Zoe E. Whitten's Blog, page 44

About Adria Richards…

Last night, the Twitter stream went nuts over a story, and I did too. I know I just said I needed to show more gratitude to people, but even some of the guys in my followers have shown…let’s say confusion, over this story.

First, let me direct you to a link where Adria Richards herself can explain how she chose to stand up to sexual harassment at Pycon. Next, I want to show you another story detailing how she’s been harassed and attacked by bullies, threatened with rape and murder, had her private information exposed, and got fired by her cowardly employers. That second story has a graphic and brutal image at the bottom, so when I say trigger warning, I ain’t kidding.

Now, guys online are honestly saying, “Well, hey women, HE lost HIS job too. Why can’t you defend HIM too?” Sit down guys, and I’m going to explain to you why you’re confused. You see, we have a federal law about sexual harassment in work places. Pycon is a professional conference for programmers. It is not a convention, and this year in particular, Pycon was feeling a bit sensitive to their need to be welcoming to women. They added some new codes of conduct expressly forbidding the behavior that these men displayed. Adria Richard did ABSOLUTELY NOTHING wrong by calling out these men. What’s more, “HIS” employers did nothing wrong for firing him, because he was guilty of sexual harassment. If you feel women should defend someone guilty of breaking the law, you’re officially inducted into the club of misogyny, and as Bill Engvall would say, “Here’s your sign.”

“But Zoe, don’t you think she made a mistake too? She could have handled it privately,” you say. “Surely they all were adults, and—” Whoa, back up, Tiger. You made a couple of logical fallacies there. First of all, most of the time it does a woman no good whatsoever to call men on their behavior by herself. NONE. Men in the tech sector are openly hostile to women, and this kind of sex joking is very common. So is bullying under the guise of “ribbing” and “snark.” (And yes, I know all about the tech sector. Maybe you forget, but I spent a good eight years working as a PC tech and a help desk operator.)

Secondly, the tones of these jokes proves the men involved may not be minors, but they sure as hell can’t be called adults either. Men who suggest that “they could have sorted it out like adults” are both ignoring the behavior of the men and projecting an ideal onto the situation that does not exist. You want to believe in the inherent goodness of the men and act like this was just a little slip up, and not a regular part of their behavior in professional work spaces. Your belief is misguided at best. At worst, you’re actively in denial about how men react to criticism, and that’s sad because we’re discussing men’s VIOLENT online reactions to criticism right now.

I APPLAUD Adria Richards’ choice to publicly shame her harassers. Men get away with this kind of behavior all the time because they don’t believe there are consequences to their actions. Oh, it’s no big deal, just a little dick joke between guys. Except, these guys were in a professional conference surrounded by people they don’t know. It was on them to behave responsibly according to the rules of the con AND according to an established federal law. Adria chose to do something that would result in consequences, sending a single photo tagged with the conference hash tag as evidence and presenting it to her followers. A crime was publicly displayed, and the result is that one of the responsible jokers lost his job.

“Oh Zoe, you’re so sexist,” you say. No, keep sitting guys, because we’re not done. Men, who had no connection to these guys, rose up as an army online to punish a woman for reporting a crime, one that violated federal law and the rules of conference that these men were attending. Men, who had nothing do do with this event, posted Adria’s home address, place of employment, and email address. Men, who had nothing to do with this, set up a DDOS attack on Adria’s employer, bullying them until they fired her publicly and cried, “We got rid of the troublemaker! Please don’t hurt us fellow men!”

Men, who had nothing to do with this, posted images of rape, and in one case, posted a decapitated body tied up with the threat “WHEN I’M DONE,” followed by an address. And while you’ve busy trying to stir up support for the man who got fired for sexual harassment, some men, who had nothing to do with this, bullied and threatened a woman because “HOW DARE SHE SHAME ONE OF US!” That the men were behaving badly didn’t reach her attackers. They only felt outrage because a woman dared to question them. She posted one photo of a crime, and men rose up as an army to crush her.

This is not a defensible position. Women say men in the tech market are hostile to women, and men get violently hostile to this suggestion. Men online band together in armies of bullying outrage every time a woman says something they don’t like, and they work to silence any critics of their behavior. To these men, any suggestion that they should grow up and stop acting like bullies is sexism most vile, but what they’re doing goes way beyond mere sexism and straight into misogyny, reflective of a deep psychological loathing for half the population of the planet, and for the people who gave birth to them.

Men, who had nothing to do with these two jokers, have turned this situation into a brutal war zone where their actions have become even more criminal than the insensitive jokes of two men in the photo, and all because men online think they should have the right to tell sex jokes in front of women they don’t know.

If you can salvage a position of defense from this by suggesting Adria was wrong to speak up, or to post a picture of her harasser online, then you are not at all clear on the law about sexual harassment, or on the policies established for this year’s Pycon. Worse, if you think that there was some merit in attacking Adria, but think the dudes “just went a little too far,” then you are a hypocrite who is also probably a rape apologist and a defender of “legendary” child rapists like Jerry Sandusky.

I want to mention a guy who said to me on Twitter: “I hope someone follows you on Twitter and polices everything you say.” Dude, wish granted, and this isn’t a new thing. Almost every one of my Twitter rants for the last few years has brought out one or two people who say, “hey, we’re not all like that,” or, “don’t you think you’re being a little harsh?” I was told by romance writer Zoe Winters, “You’ll never make guy friends this way,” which pretty effectively killed our friendship too. I’ve had men and women police my comments all the time, and that’s how life is online. I block the people who get openly hostile, and I move on. We’re all on a public network, and if you don’t like what I say, you don’t have to follow me. I don’t have comments turned on here on my blogs because after I wrote post on racism, white people showed up to explain how hard the white people have it compared to “other minorities.” With no irony whatsoever, y’all.

But this wish that my comments were policed on Twitter is a straw man which implies that these guys were just hanging out in a park, and some hypersensitive bitch was like twenty feet away and took offense to their private conversation. This is not so. One more time: the men were in a professional conference, not at a comic book convention. It was on them to behave as if they were at a business meeting, and they did not.

Even if they were at a convention, most cons have rules now about sexual harassment. If you go up to a cosplayer and ask her “Can I touch your boobies?” she can get you kicked out, no questions asked. At some cons, she can even get you banned for life. This is FAIR because you are not her friend simply because you are both attending the con. You are a stranger sexually harassing a woman. If you think it’s unfair that men have to behave by certain rules in our society, then please go live in a cave by yourself. If you don’t like it, YOU can leave. Women don’t have to, because some more humane men wrote up rules to protect them from your everyday sexism. It’s not unfair to you. It’s trying to make the world fair and equal for the half of the population. (Who gave birth to the other half, by the way. Hey, no need for gratitude or anything, right?)

And hey, if you make sex jokes around your women friends just because you assume it’s okay, try asking them how they feel about that. You might think it’s no big deal because they don’t say anything, but women have been conditioned to let a lot of shit slide rather than fight for their rights on every slight. So you might be offending the hell out of your women friends, and they won’t say anything because they’ve been taught to let it go. If you ask and they say it’s okay, then fire away with that dick joke, big guy. But don’t make an assumption that it’s okay just because she doesn’t jump your shit. (And if she does jump your shit and you find that as a cause to end the friendship…Bill? “Here’s your sign.”)

Attacks like the one Adria suffered are a big part of why women don’t speak up more often, and they’re why girls and young women shy away from working in the tech market. Men, you treat everything like a boy’s club, and if women don’t like it, they can leave. You claim “We’re not all like that,” and by doing so, you work to silence the complaints about your behavior rather than investigate how deeply misogynistic your fellow men are becoming. But these are not isolated incidents.

Men are able to use privilege to put every attack in a vacuum, so they won’t compare this to the attacks on Anita Sarkeesian by male gamers, even though many of those gamers are also technicians and engineers. They won’t compare this to the behavior of gamers at a con, who upset Miranda Pakozdi by shouting “Rape that bitch!” during a fighting game tournament. (Miranda was so bullied online that she deleted her comments from Twitter rather than put up with more abuse.) They won’t compare this harassment to the media coverage of the Steubenville rape case, where even women were mourning the sullied reputations of the rapists and making not one mention of the victim’s pain. But none of this happens in a vacuum, it’s all connected back to men who won’t learn to control their behavior. Meanwhile, men expect women to ALWAYS behave like ladies. There’s no equality here, just more of the same sexism women have been dealing with since forever.

Men, you got to open your eyes and stop with the “nice guy” routine. Because you’re not nice guys. You’re behaving like monsters, and your outrage at anyone suggesting this only serves as more proof that you need therapy and a better education on equality.

Maybe it offends you that I’m calling you out, but I’m not harassing you online. I don’t run after dudes I don’t follow on Twitter and say, “that penis joke offended me!” I don’t post pictures of someone having their dick cut off and say, “What I’d like to do to you.” I don’t drop dox on guys who upset me, or try to get men fired from their job for having an opinion on Twitter that I don’t like. I don’t run DDOS attack on the web sites of men’s employers.

But some men do this to women, and they police our gender to keep us in line. Men use fear and threats of rape and murder to keep women from speaking out. What they do is not defensible, and what I do here and on Twitter isn’t even remotely close to being the same thing. I speak truth to power, and men enforce gender violence while at the same time feigning outrage because they’re all such nice guys.

Men you’ve got stop lying and wake up. Because all you’re doing is reinforcing the misogyny that you claim to have outgrown in the 50s.

And now for something less bitchy

I complain about a lot of stuff. Part of that has to do with how and where I grew up, and part of it has to do with my inability to shut up during mood swings. And sometimes I complain because I care, and I don’t feel like others care enough to make a difference.

The thing is, last night, after staying up a bit too late and being stupid sleepy, I got an invoice from Amazon for $47. This is in addition to the $35 I just got from Gumroad, and after doing some math, I realized, I’ve made over $200 in the first few months of this year. That’s all sales. It doesn’t include the two people who went, “Hey, Zoe, here’s $100 just because.” Yes! Seriously, people now just send me money. I don’t even have to sell them books, they’re just that generous. I honestly wouldn’t think I’d see that kind of generosity without growing some boobs and taking up a job in a strip club.

The other day, that dude who wrote The Piano was talking on Salon about how the cease and desist letter from Jack Daniels had raised his sales numbers and he was right up there with the big boys for a little while because he’d caught a lucky break. Then, get this; he says, “but after royalties and taxes and other expenses, I only made $12,000.” Oh, only $12,000. Okay. But no, he goes on to say that his previous self-published books only made $123.

Now I’m looking over my math and stuff, and I’m seeing that I made over $200 this year (after taxes, even!) The year’s barely started, y’all. I got new books in the pipeline, ready to launch, and my new book Sandy Morrison and the Pixie Prohibition, is starting to pick up new sales too. I’ve got 15 sales this month already. Yeah, it’s not nearly as high as the previous two months, but hell, that’s not a bad number at all. It’s even more amazing when you consider I went on vacation and stopped promoting my stuff. Didn’t matter, y’all still went out and bought my books anyway.

But this is still only half the story. Last week, my editor Tara tells me about her friend’s project to make survival kits for the homeless, and I’ve been homeless, and it sucked. I could have died of hypothermia if not for other people having good hearts and taking care of me, so now that I’m in a better place, I want to help people still stuck down there in the dark. I go to my followers on Twitter, and I’m like, “Hey y’all, I think this is a good cause.” Other writers picked it up, and they said this too, and now, the campaign has met its goal. I don’t get bubkes out of this deal except a nice happy tingling feeling because people DO care. But that’s good enough. And that tingly happy feeling? It’s better than the best weed I smoked in Amsterdam. It even feels better than sex.

But that’s not all! My editor’s campaign for her work on Thicker Than Blood hit $500. Yeah, I mentioned it before, but it needs to be repeated and given proper attention. We’ve still got lots of time left over to casually ask for more contributions towards stretch goals, but even if we don’t make anything else, my editor got paid for her work. Now when I hand her the agreed upon 10% from sales, I won’t feel so guilty handing her pocket change, because I know she got her cut in advance.

NONE OF THIS would be possible without you. Nothing. I’m enjoying greater levels of success in the indie market, and I have trouble seeing it for my mood swings and my little single-digit numbers on each title. To my mind, success is triple-digit sales on one title, but that’s why I’m not able to appreciate what I have. I really need to look at dudes like the writer of The Piano and say “I make more than he did before publishers picked him up.” I need to say to myself, “Most indies don’t make more than $65 on their self-published books.” Because if I can do that and remember how I’m way over those numbers, maybe I can be happy with my level of success. And maybe I can remember to say thank you more often and show some gratitude for the people who make that success possible.

I complain a lot about how I’m not a good fit for the mainstream, and how hard it is to market for a niche when I’m never quite clear on what niche it is I’m trying to fit myself into. I complain about the publishers, who I never have a hope in hell of reaching because they’d take one look at my blog and decide my big fat mouth would be too much of a liability. I complain about those publishers only wanting to take safe bets instead of helping to present real art to the public. I complain about writers playing it safe and not being real with people, and yes, I complain about readers who demand professionalism from artists like we’re more related to bankers and middle managers than to punk rockers who trash their hotel and pee on the service desk on their way out.

But that’s not you, is it? You people, you fine, good people who come to my blog and follow my twitter, you take all my craziest rants and you say, “I like you Zoe, because you’re real and vulnerable.” That’s not a voice in my head. It’s a real person on Twitter who says that. I can scroll back through mentions and keep seeing that message to confirm, yes, it really happened, and I didn’t just imagine it.

I’ve got writers telling me, “Keep going. You’re right on the cusp of success, and you’re out there doing and saying stuff that most people wish they had the guts to say.” I get emails from readers saying how they enjoyed my books, and the way they talk about the characters makes me so happy because they really do get what I’m trying to say.

I don’t feel alone in this struggle anymore. I’m not always an enemy of the world, and I am making a few connections at a time. It’s not just a matter of making sales, even though that is fantastic. I really get to talk to some of you, and when I need your help with some social problem or a random charity, you get up and move. You DO care. Isn’t that what I was hoping for? Wasn’t my goal to get you talking about important issues and want to do something more than talk?

And you do. You’re good, wonderful people, and I don’t pause between rants nearly often enough to acknowledge you and say, “But none of those last ten rants applies to you folks.” Because they really don’t. That blog post I just wrote about readers demanding a flawed reality in writing? Doesn’t apply to you. Obviously not, because you guys buy my books, and then you tell me, “hey, these don’t suck!” So when I rant about snooty readers, I’m talking about people who wouldn’t buy my books on principle alone, just cause I’m queer or trans, or because they think they know what to expect from my fiction. I’m not ranting about you, because you aren’t like that. You gave me a chance, and you keep giving me more chances. I can’t ask for anything more, and yet you give so much more than that. Y’all are great fans. You’re the cream of the crop as far as I’m concerned.

I need to do this more often. I need to show you my deepest gratitude and let you know that even if I am a grouchy crazy bitch, I can recognize that what I have is not something I’ve scraped from the ground by myself. What I have was given to me, and it’s your continued generosity that keeps me in this gig day in and day out. It’s because of you that right after I finish one book, I have the motivation to start another. It’s because of you that I have the money to pay my web-host, and if I don’t like their attitude, I got money in the bank to go look up another host without asking for my deposit back. (I do not trash my account on the way out, and I have not, as of this writing, attempted to pee on any service desks, but I digress.)

The thing is, I’m not a banker or a middle manager. When I see other writers talk about “professional behavior,” I just laugh and think how their heroes talked and acted. Their heroes would shake their heads at all of this self-censorship in the name of likability. I think some writers are so out of touch with their roots, and they’re so afraid of losing even one sale that they couldn’t say shit with a mouthful. They won’t talk politics or religion, lest they lose sales. They won’t talk up the environment, or human rights, or queer rights, women’s right, or civil rights, because every topic is too risky for their precious sales numbers. If that’s what professional is, I don’t want to be a pro. I want to be the punk with both middle fingers waving in the air, and I want to be the rebel artist screaming, “Fuck alla y’all if you can’t feel what I’m saying!”

But some of you do feel me, and you say so. Some of you tell me, “Right on, you crazy bitch! Keep up the good work!” And you know what? I DON’T KNOW HOW TO HANDLE THAT. I spent so many years being ignored and shunned, I don’t know how to act when people acknowledge me with praise. But a little voice inside me says, “Well, gratitude might be a good start.” That little voice is my conscience, and even if it is the littlest, quietest voice in my head, it is the one voice I always have to listen to. Because it never steers me wrong.

I owe everything I have to you. I didn’t get where I am now alone, and every step of the way, you were there, aiding me and giving me encouragement. I really can’t stop my bitching rants, cause that’s actually part of why you’re here in the first place. But I can stop and take time out to mention you, and everything you do that’s so very fucking awesome.

From the bottom of my heart, and with the truest emotions I can offer, thank you all for being there. You make this indie writing gig worth getting up in the morning.

And now if you’ll excuse me, I have to get back to my next book project, already in progress, Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore.

God is a hack writer…

I’m pretty sure I’m not the only one to have uttered this phrase, usually right around the times that my life took on some bizarre twists that made absolutely no sense. In the midst of the most illogical moments of my life, I would look to the sky and say, “God, you’re a hack.” If this exact moment were written in a book, no one would believe it. They’d complain, “but that doesn’t make sense!” And hey, shock of shocks, real life NEVER makes sense. Any sense we find out of real life comes from our application of coping mechanisms, the worst of which is “everything happens for a reason.” NO, IT DOES NOT. Everything happens because life is random, chaotic, and scary as fuck.

In Lisey’s Story, Stephen King lectures through his writer character Scott about how editors strip his writing of the reality he’s seeking with comments like “This creaks a bit, old boy.” He mentions the classic “dog crosses country to be reunited with owner” story. And the thing is, the movies that do this come across as sappy and stupid, but they get made so often because every few years, one dog REALLY DOES cross the country to get back with their family after a move. God LOVES that sappy shit when he’s writing real life. No, it doesn’t make sense. It’s not meant to make sense. Don’t question it. Just go “Aaaaw,” and move on to the next story.

God writes some of the worst villains ever, and his villains have the worst, most petty motivations to act the way they do. Worse, God makes up “good people” who are really bastards and take offense should anyone point out, “You’re a bit of an asshole, man.” God surrounds villains with good people who defend the villain and swear up and down that their victims are just jealous bitches and haters. God gives us politicians who fly to India to rent children for sex, and then fly back home to lecture poor people about their failing morality because of reality TV. God gives us rapist football coaches who get defended as legends while their victims are blamed for speaking up.

And when people read this stuff in fiction, man, they scream like they’ve been branded with red-hot iron. “NO!” they scream, “SOMEBODY WOULD DO SOMETHING TO STOP THIS!” Not in the real world, they wouldn’t. We’ve just seen another story of rapists bragging to friends while filming their act, and while the other party-goers cheered them on. Someone volunteered to hold the camera for them. Nobody did anything to stop it. They didn’t get caught because of a good Samaritan. They got caught because they helpfully uploaded the evidence for their own trial. And after they were tried and convicted, the real world journalists mourned the rapists. Fox aired the name of the victim, and two GIRLS were arrested for sending her death threats. It doesn’t make sense, and it doesn’t have to. Real life doesn’t care about your howling outrage about how badly God is writing the story. REAL LIFE DOESN’T HAVE TO EXPLAIN ITSELF TO YOU AND MAKE SENSE TO APPEASE YOUR FEEL-FEELS.

So readers, when you demand that your fiction make sense, what you’re asking is for every writer to be a fair and just God who appeases your vanities, one who never challenges your need to be right, and one who always assures you that the good guys will win. Even if they rarely do in the real world. You want all writers to ignore real life and lie to you in the worst ways, candy coating everything to please your sensitive and refined palettes. Rather than absorb a story and learn from it, you demand that the story fit your view of the world. You can’t get any more entitled without demanding a starring role in every book.

I’m not gonna launch into another history lesson this time, but I grew up in a dark place with no allies and no hope of rescue. I certainly tried many times to get help, only to be turned away by the authority figures I was told I could trust. Cops, teachers, counselors…it didn’t matter who I went to. They sided with my bullies, or they just ignored me outright. Sometimes at school while I was being beaten, I looked around and saw teachers watching it happen, their arms folded, DOING NOTHING.

That doesn’t make sense. It doesn’t have to, because good people in the real world aren’t as good as they like to claim. They can be petty and evil if they think it’s justified. The most petty and evil are also the most devoutly devoted to their hack writer in the sky. They say, “I love God, and that’s why I have to fire bomb an abortion clinic.” They love God, and that’s why they fly to Uganda and encourage the government to write bills promoting killing gays. They love God, and that’s why they locked their queer children up in mental wards to undergo electroshock therapy. Because even if God keeps making more gay kids, that can’t really be what He wanted. Gays are an unnatural abomination, and He must really only want straight kids. So if a kid isn’t born straight, hey, let’s pound them into conformity. Why? BECAUSE WE LOVE THE SINNER, NOT THE SIN.

That doesn’t make sense, does it? No, it’s a logical fallacy, but real life doesn’t have to be logical. And sometimes, just sometimes, fiction shouldn’t have to either. Sometimes, fiction should make you squirm in your seat and think, “God, I’m not really that awful, am I?” It should make you question your values by showing you the truth of your filtered existence. And if you reject that fiction as unrealistic, it’s not an accurate statement about the writing. But it is a reflection of your vanity, and your inability to let writers be ugly, petty hack gods.

Social responsibility and online peer pressure…

Last night, the campaign for my editor reached its goal of $500. I never mentioned it until late this afternoon, because one of my followers dropped a photo of a murdered Rohingya child in my timeline. I did the only thing I could in such a situation, dropping all my evening marketing plans and beginning to push for awareness of this tragedy. I tweeted to some people I knew with bigger audiences, asking for their help in reposting this site. I wrote up something on my blogs and cross-posted it to my Tumblr. I sent some pleading tweets to some big-name celebrities who I follow and who have in the past retweeted for human rights causes. I got an invitation to do a guest post on the topic, and I quickly typed up a slightly longer post with more information on the situation in Burma. By 3 AM, I was exhausted, but still wired, and still wondering if there was more I could do. But I’d done as much as my body would allow, and I had to let that be the end of my night.

A few of my followers picked up my tweets and retweeted the news, but most did not. The big-name celebrities I approached turned out to all be on the road, and most likely will miss my tweets when they finally get a chance to check their mentions. But it was the little guys who follow me that bugged me, even if I understand they could have missed my four straight hours of campaigning. Still it does bug me because most of the writers I follow (and who follow me back) never slowed down talking about their books. At a certain point, my timeline was 90% “buy my book.” No social interaction, no conversation, and no sign that they even bothered reading what other people had to say.

Before the Rohingya story, I’d had to postpone my own marketing efforts for a few days because my editor had brought to my attention an Indiegogo campaign to make survival kits for the homeless, and with 19 days left, it had zero dollars. That sat so heavily on my conscience that it wasn’t good enough to donate money. I had to drop my own sales plans and work for a complete stranger on what I considered a good cause. My self-published books will never be taken down for a publishers contract expiring, so to my mind, there’s no need to rush to make more sales. Plus, it feels good to go to that campaign’s page and see they’re up to $385 as of this writing. It feel even better than seeing one or two news sales in my Kindle reports.

For as much as we talk about the positive power of social justice, there’s a lot of people on the social networks who are only there to hawk their wares and polish their personal brand. They don’t talk to anyone who isn’t praising their product. They don’t engage anyone in a longer conversation because they don’t like “rambling tweets.” And in this way, they tune out the other people and defeat the whole point of a social network, which is to socialize.

Even for people who do make the effort, there’s a strong peer pressure demanding that they never discuss anything troubling or risk losing sales and/or followers. This peer pressure turns any social network into high school, where only the most one-dimensional platforms can be popular. Tell some jokes, talk about hobbies to build rapport, avoid heavy topics, and always be aware of your likability quotient. To do anything else is to risk your place in the social ladder.

I don’t believe this trend started with the writers, but there’s a lot of peer pressure on them to in the form of promotion advice to adopt this kind of self-presentation. If I were still employed or had books published with other folks, I’m pretty sure I’d get told on an almost daily basis not to talk about the things I do. I would be labeled a troublemaker even for posting on good causes like last night. But I’d also catch shit for my comments about other writers, because that’s not asking for change from my peers. It’s “poisoning the well.”

Writers, both fiction and non-fiction, have forgotten their roots. Before the internet came along and turned us all into brands, writers were more open about their personal views, for both good and bad causes. They wrote in op-ed columns about the things they believed in, but since papers were local, most people didn’t know where authors stood on issues. Oddly enough, now that authors have a global platform to share their views, they’re less willing to say anything that might come off as offensive.

I can understand their fears. Just the other night, I ran afoul of a group of people who decided to tell me under no uncertain terms what a vile human being I am. My comments about greenhouse gas emissions were labeled a form of racism, an extension of the “yellow menace” myth. I do not believe in this myth, and because I hoped to appease their anger, I attempted at first to talk to some of them. But when it became clear that their outrage was more important than the topic they wanted to discuss, I gave up and started blocking everyone. Which means those people will never be allowed to be a part of my online conversations. It’s unfair to them, and I wish I could avoid doing it. But when someone starts their very first tweet to me with “Listen, you piece of shit,” I’m not able to process the rest objectively. And ironically, me saying, “please don’t call me names” was labeled tone policing. With these people, nothing I say will change their minds. I am now and forever a vile racist scumbag.

I also won’t ever get sales from those people. I’ve burned maybe a hundred or so bridges in the span of a few hours. It sucks, and I wish it wasn’t so easy to do, because I have a lot to say in my books about the topics that matter to me, even if I try to dress them up with jokes and explosions and vampires and werewolves. I like to use fantasy fiction as a platform for exploring important social issues, but if someone has tuned me out because I offended them, odds are good my books will be just as offensive, if not more so. I can’t reach people who don’t want to see the world outside their preset filters.

I wish more writers would accept that you cannot go through life without making enemies. Failing that, I wish writers would at least set aside one day a week where instead of tweeting book links, they talked about a cause that was important to them. And not just to talk and lecture, but to read what their followers say, retweet that, and then pull those readers into long conversations. Just one day a week, I want writers to stop polishing their brand and let themselves be humanitarians and teachers instead of just product promoters.

I know it’s scary to burn bridges and lose potential customers, but I would rather lose a thousand sales than lose my voice. I would rather risk my chance at the big leagues of indie success than stop talking about these things that are important to me. If speaking out online and causing offense is wrong, then I don’t want to be right. High school peer pressure drove me out of school and denied me the chance to learn. I will not allow online peer pressure to push me into self-censorship for the sake of my brand.

And besides, at this point, my brand as a ranting crazy kook is firmly established. I know I’m not for everybody, so I don’t try to be everything to everyone. But I wish more writers would remember “You can’t please all of the people all of the time.” The internet doesn’t need more posing and polishing. It needs more people willing to be vulnerable, impassioned, and yes, even angry. Niceness may get you sales, but being nice doesn’t say a damn thing about who you really are under an author photo with a fake smile.

A desperate plea to help the Rohingya in Burma

One of the people I follow typically posts pitcures of animal cruetly, or slain dolphins. I RT what I can, and I keep up on her stuff. But tonight, the image she posted was of a murdered Rohingya child in Burma, someone who couldn’t have been more than 3. They’d been hacked with a machete. And within a few minutes, I began getting reports that this is about to happen to thousands of people in Burma.

There are US sanctions against the country for two prior Rohingya massacres, and a third is planned. But despite sanctions, companies like Google are still going over to do business with the Burmese government. Genocide just isn’t as bad for PR in our time as it was after the facts of the holocaust came out. Or it won’t be, if people don’t raise more awareness.

Please, watch this YouTube video, and then go to savetherohingya.blogspot.com or read this press release and share it online. Then if you have a blog, a Facebook profile, a Twtter account…whatever. Get the word out. These people have only a few days or weeks at most, and if the world decides not to sit up and take notice, it will be a genocide that will slip quietly into the night without so much as a mention on the news.

If you are on twitter, follow Aung Aung, a Rohingya who is tweeting live on the ground in Burma as these events go down. Please, if you have children, look at them, and really think how you would feel if a government murdered them like lowly animals. You must listen to your conscience and know that this is not right. Raise awareness, and let Burma know the world is watching them. Let Goggle know that the world is watching them too. Don’t let them treat genocide as business as usual. Please.

Book review: Troll or Derby by Red Tash

So, I finished Troll or Derby today, and then I slammed two double rum and cokes to stop my shaking. I also got out my tobacco and chain-smoked two ciggies in a row. It’s times like this when I wish I was sane, and that books didn’t have so much power over me. But I completely lost it over my feelings of betrayal for how badly this book turned out in the end.

I started off loving this story, praising it with every chapter update I did on Twitter. And then right around the 50% mark, it all went horribly, terribly pear-shaped. I kept reading, hoping that it was just a minor stumble, and the book would get back on track. But with each page, I got more and more upset. I started sighing with EVERY paragraph, and by the time I got done, I was grinding my dentures so hard, I gave myself blisters on my gums.

Troll or Derby starts off great, following two characters in first person POV, Deb and Harlow. Deb is a young fairy who thinks she’s human. After saving her drug addict sister from a fire in a drug dealer’s trailer, she quickly finds out her mother is a foster parent, and that she’s a protector who’s supposed to be assigned to watch her foster sister. Since her sister, Gennifer, gets kidnapped right at the start of the book, Deb is kicked out of the house and told she must save her sister, OR ELSE.

The other half of the book is told by Harlow, a troll who is bound to Deb. Harlow’s cousin Dave is the person who kidnapped Gennifer for his father Jagger, and Dave is also a drug dealer, a rapist, a murderer, and a child molester. He’s about as charming as he sounds, believe me. Dave is trying to capture Deb, and Harlow is trying to protect Deb, though he’s not really sure why at first.

The first 20 chapters, I was so hooked into this plot. The world building was great. The characters had my sympathy, and the dialogue was fantastic. Every little detail about the mystical world set in the Midwest felt fresh and exciting. But around the midway point, the whole thing falls apart. It starts with Harlow being completely incapable of answering simple questions, and his chapters start to feel like padding rather than advancing the story. Even when he says “I’ll answer your questions,” he fails to answer the two most important ones Deb kept asking. And there was never a valid reason given for his inability to play her straight.

But then Deb becomes hands down one of the stupidest characters I’ve ever read. At the midway point, she’s been told no less than five times that she isn’t human. She’s fought trolls, slid through teleportation spells, journeyed to a troll market, fought pixies, and knocked out a troll. (resulting in her getting iron poisoning, more signs of her inhuman nature. Oh, and she shrinks and grows during this same fight.) AND YET, despite all this evidence that she’s not human, she’s still going “Wait, what? Is this real? Am I really not human? Am I on drugs?” Despite being hunted by a villain she’s been told is pure evil, Deb abandons Harlow and goes directly to the villain alone. This is the point when I started shaking my head and asking, “But why? Even small children have more common sense than this.”

Deb is repeatedly told, “Don’t drink or eat anything offered by the fae.” She even gets told by the villain, “Drink this so I can control your mind.” And despite thinking, “I probably shouldn’t,” SHE STILL DOES ANYWAY.

Thing get worse. While Harlow’s padded chapters seem to take place in one day, Deb’s chapters speak of weeks of training for roller derby. Why roller derby? Because the author is a former roller girl, and she’s writing what she knows. It makes ZERO sense in the context of the story. This whole story could have been better served without the roller derby angle. It would be like me writing a book where a fairy must use their skills as a computer technician to save the world, just because I used to be a compute technician. This may actually be a case for forgetting what you know and just stick with making stuff up.

And, while I’m complaining, Deb abandons Harlow, her only ally, not because of any valid reasons, but because she “needs a skating fix.” Now folks, I’m addicted to writing. But if my sister were in danger and I was being hunted by half my town, I don’t believe I’d step out on my only ally so I could jot down notes for a new book. And I certainly wouldn’t go to the evil dude who owns half the town to ask him “Can you help me work on a new outline?” From here on out, because of her vapid decision making, I actively hated Deb.

The second half of the book has the time displacement issue I mentioned, but the dialogue falls apart as quickly as the world logic and the character consistency. The violent nature of the fae in this would have seemed more fitting for a big city full of fae gangs, where death and disappearances are taken for granted. But this is a small town, and I just didn’t buy it. At one point, Harlow mentions that Jagger runs the church, and that the people who go in never leave. But no one ever notices all these disappearances. Being that I have lived in small towns my whole life, where nothing is a secret for very long, the idea that these fae had been acting this violently for years without trouble…it just didn’t ring true.

I also didn’t buy how much of the town was trolls, fae, or some hybrid of the two. If there’s so much supernatural stuff living in town, why bother hiding at all? The story went from feeling realistic for the setting to being so over the top that I couldn’t help but sigh with every new character introduced who (shock of shocks) wasn’t human.

And then there’s a minor gripe about removed teeth. Harlow takes two of Deb’s wisdom teeth to make a marriage pact. That’s not the problem. The problem is, despite having two holes in her gums, Deb eats normal food right after. Deb has two gaping holes in her gums, but goes all out rollerskating. Deb spits a lot. “But why is this a big deal?” you say. Because after having wisdom teeth removed, you can’t eat solid food for a week or two. You can’t do heavy physical activity without risking rupturing the growing blood vessels in the sockets, and you’re advised by the dentist not to spit because doing so draws out the newly forming gum flesh and results in dry sockets. Now okay, maybe I’m only aware of this because I not only had my wisdom teeth pried out, but also had 23 extractions done in the same surgery. But the fact is, this is all online in dental surgery after-care pages. It’s basic research, information that would be easy to look up. And it’s just one more part of the story that irked me because the whole thing becomes so lazy in the second half.

When the book heads for a final confrontation, it’s a visually confusing mess made even worse by the villain, Jagger, talking “evil” but mostly coming off as a moron. I want to give bonus points for a Muppets reference late in the game, but only a few sentences later, I was screaming “WHAT? ARE YOU SERIOUS?” Not even the arrival of a badass black unicorn can save this ending.

I know people probably think I’m exaggerating, but after finishing this, I was so upset by how badly it turned out that I slammed two mixed drink drinks and cried while I shook and hugged myself. I’m pretty sure sane people don’t react to bad endings like this, and I’m relatively sure they wouldn’t have as many problems as I do with the inconsistencies in this story. I had to spend almost an hour telling myself “It’s only a book.” Out loud. Over and over. Pretty sure your mileage will vary.

The last time I felt this betrayed by a book was Shiver, and for much the same reason. It had a great introduction, great characters, and dialogue that cracks and made me laugh out loud. And for me, it’s a much bigger sin to have a book start out great only to end dismally than it is for a book to be consistently weak from start to finish. But I didn’t even get this upset over Shiver as I did at this, because it failed on all counts when it had all been going so great.

Despite loving the first half, I’m forced to give Troll or Derby 2 stars. I wish I could say something more positive, but I really haven’t felt this betrayed by a story in a long time.

Writers are mostly assholes, mostly

Late last night, I went off on a rant on Twitter about this topic, but after I got done and scrolled back, I realized I’d missed a few words here and there, which may not have helped my clarity. I know some people got the gist because they replied to me and offered their thoughts on the topic too. But still I want to keep going with this rant and expand on it. So, fair warning, this here’s a long-ass post.

This started with someone who I’ve read talking down on “popular crap” being the way the publishing industry paid for risks on “real” writers. I get so, so sick of this attitude from writers no matter what level of the market they work in. It’s really common in small-press writers, and it’s one of the things that drove me nuts about the horror writers I hung out with. They will sit around and talk about which books are bad like they’re bottles of wine, and these guys are the undisputed kings of discerning quality.

It’s bullshit. I’ve read the writer who made this claim last night, and he’s a hack. I’ve read his friends, who also talk shit about popular fiction like they’re so much better, and they’re lousy hacks too. All the shit they accuse popular writers of fucking up, they fuck up too. They stroke off writing pastiche crap in homage to their heroes, and very few of them work at being original. Even the good reviews on their stuff say, “This reminded me of the best writing from the 80s.” And while the author gleefully dances over the praise, what they aren’t reading in that review is, “There’s nothing new or original here.” Their “art” is little more than a traced drawing of someone else’s work. It may still please the fans of the genre who liked the original work, but it’s not original art. It’s a carbon copy clone made to collect money off the talents of past authors.

I’ll tell you why it bugs me as a reader. It’s because the prevailing idea under this sentiment about popular fiction is that readers are morons. It’s like “People who read Dan Brown only like him because that’s the only book they’ll read all year. So how can they know what a good writer is like?”

A good writer like the speaker, of course.

Well look, I’ve been reading since I was a wee thing. When other kids were still working on Dick and Jane, I was reading The Rats of NIMH and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. By the time my peers got to those books, I’d moved on to adult books, books that I was often told were totally inappropriate for my age. Well the people who said that had made an assumption that because I was a child, I still had this innocent life. But of course I wasn’t about to tell them “What? You’re worried about me reading sex? Dude, I was molested at 7, and I’ve got two lovers living with me.” Yeah, cause that would go over well, wouldn’t it?

But my point is, when I say I like Twilight, I don’t want to hear that the “real” reason I do is because I haven’t read enough “good” vampire fiction. I’m a huge vampire fan, and I’ve read a lot of vampire books. So I wish writers wouldn’t insult my opinion by suggesting that I’m too dumb to know better.

And I’ll tell you something else. I hate seeing people say “Twilight ruined vampires for me.” Then you aren’t a vampire fan. If all it takes is one book series to ruin the whole trope for you, you’re not a vampire fan. Period. You’re a shitty, petty asshole looking for reasons to diss a whole trope, and Meyer is your convenient scape goat. Before Meyer, you were using Anne Rice as your reason for hating vampires. Really, go fuck yourself. A real fan knows that vampires are forever, and Twilight is just one series in a mountain of fangy, bloody, AWESOME fiction. You don’t like the sparklepires? Cool, toss the books and dig into the rest of the mountain. But if you toss out the whole mountain for four books, you’re no vampire fan. You’re just an asshole looking to diss my precious blood suckers.

Over the years, I’ve read everything. I’ve read crime novels, romance, sci-fi, horror, fantasy, erotica, and penny porn. I’ve read fan-fiction on USENET back before SPAM choked out the groups and made them hard to follow. I’ve read comics books and short fiction submitted to magazines like Omni, Playboy, and Fangoria. So when I say I read a lot, I’m not exaggerating. And after all that reading, I’ve developed my own personal tastes for what works for me. I know what narrative styles appeal most to me, and I know what methods will reduce me to an enraged gibbering mess. Just as all writers develop an inner voice that makes them unique, all readers develop a “cultured ear” that lets them know when a story is working for them. And guess what? We don’t all listen to the same tune and hear the same thing. It’s only the snob who looks at critics of his favored art and says “You don’t know quality like I do.” Because rather than admit that something doesn’t work for you, it’s easier to attack other people as being incapable of recognizing “true art.”

Has all of my fanatic reading made me a super fantastic writer? NO. I like slow introductions, and I hate most of the rules other writers quote about how to write popular fiction. I have crutch words, and I sometimes write ambiguously. And I like to start sentences with And. I’m a lousy hack, y’all. Reading more hasn’t changed that. It’s just given me a bigger pool of ideas to work with when writing new stories. It hasn’t changed my writing voice, and it never will. So if you don’t like one of my books cause you think my narrative voice sounds off, chances are you won’t like anything else I write. And that’s okay. It doesn’t mean you’re incapable of discerning quality. It just means that I’m grating on your cultured ears.

When I said last night that I was a lousy writer, a regular follower who’d read some of my books said that my writing must be good, because otherwise I wouldn’t sell much, and I’d get more bad reviews. I had to point out that I really don’t sell much, and I don’t get many bad reviews BECAUSE I don’t sell much. If I somehow got popular (not likely, but one can always dream) I would have to prepare myself for a flood of bad reviews. We’re talking a bonanza of 1 and 2 star reviews. Even the classic authors who everyone reads have a few hundred 1-star reviews.

And you know what? I try to read some of the masters, and I think they’re awful. I hate Matheson and Vonnegut. I hate Dick (Phillip K, that is), Bova, Tolkien, and Austen. I think Lovecraft is highly overrated, and despite my many efforts to read Woolf, she puts me to sleep. And yet, I’ll sit through Anne Rice’s longest and most purple description description of the garden outside the protagonist’s house. I eat up descriptions of Edward Cullen’s dreamy perfect amber eyes. I adore cheesy romantic scenes with all the goo-goo eyes and hand holding and little giggles. I have a cultured ear, but that doesn’t make me any more discerning of quality writing. I just know what I like.

But this gets me back to the other writers. I watch these guys talk shit about Dan Brown, and then say “Hasn’t he ever heard of research? My writing is better because I WORK HARD at my craft.” Well, I file that away, and later when I find something they wrote that sounds like it might grab me, I give it a shot. And, they’s some lying motherfuckers. I remember the guy who proclaimed the loudest that Dan Brown did no research, but he did, and the first story I read from him was so blatantly wrong about the basic details of illicit drugs that it was clear he hadn’t used them or done anything resembling research on how long it takes for said drugs to kick in. He talks shit about others doing research, and he didn’t do a lick of basic research. He’s a lying motherfucker, a cock posing and primping to garner readers even when he knows he’s lying.

I read another author who talked shit about how sex scenes in women’s books were all flowery metaphors, and I read his book and got an emotionless porn scene complete with a pull out and money shot. He couldn’t have made the writing more off-putting without doing an anal scene and having the protagonist pull out and ask for his wife to suck him off.

I read an author who complained that Meyer was terrible about telling not showing, and then her next book was all tell, and no show. And every book of hers that I read after that was dreadfully dull and emotionless. Her stories are connect-the-dots drivel that tell you something, but never back it up with scenes in the book to show you what’s going on. For all her talk about the quality of other writers, she’s a lousy hack.

And this is the sad truth of it, people. All of these little shit writers are bitter about popular fiction. They hate other writers for having the spotlight, and they claim that they’re superior to “those hacks.” But they’re the pots calling the kettles black. And despite the 300 books a year they read, it doesn’t improve their quality in the slightest. Some of the folks who crow loudest about discerning quality are hands down the worst writers I’ve ever read. The people who promote themselves with “move over Dan Brown” should shut the fuck up, because they could take a lesson from Brown, their writing is so dreadful.

“Well, what about you, Zoe? What are you doing with your mean-spirited reviews?” Well look, I’m a hobby writer. I don’t make a whole lot of money off of this gig. But I hear writers make these quality claims, and I see them slam each other. So when I go read their book, you’d better believe I’m going to be bluntly honest. I don’t care if we’re best buds and have been Skyping it up for a year or two, or if I don’t know you from Adam. I will gleefully tear your shit up if I don’t like it as a reader, and I won’t bother with sugar coatings or tact. I do this because when I point to a book and say, “My gosh, they did everything right to please me,” you know that’s exactly what I mean. Does this mean that writing is perfect? No, it just means they didn’t push my buttons and piss me off. Quite the opposite, they grabbed my attention and held it all the way through the book. They stoked my cultured ear like a Ferengi lover with a feather.

I read a lot of popular fiction that I absolutely hate, and yeah, I rip that shit up and say, “here’s why I hated it.” But it’s why I hated it, and it has nothing to do with how other readers took it. I don’t accuse the other readers of being too uneducated to understand why it’s crap. I don’t piss and moan “Why did this get published, and my shit languishes at the bottom of the sales charts?” I languish at the bottom of the sales charts because I write weird shit. Done. So my mean-spirited reviews are done this way because I don’t see a reason to be nice to people who rarely extend the same courtesy to their more popular peers.

Back in the day, I used to send my books to writers I respected, and I wanted to get their opinions. I wasn’t soliciting blurbs, mind you, just opinions. So they told me in emails the reasons why they thought my stuff didn’t sell. And I agreed with their assessments. But, I don’t change because I’m writing the kinds of books I wish I could buy from other writers. I write polyamorous relationships. I write about bi and trans characters. Even when I write about straight people, I’m always sneaking in things that interest me as a reader, the stuff I wish other writers would have done if they weren’t playing it safe and pandering to the white middle-class male reader. I write for me, and I like what I write.

But I also know that my writing is crap. I’m never going to claim I’m better than Stephen King, because I’m not. I’m never going to say “Move over John Lindqvist.” I don’t have his talent. I HATE Harry Potter and Hunger Games, but would I say my writing is vastly superior to them? No. It’s just that as a reader, their writing doesn’t work for me. Quite the opposite, their writing rubs me the wrong way so badly that I throw the books down and go “Fuck you, this is the dumbest shit I’ve ever read!”

And it’s just a gut reaction comment, because if I were objective, I could remind myself that nothing Rowling or Collins wrote is USENET fan-fiction bad. They are much, much higher in terms of quality to the penny porn I used to read. They are miles away from the shitty small-press pastiche humpers I’ve read. But they still annoy the fuck out of me, and so I live in the present, not in the past. I put all those past readings aside, and I lie like a rug that this is the worst thing I’ve ever read, evar. For now. Because there’s always tomorrow to read something else that’s the new worst ever.

None of what I read changes my writing style. I do get inspiration from other books. I take away ideas that I want to play with, and I sometimes lift whole tropes, with permission granted or not. (True story: before writing the werecats in Sandy Morrison and the Pack of Pussies, I wrote to Zoe Winters to ask if she minded me doing a werecats story with house cats similar to her felinthropes in Kept. I got her permission, and I ran with it.) The writing of even bad authors can inspire me. I wrote my first porno after reading Hunger Games. Yeah, I know that makes no sense, but sometimes the creative process doesn’t make much sense.

But what I’m getting at is, I have no loyalty to any writer, even if I liked their earlier works. I don’t see why I need to have loyalty, when most of the writers I’ve dealt with online have been petty, crass, and extremely self-centered. Their writing is micro-brew beer of the highest quality, and popular fiction is Bud Light. Well extending that analogy, a lot of micro-brew beer is bitter, skunky shite, and you actually need a bland, watery Bud Light to get the taste out of your mouth.

But that’s not all of the beers. There’s commercial beers from Europe that are so incredible you can’t believe people aren’t drinking this instead of Bud Light. There’s micro-brew beers doing crazy shit with habanero, raspberry, ginger, and chocolate, and you wonder why the big guys won’t take risks on recipes like this. The Germans have this crazy thing about pouring lemonade in beer, and I thought I’d hate it, but I love that stuff. But at the end of the day, the Bud Light is still drinkable, even after I’ve sampled a hundred other beers. Only a beer snob would turn their nose up at a Bud Light, and I ain’t no beer snob.

And this is what I wish I could get through to some of the writers I follow, even though I know they won’t change. They’re all making their own recipe, and for them, that formula works well. They will not acknowledge that their writing has flaws, or that their writing is below the quality of the popular writers they attack. No one wants to admit that their shit stinks, right?

Well mine stinks to high heaven. I know why my shit doesn’t sell to a mainstream audience, and it’s not because the mainstream is too stupid to appreciate my genius. It’s because I write weird shit that only appeals to a few people. If I were still in the habit of submitting my work to publishers, I know I’d still get rejected. Seven years of writing hasn’t improved my quality much, and it’s not my use of adverbs or crutch words killing my success. It’s my choice of what I write about. It’s my bizarre interests that keep me at the bottom of the food chain. It’s all me, and I accept that.

And despite me being a writer now, I will still read anything that catches my eye with a compelling blurb. I’ll still read from any genre, whether it’s adult fiction or YA. You got a sappy romance book that you self-published as an ebook only? I may read it, if I like the premise. But I’ll also read stuff from people working with the big six. I’ll read the big name folks, and I’ll give them the exact same sporting chance as I do for the small-press folks riding one level above my own place in this market. I ain’t no book snob.

I also will not cut you any slack if your story pisses me off as a reader. I say mean shit about the stuff I don’t like, and if you only want to read nice things, you probably shouldn’t talk to me. But once I’m done tearing your shit down, I’m going to move on. I’m not going to point you out as what’s wrong with the industry. You won’t be the straw man I blame for my lack of success. You’ll just be another writer whose shit doesn’t work for me.

I wish more writers would adopt this policy and admit their shit isn’t Masterpiece Theater, but sadly, it’s always fashionable to complain that the real reason we don’t have success is, readers aren’t discerning of “real quality.” It’s closer to the truth that all readers know what they like, and your shit isn’t selling because the readers don’t like you. Period.

So grow up, pull on your big boy underwear or your big girl panties, and stop complaining that all that fake crap is the reason your shit doesn’t sell. The reason your shit doesn’t sell is, you’re a bitter hack who could stand to take a lesson from the writers you diss. And hey, it takes one to know one, and as a fellow hack, I’m calling you out and asking you to get over yourselves.

Not that you’ll listen to me instead of the voices in your head telling you how fucking great your writing is. But it’s worth a shot, right?

Book review: Dust by Devon Ashley

So, so conflicted about this book. Did I like it? Um… I don’t know. Would I recommend it? Well, yes. I know, that’s confusing. Allow me to explain.

The premise for Dust drew me in instantly, being about a pixie named Rosalie who is taken prisoner by faeries and held in a pit with other slaves. The blurb kind of gave me the impression that she would escape and start a revolt. Well, that didn’t happen.

I liked the vivid details, and I liked the characters. But there is a LOT of torture going on in this story. You can imagine why it took me so long to read this, what with needing to take breaks and constantly asking “Please, let that be the worst of it.” But no, it just kept getting worse for Rosalie. And as it did, I had to take longer and longer breaks to avoid panic attacks. If you’ve got triggers for torture, this is probably not a book for you. I do have triggers, but as I keep telling other people to read outside their comfort zone, I pushed on. Gotta practice what I preach. Even if at times I wanted to run and hide from this book.

So I can’t say I enjoyed this book. I did find it realistic, even given the fantasy setting, and I did find it descriptive and full of interesting characters. Thus, I would give Dust 4 stars, and would recommend it to dark fantasy fans who are willing to be discomfited by their reading choices. I know I was, and that this book will likely haunt me for a while. This is supposed to be the first book in a trilogy, Of Dust and Darkness, and I can say that I will be picking up the next book as soon as I can.

Book review: Breaking Dawn by Stephenie Meyer

I can’t believe I put reading this book off so long, but for every volume I finished in this series, someone would come along and say, “Okay, you might have liked that, but you’ll hate the next book.” They would then proceed to spoil every little detail and attempt to ruin the next book for me before I ever opened it. This required me holding off on reading until I’d forgotten most of the fine details of their complaints.

I started out just liking this series with Twilight. I identified with Bella, and I thought the first story was cute, if a bit predictable at times. It was a four star story, and I bought the other three books together, figuring “It can’t be too bad.” Well, I liked New Moon quite a bit more, and I loved Eclipse. Still, I had to wait almost a year to get to this last book, and my only complaint now is, “Why did I wait so long?”

Everything gets tied up pretty neatly here in the final volume. Bella’s special trait is explained. Rosalie chills out and becomes easier to relate to. Jacob steps out from under Sam’s control and becomes his own alpha. Leah chills out and becomes easier to relate to (Echo-cho-o) I love Renesme, and the running gag of her nickname Nessie. I loved the book’s shift to Jacob’s POV, and I loved Seth even more than the last book. I loved Bella’s first days as a vampire, and her growing acceptance that she isn’t such an ugly swan after all. I loved all the vampires, even the evil ones. (Well, I did wish someone could have smacked Casius around, but still…)

Y’all know by now that I’m a picky reader, and yet, I really don’t have any complaints about this book. It gave me closure to the series with a highly satisfying ending that I didn’t expect. I could spend many pages drawing comparisons from these vampires to others in Anne Rice books or the Whedonverse characters, but that’s got nothing to do with this story, and would involve a lot of spoilers. So I will close this out by saying I give Breaking Dawn 5 stars, and I’m so hyped after reading this last book, I plan to go back and start reading Twilight again. Count me in as a dedicated Twihard, please.

If a woman be right, she is still wrong unless men agree with her…

I seem to be hitting on a kick of complaints lately, but whether it’s exhaustion, or just me getting sick of seeing the same comments over and over online and finally deciding to bitch, I dunno. This time around, I started thinking how someone complained that their biggest problem with Twilight was with the overzealous fans who defend it. It’s okay to bash the same series for a decade, and the fandom should just shut up and take it?

That’s my standard rebuttal, but lately, as I watch Doctor Who fans on Facebook, I’ve started to ask, “No, wait, y’all male-dominated fandoms can insert your shit everywhere, and praise your beloved show all the time, and that’s okay. Star Wars fans can dress as Storm Troopers at every con, and that’s okay. But if a chick goes for a moon tan and body glitter, she’s “taking her fantasies too far”?

Women and girls really can’t win on this. Their favorite music is accused of being empty and meaningless. As if “Wop bop a loo bop, a womp bam boom” was some deeply meaningful observation on the human condition. As if Ozzy Osbourne’s many songs about drugs were so philosophical. No, pop music is empty, and heavy metal and hard rock are the pillars of moral posturing. Why just look at Ted Nugent and his love of little girls. That’s such deep and insightful music, man.

Women can’t catch a break. Men run the porn industry, and they degrade women in porn as a checklist of holes to violate. But they also use the term porn to strip legitimacy from anything women consume. What do they call a romantic book series with no sex? Abstinence porn. And what do they call a romantic book with visual sex? Mommy porn. What do they call erotica? Porn for women. Men’s porn can feature women shaving their pubes and portray young girls who get molested by uncles, and that’s not attacked with the vigor of romance books. No man talks up the problematic nature of the porn industry, but the characters of romance book are psychoanalyzed like they’re real people. They’re all found lacking, derided as useless fantasies and empty emotions, and the fact that they’re the most popular fiction market on the planet is just a sign of how bad the “problem” is. But even the most degrading porn slips right under the public radar. You try applying the same psychoanalysis to horror writing and call it torture porn, and watch the explosions about who’s being “persecuted.” The lesson is clear. It’s okay to persecute women, but don’t you dare question a man over what he writes.

Women can’t make up realistic female characters in fiction. Meek women set a bad example. Women who abstain from sex set a bad example. Women in abusive relationships set a bad example. Women who have sex with only one person, who have sex with two people, or who have polyamorous relationships…it’s all the same thing. ALL depictions of women are wrong, EXCEPT those created by men. A Facebook meme calls out all kinds of women, fictional or not, as bad, and then foists up a set of sci-fi women, most of them dressed in skin-tight bodysuits, and most of them written by men, and that meme says, “These are REAL role models.” Yes, the fake women supported by men, the women who are paid to act the way men want them to.

“But Zoe,” you say, “some of these male-created fandoms have women fans too.” Yes, they do, and you only use those token women when it suits your argument. You otherwise outright ignore those women fans when they have complaints about problematic moments in the series they like. Doctor Who’s depictions of women in the modern shows is highly sexist, but I have yet to meet a male Who fan who didn’t act like all that sexism was okay, because the Doctor is just so awesome.

Even worse is how when a woman reveals she’s a fan, she’s questioned on her knowledge to determine if she’s a “real fan” or an attention whore. If a girl claims to be a comics fan, but only reads girl’s comics, she’s also not a real fan. Who decides which women are in the club? Men. They police their border like women are an enemy, and not one half of their fandom.

I’m a gamer, and yet, I hate being a part of this fandom because women in games get even less respect than they do in TV shows, movies, comics, or books. Our places in most games is as an object to be won or fought over by men. When the new Tomb Raider came out, the male game makers said gamers couldn’t identify with a women unless she was beaten and in need of protection. This was said despite Lara Croft having a series of games going back into the 90s, and never once did she have to be treated this way to be popular. But now she does? Samus Aran of Metroid was a great heroine going back to the NES days, but when Ninja Theory got a hold of the character, they made her meek and subservient to men. Why? Because this is how men want women depicted. Even more recently, God of War’s latest game caused outrage among women gamers because there is a trophy for killing a female character called “Bros before Hos.” The apology is bullshit and says the company listens to the community. But the fact is, the trophy was put in because some men thought the insult was funny. It isn’t until they got called on their sexism that they cared about what the community thought.

Women who complain about the way they get depicted in games are also treated like shit, like newcomers who are intruding on an all-boys club, and the dudes can’t even be bothered to note that women gamers grew up in this club with them. When Anita Sarkeesian decided to do a video series looking into this problem, just her proposal alone was met with threats of rape and assault, and men photoshopped her image into sexual positions to degrade and demean her. When women gamers reacted with horror, MORE males gamers got insulted that women were blaming them for not policing their own club. Women gamers got hit constantly with “But that’s just a minority, and we’re not all like that.” Yes, it’s just a small minority who use comments like “rape that bitch,” in fighting games. But if it is such a small minority, shouldn’t it be easy to educate these few and stamp out the behavior? Of course it is not, because this is not a minority. It’s the mindset of far too many males in the club, and not a one of them wants to admit they’rr really bullies who harass HALF the members of their hobby with impunity.

And the thing is, it’s socially acceptable to bash women for any reason. Too slutty, too prudish, too talkative, too smart, too angry, too happy, doesn’t smile enough, too stupid, too shallow, not concerned enough about…there’s never a woman who can please the men, and then when women lose their shit about how rough they’ve got it, men bitch, “Hey, we’ve got it rough too, you know.”

Men, your gender owns 98% of the land worldwide, and runs 98% percent of all businesses. You have 89% of all writing positions in TV, and even when a news story should be all about women and their opinions, the media asks men how they feel about it instead. Male artists receive more reviews and awards than women, and women’s reviews are not represented equally in most media venues. Women earn less than men, receive less recognition than men for their contributions, and through all of this, they are expected to watch their tone, or be labeled “shrill.”

They suffer from constant threats to their personal safety; assault, rape and murder. If they become a victim under any circumstances, men look for reasons to excuse the men who attacked them by blaming the victim for her behavior. Girls who aren’t even out of puberty know all about that creepy as fuck male gaze, but should we bring it up, we’re rocking the boat, or we’re being sexist for pointing out how men treat women like meat to be consumed. Men complain about being labeled as creeps, and they complain that they’re really nice guys. But most of the nice act is simply to get a chance to fuck women, and once you have what you want, the nice act is over. Don’t like it? “Hate the game, not the playa.”

Men come up with bullshit complaints about reverse sexism like, “I opened a door for a woman, and she yelled at me!” So fucking what? My best friend told me I could trust him with my secrets, and then he blackmailed me and sexually assaulted me. Boys and men have cornered and beaten me until I was trained to be afraid of all men. I’m supposedly sexist for being afraid of being hit again, but men who have never been hit or hurt can insult me as a bitch. I’m just one of thousands of victims who were sent to therapy to be told to stop thinking about what happened to us, while the males who attacked us NEVER get punished.

There is a saying: “Men fear being ridiculed by women. Women fear being killed by men.” This is God’s honest truth, and women are killed more often in gun violence than men. Men abuse women day in and day out, and the ones who don’t resort to physical violence resort to intimidation or to insults about how us bitches are too sexist. We put up with sexual harassment in the workplace, or even just walking down the street. Those who don’t do that STILL find ways to be derogatory, like the never-ending Twilight jokes, the hate on pop singers, or the comments on the behavior of young women in the media. And there is never any accountability for this. Bring it up, and guys say, “That doesn’t apply to me, because I’ve got a valid complaint about ___.” Of course you’ve got a valid complaint about something women do, or something they enjoy. You’re a man, and your opinion is all that matters.

Men, dudes. I want to cut you some slack, and there are some male feminists out there who I feel are trying to be better. But the vast majority of men have yet to give up policing womanhood to tell us how to act, and there’s no two-way street here. You act like assholes, and you’re unapologetic about it. I’ve even seen some men say that they can’t think about women’s problems because that would make them a pussy. Even as they defend their macho ignorance, they insult womanhood.

Some of you may be thinking, “Lady, we don’t owe you bitches nothing.” Go tell your mother, the woman who carried your ignorant ass for nine months, that you don’t owe her gender any respect. Go tell your mother that you can’t work to be better because men don’t owe women anything. Every single man owes his life to a woman who bore him, who suffered pain and nine months of discomfort for him. And for her ability to bring new life into the world, the companies owned by men cut her salary. For her ability to be a mother, she is attacked, ridiculed, and judged as unfit for the man’s world.

So dudes, before you make another joke about women, or something women like, think about your mother. Before you excuse the actions of a rapist, think about your mother being the victim. Before you accuse women of being sexist, try walking in the painful high-heeled shoes of your mother for just one fucking block.

Think before you speak. And if one of your guy friends says something sexist, don’t just nod and let it go. Police your own gender and work to turn this shit around. Women don’t need men’s help with policing their gender. There’s plenty of women willing to slut-shame and victim blame in you absence. But there’s no accountability on your side for the rampant bad behavior of men, and that’s why shrill women like me have such a hard time being nice to you bastards.