Ok I only implied this, but MZB's estate will still be benefitting from her works even if she isn't personally.
]]>So? Is her "estate" automatically evil? And on another minor point of mud-slinging irrelevance, she looks like Rose West: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosemary_West
The haircut and glasses being conclusive and final proof. A bit like Myra Hindley had an evil haircut and was therefore doomed.
]]>I did not say that, and do not believe that I even implied it.
However it is more likely that someone whom you would regard as "ebil" is a beneficiary of her estate than that someone ebil is benefitting from Wagner's!
]]>Obligatory XKCD reference to Archetypes.
]]>And my point was that I could be certain that I'm not doing so by listening to Wagner, but could not be certain I wasn't doing so by buying MZB. OK?
]]>:)
]]>In response to these allegations, on July 2, 2014 Victor Gollancz Ltd, the publisher of Bradley's digital backlist, announced that it will donate all income from the sales of Bradley's e-books to the charity Save the Children.
So it looks like e-books are a charity donation.
]]>One of the most face-palming posts I had ever seen on the Internet; specifically on Usenet, as it happened shortly after the first LOTR movie (Fellowship of the Ring) came out:
"Why is everyone so crazy about this movie? All characters are complete stereotypes -- they could have come straight out of the Players Handbook!"
]]>Now imagine an every woman. Is she wearing heels? Men always wear sensible shoes but sooner or later a woman's shoes will cause plot issues and that will divide your audience. Does she wear skirts? Has she had kids? And the menopause means the everywoman's age can't be ignored like it can for the everyman.
I guess there probably once was a standard female identity. But feminists spent a century destroying it. So I found the article slightly disingenuous; it read a bit like, "Wah! We're being oppressed by the burden of choice forced on us by the patriarchy!" To which my reaction was, "Hang on, wasn't destroying the uniform female identity the point?!"
But, as with all feminist arguments, there's a grain of truth there. Were I to write an everyman-style protagonist without disclosing their gender, would you just presume they were a man? I might. There was a person here who I'd presumed to be a man and was then surprised to discover was a woman. So to an extent, I think it's true that masculinity has taken over the "neutral space". And I think that was what the article was trying to get at. But it had to do some cherry picking, and then conflated issues to create a conspiracy rather than an argument.
I haven't got time to go into "singular-they". But, yeah, it has a long and noble history and I think its entirely proper. However that's because I rate gender neutrality as more important that grammatical beauty.
]]>No, really?
Satires of stereotyped fantasy tropes (like Pratchett) is possibly the oldest genre of novel existing.
Don Quixote, a parody of the cliched tropes about knights-errant, chivalrous quests, etc was written in 1605. They call it the "first modern novel".
Meanwhile "Journey to the West" (often called "Monkey" in its English translation) is a chinese novel from 1592 that sits on the boundary between retelling Chinese mythic stories and satire.
]]>A "uniform female identity" is exactly what that article doesn't want. It's pointing out how difficult it is for women (and other "marked" minorities) to partake of the identity "person" without it being qualified.
Is a choice with the "none of the above" option denied to you but allowed to others a free choice?
]]>Who could have guessed that thirty years later I'd be able to rediscover a boys' own adventure series on an SF writer's blog. God bless Al Gore and his invention, the Internet!
]]>Interesting! What would it take to write a story people want to read, where the main character is a person whose gender doesn't matter?
I think you should do it.
It might possibly start out something like this:
You're on the job. You are replacing a failed circuit board deep in a crawlspace. All around you are other circuit boards that you mustn't touch. You hold very still while it clicks in place. Power on. Test. It's OK. Good. Every other board here tests OK too. You carefully crawl backward and out. One final run of tests, all pass. Good. You close the cover and mark your slate ready for the next job.
The job doesn't show up on your slate. Judson wants you to meet him at his station. Damn. It will take you 10 minutes to get there, why can't he just put it on the slate? You've been sensing something odd about Judson.
Well, a little exercise won't hurt. You move fast and arrive at Judson's bivouac in seven and a quarter minutes. Judson is short and pudgy, he always seems sort of -- moist. He has a brown caterpillar of a moustache. He looks at you and grins. "Hellooooo!" Oh shit.
"Hey, Judson, I'm behind schedule. Could I get the job ticket?"
"Uh. Uh. Has anybody told you, you look good when you're breathing deep?"
Take a deep breath and relax. You have to get jobs through Judson, you don't want to be the one who isn't a team player. "I'm behind schedule. I need my job ticket."
"No. You aren't. The job is real close to here, You'd have had to come practically this way irregardless. So uh. Uh. Which team do you root for, the Reds or the Blues?"
You're getting a sinking feeling in your stomach. "I don't follow sports much. I guess the Reds, but I don't care much."
"How can you not care? The Reds--"
"I'm on the clock. I need my job ticket."
"Oh, right. We can talk on break. Here it is."
You look at the slate. You know how to get there from here. You turn to go.
"Oh, uh, some of the boys are getting together at the bar after work. You want to be part of the team, right?"
Gone.
]]>