Five Hundred and Eighteen Words of ‘518’

Another day, another NaNo at an end–made it to 35212 words this month–though the validate-your-word-count thingy says I only did 34941. Well, fuck you, word-count validater–you don’t know shit!

Anyway, to say farewell to April, here’s 518 of the words I wrote this month for ‘518‘, in which our protagonist, Ira, discusses with an alien classmate, ‘Art’, the definition of lying–which is one of the stereotypes humans are labelled with in this universe–as they search an abandoned space station for intruders…

Enjoy.

*~*~*

The area around us was clear in all directions. So I asked him, “Tell me, Art—what makes something a lie?”

“Presently I have the feeling you’re asking not so that I will give my definition, but so you will give yours.”

That put a smile on my face. “Usually one of you would have humoured me longer. Or just started calling me names. You know, funnily enough, in the, uh… culture, I guess you’d say, that I belonged to… lying was condemned. ‘Thou shalt not bear false witness’, they said. Everyone still did it anyway, obviously, but I read,” I looked around quickly again. Still nothing. “–about this guy, or what he’d written rather, on that subject.”

With a gesture I invited him to follow me down the corridor so we could continue the search, and I could start babbling on about the words of Augustine of Hippo.

“He said there were three parts to a lie. One, that the information’s false. Two, that the person making the statement believes the information’s false. Three, that they intend that the person they’re making the statement to is deceived by the false information.”

“But doesn’t it necessarily follow that if you believe your statement is false, you must intend for that person to be deceived?”

“You’d think so, wouldn’t you? He got kind of convoluted with his reasoning; that being if someone asked you if there was danger on the road or something, and you knew there was, but you said there wasn’t because you thought the other person wouldn’t believe you, then that would be a false statement without the intent to deceive.”

I turned and looked around behind us. Nothing back the way we’d come yet.

“But that does have the intent to deceive,” Art argued. “It just doesn’t have the intent to harm.”

“Nah, because the intent is that they’ll believe the correct information—therefore not deceitful. Similarly, when I tell you I’m no good in combat, it’s not because it’s true I’m no good in combat, it’s because I don’t want to deceive you into thinking I can always be relied on. Because I know I can’t.”

They didn’t call me ‘Irascariot’ back on Earth for nothing, after all.

Art was silent for quite a while taking that in.

Eventually, and to my surprise, he told me; “Thank you. Selena don’t attach so much complexity to such matters, so I am grateful for the explanation.”

“You don’t? Say it ain’t so.”

“Indeed, we save such complexity for the institution of the hierarchy.”

I stopped in my tracks. That was the second time since I’d met him I’d been sure Art had told an actual joke.

“But just so you know, Ira; I would not have concluded that your conduct in one situation would definitely translate over exactly the same to every other. I would only have proceeded on the assumption that anticipating similar conduct would be reasonable. I appreciate, however, that certain others may not understand that difference.”

“Well, I’ll try not to be quite so manipulative towards you in the future,” I assured him.

Things Are Over-Thinked Apart

Wow.

I think before yesterday the highest number of views my blog had ever had in one day was 20, and I’m pretty sure that was the day my brother found out I had a blog.

Yesterday I posted my thoughts, plus outlined a new little research project I intended to start, concerning the Hugo Awards. Today my blog was viewed almost 200 times, mostly (it seems) thanks to my last post somehow ending up mentioned in a Hugo Awards News Round-up post written on ‘File770‘; an online fanzine written by a Hugo-winning fan-writer. It probably sounds stupid when I say my heart skipped a beat looking at all those little lines on my ‘views in the last 48 hours’ counter, but it did.

Didn’t get many likes out of it–I guess the post sucked. Oh well. You can’t win ’em all!

Not to mention a whole two random people dropped by to correct one of my careless mistakes–it was horrible! Horrible, I tell you!

But, that’s not what I wanted this post to be about when I thought about writing a post this evening–no, the actual subject of this post was supposed to be my complaining about the decision that I’ve come to recently.

It’s been on my mind for a while now, but I kept telling myself no, everything’s fine the way it is, you don’t have to go to all the effort it would involve just to make your book–

*Sigh*

I can’t deny it anymore. ‘The Ritual of DUELS’ is going to have to be split into three books.

Brevity may be the soul of wit, but it’s not my strong suit, and as I’ve gone through chapters of ‘DUELS’ over the past year and a half, since I first conceived of it back for the NaNoWriMo of 2013, continually having to cut stuff out to keep it within an acceptable length for a YA book, I’ve kept saying to myself: “Oh, I’ll just mention that bit of world-building in the next one, I’m sure I’ll want to do a sequel.”

However, there’s just too much going on in the book. It’s not just the world-building, I don’t have the time or space to develop the themes or the character relationships the way I want–I’m going to end up with the ‘Ah, they’ve had three conversations so I guess they’re in love now!’ trope I’m always complaining about, ironically showing up in my own work (not exactly, but it’s in the same spirit), and there are too many instance where I just ‘cut-to’ a different scene and expect the reader can fill in the gap for themselves. I truly believe that even though the reader could fill in the gaps I’ve left, the story would be better with those parts filled in, and I’ve decided to make the attempt for that better story.

It’s annoying, because as I’ve said before, ‘DUELS’ was almost finished. But the more I think about it, the more I think splitting the book into a trilogy–allowing more time for the characters to develop, the world to become real, and the story to flow–this is the right way to go.

*Looks out at the hard road ahead, to the bright future of a book that was given the attention it deserved*

…

Ugh.

[In this picture, the 1st protagonist of ‘DUELS’, Xiang, tries to catch some of the pages of their book that the 2nd protagonist, Tarquin, has chopped up with his sword of ink, but accidentally sets them on fire with his pyrokinesis, while the 3rd protagonist, Elodie, dubiously regards the guys she has to share co-main character status with. There’s no caption, because they’re all too awkward to speak to each other].

#SadPuppies : Stop the Hugo Awards Bullies?

[EDIT: 29th April, 17:44. It’s kindly been pointed out to me that the book I picked for my in-depth analysis for this year’s nominations was one of the (supposedly few, from what I had understood) that wasn’t on the Sad Puppies slate. That’s on me, but the less in-depth analyses (out-of-depth? Har, har, har…) are still set for this weekend, and maybe that will help me decide on my actual selection. Stay tuned.]

Ah, the Hugo awards. A tradition so close to my heart that I only heard about it when #GamerGate noticed it; which is especially bad as I’m supposedly a sci-fi fan, but I’m not actually a gamer.

So I’ve been doing some research as only I can do it—shoddily and with as little effort as possible—and it made me think back, back to days of yesteryear. In 2013 when I first started this blog one of my first posts was about the STGRB controversy. For those of you who don’t know, STGRB stands for ‘Stop The GoodReads Bullies’, and was a group who formed one side of another SJW conflict—however, this was a little different to the more recent debacles we’ve grown to love.

The basic background was this: a number of popular intersectional feminist book-reviewers had been declared ‘bullies’ by a group of mostly independent authors whose books had been criticised by them for reasons of sexism etc. Now, the timeline here was very murky, or at least it was when I first became aware of it, concerning who had stated this whole thing. There were accusations of ’rounding up mobs of fans’ flying back and forth from one side to the other (I’m sure the SJWs have a word for that in their Newspeak lexicon… eh, I probably don’t want to know) and of course, accusations of doxxing, threats and harassment.

Those who supported STGRB claimed that their books had been criticised unfairly, and that when this occurred more often than not the friends and followers of these feminist reviewers, many reviewers just as popular, would immediately give their book a correspondingly poor rating on Goodreads without even thinking of actually reading it for themselves—and with many of these being indie authors, drive the average rating of the book down significantly and negatively impact the impressions of potential readers.

Reviewers, on the other hand, considered these authors to be sexist, thin-skinned whiners who wanted to limit their free speech, many of whom by contrast to the indie authors among them had substantial enough fanbases or followers that when they complained about their bad reviews, a wave of negative comments and messages would be sent to the reviewer in question. A popular tag or ‘shelf’ used by these circles was ‘bba’ or ‘Badly Behaving Author’, which STGRB particularly despised as it indicated the reviewer was reviewing the author, not the book. Their cries not to be censored seem almost ironic in light of how things are now.

There was a lot more going on than can be summed up in three paragraphs, of course, but I don’t think my thoughts on the STGRB debacle have changed all that much in the last year and a half. These were said thoughts:

1. The reviewers should have the right to declare the book to be whatever –ism they wanted to.
2. The reviewers should have the right to be as cruel in their reviews as they wanted to.
3. Although I personally think it’s uncalled for, the reviewers should also be allowed to say whatever they wanted to about the author personally. Goodreads is a consumer guide after all, and some consumers don’t want to give their money to people they think they wouldn’t like.
4. The reviewers should not be rating or reviewing books they had not read, either because they wanted to back up their friend’s opinion, or because they wanted it to be a comment on something they’d heard about the author.
5. The authors had the right to complain about any reviews they were given; especially if the review was misrepresentative of their work or of their character, though I would add to that that if you’re talking about an author with a massive fanbase; then one, I would expect their skin to be pierced only by the most outrageous of unfair reviews, and two, I would expect them to realise in advance that while they’re not their fans’ mother it never hurts to make known that you don’t want someone you’re in a disagreement with to be harassed by your supporters. The same goes for particularly popular reviewers taking on indie and small press books.
6. Criminal behaviour such as doxxing, threats or harassment is criminal. On both sides.

I think that about covers it. The old STGRB blog seems to have been taken down, but I saw a few of their detractors up and about after I googled the term, though since Goodreads implemented one or two of the policies they wanted maybe STGRB have just gone away. Honestly, looking back on it I find both sides kind of unpalatable, though at the time I leant towards the STGRB side: they were both pretty censorious and both loved playing the victim. I also never liked the term ‘bullies’, I’ve always associated it with children on a playground and these people were all adults, despite how many of them acted.

Anyway, it only matters now in that for me it’s an interesting point for comparison, and you can probably see why I’ve brought it up, though I don’t really associate either side in that controversy with either side of what I’m about to discuss, just that I’m getting a little déjà vu. And speaking of which…

Sad Puppies.

Accusations of isms and political agendas within both present and past nominations. Accusations of being only concerned about the author and their politics rather than the quality of their work. Accusations of rounding up the mob to see that their whims are done. Accusations of promoting or detracting from books without reading them—and this one I believe, sadly, has definitely been going on this year.

That was always what bothered me the most about the STGRB thing, and is something still I disagree with, even if I do agree that if the SJW clique really has been dominating the awards, then that needs to change so that other deserving authors can have their chance. Of course, for all I know, the SJW clique has been doing the exact same thing in previous years, and just as I saw two years ago, ‘revenge’ ratings are also out and about.

When I first thought of writing this post I wanted to come to grips first of all with what the Hugo Awards truly were; because there has been some debate about that and what is ‘supposed’ to be decided by the award. The best sci-fi books of the year? The most popular? The most well-crafted? The most meaningful?

All but the most popular are subjective, but if we’re going to use that as the metric, we have to admit… sometimes some awful shit can become popular. You know what I’m talking about. And yet, supposedly, if it is what’s voted for—and anyone can vote if they pay for membership, then a critical failure (whether it deserves such derision or not) is still worthy of a Hugo Award.

But what other metric are the Hugo Awards supposed to be decided by? What the literary elite considers ‘quality’? Not that that necessarily isn’t quality just because it not necessarily is, but then what else do we have the Nebula Awards for—assuming I understand the purpose of the Nebula Awards? Are they not the crème de la crème for said literary elite, in contrast to the Hugos’ vox populi?

Because the elitist-populist divide as it is seen by many following the controversy is as important a sticking-point as the left wing-right wing split—more important, to some. And I don’t know if there’s a real test to see whether a certain work is imaginative avant-garde versus pretentious garbage.

I mean, I’ve liked the avant-garde. One of my favourite TV series of all time is Patrick McGoohan’s ‘The Prisoner’—which you’ve probably already guessed from looking at my avatar if you’re at all familiar with the show—and that show, particularly the ending, could be very experimental in its expression, I think a lot of such experimental works have both major artistic and entertainment merit.

And some of them can fall into both avant-garde and popular categories; I mean, it’s rare—a lot of the avant-garde stuff, even the ‘good’ stuff, requires a lot more thought and reflection than what the average reader/viewer might consider entertainment—but then so does a lot of the really ‘hard’ science fiction: a more straight-forward exploration of complicated scientific theories, maybe, but to some people far more impenetrable than the more emotionally-driven artistry that certain works use instead of traditional narrative; works for whom evoking feeling is as or more important than evoking thought.

Are these the type of books the Hugos are meant to be giving recognition to?

I’m not in the in-crowd in the science fiction literature world—as an author I hate to admit it but I honestly relate far better to TV and movies and am only now getting into this because I’m writing my own sci-fi book (well, technically I’ve already written one, but it was YA, and I’ve always seen it in the context of the YA market rather than the sci-fi). I don’t know if, in recent years, the Hugos have become decided by a criteria more suited for the Nebulas, if this is about solely works approved by a clique of intersectional feminists dominating an award supposedly meant to be without political bias, if it’s a mix of both these things. I may be misunderstanding everything entirely.

One thing I really don’t think it is, is a reactionary attempt by straight white cis-men with delusions of persecution trying desperately to hoard whatever prestige comes from the Hugos away from more deserving women and minorities who were ‘just starting to be heard in the science fiction community!’… two hundred years ago when Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein. She’s a unique example, perhaps, but a telling one all the same.

All I can really do now is begin to take a closer look at the nominations themselves. This is a two-fold operation—first to analyse at least the literature nominations made over the last… Mm, let’s say five years for now, that’s how long the militant SJWs have been a really visible force in my opinion, and see if any patterns or talking points emerge from such analysis when contrasted with this year’s slate.

Second to read at least two of the books myself: one from this year’s slate, one from a year or two ago, just for comparison—and also because I haven’t been doing enough serious reading lately.

I know, I know, in the past I’ve more than deserved the title of ‘Grand Lord Universal Procrastinatrix (it’s Lord rather than Lady because… patriarchy), Mistress of Starting what She does not Finish’, but I’m going to do it! I swear!

Here—we’ll take a look at the analysis of present and past nominations another time; for now I’ll leave you with the selection of which of the ‘Best Novel’ nominations this year I’m going to read.

‘Ancillary Sword’, ‘Skin Game’, and ‘The Dark Between the Stars’ are out because I’m too lazy to read even the one preceding book in the Ancillary series; besides which that and the last one just don’t seem like my kind of book. ‘Skin Game’ sounded more my style, but as the fifteenth book in a series, I don’t think I have the time to catch up on the continuity enough that I—a continuity fiend—would feel happy judging it.

This leaves ‘The Goblin Emperor’ and ‘The Three Body Problem’, and the former had the phrase ‘hoping for the possibility of romance’ in its summary on Amazon, which made the eight-year-old boy within me go ‘Ugh! Lovey-dovey stuff!’ so, ‘The Three-Body Problem’ it is!

This originally Chinese book is perhaps not something I would have ordinarily read either—it seems a lot more ‘hard’ sci-fi than what is wont to compel me, but the ideas that I gleaned drove its plot from the Goodreads summary and a few of the top reviews on its Goodreads page really intrigued me despite my apprehension that I won’t be able to understand the science involved.

But it’s good to challenge yourself once in a while, isn’t it? Besides, one of the ideas it mentions relates somewhat to something in my book, and I need to make sure no one will ever think I ripped off this story. Otherwise I’ll have to build a mass memory-deleting machine, the power will go to my head, and I’ll become the laziest Evil Overlord Earth has ever known!

Look for my first glance at the Hugo Awards nomination slates on the weekend; I want to do a final post on ‘518′ before NaNo ends, and of course there’ll be another Missing Word Story on Friday.

Aren’t you glad it took a whole two posts before I started talking about SJW issues again? 😉

Bad Lip-Reading

So, you know when your main character has traded their voice for a cybernetic eye but then has their holographic word-display device shot off their wrist when a hostage negotiation goes south and has to try to get people to read their lips in order to understand what they’re saying?

I mean, I’m sure us authors have all been there at some point, right?

Well, what happens when the rag-tag team of plucky revolutionaries finds they’ve neglected to bring a lip-reader along on their mission to blow up an alien prince?

That’s right, Bad Lip-Reading!

(Not the YouTube channel, though if you don’t know that one you should really look for it sometime. Hilarity ensues)

It’s fun for the whole family, or in this case for me and my Mum anyway, as I mouthed some words at her today and she tried to guess what I was trying to say so I could write a scene where people are trying to guess what someone who has no voice is trying to say about a bloodthirsty alien who had infiltrated their ranks in order to bring down an Empire.

First word, ‘Blight’ [what the alien menace is known as to… pretty much everyone but themselves]

My Mum: … Blood?

Second word: ‘Parasite’ [the nature of the Blight, as our ‘hero’ is trying to explain to the other Humans]

My Mum: … Marrow Sats? Barrow Sats?

Third word/phrase: ‘You were being used’ [further attempt to explain the Blight’s agenda]

My Mum: You are mean toast?

Final word: ‘Fuck!’ [expletive]

My Mum: Oh, well I definitely understood that one!

And then the geniuses realised they had a pen and paper the whole time. Surely they will save the world!

[CAPTION] 2nd piece of Toast: “Why must you be so mean, Phil?“

Missing Word Stories: From Saturn

Hey, purple penguins! Have you ever seen the Johnny Depp film ‘From Hell‘? Did you like it? Did you ever wonder what would happen if a fifteen-year-old girl wrote up a really short and stupid synopsis of it, left some words out, and got her friend to fill in those blanks by giving her only the type of word that was missing to go on?

No? Well I’m going to show you anyway, because the one I did last week was quite popular, and I’ll do anything for attention as long as I don’t have to put any effort into it!

So, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, allow me to present to you–from the long lost days of the summer of 2005–the dark and twisted tale of… From Saturn

And no great story can fail to capture the imagination of an equally great artist–to with, here is the accompanying illustration in which our tragic hero Eomer dies (spoilers!) of hammer overdose and Claude Rains the purple-haired prison cook runs off to Mexico (hence the sombrero) with Maude’s bag, while Saturn looms threateningly in the background.

Yeah… my friend and I really liked Johnny Depp and Claude Rains back then. Even if I couldn’t spell his name right in my last post…

The Diverse Walking Dead

Since I became a zombie at the end of the post I did before my book commentary on Wings—and that one I wrote over a year ago, so even a zombie could have posted about it— and my other post about the Hadringar, I thought it might be time to write about dead things.

Not about the actual TV show ‘The Walking Dead’, I’m afraid, though in a way it does tie into it. If you’ve been following TWD fandom, you might have heard of the ‘Blacklander’ phenomenon; the idea that there can only be one black main character on the show at a time, and if another one comes along the previous one has to be killed off.

Well, it only refers to black male characters now so that there’s still something to complain about, but the point is they still complain about it. This started in Season 3 when the only black main character was killed, another black guy showed up for a few episodes and was then killed, and then another black guy showed up [who, in all fairness, has since been killed]. I’m sure this has nothing to do with characters being killed left and right in every season, or possibly actors wanting to go off and do other things, and everything to do with hatred of black people.

Uh, black men—because the two female black characters introduced that season were still alive at the end of the last one. I guess by those standards ‘The Walking Dead’ believes in Asian and homosexual supremacy, because 100% of the Asian and gay cast have survived up to the end of Season 5.

… now I want to see a spin-off show where a bunch of gay Asians lead by George Takei roam the zombie-infested countryside, head-shotting zombies and protecting the vulnerable black, white, and heterosexual populations. It would be AWESOME.

Anyway, I don’t like that I’ve been going on about the whole Social Justice thing so much lately—I promise after this one I’ll get back to the usual, apolitical ramblings of a complete moron—but the thing is that this thing, this ‘OMG! You killed off the black character!’ thing, is soon going to be affecting my own work. Such are the realisations you come to when you actually work on your projects for a while—thanks NaNo!

So what is the crux of the matter but the fact that you can only have so many main characters in a single work before you begin to get confusing, (and I’ve already got a lot of characters), but ‘diversity’ covers far more than just ‘black and white’? There’s what, 200+ countries in the world? And different regions within those countries who receive less attention than others—I mean how many times is your exciting drama set in South Dakota, for example? There are a dozen different ethnicities out there and a lot more combinations of those in mixed-race people that I’m sure exist in the world, but how often do they get represented? What about queer versions of these characters? Disabled versions? Religious minority versions?

Ultimately there’s only so much room for diversity, even if you eject your white men out altogether, which I haven’t. But the humans in the book I’m working on this month are diverse because I wanted the characters to each relate some way to a different aspect of the alien invasion, which is happening differently all around the world. So I include as much as I can by having only one or two examples of each.

Thing is, I’m writing a sci-fi drama involving conquest! Terrorism! Murder! Assassinations! People are dying all over the place! And if I kill off, say, my Jewish character—that means I killed off ‘The Jewish Guy’! Anti-Semitism abounds! I have two Chinese guys, so I guess I can kill one of them and still not be racist, but what about my Russian character? Sure, he’s a straight white male, but I wouldn’t want to offend Russian people—or have them think the killing off of a character in a book was, like, a condemnation of Putin’s doing whatever he’s doing in the Ukraine or something.

Granted, most Russians probably wouldn’t give a shit. And, frankly, writing my story the way I envision it comes before the feelings of a bunch of hypothetical Russians. But there’d be plenty of SJWs ready to give a shit on their behalf and I kind of wonder how they came to see the world that way—one character being automatically associated with everything associated with one, trivial aspect of that character and a mountain of bullshit that exists nowhere in reality.

It’s kind of weird. But what can you do about it?

I mean I know what I’m going to do about it—i.e., nothing. As I was saying in my post on the New Mary Whitehouse (Mary Whitehouse has joined the zombie hordes! Run!) earlier this month; some people think the way you treat characters in a book is always intended to be, or whether intended or not simply is, a commentary on the superficial ‘diversity’ status of that character.

Muslim villain? You’re perpetuating hate against Muslims. Kill off the gay character? You’re telling gay people they deserve to die. Have a white character rescue a black character? White Saviour. Have a black character rescue a white character? Magical Negro. Woman displays traditional femininity? Reinforcing gender roles. Woman displays traditionally masculine traits? You believe masculinity is superior.

So many of these exist in no-win situations it makes some people think they shouldn’t even try writing diverse characters, because honestly? They seem to get more vitriol for ‘doing it wrong’ than the straight white cis-scum brigade gets for their supposed ‘erasure’.

Well I am trying: trying to write a good story, anyway, and in this story characters who are superficially diverse for reasons other than blatant tokenism also have diversity of inner character, and if people don’t like it they can do whatever they want to do about it—it’s a free country, assuming you’re not enslaved to the kyriarchy, or your own narcissism.

I mean, as long as they don’t, like, kill me or anything. I promise, I’m a nice zombie. Barely eaten anyone all week.

In other news, I hit my NaNo target of 30K yesterday, so have a cartoon of all my diverse characters in celebration and place your bets on which ones will survive the book! XD

[Sorry, Americans—I couldn’t really render some of the individual state flags very well… or even recognisably. And sorry to you too, LGBT folks… I didn’t have a purple pen, so the bottom stripe in the flag is now pink].

The Harrowing Hadringar

Another in my posts showing the background of ‘518‘, this is species 517 of the 518 known species in the universe in-universe: the Hadringar. (Same word for both plural, singular, and descriptor–e.g. ‘it was a facet of Hadringar culture’. Planet’s name is ‘Hadringatte’)

The Hadringar were luckier than the Humans in the book, their species was discovered by the Bani Alliance and voted democratically to become part of the Alliance rather than being taken over. However, there are enough Hadringar upset with this development that terrorist groups have formed, some of which wish to make another alliance with Humans as they (wrongfully) see their situations to be similar.

Unfortunately, the Humans have no idea what’s really going on with Hadringatte becoming part of the Alliance, and so have agreed to snuggle up to these fluffy creatures, which leads to much mayhem. Behold; the Hadringar!

The colour of the main body in this picture is darker than it should be, and in retrospect the stalks look a little too thin, but overall I’m happy with this drawing. My inspiration was simple–a fluffy, down feather had caught on a chain-link fence I was walking past, right next to some grit that kind of looked like eyes and paws coming from the little feather. Later on, I saw a little dome in the window of a sweet shop that had lollypops sticking out of it, and voila.

Fun fact: when I showed this drawing to my Mum and explained the function of the spheres, she replied, “Hm, I wonder why nothing like that ever evolved in real life…”

Yeah, I wonder why, Mum. I wonder why…

[Excerpt from ‘518’ describing the Hadringar:]

*~*~*

Catching the eye more than the Humans would have if this hadn’t been the first time I’d seen my own people in five years, were the Hadringar. They were about the height of a German shepherd, cotton-candy pink balls of fluff with these creepy big insect-like green eyes at one end, just above their big paws.

Along their backs were—and I hate to call them this—the lollypop-like protrusions. Long pale stalks with spheres the size of small melons tipping the ends in several swirling bright colours. They’d evolved to almost perfectly mimic a type of stationary life on their planet; a plant, for lack of a better term. That plant’s protrusions contained a nectar-like substance that attracted certain creatures to feed on it.

The same protrusions on the Hadringar contained a liquid sedative that attracted the same creatures so that the Hadringar could feed on them. That was their purpose, I mean. I imagined these days Hadringar lured their prey to themselves out in the wild about as often as Humans caught, killed and prepared their own food. Or maybe not; you could never make assumptions about these things.

There were two present in the cathedral, both with weapons mounted on the two lollypops closest to their eyes, and both with other devices strapped along their backs as well. One stood the furthest being away from me in the room, by the second entrance…

Wings: Evolution Fails Again (Part II)

WINGS: PART TWO

Chapter Fifteen

Laurel argues with her mother for the sake of the land in the most boring manner possible, and Laurel’s mother agrees to wait a week to shut her up. This means Laurel can go back to berating herself for daring to make the acquaintance of more than one boy!

Then even though we’ve proved beyond a doubt that Laurel is, in fact, a plant, Laurel wants to do some more experiments—this time ones that involve kissing David! She exhales into David’s mouth to prove she exhales oxygen rather than CO2, and she was right—killing David instantly.

Nah, that would be something actually happening, and we can’t have that—this is ‘Wings’!

… which should really be called ‘Petals’! Also, turns out that pure oxygen doesn’t kill you, it only makes you stronger, so someone lied to me about that one.

Also Laurel tastes like honey—as all plants do! Go outside and eat one right now, you’ll see!

Chapter Sixteen

Chelsea phones Laurel the next day to ask if she can have any more page-time in the book, and since the plot has failed to really take off, Laurel has nothing better to do than to say ‘yes’. They have a nice long gossip with no bearing on anything.

Later that day, Laurel’s dad is sick. Oh noes!

Chapter Seventeen

Well, since judging by the description Laurel’s dad is practically dying, Laurel goes off to his book store to take up his shift, along with his employee Maddie. Maddie is even dumber than Laurel’s mother, and believes in the healing power of candles over alternative medicine.

Surprisingly, candles and liquorice root didn’t cure Laurel’s dad, even when they gave him paracetamol too, and Laurel’s mother decides calling an ambulance might be a good idea after he began vomiting blood. But it does mean something actually happened, so there’s that.

Laurel’s mother goes with him to the hospital, but Laurel doesn’t follow because…

Anyway, she calls up David and he pops over like a good Generic Love Interest. Laurel reveals she’s taught herself how to be a master guitar-player, and they watch Singing in the Rain. Without any Clockwork Orange rape. Bummer.

Boringness ensues when Laurel’s dad fails to get better and David volunteers at the bookstore. I can really feel the emotion in this part, the emotion of… DULL SURPRISE.

… without the ‘surprise’ part.

Chapter Eighteen

Laurel’s dad fails to get any better despite being strung out on the same morphine Vee Sky was blessed with in Hush, Hush. The doctors have found an unknown toxin in his blood, so they filter it with one of those filtration machines—ha ha, no, they just pump him full of drugs.

Surprisingly enough this does nothing. Oh, wait, that’s not a surprise at all. What is surprising is that he starts showing heart failure before the ‘throw everything against the wall’ method shuts down his liver and kidneys.

So he now has a week to live. Dun dun dun!

Oh, and Laurel’s mum signs the house over to Mr. Burns—er, Barnes. Excellent. Laurel fights with her mother over this, but apparently since they’re in massive debt due to medical bills hippie-mum never thought they’d need to pay, they have no choice. Bummer.

David and Laurel decide to go Scooby-Doo on Barnes’ ass and pop over to his office to look for clues, showing detective skills surpassing even Nina and Vee! (although Laurel’s cans of Sprite would probably make better detectives than that pair).

They find the building his office is supposed to be in is abandoned (DULL SURPRISE!) and what’s worse—ugly people are nearby! Along with a… blob… of some sort.

(I don’t know!)

Chapter Nineteen

The dynamic duo are discovered by Barnes and he throws them against the wall. Yeah! Woo! Revolution!

No, not like that; I mean he actually throws them against the wall. I sense a villain monologue!

First Barnes uses his mind-control powers to get David to tell him their cunning plan of playing amateur detective because ‘something wasn’t right’, which upsets Laurel because how dare David reveal the plan! It was so cunning!

Laurel punches him in the face to prevent him from saying anything else and Barnes decides he was bored anyway, and he’s going to throw them in the river, yay! We miss out on a villain monologue (aww), but we are treated to some evil laughter. Mwahahahaha.

The two ugly goons talk about their ugly goon insecurities and desire to tear people limb from limb as they drive our heroes up to be thrown in the river, and David and Laurel say their tearful, banter-y goodbyes with all the emotion of tORgO from Manos, the Hands of Fate.

But fortunately they’re able to survive being thrown in the river due to breathing into each other’s mouths, so I guess that useless experiment was actually some clunky foreshadowing!

Unfortunately it turns out you do die from pure oxygen if you’re underwater, due to pressure inequality or something, so now David is dead. Who will Laurel choose? Her Fairy Love Interest or her Zombie Love Interest!?

Just kidding. David doesn’t die. He still may as well be replaced by a zombie though.

Chapter Twenty

Three quarters through, woo hoo!

Laurel is worried that David might get hypothermia from being in the river, but tells him not to worry about her getting it, because she’s not warm blooded.

FAIL.

Then she convinces him not to go to the cops, because there’s no way the cops could possibly deal with two strong ugly guys!

DOUBLE FAIL.

So instead our heroes go off to see Tamani, who is immediately a dick about David for no reason. No reason other than mindless jealousy, I guess. Laurel falls into his arms in tears, and having told him that they were attacked by UGLY people, Tamani immediately knows who she means.

The next day he informs her that trolls are trying to kill her father, by posting mean-spirited comments on his YouTube account, taking away his will to live. Or with poison, that works too, I guess. It’s a good thing the fairies are so well organised!

Oh, and Tamani’s friend Shar is introduced. I don’t know what the point of him is, maybe he’s planning a counter-attack?

[No one will get that joke].

For now all he’s doing is having Kriptik Konversayshuns with Tamani though, who complains about ‘the Queen’. It turns out the land is a gateway to Avalon, a perfect place where gold and diamonds spring up out of the ground, attracting trolls who want riches in order to make it big in the human world, though they mean nothing to fairies.

… so why don’t the fairies just give the diamonds to the trolls, if they’re not using them? Racists!

Anyway, a zillion years ago King Arthur, Merlin, and Oberon forged Excalibur so that one day the plot of Wings could have a MacGuffin when it was most needed. Excalibur banished the trolls from faerie and Oberon created some gates near where Laurel’s house was… on the other side of the world from Camelot—??? –and the fairies can’t be bothered to figure out why the trolls want the land now when before they didn’t give a shit.

Shar then decides that’s enough exposition for one day, and they have some troll-killing to do.

Chapter Twenty-One

Tamani immediately tries to be more of a dick to David than Reed was to Russell in Inescapable. Very attractive. Then seeing as no one’s given any exposition this chapter, Tamani decides to tell the kiddies about trolls, with some really great science.

Apparently trolls are ‘a glitch in evolution’, human cells are ‘irregular’ and therefore they lack symmetry… as opposed to those oh-so symmetrical plants?

…

Of course! Don’t you know anything about science!?

Also, ugly=stupid, and if you’re ugly and stupid, then evolution has ‘given up on you’, though the misshapen gene hasn’t been thwarted by natural selection because of… I don’t know, twin clones of Hitler.

More ‘unique’ science later, Tamani says he’s going off to kill some trolls, and Laurel says she wants to come too, but Tamani says no, and they argue for a few pages. Then this happens:

David: I want to come too.

Tamani: No, you can’t.

David: Please?

Tamani: Oh, alright then.

And it was that easy.

Chapter Twenty-Two

The gang go back to the trolls lair and BREAK THEIR FRIKKIN’ NECKS!

Shit, man! Shit just got fucking real!

Then Tam kills the blob… thing… and they go off to find Barnes, but Barnes has a few villain monologues he needs to get off his chest (or so I hope) and does his signature move of throwing Tam against a wall.

A smatter of clichéd villainous dialogue later and Barnes pulls a gun out and shoots Tamani. OH NOES!

Wait, I can’t stand Tamani. Yay!

Chapter Twenty-Three

Aww, Barnsy only shotted him in the leg.

Laurel screams uselessly, but then Barnes realises he’s left his brain in his other pants and puts the gun down on the desk, allowing Laurel to pick it up and threaten him with it. She doesn’t shoot him because she doesn’t have a brain anywhere, until he attacks and she gets him in the shoulder.

Barnes runs away like a champ, and David shows up so they can steal the paperwork for the house and follow suit. There’s some hot driving action as Tamani is taken to Shar for a going through magic gates montage.

A guy called Jamison is introduced… not exactly sure what the point of his character is, he seems to be in charge of the whole changeling operation though, in which case he’s really doing a bang-up job! He gives Laurel a magic potion and a jewel because I don’t think Excalibur is going to be used in this book, and they need her to bribe her parents into giving her the land.

Chapter Twenty-Four

While Laurel tries to puzzle out how days are different to hours, she and David skip off to the hospital, to give the magic potion to her dad. Laurel also has to explain to her dim mother how she’s a fairy and everything, and her mother reacts with…

“Duuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuh?”

Then Laurel uses more of the potion on David’s minor cuts, because that’s not a waste at all! But it does result in the kiss of twu wuv… or possibly the kiss of meh.

Chapter Twenty-Five

Laurel goes back to the old house and meets up with Tamani, who’s a-okay now that he’s been healed off-page. He asks Laurel to live with him, because this is like their fifth conversation, that’s practically marriage!

It turns out Laurel’s parents were given constant memory potions to not realise that Laurel was a fairy, which was a MUCH better plan than just buying the land off them themselves with all those fucking diamonds they had lying around. Laurel says she wants to stay in the human world and protect her human entourage, but Tamani says they were destined to be together by destiny because before Laurel became a sleeper agent they were friends and stuff.

So why didn’t he tell her that sooner?

Anyway, he goes on and on and on about how he watched her grow up and she sang a lot and she was really pretty and he wanted a pony and to live in a castle and eat ice cream and go to the zoo, whine, whine, whine.

Twu wuv’s first kiss ensues here too, whoop-dee-shit.

And, that’s all, folks!

FINAL THOUGHTS

I probably shouldn’t be typing up my final thoughts right now, there’s a large growth on my back and I should really go to the doctor’s, but our doctor has this thing where you can only phone for an appointment before eight-thirty in the morning, and I just don’t get up that early.

It’s especially worrying considering how irregular my cells are. That and the fact that I don’t have a pulse…

Dawn: You don’t have a pulse because you’re dead, you freak! You got hit by a meteorite in that ‘Halo‘ review and that’s what’s sticking out of your back right now!

*Looks in mirror*

Huh. What do you know—evolution has failed me again!

Wings: Evolution Fails Again (Part I)

WINGS: PART ONE

This was recommended to me by my GR friend Hayley, whose recommendations I trust implicitly, as she’s one of two people so far who have been crazy—uh, intuitive enough to friend me on GoodReads.

Anyway, if I remember correctly this one’s about fairies, or elves or pixies or something, which I haven’t run into before outside the Love Interest Extraordinaire from Born at Midnight… his name I’ve temporarily misplaced, but I’m sure it’s not a big deal.

Condensed Goodreads Review Here: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/717761036

Chapter One

Our heroine today is Laurel Sewell, a girl with cheerful shoes (?!) but a dark mood. She’s been homeschooled for the past ten years and this is her first day at the Pit—uh, High School. A guy called David offers to sit with her during lunch, and they have a nice boring conversation.

After school Laurel goes home, to tell her mother that school ‘sucked’. Her mother scolds her for using such harsh words—rightly so! What will become of society when our children use the word ‘suck’ with impunity!? Then they have a boring conversation too. After that, boring exposition ensues. Then another boring conversation. Ahh, I will have a good sleep tonight.

Good opening, everyone—a solid contender for the show!

Chapter Two

The next day at school, David invites Laurel to sit with his friends—who include Chelsea, a character obsessed over what other people eat. Speaking of which, it seems Laurel only eats fruit and vegetables… hmm… wot cood dis meen?!

Also, lunch at this school is 28 minutes long. That seems… kind of arbitrary.

Laurel and David discuss the experience of lunch further during class, and—

Oh. That’s the end of the chapter. An entire chapter devoted to lunch; there’s a new one.

Chapter Three

I continue to be riveted by David and Laurel’s conversations, as after an unspecified period of time later they are discussing their respective mothers’ professions. David’s mother is a pharmacist, while Laurel’s is a herbalist. Let’s watch the wackiness ensue!

Only there is no wackiness as of yet. So far, this is one of the blandest things I’ve read since ‘The Wicked Woods’. We learn Laurel was adopted, and then she goes over to David’s house so he can show her a cool tree in his back yard. They exchange numbers, and when Laurel goes home he calls her and they arrange a study date!

This was supposed to be about fairies or something… wasn’t it?

Chapter Four

In this chapter, Laurel gets a zit.

It’s on her back though, so I’m guessing it will later turn out to be the titular Wings. After more boring conversations with David and Chelsea, we learn Laurel never has to use shampoo, her hair is just naturally clean all the time.

The next day the zit has grown larger than any natural zit would, but Laurel’s parents are medicine deniers, so Laurel decides to do sod all about it. And—what do you know—it continues to grow after that. She still doesn’t tell her parents. Even when it becomes so big her regular clothes can no longer conceal it.

Hmm, maybe it’s a bubo. We can always hope, right?

Chapter Five

The next day Laurel awakes to find she has giant petals growing out of her back. She decides the only intelligent thing to do…

Is to hide it from everyone! Yeah, great plan!

But after all, growing petals isn’t normal, as opposed to (and I quote) ‘mood swings, disfiguring acne, even periods that went on for months’. Wait, periods that go on for months? Not getting your period for months, maybe, but bleeding out for that long is not normal! Not even semi-normal!

With this in mind she decides to go to David for answers—he has a microscope after all, it should be no problem for him to—BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

Sorry, I really couldn’t keep a straight face there.

Chapter Six

Laurel cuts a piece of her wing off (I get the feeling this is the level of intelligence I should come to expect from Laurel from now on) and goes off to David’s house. He tells her that the petal is a plant. Dun dun dun!

After some cajoling, Laurel shows him the flower growing out of her back. They determine that since it hurt her to cut them up, they’re actually a part of her—I guess these are plants with nerve-endings, then.

Laurel does make the intelligent comment that if she went to school with wings, she’d probably attract the attention of a Dawn character ready and waiting for an excuse to call someone a freak!

And then she says she’s not going to tell anyone, because if she did then she really would be a freak!

Uh, Laurel… I think that ship has sailed.

Chapter Seven

Well, some guy called ‘Jeremiah Barnes’ shows up to be a character in the book, and he sets Laurel on edge, so I’m guessing this is a villain. Also, he’s an estate agent—one of the most evil people in existence!

He wants to buy some property from Laurel’s parents, and it’s implied he’s magically making other people not interested in land.

Then on Monday Laurel goes back to school, and while having a giant flower grow out of your back is annoying, she is easily distracted by David’s handsomeness. As are we all.

Chapter Eight

The quarter-way mark! Wow, that was fast! After the bore that was ‘Starcrossed’ this is moving by like a dream!

Anywho, Laurel goes back to her old house so her parents can talk about how they used to be hardcore hippies. She then meets a Mysterious Stranger called Tamani, who’s also a fairy, and I know this because he’s a mysterious stranger and this is a book about fairies.

However, humorous innuendo about flowers ensues, doubly so as I just can’t quite be sure it was intentional. Exposition follows, confirming once and for all that Laurel is a plant. This makes Laurel tell Tamani to get da fuk out (?!) and never come back, though Tamani is desperate to know what her parents intend to do with the property.

She gets away, but he leaves some glitter on her to remind her that she’s in another Twilight ripoff.

Chapter Nine

The next day, Laurel was a zombie.

The End.

Nah, it just says she ‘felt’ like one, though that would have been funny.

She and David have some meandering interactions and then she tells him all about Tamani, and gets really upset that he called her a fairy, even though it’s as good an explanation as any as to why there’s a flower growing out of her back.

Laurel remains pissed off at this explanation, saying that the best thing for her to do is continue ignoring the issue. That’s my girl!

It saddens poor Laurel that she might have more in common with trees than with her parents—wait, shouldn’t she be able to photosynthesise? What’s all this vegan shit?—and has a boring conversation with her dad about how she’s never been to a doctor except one time when weird things happened.

Then her dad tells her the 3vil estate agent made an offer on the house, and even though before she’d been going on about how much she was going to miss the house, now she couldn’t be happier. Because one guy said she was a fairy.

Chapter Ten

Woo! One third mark!

Laurel and David make up from their slightly less friendly than usual exchange of last chapter, which apparently passes for a fight in this book. Also, there’s a flying car.

I’m not kidding, it says so right here: ‘But a car flew by just at that moment…’

See? Flying car.

Then Laurel points out that her being a walking talking plant is absurd, which David counters with ‘there are more things in heaven etc.’ or that in as many words, at least. Vying with him for the position of Captain Dumb, Laurel thinks that looking at other tissue samples to see if she might be a plant is a CRAZY idea, and people might find out about stuff and… yawn… oh, sorry about that—where was I?

Anyway, David comforts her with a speech on the epic friendship he has for her, the kind that no one in real life would ever give. Ever. And it borders on twu wuv, though I sense we may be saving that spot for Tamani. It’s too bad, because so far David does have him beaten out when it comes to the ‘generic’ part of Generic Love Interest.

Well, turns out Laurel’s saliva cells are plant cells as well, and when they take a blood sample they find out… she has no blood!

Yes, it’s true, Laurel has no blood, and no one ever noticed.

What a bunch of dumbasses.

Wait—it gets better; she doesn’t have a pulse either!

Chapter Eleven

Having no pulse, Laurel is afraid she might actually be dead. I guess we can add brain to the list of things she doesn’t have too. What? Plants don’t have brains!

Kissing between her and David ensues… somehow, prompting Laurel to get da fuk out.

The next day, David has some theories about why Laurel only eats plants and sugar, and when the teacher asks him if there’s something he wants to share with the rest of the class, he says….. pfft, sorry, it’s just so funny…… he says “No, sir. But thank you for asking.”

BUUUUUUURN! That is one sic retort!

Or at least, Laurel thinks it is, because Laurel’s a fucking idiot.

Later, they figure out Laurel has no breath and no veins either, adding more and more reasons to the list of why Laurel and her parents are morons for never noticing this shit. She cries, they hug, Laurel feels disloyal for thinking about Tamani when with David, even though she’s dating neither of them, same old, same old.

And we get this line: ‘It’s pretty unscientific to have a friend who’s a plant’.

Yeah, David, that’s exactly what it is. You and Laurel are in equal position for Captain Dumb now, I think it’s safe to say.

Anyway, Laurel goes to the library to do some research… on Google. But she doesn’t really need to, because Chelsea drops by to justify her existence in the story by randomly being an expert in fairies, explaining that in the Dark Ages, people thought everything that went wrong was the fault of fairies.

No. No they didn’t.

Then she says people used to think angels were fairies.

WTF?

Chapter Twelve

Well, it’s time for a fancy dress party, and they may as well—seeing as nothing else is happening in the book! David and Laurel glam it up and Laurel is all the rage at the party, until she starts wilting—but seeing as Tamani said that would happen anyway… who cares?

After this, Laurel comes to the conclusion that she is, in fact, a fairy. Or ‘Faerie’ as it’s spelled in the book, I don’t think it makes much of a difference.

Yeah, no shit, Laurel.

Chapter Thirteen

Well, that party chapter was really necessary, almost as much so as the one in ‘Halo’!

Laurel decides to talk to her mirror, and when that doesn’t get the results she was hoping for realises she has to talk to Tamani instead. David says she shouldn’t go alone, but Laurel points out that she’s Captain Dumb, so she has to go alone.

So Laurel goes to see Tamani, and he explains that the flower on her back wasn’t a set of wings, thus the title of the book is a misnomer. He also tells her she has magic powers, and then gets jealous when Laurel mentions David. This would be incredibly stupid if it was the first time it happened, but I don’t know, maybe fairies imprint and it’s slightly less stupid than it would be otherwise.

Exposition ensues on a massive scale—here’s the cliff notes version. Fairies are either Gryffindor, Hufflepuff, Ravenclaw, or Slytherin, and Laurel’s in Ravenclaw. Okay, not really; they’ve all got different powers based on what season they were born in, Laurel’s an autumn girl (or ‘fall’ if you’re from across the pond) so she’s the second most powerful after the plant-controlling winter fairies, having the ability to make potions and shit.

Summer fairies have the power to make illusions, which really begs the question of why they aren’t the most powerful—just ask Aizen Sousuke! And Spring fairies like Tamani are…

Chapter Fourteen

Date-rapists!

Again, not really. They have the power to ‘entice’ people and spray them with sparkly pollen, just like Tam did to Laurel back in chapter eight. A bit strong for a first date, I think, but hey—I don’t judge!

Oh, and halfway mark, yay!

Boring conversations ensue. Tam is a snob, like all magical creatures, and yet is completely indistinguishable from a human in mannerism. He tells her that eating green stuff makes you green, and eating red stuff turns you red. Then they talk about fairy sex!

Okay, back to more of that plot thing, Laurel was taken from the fairy world and hidden in the human world and Tam and some other fairies have been watching over her ever since, because… she needed to protect the land… and that necessitated sending a child-sleeper agent to be adopted by a pair of hippies, apparently.

Why is the land so important? It’s too important for an explanation, that’s why!

For this reason Tam tells Laurel she must stop her parents from selling the land! It’s almost like they should have got someone to be a buyer, rather than hoping the hippies would adopt a child who’d grow up to be in control of the land!

Then he gives her a ring to remind her of him and I guess they’re in love now. Two conversations, and after the first one she hated him; that’s got to be a record!

(CONTINUED IN PART II)

23 Idiots with a ‘Message’

This article appeared on my twitter-feed today, and it’s a Buzzfeed article, so you know it’s going to be comedy gold. A good one, I thought, to really start showing my fee-fees for those plucky little SJW darlings.

Oh wait, calling them ‘darling’ is sexist. And since I am also a woman, I have also now lost HP. Curse my dastardly internalised misogyny!

Anyway, the article is here: https://archive.today/zRB16

Let’s see what it’s about… without taking it too seriously, of course…

*~*~*

“23 Writers with Messages for Straight White Male Publishing”

Do they mean ‘publishers’? Or is there a particular technique that only straight white males use in publishing? Your average SJW is probably poised to jump in and answer ‘Yeah, it’s the one where they only publish other straight white males’, or at least they would if my voice carried any weight… anywhere. But firstly, that would be a preference, not a technique, and secondly, it wouldn’t be true.

‘We asked attendees at the annual Association of Writers & Writing Programs conference if they had any messages for the predominantly white publishing industry. Here are their answers.’

What follows being a series of pictures of non straight-white-cis-male-scum holding up their messages for all to behold. Let’s see what deep and meaningful statements they come up with…

‘1. Diversity is NOT publishing ‘the one story’. It’s publishing multiple stories from people of diverse backgrounds’

‘Diversity is not publishing’? Learn how to use words, mate. Though I suppose that’s difficult with your only literary references being that ‘one story’ the shitlords keep republishing. Is it ‘Twilight‘? Because I read a lot of teen fantasy, and I’m guessing it’s ‘Twilight’.

‘2. My main characters are NOT always black.’

Okay… it’s a black woman in the photo, so I guess she’s saying that shitlord publishers aren’t looking at her work because they think all her characters are black, when they’re not. So basically, she’s willing to write about white people if it means someone in the big leagues will publish her? What a sell-out. Unless she’s writing about, like, Asians or Native Americans or something… but I don’t know why the shitlords would care about that.

‘3. Read less straight white men.’

Straight white man Stannis Baratheon would like to inform you that your message should read ‘Read fewer straight white men’. And probably have a ‘works of’ or ‘works from’ stuck in there somewhere. Also, you should be telling them to read more minority works, not less of what they’re already reading–assuming you want more minority voices heard.

‘4. We read. (And buy books.)’

‘We’ being who, Social Justice Warriors? Because I’ll admit that one is new to me, I thought you guys only read poorly researched online articles and agenda-pushing web-comics.

‘5. Get over it.’

No! Aethelstan is dead! I’ll never get over it! Fucking Floki and his fucking jealousy, Grrr! ‘Vikings’ is RUINED!

… that’s pretty much the only thing I’m upset about right now, I mean, I don’t know what you were talking about.

‘6. Be Honest.’

Thanks, Barney the Dinosaur, why don’t you tell them to do their recycling and eat their five-a-day while you’re at it?

‘7, Listen.’

To what? You? The Mary-Sue? The voices in your head? Oh wait, I know–you forgot to add the ‘and Believe’ to the message, didn’t you? It’s understandable, I mean, you only had the whole page to write on.

‘8. We owe you nothing.’

No, I suppose you don’t… unless you took some of their books without paying, I guess. Or feel the slightest bit of gratitude for the hours of entertainment, thought and discussion traditional publishers have brought the world over the years. I mean, it’s definitely not like they owe you anything.

‘9. Grow up.’

Your mum. XP

’10. Look out the window.’

… why? *Looks outside window* I mean, there’s nothing out there–

*Meteorite falls on house; kills unrepentant shitlord*

’11. Sit down and let us abolish you.’

Wait, you want to literally ban straight white men from being in the publishing industry? Or did you just mean ‘demolish’? Either way, you’re an idiot.

’12. Ain’t nobody got time for THAT!?!’

Sigh. That’s the way of these things, just devolving into tired old internet memes/catchphrases.

’13. It’s over 9000!’

Just kidding.

’13. Chill.’

This time it’s the real one. No, really. That’s this woman’s only message to the white male publishing industry. Chill. And I don’t see how they can with Miss 11 up there coming to abolish them.

’14. [arrow pointing towards messenger] Asian American author w/an Asian American editor.’

That’s great, I’m sure the shitlords needed to know that–you’ll totally blow their minds–for realz. Things will never be the same again.

’15. She’s coming for you. [arrow]’

In this picture, a woman holds the message up so that the arrow points at her friend, another woman, who gives the camera a middle finger. No doubt those shitlord publishers are quaking in their leather boots.

’16. Plz stop.’

Is this an example of that ‘disemvowelling’ I’ve been hearing about? Or is it just dumb all on its own?

Anyway, in answer to your question: No.

’17. We are not tokens.’

Written by a woman wearing a t-shirt saying ‘I am not a token’. You’d think she could have thought of something else to say and given them two messages at the same time–or just pointed at her t-shirt and saved the ink and paper. And I’m assuming she’s not a character in a book, so I don’t know how she could be a token.

Unless she’s saying her local publishing house has a ‘token’ policy for including minorities, and she didn’t make the cut. And I can see why she might be upset about that. Still, I hope the page goes in the recycling.

’18. You have not doomed us, you’ve doomed yourselves.’

Heh heh. Every time someone say ‘doom’ I think of that Doom fanfic; ‘Repercussions of Evil’. I guess the shitlords have failed to include minority voices in their publishing and now it’s too late…

… far too late for now, anyway.

’19. Pay attention to the world!’

What was that? Sorry, I wasn’t paying attention. Okay, next!

’20. Hire women. Diversity makes you strong.’

And hiring people based on their gender makes you super-strong! Wait, no, it makes you… what’s that other word? Oh yes, a moron.

’21. We don’t need you. XO’

Then why are you even talking to them?

’22. Take a vacation. A long one.’

Aww, the SJWs are thinking about the shitlords’ well-being, wanting them to have a good time, be rested, and come back stronger than ever before, revitalised and ready to give valuable publishing deals to the next generation of shitlord authors. You guys!

’23. Don’t assume that you are at the center.’

Of… the publishing world? Because if this list is supposed to be addressed to ‘the predominantly white publishing industry’, the term ‘predominant’ kind of suggests they are.

So there you have it; SJWs had this opportunity to deliver a message to the evil shitlord publishers, and this is the best they could come up with. And the best use of my time I could think of was to spend an hour mocking them, so who’s the real loser here? Ah, there’s plenty of loss to go around. Now back to NaNo, and all the many joys therein… ¬_¬

…

And then Rachelloon… was a ZOMBIE!