Huge congratulations to Delia Sherman and
@EllenKushner
for winning the NESFA's Skylark Award for significant contribitions to the sf/fantasy field, presented in Boston this past weekend. So well deserved!
"the sexy lamp test holds ‘if you can replace yr female character with a sexy lamp & the story still basically works, maybe u need another draft.’ If you can replace your ethnic minority character w a teddy bear that says ‘I believe in you!’, that may also need another draft."
"Well, actually, it’s only mansplaining if it comes from the Mansplain region of France. Otherwise it’s just sparkling misogyny." -- Chase Henderson (via FB)
@jlq529
@Imposter_Edits
THANK YOU.
It’s clear he wasn’t stealing a guitar: in the video you can see him grab it as they’re rushing him out!
Also, their level of cold anger and “LEAVE THIS STORE” is not for shoplifting.
"I’m looking for more shows that don’t end with a big battle. If that’s the hero’s journey, I’m sick of it. Less people with swords. More people with sandwiches." -- Karen Joy Fowler
A librarian friend writes: “This bill would make it a FELONY for teachers or school librarians to provide books to kids that community members deem inappropriate.
Florida folks, CALL YOUR REPRESENTATIVES. This is some serious bullshit right here.”
“Diamonds are formed under pressure,
but bread dough rises when you let it rest.
What’s motivating to you may be crippling to others.”
--
@Linaowinmo
(paraphrased)
SF writer and all around mensch Greg Bear is leaving us. His heart surgery created a series of strokes he will not wake up from. Here is his wife’s harsh and gentle public update from yesterday:
@vandroidhelsing
I call upon the power of all my genius rhyming friends (and any of theirs) to now crank out a series of increasingly rambunctious songs beginning always with:
"I heard there was a...."
a/a/b/b/etc. rhymes only, please
@lizduffyadams
@Signs_of_Life
Lmao Trump said NYC is a ghost town that may never recover. So sad.
Darlings, I live here. Our open restaurants are spilling out into the streets. The second anything opens, we are there. This city never sleeps.
Man is smoking the Hello Kitty Crack Pipe.
Too many queer youth say they don’t see elders to give them hope. Please, for
#LesbianVisibilityWeek
, I’m calling lesbians age 40 and over. Reply or quote with a pic/vid to show our youth they have generations past, present, and well into the future🧡🩷🤍❤️💜
“We have to trust in the Lord. We need to let the good Lord carry out His plan. This will all work out the way it is supposed to. And then the Lord will come down to Donald Trump and pull his head clean off his shoulders.”'
2:2
“Rachel didn’t just ”exist.” She (r)existed. Her art was fundamental to DC comics, her work on tarot & occultism was so vast & powerful she remains one of the great names. Neil Gaiman & Karen Berger saw her as their peer…. She won awards, including the Arthur C. Clarke award.”
Fantasy novels often include lavish descriptions of food. Our heroes and heroines can be found eating familiar fare like stew and pies, even if they cast spells and ride dragons. But why do fantasy writers write so much about food?
A friend writes: “I don't know, it's kind of like the end of Lord of the Rings, when you know you should be jumping for joy, but your body aches from wearing that armor for four years while getting pummeled by sword wielding orcs and you just can't get up to do the jitterbug.”
I'm beginning to recognize "do your own research" and "think for yourself" as code for "Ignore the research of carefully-trained doctors, scientists and journalists with ethics."
I just don't get it.
#MAGA
#Trump2020
#Trumptards
#FakeNewsAlert
If after 10 minutes with a mask you feel like you’re going to pass out...that's not the mask keeping out air, that's probably a panic attack. Check out ways to handle that, and take good care of yourself and others.
#AntiMaskerProblems
#facemask
#MaskUp
Oh, yeah. That's really going to help.
What idiots. Why don't they go volunteer in a fucking soup kitchen, or help old ladies cross the street, or something? Honestly, they give American neo-fascists a bad name!
The poll workers of Detroit are heroes. The counted 170k ballots in 36 hours, while dealing with constant harassment and chants of “Stop the Count” from GOP challengers.
#CountEveryVote
Your life can change in an instant.
Mine did yesterday, when I found out I had gotten the true vaccine instead of placebo in my AstroZeneca study.
It's . . . extraordinary to go from Schrodinger's Immunity to omg I don't have to fear passing someone on the street!
Oh FFS. As I sit here at my kitchen table in New York City drinking tea and thinking of going for a walk in the park, allow me to post you some photos of the dreadful conditions we are enduring here in this terrifying anarchist jurisdiction.
#NYC
DOJ is threatening 3 American cities, all, coincidentally, led by Democrats, with shutting off unspecified federal funding. Barr is treating peaceful protestors like criminals and demonizing entire cities instead of focusing on the conduct of a very few.
I have interviewed real Nazis, including the personal aides of Ribbentrop and Goebbels, men who worked at the Reich Chancellery with Hitler, as well as torturers and officers of Argentina’s genocidal dictatorship of the 1970s and 80s.
Thread🔻
I AM SO ANGRY ABOUT THIS. This is desecration both of our land and the Tohono O'odham Nation's burial ground. Let us flood Homeland Security with letters of protest based on Rep. Grijalva's, which they ignored. 1:2
#BiVisibilityDay
Hi! Can you see me?
Happily married & faithful to the same woman for over 20 years...but she loves hearing about my chequered past. And we both turn our heads at whatever nice walks by.
#IfMaryPoppinsWerePresident
she'd be the one in the P.L. Travers books, not this movie version, and she would kick butt, drain swamps, and have us all home in time for tea.
Those bastards! "The complaints range from being left out of a programme’s credits after handing over weeks of research to cases where entire books have been used as the basis for shows...."
@RepMTG
Be sure to ask regular people to discuss what to do if you ever need any kind of surgery. And then be sure you do what they say. I’m sure they know better than the so-called experts.
@joanhaigbooks
@JamestownReads
@MsPollyClark
I’ve had to learn to stop being flippant in public. There’s a part of you that thinks no one’s really listening—or that just wants to make points with the audience. It nearly always comes back to bite you on the butt.
We were very keen to show the interplay of ancient and modern in Fantasy culture - here, an early manuscript version of Thomas the Rhymer (scorched in the Ashburnham House fire) sits with
@EllenKushner
's touring script for her award-winning 1990 novel about Thomas the Rhymer.
It is my birthday. I am in England. I suppose this means that, even though I have just had a large bowl of porridge with an egg in it, I can still have toast and marmalade. But I think I'll take a lavender oil bath in the big tub instead.
@joanhaigbooks
@JamestownReads
@MsPollyClark
That said, though, I’ve also been thanked for kindnesses I don’t remember, either.
Either way, someone’s listening. Writers can be such solitary creatures, we lose sight of that.
A fantasy novelist who existed before everything could be looked up by anyone on the internet, I'm grieved by the insistence on everything in any book being absolutely 100% accurate or else.
It should be enough that we artists, the wizards, ensorcel the reader into belief 1:
“We need to come up with a better treatment for people afflicted with the illness of sociopathy. Our current approach, which is to put them in charge of all the countries & corporations, doesn't quite seem to be panning out.” —Greg Bossert
Our writing group came over today. Before we could even sit down, people were standing in the front hall, engaged in conversation that sent laughter down the hall to me where I was prepping lunch in the kitchen….
This is the life I wanted.
A friend of a friend has a mother who is in dementia hospice in a red state.
'This morning one of the aides, a middle-aged Black woman, was speaking comfortingly to her mother as she leaned over her, saying:
1:2
I went for a professional makeup job at Sephora today for 2-hour video taping for UK documentary on the rise of fantasy literature…because I have my pride! Great fun all ‘round.
Due to the severe Covid 19 problem, a load of horseradish for the seders is stranded at Madrid airport.
.
.
.
So unfortunately, the chrain in Spain stays mainly on the plane.
#Passover