cstross - Tumblr blog

[cstross]

David A. Riley claiming that the National Front was not a fascist party (which even the slightest amount of research can debunk) and claiming that he was never racist, even though he has said this, elsewhere:

Lovecraft, though often too emotionally involved in the subject, was fundamentally a White supremacist, who had no doubts whatsoever of the rightful preeminence of the White race. “Science,” he wrote, “shows us the infinite superiority of the Teutonic Aryan over all others, and it therefore comes to us to see his ascendancy shall remain undisputed. Any racial mixture can but lower the result. The Teutonic race, whether in Scandinavia, other parts of the continent, England, or America, is the cream of humanity.”

How he would have viewed the suicidal swing towards multi-racialism now being compelled upon the “cream of humanity” should not be difficult for anyone to imagine. Not only was Lovecraft an outstanding exponent of the particular literary genre which he made his own, he was also, importantly, a staunch racialist who despised and abhorred the liberalising degeneracy which now imperils the future survival of our race.

David A. Riley has been involved with fascist movements and white supremacist groups since 1973 and that has not changed. The only thing that has is he’s gone underground with it and tried to keep anyone from the small press horror scene from knowing of his involvements. David Andrew Riley is a fascist and white supremacist and his presence in the small press is toxic and cancerous.

[cstross]

This is NOT how you peel a banana, cat!

[cstross]

Going dark on Tumblr

OK, I just can't wrap my head around Tumblr discourse. It simply doesn't work for me. (And I'm not really a visual thinker, I'm textual.)

You can find me on Mastodon: @cstross@wandering.shop. You can also find me on my blog. And I haven't deleted my twitter account yet: @cstross.

However I'm likely to only update my Tumblr or Twitter accounts when I have a publication to announce or some marketing to do. I won't be using them for significant social media interactions from now on.

[cstross]

So I just finished a short novel/long novella yesterday. Laundry setting, about Derek the DM: title, "A Conventional Boy", probably coming out in 2024. Extract in screencap.

(Text: Derek pointed at the frog idol. "That thing! Think I don't know a blatant rip-off of the cover of the first-edition Dungeon-Master's Guide when it see one? Toad instead of minotaur, okay, you get full credit for changing the monster behind the altar, but the gem in the forehead is the oldest cliché in the book. Did you outsource this crap to marketing consultants?" (He'd caught part of a documentary about them on BBC2: now he ad-libbed.) "Did McKinsey send the office intern to manage your design team and bill you for a partner?" (Behind him, Linda winced.) " hear they teach degrees in game design these days--maybe you should go back to college before you try again!")

[cstross]

*They want to live in a theocracy, while simultaneously saying that religious oppression would be terrible if it happened... to them.*

Not exactly right, but close: they want to live in a theocracy, *while denying that it's a theocracy at all* because there can be no other legitimate way to live, it's just normality, any other way to exist must be discredited and denied.

It's like the fundamentalists who won't read fiction because "fiction is just lies"; no, *that's* not why they won't read fiction—the real reason is that fiction is text, holy scripture is also text, but fiction explicitly acknowledges that *what it describes is not real*, and to admit that *any* text can describe something unreal is to admit that holy scripture might also be unreal, *and they can't allow that realization to dawn*.

It's a deeply scary totalizing perspective that ultimately denies the very existence of alternatives (including people who don't fit their beliefs).

The biggest reason the war on "Happy Holidays" is dumb as fuck is that even in a strictly Christian context, the holidays in question are Christmas and New Year's.

Even the most carefully sheltered religious ignoramous who's never heard of Diwali or Chanukah HAS heard of New Year's Day. You know—that thing that happens a week after Christmas? That's often a government-mandated statutory holiday? Where all the calendars change? So close to Christmas that many businesses, schools, and other institutions often take the days between them off too?

It's so absolutely clear that the grown adults peddling this crap are making something up to get angry about, because Christians have been wishing each other Happy Holidays for centuries. (Twelve whole days of Christmas, and extra events like Epiphany or Feast of the Innocents, too! These days we even get Second Christmas, for the Julian calendar folks!)

They're not angry about "erasing Christmas". Christmas is indelible. They're angry at having to acknowledge literally any other religion as having a right to exist, more or less. They want to live in a theocracy, while simultaneously saying that religious oppression would be terrible if it happened... to them.

I'm so goddamn sick of it. Of people who ask "Which holidays?" as if it's some sort of sick burn, not something that can slide from moderate inanity through to actively bigoted malice.

Keep Christ in Christmas?

Great idea. You start. Love your neighbour and shut the fuck up.

[cstross]

Describe the house in excruciating detail without describing the occupants because the furnishings, geometry, narrative path through the architecture, and all the trappings of the residence all combine to *imply* the personality of the occupants, and the reader's imagination will make them far more horrifying than the author ever could.

There’s two ends of the horror spectrum

[cstross]

Makes sense.

already got a blazed marvel post. the adpocalypse is closer than we think so heres your daily PSA

don't interact with corporate tumblr accounts

yes even to dunk on them. i don't care if you have the sickest burn of the century lined up, don't even give them the time of day

the eventual and inevitable fall of twitter marks a change in the advertising industry, and tumblr is unclaimed territory. if we want tumblr to remain the social media bastion it has become, it needs to remain as unappealing to corporations as possible. do not engage. in a marketing strategist's eyes, any kind of attention is good attention. don't "silence, brand" them. don't kungpowpenis them. don't send them hate anons. don't hate-follow them. corporate tumblrs are not a single entity and they will not be harassed off this site. we only have a shot at repelling them because of tumblr's lack of an algorithm. so turn off recommended posts on your dashboard, put it chronological order, and install an adblocker. if you don't seek out these blazed posts and actively ignore them when they happen upon you, the corporations will starve. in this case, the best kind of protest is a silent one

[cstross]

Speaking as an author ... a 4 star review drags down the average: a lot of readers won't look at anything that averages less than 4 stars, so it really isn't helping. If they're the very first reviewer on a book, and the second hates it and gives it one star, then it's going to look like a 2.5 star average, which ain't good. I've had politically motivated asswipes go on Goodreads and systematically one-star every book of mine listed there, including ones not yet published (or even written): it really drags down the average and deters people from buying the book at launch.

I appreciate their need to keep track of what they read. But surely the way to do that is with a private book blog or an anonymous Goodreads account, not one linked publicly to their identity as a publishing salesperson?

Meanwhile, if they're in the sales team they shouldn't be doing anything that might reduce the marketability of one of their authors' books.

(As for me, in this situation I might have a quiet word with my editor, NOT naming the salesperson in question, but mentioning it as an issue in general terms. Because if it's happening to me with this one sales person it's probably happening to other people and/or with other sales folks, and maybe it's something where the response should be to give some thought to establishing a company-wide policy.)

There's a person in sales at my publisher who's notorious among the other authors at my imprint for 4-starring books on Goodreads (the very books that they are then responsible for selling!). They recently did it to mine. I know one early 4-star rating isn't going to make or break my book and is still considered "good" to most people. But it's also annoying and seems pretty unprofessional! Is this something I should mention to my agent or editor, or just forget about it?

If they were routinely giving books from their publisher TWO stars or something, like publicly bashing them, that would be something to justifiably complain about. But four stars means they liked it. That's a good review!

It could be that they use it to keep track of what they read but they are leery of giving ANY books they work on 5 stars because they don't want to "play favorites." -- they perceive this the opposite way to how you perceive it, that they are liking everything equally and being totally fair.

Listen, it's totally reasonable to expect people at your publisher to be kind and supportive of your book generally and not publicly trash you or it. But that is what it sounds like they are doing, if they are giving EVERYONE a good review. I'm not sure where you're getting "unprofesh" -- if anything it would be unprofesh if they were giving some five stars, some three stars, etc., but even if they WERE doing that, you can't police how private citizens use the internet.

At the end of the day, what would you hope to gain from complaining about this? Do the thought experiment. You bitch about it to your agent, and then what? Are you just venting, or would you like them to kick the complaint up the chain?

Would you like the person to be scolded? Told they can't have an account at all? FIRED? For the sin of... *checks notes*... giving a book a neutral/positive/good rating on the internet?

Hm.

[cstross]

There was this novel I wrote back in 2004/05 that was structured after a Bond Movie, and it burned me out on Bond movies (and ultimately movies in general), but I drew up this flow chart of the opening sequence of a generic Bond movie (pre-Daniel Craig). They spend 20-50% of the entire budget on this one sequence, every time, and there's roughly how it goes (about 80% of the time).

[cstross]

[cstross]

Nothing political in my writing, not even back in 2004's "Iron Sunrise". No indeedy.

[cstross]

START THE VIOLENCE in 3 ... 2 ... 1 ...

[cstross]

Good grief I *hate* REST website UIs

And Tumblr is a classic case of obscuring functionality by making obviously-non-clickable design elements Do Stuff When Clicked, while the obvious things you'd click on don't work.

I feel old. (Also, going to bed soon.)

[cstross]

[cstross]

(Taps mike) "is this thing on?"

Yup, I'm on Tumblr now (hedging my bets in the wake of the Muskpocalypse over on Twitter).