Categories
video game

Saint-14 Lives

I’m really fucking tired of dead Guardians in Destiny. This is an in-game trope that has basically haunted us since vanilla D1. Basically every time you get sent to address some kind of distress call, you can rest assured that on the other end of it, the guy you’re helping out is either already dead, or possibly going to die while you’re listening. That’s even the plot of an entire strike in Destiny 2 (Savathun’s Song), where you get to meet the total badass that is Taeko-3 via radio, just to hear her off herself on the line so you can go on to beat the boss.

Exception: You get to rescue Cayde during the D2 campaign. Oh yeah, and then he bites it in Forsaken. Maybe the player character Guardian should just stop trying to rescue people.

I was pretty upset in D1 when there was a story mission where the conclusion was the corpse of Praedyth, a character we’d all gotten to look up to via lore cookies on gear named after him. I haven’t been looking forward to personally adding more legends to the massive pile of dead Guardians we stand on as players.

Which brings us to Curse of Osiris. Where we get sent to see the tomb of my personal favorite legendary Guardian, Saint-14. (Look, I’m a Titan at heart. Bite me.)

To this, I say no. Saint-14 isn’t dead. And this isn’t just me being in denial because I am tired of dead Guardians.

Let me explain.

The entire way you get to Saint-14’s tomb is via the Infinite Forest, which is a giant ball of wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey stuff. The entire point of the Infinite Forest is that it’s a simulator that runs on an engine of time travel bullshit that enables the Vex to try to calculate a future where they get all of the things they want. Well, considering what an unholy terror Saint-14 supposedly is, it’s no surprise that the Vex want him dead, right? So right off the bat, you cannot trust anything the Infinite Forest tells you, because it’s only calculating futures and possibility trees; it’s not a picture of current reality, but rather what the Vex could do if they traveled to some other point in time and changed things.

Another factor to consider: we get told repeatedly that the Light of the Guardians is one of the few things that the Vex can’t manage to simulate. So when we get to Saint-14’s tomb, Ghost tells us that there’s no Light here, despite the fact that what’s led us here was “traces of familiar Light.” Which sure, could be a way for the Destiny writers to be yelling, “LOL HE’S SUPER DEAD, TROLLED YOU AGAIN.” Or it could also be an indication that Saint-14’s corpse is just an approximation, an empty shell because the Vex can simulate a mannequin that looks like Saint-14, but they can’t actually make it be him. The fact that this tomb is also in the simulation we’ve seen before, the awful-looking place where the Vex have won (or are about to win) cements that for me as another argument that they’re figuring Saint-14 being super dead is necessary for that to happen.

Also, Saint-14 is a big enough badass that he made a whole rift full of his Light in the Infinite Forest. So what’s that about? We’re following traces of his Light smeared all over the damn place, but he’s simultaneously utterly gone? I don’t buy it. The Vex aren’t known for utterly destroying a Guardian’s Light the way the Hive do. Praedyth kind of survived being dead as a ghost. You can’t do that with no Light. Kabr still had his Light and was able to turn himself into the Aegis, even while he was getting brain-eaten by the Vex. (Kind of like whatever horrible Vex transformation happens to Asher, it’s eating his body from the outside in, not his Light.) So if Saint-14’s Light is utterly gone, it wasn’t the doing of the Vex, that’s for sure. The Perfect Paradox lore says that the Vex created a Mind to drain Saint-14’s Light… and also that he killed it. Like he’s literally talking to you while sitting on its corpse. That Light went somewhere, that’s for sure.

But let’s say, even for the sake of argument that the tomb of Saint-14 is “real,” or as real as anything in the Infinite Forest can be. It’s the goddamn Infinite Forest, and Saint-14’s Light is actively in it. He’s still wandering around in there, and may have even stopped by his own tomb to drop some more Vex corpses on it. It’s a world powered by time travel bullshit; anything and everything is possible in it.

Sagira says it best: “Nothing could stop that old Exo.” As much as it pains me to agree with the Drifter about anything, I’m with him–I don’t believe Saint-14 is dead for one minute. Because what’s the point of building a game out of space magic time travel bullshit if your heroes don’t come walking out of death once in a while to tell you to buck up? He’s going to come walking out of the Infinite Forest some time soon to ask for his shotgun back, and welcome to the new DLC, motherfuckers.

And goodness knows we need some more Exos at the rate they disappear from the main cast.

Thanks for coming to my TED Talk.

Categories
health the human body is made of bullshit thinking out loud

“Normal”

On advice of the workers comp doctor, I’ve been going to the pool, to try to do some walking without my full weight on my foot. My rec center has a little lazy river thing, and I walked with the current of it today.

It felt almost normal.

Except as soon as I thought that, I realized that normal was the wrong word to use. What I really meant was that it felt something in the neighborhood of how I used to be able to walk, before the surgery, before the injury. Normal back then was a moderate gait with a slight limp that I’d developed over 35 years of walking on my terrible arches and chronically spraining my left ankle. That normal wasn’t the best gait in the world, but it got me around at a decent clip and meant I could average 5 miles of walking a day between work and playing Ingress or Pokemon and feel pretty good about it.

Normal is normal for you. It’s the place you settle after the healing and the physical therapy and the retraining to about as good as it’s going to be. Normal is made of hopefully good habits, but some bad. And normal changes. That’s the thing that trips me up. Normal isn’t a static value. It shifts with the circumstances, gets modified by the sling and arrows of outrageous fortune.

After you get injured, or sick, or anything else, on the other side you find a new normal. Sometimes it’s the same or close to the old normal. Sometimes it’s going to be really different. The hardest thing to accept is that it is what it is. Your normal is going to be your normal. You can push it this way or that with physical therapy, with dedicated time and practice and good technique and mindfulness. But at some point, you hit the border where you can go no further. The normal doesn’t move that far from its center unless it’s traumatically shifted again.

We like to pretend that mind over matter is a thing. But eventually, the matter wins. It’s what we’re made of, whether we acknowledge it or not.

I’m mostly thinking about this now because the workers comp doctor told me something else: I’m not progressing as fast as they would expect for someone my age and relative level of health. That could mean nothing, or it could mean everything. You can’t dictate the way your body heals. But it’s making me wonder if I’ve already arrived at my new normal and now I’m just trying to push the center of it as far as I can. Is my new normal always walking with a cane? Is my new normal chronic pain in the arch of my foot? Is my new normal a much more pronounced limp than I used to have, one that everyone can see and not just trained professionals? Or is this not my normal, and instead a symptom that something else has gone wrong, a nick in a ligament or a bruise on a bone?

There’s no way of knowing right now. Time will tell.

Which as you can imagine, I’m just overjoyed about. I’ve always been such a patient soul, right? I want a set reward and a guarantee, and I get none of those things. All I can do is put in the work and keep hoping. And while I work on my matter to try to build its normal, I also need to work on my mind. I have to be able to accept wherever I end up.

That’s the part that’s harder than fighting my nemesis, the two-inch-high step, or attempting calf stretches, or the other things that only just hurt. I have to reshape my expectations of myself, my habits, my life. Because I have to keep going on the other side of it. I have to find a new normal for my life, just like I have to find a new normal for my gait, and that’s the scariest part of all.

Categories
locally hosted story steampunk

Sniff, Sniff Adventure!

Being a story of a beloved, if admittedly not terribly bright, minor character who may be familiar to you due to his adventures in The Curious Case of Miss Clementine Nimowitz and Her Exceedingly Tiny Dog, available in Murder on the Titania and Other Steam-Powered Adventures

(If you’d like to hear me read this story out loud, here you go!)

Once upon a time, there was a happy little puppy named Chippy. He liked to bark, bark and run, run, but best of all he liked to sniff, sniff. He took Sister on walks where she held on to the leather lead so she would not get lost, just as he’d once taken Mummy on walks. They would walk and he would sniff, sniff at trees and fire hydrants and bushes where all the other dogs and some cats would stop and it was ever so interesting. Yay!

One day Sister wasn’t home, and that was sad. But Sneezy Lady (she smelled of lye and washing powder and it made Chippy’s nose itch terribly) came to hide all the interesting smells, and she left the front door open. At long last, Chippy could go on a walk by himself! He enjoyed walking with Sister and Mummy of course, but sometimes a dog just wanted to walk down the pavement and sniff, sniff where he would sniff, sniff and not be told what he could and could not roll around in.

So out for a walk Chippy went. Yay!

Down the street he strolled to investigate all of the interesting bushes so he could read the mail. People walked past and said nice things to him, so he wagged his tail politely. And then run, run, on to the next place to sniff, sniff. Yay!

At the big red mailbox on the street corner, he heard a man say, “You!” in an angry voice.

Chippy didn’t like the angry voice at all, it made him feel sad. And then he smelled a whiff on the man’s shoes and realized it was Mister Angry, and those were the shoes Chippy had done a Bad Thing on once. He hadn’t meant to do it, but it had happened because his stomach had been so very upset, and he felt very bad about that too.

He tucked his tail and his ears down to show how sad he was, and then Mister Angry swooped him up! Chippy squirmed and yipped and tried to make the best of the situation, because maybe Mister Angry wasn’t so angry anymore and wanted to play. Maybe he had forgiven Chippy for the Bad Thing.

Mister Angry carried him to a waiting steamy puff-puff car, and Chippy was excited because he liked cars. There were always such smells, and sometimes he could stick his head out the window and let the breeze flop his ears. Yay!

But Mister Angry just held him by the scruff of his neck so he had to sit still. He must still be upset about the Bad Thing.

“Grand Aunt Clementine was so fond of you, you little overfed rat, and so is Deliah. I bet she’ll finally give over some of the money that should have been mine so I don’t throw you in the river with a brick tied to your neck,” Mister Angry said.

There were a lot of complicated words in there that Chippy didn’t understand, but he recognized Mummy and Sister’s names, so he wagged his tail.

Mister Angry took him into a house that smelled like boiled cabbage, old shoes, and dust, which was all right but those smells became boring very quickly. He shut Chippy in a little closet and went away. Chippy tried to scratch at the door, but Mister Angry didn’t come back. He sniffed around and cataloged all of the old shoes, nosing them over. One of the shoes had shinies in it. Chippy loved shinies, they were his favorite. He couldn’t resist the taste and licked, licked them until he’d swallowed them all. Which made his tummy feel happy and full of shinies. Yay!

The closet door opened, and Chippy wagged his tail to say hello. It was Missus Angry.

“Why did Morris put you in here?” she demanded, angry.

He tried to lick her hand to make her feel better but she pushed him away, which mixed sadness with the shinies rumbling in his stomach.

“What did you do to the shoes?”

Missus Angry shoved him aside with her foot and he hoped maybe it meant she felt like playing, but instead she seemed to only want to play with the shoes. She shook each one as she put it back. “Did he move the safe deposit keys?” she muttered. “He did say he wanted to check on those papers he took from his mad old aunt’s house—oh you nasty little creature!”

Chippy had wanted to help, so had started sniffing through the shoes again.

Missus Angry grabbed him by the scruff of the neck and he went limp, ashamed. “This is not place I want a dog, let alone a bad little creature like you.”

She knew about the Bad Thing too. Oh, no!

Missus Angry carried him out of the house and put him in the woodshed. “You won’t be able to harm anything here.” Then she shut the door and left him alone.

For a few minutes Chippy felt sad, because this must be about the Bad Thing and he was a Bad Dog, but then he began to sniff, sniff around. He could only be sad for so long.

The woodshed was even more boring and lonely than the closet. There were no shoes, and no shinies either. But Chippy went sniff, sniff and smelled rats. His doggy heart told him that he was supposed to hunt and kill rats. Then maybe Mister and Missus Angry would forgive the Bad Thing. He nosed wood aside and dug into the pile, his stomach rumbling happily around the shinies all the while, and found a big rat hole in the wall. Oho! Rats thought they were so clever. He squeezed through and popped out the other side of the wall, into the overgrown garden of the house.

The garden was very interesting and full of smells, like cats and more cats and even more cats. He ran back and forth and dug around a bit until he had gone sniff, sniff in every corner. Then he thought he should go home to Sister, because she would worry and it was getting very close to tea time.

The fence around the garden was just for decoration, and he could walk right between the iron bars in the gate. He trotted down the pavement, head held high, and paused to sniff, sniff at everything that seemed interesting.

“Oh, what a cute little doggy!” a young woman said.

She smelled of bread and baby burps, which were both smells he liked. So he wagged his tail for her and danced around to say hello, and she scratched his ears.

“Are you wearing a collar?”

She picked him up in her arms in the nice way and he licked her face. She laughed, and the sound made him feel warm and happy around the rumbling shinies that were feeling progressively less and less happy in his stomach.

“Well, little man, you are a long way from home. I shall send your mistress a message so she can come fetch you. But you can spend the afternoon with me.” The young woman carried him to a house down several streets. It was a small house but there were food smells and a squirmy little human in a high chair. She let Chippy wander around in the kitchen and the squirmy little human fed him handfuls of soggy cereal and peas. Yay!

His stomach rolled around and around the shinies and soggy cereal and peas when Sister arrived. Even though he felt strange and weighed down, he still jumped and barked for her. Yay, Sister!

“I can’t begin to thank you enough,” Sister said to the young woman. “Please, if ever you need a favor, do let me know. Chippy is very dear to me.” Then she took Chippy off into a different car, and she let him sit on her lip and sniff, sniff out the window.

“I had the nastiest little note from Morris, claiming he had you, you know,” Sister said during the ride. “But you seem to have rescued yourself quite well. That’s my clever little boy.”

Chippy wagged his tail, though he was beginning to feel a bit odd. Maybe it was the car rocking back and forth.

Sister took him into the house and set him down in the parlor. “And you’re home just in time for supper.”

Chippy loved supper. Yay!

But then his stomach gave one mighty rumble around all the shinies and mushy cereal and peas, and he did a Bad Thing again. Right in front of Sister. In the middle of her carpet that was still new enough it smelled of dyes and wool instead of shoes.

Horrified with himself, Chippy tucked his tail back and let his head hang, waiting to be told he was a Bad Dog. He felt like a Bad Dog.

Sister, a handkerchief over her nose, leaned down to look at the Bad Thing. “Oh my. Are those…keys? They look like safe deposit box keys.” She didn’t sound angry at all. In fact, she sounded pleased. “Did you eat those at Morris’s house? Oh, good boy. You’re a very good dog.”

He was a Good Dog?

He was a Good Dog! Chippy wagged his tail and wiggled happily for Sister. She picked him up and carefully skirted around the Bad Thing on the carpet.

“And you shall have a nice supper of chicken and steak now,” she told him. “While I make certain all of my jewelry and keys are well out of your reach. I don’t know where you picked up this terrible habit.”

Chicken and steak? Yay!

And Chippy was a happy little puppy indeed.

If you would like to read more about Chippy and his human friends, check out Murder on the Titania and Other Steam-Powered Adventures!

Categories
Uncategorized

2018 Wish List

Since it’s that time of year, my wish list:

  1. Smartwool Hiking Socks; men’s medium or women’s large crew; light or medium cushion.(Like these ones.)
  2. Set of 4 pasta bowls (like these)
  3. Pie weights
  4. Round cookie cutter set
  5. Alamo Drafthouse Gift Cards
  6. B&N Gift Cards
  7. Alphasmart Neo or Alphasmart Neo 2 (info here)
  8. A nice day planner
  9. A laser pointer suitable for playing with cats who want to chase the red dot
  10. Baking/pastry/bread/related cookbooks and adjacent books for research purposes

And if none of that sounds good, just donate some money to UNICEF, Standing Rock, or CAIR!

Categories
convention

MileHiCon Schedule!

MileHiCon is coming this weekend, and I’ll be there! Here’s my schedule:

  • Friday at 8:00 PM Group Reading & Discussion: Strong Women, Bitches, and Villainesses
  • Saturday at 10:00 AM Better the Second Time Around
  • Sunday at 1:00 PM Drop-in Knitting/Crocheting/Embroidery Circle

As a note, I’m still recovering from having foot surgery, so I’m afraid I’m not going to be terribly mobile and I’m unlikely to do a lot of ancillary hanging out since right now all I want in the world is to prop my foot up and have ice on it. That said, I hope I’ll see you there, and feel free to say hello!

Categories
writing

You’re nothing new.

“There’s nothing new here,” so why do we write it? – a blog post my dear friend E. Catherine Tobler wrote, and you should read.

And now I’m going to have some feelings that are too big and too angry to have on Twitter.

I have basically been told at various times since I started writing professionally, about almost every goddamn thing I’ve written, that “it’s nice, but it’s nothing new.” I’ve heard it in writing groups. I’ve seen it in reviews. It’s not new, it’s not that creative, it doesn’t add anything, it’s derivative, etc.

And as an aside, I have a particular feeling about being told that something I’ve written has been done before, almost always by a cis male writer fifty years ago, whose story I haven’t read.

It’s frustrating. It’s hurtful. It’s almost killed my ability to write, multiple times. It’s certainly killed my ability to read certain things, because being constantly told you aren’t that creative because your thing is like a thing you’ve literally never even read makes you not want to read things that might be similar to your next project. Because then at least when you get the sounds-accusatory-even-when-it’s-not verdict that “Person X already did this,” you can say, “Funny, because I haven’t read them.”

It happened within the last week, where I got recommended a book that’s in the same sort of sub-subgenre as what I want to write, and now I can’t bring myself to read it because then it’ll be like proof that I’m a pathetic piece of shit who can’t have my own ideas.

And what makes me even angrier is that it’s all subjective bullshit and it still takes up so much space in my head.

Your verdict on if something is new and groundbreaking has everything to do with what you’ve read before. So what’s new to you may not be new to someone else. And frankly, if you’ve read so much that you’re feeling jaded, why feel the need to pass that on to other people?

The idea that a work is somehow derivative because it explores similar ideas to something you’ve read before presumes that only one person can generate an idea from their experiences, and everyone else is riding their coattails. There are a lot of fucking people in the world, and it shouldn’t be a goddamn surprise that we overlap sometimes, even across decades.

I write because I’ve got something to say, because there’s a conversation I want to have, and telling me it’s not worth it because it’s not novel sounds a lot like “shut up and let other people I find more personally interesting talk.”

Something doesn’t have to be completely new or novel to have merit. I like reading things that are different, but I also like reading or watching things that are comfortingly similar to other things I’ve liked before. There’s a reason I love shows like Criminal Minds, and it’s not because they’re unique and challenging; in fact, part of their appeal is the formulaic nature, because it gives me something I know I’ll enjoy. That doesn’t mean the people involved in its production are any less artists, because they know what they’re making and they’re damn good at it.

I don’t see the benefit in novelty for novelty’s sake. I don’t believe there exists a holy Story That Has Never Ever Been Told Before By Anyone. There’s only iterations and changed details and twists and new takes, and that’s perfectly fucking fine, because sometimes the little twist will really just work for someone like it’s a light from heaven. I think the reason we tell the same stories is because they’re in our blood and bones and we’re constantly remaking them into what we need in the moment, and that is also beautiful.

And I think everything I just said is true, but it’s also defensive. These are things I tell myself when I’m feeling down so I can keep writing words. Because there’s nothing like being a “creator” when you’re constantly being told you lack the creative spark that’s supposed to animate your work. Well, I guess I’ll struggle through on sheer bloody-mindedness.

But none of that actually matters, and I’m going to go on the offensive for moment.

We stand at the nexus of countless, profound improbabilities on a planet that’s been around 4.5 billion years, and we are as different in character as grains of sand once you humble yourself enough to peer into a microscope. Unless I’ve literally typed, verbatim, what someone else wrote because I’m actually a skin bag containing infinite monkeys sitting at their typewriters, what I’ve written is a thing only I could have written, even if it’s down in the smallest of details. And I’m writing it because it’s exactly what I want to read, and if what I wanted to read was already out there, I’ve got an Xbox I could be playing instead of beating my head against a fucking keyboard so people can tell me I’m insufficiently unique.

You think what I’ve done isn’t creative enough? Fuck you, asshole. I am the only one of me that has ever existed in the history of humanity, and so is every fucking one of my writer friends.

Categories
video game

Dear Rando

Dear Rando With Whom I Was Apparently in Some Crucible Matches Today, Not That I Noticed Because I Was Paying Attention to My Own Fucking Business,

Wow, thank you so much for taking time out of your no-doubt busy day (I mean, come on–only the most important and high-drive people are playing Crucible at noon on a Friday, right?) to let me know that I suck at PvP. I never would have guessed that without your insightful and helpful messaging over Xbox Live. Like wow, I thought my negative K/D ratio was a great thing, like what do you mean PvP doesn’t have the same kind of scoring regime as golf? Gosh, my face is red.

But this is a very important thing, since my sad playing in a whole two or three matches disturbed your zen enough that you felt the need to take valuable time and energy to message me, a complete stranger, with your obviously valuable opinion. I guess I should be honored to have been given the gift of time by someone so much better at a small portion of a video game than me. I’m humbled, really.

Because god knows what might have happened, if I’d dared to keep playing. The internet might have blown up in the fires of my absolute failure to shoot video game people in the head with a gun made out of math. The massive weight of my sucking at PvP could have warped space and time and caused a singularity to fall into the center of the earth and destroyed life as we know it. Hyper intelligent aliens, on the verge of contacting humanity, might have taken one look at that match and been like, “well, we were totally going to give these sad monkey people the cure for death and the answer to all poverty, but that bitch can’t even hit someone with a grenade so lolbye.”

(Oops, except I did keep playing, by the way.)

I mean this is a Big Deal that I somehow messed up your ability to win an Extremely Important Video Game Thing for maybe an hour while I was playing. Because god knows you must be more important than me, and your enjoyment of the game must be more important than mine, and your feelings about this game that we have literally paid the same amount of money for are way more valid than mine.

We don’t need to get into the fact that the only reason I’m even grinding in PvP at all is because Bungie keeps forcing it on us by making quests and weapons that have to be completed in PvP. We don’t need to get into the fact that the only reason I’m there to ruin your match with my unbridled suckitude is because I’m being compelled to, and I want to be there as little as you want me to be there. And we don’t need to get into the fun vicious cycle of how you can’t get good at a thing unless you do it, but when other people make doing the thing unpleasant because you’re not good, you don’t want to do it, and… well, does that even matter?

Obviously not to you. Because only you matter, right? Only you exist in your sad little world of one, where your video game accomplishments are so important that they’re worth being shitty to a stranger about, I’m guessing because you literally have nothing else going for you.

In conclusion: I invite you to eat all of the dicks. And while you’re working your way through that pile, marinate in the knowledge that you being super awesome A+ lolgitgudnewb at PvP has exactly the same effect on where you sit in the world as me being shit does: none. Zip. Your power is as fictional as glimmer and even less useful because it has no place in even the made-up economy of a game.

Enjoy your dick salad with dick dressing followed by a steaming plate of dicks alfredo and maybe a nice dick mousse with macerated dicks on top for dessert.

Sincerely,

The Titan Who Sucks at PvP and Gives No Fucks

Categories
tv

I Have Problems With “The Alienist”

Before I get going on this bitchfest, let me just say that translating a book into a TV show or movie is not an easy thing to do. Particularly when you’re going from a book that’s very internal, like The Alienist, which is narrated in first person, to this very external, visual medium. It’s not reasonable to expect a recreation of every detail, or for there to not be additions or subtractions of the plot, changes of the pacing, and so on.

But there does need to be some relation. There are fundamental aspects of a book, often deep thematic or character elements, that are what made us enjoy reading it to begin with. When you start losing that stuff, you end up with the feeling like you’re watching something completely different, a generic thing where the characters have the same names but that’s pretty much where the resemblance ends.

Which is my long way of saying that I really hate the TV show TNT made of The Alienist. A lot. Like yelling at the TV a lot. I also can’t say how anyone who hasn’t read the book is going to feel about the show. I just know that I’m absolutely furious.

(Spoilers for The Alienist tv show and book follow.)

I’ve read the book, The Alienist, multiple times. I’ve got some complicated feelings about it as a queer person, because it does hit that crime drama aspect we’ve all seen way too much of: the victims are sex workers, specifically young men and boys dressed in women’s clothing, with at least some of them arguably gay or transgender. Even this statement of mine is complicated by the fact that the book’s set in late 19th century New York City and Caleb Carr went as historically accurate as he could with things… so things like “trans” as a linguistic concept didn’t yet exist. And the narrator, Moore, is very much a heterosexual white cis dude who has very typical heterosexual white cis dude feelings about sexuality and gender.

(Also to note, the murdered sex workers in this book being young boys makes it much more oogie, to use a technical word. One of the few times you really feel the author step into the narrative to explain things is when Moore notes that attitudes toward children and adulthood and work of all kinds were pretty different back then.)

On the other hand, I’ve always felt when reading The Alienist that there’s still an effort to humanize and empathize with the victims. There’s an effort to at least acknowledge the varied gender and sexuality of the young people the investigators encounter. Some are obviously dressing as women for the sake of expediency; others explicitly do so as an expression of their gender in the only environment they find will allow them to do it. And the alienist of the title himself, Dr. Kreizler, doesn’t treat the victims like they are the problem.

I don’t feel like the tv show hits on any of this nuance. There are plenty of scenes in seedy brothels that are set up to highlight the wrongness of the situation–but it never feels like there’s any sympathy reserved for the sex workers; rather, they’re there to drive the lurid ick factor. The only time it really feels like there is sympathy for them is when they’re shown outside of work, and not coincidentally, dressed in socially acceptable clothing.

I don’t think it helps my negative feelings toward the TV show that there’s a sort of subplot present about syphilis and it only really exists in connection with two incredibly unsavory gay characters. The second is a random suspect that I can only figure got added into the TV show to help pad it out to ten episodes, and to nominally give high society a reason to be up Kreizler’s business about the investigation… except nothing really comes of it after that suspect gets killed and dumped in the harbor. It’s a weird disjoint in the structure of the show’s plot.

I find that especially annoying because there is a whole thread in the book about outside interference in the investigation of this killer. That’s the entire reason Teddy Roosevelt lets Kreizler and his team investigate, because there are a lot of people who want it swept under the rug. They also don’t want to see Kreizler succeed because his theories as an alienist challenge a lot of accepted societal beliefs that the wealthy rely on to keep the social order. Which I imagine is something harder to depict on television, perhaps, but it wouldn’t have hurt them to try.

I’ve recommended the book to my housemate, who really loves Criminal Minds because it reads like a historical ancestor to that show. The major theory that Kreizler has that gets him in so much trouble with his peers and with people high above him is a thing he calls “context.” Which means he believes that if the circumstances of a person’s life are fully understood, that will also render their actions understandable–though obviously not forgivable. The latter point is something a lot of character in the book have a difficult time understanding, because they’re committed to the idea that criminal behavior is a sign of some kind of mental illness. It’s another major point in the book that Kreizler butts heads with people because he finds most criminals he’s called to consult on as an alienist sane and quite rational within their own context.

Which is another position I think the show really misses out on. Probably because it’s more interested in depicting Kreizler as some kind of tortured and miserable genius than the procedural aspect of the story.

And that is ultimately my biggest problem with the show. There are a lot of interesting characters in the book. The narrator, Moore, is probably the least interesting of them. But it’s got a great ensemble cast thing going (hello, another thing I love about Criminal Minds) and there’s real depth to all of the relationships. It’s a group of people who find support and strength in each others’ company, which helps them combat the grim task they face.

The show seems to have focused on the characters to the detriment of everyone but the Isaacsons–who are absolutely adorable. With a drab and grim and miserable New York City as the backdrop, the show seems to feel the only way the characters are going to be interesting is if they are even more drab and grim and miserable than the city, and I cannot begin to say how much I hate it. I spent ten episodes wondering why the hell any of these people wanted to be around each other–I certainly didn’t want to be around any of them. We keep being told verbally that Kreizler, Moore, and Roosevelt are friends, but there’s never anything on the screen that makes you feel like they do more than barely tolerate each other. Kreizler transforms from an occasionally overly-clinical intellectual who loves a good, merry meal with his nearest and dearest to a self-isolating edge lord who slaps Sara Howard in the face for being too curious.

Yes, we have arrived at the fiery, magmatic heart of my rage. Let’s be clear, I already pretty much hated the show for how goddamn unpleasant it made everyone but the Isaacson brothers. But the full character assassination of Sara Howard is what had me shouting at my television.

(Note that there are really only two female characters in the main cast of the book: Sara and Mary. And there, too, Mary gets fridged. Sigh.)

Sara Howard, in the book, is a giant badass. She’s determined to be the first female police officer in New York City, and being Roosevelt’s secretary is step number one on that path. She carries a pistol in her purse at all times, she knows how to use it, and she has no compunction against shooting kneecaps. (The pistol, I will note, makes no appearance until the final episode of the show.) She takes exactly zero shit off of anyone, especially not Moore, who she’s known since they were children. It’s worth noting in the second book that she explicitly says she’s made the choice to remain a spinster because she wants to retain her independence and, as unfair as that is, it’s the only way she’s got to do it.

So putting her in some kind of stupid shit quasi-love triangle with Moore and Kreizler? Are you fucking serious? Kreizler slapping her for nosing into his past (Kreizler would never) and then her just taking it? Really? Moore going on about how he has super real feelings for her (Moore would never) and her not shooting him down cold? FUCKING REALLY?

I’m not saying that Sara Howard is a stone-cold lioness who never feels fear. She’s wonderfully human, because she does get sick, and she does get scared, and she does get herself in over her head. But she is most definitely not there at any point to be an object onto which men project their precious emotions. And she certainly doesn’t take that shit with passive, wide-eyed confusion.

This is the stuff that has made me loathe The Alienist TV show. It’s a fundamental miss on what made the book so damn good as a procedural/mystery. There’s plenty of drama and tension when it comes to hunting down a goddamn serial killer (even if they didn’t have that term back then) without manufacturing a series of internal problems for the characters. Frankly, all the focus on all of the investigators (except the Isaacsons) being miserable and dysfunctional people took away from the actual plot. There’s less development of the investigation, less time spent making the necessary connections, less good build up to the discovery and hunt of the killer. That also means there’s almost nothing of what’s going on in the city, with the mobsters and the rich having a proxy war via the investigation–only vague hints that dangle and goes nowhere. The plot feels ancillary and incomplete and the show is ultimately unsatisfying as a mystery.

It’s a frustrating mess that I’m sorry I paid good money on Amazon to watch. Maybe it’s an audience expectation issue, for me. I know too much about the book. I expected it to be a satisfying procedural, my Criminal Minds in the 19th Century on the screen at last. Maybe I wouldn’t have hated it as much if I’d never read the book, though I think I still would have stopped watching after the second episode because I have little patience for watching a bunch of miserable people being miserable at each other when there’s no plot glue to hold them together. Maybe I’m just not the target audience for the show, even if I was for the book.

But even if they decided it needed to be character drama and not procedural, look: if you have only one female character, the last fucking thing she needs is to be the object of a romance plot. Thank you and good night.

Categories
worldcon

[WorldCon] WSFS Main Business Meeting #2 Summary

  • Utah will be hosting NASFiC in 2019
    • Please note that since there will also be a NASFiC in 2020, you must be a member of the convention in Utah in order to vote for the 2020 NASFiC site.
  • New Zealand will be hosting WorldCon in 2020.
  • Hotel reservations for Dublin 2019 will open on January 9, 2019. There will be earlier reservations opened for people with accessibility needs, on December 8, 2018.
  • Washington DC will be putting up a bid for WorldCon 2021.
  • Chicago will be putting up a bid for WorldCon 2022.
  • D5 Professional and Fan Artist Hugo is taken up. After a lot of sturm und drang, it is referred to a NEW committee. Dave McCarty will head this committee, so contact him if you want to be involved.
  • Standing rule change proposed by Ben Yalow referred to the Nitpicking and Flyspecking committee to ensure no unintended consequences.

And that’s it for this year! The meeting adjourned sine die at 12:21, until Dublin in 2019.

Categories
worldcon

[WorldCon] WSFS Main Business Meeting #2 Liveblog

You can find a copy of the agenda here.

Hugo Study Committee report here.

1003: Meeting comes to order. This is the site selection business meeting.

1004: Final committee called up for report. The WorldCon Runner’s Guide Committee. Mike Willmoth speaking. Report has been submitted. Incremental progress continues. There’s a URL from wsfs.org where you can see what’s been uploaded. They have uploaded the backup before the catastrophic crash from last year and the team is working on updating these. wsf.org/comittees/worldcon-runners-guide is the URL.

1005: No objection to continuing the committee as currently constituted for another year.

1006: Warren Buff as the NASFiC administrator. 192 ballots cast for NASFiC selection. 7 for none of the above, 1 for Christmas in Boston 2020, 1 for Olive Country, 1 for Minneapolis in ’73, 1 for Bristol, and 171 for Utah. As 92 were needed for elect, Utah is the winner.

1008: Currently some issue on who did or didn’t get the slides for the presentation from Utah.

1008: Kate Hatcher, chair of Utah 2019 NASFiC: I will wing it. 150th anniversary of transcontinental railroad and the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing. July 4-7. This combines Westercon with NASFiC. Layton is north of Salt Lake City. Guests include Susan Chang, Vincent Villafranca (artist guest of honor), Dragon Dronet. Guests of honor: Laurell K. Hamilton, David Weber. Master/mistress of ceremonies, which are Bjo and John Trimble. PR 1 is being handed out; up until now they’ve been doing updates as Westercon. Linda Deneroff as fan guest of honor.

1014: Moving on to WorldCon site selection.

1014: Kevin Standlee asks unanimous consent to thank the tellers and instruct that the ballots be destroyed.

1014: 726 ballots cast. 33 no preference. 8 none of the above. Single votes for Aotearoa, El Fabuloso Bungalo, Grantville WV, Wakanda, Marsopolis, Minneapolis in 74, Slab City. 2 for Olive Country, 2 for Minneapolis in 73, 3 for Peggy Rae’s House, 22 for Christmas in Boston 2020, and the overwhelming majority for New Zealand. As only 347 were needed, New Zealand will have WorldCon in 2020.

1017: Video will be played introducing the WorldCon.

1018: Technical difficulties.

1019: Guests: Mercedes Lackey and Larry K Dixon, Rose Mitchell, George RR Martin, and Greg Broadmore. (Also this video is HILARIOUS.) July 29-August 2 in Wellington, NZ.

1023: George RR Martin will say a few words as toastmaster. He’s thrilled to return to NZ again and tells us about some of the cool stuff around. There’s a lake of sulfuric acid and a volcanic island. (So the writer of this liveblog is very excited, I assure you.)

1025: NZ is given $10,000 from KanSMOFs. WorldCon 75 gives €12,000 in pass along funds to New Zealand.

1029: Note, there’s something air bnb-esque in NZ to be had. (“serviced apartments.”) Kevin Standlee asks for the appointee to the MPC, which will be Daniel Specter.

1031: Unanimous consent to thank the tellers and destroy the ballots.

1031: Anyone from Dublin? James Bacon, chair of 2019 WorldCon. He’s hoping everyone will join them at the closing ceremonies because they’ll have some info then. Otherwise you can find him and others at the Dublin table in the dealer room.

1032: Stephen Cooper head of facilities. Hotels will open on ninth of January 2019. On 8th of December, hotel booking will open early for people with access needs.

1033: Any 2021 bidders who wish to present? Colette F for DC in 2021. They don’t have a presentation, but they want to give basic details. That would be August 25-29 in 2021. Location is the Marriott Wardman Park, which contain all of the function space, 1000 hotel rooms, and 100 suites. Overflow hotel is set up too. This would be a Wednesday-Sunday con.

1035: Question from Sue Francis: will there be overflow days before and after con? Yes, there are shoulder days for at least two, if not three pre- and post-event. Have some exciting plans for people who come to the convention early.

1036: Kim Williams for the 2020 NASFiC. Congrats to NZ! August 20-23 at the Hyatt Regency Columbus Ohio. There is a table in the bid area and they will be happy to answer questions.

1037: Judith Bemis: Who is the chair who had to go home early? Answer – Lisa Garrison is both bid chair and will be convention chair if they win.

1038: Kevin Standlee to remind everyone that in order to do site selection for 2020 NASFiC, that will be done at 2019 NASFiC and you will need to be a supporting or full member of the 2019 NASFiC in order to vote for the 2020 NASFiC bid.

1040: Ben Yalow will be the site selection administrator for the Westercon and NASFiC 2020. All info will be on the webpage.

1041: Dave McCarty, co-chair for Chicago in 2022. They are talking to hotels and have exciting offers. It will likely be on the labor day weekend.

1042: Q – will you participate in pass-along funds? Dave – we have every other time, so I’m advocating for it now. I will beat up anyone who ties to stop us.

1042: Site Selection portion is closed.

1043: Recess until 1100.

1102: And we’re back. We are now taking up D5 Professional and Fan Artist Hugo.

1102: Perianne Lurie makes a motion to refer to committee, not to be reported back until next year. Seconded.

1103: Point of Order from Kevin Standlee. The maker of the motion gets priority unless they yield to the motion to refer. So motion to refer is out of order until then.

1104: Cliff Dunn isn’t quite sure what they will achieve with another year to go around on this, but they can try.

1104: Motion to refer to committee of the whole. (This will put it into a freer form of debate.) Motion is passed. Tim hands the chair over to Jesi.

1107: Time spent here will be taken out of the debate time for D5. Time will be charge equally for both sides. D5, D5.1, and referral to committee are all germane to this.

1107: Joshua Kronengold who was on the committee. What we have is an additional question of direction. We need direction from the business meeting. Currently, professional and fan artist and split with professionals being a group that makes money selling an art, and we define fan artist as “who is not professional.” Instead, we want to privilege fan artist as a very limited set and define who is not fan artist as professional, which privileges fan artist instead. The other option is to strictly define professional and fan, and anyone who doesn’t fit into that definition just can’t compete. Joshua does not like the latter because it’s exclusionary. So do we want to exclude, do we want to privilege fan artist, or do we want to privilege professional artist?

1110: Ben Yalow agrees with most of Joshua’s summary, but one key point not raised is that we are referring to professional art work and fan art work, and saying that you are eligible in fan artist if you create fan work, and professional artist if you create professional art. The key is that we are not talking about a PERSON as being professional or fan, but saying the art is. Thus the same person can create both kinds of art.

1111: Ben Yalow continues that both D5 and D5.1 make clear that we are not classing persons because that is wrong; rather, we are classing the work itself.

1112: Question for Ben from Terry Neill: isn’t there something in the constitution that says you can’t have the same work in more category, but is it okay for a person to be in more than one category as long as it’s for different works? Ben – that is correct.

1113: Elspeth Kovar asks if there are any examples of this kind of thing in the last fifty years. Ben – no, because shortly after, the constitution was amended to say you couldn’t win in both fan and professional, and Ben introduced an amendment to undo that only a few years ago because he felt that decision was wrong. (The “Gone, gone” amendment.)

1115: Kate Secor speaking. Wanted to make sure that people in other media (eg jewelry, sculpture) were eligible. And this also removes the requirement for publication in a semi prozine and fanzine, because the art world has moved on and there are many other ways people publish. They want to expand definition to allow people to be eligible more broadly and not restrict how they are published. Has concerns about D5.1, because it brings in questions of income, which is confusing in some ways and also someone’s income is none of our business.

1118: Question for Kate from Jerry Lohr and it’s not actually a question so never mind.

1119: Kate Secor says there was a sculptor nominated last year, and they were ruled ineligible because they did not meet the strict display guidelines. Not having the explicit language in means the Hugo Administrators will have more discretion.

1120: Joni Dashoff was on the committee because she’s organized a lot of art shows and is on the ASFA board. Publication and display has gone far beyond physical displays and books, and while we’ve updated publications for writing, but not for art. We do not have as clear a wording that includes online as part of “publish” and “public display.” I want to correct that. Some points about artists guests who donate art that I don’t quite understand (sorry).

1122: Dave McCarty – the act of fanart is importantly making the art for use by conventions and fannish things. They have to make it available for fannish things in lieu of compensation.

1124: PRK – the in lieu of compensation thing is not in any of the other fan categories. Why do we require this of fan art, but no other fan things? A clause for giving away rights is not appropriate.

1125: Debate time is almost up. Cannot extend debate time because committee of the whole does not have that power. Seth Breitbart says no time limit was put on the committee of the whole, so we can keep going until we are done. Jesi confers with the parliamentarian.

1127: Parliamentarian says that the time comes from the debate time.

1129: Kevin Standlee commits and act of witchcraft for get us out of these weeds.

1130: The committee of the whole resumes for another 16 minutes.

1131: Warren Buff points out that we postponed to allow artists to speak, so let’s get an artist.

1131: Maurine Starky, Hugo Winner from 2012. The thing that links the fan artist with WorldCon is fanzines. Does not want to see that diminished in any way, but doesn’t want to see that be the end all and be all for any fan artists. Points out the really cool tower in the exhibit hall is an amazing piece of fanart; it was done at someone’s expense and not compensated. Don’t want to say that they can’t be part of this.

1133: Terry Neill sounds like we’re more interested in awarding to a body of art, not a person. Do we want this to be a WSFS-con-fan-linked fan artist, or a celebration of any kind of fandom anywhere? We need to tell the committee which side of the seesaw they should come down on when they take this up again.

1134: Kent Bloom seeing this is much more complex than originally thought, particularly when defining the line between fan and professional art. We are giving awards to artists, not to the artwork. That didn’t work well in the past However, not convinced that there’s a good definition for this yet. Need a better and simpler definition of professional versus fannish art, motion to refer back to the committee with this direction.

1137: Andrew Adams is not sure without a significant input of new people with strong opinions that the committee can come up with something better. Need people who were not already on the committee with new info and new opinions who would be willing to put in the time. Asks for show of hands of people who can do this. Sees enough that he withdraws his objection.

1138: Todd Dashoff says we have to be careful about our terms – professional vs nonprofessional vs fan. If we don’t get guidance as to what is more important from the membership, we’re going to not come up with anything really different.

1139: Kate Secor says the only substantive change she’s really heard is wanting to link fan art back to fanzines, and she will fight that with every fiber of her being. Opposes sending it back to the committee because there hasn’t been really substantive changes suggested from what is currently being presented.

1140: Lou Walcof – suggests that a new committee be created for specifically this issue. That motion is currently out of order, but can be brought up when we’re out of committee of the whole.

1142: Cliff Dunn says that there will be a subcommittee on it from the Hugo Study Committee if this comes back. Repeats that if we don’t get guidance, nothing new is going to come. Also says that with the state of things and necessary nuances, he doesn’t think a simpler definition is possible.

1144: Elspeth Kovar notes that at the moment, very few artists know this is being debated. In the next year, make more artists aware of this and you will be able to get more input.

1144: Petréa Mitchell – referring this back committee will allow the different issues to be separated out for debate.

1145: Maurine Starky – I don’t want fanzines to go away. Computers are a fairy gift. If there’s no electricity, there’s nothing there. Think about that for the future of what will be represented. An artist is known by their work.

1147: The committee of the whole will recommend that the main business meeting refer the motion back to a committee, not specified which.

1148: Tim is back as chair. Question is to refer D5 and D5.1 to refer back to the Hugo Study Committee.

1148: Motion to extend debate fails. We barely get out of a serpentine because Tim remembers it’s a 2/3 majority.

1149: Motion to amend to refer to a new committee rather than the Hugo Study Committee. Which passes.

1150: I have to get a panel so Corina is going to take over. THANK YOU CORINA.

1151: Clarification: both a new committee and the Hugo Study Committee could independently come up with additional advisements.

1153: Serpentine to determine if a new committee is to be formed!

1157: 41 in favor of a new committee.  In favor of sending it to the existing Hugo committee, 30. Motion D.5 to modify Best Professional and Best Fan Artist is sent to a new committee to be reported next year.

1158: Dave McCarty to chair the new committee.

1200: Motion D.8 assigned 5 minutes.  This is the motion to amend the standing rules to have more explicit language regarding deadlines (referring rule 4.4 and amendment 2.9.1 to rule 2.1).

1202: Objection to the movement as financial reports are often late and we do not want the situtation of waiting a while year to get a financial report if it is not ready 30 days ahead of time when current practice may allow it up until the end of the current business meeting.  Kevin Standlee moves to refer the motion to the Nitpicking and Flyspecking committee and to come back next year.

1204: (correction to previous statement)  Motion to end the meeting sine die.  Kevin Standlee delays because they need to take the Worldcon Chair Heads photo.

1205: Terry Neill proposes the secretary and chair contact the LeGuin estate with our respects about the kerfluffle with the naming of the Lodestar award (having been a proposal to rename it to LeGuin).  We do not want the estate to be hurt by the actions of WSFS because we love, adore, and miss her.

1210: Point of order: we cannot do this as after this meeting the secretary and chair will no longer exist.  Chris has perhaps already contacted the LeGuin family but he does not have the authority to speak for WSFS.  Is the motion in order?

1211: Amended to resolve to contact the LeGuin estate regarding any distress caused by the Lodestar award naming process and directs the business meeting staff to send this letter.  Should this actually come from the Mark Protection Committee, Lodestar being a Mark?

1214: Kent Blum does not think that members of the business meeting should be apologizing.  Terry Neill says she did not prefer an apology, but a communication of regret.

1216: Motion to communicate regrets to the LeGuin Estate is a narrow margin.  Division requested!

1218: 23 for, 31 against.  Motion fails.

1219: Kevin Standlee states the Mark Protection Committee meets tomorrow in this room.

1220: Deputee Chair Jessie Lipp presented with a ceremonial crab mallett.

1221: Motion to adjourn sine die, in honor of Milt Stevens and Julian May. Business meeting adjourned until Dublin 2019.  See you all next year!