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Thursday, August 2nd, 2012
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9:27 am - Happy stuff
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So, no rants today!
For the shapenote fans who follow me, the recent Young People's Singing was webcast, and you can watch the recordings! They seem to have recorded basically everything, which means even people standing around chatting and walking back and forth to get coffee during breaks. Slide the thingy forward to get to the singing. And the sound isn't exactly high fidelity (shapenote has a way of...overwhelming small mics and handheld recording devices). Still. There it is! Now I've got to stop singing along and get to my other work today.
Also, I am going to Worldcon! I'll have SFWA stuff to do, and other than that I'll be hanging with folks, and I have a feeling it will be freaking awesome.
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| Sunday, July 29th, 2012
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8:39 pm
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Everyone knows what this is about.
So, many people have already said more or less what I'd want to say about the thing that this is about. But there's another thing I've seen going on. Not a lot of it, no, most people I've seen comment are (completely understandably) outraged. But a couple comments I've seen--that no, the facts aren't in dispute but really we should be making sure there's actually more than the undisputed facts to go on before rushing to judgment, combined with another comment decrying the possibility that If This Goes On it might no longer be possible to flirt at conventions--those are what I'm thinking about right now.
No, don't get mad at them, at those individuals. I think the couple people I've seen say this sort of thing have either rethought their position or have deliberately chosen to disengage with the discussion. I'm not interested in castigating them personally.
Particularly since I've seen this reaction before. It is not confined to one or two outliers, but actually is a reaction I've seen to any number of anti-harassment initiatives or regulations. "But when you make all these rules about sexual harassment, how can you talk to a woman without getting in trouble?" or "How could you ever date anyone?" It always makes me think of the time, shortly after the Anita Hill/Clarence Thomas thing, an elderly gentleman came into the faculty club and came up to the bar--which, I was bartending that day--to order a martini, and the first words out of his mouth were, "What can I say to a lady bartender that won't get me in trouble?" I smiled my waitress smile and said, "How about, Hello, lady bartender." I'd probably have lost my job if I'd given him a more extensive answer. Oh, the waitress smile, it has gotten me through any number of difficult situations!
But here's the more extensive answer. If you really think that "speaking to women" is indistinguishable from harassment, there's a problem and it’s not with the rules. If you really think anti-harassment rules bar flirting, you've got an idea of what constitutes flirting that really needs some re-evaluation. I mean, if someone said, "Hey, we should outlaw rape," and the guy standing next to you said, "But that's the same thing as saying people can't have sex!" you wouldn't say, Wow, good point!. You'd look at him sideways. Or, sweet unconquered sun, I hope you would.
If you speak to women the way you'd speak to someone you respect, someone whose boundaries you respect, you generally won't have any problems with women accusing you of harassment. End of story.
When you worry out loud that anti-harassment policies might outlaw flirting, you as much as sharpie a sign on your forehead saying "I DO NOT CARE WHAT YOU WANT AS LONG AS I GET WHAT I'M AFTER."
And the thing is, like I said, this is not an outlier attitude. By default, women are supposed to be available targets of men's desires, and men are expected to have the right to act on those desires. Women's desires are immaterial. You see this whenever someone complains that some nicely dressed woman in a bar (or at a con, or really anywhere outside the house) expressed a lack of interest in male attention, or even annoyance with it, when she ought to just deal with it if she's going to dress the way she did. *
You see this whenever someone says "but men don't understand subtle signals, did you say really clearly that you wanted him to fuck off?" and the woman in question says, "Yes, actually, I did, I said fuck off I'm not interested. About five times." And the first someone says, "But you have to be really clear about it, maybe he was on the autism spectrum!" (Or my other favorite response to that one, "But did you have to be so mean?")
You see this when the reaction to an accusation of harassment is to worry about the feelings and motivations (and possibility for reform) of the harasser, and to wonder how anyone will ever have happy fun sexytimes if women start taking offense at having their boundaries disrespected and being physically assaulted.
You see this in "romantic" movies, where the key to the guy's success is to stalk and harangue the woman until she gives in. You see this every time someone pops a hugely public surprise** proposal. She can't say no on the jumbotron in front of all those hockey fans, can she?!
TV and movies and people's conversations, they all constantly reinforce this narrative of men's desires and women's obligation to fulfill those desires. This narrative of men being people who want things for understandable reasons of their own, and women being objects who exist only in relation to those men's desires. It's a really, really powerful narrative, it affects the behavior and attitudes of people who would, if you asked them, completely disavow the underlying structure, that "women are objects that exist to satisfy men" thing. Men and women both.
And yet they keep telling those jokes and those stories, keep applauding those put-her-on-the-spot proposals, keep talking about how women who go to cons dressed all sexy are only doing it for male attention, keep reacting to accusations of harassment by wondering if the woman really did what she ought to have done, and how we can make things better for the poor harasser.
___________________
*It' s been said many times, but it bears repeating--women do not actually do everything with men in mind. Sometimes women go whole hours doing things because they want to, never even giving a moment's thought to what some random guy will think about it. Yes, we are living in the end times. It's true.
**The "surprise" here is key. If you already know what her answer is and you've just decided to announce it to the world on the Jumbotron at the Cards game and show her how happy you are about it, no sweat. If you think you already know what her answer is and are really invested in putting her unexpectedly on the spot in front of thousands of people, I highly, highly recommend rethinking why that might be.
***It occurs to me that a good number of the people I've met who get bent out of shape thinking about how supposedly feminists think all sex is rape are the same people who repeatedly demonstrate that they, themselves, are not actually clear on the distinction between the two.
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| Monday, July 23rd, 2012
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1:54 pm
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So, I know this is kind of old, but something happened kind of recently(ish) that reminded me of it.
A while back,  nihilistic_kid wrote a post called "Ten Bits of Advice Writers Should Stop Giving Aspiring Writers." And I pretty much agreed with all of it.
Some time later, ken_schneyer posted "What do you tell young writers? A response to Nick Mamatas." And I pretty much completely disagreed with him. And said, "Eh, I don't agree," and then went on about my business.
And then Hal Duncan posted another couple entries in his advice for young writers sort-of-series, which honestly I think everyone who's serious about wanting to write should read, and that reminded me of Hal's "Ten Rules for New Writers" which, read it, but this:
You’ve been writing since you first scrawled your name. You’ve been making up narrative since your first daydream. Does it matter if you didn’t even start doing those together until you hit forty, if you write The Naked Lunch? That’s the point: all that really matters is whether you’re skilled or unskilled, and thinking of yourself as a novice or amateur… that’s a rationalization that you lack skill because you’re a learner, an amateur. Bollocks to that. You’re always going to be learning. You might never be published. The nearest you come to a graduation is the day you cease to accept any excuse for a lack of skill in your work. In fact, if you’re looking at other writers like they’ve achieved a special status you wish you had — call it established, professional, whatever — you’re engaging in a fantasy of being a writer when you should be writing. Because you are a writer. Not a beginning writer. Not a new writer. Just a writer.
That. I mean, seriously, that.
And then I got to thinking more. ( Read moreCollapse )
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| Saturday, July 7th, 2012
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2:35 pm - July Fiction
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I know, I know, I'm late. This month at GigaNotoSaurus, Ian McHugh's "The Navigator and the Sky."
“Sing, Kio Lea! Sing!” Tapa O heard his wife urge, even over his own exhortations to his nephews and grandsons to paddle.
The young men bent their backs. Sluggishly, the big double-hulled canoe moved out of the harbour. Huddled on the platform that joined the twin hulls, a pile of shadows beneath the platform’s roof, the men’s wives tried to quiet their crying children. The sail hung slack, dyed orange by the light of the fires ashore, its turtle motif half-hidden in its folds.
Kio Lea’s voice rose at last. Tapa O put a hand to his chest, feeling the song in his heart and lungs, the pulse and breath of the world. His granddaughter’s voice belonged to the days of the ancestors, he was fond of boasting, when mankind still had one foot in the realm of the gods.
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2:33 pm - I started off with good intentions
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I planned to post my daily wordcount, since I'm participating in the Clarion West WriteAThon. And I actually have sponsors. Hello, lovely sponsors, and thank you!!!
I did hit my wordcount during the second week, and then realized that what was happening was the thing that happens every year during NaNo--I'm pumping out the words, stuff is happening--but it's the wrong stuff, I've taken a wrong turn and written a bunch of stuff I just shouldn't have.
So this week I went back and pruned and rewrote and now I have three more or less respectable chapters I can present to my unsuspecting meatspace writers group. (Three chapters now, then nothing for months and months! Then the whole ms in one big lump. That's how I roll.)
So there is writing happening. Daily, in fact! And one of these days I'll get things listed again at my Etsy store--things have lapsed, and I've made new stuff that needs to be photographed, and....I'll have to set a deadline for myself for that, I think.
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| Tuesday, June 19th, 2012
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3:22 pm - Writeathon!
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Yesterday's word count-- 1,699
Today's word count-- 1,559
Yes, actually, it would have killed me to add one more to make those nice round numbers.
So far I've been moving at near-Nano speeds!* This may not bode well for the quality of this first draft. But hey, all my first drafts pretty much stink, so.
*Watch me jinx that by saying so.
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| Monday, June 18th, 2012
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3:02 pm - Clarion West Writeathon!
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Y'all! I went to Clarion West in 2005 and it was awesome. I spent six weeks talking about writing with amazing people--instructors and classmates both. Less than six months later I made my first sale, a story I'd written for week 6, one that ended up in a years best antho. Coincidence? I think not!
Well, maybe it was. There's no proving it wasn't. But it was an incredible, life-changing experience for me.
I was lucky. Hell, I am lucky. I had the money it took to go, and lots of amazing help from my family, and since I was a stay-at-home mom there was no problem with taking off work. You guys, I can't even tell you how lucky I am to have the life I have, just generally.
Going to either of the Clarions is a big deal, it takes money and time that not everyone has. The time--well, there's probably no fixing that. Tuition doesn't cover all of Clarion West's expenses, but both the Clarions, as far as I know, try to offer scholarships so that money isn't a barrier to someone who really wants to go.
So, the Clarion West Writeathon. It works like this: a bunch of writers have signed up, and many of them have posted goals they want to meet during the writeathon. You can sponsor any of these writers by clicking on the PayPal link on that writer's writeathon page. Any little bit helps. My writeathon page is here.
I'm diving into the next novel, a sequel to the one that's...yes, out on submission right now! Which I'm not stressing about at all, because I figure that's Seth's job. My job is to write at least a thousand words a day on the first draft of novel number two. Come sponsor me! Toss in a buck or two if you can and wish to!
I'd put the seven meme thingy here that's going around, but the WIP is really pretty drafty at this point, and besides I'm working in Scrivener which doesn't tell me what page anything is on. So instead, have a wordle!
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| Tuesday, May 29th, 2012
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9:21 am - Home from Wiscon
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Got home yesterday pm and collapsed. Talked to a lot of awesome people, as always. Babbled on a few panels, having thinky thoughts about their topics, as usual. Am in dire need of a few days rest and quiet. This is always the case after Wiscon.
People waiting for emails--GigaNotoSaurus responses or otherwise--things should start moving in a day or two.
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| Tuesday, May 22nd, 2012
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9:35 am - Nebulas! Wiscon!
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Super big congratulations to all the Nebula winners! The ballot was awesome this year and it was going to be a fantastic result no matter what.
Restated super big congratulations to Katie and Ferrett, WHO ARE AWESOME, for their nominations! Yeah, Walter Jon Williams made some jokes about it being an honor to be nominated, but really truly the nominations alone were the most amazing and wonderful thing!
Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to go lose my mind over getting ready for Wiscon. See you there!
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| Thursday, May 17th, 2012
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12:12 pm - A fable
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Once upon a time, there was a cafeteria. Now, this cafeteria had been in existence for decades, and for a long time it was the habit of the people who worked there to actually put bugs in the food. Sometimes they said it was because the customers deserved to eat bugs. Sometimes they said that it was good for the customers to eat bugs--extra protein, extra crunch, and hey how was it any different from lobster? They only wished they could have so many bugs for lunch! Because, of course, when they made their own lunches bugs were conspicuously absent. And some workers didn't really ever wonder why, it was just how they'd always done things.
After a lot of noisy and sometimes violent protest, the cafeteria workers stopped deliberately putting bugs in the food. Some resented this and felt they ought to still be able to, but many had realized that, in fact, finding half a roach in your chicken caesar salad wasn't actually much like a lobster dinner. Many had come to the realization that putting bugs in people's food was really a pretty nasty thing to do.
So that was good. But because for a long time nobody had really cared if bugs accidentally got into food (because they were already putting them there on purpose) the workflow in the kitchen included lots of points where bugs could crawl into that day's turkey sandwich. And the kitchen was, in fact, densely populated with bugs. Because until recently, it hadn't bothered anyone, it had just made it extra handy when you wanted to pop a couple more into the soup.
The cafeteria workers were very focused on avoiding the deliberate act of planting bugs in the lunch. And that was good. It improved the cafeteria a lot. But there were still a lot of bugs in the food. So the customers went to the manager and complained.
This angered the manager a great deal. Were the customers saying she was the sort of person who would put bugs in people's food? She most certainly was not! She had never put a bug in anyone's food. And neither had any of her staff. How dare the customers complain? Surely being accused of bug-planting was just as bad as--perhaps worse than!--eating a few roaches. She certainly felt it was. (Of course, she had never put a forkfull of mashed potatoes in her mouth only to discover they were suspiciously, horrifyingly crunchy, so she really had no basis for comparison.)
The customers explained that actually, they didn't think any of the staff was deliberately planting bugs. Still, no efforts had been made to keep bugs out of the food. All they really wanted was for the manager to call in an exterminator and then make sure the staff got some basic food safety and sanitation instruction.
But this was out of the question. To do that would be to accuse her staff of planting bugs in people's food, which was obviously a seriously bad thing or the protests that had instigated recent reforms wouldn't have been so loud and violent.
No, the problem wasn't that there were still bugs in the food. The problem was, the customers bringing up the problem. Their complaints were causing the problem. If they would just be quiet and eat, like nice customers, everything would be fine. If there were still problems, customers ought to fill out a special form--seventeen pages long, with lots of detailed questions, ten pages of which were to contain an essay on why it might not be pleasant to find bugs in your food. Because the manager needed to really understand that part of the situation before she could take any action. Bad penmanship, of course, would cause a form to be rejected. Any hint of an actual complaint would cause the form to be rejected. But this form was, the manager insisted, the only viable way to address any problems the customers may have imagined they had with the food. Which couldn't possibly have any bugs in it.
To this day, the manager insists that there are no real problems with the food. Customers who complain are oversensitive, or have a chip on their shoulder, or just hate cafeteria workers. Customers who try to complain with the approved form are brandished as proof there are no actual problems. The food has fewer bugs in it than a couple of decades ago. Which, that's great, but you know, one roach on your pizza is too many.
All it would take to fix things would be some basic sanitation measures. It's almost--almost!--as though the manager and her staff had some kind of investment in not acknowledging the bugs in the kitchen. Maybe that's not fair. Maybe she, and the other workers, can't actually see how bug-filled the kitchen is, because it's been like that for decades and it seems perfectly normal.
Maybe one day the manager and her staff will finally see that the kitchen is crawling with bugs. On that day, the manager will likely cry out, "Why are you making me feel so guilty for being the kitchen manager? I didn't build this kitchen! What do you expect me to do about it?" And she'll sit down and weep bitter tears at being bullied by those mean customers for something that just isn't her fault.
But I won't feel very sorry for her.
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| Tuesday, May 1st, 2012
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10:31 am - May Fiction
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Happy International Workers Day!
It's also the calends of May, the festival of the Bona Dea.
Completely unrelated to this, it is also the day new fiction goes up on GigaNotoSaurus! This month it's "Tilia Songbird" by Francesca Forrest.
“I have a song for you,” the girl said, appearing in Anj’s study unannounced. The two bluetails in the cage by the window trilled a welcome.
Anj looked past the girl to the outer chamber. Where was Shen? He was supposed to keep things like this from happening.
“Your servant is striking a bargain to get your roof repaired,” the girl said, joining Anj in looking into the outer room. Then she leaned across Anj’s desk, so the two were practically nose to nose. “He’ll probably overpay,” she said. She smelled of goat. Anj leaned back slightly, but then the girl herself pulled away and stood up straight.
“Here’s my song,” she said. She clasped her hands together and began to sing, full voiced, as if she were out on a hillside, among the goats and the clouds, and not in a tiny room filled with the accoutrements of a civil servant from the Empire of Cinnabar.
Read! Enjoy!
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| Tuesday, April 24th, 2012
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11:41 am - At last it can be told!
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Well, okay, the few of you who've been wondering at all have only been waiting a week or so.
I now have an agent! And that agent is the lovely and talented Seth Fishman of the Gernert Company!! Oh frabjous day!!! He's a smart guy who is very enthusiastic about my novel, and gets what I'm trying to do with it. This is so awesome, I can't even tell you.
I'm still feeling a little unreal about it. When I first started writing in earnest, getting enough qualified sales to join SFWA seemed like an impossibly ambitious aspiration, something I'd never manage. A distant fantasy to contemplate when I was feeling extravagant. But I actually did it! And then when I got to the point where I had a novel to seriously shop around, finding an agent who'd be interested in representing it seemed like something that would never happen, I would tear my hair out over the query letter and synopsis for nothing. But I tore my hair out anyway, because you can't win if you don't play, right? And I sent out and...honestly, is this real? This is real.
And now, of course, the next step is to actually sell the puppy. Or, the next step is some revisions and send the ms back to Seth--my agent (!!)-- and then he'll try to sell the puppy. Cause that's his job. Cause he's my agent!
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| Wednesday, April 18th, 2012
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8:15 pm - Wiscon Panel Schedule!
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And the very day I wonder when it's coming out, I get the email about my schedule. So, here's what panels I'm on at Wiscon!
World Building Fri, 10:30–11:45 pm Senate A
Richard F. Dutcher, Dorothy Hearst, Ann Leckie, Amy Thomson
Good world building helps you suck in your readers. It allows them to suspend belief in their own reality and enter the reality of your story. It can also help prevent you from writing yourself into a corner. Where and how should you start building your world? What should you be wary of?
A Thousand Times No: Handling Rejections Sat, 4:00–5:15 pm Room 634
Cassie Alexander, Ann Leckie, S. N. Arly, Caroline Stevermer
It's part of the game: If you're an artist and you want to get read, or perform, or have your art displayed, you need to learn how to handle the inevitable and innumerable rejections that follow the submission/audition process. What keeps you on track? What sets you back? How do you recover from a funk? Bring your best and worst rejection stories.
Creating Your Own Religion Sun, 10:00–11:15 pm Conference 4
K. Tempest Bradford, Ann Leckie, Alex Dally MacFarlane, Deirdre M. Murphy, Larissa N. Niec
Which SF authors create interesting, believable religions, and which get religion wrong? (What does it mean to "get religion wrong" anyway?) Do made-up religions with intervening gods work better than those without? How can we as writers avoid making mistakes when creating and writing about fictional religions?
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11:49 am - In other news...
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...yeah, there's actually stuff going on in my life. Stuff that is causing some serious squee right now. But I can't say until the nature of the squee achieves a certain...specificity. Yeah. In the meantime, sorry people who deal with me on a daily basis, I am going to be slightly insane.
So, uh, I'm going to Wiscon! And I'm on panels even! At some point I'll post my panel assignments. They all look fun and have awesome other panelists!
Also I'm absolutely yes planning to go to Worldcon. Got my hotel, got my membership. I've never been to Worldcon before, but I am pretty sure it's going to be a good time, and I'm already pretty certain of running into a number of awesome folks who I either see very rarely, or have only interacted with online. I'm seriously looking forward to it!
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11:36 am - Awesome Kickstarter!
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So I've been meaning for days to post about this, but with one thing and another I haven't.
Until now!
Did you love the awesome The Native Star by MK Hobson? Of course you did! And then you read The Hidden Goddess, right?
Well, now there's a Kickstarter campaign to fund the third book, The Warlock's Curse:
The first two books in the series were the Nebula Award-nominated THE NATIVE STAR and its sequel, THE HIDDEN GODDESS. The books followed New York warlock Dreadnought Stanton and California timber-camp witch Emily Edwards as they made their way across a magical version of 1876 America. The next two books in the series (of which THE WARLOCK'S CURSE is the first) are set in 1910-11 and follow the adventures of their youngest son, Will and his childhood friend, Jenny Hansen.
THE WARLOCK'S CURSE is significantly darker than its predecessors, exploring sinister magical practices that I merely touched upon in the first two books. But while the magic is darker, there's still plenty of my own unique brand of humor, history and romance.
So if you loved The Native Star and/or The Hidden Goddess pop on over to Kickstarter and help make the third book a reality!
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| Sunday, April 8th, 2012
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7:37 am - Happy Holiday!
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The Leckies don't celebrate Easter, of course. We celebrate that ancient and terrible holy day, "Ham is on sale this week. And oh, look, peeps!"
On this day we placate the Elder Gods with animal sacrifices--in effigy, of course, because of local ordinances. We offer the ears of rabbits to the gods, and chick after sweet marshmallow chick. We eat them as one day, the gods will EAT US ALL.
Whatever you do or don't celebrate this Sunday, have a lovely day!
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| Sunday, April 1st, 2012
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10:06 am - No Foolin'
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9:26 am - Ah, April
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| Tuesday, March 27th, 2012
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12:32 pm - Blisteringly fast!
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So, I've got a big project I'm supposed to be working on. What does this mean? It means lots of blog posts instead!
I was walking this morning thinking I wanted to say something about exposition, or maybe something about slush, and when I got back I saw this:
Congratulations go to David Steffen, whose flash fiction story got rejected by PodCastle in a blistering five minutes yesterday. As David said, “I had not even finished updating the entry in my submissions spreadsheet before it got rejected.” The email confirms it: submission at 8:57 a.m., response at 9:02 a.m.
Now I want a big button that says "REJECTIONEER." Maybe with a ribbon on it. I would wear it all around everywhere. Most people would be kind of puzzled by it, but the writers, oh the writers would tremble! They would bow before me! ALL SHALL LOVE ME AND DESPAIR!
Or maybe not.
If you want tips on how to be rejected real fast, here are my suggestions. Write a long, rambly cover letter explaining what inspired you to write your story and what it's about. Don't forget to explain just how the story expresses your religious beliefs--use the most hackneyed, lazy phrases you can find so that I know right up front that this story will have all the depth and originality of a greeting card. For extra effect include irrelevant details, like your age, the name of your elementary school lunch lady, and what jobs you've held over the last decade or two. It is extremely important to scatter misspellings and eggcorns strategically throughout the cover note.
The exact length of this cover letter is a delicate matter--too long and reading it is cutting into my rejection time. Too short and it might not be egregious enough to make me bounce your sub back before I've even finished the first sentence of the actual story. There's an art to this sort of thing. Keep trying!
Of course, you could go for the short cover letter. Perhaps nothing more than a salutation followed by a misspelled exhortation to enjoy the story. This has many advantages, but do not forget to address the note to the wrong editor. There is also an art to picking just exactly the right wrong editor.
Then the sub. You'll want to study "The Eye of Argon" here for style tips. But in general, you want to avoid actually starting anything like a plot right off the bat. Muse for several paragraphs about random things--don't make the sentences too good, and don't forget the eggcorns--or you could introduce a whole bunch of characters without making it clear just how they're going to fit into things. If you do have dialogue in that first paragraph or two, make sure none of it actually sounds like human beings conversing. Extra points for using a setting that it's obvious you don't know anything about. And here it helps to know an individual editor's pet peeves. Give me a sub with a bad cover letter that opens with awful sentences introducing a woman who is described entirely in terms of her shapely legs, large breasts, and flowing blonde hair, time that sucker so it comes in while I'm slushing, and Bob's your uncle. You can also get great results using Arthurian literature--but be careful, if you've actually read a significant proportion of more than one pre-Mists of Avalon take on Arthur you run the risk of actually doing something mildly interesting.
NOTE--the timing is the one thing you can't control. (Maniacal laugh. MANIACAL LAUGH!) And David totally lucked out--he didn't follow any of my pro tips. All he really did right was the timing, and that was an accident.
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| Sunday, March 18th, 2012
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9:14 am - John Carter
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Went to see John Carter last night. Which was mostly pretty good fun. I am somewhat puzzled by the folks who can't figure out why they chose the frame they did, with Burroughs as a character. That was, you know, an actual conceit of at least the first volume. And ultimately Chabon and Stanton used it pretty well, I thought.
And glvalentine is right, they did pretty well addressing the creepy sexism of the books. Deja Thoris gets to be pretty kickass. They (mostly, with some reservations, see below) did a good job with Sola.
But glvalentine is also right about the racism. When I saw that opening clip that was going around the web a while ago, I was a bit puzzled by the cavalry officers turning up and being so determined to make John Carter--former Confederate, clearly antagonistic--sign up. I considered it a bad omen when the guy says "people are being murdered in their homes"--because, yanno, the US was only sending the Apache cupcakes and kittens and suddenly they just snapped and started killing people for no reason, right?--and Carter's response is a weak "You started it" when I'd have hoped for that to maybe be a moment to address some of the ickier things that are going on in A Princess of Mars.
But maybe, I think, we're going to undercut the direct equation of Tharks with Apache by having the US Cavalry chase Carter into the cave. Ooops, no. So why the hell did the writers introduce that extra character?
Well, by the end I realized why, on a mechanical level it made sense. But still we're left with the book's very specific equation of Tharks with Apache. And the first thing we learn about the Tharks is how they raise their kids. Like savages, that's how!
When I first read A Princess of Mars I knew that something felt off about the equation Burroughs was (very deliberately) making, but it was something I couldn't put my finger on. I did see the patronizing attitude Carter takes towards the Green Martians, and I knew that was par for the course at the time, and I figured that was what was making me uneasy. But a few years later, after some conversations and some research for a particular project, I realized that the first thing Carter learns about the Tharks--that they don't really care about their children--was in fact an extremely common racist trope about Native Americans. Possibly still is, since for years I saw examples of it without realizing what it was I was seeing.
I'm going to hope--this is a terrible sort of thing to hope for, but you take what you can get--that Chabon and Stanton were just unaware of that trope, just not aware of the way the depiction of the Tharks is constructed of racist depictions of Native Americans. If they'd seen it, they'd have addressed it. I hope. But I wish they'd have seen it and done something with it.
If you can sit through that kind of thing, which sometimes I can and sometimes I can't, and some people very understandably can't ever, John Carter is a fair amount of fun. The visuals are cool--Paidhi Girl says the airships looked exactly like she'd imagined them, which startled her and kind of minorly creeped her out--and very little of the dialogue sounded utterly improbable. You know the sort of thing, where characters in an emotional situation make speeches that no human being in that situation would actually utter, but are meant to be "moving." The acting was very good, especially on the understanding that a film like this needs some heavy-duty, highly-skilled scenery chewing. On which topic--if James Purefoy had been onscreen thirty seconds longer than he was he'd have stolen the movie and they'd have had to retitle it Kantos Kan of Mars.
Also, a message for Disney executives--people stayed away from Mars Needs Moms in droves because it was clear from the previews that it was tripe. Mars was not the problem there. Truncating the title of John Carter because Mars doesn't sell movies was just...I mean...I don't know, I don't understand people sometimes.
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