Dragoness Eclectic's Place @dragonesseclectic - Tumblr Blog | Tumlook
Dragoness Eclectic's Place
@dragonesseclectic
Being the tumblr-thing belonging to the old Dragoness. Closeted, het-passing cis-tomboy old lady. Or I may be a 300-lb redneck man named 'Bubba'. It's the internet, you never know for sure.
You are very much allowed to write fanfiction about Harry Potter if you want. No one is going to come to your house and take away your keyboard for it--if they try, have them arrested for home invasion and assault.
There is no such thing as thought crime, in spite of what the morality police would have you believe. Right-wing or left-wing, wannabe censors still suck and should always be pushed back against.
Yes, JKR is a terrible, unhinged bigot with too much money to do damage with. So is Elon Musk, yet no one is telling people not to write Tesla fanfiction.
Missing the point this badly requires some serious effort. How do you not understand that engaging with that fandom grants JKR a sense of support and social capital? It makes her feel comfortable to keep doing what she's doing because the people that are against it put their fandom ahead of their convictions.
Stop writing fanfiction for HP. Start again when the bitch is dead and buried.
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Okay, one last attempt at sanity: stop giving unhinged bigots a heckler's veto.
I worry that this "Don't write HP fanfiction" will turn into dogpiles and callouts of any random target that ever posted HP fanfiction on ff.net or AO3--or lead to people removing their fanfics from archives for fear of being targeted. There's a certain segment of the internet that loves having an Acceptable Target for their moral crusades bullying, and/or understands nuance about as well as a bacterium.
I don't actually have any HP fanfic posted anywhere; I just deeply hate de facto as well as de jure censorship. (Though I am now planning on writing some).
You lot are trying to push self-censorship--whatever happened to "Do Not Comply in Advance"? The government of my country is literally trying to rewrite its own history to push white supremacism, and it's relying on people to be too scared of official disapproval to contradict them. (Not that that works so far--we Americans are a cantankerous lot who don't like people telling us what to do.)
Training children to be afraid to write and share what some vague authority might disapprove of is training up future obedient slaves. I already see posts from young writers terrified that someone might disapprove of them writing anything but the most sanitized blobs doing nothing but fluff. "Am I allowed to write this?" is an actual question writing forums see.
Also I was referring to the Tesla cars, not Nikolai Tesla.
Stop giving JKR a heckler's veto over all things HP. Fanfiction doesn't give her any money, and you know it. Telling people to shut up about Harry Potter just pisses people like me off, and y'all are apparently unaware of the term 'Streisand Effect'.
You are very much allowed to write fanfiction about Harry Potter if you want. No one is going to come to your house and take away your keyboard for it--if they try, have them arrested for home invasion and assault.
There is no such thing as thought crime, in spite of what the morality police would have you believe. Right-wing or left-wing, wannabe censors still suck and should always be pushed back against.
Yes, JKR is a terrible, unhinged bigot with too much money to do damage with. So is Elon Musk, yet no one is telling people not to write Tesla fanfiction.
surprisingly forward-thinking of jim henson and co. to make a female character in the 70's that's allowed to be loud-mouthed and violent and kind of overwhelmingly romantic and even a huge bitch at times and not have a moment where any character asks her to change
going through all the muppet movies in a row made me realize that like. miss piggy was made in the 70's. and it's so rare even today to have a character like her. she's loud, she's selfish, she's funny, she's extremely vain, she's obsessed with romance, she's violent, she's kind of annoying, and there's not a single moment in any of these films where she's asked to tone down any of these personality traits. i am not joking when i say that miss piggy might be one of the best treated female characters ever written
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I really don’t want to open this can of worms because Tumblr hath no fury like people called out on their political performativeness but it is literally driving me up the wall to watch people react to Serkis’ ‘keep Tolkien white’ commentary by insisting twice as hard that Tolkien would descend down to earth and dropkick the entire Republican party to hell or whatever, just because they want to ensure that a piece of media they enjoy isn’t seen as being morally impure. Case in point: I have seen at least five instances of Tolkien’s ‘I hate apartheid’ valedictorian address being used as a ‘counter’ to Serkis being racist, including by actual news outlets.
Except it’s only ever the ‘I hate apartheid’ line that’s shared, and not the actual quote in its full context. Because here it is:
If we consider what Merton College and what the Oxford School of English owes to the Antipodes, to the Southern Hemisphere, especially to scholars born in Australia and New Zealand, it may well be felt that it is only just that one of them should now ascend an Oxford chair of English. Indeed it may be thought that justice has been delayed since 1925. There are of course other lands under the Southern Cross. I was born in one; though I do not claim to be the most learned of those who have come hither from the far end of the Dark Continent. But I have the hatred of apartheid in my bones; and most of all I detest the segregation or separation of Language and Literature. I do not care which of them you think White.
Which is to say. This isn’t exactly the antiracist quote of the century, to say the least. This is a white South Africa born man and a white Australian shaking hands and going ‘omg we relate’ and expressing what is a very, very mild ‘segregation is not great’ opinion in order to convey his thoughts on an academic subject, ie the confluence of language and literature. Using race to make a point about his own subject of interest, in his own interest, which is, amusingly enough, what a lot of ostensibly well meaning progressive seem to be doing.
I also think that some of the general surprise around ‘what do you mean large swathes of the Tolkien fandom are incredibly conservative!?’ in lib/left Tolkien fandom is the result of a tendency in said parts of the fandom to transpose one’s own progressiveness onto Tolkien and turn a blind eye to things like, say, the Shire being a very specifically mid-century British racist construct that is very, very clear in its politics, often going so far as to insist it’s anarchist or an ideal society or whatever the fuck… and then getting really Pikachu-meme ‘but they’re misreading it’ every single time a conservative explains exactly what it is about the legendarium that they really love, and get surprised when someone uses the Shire being a racist construct to do more racism. It is 2026 let us do away with ‘I don’t see colour’ interpretations of media, I beg. Nobody is cancelling you for enjoying a book that is not kind to race. Most of the books I love are not kind to race.
I genuinely don’t have the energy to go deeper into it now because I and others have been beating this drum for ages but like man. Man. I’m not surprised by Serkis’ comment. I don’t really give a shit about what Andy Serkis says and does because if I was the kind of person who gave a fuck about Andy ‘I felt like an ethnic minority on the Black Panther set’ ‘I somehow interpreted Animal Farm in the most ridiculous way possible’ Serkis’ opinions on anything, let alone race, my life would be much sadder. I think the adaptation will be an enshittified money-grab, and I will probably embrace cannibalism when McDonalds inevitably starts giving out little Gollums with every Happy Meal. Again.
What I am surprised and disappointed by is how the liberal-left reaction to this shit is to always and forever just either pretend it doesn’t exist in the text, or is the result of a complete misreading. So seldom is the response ‘fuck me, this book has some real wild thoughts on race, let’s see how we can engage creatively with that in an adaptation’. Which has never happened. In fact, all your thoughts on Amazon and lore faithfulness and other adaption criticism or applause aside, TROP, the only Tolkien interpretation that has directly engaged with race has thus far done so very, very badly, and only on a surface level. Why?
Because the loudest parts of liberal Tolkien fandom is not interested in exploring race as it exists in the text, to explore it progressively, to engage creatively with the structural conservatism present within the very construction of Middle Earth. They’re interested in concessions that change very little: you can have your brown elves, as long as we don’t have to think about the implications of foundational aspects of our beloved world, which we relate to greatly and do not wish to think about why we relate to it beyond our own experience of encountering the text.
No, it’s always either an insistence that the Racists are Wrong because the Text is Pure, or a slight, grudging concession that Tolkien had ‘a few racist elements’ but ‘nothing like the racism of today’. Of course it’s nothing like the racism of today. Tolkien isn’t writing in 2026. It was the racism of yesterday, and it is very clearly written into the text. Tolkien is not your mildly problematic grandpa. Tolkien was an Oxford don with an enormous, wide-ranging cultural impact, and refusing to acknowledge that is the misreading, not the pointing out of or engagement with structural racism within the text.
There's also a version of this where people cite Tolkien's 1938 letter to the German publisher, ie the one where he refuses to confirm he's of "Aryan" descent and basically tells them to fuck off, as the other canonical "proof text" that Tolkien Was Not Racist, and it does the same flattening as the valedictorian quote. It's a great letter, very ‘get thee gone from my gate’ but it is also a letter about refusing a specific, legally coded Nazi racial category, not a statement about the internal racial logic of his own fiction.
Nobody is saying Tolkien was a fascist white supremacist Nazi. Hell, Tolkien’s own thoughts on military atrocity in general is pretty clear in the depictions of the escalating kinslayings. But people love to conflate "hated actual fascism, said so on the record and is very evident in his fiction" with "therefore the legendarium contains no racialised hierarchy," as though those two things have to rise or fall together, when they don't. You can be sincerely, personally opposed to Nazi race science and apartheid violence and still write a mythology where moral and aesthetic worth consistently map onto a Northern-European somatic ideal. Because the racialisation Tolkien both inherited and passed on wasn't Nazi race science, it was the broader Edwardian/interwar philological raciology he was actually swimming in, hell, drowning in, considering the Oxford environment. And I find it so, so frustrating how fandom keeps failing to make this distinction: structural racialisation and personal bigotry are not the same axis, and refusing to be measured on one doesn't clear you on the other.
The Southrons/Easterlings material is obviously the part most quoted when it comes to Tolkien’s ‘problematic elements’ except it's imo super telling how rarely it actually gets quoted compared to how often it gets vaguely waved at (except Charles E Mills. I love you Charles E Mills). Anyway “Black men like half-trolls," swarthy, slant-eyed, riding out of the south and east to serve Sauron… it’s the same mapping of good-north/evil-south-and-east you get in a dozen other early-twentieth-century adventure texts. And this imo actually undermines the "it's just medievalism, calm down" defense, because medievalism is a selectively retrospective construction of which past you're claiming and which one you're othering, not some sort of static, neutral historical styling.
Tolkien's medievalism is specifically Northern European heroic-elegiac medievalism, the "Northernness" he talks about loving as a kid, and that aesthetic preference is not extractable from the racial hierarchy it produces on the page. You cannot keep the aesthetic and disclaim the politics because as in all art, the aesthetic is the politics, that's what "structural" means as opposed to "incidental”, and I just wish that many extremely clever people who understand this in a contemporary sense would allow themselves to feel uncomfortable and look at it in a beloved text.
Jackson's trilogy didn't invent racialisation in Tolkien, hell I think he even softened some of it because the Scouring is straight up impossible to adapt without it being very clear about its politics, but his adaptation does go quite some way make the existing racism legible… casting, costuming, choreography and cinematography does the same racialised sorting the text does, and does it visually: Uruk-hai as a kind of grunting brutalised, brutalistic mass, Haradrim on oliphaunts as a fairly straightforward Orientalist boogeyman, and the Fellowship itself photographed like a Pre-Raphaelite fantasy lmfao. Serkis isn't introducing a new interpretive layer with his commentary, hell Serkis was in all those Jackson films as well! Serkis is being very clear about what aspects of the legendarium matter to him, and that aspect happens to be the whiteness of it all. And I genuinely cannot understand why the huge ‘scandal’ around his comment is not that someone said the quiet part, but that saying it out loud is what became the scandal, taken as some kind of transgression against Tolkien and all his readers with Good Politics™️, rather than the quarter-century of adaptations, readings, and analysis of the text that wordlessly encoded the racism and got called faithful and dedicated for it.
I didn’t want to go to author is dead territory but. Fandom discourse keeps reaching for authorial intent as the arbiter of textual meaning in exactly the way most of these same people would reject in any other context. Everyone is a massive New Critic the second the author in question is someone they love. But Tolkien doesn’t need to have consciously intended a racial hierarchy or a white nationalist mythology for the text to functionally produce one, for it to be so loved by conservatives and ethnonationalists who come fifty years after his time.
Intent is not even a contested position in literary theory, it's just the very basic understanding that "text has ideology independent of authorial intent". The insistence on relitigating Tolkien's personal feelings as though that settles the structural question is wild to me, and I find it so extremely unproductive how liberal fandom reaches for this constantly, repeatedly chanting Tolkien’s few vaguely liberal statements that read far less liberally in context. But I guess the alternative, ie reading the actual construction of race in the legendarium on its own terms, requires giving up the fantasy that the thing you love is politically inert. And it’s just so sad man. Like I fucking love the legendarium, and I think insisting on its moral purity is the worst thing you can do to it.
I think my entire argument can be summed up in a few questions. Why do conservatives keep saying "I love Tolkien" completely unashamedly, in a way they don’t realy say about most other ‘canonical’ twentieth-century texts, while we on the left have to perform a whole apologetic dance before we say it? What is it that they embrace about the text, that we have to occlude in order to express an unproblematic ‘love’? Why do we have to disavow parts of a text to claim we love it? Who are we performing to? What are we losing in focusing so hard on this performance?
This is why the Serkis-style comment, or the Rings of Power casting discourse, ends up being the deepest engagement we collectively get in fandom terms. Because both "sides" of that fight are actually shallow in the same way, just from opposite ends. The right-wing backlash to diverse casting is, repulsively, responding to something absolutely present in the text: a defensive crouch around a racial aesthetic it identifies as being under threat. The liberal-left response, the "just add brown elves" gesture, claims the problem to be one of representation and casting rather than structure, which is precisely why the racial elements of The Rings of Power satisfies no one and changes nothing.
You can put actors of colour in Númenor and Harfoot villages and yet the underlying moral framework of who is coded as inherently noble and who as inherently monstrous, whose skin colour the textual narrative uses as a standin for corruption, stays completely untouched. Again, see my TROP link above, with the jihadi-coding of the villains. Because that framework isn't located in the casting of an adaptation, it's located in the construction of Arda itself and physiognomy-as-morality at the level of the prose itself, constantly present throughout the text. Casting a Black actor as an elf doesn't do anything to the fact that "evil race coded as racially other" is still sitting right there in the Southrons and the orcs, unadapted, undiscussed, doing exactly the same work it always did, and this work takes on a new look in post-2001 adaptations.
So what you get is two adaptations of the same tiresome insanemaking discourse rather than two different arguments: the right defends the racial aesthetic as the substance of their love, and the liberal mainstream defends the fantasy that representation-level tweaks constitute engagement with race. And so, nobody actually produces the adaptation that takes seriously what nonwhite Tolkien scholars have been saying for decades, which is that you'd have to touch the orc/Southron/Valar/Valinor/blondeness architecture itself to ever productively have this conversation. Not diversify who plays the good guys, but interrogate why "evil" in this legendarium has a face and a hair colour and points compass east.
But if the talk about this goes on as it does, and continues between Tolkien the Pure versus Tolkien the Misread, there will never be anyone willing to make that adaptation, and we’ll go on forever in a sisyphean climb, where both the reactionary embrace and the progressive denial are just two versions of refusing to read the same damn book. Basically, I think we on the left etc need to stop treating "is Tolkien racist" as a yes/no gate you have to clear before you're allowed to enjoy the books, and stop acting like enjoying problematic media makes you a fascist. We need to start treating the racialised architecture within Tolkien’s world as the actual object of study, same way you'd read imperial romance or Forster or Kipling or Haggard, without needing to acquit or convict the author first.
Which means we have to name the conservatism specifically rather than gesturing at "some outdated attitudes," trace where it comes from historically (the philological Northernness Tolkien grew up steeped in, not some special personal failing that reflects badly on you), and then ask what an adaptation would look like which dramatised that rather than smoothing over it or weaponising it. We have to let go of the idea that critical engagement is disloyalty, and let go of the idea that loving something requires defending its honour. We need to get the resilience needed to engage with the idea that a work can be both formative and ideologically compromised at the same time.
We don’t need to resolve that tension into either adoring hagiography or totalising cancellation. If we do, we're going to keep getting “keep the Shire white” Serkis soundbites and “hooray we cast a brown elf in our we-invented-elf-jihadis show!” news cycles standing in for a conversation that hasn't actually started yet, and ngl buddies I have to say I personally will be biting people the next time I see yet another rendition of the same damn response-reaction cycle start again because everyone, both the conservatives and the left, wants the things they love to be a reflection of themselves, and will twist themselves into pretzels to ensure that remains the case.
Huh. Interesting. I'm not sure I agree, but I'm not sure I disagree, either.
I disagree that it is necessarily conservative to write stories influenced by Norse & Finnish mythology, with a North European-based setting, any more than it is "conservative" to write stories influenced by Chinese mythology, and set in a fantasy version of one of the Chinese port cities.
But, there's no denying that Tolkien was quite conservative, in the classic sense of the word--not the bastardization of it that's just fascism wearing a skimpy mask. He was also "a man of his time", and what a time that was! WW1 and WW2 irrevocably changed everyone involved. Fiction written by war veterans hits differently, I've noticed.
Sorry, I'm rambling--can't quite get what I want to say to jell. Lack of sleep will do that. Love your artwork, too.
Each state gets to decide how their state is represented in Congress
This has been a common method for a long time in some states
The idea is that a Senator's sibling/spouse/parent/child knows their intentions and policies better than a political rival or a random person would. It's a pretty good way to prevent political assassinations tbh
An unelected individual getting grandfathered into a real political position due to their blood or legal relationship with a deceased elected official is not pretty good actually
It's usually "sit in for dead relative until the special election can be held", so what's the problem? The alternative is what? No representation until the special election? That's bad. It's up to the states to decide how they want to handle this, and usually the governor appoints someone that won't piss off the voter base and is capable of doing the job. Relatives (usually spouses) have the advantage of being nominally familiar to the electorate.
Some great women legislators got their start as appointed replacements, and then went on to be elected in their own right.
How is an unelected nepotistic "representative" who hasn't even made a public statement about their political positions better than no representative at all? How is that not only acceptable but preferable in a world where elected representatives can disappear for weeks or even months, failing to do their duties and not be removed from their position?
...That's a bit like asking "How is having an appointed Public Defender better than having no lawyer at all?" Frankly, it's a stupid question with an obvious answer.
I have never heard of a governor appointing someone they had no clue about. Since an appointee is appointed, their public statements on their political positions don't matter--the public doesn't get a say in it. That's why such appointees only hold the position until there's a special election. It's not a permanent position--it's quite temporary, but it ensures there's someone in place to vote the state's interest if something comes up.
Other elected representatives not doing their jobs is a different problem than that of filling an empty seat.
Not the same thing at all, and to claim it is is ridiculous.
A public defender's job is to follow the law in defending their client to the full extent of their ability. Failing to do so is grounds for an appeal, a mistrial, or even overturning a conviction.
The appointing of someone who has in no way made their beliefs and policies known to the people they are supposedly representing is in no way equivalent.
Public defenders don't work based on political parties. Senators do.
You outright admitted that the public gets no say in this. How is someone they have no say in better than no one at all?
"How is someone they have no say in better than no one at all?"
An empty seat can't vote on bills, confirmations, declarations of war, any other legislative business that might come up in the interim before a special election can be held. How is your state having no voice in such things better than having an appointee chosen by the governor to do the voting?
The governor, who appointed the temporary seat-holder, is someone who was elected, and is presumably trusted by their voters to do their job. (In theory. Voters elect corrupt but charismatic assholes all the time. Welcome to democracy in the Real World). Their job includes appointing someone to fill empty legislative seats. Presumably, voters did know the publicly-stated policies of the governor when said voters elected them.
And having someone who you admit the public had no choice in, doesn't know the positions of, and didn't even know was an option making decisions for them is better how? You still haven't answered that.
Each state gets to decide how their state is represented in Congress
This has been a common method for a long time in some states
The idea is that a Senator's sibling/spouse/parent/child knows their intentions and policies better than a political rival or a random person would. It's a pretty good way to prevent political assassinations tbh
An unelected individual getting grandfathered into a real political position due to their blood or legal relationship with a deceased elected official is not pretty good actually
It's usually "sit in for dead relative until the special election can be held", so what's the problem? The alternative is what? No representation until the special election? That's bad. It's up to the states to decide how they want to handle this, and usually the governor appoints someone that won't piss off the voter base and is capable of doing the job. Relatives (usually spouses) have the advantage of being nominally familiar to the electorate.
Some great women legislators got their start as appointed replacements, and then went on to be elected in their own right.
How is an unelected nepotistic "representative" who hasn't even made a public statement about their political positions better than no representative at all? How is that not only acceptable but preferable in a world where elected representatives can disappear for weeks or even months, failing to do their duties and not be removed from their position?
...That's a bit like asking "How is having an appointed Public Defender better than having no lawyer at all?" Frankly, it's a stupid question with an obvious answer.
I have never heard of a governor appointing someone they had no clue about. Since an appointee is appointed, their public statements on their political positions don't matter--the public doesn't get a say in it. That's why such appointees only hold the position until there's a special election. It's not a permanent position--it's quite temporary, but it ensures there's someone in place to vote the state's interest if something comes up.
Other elected representatives not doing their jobs is a different problem than that of filling an empty seat.
Not the same thing at all, and to claim it is is ridiculous.
A public defender's job is to follow the law in defending their client to the full extent of their ability. Failing to do so is grounds for an appeal, a mistrial, or even overturning a conviction.
The appointing of someone who has in no way made their beliefs and policies known to the people they are supposedly representing is in no way equivalent.
Public defenders don't work based on political parties. Senators do.
You outright admitted that the public gets no say in this. How is someone they have no say in better than no one at all?
"How is someone they have no say in better than no one at all?"
An empty seat can't vote on bills, confirmations, declarations of war, any other legislative business that might come up in the interim before a special election can be held. How is your state having no voice in such things better than having an appointee chosen by the governor to do the voting?
The governor, who appointed the temporary seat-holder, is someone who was elected, and is presumably trusted by their voters to do their job. (In theory. Voters elect corrupt but charismatic assholes all the time. Welcome to democracy in the Real World). Their job includes appointing someone to fill empty legislative seats. Presumably, voters did know the publicly-stated policies of the governor when said voters elected them.
Each state gets to decide how their state is represented in Congress
This has been a common method for a long time in some states
The idea is that a Senator's sibling/spouse/parent/child knows their intentions and policies better than a political rival or a random person would. It's a pretty good way to prevent political assassinations tbh
An unelected individual getting grandfathered into a real political position due to their blood or legal relationship with a deceased elected official is not pretty good actually
It's usually "sit in for dead relative until the special election can be held", so what's the problem? The alternative is what? No representation until the special election? That's bad. It's up to the states to decide how they want to handle this, and usually the governor appoints someone that won't piss off the voter base and is capable of doing the job. Relatives (usually spouses) have the advantage of being nominally familiar to the electorate.
Some great women legislators got their start as appointed replacements, and then went on to be elected in their own right.
How is an unelected nepotistic "representative" who hasn't even made a public statement about their political positions better than no representative at all? How is that not only acceptable but preferable in a world where elected representatives can disappear for weeks or even months, failing to do their duties and not be removed from their position?
...That's a bit like asking "How is having an appointed Public Defender better than having no lawyer at all?" Frankly, it's a stupid question with an obvious answer.
I have never heard of a governor appointing someone they had no clue about. Since an appointee is appointed, their public statements on their political positions don't matter--the public doesn't get a say in it. That's why such appointees only hold the position until there's a special election. It's not a permanent position--it's quite temporary, but it ensures there's someone in place to vote the state's interest if something comes up.
Other elected representatives not doing their jobs is a different problem than that of filling an empty seat.
Each state gets to decide how their state is represented in Congress
This has been a common method for a long time in some states
The idea is that a Senator's sibling/spouse/parent/child knows their intentions and policies better than a political rival or a random person would. It's a pretty good way to prevent political assassinations tbh
An unelected individual getting grandfathered into a real political position due to their blood or legal relationship with a deceased elected official is not pretty good actually
It's usually "sit in for dead relative until the special election can be held", so what's the problem? The alternative is what? No representation until the special election? That's bad. It's up to the states to decide how they want to handle this, and usually the governor appoints someone that won't piss off the voter base and is capable of doing the job. Relatives (usually spouses) have the advantage of being nominally familiar to the electorate.
Some great women legislators got their start as appointed replacements, and then went on to be elected in their own right.
Anya is live and ready to show you everything. Watch her strip, dance, and perform exclusive shows just for you. Interact in real-time and make your fantasies come true.
✓ Live Streaming✓ Interactive Chat✓ Private Shows✓ HD Quality✓ Free Actions
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its really darkly funny that so many public figures keep dying "of cardiac complications after a brief illness" like wow y'all are Never ever going to say the word COVID huh.
Old men who spend their time sitting down yelling at people and probably stressing, but who get some of the best healthcare in the world, including regular COVID vax? Nah, it was mostly likely heart disease. It still kills almost as many (if not more) people than cancer--and way more old people than COVID ever did.
I'm still waiting for Mango Mussolini to have a stroke/cardiac arrest--he's in such blatant bad health.
when we started talking about getting a small-breed dog I was like, "I will NEVER turn into one of those people who treats their little dog like a doll or an accessory by forcing them to dress up in ridiculous outfits. Dogs HATE that. They should get to be DOGS, and that means not having to wear anything but a HARNESS and being FREE to ROLL in the MUD." and then I adopted a dog who throws a fit if you try to take him for a walk without letting him pick out a bow tie first. a dog who loves wearing pajamas so much that I'm about to spend a disgusting amount of money on several sets of linen ones for summer. a dog who watches me wave at him to follow me through a mud puddle and just stands there blinking up at me like, "are you fucking serious? and get my paws wet?"
me: I will raise him no differently than the two 80-lb labs I had growing up. absolutely no hoity-toity frou frou little yapyap dog stuff. he's gonna be a good ol' fashioned, rough-and-tumble, capital D-O-G—
to celebrate the popularity of this post, I ordered him another set of the linen jammies in yellow. now he looks like paddington bear
the etsy seller threw in a little miniature hermes silk scarf as a freebie and I dare you to tell me he doesn't know how handsome he looks in it. whenever we take it off of him he broods like he's a wealthy victorian orphan child in desperate need of a seaside holiday to restore his delicate aristocratic constitution
I am not too surprised when I think about it. Small dogs lose body heat faster than large dogs. He probably likes being kept cozy and warm by his sweaters.
Look at the insulting (and money-grubbing) crap some feckers just sent David Gerrold
David was way politer than I would have been. But then he has a few years on me.
I'm adding a break here. Seriously, I have to take a breath every time I read the (absolutely breathtaking) insolence of this shit. (And it makes me want to take a brickbat to anybody who says "Warm regards" to me in the immediate future. [mutter])
...Doubtless I'll get past that. But JEEEEEZ. :/ (TL:DR for those interested: "Hi there! Your work is fabulous! You should have an award! Send us money to be part of the process.")
("The entry fee for the Discovery Awards is $150 USD for the primary book entry. If you would like the book considered in additional categories, each additional category entry is $100 USD.")
Beware this shit, my cousins. If they have the absolute baldfaced GALL (or utter ignorance, who knows which) to send David mails like these, they won't mind coming after the rest of us. :/
(Via David:)
Here are a few of the email messages I have received today -- and my responses.
--
On Wed, Jul 8, 2026 at 10:10 AM Cassandra R. Baldridge [email protected] wrote: Dear David ,
I recently finished learning about Bouncing Off the Moon, and one aspect stayed with me long after I finished reading about it.
What immediately captured my attention was how the novel combines the grand scale of a future shaped by political instability and corporate power with the deeply personal journey of three brothers forced to navigate life on their own. Charles "Chigger" Dingillian and his brothers aren't simply surviving in a hostile lunar environment, they're confronting questions of trust, family, and resilience while carrying knowledge that powerful forces will do anything to obtain. That blend of compelling character dynamics and high-stakes science fiction creates a story that feels both intimate and expansive.
Books that leave that kind of impression deserve more than another advertisement or another promotional campaign. They deserve thoughtful professional evaluation from people whose opinions carry weight within the publishing industry.
That is why I wanted to personally invite you to consider entering Bouncing Off the Moon into the 2027 IndieReader Discovery Awards (IRDAs).
What immediately sets the Discovery Awards apart is that every single entrant receives a professional verdict written by an IndieReader reviewer after reading the complete book. It isn't an automated score or a participation certificate, it is a genuine editorial assessment that can be quoted as promotional copy, used as a credibility blurb, or shared with readers if the verdict is positive.
For many authors, that professional verdict alone becomes a valuable long-term marketing asset.
Beyond that, the Discovery Awards were designed to place exceptional books in front of people who can genuinely influence an author's career.
Among the opportunities available to top-winning books are:
Book-to-film consideration by acclaimed producer Ram Bergman, whose credits include Knives Out, Star Wars: The Last Jedi, and Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker.
Review for potential literary representation by Dystel, Goderich & Bourret Literary Management, the New York agency whose clients have included bestselling authors such as Colleen Hoover.
Professional publicity consultation from Wildbound Literary PR for the top fiction and nonfiction winners.
A full professional IndieReader Review for qualifying winners.
Featured author interviews through IngramSpark and Bookfinity, helping winning books reach booksellers, librarians, publishers, and readers worldwide.
In addition, category winners, Best First Book winners, and Best Cover Design winners receive industry exposure, featured interviews, recognition materials, and promotional opportunities that continue well beyond the awards announcement.
One aspect I especially appreciate about the Discovery Awards is how the judging process is structured.
The focus remains on the quality of the writing and the originality of the work itself. While editing, production quality, and design are considered, the primary objective is discovering exceptional books that deserve wider recognition, regardless of how they were published.
After learning about Bouncing Off the Moon, I genuinely believe it possesses qualities that would make it a meaningful submission for the 2027 program. Its combination of imaginative world-building, suspense, and emotionally grounded storytelling demonstrates the kind of originality and narrative ambition that the Discovery Awards were created to recognize.
Whether the outcome is a professional verdict that strengthens your marketing, category recognition, or one of the top industry opportunities available through the awards, I believe your work deserves to be seen by experienced publishing professionals.
If the Discovery Awards sound like something you'd like to explore, I'd be happy to send you the submission information and answer any questions you may have.
Thank you for continuing to create stories that challenge readers to imagine the future while remaining invested in the people at the heart of it.
Warm regards,
Cassandra
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On Wed, Jul 8, 2026 at 5:04 PM David Gerrold wrote:
You may feel free to consider my book for the award.
I, however, have no interest in filling out any paperwork at all.
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On Wed, Jul 8, 2026 at 12:10 PM Cassandra R. Baldridge [email protected] wrote: Dear David,
Thank you for your response. I completely understand, and I appreciate your willingness to have Bouncing Off the Moon considered for the award.
To make the process as simple as possible for you, you do not need to complete the paperwork or submit everything through the official link yourself. I can handle the submission process on your behalf. I will just need the required information and materials sent directly to me, and I will take care of organizing the entry.
The requirements I would need from you are:
The final manuscript or published book file for Bouncing Off the Moon
Book cover image
Book description/synopsis
Author biography
Publication details (publisher, publication date, ISBN if available)
Any additional information you would like included with the submission
The entry fee for the Discovery Awards is $150 USD for the primary book entry. If you would like the book considered in additional categories, each additional category entry is $100 USD.
My goal is to make this as straightforward as possible while ensuring your book receives the professional evaluation and consideration it deserves.
Please feel free to send the materials directly to me, and I will guide the process from there.
Thank you again, David. I look forward to helping Bouncing Off the Moon receive the recognition it deserves.
Warm regards, Cassandra
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On Wed, Jul 8, 2026 at 5:11 PM David Gerrold wrote:
Yeah. No thanks.
I have a very firm rule. Money goes TO the writer, not FROM.
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Cassandra R. Baldridge 12:23 PM (7 hours ago) to me
Dear David,
Thank you for sharing your thoughts. I completely understand and respect your position.
I know many authors have a personal rule that money should always flow toward the writer rather than away from them. It is a reasonable concern, especially with the number of questionable services and practices that exist in the publishing industry.
At the same time, I think it is important to distinguish between paying for a guaranteed result and making a professional investment. In any business or creative industry, growth often requires some level of investment. Companies invest in marketing, entrepreneurs invest in development, and professionals invest in tools, education, and opportunities that can increase their visibility and reach.
Publishing works in a similar way. While no legitimate award, marketing effort, or professional service can guarantee success, authors often make strategic investments in areas such as editing, cover design, publicity, advertising, and industry recognition because these can help position their work in front of the right audiences.
The IndieReader Discovery Awards are not a promise of publication, sales, or representation. The value is in receiving a professional evaluation of the work and having the opportunity for additional recognition and exposure. Ultimately, whether that type of investment makes sense is a decision each author has to make based on their own goals and circumstances.
I appreciate your honesty, and I certainly do not want you to feel pressured into something that does not align with your approach. I simply wanted to clarify the purpose behind the opportunity and the difference between a cost-based service and an investment intended to create professional possibilities.
Thank you again for considering it, David. I respect your decision either way and appreciate the opportunity to discuss your work.
Warm regards, Cassandra
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David Gerrold 8:04 PM (26 minutes ago) to Cassandra
I'm going to assume you're not a bot, but the text of your note is definitely bot-like.
I am a published author with 60 years of experience. I have worked with almost every major publishing company in NY and elsewhere, including multiple publishers in Europe and Asia. I have published best-selling books. I have won awards. I have been the guest of honor at numerous events, including this weekend. I have written short stories, novellas, novelettes, novels, trilogies, plays, teleplays, and several movie scripts.
You can look me up on SFADB and ISFDB.
I do not need your services. There is absolutely nothing you can offer me that would be worth me taking a single dollar out of my wallet for you. And, to be blunt about it, I find your assertions not just ignorant but insulting -- because if you had the slightest idea at all about my career, you would not have offered your services. I am far beyond any need for your services.
But more than that, I do not believe that any business that sells such services to working writers can ever deliver anything that is going to put more money or recognition into their pockets. This is the electronic equivalent of "Who's Who?" -- a book of people who paid to be included.
Sorry, but please do not write to me -- unless you intend to apologize for the implied insult.
No doubt plenty of people have already mentioned that fanfic writers have been getting this same bot-flavored scam-shit for years now. Instead of "pay-to-play" writing contests (which are also an ancient scam, for those non-writers not familiar with the culture of scammers in the writing world), fanfic writers are asked to buy commissions of fanart. With, I will remind you, the exact same pattern and sometimes same words in the appeal--a vague praise of the themes and characters, the apparent enthusiasm, and then the 'subtle' offer..
I know a fellow fan who is putting together a side-by-side comparison of this spam to professional authors and the standard 'commission fanart' scam. I wait their results with interest.
nobody needs to know your real name or your hometown or where you work or your home country or your race or ethnicity or skin color or phone number or the name of your first pet or the model of your first car or your mother’s maiden name or how many siblings you have or what school you go to or your credit card number
To be fair, having an email with your name in it makes sense specifically for interactions that bridge to offline life, like the email you use for job applications, or to communicate with contractors, etc.
You should NOT be using your Official Email for things like Tumblr, Reddit, and Ao3. Learn to partition your online identity. As long as you're not using multiple accounts for weird sockpuppet antics or ban evasion, it is, in fact, healthy to limit the scope of your online identity partitions.
You don't HAVE to have a single overarching online identity. You can use separate handles and emails for separate hobbies, or even separate fandoms. Have a completely different username and email for every major website if you want! Set yourself free!
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