Penny Arcade, T. Hunt, and Rape Jokes

I want to preface this post by saying everyone messes up.  We all say things without thinking.  We say things that are hurtful, offensive, or just plain stupid.  To me, what’s important is what happens next.  Do we try to listen and understand and decide whether or not to be more mindful in the future?  Do we get defensive?  Do we go on the attack?

Last week, Tarol Hunt (creator of the Goblins webcomic) posted on Twitter:

I’ve gotten laid before, but I’ve never gotten laid using only the power of hypnosis. But one day I will. Oh yes, I will.

As most anyone could have predicted, there was backlash to the idea — even in jest — that gosh, wouldn’t it be nice to have sex without having to worry about that silly old consent business?  Because a disgusting number of people genuinely believe consent is nothing but an obstacle to be overcome by any means necessary.

Hunt followed up by explaining how it was just a joke, and you can’t really hypnotize someone to force them to have sex against their will.  Also, “…hypnosis + sex = rape. This is true in the same way that killing NPCs in WoW = murder.”

My clueless.  Let me show you it.

The thing is, pretty much everyone got that this was meant as a joke.  I don’t think anyone believed Hunt was seriously planning to become a hypnorapist.  The fact that it’s a joke isn’t the point.

From what I can tell, he did start listening and trying to understand.  He apologized to anyone he offended in a blog post a few days later, and acknowledged that he was being insensitive.  But he also kept up the defensive “no person on the planet has ever been forced into sex via hypnosis” bit, and brought up questions like why his hypnosis joke was triggering but not the rapist character from his comic?  (Answer: the rapist character doesn’t make rape into a joke, or feed into the attitude that consent is an irksome obstacle to be overcome.)

His second blog post suggests, to me, that he’s working on it.  He’s still stumbling, but I think he’s trying to listen and understand.

Penny Arcade posted a comic last August in which they referenced slaves “being raped to sleep by Dickwolves.”  Once again, there was backlash.  Once again, the immediate response was, “It’s just a joke,” with an added helping of “You’re stupid to be offended” as seen in their follow-up comic: It’s possible you read our cartoon and became a rapist as a direct result…

They didn’t get it.  Unlike Hunt, Penny Arcade had zero interest in understanding why people were upset.  Instead, they promptly turned around and began selling Dickwolves T-shirts and pennants.  Essentially, they declared open season on those who felt offended by humor about rape, and their supporters gleefully jumped into the fray.

Folks like TeamRape on Twitter were upset that the mean people were trying to censor Penny Arcade’s Freedom of Speech.  (A PA blog post notes that this is bullshit.  “[S]he is not censoring us, she has not stripped away our freedom of speech.”)  DickWolvington (account now deleted) attacked rape survivors, demanding proof they were really raped.  PA continued to make a joke of it all, on Twitter and elsewhere.  There’s more.  Timeline here if you’re interested.

I don’t believe PA intended to offend or hurt anyone with the original comic.  But once people began saying, “Hey, this isn’t cool,” PA’s response was a big old “Fuck you.”  Having been told that people were upset by the comic, PA deliberately set out to do it again.

Everyone messes up.  Everyone, sooner or later, says something that offends another person.  When that happens, you have choices.  You can assume that person is an idiot who just likes being offended, and mock them for it.  Or you can try to listen and understand why this person took offense.  Maybe you’ll agree with them, maybe you won’t.

Personally, I find Hunt’s “joke” more distasteful than PA’s original comic.  But PA’s response has been despicable, ignorant, and deliberately hurtful.

If you’re talking about rape, even as a joke, and someone confronts you about it, you might consider:

To Penny Arcade, I say no, your comic did not magically transform readers into rapists.  But your actions did encourage people to mock and disbelieve rape survivors.  You encouraged people to joke about rape, about the concerns of people who have been raped and people fighting to end it.  You belittled people who are damn tired of rape being treated as nothing but a joke.

Thanks for making things that much harder for rape survivors, and for those of us doing our damnedest to try to put an end to rape.

LEGO Spongebot

I have nothing to say about this build beyond, I knew it!

This was built by rack911.  Click here or on the pic for the full set.

Book Reviews: Strout & McGuire

I wrote both of these reviews a while back, when I was thinking I might try to start up a separate book reviewing blog called “Magic ex Libris” — a tie-in to my new series.  And then I realized there was no way in Hades that I could add another blog to my online obligations.  I found my notes tonight, and figured I’d clean them up and get ’em posted.  Better late than never, right?

Dead Matter [Amazon | B&N | Mysterious Galaxy] is the third book in Anton Strout’s light urban fantasy series, in which Department of Extraordinary Affairs agent Simon Canderous uses psychometry and a big bat to fight the nasties of New York.

Our story begins with Simon’s partner Connor taking a sabbatical to look for his missing brother, leaving poor Simon to cover twice the workload.  Simon eventually manages to slip away for some personal time with his girlfriend (ex-cultist and technomancer Jane).  Naturally, given Simon’s luck, Taco Night is interrupted by an angry, lumbering monster with lots of pointy bits.

Pointy monster is just the beginning.  Simon, Jane, and Connor slowly uncover a bigger problem — one which puts Simon in the crosshairs of just about everyone, monster and human alike.

I like this series.  I like the sense of fun, and there’s much less angst than in your average urban fantasy.  (Though sometimes it feels like Strout is trying a little too hard for the funny.)  Like the previous two books, this one is a quick read.  My only complaint is that the beginning meandered a bit.  Taco Night monster seemed like a random encounter, and it took a few chapters to start to get a sense of a larger story.

Dead Matter stands alone pretty well, but you’ll get more out of it if you’ve read the first two books in the series.

Seanan McGuire scares me.  She’s writing two series simultaneously, under two different names.  She’s also a singer with multiple albums, as well as a gifted artist.  I think she’s also Batman.

A Local Habitation [Amazon | B&N | Mysterious Galaxy] is the second book in McGuire’s urban fantasy series about October “Toby” Daye, a half-human, half-fairy changeling and knight of the Shadowed Hills.  (In the San Francisco area, for those not familiar with fae territories.)  This time around, Toby must visit the realm of Countess January O’Leary in the County of Tamed Lightning to investigate a series of bizarre murders.

McGuire gives good fae.  Reading this series, you just know she has a dozen notebooks filled with the details of the various fairy bloodlines, territories, allegiances, and powers.[1. She recently started posting some of her worldbuilding info on her blog.]  She makes them real.  Often more real and complex than humans, who are mostly just background noise this time around.

A Local Habitation uses the locked room mystery format.  Someone in Countess O’Leary’s computer company is murdering her people.  Is it Alex, the irresistibly sexy love interest with a secret?  April, the dryad whose “tree” is the computer server?  Gordan, the cranky but skilled healer?

There were times when I wish Toby had been quicker to pick up on various clues.  It sometimes felt like McGuire was trying a little too hard to hold back information.  In a mystery, you obviously don’t want the reader to figure things out too quickly.  At the same time, the fae of Tamed Lightning were a little too secretive, holding back one important revelation after another, even as they’re dying.

There’s a lot to like about this book.  It was great to see more of fairy society.  I particularly enjoyed the revelations about the night-haunts.  The murder mystery, once we discover the truth, was fascinating on a number of levels, and I hope McGuire follows up on some of the things we learn about Faerie.  And April is just great.  (I tend to have a weakness for dryads.)

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First Book Friday: Anton Strout

Welcome to First Book Friday.

For several days now, I’ve been trying to figure out how to introduce Anton Strout (antonstrout on LJ).  I keep coming back to, “He’s just Anton.”  He signs goofy bookplates.  He cofounded werejaguarpunk with me.  He does booksignings with Amber Benson.  He usually wears pants.

He also writes fun urban fantasies, the fourth of which (Dead Waters [Amazon | B&N | Mysterious Galaxy]) is starting to show up in bookstores.  I posted a review of his first book here, but before you read that, check out Anton’s tale of how he wrote that first book.  And then give him a hard time in the comments.  He deserves it.  Because, you know, he’s just Anton.

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I’m four books into the Simon Canderous series now, but writing the first, Dead To Me  [Amazon | B&N | Mysterious Galaxy], was a far different experience that writing the later ones, because at that time I was untested as a writer.  Writing the first of anything is a scary, pants-wetting time.  I didn’t have contractual deadlines to make, never knew if the book would find a home, and my only motivations to write were simply proving to myself that my love of Ghostbusters, Hellboy, and Buffy counted for something.

I had written one previous unpublished book with The Dorks of the Round Table, my writing group that consisted of now-published authors Jeanine Cummins and Carolyn Turgeon.  That book was a serial killer techno-thriller, and once I was done it went into a drawer, and should never again see the light of day.  Next, I started on an idea about a guy with magic hands that kept him removed from others, ruining all his relationships.  Thus began the adventures of Simon Canderous.

One by one the Dorks of the Round Table joined a workshop run by contemporary fiction author Jennifer Belle. It wasn’t a genre specific one, but I joined because I wanted to be around others working on good writing.  I was glad to be in such a non-genre group, even if I got strange looks from time to time when I would bring in something like a combat scene between Simon and an enchanted, homicidal bookcase.

I was about a hundred pages into the first draft of Dead To Me, and the first thing they pointed out was that it would work much better in first person.  Converting it was a far more annoying task that it sounds, but well worth the effort as I think it strengthened the emotional connection to Simon for readers.

As to how I sold the book, well … my day job happened to be in Sales for Penguin Group, so I also knew a lot of editors.  I asked a friend from Ace/Roc to take a no-strings-attached look at my manuscript, just to tell me if I was going in the right direction.  I gave her every opportunity to say no, but she said she’d be happy to.

Then nine months passed.  In author time, that’s 72.9 years. I used that time to work on new ideas.  It was that, or go mad … well, madder, anyway. 

So cut to a day job meeting then with another fantasy imprint.  They started talking about how they really want to find a new urban fantasy talent to grow, and I had to bite my lip to keep from calling out “Me, me, me!”  I then asked my friend at Ace if they minded if I send my manuscript to this other imprint.  She told me to give her the weekend to finish looking over my work.  That Monday she came back to me, wanting the first two books in the series! Woot!

The strange thing I sometimes hear people say is, “Oh, he had an in … that’s why he’s published.” I’ve always found that strange.  I mean, the people at Ace have to work with me every day in a regular job capacity, so they better be twice as in love with my work if they buy a book from me, right? 

I think the important things I did was what anyone else submitting a manuscript should do — be professional in my querying, put my best work forward, and learn how to write while you wait. Tom Petty was right … the waiting is the hardest part.

Tweeting Goblin and Other Stuff

1. Jig now has his own Twitter account at @JigDragonslayer.  I don’t know how often I’ll be updating, but I figure it should be fun.

2. Borders has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy.  Scalzi writes about it here.  Scrivener’s Error (publishing lawyer) gives his take here.  My agent, who has been following the Borders situation quite closely, weighs in here.

3. I appear to have reached an agreement with an artist for the cover of Goblin Tales.  At this point, barring any random crises, I’m hopeful that the e-book will be finalized and on sale within the next few weeks.

4. Abandoned Victorian house, with tree, in LEGO.  Mike Doyle spent 450 hours putting this together.  Click the pic for photos, or check out Mike’s blog for more on the building of this model.

Rape in the Media

I’m talking about sexual assault and the coverage of rape in the media.  Both the description of rape and the victim-blaming in the reporting are likely to be anger-inducing and/or triggering for some readers.

Shadesong pointed out two very different news stories about CBS reporter Lara Logan, who was separated from her crew and repeatedly raped during the protests in Egypt. The difference between the CBS News report and the LA Weekly report is obvious from the images chosen for each story.

For CBS, Logan was one of their own.  Not a sexual object but a human being, a colleague.  They present the facts in a concise article.  Logan was reporting on the celebration in Tahrir Square.  She was separated from her crew.  She was raped and beaten before being rescued by a group of women and an estimated 20 Egyptian soldiers.  The story concludes with, “There will be no further comment from CBS News and correspondent Logan and her family respectfully request privacy at this time.”

Contrast this with Simone Wilson’s “report” in LA Weekly. “South African TV journalist Lara Logan, known for her shocking good looks and ballsy knack for pushing her way to the heart of the action, was brutally and repeatedly raped…”

Wilson emphasises Logan’s appearance, calling her “the gutsy stunner” or referring to “her Hollywood good looks,” while at the same time sensationalizing/sexualizing the rape with phrasing like, “…Egyptian protesters apparently consummated their newfound independence by sexually assaulting the blonde reporter.”  (Emphasis added.)

Of course, it was really Logan’s fault, because she should have known better, right?  Wilson brings up an Esquire interview in which Logan was called “insane” for wanting to return to Egypt.  (Um … she’s a reporter.  This is her job.  Would a male reporter be similarly criticized for choosing to report in Egypt?)

No report of rape would be complete without an attack on the victim’s sex life.  The longest quote in Wilson’s article is reserved, not for anything to do with rape, but for an excerpt from a New York Post article from 2008 about Logan’s sexual history in which she’s called a “sultry” “home-wrecker,” a lurid piece which sounds more like the setup for an erotic romance than actual reporting.

The pathetic thing is how normal this is.  This is how rapes are reported in this country.  Sensationalized and sexualized, deliberately playing into readers’ rape fantasies.  (Why else would Wilson include the following quote from Mofo Politics: “OMG if I were her captors and there were no sanctions for doing so? I would totally rape her.”)

This is the story we tell, again and again — that rape is about sexually attractive women getting what they deserve, for being sluts or for being unavailable or for just being where women don’t belong.  This is how we treat survivors of rape, blaming them and sexualizing/fetishizing what they’ve been through.  This is how we encourage rapists, fantasizing and justifying the act of rape.

The next time someone asks what “rape culture” means, tell them to go read LA Weekly.

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ETA: For those wondering if there’s anything they can do, Laura Anne Gilman writes:

I just wrote a rather scathing letter directly to the reporter, via the newspaper’s website.

“…Well played. I’m sure you’ll get a Pulitizer for that. Or maybe a Penthouse award. It’s clear which one you were going for…”

I encourage others to do the same. And cc the publisher of the newspaper while you’re at it.

Dream Casting

Interviewers often ask me who I’d cast if there were to be a movie of The Stepsister Scheme [Amazon | B&N | Mysterious Galaxy] and the subsequent books.  I don’t get out to see many movies, so I usually try to brush that question off.  But then on Twitter, I came across a reference to a new project from Felicia Day, and it occurred to me that she could do a very nice job of playing Danielle.

A few Tweets later, and we have:

Danielle: Felicia Day
Snow: Emma Stone or Kristen Bell?[1. I’m not familiar with their work. These were suggestions from two of my Twitter friends.]
Talia: Zoe Saldana

And maybe Wil Wheaton for Diglet the goblin?  I know it’s a smaller part, but I could see him having lots of fun with that.

Dear Hollywood – please make it so.

What do you think?  Any ideas for the rest of the cast?  Queen Bea, Prince Armand, Hephyra (from books two and four, because of course we’re going to do all four films), Roudette, Trittibar, etc?

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The Anti-NY Playbook (Bashing Commercial Publishing)

I asked on Twitter a while back why, if e-publishing is so successful, so many self-published e-authors are still promoting themselves by bashing commercial publishing.  Instead of, you know, promoting their writing.

To be clear, I’m not saying that all self-published authors do this.  But there are a number whose public personas spend most of their time going on about how awful commercial publishing is. And I finally figured out why their rhetoric bugs me so much.

It’s because this is the same stuff I’ve been hearing for years … only a decade ago, it was coming almost entirely from scammers and vanity presses.

Take the author who cited Snooki’s book as proof that commercial publishing is imploding.  New York is only interested in celebrity trash!  There’s no room for the truly original, so your best bet is to sign with Publish America e-publish your own work.  (See First Book Friday for a list of non-celebrity authors who sold their books to major publishers in recent years.)

Another e-published author criticized commercial publishing for being too slow.  Why wait two years for your book to come out when Publish America can release it within a week of signing the contract you could self-publish through Amazon and start earning 70% Kindle royalties within 90 days?  (Assuming you don’t care about things like editing, good cover art, pre-publication publicity, and so on.)

But commercial publishers want to rip you off!  Look at these e-published authors who are selling like crazy, getting 70% royalties and making tens of thousands of dollars every month.  It reminds me of the way Paolini used to be “proof” that self-publishing was the way to go.  By the same logic, don’t Rowling and Meyer prove that commercial publishing is the best choice?  Because that way you can become a bajillionaire like them, right?  (Paraphrase: Don’t use outliers to make your arguments.)

Whether it’s the old-school scammers or the new indie author with a grudge, we all know the real enemies are the evil, greedy, clueless editors and agents.  The people who are only in it for the money and wouldn’t know a good story if it hugged their face and planted a book that burst out of their chest a few days later.

The only problem being that this is bullshit.  Most editors love the field, and love discovering new writers and new stories.  The agents love signing new authors and watching their careers take off.  These are jobs that eat up a hell of a lot more than 40 hours a week, and if you’re just in it for the money, then you learn pretty quickly that you chose poorly.

Are there bad editors and agents?  Of course … just like there are lousy [insert any other career here].  What’s your point?

I’m not against e-publishing.  (Heck, I’m about 90% ready to e-publish Goblin Tales.)  I know not all e-published authors are taking this approach to self-promotion and publicity.  But to those who are, well, when so much of your playbook seems to have been swiped from Publish America and their ilk, I hope you’ll understand why I look elsewhere for worthwhile information and conversation.

First Book Friday: Lynne Thomas

Welcome to First Book Friday.  Today we have Lynne Thomas (rarelylynne on LJ), Head of Rare Books and Special Collections at Northern Illinois University.  That’s right, she’s a librarian, so don’t mess with her.  She’s fears nothing, except possibly desserts as big as her head.

Lynne brings us the story of her first (but definitely not last!) experience as a book editor.  A book which came about, in part, because of a T-shirt…

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Jim has asked me to talk about my experiences as a first-time editor on Chicks Dig Time Lords: A Celebration of Doctor Who by the Women Who Love It [Amazon | B&N | Mysterious Galaxy].

I’ve been part of Doctor Who fandom for about a decade, thanks to my husband, Michael. I’m an academic rare book librarian at Northern Illinois University, who happens to archive SF/F literature as part of my current job duties. (Best. Job. EVER. Especially since I get to work with Jim C. Hines’s papers.)

The anthology’s title came from a t-shirt that Tara O’Shea, my co-editor, designed for her first Gallifrey One Doctor Who convention in 2006. There’s a pervasive notion in Doctor Who fandom (particularly in the UK), that the series is primarily pitched to and enjoyed only by male viewers. Tara wanted a book, aimed at both male and female fans, that told the stories of female fans, in a series of personal essays, who had been in the fandom all along, often behind the scenes. The subtitle could have easily been “No, really. Women like this series, too.”

Just after Tara signed the contract, her personal life imploded, and Tara and the Mad Norwegians realized that she needed some help to get the book done on time. This is where I was brought into the project as co-editor. The folks at Mad Norwegian Press had been friends of ours through Who fandom for nearly as long as I’ve been part of it. I had previous academic editing and writing experience (including a co-authored academic book, Special Collections 2.0). Editing creative nonfiction — personal stories — was new to me, even if the organizational skills for editing do translate.

Adding an editor changes a book, because we all bring different contributors to the table (this was an invitation-only anthology). Tara laid out much of the initial groundwork, getting Seanan McGuire into the project, for example. I brought in additional SF/F authors, (many of whom archive their papers with me at NIU) who also happened to be Doctor Who fans (Elizabeth Bear, Catherynne M. Valente, Jody Lynn Nye, K. Tempest Bradford, and Mary Robinette Kowal). Carole Barrowman, Captain Jack Harkness actor John Barrowman’s sister and writing collaborator, agreed to write for us, to my astonishment, when I cold-contacted her through her website. Our publisher also helped us reach contributors who had written Doctor Who tie–in books (Kate Orman and Lloyd Rose) and acted on the series (Lisa Bowerman). Through other friends in fandom, we got interviews with actors like Sophie Aldred, who played Ace in the Seventh Doctor’s era. (Tara had to interview her; I was too nervous. Ace is my favorite companion.)

We then filled out the rest of our roster with other writers who had interesting, positive fandom stories. Many focused on their Doctor Who inspired creative activities such as writing fanfiction, cosplaying, and creating fanvids and fancomics.  We were very lucky to get an original comic from the creators of Torchwood Babiez. Working with writers is great fun, but it is intensive. I see my job as editor as giving writers feedback that will make their own work better, while still retaining their voice and vision. With some of the fan writers, this involved numerous drafts to figure out how to best tell their story. Over the course of two and a half years from pitch to publication, the book came together, and debuted at last year’s Gallifrey One Convention.

I couldn’t be more proud of this little book. The positive reaction from our readers has been completely overwhelming. Reading events have been standing room only. Fans have made fanart, fanvids about the book, and have even cosplayed Verity, our cover chick — named for Verity Lambert, Doctor Who’s first producer — at conventions!

It was such a pleasure to work on this amazing project with Tara, the Mad Norwegians, and all of our fabulous contributors. Doctor Who has had a huge impact on my life, largely because of the community of fans, now friends, whom I have met through the series. Chicks Dig Time Lords is ultimately a love letter to my favorite show, its fandom, and the sense of community that comes out of being part of fandom.

Because fandom, you see, (much like the Doctor’s TARDIS), is truly bigger on the inside.

E-book 2: Electric Jig

For those of you wanting the next update on Goldfish Dreams [B&N | Amazon], I checked the numbers, and it’s selling 1-2 copies per week.  I.e., still not king.  So I figured I’d try something else.  Review copies of an e-book cost me nothing but the time it takes to send an e-mail, right?  If you’re a reviewer and would be interested in a review copy of Goldfish Dreams, (epub or mobi format), please let me know.  I figure I’ll start by giving away a dozen or so copies and we’ll see what happens.

In the meantime, the e-book experiment continues!  I’ve downloaded a copy of Sigil and have been playing around with creating my own epub files, both by working with the software and by reverse engineering the work Steven Saus did for me converting Goldfish Dreams.

I’ve created and uploaded the sample chapter of The Snow Queen’s Shadow as an epub file here.  To those of you with e-book readers who want to check it out, please let me know if you run into any trouble with the file or formatting.  I tested it in iBooks on my phone, and it turned out fairly well, but I’d love to hear how it does on other platforms.

Because you see, once I get all of the bugs worked out, I can take the next step in my e-book journey.  I was thinking that it might be nice to do a little e-pubbed collection of my goblin-related stories.  It would be five short stories, probably priced at either $2.99 or $3.99, called Goblin Tales.

One criticism of my experiment with Goldfish Dreams has been that it’s a mainstream novel, and I haven’t built an audience in that area, so naturally sales aren’t as good.  Short fiction collections don’t tend to sell as well as novels, but Jig and company are in many ways the foundation of my career, so I suspect I’ve got more of an audience for goblin stories.

What do you think?  Goblin Tales: Best Idea Ever, Utter Waste of Time, or Other?

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