Lee's Love Song

Amazing Thrace, Cylons inbound
Your Viper's prepped for thee
Face each toaster, and shoot them down
And then fly home to me.


(It's probably better if you imagine Felix Gaeta singing it.)

(I promise I'll stop eventually.)

Five Things I Learned At Nine Worlds 2016

1. The Duke Mitchell "Night of the Trailers" was problematic af, with several of the trailers completely inappropriate for a crowd who sees nothing wrong with cross-dressing or queer coding, and rather a lot wrong with catering for the male gaze.

That said, both the short films shown were rather nice, and the second in particular was delightfully sweet and melancholy. I've embedded it below, and strongly suggest you give it a try; it's only fifteen minutes long, and entirely lovely.



It's also worth noting that we got to vote on whether to see this. We had the choice between this, described as "funny and sweet", or two sci-fi films, one "weird" and the other "gritty". We went with this one. Which, honestly, how cool is that? How many other screening sessions at a sci-fi/fantasy convention are going to plump for "sweet" over "weird" and "gritty"?

This is why Nine Worlds is my home now.

2. A depressingly small number of Trek fans understand the difference between utopianism and utopia, conflict versus disagreement, and realism versus adolescent grimdark. I feel really bad about saying I hoped Star Trek Discovery returned to the utopianism of early-mid TNG, because it led to a dozen or more people to drone on about how the Federation should be considered venal and corrupt, as though that were mutually exclusive to the ship's utopianism. I mean, there's probably worse things to say in a discussion about Star Trek than "the human race is built on conflict", but I'm not sure what they'd be, short of actual bigotry.

Still, at least I knew I wasn't the worst (albeit accidental) derailing specialist in the room; that prize went to someone two seats from me who'd decided the queuing system to speak put in place by the (rather excellent) panel didn't apply to them, so long as they were correcting somebody else. Needless to say, more than one of their corrections were incomplete, or flat-out incorrect. So well done, self-appointed fact-checker! You're an arsehole and useless at your job!

3. Red Seven is a rather nice game, even if its name makes it a rather cruel trick to suggest playing it during a sci-fi convention (clearly an AU tie-in opportunity there). Jamie described it as a better-designed Fluxx, I called it a child's primer to R. Scott Bakker's benjuka, because I'm pretentious.

Either way, it's one of those games where your actions change the rules themselves. Players receive seven cards, each a unique combination of colour (red to violet) and number (1 to 7), hence the name of the game. Each card can be played in front of you (in your "palette") or be placed on top of the rules deck to change how the game is operating - each colour has its own winning condition. You can play a maximum of one card to each location a turn, so there's never more than 98 strategies you can enact when it's your go.  By the end of your go, you have to be winning by the current rules, or you're out. So either you have to play a winning card under the current rules, change the rules so you're now winning, or do both.

Which is pretty straightforward, with none of your turns requiring more than two minutes to work out what combinations will keep you alive for another round. The part where it gets interesting is knowing that every card you use to improve your palette is one you can't use to change the rules, and vice versa. Having the red seven (the most powerful card in the game since there's a colour hierarchy with red on top) is really useful under red rules (highest card wins), of no more use in general than any other under blue rules ("most different colours wins"), and an active drag factor under violet rules ("most cards under 4"). If you play it in your palette, you can't use it to switch to the red rules which it's an automatic winning card. If you play it on the rules pile so that highest card wins, you'll need a different high card to avoid going out. Your resources keep dwindling, in other words, and it's made more difficult by knowing every card you give up could be the one you need when someone else changes the rules, and that every time you have to change the rules and play to your palette to be winning, you've used two of the seven cards you started with, which could leave you unable to take a turn whilst others still have cards left to play.

It's immensely elegant, tactical without being overwhelming, and all over in five minutes. Very much recommended.

4. A more serious one here: the talk and subsequent discussion on fat representation in genre fiction was absolutely fascinating.  I took away a few recommendations (I'm more eager than ever to find a way to experience Steven Universe without having to pay a ludicrous amount for it) and acquired some useful zingers/responses for future use. Mainly though, I was amazed at how little tolerance people in the room had for any of the "nicer" synonyms for fat, insisting that fat was what they were, and this was fine, and trying to find other ways to say it is just an attempt by people to separate the fat people they like from the fat people they don't.  Which is so obvious a point I'm amazed it had taken me so long to encounter it.

Which I guess is to say: I am fat.

(I also learned from someone in the audience that in her experience she got far more anti-fat remarks directed at her whilst presenting as feminine than she did when presenting as butch. This is the sort of thing that even decades of getting crap over your weight can't lead you to understand when you're a cis-het white guy.)

5. The history and uses of filk are both great fun to learn about, and common meter is incredibly useful:

"Oh Elven grace, how sweet the ground
In Rivendell I see.
I once was lost, but now I've found
A homely house for me."

The Second Rebellion

It can be difficult, as an atheist, to talk to people of faith. Richard Dawkins and his associates have sown too much salt in the places that seeds of conversation might otherwise flower. The distinction between atheist and anti-theist is one not always picked up on, even by those who want to engage in good faith (no pun intended).

So as always, the standard disclaimer: disbelief is not disrespect. But - and this is where I sweep away my carefully-laid cloak to reveal a sheer drop into the Bog of Eternal Stench - there are certain ideas central to the religious beliefs of hundreds of thousands of people that my political philosophy requires me to take strong exception to. To not merely state that I don't believe in the God that allegedly espouses these ideas, but to argue their very existence makes the world a worse place.

One of the worst of such notions is that suffering is necessary or even good for us.

Sometimes They Come Back

I haven't really written much about Trump's rise to public leader of the Republican Party because, really, what's the point? No-one who reads this is remotely likely to disagree with my opinion of the man, and if by chance a Trump supporter gets so lost among the internet weeds that they stumble onto my blog, what hope have I of persuading them of their error?

But that doesn't mean I haven't been paying attention. It doesn't mean I'm not concerned. And not just about Trump himself. Yes, clearly, the prospect of President Trump is beyond terrifying. Last I checked Nate Silver has Trump's chance of victory at around 15%. Long odds if you're betting your life savings in a casino, sure, but still vastly too high for me to sleep properly until November. Sure, it's only half the chance Silver gave Romney four years ago, and Mitt was resoundingly thumped come the day. Still, though. 15%. If you get pregnant today, it's more likely your child will be born under a Trump presidency than they'll be born on a Sunday.

That's not why I'm writing this post, though. What terrifies me - what truly scares out every atom of waste product my body contains - isn't Trump. It's the guy who comes after Trump.

Because what Trump has demonstrated, utterly beyond argument, is that the Republican nomination AND a minimum of 131 electoral votes (just under half of what's needed to win) is more or less automatically yours if you run as a fascist, even if your campaign is incompetent and your candidate is an idiot thug. Seventeen states, including the second-most populous in the union, will happily wave in a new era of bigoted tyranny even if the new generalissimo doesn't seem capable of tying his own shoelaces, let alone negotiating an international treaty.  In the current political climate the only way in which you might fail to secure the nomination is if someone else runs who's better at being a fascist than you are.

That's what terrifies me. Not that Trump will win, but that next time around everyone will be a Trump. But smarter Trumps. More well-disciplined Trumps. Trumps who knows when to reach for the dog-whistle. Trumps the GOP and its media allies can pretend aren't even Trumps at all.

This is not a wild hypothetical devoid of supporting evidence. The politicians and media on America's rightmost flank faced what I'm sure was an ugly choice in the weeks since Trump's coronation. They could admit this cluster-cuss was the inevitable result of two decades of rightward drift, political tribalism, and the cynical embrace of white supremacy. Or they could insist Trump was an aberration, something never to be repeated following his inevitable defeat.

To no-one's surprise, many if not most immediately made a mass dash for door number 2. The solidifying narrative in the right-leaning media would seem to be that Trump is not only an obvious political outlier, but one created by the left. When your reaction to seeing an actual fascist take control [1] is to blame your political opponents for claiming the last three guys also had some pretty extreme tendencies, you reveal yourself completely. You don't want to avoid horrifying extremists. You want to avoid horrifying extremists you can't give cover to. You don't want better people. You want better masks.

Well Ted Cruz is busy carving his mask right now, and he won't be the only one.

And that's just the crimes of those who've admitted anything is amiss. Plenty of career arseholes are acting as though this is simply business as usual. Mark Rubio, Paul Ryan and Chris Christie have all endorsed Trump (admittedly with varying degrees of enthusiasm). In doing so they leave us with only two possible conclusions: either these career-politicians would actually prefer Trump to Clinton, or that they secretly want him to fail but think a future in the modern GOP requires them to establish fascistic bona fides. The difference isn't really all that important. It doesn't matter if they want it themselves or just know their voters want it. Either way, the future isn't fewer Trumps. It's "better" Trumps.

Defeating Trump is of course utterly necessary to prevent the arrival of fascism in the United States. But it isn't sufficient. Sending Trump packing come November isn't a final victory, any more than the failure of the Beer Hall Putsch represented the end of Nazism (yes, I went full Godwin; fuck you). Hell, Hitler went to jail, and he still got to take control of an entire nation. At best, Trump [2] is just going to lose a national vote, and that by far less than he should.

Fascism doesn't slink away to die when you knock it down. It comes back. It comes back smarter. It learns where it went wrong and it adapts, like a flu virus in jackboots. And it keeps coming back until eventually it's smart enough or even just lucky enough to win.

And the people who once thought they controlled the American Right have decided they can live with that.

[1] Albeit one so lacking a coherent political philosophy that actually nailing down what type of fascist he is proves difficult, though incompatible goals and positions are nothing new to fascistic thought in general. 

[2] Who is almost certainly not going to be the next Hitler. But he might be the next Hitler's test-case.

Geek Syndicate Review: House Of Penance #4

This series is awesome and you should stuff it into your brainbox: part four.

No Apologies for the Infinite Radness 1.1.14 - "So Alive" (Ryan Adams)

A taste of where we're headed.

This is a song with an interesting history, one of those "right place, right time" kind of deals, where here the right place was the Twin Towers, and the right time was the first week of September, 2001. Ryan filmed the video for "New York, New York" there, the debut single from his second solo album. Following the terrorist attack a week later, it was decided there would be no reshoot. That the video would go out as it was made, accompanying a love song to a city united in tragedy and defiance. Let the towers stand again.

The resulting resonances pushed the song into minor hit territory. Which is fair enough; even without the associations of the time it's a strong, up-tempo song drenched in the kind of hyper-condensed nostalgia one can only experience in a place that moves forwards with as much velocity as major cities do. But the additional context it took on - almost drowned in, really - warped what the public expected from Adams. Or didn't, probably, but it certainly warped what his label thought the public expected from him. Despite his first band being expert purveyors of alt-country misery, despite his debut solo album being so drenched in bourbon-and-tears American folk influence its title of Heartbreaker seemed like an understatement, despite the disc "New York, New York" having more than its share of misery-fests - the apotheosis of which being a song in which the narrator is so depressed dating Sylvia Plath seems like a good way to cheer himself up - his label was convinced Adams was now someone whose talents lay in making people feel better about themselves.

So when Adams turned in his proposed third solo album, the title-as-spoiler Love Is Hell, a low-key ramble through tales of alienation and loss, the label were somewhat less than impressed. How dare one of their artists sound like themselves instead of how they'd marketed him as sounding? They didn't want slowness and misery (neither of which the album offered up uniformly, but never mind). They wanted heart! They wanted power! They wanted rock and roll!

So Adams gave them it, agreeing to release Love Is Hell as two EPs (the first sublime, the second less so) only after a new studio album - called Rock N Roll, obviously - which Adams slapped together over a fortnight by simply recycling every rock style he could think of, from Marr to Gallagher. He even tossed off an obvious lead single almost utterly unlike everything else on the album (though he more-or-less recycled its main riff for another song, presumably to make a point), simply because that's what his label wanted, and because he so effortlessly could.

Which finally brings us to "So Alive".

(I can't help but be amused that I've done the same thing every other commentator on Adams has, and discussed his past output just as much as what I'm nominally discussing. Uniquely, though, I've done it without so much as mentioning how frequently he released albums in the mid to late '00s. Seriously, just try to find a review of any Adams disc since 29 that doesn't bring it up. It's close to impossible.)

The thing is, no matter how cynical his record label was in insisting it be written, and how cynical Adams was in writing it, "So Alive" is an absolute killer. It's about as precise a piece of guitar-work as exists, and yet the sheer forward momentum of the central riff and the gloriously unhinged structure under each verse makes everything feel barely under control, a precisely-painted picture of exploding chaos. I've been repeatedly told that, in keeping with the general approach of the album, this is Adams' impression of U2, but I've never really believed that. When U2 pick up speed it sounds like bombast. This sounds like desperation.

Which means Adams had the last laugh, even before music critics more or less unanimously agreed Love Is Hell was an act of minor genius and Rock N Roll is a glib collision of other people's ideas (inevitably, neither of these positions is correct, but we'll put that to one side). "So Alive" is utterly not the kind of song you'd want to put out in an effort to recreate the reaction to "New York, New York". I mean, you never could do that anyway, obviously, unless one had a crystal ball willing to give you the skinny on the next horrific terrorist atrocity. That said, you don't actually need a 9/11 to write love-songs to a place and time that resonate. If you're minded to try,

Instead, though, Adams abandons entirely the sense of upbeat belonging and warm nostalgia for something entirely different. On the most surface level "So Alive" can maybe be read as being optimistic about a new relationship as it begins - love is NOT hell - but the focus isn't really right for that. Adams is promising to soon belong to someone, but *their* feelings on the matter go strangely unrecorded. Are they similarly interested? Do they even know this song is about them? Devoting yourself to someone doesn't mean they come close to seeing you in the same light. Deciding you want to chase something doesn't mean they want you to catch them. When Adams falsetto-yells that he's on their side, it can't be read as gleeful romantic posing. It's a demand to be noticed. I'm on your side. I'm so alive. Just see, please, who I am and what I could be for you. It's a plea for recognition.

Or maybe not. Maybe I'm bringing myself into this too much. I have the most vivid memory of listening to this track - not for the first time, I must have burned through dozens of spins already - as I walked in the cold dark from the shitty terrace house in which I was living to the shitty off-license from which I was buying shitty drinks, trying to hold myself together over a woman I was utterly consumed by. She never saw me the way I wanted her to see me. She was too busy planning a future with a man who barely seemed to be on her side at all. Barely seemed alive. But then maybe that was a case of misrecognition as well.

Actually I guess that with such an indelible sense of place and mood burned into me, you could argue Adams really did repeat what happened with "New York, New York". 9/11 was a tragedy the entire western world shared in, or told itself it shared in (this isn't the time or place to start picking at any of that). But we share just as much the scars, or even the still-open wounds, of having to watch the one we're convinced should be with us be instead with them. We share the dreadful memories of bleeding out in a corner for someone who never seems to notice.

Perhaps Adams did pull off the same trick twice. Perhaps he just switched targets.

Either way, bargain-bin U2 this absolutely never was.

December 1577

My final Game of Thrones piece for the year (unless something else comes up) is now available at Geek Syndicate.