baen’s Bar, the discussion boards sponsored by Baen Books, for encouraging armed insurrection and white supremacy, a good bit has happened*.

One notable outcome is that DisCon has removed Toni Weiskopf as a Guest of Honor, making this statement:

DisCon III condemns the violent and hostile content found within Baen Books’ forums. We also cannot condone the fact such content was enabled and allowed to ferment for so long. We want to make it clear abusive behavior is not, and will not be, tolerated at DisCon III. Such behavior goes entirely against our already established policies concerning inclusivity and creating a welcoming environment for our members, which can be found here: https://discon3.org/about/inclusion/.

We knew simply saying those words with no actions to back them up would be unacceptable. Too often, we have seen individuals and organizations say they are on the right side of issues yet do nothing to act on those words. We knew we had to take a hard look at our own position and take action based on our established policies.

As a result, after discussion with her, we have notified Toni Weisskopf we are removing her as a Guest of Honor for DisCon III.

Many authors and some con-runners have weighed in on the choice, from all sides of the fence.

Some of the writers championing free speech are, in my opinion, working from a notion of a past version of the Internet, the world of the Well and lively debate and intellectual exchange and alla that. That ignores the fact that nowadays speech on the Internet has been weaponized, used by world powers as part of today’s fourth-generation warfare.

It cannot be mentioned often enough that the events of January 6, the ones Republicans and other conservatives are working so hard to downplay and erase, was not a case of a rowdy bunch busting up a Starbucks. It was an organized effort that destroyed and stole government property, in which people died and it would not have taken much more for a pre-planned section of that mob to use the chaos in order to kidnap and kill government officials. Camestros Felapton illustrates this in an infographic here.

Expressing admiration and support for an armed insurrection is not illegal, nor is talking about how you and your family were there watching the events from the sidelines, as with one longtime Baen author. Nor is discussing how to engineer the downfall of American cities
or opining that people of color were the best to recruit to wage violence, as another longtime Baen author was. But the Baen forums, by multiple accounts, had been swarmed in recent months by new users who found the established culture welcoming. If you don’t think domestic terrorists weren’t going through them with an eye to recruitment, you are — in my opinion — somewhat naive as to how the Internet works. The FBI is not. Many excellent related points are made here.

David Weber’s stated he won’t go to cons that disinvite guests. I agree that often these dis-invitations happen in a way that ignores the fact that a GoH appearance is something that is scheduled months in advance, and which you shape other events and appearances around, sometimes saying no to those other gigs as a result. Inviting/disinviting is essentially saying “here is a shiny special thing for you” and then yanking it away, no matter what emotions the person doing the yanking are experiencing. Disinviting someone shouldn’t have to happen and cons need to be better about that.

By that, I mean inviting a GoH needs to include anticipating situations in advance by doing due diligence. If a potential guest is advocating something your attendees are going to find awful in their social media and not showing signs of moving away from that, then maybe they’re going to say something in their social media further on down the road that would make you disinvite them. Maybe be smart now and avoid being awful to them — because how awful does being uninvited to something that was a celebration of you, that you would have been looking forward to enjoying have to be? Disney tried this with the firing of Gina Carano, a move based less on wanting to do the right thing than to avoid controversy further on down the road — and sure enough, Carano followed pattern and created it, at which point it was revealed that Disney had severed the relationship with her months earlier.

At the same time, there are obvious circumstances under which I would definitely expect a convention to dis-invite a guest no matter at what point they arose. Criminal behavior is real high on that list. I once worked for a company where a guy brought a live grenade to a meeting. Not wanting to be in the same physical space as that guy anymore was, in my opinion, pretty valid.

As far as Weiskopf’s removal as GoH goes, it’s not a call that anyone would have made lightly, particularly given that they had to know that either way there was going to be considerable, outspoken public opinion about it. Running conventions is tough, and people who do it invest literal years in bidding for and running a WorldCon. Fan conventions like WorldCon are usually not for-profit events usually, as opposed to comic-cons, which are profit-driven. As such, I find it dubious that any amount of public calls or attention would sway the decision.

Taking down all of the forums rather than the ones specifically mentioned was a reasonable choice in many ways. If it had only been the politics subforum, the next, absolutely inevitable thing to happen would have been for the users to immediately move into other forums and thrash around disrupting those with their protests.

At the same time, taking down all of the forums made uninvolved people inconvenienced by the act and very angry as as a result. I can speak from experience that hell hath no fury like a user who can’t log in to get their daily fix, and I suspect a good deal of the conflation of Sanford’s article about the forums and a coordinated attack on the publisher comes from the removal of the forums in their entirety.

Is Weiskopf’s removal a punishment for that choice — as it will surely be read? I don’t think so. It’s more a product of what a convention is, and what it represents, and wanting to honor guests who’ve made the field more awesome.

Weiskopf has definitely done some awesome things, including inspiring other women by becoming the owner and leader of Baen. Since taking over for Jim Baen in 2006, Weisskopf has created and implemented an innovative e-publishing program light years ahead of the efforts of other publishers, established the Jim Baen Memorial Short Story Award, the Baen Fantasy Adventure Award, and the Baen Best Military SF & Adventure SF Reader’s Choice Award. She co-chaired DeepSouthCon 50 in 2012 and served as the official Editor of the SFPA, the Southern Fannish Press Alliance, and edited an history of Southern Fandom.She has edited six anthologies, in which she’s helped find and nurture new voices. Baen itself is responsible for some terrific writers, including Lois McMaster Bujold. It cannot be overlooked that it is an indie publisher in times increasing dominated by corporate alliances.

There is no question all of that adds up to exerting a major, positive force on the field. And that’s what you want in a GoH, partially because you expect they will also be a major, positive influence on the programming. As I’ve talked about before, programming is an art. Who you pick as GoH is part of that. Often programming starts with the GoHs and fills in around them. And one of the (reasonable) expectations of a GoH is that they participate in a hearty chunk of programming. The GoHs are the literal faces of the convention, smiling out from the convention advertising and program books.

Bearing that in mind, DisCon had to ask was Is supporting a place where a bunch of people spend their time expressing their hatred of other members of the F&SF community something that makes a field more awesome? as well as What do we do, knowing that a choice to keep Weiskopf will be read as an endorsement of those words?

Words that support an armed coup. Words saying people with differing political beliefs should be killed. Words urging violence towards other people.

We talk about free speech, but with free speech comes responsibility for one’s words. Baen cannot disavow responsibility for those words, regardless of whether or not they happened because someone was asleep at the wheel. One of the reasons a business cannot ignore the importance of moderating any boards that they run is that they are responsible for the words posted on there. They can’t just turn over the keys to the car and say “drive this where you like.” They’re still enabling that car to bounce along the highway, swerving to hit any pedestrian it suspects of being from a particular group. It’s still their vehicle. And when you are a leader, whether you like it or not, you are responsible for what is happening under your leadership, whether you’re aware of it or not, because that’s part of the role. Weiskopf is not an employee of the company; she doesn’t help just run it, but is one of its owners and profits from what it chooses to do. And that’s part of the choice.

Baen can continue as it has, and lean even harder into its conservative audience by choosing to enable and host the “liberals aren’t people” rhetoric, but if it does, it means they’re definitely saying “here is our very specific bunting-draped market niche,” and leaving a lot of other readers, a number of whom are liberal, out in the cold. That choice is also one that says “hate’s a good marketing strategy,” which may be savvy capitalism but I personally think equates with ethical bankruptcy.

If Bean makes that choice, it will not be the only entity using that; we’ve had four years of government based on exactly that, and it will continue to be profitable for the people printing the QAnon t-shirts or assembling the dogwhistle factories for quite some time. We’ve seen some of the usual uninvolved suspects jump into the fray trying to garner attention. My hope is, that with time and the rise of generations that have seen this approach and how hollow it is, it’ll stop being so popular. I, for one, hail our new Tiktok and Hive overlords exercising the most punk attitude of all: kindness.

Or Baen can be what it claims to be, and work to appeal to a wide range of readers, some of whom are being driven off by the current rhetoric being encouraged there on the forums the company sponsors and runs. That’s not a novel approach.

I’m nudging up against two thousand words in my polishing of this, and I suspect the overall event is becoming one of those things a lot of people are devoting words to on the Internet. I do want to talk in an essay sometime about online swarming and the ethics of authors siccing their readers on people, but I’ll yield the mike for now.

*Sanford has been forced to take his Patreon and Twitter private, while members of an organized campaign, in between composing clever and usually highly inaccurate sneers about his writing career, have been contacting his employers demanding he be fired for expressing his free speech outside of that job. Cognitive dissonance? That doesn’t seem to have dissuaded them. As a co-owner of Baen, Weiskopf faces a bit less economic pressure from the fall-out of his article than Jason and his family do.

Opinion: On Baen Books, Moderating Discussion Boards, & Political Expression

A few days ago writer Jason Sanford published an investigative report into what was happening on the discussion boards known as “Baen’s Bar,” run by the fantasy and science fiction publisher Baen Books, specifically in its Politics group, where people were posting in support of the Jan 6 coup attempt and suggesting ways it could be better organized and executed. Baen, as well as some authors, replied. Others replied to them. Now I’m weighing in too.

To put this in context, let me say: I have decades of experience with online moderation. I have been a moderator on three lively BBSes, a game discussion board, and was for a good time the head moderator of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America’s private discussion forums, including during the period the organization’s board ejected Vox Day. I may have spent more words discussing moderation policy with Jerry Pournelle than any other human being (I understand some ARPANET administrators might also be in the running.) In trying to navigate all that, I’ve done a lot of reading about online culture, communication, and how text works. My friends tell me I have good people skills.

In the interest of full disclosure, I’m technically a Baen author. I have a story in a couple of Baen anthologies and another in an upcoming one. I also was the main decider in the choice to give Toni Weisskopf a Kate Wilhelm Solstice award in 2016 in acknowledgment of how much she has shaped the field. I have never been on their discussion boards, as far as I can remember.

As such, I have a Lot of Opinions, and a few observations.

1) Boards have to have moderators and rules, and superloose ones like “no hitting” are dangerous. One person’s affectionate verbal love tap of greeting may be someone else’s roundhouse swing. This is why moderation is exhausting, usually thankless, and involves a lot of arguing with people about why their posts needed to be amended or removed. I salute anyone who tries to run one, let alone successfully. One thing that makes the SFWA ones work nowadays is patient moderation plus a willingness of the overall administration to back the moderators up.

SFWA does this because such moderation is important for an organization. If you want a board to be useful to all of your users, you keep it a place where if someone posts a question, they get an answer, rather than a series of insults and a Tubgirl shot. Otherwise, why are you putting money into maintaining those boards? For a company like Baen, they are an extension of the business and should represent it in a way that serves all, rather than a small vocal portion, of your customer base.

2) Those moderators create and sustain the culture of a discussion board. I read Eric Flint’s essay up to the point where he said “a never-heard-of-him who uses the monicker of Theoryman”. And then I stopped, because while I respect Eric and his opinion, the difference between Theoryman being some rando and the fact that Theoryman is actually a long-time board moderator is such a big one that it feels like Eric went into Sanford’s piece already angry and determined what he would find, to the point where he skimmed for stuff to corroborate that and skipped everything else.

There is a pattern where authors defending these posts all take the stance of “oh, they were so awful I personally stopped reading them but I am still sure they couldn’t have held anything harmful.” My first reaction to the observation, “I stopped visiting “Politics” about… oh, I dunno. Twenty-three years ago?” is that perhaps what he says about it 23 years ago will be somewhat more informed than “here’s what’s happening 23 years later as people with a certain amount invested in this argument have described it to me.” (And it seems contradictory doing that when also maintaining Mercedes Lackey/Larry Dixon’s experience of getting driven off the boards 23 years ago was so long ago that it’s meaningless.)

3) Talking about politics has always been fraught. Nowadays even more so. In 2020, I tried adding a politics channel to my Discord server, and shattered one of my most valued friendships in the process. We no longer have that channel. And it cannot be ignored that this year’s attempt to take our country by force was organized on electronic message boards and coordinated in the same way.

There are plenty of places online where people can talk politics. So many of them, in such a variety of flavors. Saying “this can’t happen here” is very different than “This can’t happen everywhere.” Take that cigarette outside and smoke it, but you can’t do it here in the bar. I would be heartily surprised if multiple alternative places for the regular posters to talk about the best way to take down American cities haven’t already sprung up, and of course the meta-discussion of all of this “cancel culture” is freely taking place online.

4) Free speech is a great ideal, up to the point where it’s being used to promote killing people. Popper’s Paradox applies.

Speech can also hurt people. The effect on a person’s physical — not to mention mental — health from verbal abuse has been documented over and over again. And, as we have seen, speech can incite riots that kill people. Want more? Search on “online trolls drove to suicide” but prepare yourself. For some, it’s their victory condition. Or was that just a joke, hee hee, they say, denying their own words in the middle of saying them.

5) What “if you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen,” aka “people who are too weak should avoid this discourse” says is “only certain people get to speak here.” And that’s shitty, no matter how many noble words you try to dress it up with. As an analogy, we make things wheelchair accessible so those folks can enjoy them, rather than declaring everything off-limits to them.

Or maybe that’s just a stance some folks are simply incapable of comprehending. The reaction to the idea of a character in a wheelchair in D&D 5E was overall positive, but it got heartily derided by some people who didn’t take a minute to think about how much that might matter to another player.

I am so tired of this argument, which so often gets used by people who have, indeed, fought the good fight but somewhere along the line also acquired the idea that only people who’ve gotten punched in the face for speaking get to talk. That’s what underlies someone talking about “swooning” or “pearl-clutching” and don’t even get me started on some of the gender stuff that gets draped onto that rhetoric like a six year old putting tinsel on a Christmas tree.

But I also want to point out that some people are getting pretty hot under the collar about an attack on the publisher, when it’s an article that talks specifically about the message boards and the behavior happening on them. Info about the publisher hosting those boards is provided for context. It does seem possible for a publisher to be both publishing left-wing and right-wing stuff at the same time, so maybe we can abandon that question and look at what Sanford’s actually talking about: not what’s happening on the publication list, but on the message boards.

If that discussion is so upsetting for them that they can’t undertake it without saying things like “you should be thrown from a plane for saying this,” then perhaps that portion of the audience might could wanna take their own advice regarding the temperature in this particular kitchen, because at this party there’s a bunch of people talking in there already without threatening to defenestrate anyone.

6) Online harassment is used by a number of folks to silence other people and it includes tactics like SWATting, contacting one’s employer, doxxing, and worse. Jason Sanford is experiencing some of this right now, to the point where he’s had to take his Twitter and Patreon private, but he’s not the first, nor will he be the last. It is shitty and invasive, and it’s something that can constantly ambush you.

Moreover, stochastic terrorism is a thing, and it’s one that some of the “my wishing you were dead wasn’t really a death threat because I didn’t say I’d do it personally” yahoos are hoping for. That hope that someone will be hurt as a result of their rhetoric flickers dimly in the depths of their creepy little souls, even when they claim otherwise, because here in America, it’s a possibility every time they stir up an audience to think of their opponents as NPCs rather than people. And it’s something that is particularly hard on the vulnerable. If you’re a white male experiencing harassment, know that if you were a woman of color, you’d be getting it a hundred times worse, whether you acknowledge that or not.

So… I don’t know what will happen with Baen’s discussion boards. I hope that they’ll do what sometimes happens as a result of these challenges: emerge as something better and more useful, something that creates more community ties than eroding them. Because it’s a time and place when we need more kind, brave words and less hateful, thoughtless rhetoric, and I feel any efforts to establish that is where true heroism lies. Thank you for issuing the challenge, Jason. I hope people rise to meet it.

What’s Coming Up: Valentine Day Events

Class: Different Kinds of Love: Writing Relationships that Aren’t Romantic
Next class date: Saturday, February 13, 2021, 9:30-11:30 AM Pacific Time.
Instructor: Cat Rambo

There are plenty of loves that aren’t romantic in nature, ties of friendship or family. What sorts of speculative stories come from those alliances, and how does a writer convey the relationship in a way that makes the reader feel its strength? In this class, we’ll talk about how to write about non-romantic relationships as well as performing writing exercises designed to fine-tune your ability to convey these nuances.

Class: Where Babies Come From: Speculative Reproduction
Next class date: Saturday, February 13, 2021, 1:00-3:00 PM Pacific Time.
Instructor: Evan J. Peterson

How do magic and technology change the possibilities of reproduction? Whether on Earth or in alien lands, through futuristic science, historical alchemy, or outright sorcery, this class examines ways to reinvent the process of reproduction in your fiction.

Class: Consent is Sexy: Writing Consensual Scenes
Instructor: Sarah Buhrman
Next class date: Sunday, February 14, 2021, 9:30-11:30 AM Pacific Time.

Consent is sexy. But how do you include consent without throwing ice water on the seduction? Keep those steamy scenes hot while making sure all parties, even the fictional ones, are respected and respect boundaries. Specific examples may include references to actions and kinks, however, content will be kept at PG-13 levels.

Class: In Flagrante Delicto: Writing Effective Sex Scenes
Instructor: Catherine Lundoff
The next class date is Sunday, February 14, 2021, 1:00-3:00 PM Pacific Time.

Live classes are taught online, are limited to 15 participants, and require reliable Internet connection, although in the past participants have logged on from coffee shops, cafes, and even an airplane. A webcam is strongly suggested but not required.

See http://www.kittywumpus.net/blog/upcom... for the full list of upcoming online classes.

Tired of fading to black every time your characters get intimate? Not quite sure what to do once they’re in the clinch? Want characters whose romantic moments have some spark, sizzle, and steam to them? Learn some of the building blocks for writing about sex and writing it well.

Rambo Academy Campus Calendar for February 2021

Zoom links will be available on Patreon, pinned in #localannouncements on the Discord server, and available via the !calendar command on Discord.

How do you get access to these events? Details are here, but basically you can subscribe through Patreon or Paypal. There are free scholarships.

Event explanations:

Unmoderated co-working. Log on and work with other Chez Rambo peeps. Does not have to be writing. Structure is up to the participants.Moderated co-working. Cat or designated other will lead three thirty minute sprints, with check-ins to say how we’re doing in between. Does not have to be writing.Chillax and chat:. Hang out and craft or clean your virtual or real workspace while we talk about stuff.Story discussion group. Story changes every two weeks; titles and links will be posted on Discord and Patreon. Additional resources will be in #thepanel channel on Discord.Writing Games. Bring a prompt if you like. We all write for 10 minutes to the same prompt, then people who want to share theirs. Then we do that a couple more times. Great jolt of creativity

All days
12-3 AM Midnight co-working (unmoderated)
8:30-10:30 AM Morning co-working (unmoderated)
1-3 PM Afternoon co-working (moderated, weekdays only)

Weekly Events:
Tuesdays/Thursdays:
6:30-830 PM Evening co-working (unmoderated)

Wednesday:
11-12 PM Story discussion or writing games morning session
4-5 PM Story discussion or writing games evening session

Friday:
10-11 AM Chill and chat

Upcoming Classes

Dunking Your Reader in the Details: Toolsets for Creating Immersive Worlds  with Cat Rambo, Saturday, February 6, 2021, 9:30-11:30 AM Pacific Time. Pitches and Synopses Workshop  with Jennifer Brozek, Sunday, February 7, 2021, 9:30-11:30 AM Pacific Time. Different Kinds of Love: Writing Relationships that Aren’t Romantic  with Cat Rambo, Saturday, February 13, 2021, 9:30-11:30 AM Pacific Time. Where Babies Come From: Speculative Reproduction  with Evan J. Peterson, Saturday, February 13, 2021, 1:00-3:00 PM Pacific Time. Consent is Sexy: Writing Consensual Scenes  with Sarah Buhrman, Sunday, February 14, 2021, 9:30-11:30 AM Pacific Time. In Flagrante Delicto: Writing Effective Sex Scenes  with Catherine Lundoff, Sunday, February 14, 2021, 1:00-3:00 PM Pacific Time. Mapping the Labyrinth: Plotting Your Novel  with Kay Kenyon, Saturday, February 20, 2021, 9:30-11:30 AM Pacific Time. Make Yourself More Discoverable Online: SEO Basics for Creative People  with Cat Rambo, Saturday, February 20, 2021, 1:00-3:00 PM Pacific Time. Writing Fight Scenes  with Marie Brennan, Sunday, February 21, 2021, 1:00-3:00 PM Pacific Time. Systems of Magic: How to Use Your Magic to Enrich Your Worldbuilding  with Cat Rambo, Saturday, February 27, 2021, 9:30-11:30 AM Pacific Time. Witches Are People Too: Writing Well-Rounded Pagans and Spellcrafters  with Evan J. Peterson, Saturday, February 27, 2021, 1:00-3:00 PM Pacific Time. A Mixed Bag: Combining and Manipulating Genre Conventions  with Tracy Townsend, Sunday, February 28, 2021, 9:30-11;30 AM Pacific Time. Writing Masculinity  with Sam J. Miller, Sunday, February 28, 2021, 1:00-3:00 PM Pacific Time.

Fiction Reading: Acquainted with the Night

Trigger warning: child murder, violence
This is an early superhero fiction story of mine that originally appeared in Corrupts Absolutely?, edited by Lincoln Crisler.

Guest Post: PJ Manney on GameStop and the Power of Populism

I have many thoughts on the GameStop stock/stonk play. Big movements in complex systems are difficult to write about, because many things that seem paradoxical can be correct at the same time. At different scales or frames, differing takes have validity. So forgive what may seem contradictory. For those not familiar with the topic, let’s start with this @Vox article as the baseline.

In populist movements, the participants are attracted by and manipulated through memetics. We see what begins as a meme becomes hype, then a mass network memetic swarm effect, as happens in the promotion of everything Modern Meme from Bernie Sanders to cryptocurrencies to QAnon.

That the GameStop play has appeared to hurt some predatory shorters and their hedge funds means we will see more #stonk in the future. Success breeds repetition. The latest on r/wallstreetbets is an attempt to wrestle the silver market.

Why did the subreddit readers and social media followers do it? On the face, it’s economically irrational, which is why the hedge funds and investor class didn’t understand it at first. All the investor class cares about is making money above all else. Driving up a stock to protect it from a short will only lose money in the long term. Gamestonk is willing to hold and lose big to make a statement about loving GameStop and hating Wall Street. Reddit’s wallstreetbets subreddit has nearly 4 million self-called “degenerates” alone. And that’s why the Street never saw this coming at first. The combination of paradoxical motivations for this mass behavior is remarkable. Protection, vengeance, anger, fun, gaming, bitcoin play, populism, power, anarchy. One could even say that Gamestonk is the Pokémon Go of 2021. When such a combination of emotional forces can be rallied to a single cause (see the US Capitol on January 6, 2021), anything can happen.

Now add the effect of mass network swarm activity. This can be a weapon, as in QAnon or Internet troll farms. Gamestonk is weaponized investing. When most conflict theorists think of swarms, they think of organization from a single body that sends out many agents of chaos or destruction with a single purpose, coming from every direction. But in this case, so many are in it for the lulz and all those paradoxical motivations listed above, that all they need is a single common interest: take down the Street predators. Everyone has their reasons. They don’t need to be organized.

The Street isn’t a victim. There is no logic behind markets anymore and hasn’t been for some time. Manipulation on all sides, and the decoupling of Wall Street from Main Street, and the end of fundamentals means whoever has the power to define the market does so. And usually, the big institutions run the show and get bail outs when it spins out of control. The only people who suffer are “the little guys.” But when the little guys rally as one? Especially when the world is filled with “money” and no one knows where to put it safely? Anything is possible.

Populism is a powerful and unpredictable political force. It forces reaction or reorganization by the establishment regardless of your position to the cause, because anarchy is the alternative. And institutions hate anarchy. Wall Street wants modellable certainty. No one can predict which way populist-fueled movement will go, because populism is usually about being against something. Not for building a better alternative. See the Russian and French Revolutions, and Brexit as dangerous populism that had ideals but no plans.

But sometimes a plan emerges just in time. See the American or Singing/Baltic States revolutions. Or the New Deal. The reason a populist movement succeeds long after they win is through a combination of cooperation, compromise and construction. We have to build something that benefits most of us, together, to successfully ride through a populist revolution.

If we could get all those people who threw some crypto into the GameStop, AMC or BB&B pots to swarm anew and reorganize healthcare, or law enforcement, or the rest of the predatory financial cycle, that would be something.

Senator Elizabeth Warren is already calling for financial regulation in this case, but to fight the shorters, not the social media/Mom & Pop retail investors. Let’s hope the SEC follows suit. This is part of the constructive, cooperative future, and Wall Street ignores the clean-up of their swamp at their peril.

PJ Manney is the author of the P.K. Dick Award-nominated (R)EVOLUTION, book 1 in a series with (ID)ENTITY, and the upcoming trilogy’s completion (CON)SCIENCE, as well as non-fiction and consulting about emerging technology, future humans, and empathy-building through storytelling. She was a former Chairperson of Humanity+, teleplay writer (Hercules–The Legendary Journeys, Xena: Warrior Princess, numerous TV pilot scripts) and film executive.

What’s Coming Up This Week

Here’s what’s coming up next for the Rambo Academy for Wayward Writers. For the full list of online writing classes aimed at fantasy and science fiction writers, see http://www.kittywumpus.net/blog/upcoming-online-classes/

Writing Your Way Into Your Novel with Cat Rambo, Saturday, January 30, 2021, 9:30-11:30 AM Pacific Time.
Beginnings & Endings with Cat Rambo, Saturday, January 30, 2021, 1:00-3:00 PM Pacific Time.
Principles for Pantsers with Cat Rambo, Sunday, January 31, 2021, 9:30-11:30 AM Pacific Time.
Highspeed Worldbuilding for Fiction and Games with James L. Sutter Session II, Sunday, January 31, 2021, 1:00-3:00 PM Pacific Time.
Dunking Your Reader in the Details: Toolsets for Creating Immersive Worlds with Cat Rambo, Saturday, February 6, 2021, 9:30-11:30 AM Pacific Time.
Pitches and Synopses Workshop with Jennifer Brozek, Sunday, February 7, 2021, 9:30-11:30 AM Pacific Time.