rachelmsterling - Tumblr blog

[rachelmsterling]

[rachelmsterling]

Maybe this is the wrong platform to pose this question given the average tumblr user but

Is it just me or did our generation (those of is who are currently 20-30 ish) just not get the opportunity to be young in the 'standard' sense?

Like, everyone I talk to who's over 40 has all their wild stories about their teens and 20s, being young and dumb, and then I talk to my friends and coworkers and classmates, and we just... dont.

[rachelmsterling]

So George RR. Martin is in the news. He's upset that Glasgow WorldCon didn't call him back. What the Guardian and other outlets desperate for a bit of clickbait leave out is the mountain of context to this. So I'm going to give you some.

GRRM has already burned every bridge needed for special treatment. How? With an absolute train wreck of a hosting job at the 2020 WorldCon in which he butchered the names of awardees, wore silly hats as he rambled pointlessly between powerful speeches by actual award winners, and ranted about the good old days name-dropping old pals of his who are unwelcome in writer spaces because of reasons.

Now until not so long ago that wouldn't have mattered. A big old name like George could have just rung up his old pals who run the show at WorldCon, who have been around for decades like him and reminisced over how things were better before "you know", and they'd have done some wrangling to ensure he didn't have to queue up for slots with all the pleb writers (you know, the ones winning awards and hitting best-seller lists today instead of a decade ago).

Except they're all gone now. The old guard have been swept out. Why? Because they fumbled the 2023 WorldCon so hard that their overt corruption and underhanded practices hit international news:

So they got dropped as fast as people good as the Hugo Awards, and WorldCon by extension, faced possibly its biggest ever PR crisis of legitimacy, putting the new Glasgow WorldCon committee in the inevitable position of trying to patch things over.

That means they have to be entirely stainless. Everything needs to be done by the book, the book needs to be open for everyone to read, everything needs to be transparent, no special favours, everyone gets treated as equals.

Including George RR Martin.

Something he, apparently, wasn't able to handle and so went to his blog to have a sulk. Did he intend for it to hit the national papers so he could bully the Glasgow WorldCon organisers with his big sulk whilst they're in the middle of what might be the most stressful WorldCon organising process in its history with its future hanging in the balance?

Maybe not, but he definitely knew that that's what was going to happen.

GRRM's entitlement is the picture of everything wrong with the old guard that the Hugos and WorldCon needed to move on from, yet another reminder of exactly the mentality that made the 2020 hosting job such a disaster.

Writing shouldn't be an industry of celebrity authors throwing their weight around, skipping the line, and trampling new talent under them with a wink and a nudge with the organisers who they're pally with. The Glasgow WorldCon team has enough on its plate without having to also pander to the egos of people who evidently don't care much for the future of the genre.

Good on them for standing their ground. I'm sure it's going to be a fantastic event, and I'm looking forward to what the future of science-fiction and fantasy actually looks like.

[rachelmsterling]

Not to be a debbie downer but Tim Walz was in the military for 24 years, including during the Iraq war. He called the national guard on protestors following the George Floyd murder. He supports Israel. He's approved an oil pipeline across indigenous lands that break treaties.

It's weird to celebrate a man who goes against all leftist values

[rachelmsterling]

Every time I advocate for voting people are like "no you shouldn't vote! Read this literature, it'll totally change the way you view voting!" And every single time it's the same fucking "you shouldn't vote because both parties are exactly the same so it won't make a difference who wins" bullshit wrapped up in some fancy language

[rachelmsterling]

You guys realize this means we ALL have to vote now. No "don't wanna vote biden" excuses now- if we don't vote our rights are going to be taken away.

[rachelmsterling]

We have lived through this before.

People said Gore wasn't good enough, that he was Bland and uninteresting and middle of the road and something had to change. So they voted third party or they didn't vote at all. And the Democratic party didn't wake up, and we got George W Bush and all the absolute hot garbage that came with him.

And they said Hillary Clinton was the wrong candidate, that she was middle of the road at best and conservative for the Democrats at worst, that she was entitled and they were going to vote for a third party or they didn't vote at all or worse yet, they voted for the other candidate as a joke because it's not like those votes change things, you know? And the Democratic party didn't magically wake up, they didn't majorly change, and we are still dealing with the fallout from that.

And that's not only twice in my lifetime, but twice in my voting lifetime. One of the important things you learn in therapy is that you cannot change other people, and you cannot set your expectations based on how you think they ought to react to certain things.

If you are refusing to vote, or voting third-party because of what you think it's going to make someone else do, please reconsider.

If you want to make the liberals or the centrists or whatever you want to call them wake up, you're going to need to do something that hasn't already been done twice in the last 20 years.

[rachelmsterling]

Friends, enemies, whoever: there is a massive, money-soaked rightwing voter suppression effort targeting social media users who identify as progressive and/or are seen as potential Democratic supporters. Let's all keep that in mind, okay? Let's not make accidental unpaid operatives of ourselves, all right?

[rachelmsterling]

I cannot stress enough how important it is that whatever you think of anything else, Trump Cannot Be President Again.

The "rip apart democracy and install an autocrat" group was not Ready for him in 2016. They didn't think he'd win.

They're ready now. They're teeing up for a second Trump president. Whatever your favorite current Thing, it would be worse under Trump, and it is not an exaggeration to say that they're going to try to make sure that they stay in power forever, by any means necessary.

SCOTUS basically just said, "If Trump sends the Army in to murder protestors, that's okay. If Trump assassinates a political rival with the armed forces of which he is the Commander In Chief, that's an official act, and there's no recourse."

Anything he can even vaguely justify as "an official act" - including installing people in the Justice Department to support his coup, including pressuring his VP to support his coup - is no longer a crime.

This isn't just me saying this, btw. Here's Robert Reich, lifelong public servant (and yes, dad of @samreich, since I know what's important to y'all):

Finally, the Republican-appointed justices have given a dangerous amount of discretion to presidents — broad enough, as Justice Sonia Sotomayor noted in her dissent, to protect presidents from prosecution for bribes and assassinations. A president already has the authority under the Insurrection Act to order troops into American streets. After today’s ruling, those troops would be under the command of a person who would almost certainly enjoy absolute immunity for the orders he gives them.

This is unbelievably terrifying.

[rachelmsterling]

vampires are like. what if i was a monster and you loved me anyway. what if i was a monster and you loved me because of it. what if i could teach you not to be afraid of yourself. what if i taught you how to be free. what if i vamped our genders. What if my very nature created, for us, a romance so epic and dark and seductive it’s impossible to tell a vampire story without this element? 

[rachelmsterling]

Hi Foz! I finished reading All the Hidden Paths last week (absolutely adored both it and ASASE and read them with friends who love them too) and have not stopped thinking about Asrien and Naza since! I don't know if you'd be willing to answer this or if it veers into spoiler territory (and if that's the case, absolutely no worries), but I was wondering, will we be seeing more of Asrien and Naza in the next book?? Thank you for writing these beautiful, angsty-good queer books!

Thank you so much! While I won't rule out returning to Tithena at some point in the future, for the moment, the series is complete as a duology. I do have some thoughts about what might happen with Asrien and Naza (and other characters) down the line, but I'm keeping them to myself in case I get the opportunity to write another story - however, anyone who wants to explore their own version of events is very welcome to do so in the form of fanfic :)

[rachelmsterling]

Was wishing there was a positivity post for original fiction writers since I see so many about how fanfic writers are doing so much for their communities even when they're not actively writing, and then I thought:

Be the change you want to see in the world.

So this is a positivity post for the writers out here who are working very hard on stories with no established community. Who can't talk about their blorbos and plot lines and brainstorming to anyone and expect them to know what any of it means. Who don't have much to share publicly, but are hoping they will one day.

You're doing a lot of hard work, and I recognize and appreciate what you're putting into the world, even when you're resting.

[rachelmsterling]

[rachelmsterling]

req'd by @onyourstageleft

such is this site, of course

text: It seems we've both got autism haven't we

[rachelmsterling]

For the last goddamn time...

"Kill your darlings" means "if something is holding you back, get rid of it, even if it sounds pretty."

That's it! That's all it means! It means if you're stuck and stalled out on your story and you could fix the whole block by removing something but you're avoiding removing that thing because it's good, you remove that thing. That's the darling.

It does NOT mean

That you have to get rid of your self-indulgent writing

That you should delete something just because you like it (?wtf?)

That you need to kill off characters (??? what)

That you have to pare your story down to the absolute bare bones

That you have to delete anything whatsoever if you don't want to

The POINT is that you STOP FEELING GUILTY for throwing out good writing that isn't SERVING THE STORY.

The POINT is that you don't get so HUNG UP on the details that you lose sight of the BIG PICTURE.

Good grief....

[rachelmsterling]

Not what I expected coming from John Green

[rachelmsterling]