Monthly Archives: January 2019

On Fandom

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This was originally published in Watch The Skies for the January 2019 issue.

Fandom is a wide ranging place. There are folks from across the spectrum of humanity and all around the globe… or at least that’s how it’s supposed to be. Somehow that’s not how it’s working out.

There have been a number of actresses that have recently departed from social media after being harassed to the point that they felt interacting with fans was not worth the effort anymore, or worse it was actively dangerous to them. An actress, long out as gay, was the target of huge amounts of harassment for being picked to play a gay character. Let that sink in for a moment.

A gay actor is not right to play the part of a gay character. Cue Rage Spew and foulness from the dim glow of a screen in a basement.

It almost sounds like this is something new. Social media has been around for more than a decade now, but it has become ubiquitous. Say Facebook and everyone knows what you mean (and likely has an opinion on it). There are other platforms and many methods to be more connected to the people that help to create the things we all know an love.

This harassment is not new and that is what makes it more shameful to me. I listened to an actor talk about how he almost killed himself because of how he was treated after the role he played was deemed unworthy of the franchise he was part of. This was twenty years ago. Yes, twenty (20). This young man thought that his life was done, was not worth moving forward with because of the extraordinary backlash to his role. People hated what he had been part of creating and it almost killed him.

Link Jar Jar

My opening statement means you. Yes you. Fandom is not yours. It is communal property and you do not have a right to harass, threaten, demean or otherwise be shitty to the people that create it. The people creating this art are more open and accessible than any other time in history, and people that can’t behave any better than a four year old that missed snacks and nap time are driving them away. This is NOT acceptable. As a fan I love being able to connect with the folks that make some of the most amazing things. The more people are terrible to these creators (actors are not alone here) the more the creators pull away and become less available to us. All of us.

Fans love to disagree and then expand those discussions over far and wide ranging topics. Arguing about the latest film, book, play or adaptation to whatever form is right down at the core of fandom. Fans should discuss things. Fans absolutely have every right to dislike any media they consume. Fans do not have the right to abuse the people that helped to create it. Fans don’t own the things they love, the can only love or hate them from a distance. Our biggest responsibility as a community is to act with the future in mind. We must create a sense that all are welcome. More than welcoming, we must create an atmosphere and place where the children who see our actions will come to love and understand the same things. The best and only thing we can hope for is that our children see examples of the wonderful creations in fandom and the fantastic people involved and choose to continue making amazing things far into the future. We must show others how to have a good time so that good time will continue.

Fandom is not yours. It belongs to the future. Make that future the best it can be.

Failbook

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Facebook has become a known and common method of communicating with friends, family, associates and all manner of folks. It is a beast. It is huge… and it will do as it pleases.

Social media in general has come under fire for being a terrible thing that allows people to do and say rotten things to each other. It has become a storm of political hyperbole and equally outlandish backlash. I have grown to hate it. I joined Failbook almost a decade ago. It’s stunning to put it that way. Ten years of “like this post” and everything that goes with it, but now I am reconsidering.

The platform itself has privacy and security issues. To paraphrase some younger folks I know, “DUH!”. A socially connected computer program that reaches millions of people is going to have issues. That many people can’t be mixed together and have everything come out perfect. Just can’t happen. The biggest solution to that is I don’t put things out there that I don’t want others to know or that aren’t already public knowledge. I don’t connect it to my bank information or anything that I can’t drop or replace (yes, that includes my phone – it would be a pain in the ass, but I could do it).

It doesn’t connect my website posts automatically anymore. I will admit this is annoying. I prefer to work here when I can and link this site over. It used to be an automated thing, and now it doesn’t work. I have a series of developer messages that would require some amount of research and picking and pecking here on the site to get the connection to work again. I am not a web developer. I am not a programmer. I maintain this site on my own with my bare minimum amount of knowledge. Bluntly I don’t want to spend my time on a web site. Every bit of time I spend working on a web site problem or looking up programming connections or whatever other nonsense doesn’t work now is just more time away from the work I want to be doing. I don’t want to be a programmer, just an author.

Even if I could get it to work, there’s a fair chance nobody would see it anyway. The Failbook folks have decided that your small business links shouldn’t be seen in everyone’s feed… just the big companies that they work with. The site itself is worse than any needy significant other you have ever had. Constant messages about new posts, new friend suggestions, things YOU’VE MISSED! OH MY GOD WHY ARE YOU NOT ON THERE LOOKING AT THIS THING RIGHT NOW!?! They will do anything in a desperate attempt to capture your attention. They want you to scroll and click and like and all the other crap they’ve got going on. It has become intensely annoying. I have complained about it, out loud, frequently. This prompted my wife to yell at me, “Quit bitching! That’s how they make money. You react, you check, you click and they get paid. If you don’t like it, get off there and shut up about it!”

She’s not wrong. The purest distillation from that is a single fact. What you put up there IS NOT YOURS. I’m sure there’s a volume of legal mumbo-jumbo somewhere that declares what words are yours to use or not use and how they can collect it and catalog it and… whatever. It’s all bullshit and it’s not yours. They hold all the keys. They want to change something, they will. They want to deny you access, they will. You get the point. That is why I go through the trouble to maintain this site. It is mine (to the extent that any web based service is truly possessed). If I want to turn the whole thing purple I can. I will post as I please, when I please and all six of my readers will still see my words (after they check their news aggregators because this isn’t cross posting any more). I like the simplicity of it. It’s not going to win any awards, but it is mine. All the changes, all the anger, frustration and screaming into the void over what Failbook should or shouldn’t do amount to nothing. In the end it hasn’t dramatically changed my true friendships. It’s nice to be able to connect, but then I was also on Myspace and Livejournal. We see how those turned out.

I’m planning on staying on Failbook for now, but I’m not jumping through the hoops to make posts from here connect. Their site really isn’t worth the effort.

The New Year

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Yes, It’s later than everyone else but I am finally acknowledging the new year. The end of 2018 was a busy time for me. It was a time for the holidays and family but also when I started to come back from a massive slump. 2018 was a miserable year for me creatively. I read next to nothing, I wrote next to nothing and I did a handful of art pieces that I don’t like much. Terrible. There were a lot of things to be thankful for over the year, but it was still a tough year. It’s easy to put a marker at the change of a calendar year and claim “new” but I had already started all that back before Christmas – now I just need to keep it rolling.

For anyone keeping track I haven’t changed my personal view on resolutions. Many years ago I made a New Year’s resolution to NEVER make a New Year’s resolution again. Guess what? Nailed it again. Still going strong on that one. IF you want or need change in your life, the calendar is convenient, but not required. Make the change to grow or get better when you make that choice. You can do it!

I’m going to apply some of that same enthusiasm to my own work. I’m still struggling along, but I’ll get there. So will you. Have a fantastic 2019 – I look forward to a lot of wonderful stuff.

Mortal Engines

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People have a lot to say about what the movie industry has to offer these days. Most of the time what I hear is, “Hollywood is out of new ideas…” in some form or variation. I will split semantics on this one. I am slowly coming to believe that they’re not out of ideas at all. They’ve got lots of ideas, just nobody with the guts to put something new out there. IF by some crazy chance somebody manages to push through an original and interesting idea that gets made into an actual feature film, the marketing team has no idea what to do with it. They attempt to cram it into a box and force it to fit some concept of ‘what will sell’ that may or may not actually have anything to do with the movie.

I believe that last bit is what happened to the film Mortal Engines. The movie is based on the book of the same title by Philip Reeve. I read the book back in 2009. That was actually before I started posting my book reviews here but those old words are still hanging around on Goodreads. I was excited to see this film in theaters. It’s new. It’s not a sequel. It’s not a remake. It’s NEW!

When I saw the box office results I was very disappointed. For all the people out there that clamor constantly for something new and different this was a staggeringly poor turnout.

 “…second straight flop for Universal… following “Mortal Engines. That $100 million film debuted last weekend with $7.5 million film in ticket sales.”

That’s dismal. I’m not in the industry and even I see that as dismal. On paper this movie had everything going for it. One of may favorite directors was on board (I’m trying to look past the Hobbit fiasco). Great actors were involved. There’s action, there’s a revenge plot, there’s romance. The characters are diverse. There were so many good things…

I’m not sure why it hasn’t been more successful. The visuals and special effects were excellent. The acting was good. I enjoyed it. I will buy the DVD when it comes out. I think it’s a movie that is worth seeing – above and beyond the simple fact that something new needed to be supported so that the people funding films put more new things out. The only thing this will do is push the number crunchers back to Dukes of Hazard 3 Accessible Parking and that is just depressing.

I put this movie directly into the same category as Jon Carter of Mars. That movie should have been a big box office hit with multiple stories to follow up and the people selling it just couldn’t figure out how to get it to you. Mortal Engines is a good film and if you get the chance to catch it you should.