All of this. #WGAStrong

I’m not on Twitter anymore, but I see John Rogers is still there bringing the fire. As I think I mentioned here a while back, I’m not in the WGA yet -- applied, after writing the script for the Fifth Season film, but obviously everything’s on hold given this. (The script was being revised, but since the strike’s been called it’s “pencils down.”)

And the stakes are exactly as high as what John lays out here. I’ve already seen any number of absolute garbage takes on this -- dismissing screenwriters as rich hacks who just want to get richer, stupidly suggesting that only some workers should matter (as if that won’t get weaponized against all of us), and worse. But whether y’all want to believe it or not, creative workers are workers, and the WGA is fighting for all of us right now.

#WGAStrong

well ain’t this some fuckshit

Just heard about the mess that YA author Maggie Tokuda-Hall has been dealing with. tl;dr, Her publisher offered her the chance to be part of an initiative that would’ve put her work in a lot more stores and libraries. It’s an initiative specifically aimed at amplifying Asian voices… but only if she removed the word “racism” from her author’s note. On a book about the Japanese internment.

I am very glad she rejected this offer, and I 100% agree with her that this is pure cowardice. I’m appalled at Scholastic – or any other publisher who’s doing this but whose authors can’t take the risk of speaking out. This is the kind of crap that marginalized writers have to deal with all the time – and it is also how fascism takes root:  “just business” decisions that perpetuate injustice, systematic erasure of targeted groups from their own damn stories, institutions choosing to do what’s easy over what’s right.

(I have been very fortunate to never have a publisher do this to me. Plenty of disrespectful bs from institutions and individuals within the industry, but never from the people who signed my checks. I’m also somewhat insulated from the book ban bullshit because my work is genre and isn’t aimed at kids – though that’s coming, of course. Fascists don’t stop until they are stopped.)

Anyway. Pop over to Maggie’s blog to read the full story – or better yet hop on a retail site and buy her books. It’s up to readers now to support marginalized authors, since it’s clear nobody else will.

hard to say how much these kind words from @nkjemisin mean to me. chuck is a huge fan and also we have so much history as buds from hugo awards to now and i am just radiating with love and appreciation. i am truly honored. camp damascus preorder is here

Why is a god losing to a vegetable?????

ARE YOU TELLING ME THAT HORUS BABY TRAPPED HIS UNCLE WITH LETTUCE?????

In Horus' (and Isis', who is the one who actually performed the act of dressing the lettuce with the semen) defence, Seth did first try to rape him to disprove his claim on the throne.

Also related fun fact: In one iteration of this myth, the semen is asked to come out of Seth through his ear, which it does in the shape of a golden halo. Thoth then snatches the halo from Seth and puts it on his own head as the moon. So in this case, Seth is technically responsible for birthing the moon.

Just to clarify from my understanding of this myth, the reason Horus babytrapped his uncle with cum-lettuce is because Seth (as previously stated) tried to rape him to show that he was unfit for leadership--and then spread the message that Horus was a bottom and therefore shouldn't be king.

Except Horus and his mother came up with the cunning "make him eat cum-lettue" plan, so when Seth went bragging that he'd fucked Horus, the gods used their X-ray vision to see that it was actually Seth who had semen inside him, how embarrassing.

And people ask me why I love studying mythology SO MUCH. :)

"N. K. Jemisin! Why is there so much weird god-sex in your works?"

Well, you see, I read a lot of mythology, growing up.

That Open Letter to the NYT

I’ve barely been on social media lately, so only today heard about this letter, and I just signed on to it as a former freelancer there. The NYT keeps asking me to do op-eds for them, and I’ve refused repeatedly because the both-sidesism in their Opinion pages has been ridiculous in the last few years, as has their repeated platforming of racist, Islamophobic, anti-semitic, anti-immigrant, anti-poor, and just plain bigoted voices. I remain grateful to the NYT for giving me the opportunity to elevate other SFF writers when I ran the “Otherworldly” review column a few years back (and I continue to support Amal El-Mohtar, who runs it now, for that reason). But while there is something to be said for yelling back, I’m just not personally interested in that.  Or in being used as a “see? we’re not bigots!” flak shield for their reactionaries.

So, I think it’s worth linking to the Onion’s brilliant response to the NYT’s incitement of violence. And I think it’s worth considering whether you really need to keep that NYT subscription. I canceled mine years ago.

DC version of AO3 is called Tales of Our Own??

WHY DC MAKING ALTERNATIVE VERSION OF AO3

(Far Sector: Green Lantern)

(polite cough) That was me. Just showing a little love to one of my favorite sites!

—

What the Final Stage of Reaganism Looks Like

I hate Reagan so much. I wish hell existed, so he could spend eternity there.

(via wilwheaton)

Reminder: the staff at Harper Collins are on strike for better wages. They are literally out there in these icy cold streets trying to make sure they can do their jobs, and give you books, without starving. Here’s their linktree; help them out, if you can?

Launch Day, Launch Day! Welcome to the world, my 10th novel (11th book, including the short story collection)!

Stuff you should know, just a little bit, as a treat:

I think that’s everything. Whew!

Ask and ye shall receive

@nkjemisin​ ‘s Emergency Skin is also a delicious and satisfying read

hey writers if you want to make a metaphor for racism, please maybe remember that racism is literally based on nothing. Africans weren’t enslaved en masse because the Robo-Musa threatened to destroy the world, they were enslaved because it was economically rewarding and politically convenient. If at any point your allegory for racism includes “so <oppressed group> did this major catastrophe and” then you have not only missed the point but you are literally reinforcing the ideas that racism have let racism self-perpetuate (that e.g. black people are naturally dangerous and violent and must be contained or begrudgingly accepted by the Nice White People)

Just a personal note on this, ‘cause I’ve had some folks ask me how orogenes in the Broken Earth trilogy can be an allegory for oppressed groups, given that orogenes actually are dangerous.

I was completely aware of the Unfortunate Implications of orogenes as black people/Jewish people/closeted queer people/neuroatypical people and having Special Powers. That was the point, actually. At the time I was early in THE FIFTH SEASON, I was watching Ferguson unfold, and listening to Darren Wilson’s bullshit about how Mike Brown seemed superhuman (or subhuman) to him.  And the whole time I kept thinking, “So-the-fuck-what if he was a demon? He was still an unarmed 18 year old whom you shot 10 times while he was running away.” From that to stories of doctors assuming black people aren’t capable of feeling pain to the same degree as white people – I was just done with it.  Fucking done.

Because it should not matter if we are big, or dark-skinned, or wearing “villain clothing” like hoodies, or whatever. All that shit’s just an excuse anyway; racist white people are scared of us when we’re small and light-skinned and wearing business suits.  The problem isn’t us. The problem is chickenshit white people and the imaginary monsters they carry around inside them.

And over the course of the Broken Earth trilogy I poked at this notion. The society of the Stillness could at any point choose to accommodate orogenes in a way that is safe for all… but it chooses not to. Orogene parents have no trouble raising orogene kids. Orogenes in communities police each other the same way non-orogenes do – because at the end of the day, they’re all people. Even if some of those people are extraordinary, they can live together if there is respect.

Black people are extraordinary in so many ways. Not superhuman, obvs – but we aren’t white, which is what this society insists upon calling “normal.” We will never be white, and that’s fine. We will never be “ordinary” in the eyes of racists – and we shouldn’t have to pretend otherwise. We shouldn’t have to stoop if we’re naturally tall, or speak softly if we’re naturally deep-voiced, just so that small-minded people will be less afraid in our presence.  Our children shouldn’t have to think and act as if they’re older than they are, just because white people misjudge their ages. The problem isn’t us. And a good, diverse society, one that actually accommodates and respects all of its members, should be able to handle both the ordinary and extraordinary with no trouble.

So: I agree with the OP; don’t reinforce racist notions in your worldbuilding. Or if you do, make sure you interrogate the fuck out of them, and make it clear that the problem is still racists, not race.

This is what I was talking abt so the white didn’t get double she got more than quadruple

We’re talking abt the same NK Jemisin that one the Hugo awards three years in a row for the broken earth trilogy this is what antiblackness looks like in publishing

N. K. Jemisin, “How Long ’til Black Future Month?”  (September 30th, 2013)

This essay definitely stands the test of three years, and I highly recommend reading the whole thing. It’s spectacular.

(via medievalpoc)

N. K. Jemisin has a Patreon now and you should really check it out.

(via medievalpoc)