Some links may be affiliate links. I may earn money if you buy something or take an action after clicking one of these links on this site.
Rob Knowlan is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.com. As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases.
Midweek Mania
Busy week? Imagine that. At least I’ve gotten some help and expect to get additional license to draw some lines in my busy week. Maybe…
A Certain Point Of View
People are not disturbed by things, but by the view they take of them. ~Epictetus
It’s been said that the truths we cling to depend on our point of view.
Fact-checkers take independently verifiable facts and declare them false based on their own view of the world.
Naturally, that’s a problem.
Some things are subjective, such as tastes, interests, preferences and perceptions.
Some things are objective. Water is wet. Dark is the absence of light. Rocks are hard and pillows are soft. 2+2 = 4
The wall between these categories is being deliberately blurred by hordes of the willfully ignorant and it’s causing problems.
You will find that many of the truths we cling to depend greatly on our own point of view ~Obi-Wan Kenobi
Yeah, who needs it?
Forced ambiguity sounds hip and enlightened as loose chat at the Starbucks, but as a political philosophy it pretty much blows.
We had no problem dealing with reality not so long ago and things worked very well.
As archmorons drive us further into the realms of absurdity and illogic, it’s getting harder to orient ourselves to what the whirlwind of whims will perpetrate on us next.
I continue to wonder how far Left the pendulum can swing before it necessarily swings back toward sanity and reason.
4th Wall
WHO is SHE-HULK Talking To? Fourth Wall and DEADPOOL Explained
Shakespeare was big on 4th Wall breakage. It’s a time-honored dramatic tradition.
I enjoyed that facet of the first She-Hulk episode. As the guy in the video points out, this is a feature of this character.
People think the MCU is getting too jokey, but if that’s how the character is in the comics then it’s how they should be in the movies and shows.
Some characters work well as super-dark, brooding antiheroes. Some characters work well as campy, light-hearted everyman heroes. It takes all kinds, y’know?
Unsaid
The best artists know what to leave out. ~Charles de Lint
I actually had a few days last weekend to work on this year’s Holiday Season Serial Romance and some of the 10K foot level core notions of The Sentinels series. Here are some resources I used to work on these.
|
|
|
I’ve mentioned before that there are some considerations in publishing these days that speak to the pendulum I mentioned earlier.
There’s some legitimate concern regarding “cancelation“. The willingness of basement-dwelling weirdos searching for something to be offended by to rally their fellow troglodytes into a hate-mob is nothing to sneeze at.
As a new publisher, a horde of these idiots can sink my business before I even get going.
Problem is, how do you write something that offends absolutely nobody and who in their right mind could stand to read such a thing?
Literally nothing is safe these days.
If you exclude diverse characters, you get yelled at for a lack of intersectionality.
If you include diverse characters, you get yelled at for infringing on “own voices” or engaging in cultural appropriation.
There is literally nothing you can do that will not offend these morons.
Naturally, my rational mind says:
🤬 Who cares? They’re a bunch of assholes. 🤬
True enough, but they’re tragically powerful in aggregate. While it’s been said, “👹 Don’t feed the trolls. 👹” it also needs to be said that one should not bait the trolls either.
It feels cowardly to bow to these rats, but it’s a calculation in maintaining a business for the foreseeable future.
Of course, my personal inclination is to actually lean into it and hope to draw a non-woke audience. In the long term, being cowed by the opinions of people who genuinely suck will make my work age poorly.
It’s a consideration I have to weigh as I lay out my storylines.
The Holiday Season Serial Romances are relatively harmless. I’m sure that someone would find them offensive and kick off a feeding frenzy if they were sufficiently bored, but I’m not worried about that. They’re just there to provide me daily content through the holiday season on Christmas All The Time. Putting them into print on demand format is just a way to leverage work I’ve done.
The Sentinels are meant to be a celebration of my enjoyment of comic books and comics-related media. Since they’re set in a fictionalized version of New York City with an appropriately diverse cast, there are some concerns that the work will be attacked by wokesters. Again, fuck ’em, but it’s still a slight matter of concern.
When I get to them, Tales Of Olde Auringia will be a celebration of my enjoyment of high fantasy books and movies, D&D and things of that sort. I’m not terribly worried about these being targeted by wokesters because the setting is entirely imaginary. I’m sure somebody could find something to be offended by but, as before, fuck ’em.
Eventually, I’ll also write some books in the Far-Flung Reaches series. Depending on when any given book is placed in my imaginary future timeline, there will be things that seem more applicable to current events. If I write something that takes place in near future decades or even up to a century or two, there will probably be some real-world suppositions and faux future history that will offend someone.
On the other hand, centuries or millennia in the future in another star system, current events will only feature as themes or tropes of storytelling. I haven’t got that far, so who knows what will wind up offending people by the time I write those. Pronouns and adjectives may be illegal by then. Who knows? I hope not, but I wouldn’t be terribly surprised if it’s illegal to form a complete sentence in the next 5 years.
Ultimately, I’ll write what I want to write on topics I feel are worthy of being covered and to hell with the freaking trolls. The concern certainly lingers, but I’m not sure it will affect what I wind up writing. It’s all made up anyway, so why should anyone get bent about it?
It’s a busy week but I’m burning hard to ensure I’ve got no work-related tasks to deal with over the weekend. Hopefully, that’s an achievable goal.