Authors, please please -please- stop trying to drive plot with informational scarcity. It's an outdated concept. It makes even contemporary works feel aged.
What am I calling information scarcity? A contrived absence of information. If your plot isn't possible without disabling somebody's cell phone - your plot isn't applicable anymore. What you are writing is not contemporary, and it certainly isn't sci-fi - it's steampunk. It's somebody else's future.
And good steampunk can be good, don't get me wrong. But you have to -know- that what you're writing is steampunk. You have to -know- that you're writing somebody else's future.
Otherwise it's like watching improv theatre without knowing it's improv. The context is wrong.
*Shrug* Tiny complaint, thrown out into the void.
Sunday, July 7, 2013
Thursday, July 4, 2013
Fifteen years ago...
...my father was teaching me to make gunpowder.
In secret, because we all were too-aware this could be taken as some kind of child abuse by a government my parents already regularly poked the eyes of.
Parents? Be him, this Fourth of July. Thumb your noses at authority. Because THAT is the true American tradition.
In secret, because we all were too-aware this could be taken as some kind of child abuse by a government my parents already regularly poked the eyes of.
Parents? Be him, this Fourth of July. Thumb your noses at authority. Because THAT is the true American tradition.
Tuesday, July 2, 2013
Where Atheism Fails
This is where Christianity succeeds and atheism fails - the fundamental fact that every day of our existence we are fighting for our very souls. Not in that vague sense that many of today's pseudoreligious people use - in the real sense that every moment of your existence every fibre of your being is making you who you are...
...we have failed our youths. In particular we have failed our young men. We convince them that their lives and futures are secure. We've never secured the future for young men. The future of every young woman has always been guaranteed - that has been the basis of civilization for thousands of years. We tell young men, maybe we even believe, that they have something to look forward to, some sense in which their actions will have some significance. And then we spend the rest of their lives battering them down into nothing, into telling them exactly how little they matter.
It's fucking psychotic. It is the grossest kind of psychological torture to put a human being through. Men, let me reiterate for you: You don't matter. There is nothing you can do to matter. You can set yourself on fire in front of a courthouse just to show the world how cruel and indifferent it has become - and you can't even matter through your own self-immolation. We are so cruel and indifferent to men that no amount of their misery can reach us. We reserve compassion in our society for women, and women almost alone.
You know what's fucked up? I go to "A Voice For Men" and the subtitle is even worth -being there-. It's even worth mentioning that men are worthy of compassion.
You know what's more fucked up?
How long it took me to realize that maybe I was one of them.
You are too.
...we have failed our youths. In particular we have failed our young men. We convince them that their lives and futures are secure. We've never secured the future for young men. The future of every young woman has always been guaranteed - that has been the basis of civilization for thousands of years. We tell young men, maybe we even believe, that they have something to look forward to, some sense in which their actions will have some significance. And then we spend the rest of their lives battering them down into nothing, into telling them exactly how little they matter.
It's fucking psychotic. It is the grossest kind of psychological torture to put a human being through. Men, let me reiterate for you: You don't matter. There is nothing you can do to matter. You can set yourself on fire in front of a courthouse just to show the world how cruel and indifferent it has become - and you can't even matter through your own self-immolation. We are so cruel and indifferent to men that no amount of their misery can reach us. We reserve compassion in our society for women, and women almost alone.
You know what's fucked up? I go to "A Voice For Men" and the subtitle is even worth -being there-. It's even worth mentioning that men are worthy of compassion.
You know what's more fucked up?
How long it took me to realize that maybe I was one of them.
You are too.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)