My Shame is TL;DR

[thefourthvine]

Chris, the Ghost, and Mono

The other night, I told this story to my sister, who had somehow never heard it before. She demanded that I write it down. (I sincerely hope she's not planning to use this as some kind of college life advice for my nephew.)

There are three things you need to know to understand this story, provided you are not my sister:

I started college at 15.

I almost immediately got mono and didn't realize it, assuming that I was sleeping 16 hours a day because sleep was the best thing in the world and I'd suddenly gotten really good at it.

I made most of my bad decisions – like, most of the bad decisions I would ever make, and almost all the ones I could think of – before starting college.

These were not things I had in common with my freshman cohort. Any of them, as far as I could tell. They were all older than I was, they seemed to have all the energy in the world, and they had come to college to make those bad decisions they'd been dreaming of all these years but apparently couldn't quite commit to until they were away from parental backup and support.

At the first party I went to, before classes even started, someone dared a guy named Fernando to take a random handful of pills on top of the lots of alcohol he'd already had. (Note to impressionable people: don't do this.) I said to the dude I was apparently dating, "This is not going to end well and I'm leaving before it gets disgusting." And I went to my room, which was blissfully free of intoxicated people.

About half an hour later, there was pounding on my door. When I eventually answered it, someone who seemed to know me said breathlessly, "Fernando's going to die! Come quick!"

"If he's going to die, you should call 911," I said grouchily. "I'm not a doctor."

"But what if he's not dying? He could get in trouble!" the someone said.

"Which is worse, being wrong about him dying or being wrong about him not dying?" I asked. But the person was adamant. Somehow, in my absence, I had been elected the Person Who Is Going to Know If Fernando Is Actually Dying. (I suspect the dude I was apparently dating nominated me.) So I went back to the floor the party was on and into the men's bathroom. I inspected Fernando, who was retching miserably in the shower, but conscious and oriented. Assembled spectators told me, in as dramatic, hushed voices as were possible in a shower room, everything he'd taken and every detail of his behavior since then.

But I had seen much worse decisions being made -- made a number of them myself, in fact -- and I was 15 and didn't actually know anything. Also I didn't have any social skills and was snotty as hell. So I sighed heavily, pointed out the various reasons why Fernando would probably be fine aside from a hangover, advised his roommate not to let him drown in the shower and to put him to sleep on his side, and stomped back up to bed. (Note to impressionable people: don't do this. Call 911. We were all very lucky that Fernando was indeed fine, aside from the massive hangover.)

Unfortunately, that turned out to be the perfect way to become everyone's Person Who Knows Stuff. I got asked a lot of questions and woken up from a lot of naps by people who I felt should know better, what with them being older than me and also not newly arrived on the planet.

Which takes us to Halloween. On Halloween, a group of my friends decided to do an expedition to the local ~~haunted graveyard~~ and invited me along. I said no. In every woman's life there comes a point when she's done all the fooling around in graveyards she's ever going to do, and I'd reached it the year before. (That is a totally other story.) Plus, my bed was calling to me, and it was going to take more than some gravestones and weed to keep me from it. "It will be stupid," I predicted, and told them to have fun without me. (The future Mrs. Vine, Best Beloved, did go, and confirms that it was in fact stupid. She wandered off after a bit because the gravestones were more entertaining. It's a pity I didn't go, since then she would've had company in being disgusted with the proceedings.)

The next morning I learned that Drama Had Occurred and mentally patted myself on the back for missing it. "Chris got possessed by a ghost!" someone told me.

"Oh. Really?" I said. I probably rolled my eyes, because: possessed. By a ghost.

"He lay down on a grave and invited the grave's spirit to possess him and his whole body twitched and it was really creepy!"

I imagine there was some further eye rolling at this point. (I told you I was snotty.) I definitely said, "Did you guys take acid?"

"Yes, some of us, but Chris didn't have any!"

"Okay," I said.

That afternoon, Chris asked me to come to his dorm room. We sat on his bed while he told me about the possession, and how he didn't feel right, and how he could feel the ghost eating away at his resistance, and he wasn't sure how much longer he could hold out. Chris was a great guy, but very prone to theatrics, and it took him more than an hour to go through all this. I could see that I was likely to have to listen to a lot more of it in the near future.

Here's the thing about having mono: you are suddenly very motivated to draw the straightest possible line between point A and point B, where point B is your bed. So that's what I did.

"Okay, don't worry," I told Chris. "I know how to do an exorcism." By which I meant that I knew the basic idea of it, it didn't seem like there were many potential pitfalls, and it was either that or listen to his feelings about ghosts some more. You'd have done the same.

He grabbed my hand. "I knew you'd know what to do."

"Yup," I said, removing my hand from his. "Okay, here's what I'm gonna need." I made a respectable list of things that seemed vaguely exorcism-y and that people would probably have to go to the next town to get, and then I went to my room to "prepare," by which I meant nap.

An hour later, Kelly knocked politely on my door and announced that they had acquired all the things on the list. "Are the candles real beeswax?" I asked suspiciously. "It doesn't work if they're not real beeswax." She assured me that they were.

I went up to Chris's room, where a number of people had gathered to listen to Chris talk about how the ghost was eating away at his resistance, and also talk to each other about the Great Graveyard Trip, and also just generally be loud. I do not like loud. "You have to be totally quiet," I announced to the assembled audience. "If you talk, you could draw the ghost to you, and you're not prepared to deal with it."

Everyone shut up instantly. It was extremely gratifying.

Then I set about improvising some random, vaguely arcane-ish actions. I burned some stuff and put the ashes in the mortar and pestle. I added a little of my blood and Chris's blood and put all that in the mortar and pestle, too. I ripped up some herbs, added those, then muddled everything together. I had Chris lie down and drew a circle of salt around us. I lit the beeswax candles and placed them carefully at randomly-determined points that definitely looked significant.

Then I rubbed the ash mixture on Chris's forehead, sternum, and stomach, and recited as much as I could remember of Julius Caesar's The Gallic Wars. (Mrs. Scher, you were absolutely right: Latin did turn out to be knowledge that would come in handy in the future. My belated but very sincere thanks.)

When I realized I was running out of memorized faulty Latin, I made my voice get a bit louder and deeper, and then I stopped suddenly and blew out the candles.

Chris's body twitched all over. ("Just like--" someone whispered, and I shot her a warning look.) He made some distressed whale noises. He jerked some more.

Then he opened his eyes and said, "I felt it! I felt it leaving my body!"

He thanked me sincerely, hugged me, and burst into tears on my shoulder, which is a hell of a thing to do to someone who made up an exorcism out of whole cloth for you, but whatever. I advised him not to go to graveyards in the future. "You're not up to it," I explained, which was the literal truth. Someone that suggestible should stay indoors and take up an improving hobby. Maybe model-making.

"I know, I know, I should never have gone," he said.

"Well, it all worked out," I said briskly, and got off the floor. "Wow. That's exhausting," I added, and then, after a pause, "My energy is totally depleted. I need to go recover."

As I left, a girl said to me, "How did you learn to do exorcisms?"

"I can't answer that," I told her, and went off to get some more sleep.

Just in case my sister does have some extremely misguided plans to use this as college life advice for Z, here are the take-home lessons of this story:

If the amount of sleep you need triples, go to Student Health immediately.

If there's an outing, like to a graveyard, go on it; if I'd gone on that one I would've met Best Beloved a year earlier, and I also would have been able to put a stop to the possession nonsense before it got to in-dorm-exorcism levels of ridiculous.

Just in case, memorize a chunk of something in a dead language. You never know when it will come in handy.

[thefourthvine]

You Don’t Owe Anyone Your Queer Story

So, today over lunch I decided to read some stuff that wasn't mathematical economics, just to sort of remember there are other words out there.

Annnnnd so I read this Ask Bear column, and then I stewed for a while, and then I wrote this rushed, angry rant before I went back to my mathematical economics.

The letter in that column comes from a questioning 22 year old who is potentially starting down that "hang on, am I -- queer?" path that a lot of us have walked. I've walked it myself! It is scenic and has many twists and turns. The letter writer is in a very traditional and appropriate place for starting on that path: he (I'm assuming) has many questions and is not sure what comes next or what he has to do to be a good possibly queer person.

Bear's response, summarized: you can absolutely be queer, sounds like you might be, and oh, by the way, before you explore that queer identity at all, you'd better come out. To everyone. You have to, to be a good human.

I really wanted to believe Bear didn't tell a questioning 22 year old that he had to come out of the closet before he is allowed to see if he might potentially be queer. But I tweeted my rage (as is the custom of my people), and several Twitter friends got the same read from it, so I just want to remind everyone of something important.

No one can tell you that you have to come out. Not if they're queer, not if they're out, not if they're an activist, not if they are the Fairy Queen of the Queer Isles (my dream job!), never. (The one exception to this: your partner(s) in queerness get a say. But even they don't get to issue a fiat like Bear did in this letter.)

There are three major reasons for this.

Coming out is a dangerous endeavor for many people in this world. And you are the best evaluator of your physical, emotional, and social safety. I think Bear may just have forgotten, since he apparently lives in a polytransqueer wonderland, that coming out can be risky. That his letter writer may have to face familial rejection, social rejection, harassment, homelessness, abuse -- that, in short, a lot of bad things might happen to the LW if he comes out. (Queer folks struggling with this issue, take heart: it is apparently entirely possible to get to a place in your life where you can forget this!) Bear may also have forgotten that those same things may also happen to the dude LW is into, and that they may together choose to be closeted for safety reasons, and that is absolutely fine. (It isn't fine that people have to make that choice, of course, but blaming people for picking the best of a number of bad options is classic oppressor bullshit, and I'm embarrassed to see any of my fellow queers doing it.)

Coming out is a process, and the LW is at the very beginning of it. (People can be at the very beginning at any point in their lives. They can go back to the beginning at any point in their lives. And they can spend as long as they need to there. This is not some sort of board game, folks, where you can just pass go and collect your Queer Person ID.) Bear ordered him to go straight from starting college to taking the Bar Exam, without going through any of the intervening bits. But those bits are important, and they make you ready for the later bits, and only you, the queer person, know how you're doing in the process, or what you're ready for right now.

You don't owe anyone your story. Let me repeat that, slightly louder: you don't owe anyone your story. Bear strongly implies that his questioning letter writer should come out because social justice. And, no, that is not a burden queer folks have to bear; we do not have to build a bridge to our own equality with our bare hands using bricks made out of our lives, our bodies, and our hearts. (Unless, of course, we choose to. Many of us make that choice, in big ways and small. But it's our choice to do that.) Many, many of our straight allies say the same thing in other words. For example, they say that gay people who come out are heroes, and gay people who make choices other than absolute and total openness are weak, and that is bullshit, and it's extremely harmful bullshit. You are not required to come out to Make the World Safe for Queers, you are not required to come out to Be a Good Queer, you are not required to come out for any reason at all ever except that you want to and are ready to. Your story is yours. You tell it how you want to, when you want to, if you want to

So, Bear's Letter Writer, if you're out there, here is some alternate advice from a different middle-aged queer who has come out a whole, whole, whole bunch:

Letter Writer, you can do whatever you want to with your guy (provided he consents, of course), with whatever level of disclosure you both agree on. It's important to be honest with him about where you are with respect to coming out, whether that is "I will actually have a panic attack if you touch me in public" or "I am totally okay with our friends knowing, but I cannot face having some kind of formal announcement right now" or "let's tell everyone including our extremely homophobic extended family members and then POST LOTS OF TOPLESS MAKING OUT PHOTOS ON FACEBOOK HA HA HA." (You may be in a different place than any of these, or experiencing a combination of all three. That's normal.) Then it's important to listen to what he says about where he is. If there's a big difference -- if you're at panic attacks and he's at Facebook, say -- then be aware that that is going to be an issue in your relationship, and be prepared to work on it.

Your queer journey is belongs to you, Letter Writer. You and those you choose to share it with are the only people who get to say how it goes, and that includes coming out, if you decide to do that. Speaking as a supportive bystander, though, I hope your queer journey is awesome. Good luck!

[thefourthvine]

Team Angry Cat

Last year, I went to a con in Chicago. On Saturday morning, I took the elevator from my room (fourth floor) to the con suite (second floor). Also on that elevator: a dude taking it to the first floor. As soon as I pressed the button, he said chidingly, "Two floors! Should've walked it." And then he literally, actually tutted at me. "Tut tut tut" went the arbiter of everyone else's body and abilities. Just so I'd know for sure that I'd been bad and been judged for it.

Now. There were a couple of conversations we could have had at this point. I could have told elevator dude the truth: that I have lupus (please please don't make the House joke; you have no idea how many times I've heard the House joke, and I promise you that sometimes it is in fact lupus), so I keep an eye on my energy and pain levels and try to save some of whatever ability I have for later. That I'm especially careful to do that when I'm at an event or traveling, because I don't want to be in my room exhausted or in pain when a thing I really wanted to do is happening two floors away, and I really don't want to be in pain and out of energy while traveling in modern American airports (apparent motto: "If you can't stand for four hours and run two miles full-tilt while carrying two weeks' supplies, lol no go fuck yourself"). So I'm careful. I don't push it. In the mornings, I might take the elevator, which the hotel did, after all, install for people to use.

I could also have told elevator dude to go fuck himself, which is the other honest conversation we could have had at that point. It is seriously none of his business whether I use the stairs, or the elevator, or rappel down the outside of the building, or maybe just dissolve into primordial ooze and drip down the walls.

But, you know, confrontation is another energy burner. I wanted to save my energy for having fun with my friends, the people I came to see. So I said something non-committal. Elevator dude wasn't done, though. "You should always find the stairs, first thing when you check into a hotel," this dude who was maybe ten years older than me and in no way my father said. "Did you know you're not allowed to use the elevator during a fire? Whenever you check into a hotel, you should think: what if there's a fire?"

Indeed, elevator dude. What if? What if, in my second decade of staying alone in hotels, you had not come along to tell me how to do it? I might have done it wrong, and then I would surely have burned to death in a fiery inferno, just as I have at least once a year throughout my adulthood, despite my mother giving me pretty much exactly those instructions back when I was seven and actually needed them.

Fortunately, at that point, we arrived at the second floor. I headed to the con suite and settled in. Some minutes later, I mentioned the mansplainer in the elevator and his profound concern for my well-being in case of fire. I didn't complain about the "should've walked" comment, largely because I didn't expect any support for it; I know an apparently able-bodied (and fat!) woman taking the elevator is cause for judgment in this world. (In some places, going by the general response, it's borderline actionable.) And most people at that particular table didn't know the details of my medical status, since in general, when given the choice between talking with my friends about lupus or talking with them about people banging, or being unicorn space eagles, or both, I tend to choose the pointy space birds and their sexytimes.

"Why would anyone say that to you?" one of the women at the table asked, in that mystified dudes-why-are-you? tone. "How does that even come up?"

So I explained about how we got on the topic of elevators. As soon as I said, "He said I should've taken the stairs," ten women around the table looked up and angry cat hissed in unison. It was like they'd rehearsed it for weeks after months of watching angry cats and studying their motivations. Truly a beautiful moment.

From this experience I learned some things:

Support matters. Those women and their instinctive and audible anger didn't just make me feel better; they actually changed the way I remember the event. They became what was important about it rather than elevator dude. His judgment has become small and insignificant to me, and in fact I smile when I think about him, because he's inextricably linked to that moment ten people became Team Angry Cat for me.

A lot of times, I don't reach for support because I don't expect it. I don't talk about the random elevator dude type aggravations of life, because I assume there's a good chance most people will side with the elevator dudes of the world. It's worth it to find the places where that isn't true. And it's worth it to reach for support when I can.

I need to look for more chances to be on other people's Team Angry Cat. I don't need to know about that person's life or judge their worthiness; if they've experienced harassment or microaggressions, I'm gonna try to support them.

I'd pay significant money for a YouTube series that was just ten women angry cat hissing at ability enforcers and mansplainers and dudes shouting "smile, baby!" at random ladies and so on.

Oh, yeah, and to the ten members of that particular Team Angry Cat: thank you. You're the best, and I will hiss for you anytime.

[thefourthvine]

Happy Valentine's Day! Don't Be Me.

It's Valentine's Day, so I would like to share a Cautionary Tale for the Youth of Today. Once upon a time, my wife and I were teenaged college students who did not think before we got together, and by "got together," I mean "had sex for the first time," because did I mention we were teenagers in college? We did not bother with dating. So, you know, we let our passions overwhelm us, and didn't think before we had sex, and guess what happened? We checked the calendar the next day, noticed it was 2/15, and realized we had had sex for the first time on Valentine's Day. Obviously this creates serious lifelong problems in terms of celebrating our anniversary. All because we were careless. Don't be like us. "But TFV," I hear you saying. "You said she's your wife. Why not celebrate the anniversary of your marriage instead?" Now, I could give you all kinds of excellent reasons, like that we couldn't get legally married until long after we were de facto married, because of governmental concern that allowing two people of the same sex to get married might cause a small black hole to form at the center of our planet and end the world. (Their caution is understandable considering the grave risks.) But that's not actually why. Let me tell you about our wedding. We had a baby the year we got married, and also we are the least romantic people and least party-oriented people on earth, so we selected the "cheap courthouse wedding" option. We had a limited choice of dates, because we could only get married in the registrar's office on Fridays, and the election at which California voters would take away our civil rights was coming up fast. So we took the single reservation slot that was available when we got our marriage license. On the day, we drove to the courthouse, met up with my mother, sister, brother-in-law (who had to be there to hold our baby), and oldest nephew, and had a five-minute civil ceremony conducted by a dude who finished with "and don't forget to file as married filing jointly on your state taxes next year." And then we left and the next couple and their friends and family came in. And they were all in Viking costumes, because Best Beloved and I got married on 10/31. Our wedding anniversary is on Halloween. What I'm saying is, youth of today, if there is a single message of wisdom I can share with you, it is check your fucking calendar before you fuck for the first time, and if it's a major holiday, wait. Otherwise you might end up like us, celebrating an anniversary that is not actually on any of the major dates of your relationship. (If you're really entirely like us, you will also never remember exactly what day you picked out to celebrate your pretend anniversary, but that's another story.)

[thefourthvine]

You're Always Coming Out

[pitchercries]

Geno: “At first I thought the only thing necessary for victory is physical strength. When someone uses physical force against you, answer them with more force [shots of checking], but later I realized that real strength lies elsewhere. It’s in the ability to use pressure, instead of buckling under it, in the ability to charge yourself with the energy of the fans. At home or away, whether they’re rooting for us or against us, the louder the stands the better I concentrate. Strength is treating the Olympic final like any other game, because that’s what it is. Today I know for certain that victory starts from within, from a clear head and the confidence that comes with it.”

VO: HEAD AND SHOULDERS! When dandruff leaves, confidence enters.

LOLOL

Also I do have to say I’m impressed because I remember in a Russian interview Geno did over the summer he talked about how the one thing that he hates about Olympic games is that there is no margin of error on the one hand and on the other there’s all this expectation, like they’re not just expected to do their best, they’re expected to WIN. And anything other than a win is unacceptable. And that mindset, before the game, coming from other people, is really a killer, because it’s really hard to perform when you feel like the win wouldn’t be seen as an achievement almost, but as something EXPECTED.

Like people aren’t like “omg I hope we win!” they’re like “WE BETTER WIN” and that makes it really hard to play and Geno really hates how that’s set up. Because ultimately even the best players have off days, and things just don’t work out sometimes, and the olympics doesn’t give you any room for bad days, and so on. BASICALLY geno freaks out because of the pressure. So, I see that this commercial either made direct reference to that or was generally written with geno’s input.

[stumblingoverchaos]

Earlier this year, I read an amazing story by thefourthvine called Fastening One Heart to Every Falling Thing. And I read it again. And again. And… you get the idea.

It’s the story of a Sidney Crosby who’s not only incredibly gifted in hockey, but also in his ability to connect to other...

[thefourthvine]

Awesome playlist that totally works for the story. 

[thefourthvine]

Hi, I was just reAding your defence against bad writing and I agree with it but I was just wondering what you meant by Mary Sue? You referred to it a few times. Thanks

The short answer: Mary Sue is the author's idealized self-insert. (If you want to know alllll about Mary Sue, including the history and origins of the term, TV Tropes has your back. Also, if you aren't careful, your mind and soul. Pack a lunch.) A Mary Sue story is one that primarily features a Mary Sue.

The slightly longer answer: That story you used to tell yourself, about the awesome girl who was totally pretty and everyone liked her and she maybe had magic powers and also like fifteen skills that you wished you did and also her hair never did that, you know, THAT THING your hair always does? And she was in your favorite fictional (or real person fictional) world, and all the characters or people that you loved the most loved her, and she married them or solved their problems or saved them or made them awesome food or held them when they cried? That story was a Mary Sue story, and that girl was a Mary Sue. Sometimes people write those stories down and post them. (AND THAT IS FINE.) Often the stories have limited appeal beyond the author and maybe her friends. (BUT THAT IS ALSO FINE.)

The "Sorry, you kind of touched a nerve" answer: While we can all identify our own Mary Sues, even if we've never written them down, people tend to spend a lot of time figuring out if other people have maybe written a Mary Sue, and checking every female character for potential Mary Sueism. In fandom times of old, the letters "OC" (original character) in a story header were a giant flag that meant Potential Bad Story Here, and the letters "OFC" (original female character) were translated as Guaranteed Bad Story Here. So people mostly stopped putting original female characters in their fan fiction.

But that couldn't stop the inexorable progression of the Mary Sue Hunt. Canon female characters in fan fiction became the focus of intense scrutiny. Is this character being, perhaps, idealized? Is she better than she should be?

It was surprising how often she was better than she should be.

I mean, it's one thing if we write John Sheppard being brilliant and solving a Millennium Problem while being extra super badass and a sharpshooter and extremely hot and having a troubled past and also he can play the piano and small children love him and he rides a horse. It's one thing if we write Stiles as a badass motherfucker who can hack and do MMA and make small explosive devices and he saves everyone, and also it turns out he's a surprisingly sexually skilled virgin, and also there's this scene where he wears skintight leather and he has two boot knives. It is fine to write those things. (AND IT IS.) You could give Sheppard's horse a telepathic soulbond with him and have Stiles elected president of universe (because he is awesome), and you'd still potentially have a significant and delighted readership. (WHICH IS ALSO FINE. Who doesn't sometimes like a President Awesome with a Psychic Horse story? Give Sidney Crosby a psychic horse and you've got my click.) That's just having fun and extrapolating from the canon. (Or, in the case of the telepathic soulbonding horse, it's a crossover. From real actual published original fiction. And people call us strange.)

But if a female character does one of those things in fan fiction, she's declared a potential Mary Sue. It's out of character, it's over the top, it's wish fulfillment (as if there's something wrong with wish fulfillment), it's a self-insert. And that. That is less fine with me. 

And the Mary Sue Problem is not limited to fan fiction. Turns out Mary Sues are also surprisingly prevalent in the canon itself! A tiny sample of the female characters I have heard described as Mary Sues:

Hermione Granger

Nyota Uhura

Natasha Romanov

Haruno Sakura

Rose Tyler

Bella Swann

Katniss Everdeen

Buffy Summers

Basically, think of any female character who gets more than eighteen lines, from any popular canon. Someone has called her a Mary Sue. Because she's competent, because she's smart, because she's talented. Because she can do stuff, or because she tries to. Because she loves someone, or because someone loves her. Because she thinks she's interesting. Because the author thinks we should care about her.

Mary Sue, in short, has become another way of dismissing female characters. Of telling women that we can't be awesome. Of drawing the line between people who do (dudes) and people who are done to (ladies). Yet another entry in the long list of All the Unacceptable Female Characters. Yet another way of viciously scrutinizing every woman, real or imaginary, and either finding her excessively flawed (and therefore terrible) or excessively without flaw (and therefore terrible).

And also, of course, if the author of the Mary Sue story is a fan fiction writer, we make fun of her.

Which is why my actual definition of the term Mary Sue is: it's a phrase that is useful for describing a certain common tendency in fan fiction that, taken to an extreme, is often pretty repetitive and uninteresting (but not, let me note, actually criminal or anything). Unfortunately, it has, over time, warped into a tool for knocking down ladies who write, and also other ladies, so I'm trying to learn not to use it any more. (But that is hard. Because see above about usefulness. Almost everyone has dreamed up at least one or two of these, and it's so nice to have a name for them!)

[4gifs]

[thefuuuucomics]

HELLO MAILMAN, THIS IS DOG. I AM HERE TO ASSIST MY HUMAN IN FETCHING THE MAIL. WOULD YOU BE SO KIND AND INSERT ALL ENVELOPES INTO MY MOUTH? THANK YOU, SIR. HAVE A LOVELY DAY. LOOK, HUMAN! I HAS MAIL!

[tawkwardturtle-deactivated20210]

I’m pretty sure I’ve reblogged this before and certain I should reblog it again

[thefourthvine]

In Defense of Bad Writing

A long time ago, I had a lot to say in rants about how people were DOING IT WRONG and should NOT WRITE THIS WAY but rather THIS OTHER WAY. (And, if I'm gonna be honest, those rants are all still there, just waiting for me to type them. Let me tell you about the Should You Use the Pluperfect? flowchart I made the other day. Or not, because honestly, TFV, nobody wants to hear that.) I was all, "People! Write better!" Sorry, past me -- you were wrong. What I should have been saying was, "People! Write more! (Even if it's really bad!)" Because, yes, I still think the word sensitized needs to be left to lie fallow for a decade. Where it can maybe cavort with its friend, lave. I still sometimes want to ban thesauruses. I still feel like maybe those weeping cocks should see a doctor, or perhaps a therapist.  But these days, I also think we're lucky to have those stories. I probably won't be reading them, but I'm happy they exist, for three reasons. Writing is good. People are writing! For fun! Good news! Seriously, if I had spent more time writing down the hideously painful Mary Sue fan fiction I dreamed up when I was a wee teen, I might have spent less time on, you know, drugs and sucking the cocks of random strangers without protection. I'm always happy to see someone making better choices than I made.  Maybe you're now saying, "Okay, fine, but do they have to post those Mary Sue stories where I can see them?" If so, you're being a dick. Cut it out. The Archive of Our Own is not the Archive of Just What You Want to Read. It's the Archive of Fanworks. Is it a fanwork? Then it belongs there! And if you're incapable of scrolling past something, it's not that the Mary Sue writers are in the wrong place, it's that you are. (Also, I'm sorry, but I don't know where would be the right place for you. Everywhere is going to have stuff you don't like, because tastes are individual and all that. Maybe the internet just isn't for you.) Crap is important. Sturgeon's law is right, but it misses the point. Ninety percent of everything has to be shit. That's how you get the 10% that's good.  Your favorite writers, fan fiction, published fiction, published fan fiction, whatever -- they didn't start out writing that way. There was a time when they wrote unspeakably awful crap. Writing unspeakably awful crap is how you learn to write only moderately awful crap, and then eventually maybe decent stuff, and then, if you're lucky, actually good things. There are not two classes of people, those who are good writers and those who are bad writers, so that all you have to do to have only great stuff is scare away all the bad writers. There are people who used to write bad stuff, and there are people who are currently writing bad stuff, and there's a lot of crossover between the two. Some of the second category will one day be the first category. (Also, tomorrow some of the first category will move back to the second. No one hits it out of ballpark every time.) If you want to read new good stuff tomorrow, encourage the people writing bad stuff today. (And also maybe help them get betas. Betas are great.)  And, no, those people don't have to hide their work away until it gets better. They can share it with anyone who wants to read it. If they want to post it, they should. Wanting to is reason enough. (Although if you want another reason -- posting is how community happens. Which is how things like betas happen. People who share their work get better faster.) Crap is a sign of life. New bad stories are a sign that this genre -- fan fiction, the genre I adore the most - is alive and well. Bad stories mean new people are trying to write in it, and people are trying to do new things with it, and maybe new people are joining the audience, too. When only the best and most popular are writing in a genre, it's on its deathbed. (See: Westerns and Louis L'Amour.) I want this genre to be here forever, because I want to read it forever. So I'm happy that teenagers are posting Mary Sue stories to the Archive of Our Own.  Does that mean you have to be happy? Nope. I can't make you do anything. (I can think you're wrong, but hey, being wrong on the internet is a time-honored tradition among our people.) But when you start making fun of a writer and bullying her in the comments of her story, simply because she's writing something you think is bad and embarrassing, well, that's when I say: shut the fuck up or get the fuck out. Because she's not a problem. She's just doing what we're all doing -- having fun, playing with words, throwing something out there on the internet to see if other people like it.  But you. You're trying to stop someone from having fun. You're trying to shame people into not writing anymore. And that, folks -- that is the definition of shitty behavior. (Mary Sue fantasies, on the other hand, are just the definition of human behavior.) It's bad for people, it's bad for the future, and it's bad for the genre. So you're a problem.  Please go away, problems, and let all of us write out our ids out in peace.  (And, yes, this was triggered by one specific story and some of the responses it's getting on the AO3. But it applies to all of them, all the fan fiction we don't like out there. Okay, I'm done.)

[shinnystudio]

The wait is over! Shinny Studio is officially taking orders for the Steel City Pens shirt. Black design on heather grey tee (American Apparel, unisex, 100% cotton).

Price depends on headcount; at most it’ll be $28/shirt (includes shipping), but the more orders we get the cheaper it’ll go.

Shoot us an e-mail with your name, mailing address, and desired size (sizing chart found here) at [email protected] to pre-order. No worries, you won’t be committing to anything until final price has been confirmed.

Closing date for orders will be November 30th, at which point we’ll tally up the order and announce final price. T-shirts will be shipped mid-December in time for the holidays.

And now I’d normally say “good luck” to Pens fans, but with Crosby cashing in nearly two points per game so far? I’ll say good luck to the rest of the League instead!

[thefourthvine]

Over on Twitter, people had questions about hockery RPF fandom folks, so we put together a poll. (When in doubt, TICKYBOXES. That is my motto.) If you've read/watched/listened to hockey RPF fanworks, please come take the poll! (And if you know anyone who's in the fandom, please tell them about it, too. Some data good, more data better.)

[cefalopod-deactivated20150821]

If you have suffered a tragedy and someone says, “you’re in my prayers" with sincerity, and you respond with some egotistical shit about being atheist you are an emotionally inept moron.

[magebird-old]

For real though like think about it. If someone is religious, there’s...

[thefourthvine]

My father died of brain cancer, and there was a two-year period in between diagnosis and death where he got sicker and sicker. It sucked. It was terrible. It was the worst thing that's ever happened to me. And people would say to me, "I'll pray for you." You know what that sounded like to me? "I want to pretend I'm helping without actually helping. Will you help me pretend to help?" There were things they could have done that actually would have helped, instead of this utterly meaningless gesture they forced on me.

But I always said, "Thank you."

Someone said to me, "I know Jesus will heal him." And no. No one was going to heal him. He had terminal fucking brain cancer and it wasn't if. It was when. But what could I say? "Please take your religion, which is not mine, and get it out of my face"? No.

I said, "Thank you."

At the funeral, a complete stranger came up to me and said, "Don't cry. It's so selfish. He's in heaven. It's a better place." Of course. It's selfish of me to cry at the ceremony of mourning for my dead father. 

I don't remember what I said. I probably said, "Thank you."

A year ago, a friend's three-year-old son was diagnosed with brain cancer. When she told me, I felt sick. I have a son. I have lived through a loved one having brain cancer. I could not imagine the two together; it would be worse than the worst thing ever. I asked her how I could help - we live far away, so there wasn't much I could do, but the offer matters, I knew that.

She gave me a short list. The first item on it was "Pray for him, however you can pray."

Again, I don't believe in prayer. But she does. So I emailed my rabbi for instructions, because I wanted to do it right, and then I did something I have never done before: I prayed. Every day at the same time. For months. Not because I thought it would help, but because the person suffering asked me to.

So that's when prayer helps, people: when the person who is hurting  wants it. Prayer hurts when the person hurting doesn't want it.

How can you know the difference? You have to ask. If you don't care enough to do that, to say "How can I help?" then you'll just never know. So go ahead. Pray. But no matter what the hurting person believes, you'll just be pretending to care. Real caring asks. And real caring listens.

Real caring makes it about the person who is hurting. Not about your beliefs, not about your feelings, not about you. 

[thefourthvine]

Hello, I recently read your Sidney Crosby/Evgeni Malkin fanfic and it was extraordinary! I loved it so much! Do you plan on writing anymore stories with that pairing?

Possibly! I certainly love the pairing immoderately and *hope* to write more in it. 

[thefourthvine]

Yuletide reveal!

I wrote one story for Yuletide 2012, for the doughty shrift, who gave me the best prompts in the world. This Side of Paradise (17031 words) by thefourthvine Chapters: 1/1 Fandom: The Losers (2010) Rating: Explicit Warning: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Carlos "Cougar" Alvarez/Jake Jensen Summary:

"I'm a good boyfriend," Cougar said.

I tell you what: in the planning stages, this story seemed like it would be fun and short, but it really only delivered on the fun front. I blame Jensen. Key lesson learned this Yuletide: If you want to write a Yuletide story that's less than 10k, don't use the motormouth's point of view. Use the PoV of the laconic guy with the sarcastic eyebrows. I mean, Cougar doesn't go into lengthy digressions about rude Canadians and the etiquette of three-ways and Star Trek.  And speaking of geeky movies, I totally salute thehoyden and frostfire for pointing out, during my Fucking Chris Evans Is in Fucking Everything breakdown, that he's never been in Star Trek. (And I salute frostfire for this conversation via IM while I was deep in the middle of writing this: Frostfire: Hi! How are you? Me: WEEPING BECAUSE SPOCK. Frostfire: Did you watch Wrath of Khan again? Me: DANTE'S PRAYER. Frostfire: Awwwwwww.  Fandom: the place where people will always understand when you're sobbing incoherently about how he TOUCHES HIS CHAIR OH GOD.) So, anyway. This story, thanks to Why Jake Can't Shut Up Jensen, became so long that I was in the painful position of not even being able to complain on Twitter about how long it was, because that might de-anon me. But it was a barrel of fun to write, for real.  And Nestra, Norah, Queue, and thehoyden were heroes of Yuletide for beta-reading this with such aplomb. Thanks, guys! Next year, I will try forshorter, and also way fewer run-on sentences. I swear.

[thefourthvine]

"So You Want to Arm the Teachers" The problem with your post is there is no middle ground, as if no middle ground can be sought. Should we mandate that every teacher carry a gun? No, that's no different than forcing everyone to turn in their guns. If a teacher is willing and able to seek training themselves, should they NOT have the option to carry their own firearm?

Dude. Did you read the post? Arming only the teachers who want to be armed - allowed teachers to choose to carry guns to school - solves the expense problem. Not any of the others. And it adds some more problems, and by "problems" I mean "deaths."

You still have teachers carrying guns that are either locked safely away (and thus pointless to have on school grounds) or carrying concealed in ways that make the guns accessible to students. (Gun-free school zones aren't aimed at random shooters, you know. They're aimed at students, because kids are notorious for making short-sighted, bad choices, especially when angry.) And if you think a teacher could carry concealed and never get found out - um, no. Not in front of a classroom. Little kids would find out 'cause they're curious. Big kids would find out because they always do. And sooner or later a kid would get the gun. And play with it. Or deliberately use it to kill a classmate, because sometimes kids do that. And, hey, more school shootings!

And if you have only some of the teachers armed, the problems with unstable teachers (and teachers with bad motives) become worse. Unstable people frequently start out by becoming paranoid. So they decide to buy guns and bring them to school, and then when they lose it for real, they can be the shooters! MORE SCHOOL SHOOTINGS. Are you sensing a trend here?

And teachers with unsavory motives - there have been these. They aren't the majority, not even close, but there are certainly more teachers abusing their power over their students than there are school shootings. The last thing I want is for those teachers to be armed with weapons, for reasons that should be really, really obvious.

Finally, teachers make bad choices sometimes, because they're human. People who carry guns are more likely to be the victims of crimes than to stop them. Guns escalate dangerous situations. Guns rarely are used to end a crime in progress. (For citations, see this index from Harvard, a very reputable school: http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/research/hicrc/firearms-research/gun-threats-and-self-defense-gun-use/index.html.) All of that means that by adding guns to school settings, we've not really reduced the chance of school shootings by random mass killers, but we definitely have increased the chances that other kids and teachers will die.

So if your definition of middle ground is only arming some of the teachers, no. No, we can't have any middle ground. You're still not thinking about people, or how they realistically behave and think. You're still not really attempting to negotiate a reasonable public policy that will accomplish the ends we all want. You're just thinking about how much you love guns. 

[thefourthvine]

So You Want to Arm the Teachers

My son is in preschool right now. Since Newtown, I've been staring at his school, at his building, at his classmates, and thinking of all those kids who are dead now. I don't think any parent can help that.

And, hey, I am willing to do whatever it takes to stop that from happening again. Suggestions I've heard from gun control proponents: Reduce gun access, reduce rate of fire, increase waiting periods, make smart guns (with biometric chips to prevent firing by someone other than owner) mandatory.

Suggestion I've heard again and again from gun fanatics: Arm teachers. When every teacher has a gun, every child will be safe.

Gun fanatics, guys, can we talk about this? I like that you're trying, I like that you've acknowledged we have a terrible problem and we need to solve it now. But I don't think your solution is going to work. I keep running through it in my mind and hitting walls.

First, if we arm the teachers - well, it's not enough to arm them, right? (Although I tell you what: as a parent and taxpayer, I really am not thrilled with the idea that my school taxes will be going on guns instead of books. And please tell me you don't expect the teachers to buy their own guns.) You also have to train them. And this isn't a situation where you'll be training someone who wants to learn - most of these people will be afraid of guns, unwilling to fire them, unwilling to learn, because guess what: people who want to fire guns go into the military or law enforcement or gun shop ownership or whatever. They don't become teachers. I mean, sure, there are some teachers who like guns and are good with them, but it's not going to be the majority by any means. Most of them are going to be like me. I am sure you could teach me to safely own, handle, and fire a gun. I'm also sure that it would take a lot of work on your part, because I have limited dexterity, I don't have good aim, I (like many people) tend to freeze and shut down when I'm scared, and most of all: I don't want to learn to shoot a gun. I mean, most teachers will be like me unless you prioritize the ability to use firearms over the ability to, say, teach reading.

And these people can't just be trained a little. They have to be good enough to make a targeted shot when they're terrified (and remember: a lot of them, like me, will be prone to shutting down or freezing in an emergency; that is a human thing that happens), in a classroom where any miss means they may become the child-murderer. They have to be good enough to know when to fire. They have to be good enough to know when not to fire. Even police officers aren't always that good (links to many, many cases available as necessary), and police officers go into their careers expecting to learn to fire guns.

In other words, you're talking about adding a whole lot of training. For every teacher in every classroom in the country. Even though some states are so desperate for (cheap) teachers they've cut requirements and allow teachers to get certified for teaching over time as they're teaching. But the gun training - to be safe with a gun, to be useful with a gun, you have to know all this stuff before you step into the classroom. So you're proposing we prioritize educating teachers about guns over educating teachers about teaching.

Now. Let's say you get your wish. We no longer have teachers. We have a vaguely-educated militia heading up our nation's classrooms. Wow, I really hope no teacher ever loses it. And I say this as someone who once watched her teacher have a nervous breakdown. We sat frozen in our seats, twenty-two fourteen-year-old targets, as he yelled, wept, and threw things at us - pencils, chalk, a mug, books. Despite the noise and the open door, it took twenty minutes for someone to come help us. If he'd had access to a gun, boy, that would have gone a lot better, right?

No. I'd be dead.

And, hey, let's hope no teacher who has been trained to respond to threats by shooting them, trained to shoot instantly and well, ever feels threatened by a student at all.

Or are you saying you're okay with that kind of collateral damage? With kids at risk from their teachers if the teachers are having a bad day or a bad time? Because to me this sounds like a recipe for more dead kids, not fewer. And what I want is no dead kids.

I don't know how to solve that one, but let's assume you do. (Spoiler: You won't.) Now we have our teachers, and they're trained, and they're armed, and they're ready and willing to shoot. Where do you keep the guns? If they're safely stored in the classroom - in a locked box, ammunition separate from the gun - then I'm not really clear on how the teacher is going to get to the gun in case of a mass shooting.

And if they're not safely stored, if they're on the teacher - look, have you been to a classroom recently? Not a high school. A preschool. A kindergarten. A first grade classroom. Those teachers have a lot of physical contact with the students. It's inevitable. My son is carried around by his teachers, he sits on their laps, he hugs them. And he's curious. He gets into everything. I can tell you: if you spend a lot of time in physical contact with a small child, that child will investigate your bra, your glasses, your hair, your buttons, the contents of your pockets. The inside of your nose and ears if you have even a moment's distraction. There's no strap or buckle that will keep kids out of anything; you need a lock. With a key in another location. That the kids don't know about. (Yes, of course a four year old can use a lock to open a door and can find a key if he knows where it's kept.) But we just discussed how locks won't work.

So how do we keep these curious, investigating kids away from the guns? Are we back at biometric sensors? Hey, then can we just try the biometric sensors first, see how that works, and then maybe spend a fortune and incur a huge risk to raise our very first teaching army? Seems like the biometric sensors would be easier, cost less, and be faster. Or are you saying that you want the teachers six feet from their students at all times? Because you'll need a fence if you want that. An unclimbable one, let me just mention, as the parent of a climber. (And you'll also need an adult on the other side of the fence, one who isn't armed, because the younger kids don't respond well to teachers under glass. And that adult can't be armed. Wait, we're back to unarmed teachers. WHAT NOW?)

Now let's summarize, proponent of armed teachers. Your vision of our safe, glorious future:

1.   Teachers untrained in teaching.

2.    Who are crack shots with extensive weapons training.

3.    Who are armed.

4.    Who teach from behind Plexiglas walls

5.    In disintegrating schools (because I can't imagine you're going to approve massive tax increases to pay for all this training and arming of teachers).

6.    With minimal equipment (because again).

Holy shit. You've just turned the education system into a giant prison system, incarcerating children as young (in my state) as three. And, let me remind you, unless you think every single teacher, all 7.2 million of them (according to the US Census), is safe and stable and unlikely to snap, you've put the kids at greater risk.

No. No, no, a thousand times no. If this is your plan, if this is the best you can do, then you really, really, REALLY need not to be firing guns, or carrying guns, or in the presence of guns. You are exactly who should not be armed. Because you're fucking dangerous, out of touch with reality, frothing at the mouth rabid.

And I thank you for showing me how to vote. I will absolutely vote to take your guns away.