My fellow band of damned creative brothers:
Once more I come to beg you with tears in my eyes: Stop lending credence to the leftist lie that the right isn’t artistic or creative.
That lie, which I’ve fought against for the last 20 years, the poisonous lie circulated to hide their brutal cancellation of dissenters and promotion-for-ideological agreement, which even ten years ago was widely believed even on the right, is crumbling now.
It is crumbling under the assault of indie writers, indie artists, indie everything who have fearlessly stridden through the wild frontier of the internet to get their work before people.
Okay, visibility and publicity still sucks, but there are enough of us to deal a mortal blow to both the traditional market and the assumption that they’re the only creative ones.
And then Conservative Inc. And VERY SERIOUS PEOPLE got in. And they’re harrumph harrumph lecturing those d*mn kids who are doing unauthorized creative things — gosh darn it — and not at all creative or for that matter since they mostly do Harry Potter fanfic. And not conservative at all. They don’t take time every twenty lines to thank Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. And how VERY dare write two young people sparking each other and yearning and maybe getting a little risky. THAT’S NOT CONSERVATIVE.
Every time these people get going, they almost convince ME that all conservatives can produce is those boring church movies from the seventies, where Jesus had carefully combed beard and hair, and spoke only in the approved way, etc. (People. He has a sense of humor. No? Look at the plight of Anthony WEINER. No, really. I was in Portugal, and explaining to my parents why I was laughing like a train engine. He’s an Author and not subtle at all. Less subtle than Terry Pratchett.)
Most importantly, those church movies were boring. Guys, they managed to bore the kids for whom any kind of picture with the lecture was so exciting that a slide show was a reason to come to a lecture.
But apparently the equivalent of that is all I should be allowed to write if I want to rebuild the culture.
So let me take a deep breath and instead of screaming give you a little lecture. The reason the left ever got a leg up, let alone the overwhelming advantage they got over the culture to where they COULD pick and choose who made it in writing and movies and all creative endeavors, is because of stuff like this. It’s because the right was playing the same kind of stupid games as the left, but in the service of “We want only wholesome things. WHOLESOME.”
Look, I came from a different culture, yes. But you know, I made money while in college (including the money to fly to the US and get married which was a lot at the time) by tutoring young women who were failing high school.
Almost every one of them who came to me was only allowed by her parents to read “wholesome” literature. Which mostly consisted of “Lives of Saints” and instructional literature on how young women should behave. All of which I read (including Grandma’s stash of books for young women which were Victorian and simultaneously sanctimonious and horrifying.) BUT it wasn’t the only thing I read. These young women saw absolutely no point in reading. And thereby their first step into academic excellence was thwarted. Yes, okay, I did introduce them to reading for fun. Look, guys, though I never gave them those — weirdly super-clean — even bullfighter romances were better than a steady diet of reading the lives of saints.
People know when they’re being lectures, and they don’t wish to do it for fun. And most people read or watch movies for fun.
Which is why if the right insists on doing only the equivalent of the lives of saints, it leaves the field to the left, which not only does give them power, but gives their messages power.
And their messages are unmaking Western society. Yes, I could easily explain how they got there. Maybe next week.
But the point is at this point the left stuff is boring and repetitious and not-even-appealing. To the extent it finds a home is because people have to read and/or watch SOMETHING.
They’re ripe for pushing over.
But you’re not going to push them over with Jesus with combed hair, or romances that stop every three pages for the characters to pray. You’re not even going to push them over with shouting Libertarian slogans every three pages.
You attract more flies with sugar than with vinegar, but more important to our matter, you attract more people who think and read and are interested in life with complex plots and unpredictable stuff that is wildly entertaining.
Besides, kindly, as my friend M. C. A. Hogarth would say “All artists are cracked.” This includes, yes, those of us on the right.
So while No Man’s Land might puzzle the heck out of you because why would any artist to the write of Lenin write a book where the main character is gay and the entire rest of the cast (just about) are gengineered hermaphrodites?
Well, because I’m cracked. And that world has been in my head since I was 14, and not letting it out was poisoning my writing.
OTOH you know, in the current environment you can’t talk about things like being baby-positive or the roles of women and men openly. You just can’t. The whole discourse has been poisoned. But come at it sideways from a perspective of “But these are people who really have only one sex” (Or both in an individual.) And it’s different, and will hopefully cause people to think.
If we get them to think, we have them. Because the left’s entire effort is anchored in getting people not to think past their loud, contradictory shibboleths.
So the respectable people on the right should remember artists are cracked. And that the ultimate beliefs of the artist come through.
So leave us alone to do the thing we know how to do. The indie life (and fan-ficcer life) is hard enough without you piling on.
Go and yell at the left and leave us to Yearn for Freedom.
Thank you.
90 responses to “The Way Back”
On the other hand, I am rather to the Right and the urge to write prawn stories just keeps getting worse and worse and I’m tying in plot and details…
But the left has lost any claim of the artistic high ground since 2012-we can smell the rotting corpse now and they can’t claim otherwise.
IT WILL STILL COME THROUGH. Your politics. You’re just preaching to people who read that.
I’m worried-some days-if I’m just a blue-dog Democrat from the ’80s who is wondering how these people got let out of the insane asylum.
An 80’s BlueDog is roughly a hardcore RightWinger these days. The Overton Window has been mounted on the roof of a Ferrari and is flooring it Leftward.
I don’t worry about these things. The more they scream, the more obvious it is that they’re lying and they’ve got nothing.
EXCEPT guns.
They’ve been lying for years, but nobody seems to CARE that they’re lying.
Nobody but me and a few others.
Yes this. Your true values will always come through in what you write.
No matter how weird what you write. (sighs.)
“…the left has lost any claim of the artistic high ground since 2012…”
They lost it a long time before that, but I agree that 2010-2012 was when it became impossible to find anything to read. That’s when I completely stopped buying books and began my own writing journey.
I went from buying three or more paperbacks a week to zero. Because I couldn’t stand reading what they were pumping out. It’s horrific garbage and gets worse ever year. “Where’s my Nutty Nuggets?” indeed.
26 years for me now, writing instead of reading. I steer clear of writing the spicy parts because I’m extremely bad at it. The curtain closes at the kissy part and re-opens after the bleary ‘where’s my pants?’ part the next morning. ~:D
Sorry, about sixteen years. My math ain’t mathing. ~:D
I noticed it on TV. After 2012, there was darn near nothing to *watch*. Books came next, and since I was already picky, everything dried up fast. We had no idea how spoiled we were, before that, for good entertainment.
I noticed in 2009-ish when Monster Hunter International first came out. I read that book, and I said “where have all the books like this gone?”
Because there used to be lots of books like that. Remember how it was? I loved it!
And then it STOPPED and I could not understand what the hell they were doing. But then I stopped caring, because everything was unreadable trash and I just didn’t care. MHI isn’t deathless prose, but at least I didn’t fling it at the garbage can after tearing it in half. I’ve done that to the ‘work’ of Charles Stross, to name one who earned my wrath.
I take comfort from the fact that whatever was sustaining the media industry in this farce, it is drying up. Netflix just fired the imbecile in charge of their new movie pipeline, because their bottom line is getting crushed. Bomb after bomb coming out of Hollywood is leading to production leaving California. Looks good on them, I must say.
Faster, please.
For movies and shows, you have to think at least a three-year lead time. Anything that came out today was planned in at least 2023, if not a little earlier. This means that everything we’ve had is probably COVID-era, and some of that was delayed due to COVID.
COVID probably gave the movie and TV industries a few more years of life…and the crash will be much worse when it happens.
How are your local theaters doing? The best one around here is gone. Not just out of business, they razed the site.
Covid changed our movie watching habits, not just the dreck they produced.
Dying horribly, because it costs almost $50 to just go through the doors for a film, let alone any premium costs.
A LOT of people are to blame for this, and the theaters have their own share of the blame.
TV died as streaming became the de facto platform for everything.
Movies died when films became longer TV shows and crappy superhero movies.
Books…it’s been a long time coming. There’s been a lot of videos on how the changes in TradPub to almost entirely liberal white women agents buying books from liberal white women to sell to liberal white women means no zeitgeist books of any kind.
Comic books…don’t ask me what my opinion is. Probably violate Terms of Service. I will say this-Marvel and DC and the other Big Five comic book makers killed their own industries and they aren’t coming back the same way.
…I miss so much.
I LOVED comic books when I was a teenager (still do, really). Marvel jumped the shark in the late 1990s (and in some ways earlier than that) and Joe Quesada drove a stake through the heart of my enjoyment as soon as he became EIC. There were certain titles I read at DC in the 2000s, but I haven’t bought a new Big Two book since before I moved to Japan. It’s very sad, but at least there are some crowd funded things out there that are still enjoyable.
In the years leading up to 2012 I realized there was nothing out there I wanted to read. That was the big thing that started me writing more seriously in the first place: if they won’t entertain me, then I’ll do it myself.
Chuckles. I bought an early revision Kindle Fire in 2014 and used it as an affordable internet tablet. It wasn’t until 2016 that I actually found digital content I wanted to buy. (Tom Kratman, Larry Corriea and a mix of MGC authors and the North Texas Troublemakers.)
There’s decent content out there now, and book announcement day can make for a fair amount of purchases.
(OTOH, I have no idea why my Kindle thinks I’m following GRR Martin. Noway, bud.)
I don’t think it’s the clankers. I think they’re paid to push certain things.
☝️☝️☝️
She beat me to it. It’s obvious pushing.
They lost it a long, long time ago, but that’s when the mask fell off. Because with the rise of the Obamamessiah, they thought the war was over, they had won, and there was no more need to pretend anymore.
I’m not good at the spicy bits, either, but I keep trying. Mostly because I hope if I get good at the spicy bits on the page, I’ll get good at the real thing in person.
“write prawn stories”
It should tell you something about where my head is that I read that as completely literal to begin with, and was wondering why shrimp were a style of writing.
…okay, now you’re making me think about Prawn Porn and Grok is probably wondering if I need a 5150… 😀
ROFL. I only know because someone asked me if the barbarella comic was that….
The flashpoint arguments around Angel Studios’ *Cabrini* film were instructive for this: the Left said it was too Catholic, while the Catholic Right said it wasn’t Catholic *enough* because none of the miracles attributed to Mother Cabrini are shown and she never prays aloud. When she mentions God in a speech it’s because she’s *furious* at the city of New York essentially stealing money she raised for her orphans via a specious fine. Even her speech before the Italian Senate to secure a loan for her NYC hospital doesn’t mention Him by Name.
Whereas, if you look at the subtext of *Cabrini*, the subtext is ALL Catholic and all to the right of Lenin. Imperfectly, toward the end, but the Left loves subtext even when it isn’t there: they got the message. Furthermore, the mayor whom Mother Cabrini is up against is Tammany Hall Leftist to the core. No wonder they had a conniption fit. It did *not* make the Left look good, especially if you knew history.
But the Right didn’t know what to do with it, a lot of Catholics weren’t happy it wasn’t “saintly” enough, and the Left had a cow. Given the Draco/Hermione (“Dramione”) trend a few years ago that saw fanfic writers being asked to file the serial numbers off their Dramione fics so they could be published professionally, I’m hoping no few Malfoid authors have fans who beg them to do the same via indie. It would be a nice twist!
Addendum: The Dramione fanfic-ers were the most popular ones. It wasn’t all of them, just the really big ones. Malfoid could reach that level. I would like to see if they can pull that off!
Fifteen (?) years ago there was a film called __There Be Dragons__ about Saint Jose Maria Escriva. I thought it was genius, but people complained because they said it didn’t do justice to his life. The story was told through the eyes of a man whose father had been acquainted with Saint Jose. It is impossible to explain the plot in a reply box…. but how do you do a movie about a person who changes others, yet the external look is prayer, prayer, prayer?
The other item I would mention is __The Song of Bernadette__, the BOOK, not as far as I can tell, the movie. The book shows all the tawdry publicity seeking that surrounded Bernadette, along with the people who wanted to shut her up, but it also manages to show the heart of the matter. The central statement that a Lady appeared to Bernadette and produced a healing spring. And Bernadette herself changed. The book has no time for pious nonsense.
I’ll need to look into both of those – thank you for passing these on! It’s really difficult to show internal change via film, so I’m not surprised *Song of Bernadette* fell short in the translation from book to movie. *There Be Dragons* sounds like it pulled it off *really* well, though!
#Malfoid just seems to have found this niche in people’s heads. Even when the usual OF girls and fast-prawn makers tried to jump on, they were mocked firmly out of the discussion.
And almost every single story was…wholesome. I don’t think I’ve even seen a “call me QUEEN DRACINA!” prawn from the usual Japanese hentai sources.
I do think it is not fair to include not even one miracle. It is common with biographies today of “social cause” saints to leave out the fairly common miracles that happened in their lives. Sometimes it means that you miss a lot of motivations for their actions, or for the actions of others.
Most ministries to the poor have multiplication of food happen sometime, for instance. And people are so busy that sometimes they barely even notice!
That is a fair criticism, and I would have liked to see some food multiplication myself. That being said, the movie isn’t bad for not making a miracle explicit, and one could argue that the crisis of faith Mother Cabrini has before addressing the Italian Senate is answered almost miraculously. The Lord just doesn’t tell her in His Own Voice what to do – He uses the voice of the girl she saved from prostitution.
I suppose I am somewhat biased about that, because as a writer, that type of moment is…not unfamiliar to me. So it resonated very strongly as the emotional climax of the film for me where it may not have done anything for others. But that was, I think, the money scene in a very good movie. Not a great movie, perhaps, but a good one.
Hey, some of the Malfoid fan-fiction is brilliant. That one change could make the whole Harry Potter saga even better than it was.
I very nearly gave up a year and a half ago. I spent the previous 16 years working on an entire connected literary universe and just felt no matter how much I worked on it I would never be good enough; it would never make any money; there’s no audience for what I wrote (heavily influenced by GL/yuri manga: I’m as cracked as any other artist). I should have spent my 20s working 100 hour work weeks to provide for a family I would never have seen, that would have been the responsible thing, right? Working on this sprawling network of stories was just a self-indulgent waste of time.
But I’m finishing up two projects right now, and I’ll enter the indie market next year. And if no one reads me? Well, that’s fine. At least there’s one more artistic effort out there made by someone who doesn’t hate conservative readers.
Never give up, never surrender.
One man’s self-indulgent waste of time is another man’s Lord of the Rings. Post it and I’ll read it. If it sucks, I’ll tell you why. If it is awesome, I’ll tell you why and throw money as well.
Write on, brother. Write on.
Damn the resonance cannons, full speed ahead! (we just watched Galaxy Quest last night)
Thank you!
It’s terrifying, starting out Indie. How do you get readers? What if they say your baby is ugly? What if no one says anything?
Well, right here is a good place to put up a link. Do it!
It is. I’ve found sf series do better than fantasy. We’ll see romance…..
I tried the Substack route for a few years and found it to be an utter void. I’m terrible at self-promotion since one of my two biggest talents is self-doubt. For some reason these two current projects would not allow me to walk away wlast year so I guess I have no choice but to internalize as much of your advice as I can and take the plunge. Your recent columns have been very illuminating.
Marketing–wise . . . one thing that helps is to have several things published before you get too gung -ho with the adverts.
Readers, if they like the first taste, and can jump right into the next . . . and the next . . . will be looking for the books that come along later.
No follow-up, and they probably won’t remember your name.
Part of it’s cultural.
Specifically, these Big Voices folks have preferred cultural markers, and their philosophy stinks on ice. They just have a vison of “How It Will Look.”
Which is why you get folks mooning over old photos where everyone is in a suit or nice dress, and completely ignoring the very many trade-offs involved.
My hackles go up at these scolds because they’re just wanting to wear the boot that’s been stomping on anyone not in line–they don’t object to the stomping.
“…Big Voices folks have preferred cultural markers…”
A succinct encapsulation of what I flailed at in my comment below.
Absolutely true, and all-pervasive in current publishing/media. Also the reason I can’t stand current books/media, every one of their cultural markers I come across makes me angry.
So I watch anime. None of their BS in anime, the Japanese won’t have it. It has other markers and imperatives, but those ones don’t bother me.
Incidentally it was Otoya Yamaguchi Day on October 12th. We’re allowed some cultural markers of our own, I do believe.
Which is why you get folks mooning over old photos where everyone is in a suit or nice dress, and completely ignoring the very many trade-offs involved.
It’s pretty easy to shut them up by telling them to wear the sartorial splendor they wish to see in the world.
*AHEM* I resemble that statement. 😉 Minus the proper corsetry, mind, because I have to pick things up from the floor, and a few other things that are not easy in a Victorian corset.
You’re also not demanding the mom chasing three under five, doing vehicle maintenance and most of the home upkeep so that the dad working like crazy to keep her home also dress like an Influencer for MaryPure(tm).
Nope! Although 99% of my non-sweater wardrobe is wash-n-wear. Because LIFE happens.
I keep getting the guys who are upset about moms with spitup on their shirts, wearing jeans, being at Church– but not about pious himbos in gym gear.
(I’m actually kind of fond of said himbos, because I want folks to be at Mass and most keep as far back as they can while still being there, but if you find the facts of “babies spit-up” to be scandalizing and distracting, but do not find a very nice looking young man in slightly over what’s needed to be legal in public to be a dignity issue, it’s a you thing.)
*grins* When the next book comes out, I’m going to include an author afterword that says “this whole thing started as an internet argument on whether an actual massive genetically-engineered sex ratio imbalance in a population across generations (not culturally-enforced or post-war demographic blip) would end up in polygymy or polyandry. And if you think this one’s odd, check out Sarah Hoyt’s No Man’s Land, because she takes the argument about the consequences of playing G-d via genetic engineering on societies one step further!”
My readers haven’t abandoned me yet for putting out weird things – and neither have yours. May all of us go forth and be our absolutely most creative selves!
:ears perk: Oooh….
Limbers wallet fingers…
“…massive genetically-engineered sex ratio imbalance… would end up in polygymy or polyandry.”
Sounds fun!
Currently I am given to understand that the “Gym Girls” “TickTock influencer set” are inadvertently re-enacting polygamy by un-personing 99% of the male population and only dating the “six-five, blue eyes, trust fund” bros.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Looking_for_a_Man_in_Finance
This appears to be an actual thing on dating aps, 99% of guys don’t get a swipe.
Men of course swipe left on every single female, and then choose from among those who respond. Leading to actual products for sale to do that, like “TAPDRA Auto Screen Swiper for iPhone iPad：Screen Device Automatic Swipe for Android iOS, Simulated Finger Continuous Swiping, Adjustable Speed!” You sit your phone down on the table and swipe left on everything. When you do that, sooner or later a random girl will swipe you back.
So the TickTock girlies think they’re girlbossing and being all choosy, but in actual fact the boys are still doing the choosing. And of course the girls who only swipe one type of guy are all dating the same guy. Polygamy, 2026 style. Bro has options, as they say.
Because the fabulous looking TickTock girls have one thing going for them, but it isn’t brainz.
In my books I’ve been having some fun with questions like “would post-human AI beings with zero biology even have gender?” and my answer was “yes they would, for fun.” I have dragons so old that they mostly only remember their biology. They’re hanging out on holiday planet Earth, playing with the enchanting biocreatures and getting up to all sorts of improprieties with them. Completely scandalous. ~:D
Not just yes but a resounding hell yes!
“Once more I come to beg you with tears in my eyes: Stop lending credence to the leftist lie that the right isn’t artistic or creative.”
Oh, my ghod… those idiots haven’t had a new idea since Mary Shelly.
Have you SEEN what passes for writing on TV? Every single SciFi show or movie with a robot in it is Frankenstein. Straight up Frankenstein, or backwards, or flipped inside out, but always Frankenstein.
It never EVER occurs to the Left that an intelligent, self-motivating, dare I say “en-souled” artificial being is a –person– and would have personal goals, likes and dislikes, fears, ambitions and so forth. Even the likes of Ian Banks seems incapable of having robots/AIs that don’t revolve around human failings. It’s still fricking Frankenstein.
I currently, post-Sad Puppies, post-Covid, believe that this is down to virtue signalling in media and publishing. If a work does not contain the hallmarks of accepted Lefty Art, it will be cast out into the darkness.
That’s not creativity. That’s a litmus test. Pink, okay. Not pink, not okay.
I am proudly not pink. I have robots who do -not- act like Frankenstein’s monster, and the robot creator who does NOT act like Victor fricking Frankenstein, that appalling buffoon.
This is my little contribution to keeping the lights on for Sarah. Hell to the yeah, Sarah.
They were already trying to dictate details to be “correct’ in the oughts.
When I think about the idiotic hoops they’ve made writers jump through, it make my fangs grow. Not even a full moon out…
Also, to your point of ““We want only wholesome things. WHOLESOME.” Still the fangs grow. Because it’s -exactly- the same thing, if anything even stupider.
One of my characters is Toyotama the dragon, the jeweled princess of the Sea King’s Empire out among the distant galaxies. One of the first things she asks people who interest her is “Tell me, would you be interested in a mistress, young gentleman?” Accompanied by a brush of the whiskers with an elegantly manicure forefoot.
“Wholesome” is something one assumes as the baseline. If Her Highness decides to be mistress to five different Humans, it is understood that she can do this properly, and it is in everyone’s best interests. After all, would the Sea King Watatsumi send his daughter across unspeakable distances to Earth if she was a flighty nitwit? That would be stupid.
But that’s what a Lefty sensitivity reader would want. Because you can’t have a -competent- royal, right? And a Righty sensitivity reader would say “Mistress? Absolutely not!” Without understanding that marrying into the Emperor’s Court would bring a huge freight of consequences with it, whereas having the Princess for a mistress is much safer, politically speaking.
Both would scream that an AI would never do that. Because humans are bad, right?
The problem is that an AI will do that if that’s what it’s creators and trainers want it to do. That’s fine if it’s just your own works, but when someone uses it as a filter to try and gatekeep, I foresee problems ahead.
I remarked to someone on substack the other day that if
Victor were a standard rich guy abandoning a standard illegitimate child a surprising amount of the plot would stay the same.
My gosh, I’ve read about a Golden Age superheroic robot character (Nedor’s Mekano) and his creator that was more original than that, with the two-fisted scientist protecting and fighting alongside his mechanical “son”.
*”..or romances that stop every three pages for the characters to pray. “*
‘Oh god, oh god,” may or may not count, depending. (ducks the thrown shoe)
LOL. No. These are very formal prayers. When I was trying to find romances that weren’t erotica I decided this was JUST another sort of pain….
I have been amused by the Malfoid memes without feeling any real urge to read the fics, but I confess, my initial reaction was: “oh, look, someone’s gender flipping a Harry Potter character! Must be Tuesday.”
That was my initial reaction, too, but the whole Malfoid thing is going a lot further with it than just “creator wants to get off on it”, which is the primary purpose for which many such fics are written.
I haven’t been seeking out everything (never really followed HP beyond the first few movies), but there are some out there who are using Malfoid as a springboard to writing entertaining stories.
And then the “Conservative, Inc” crowd hops in and urinates all over it, because even small wins are apparently evil compared to the profitability of being losers.
:looks at main stream TV since the 90s, where it became a running joke that you can identify the producer’s kinks:
In as much as that’s accurate, it’s across the entire spectrum of creativity.
You caught me. I have a kink for a lot of babies. (And a pervasive fear of human extinction.)
#faktz
I didn’t realize that my werewolf story was turning into 50 Shades of Wolf until an alpha reader pointed it out (not in those words).
Oops. It didn’t take much to fix. The author’s kinks were not central to the story, they just crept in. They have been excised, but I noticed it happening again, 20 chapters later.
I wouldn’t necessarily mind writing that sort of thing, but if I do, I want to do it by-design.
Authors *are* kind of going for a reaction.
That’s the job of editors/feedback.
Well, yeah, but back when I was actively seeking out fanfics (several franchises), for many of them there was almost no story other than “Hi, friend” (even if they’re mortal enemies in the original story), then “Hi back. Wanna screw?” “Oh goodness yes!” [cue the porn music]
“The Writer’s Barely Disguised Fetish” stories on mainstream TV still had at least something more to the story. That many of the fanfics I came across didn’t is a big part of what made me lose interest.
(Mind you, this was before there were FF-specific websites with convenient tags, where you were relying solely on the author including a synopsis like they often didn’t.)
I was on Yahoo’s Trek Boards, and found other than that.
Of course, this was during the “we noticed you, ignore legal claims, we say you die” era…..
Yeah, well, HP fanfic as springboard to bigger things is also Tuesday. 😉
The comments on “Conservative Inc.” sound a lot like the old “Archie’s Christian Comics” that well-meaning relations kept foisting off on me as a boy. Even as a kid I thought they were shallow tripe with their “But TRUE Christians are never unhappy or even think about doing anything wrong!”
Let me point out, anyone who thinks STRUGGLES. They call them temptations for a reason.
Everyone should have a temptation, if only so he can learn to resist it. Though I will admit one exception for bookses, because my preciousssss cannot be dethroned.
The characters in these comics were never tempted. They were always flawless, as long as they were “good guys” – or if they were tempted, a quick, “Please, God, get me out of this with my virtue intact – gee, thanks!” ended the whole problem.
Nobody expected this stuff to be deep, but those stories were shallow enough to be their own reflection. Then again, I’d much rather kids looked at those comics rather than modern shows like Helluva Boss and Hazbin Hotel.
Going to keep going. Day job is long and hard, but I am editing White Cat’s Bluff, a few pages at a time.
The annoying part is there isn’t even a consistent target to hit. Whether the fiction you make has to be explicitly Christian, explicitly conservative, and/or explicitly moral depends on who you’re talking to.
Likewise whether it’s okay to have violence, swearing, kissing, magic, etc. Or whether anime and video games are valid hobbies. Or whether it’s okay to have hobbies at all…
As usual, the only way out of the crab bucket is to ignore the critics, do your own thing, and make cool stuff without them. The works that shape the culture aren’t going to follow any of their prescribed rules or strictures. Success is only ever obvious in hindsight.
TO QUOTE M. C. A. Hogarth again: Do your mad, beautiful thing, anyway.
TBH, I can see why the Left sneers at a lot of “right” writers. I’ve read a lot of “freedom novels” in my time—you can find them at gun shows and, on the Net,—and a lot of them, even those by professionally-published writers (Vin Suprynowicz, I’m looking at you) have the same faults:
One is the author taking time in his story to take potshots at every last thing that’s been bugging him, even if it has little or nothing to do with the story he’s trying to tell. Another is villains made of purest cardboard, with no motivation other than “Bwa-ha-ha, aren’t I EVIL? Watch me eat this kitten!” Three-dimensional villains, with comprehensible motives, are rare in these things.
Yet another is the author visibly getting up on his soapbox. L. Neil Smith’s later novels suffered from this for the most part—the best of them was Sweeter than Wine, his vampire story.
Many of them are also all too obviously the authors’ first venture into fiction. Isaac Asimov (PBUH) said you had to write a million words of bad SF before you could write good SF, and that applies to fiction in general, at least IMNSHO.
I write from a Christian perspective, but obviously many of my characters are not Christian or religious at all. Yes, in Advance Guards, there are characters who pray as a family before meals and at funerals, but the novel is definitely not pious. Damn people, have you ever even read the Bible? Abraham and Lot, Noah and his kids, David for God’s sake!
The next novel will probably have even less bible and religion in it. We shall see. I just write what I want to read, except for the smut. And I AM good at the smut. I just don’t try to sell that. I’m amazed at the explicit content in mainstream books these days. I mean a two page blow-by-blow description of the hero and heroine making “the beast with two backs” as the Bard delicately put it in Othello. That’s apparently mainstream Romance these days. No more subtle hints, full on anatomy lessons.
For those of you feeling the need for actual storytelling on TV, I recommend anything by Taylor Sheridan. 1883, 1923, Landman, Tulsa King–those are the one’s he wrote every episode. Series he only produces are more hit and miss.
[…] A PURITY SPIRAL IS NO WAY TO FIGHT A CULTURE WAR: The Way Back. […]
Who says the Left is creative? Not me! Yes, sime very skilled crearive people have leaned Left, perhaps because they believe the profit motive stifles them, perhaps because they don’t understand that being a functioning part of an economy means serving others–or perhaps because they DO understand it and they don’t like it.
But this leads to the convenient error that Leftism is the font of creativity. Counter-example: anyone claiming the name Trigglypuff should be enough to end the debate.
those boring church movies from the seventies
Not exactly a “movie”, but it’s church from the seventies.
LitRPG usually completely ignores religion. Pointing out that “gods” are not Gods, just really old, high level people is about as far as it goes.
This irritates me, but I also don’t want to spend half a book trying to fit the two together.
I tossed this into a conversation with a priest (our intrepid hero is visiting the Catholic church because it is the only one with a real bell, which they use as the town alarm) then dropped it.
“I’m not sure that what I think about it matters,” he finally said. “I’m not Catholic. Most Christians would probably say I’m not Christian, either. However, I’ve always kept one phrase in mind: ‘It’s blasphemy to limit G*d’. I’m not sure where I heard it, but it seems like an inherent part of the definition of omnipotent to me.
“Was Jesus G*d’s Son? I don’t know. Is He the only route to salvation? I don’t know. Did G*d have a hand in this? I don’t know. I do know that answering ‘no’ is limiting G*d and I won’t say it, whatever my personal thoughts on the matter may be.”
James [the priest] raised his eyebrows. “That’s a rather remarkable answer, but it’s about knowledge. What do you believe?”
“My beliefs don’t often hold up to scrutiny and I’ve been known to change them. For the sake of this discussion, I believe this System is most likely an alien super-AI that has run amok, not an instrument of G*d.
“I tentatively believe that G*d doesn’t object. If He gave us free will to do good or evil as we see fit, the System only enhances our ability to do so. I don’t see that the System, itself, has any bearing on my salvation or lack thereof. What I choose to do with it is what matters.”
Three comments in a row, but they’re all single subject!
Just as I stole Sarah’s spelling of “G*d”, I’ve also stolen Instapundit’s line.
“What do you want?”
Tom [our intrepid hero] considered the question. “I want to create a libertarian utopia where gay couples guard their marijuana garden with pink 50 cals.”
Zeke laughed.
“Yeah,” Tom agreed, “the utopia part is stupid. I’m mostly serious about the rest. …”
So far, that’s as close to politics as I’ve gotten. Book two will have more. Book three will have lot more (one cannot establish a semi-sovereign werewolf pack in the US, even post-apocalypse, without a lot of politics).
I just noticed and fixed the “garden should be gardens” problem.
“What do you want?” is Mr Morden’s line.
Well, there are some obvious targets. A lot of high fantasy is set in “medieval” settings, and yet I’ve gotten reviews that comment that A Diabolical Bargain is set in a medieval milieu with Christianity.
Well, Conservative Inc are the folks who profited by being the controlled opposition. I wouldn’t expect them to be much beyond the caricature the left wanted them to be.