Still Grumpy
May. 20th, 2007 08:15 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
erastesGREAT NEWS!! Going to see POTC3 this week on the opening night. Not only that we are splashing out on tickets for "The Gallery" which are Pullman seats, and no under 18's allowed in. Plus you get unlimited scoff - which is well worth the £10 ticket price! Tickets are normally £6.10 each, then I spend £5.25 on nachos and a drink (are you fainting yet, America?) so the bloody gallery is a BARGAIN - I don't know why we never went there before.
NOT so Great News: seen via![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
queertext Journey Books Publishing is accepting submissions for an anthology called UNPARALLELED JOURNEYS 2. I could (almost) forgive them for the ½ cent a word - making a 3000 word story worth crap $15, but I can't forgive anyone this:
We do not accept work that promotes gay lifestyles.
Look. If you don't wish to publish gay material, then don't publish it. But don't make yourself look like a horse's arse by coming out with statements like this. And gay "lifestyles"???? What is homosexuality? A HOBBY or something?
Look Journey Books, being gay isn't a life choice. It's not something you wake up one morning and think, "I'll have a go at that today, and if that doesn't work I'll join the Caravan Club." For some people it's a very traumatic experience, learning to cope with it, having to tell others about it not to mention the million other problems, and to have it trivialised like this - particularly within a genre that has traditionally, for fifty years, explored gender and bent it, played with it, threatened it, questioned it.
Are you expecting to land on your planet in one of your Parallel journeys and find a lovely planet full of heterosexual aliens who don't swear? (yes, they don't want cussin' either, folks)
As I said. It's their decision not to publish whatever the hell they want in their magazine (although I won't ever publicise them after this, and I'm expressing my distaste to Ralan, Duotrope and Journey Books themselves) but for FUCK's sake, don't treat it like it's a communicable disease.
I think this little used icon sums it up. Thnx
NOT so Great News: seen via
queertext Journey Books Publishing is accepting submissions for an anthology called UNPARALLELED JOURNEYS 2. I could (almost) forgive them for the ½ cent a word - making a 3000 word story worth We do not accept work that promotes gay lifestyles.
Look. If you don't wish to publish gay material, then don't publish it. But don't make yourself look like a horse's arse by coming out with statements like this. And gay "lifestyles"???? What is homosexuality? A HOBBY or something?
Look Journey Books, being gay isn't a life choice. It's not something you wake up one morning and think, "I'll have a go at that today, and if that doesn't work I'll join the Caravan Club." For some people it's a very traumatic experience, learning to cope with it, having to tell others about it not to mention the million other problems, and to have it trivialised like this - particularly within a genre that has traditionally, for fifty years, explored gender and bent it, played with it, threatened it, questioned it.
Are you expecting to land on your planet in one of your Parallel journeys and find a lovely planet full of heterosexual aliens who don't swear? (yes, they don't want cussin' either, folks)
As I said. It's their decision not to publish whatever the hell they want in their magazine (although I won't ever publicise them after this, and I'm expressing my distaste to Ralan, Duotrope and Journey Books themselves) but for FUCK's sake, don't treat it like it's a communicable disease.
I think this little used icon sums it up. Thnx
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2007-05-20 07:24 pm (UTC)Well... *cue escapee from old jokes home*
My mother made me a homosexual...
*scarpers*
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Date: 2007-05-20 07:27 pm (UTC)*shoves firmly up Journey Books Arse*
There's my two swear words used up.
I really want to do Jeeves and Wooster in Space now.
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Date: 2007-05-20 08:21 pm (UTC)Re: unlimited food?! *grabby hands*
Date: 2007-05-20 08:29 pm (UTC)"Sofa seats" is how they are actually described, so i'll let you know...
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Date: 2007-05-20 08:29 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-05-20 08:42 pm (UTC)Either one seems to be damaging to the fiction, so far as I've seen.
Can't recall now if it was in one of the Agatha Christies, or a Josephine Tey book, but I do recall one British character commented that, "Evangelism seems to be so damaging to their grammar."
While I can understand a reader's desperate longing for well-constructed plotlines with interesting futuristic doohickies (let alone intriguing actual speculations about future consequences) that do not depend on violent sex to accomplish anything whatever in a story, still, I do not think telling people to avoid promoting queer orgies is quite the way to go about getting what you're really looking for, do you? It seems to me the kind of guidelines you would see on well-done children's fiction publishing websites would be far more appropriate to that end.
(walks away, whistling...)
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Date: 2007-05-20 08:43 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-05-20 08:44 pm (UTC)exactly
Date: 2007-05-20 08:57 pm (UTC)But the notion that science fiction shouldn't be open to (non-sexy/smutty) queer writing is so laughable we should just feel sorry for the people who are publishing "Spaceships for Jesus" or whatever their antho. will be called.
Re: exactly
Date: 2007-05-20 09:16 pm (UTC)I disagree about different genres though, I'm a bit of an anti-genre-ist as it is, I don't like pigeon holes. Yes, I agree that they are quite within reasonableness to refuse sexy fiction - of course! But I think that erotic writing isnt a seperate genre, but a part of all genres.
But I do agree that I feel sorry for their explorers who are going to get a big shock when they start travelling around the universe.
Re: exactly
Date: 2007-05-20 09:26 pm (UTC)Particularly when they encounter Eccentrica Golumbitz, the Triple-breasted Whore of Eroticon 6...
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Date: 2007-05-20 09:50 pm (UTC)Robert A Heinlein had to remove a number of ideas from his original ms of Stranger in a Strange Land. One of them was that in Valentine Michael Smith's church, sex among members included s/s pairing. (He was sort of die-hard het himself, but had the occasional variation.) The publishers had fits. Years later, they realized there was a market and put out the 'original' edition that had the shocking notions put back in.
I commend to anyone who thinks classic SF has to be homophobic a beautiful little story written decades ago by Theodore Sturgeon: The World Well Lost. Or the wonderful Ethan of Athos.current master of SF, Lois McMaster Bujold, in which a man from a fundamentalist men-only planet gets offworld, meets a smart, capable woman... and no cliches happen!
I really object to the use of "lifestyle" to describe same-sex identity. It isn't a 'style,' Bunky, it's my life. And I still think the biggest motivation for homophobia is jealousy--no need for birth control.
Re: exactly
Date: 2007-05-20 09:51 pm (UTC)Two words for them: Jack. Harkness.
(cue evil cackle)
Re: exactly
Date: 2007-05-20 10:01 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-05-20 10:16 pm (UTC)I remember still how I got such a warm feeling when the first book I ever read of his (Time Enough for love) had m/m kissing and intimated sex and f/f more obvious sex. And twincest.
I'll have to check out those stories you mention, thanks!
Re: exactly
Date: 2007-05-20 10:17 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-05-20 11:14 pm (UTC)I've read all his books, even the juveniles--they were great for me in high school & my 20's (they were the first things I'd run across where sexually active women were portrayed as good people--a lovely change from my Catholic upbringing.) Still, I did get awfully tired of his obsession with making babies. (I think his glamorized portrayal of the both the military parenthood was wish-fulfillment--RAH himself had to leave the military for reasons of health and had no children. I expect that was why he never dealt with issues like diapers, teething, and the Terrible Twos.)
And I thought he copped out terribly on issues like the environment--in "To Sail Beyond the Sunset" he has a character bemoaning the way Earth's been trashed... after she herself has grown rich exploiting the planet, rationalizing it away as something that was bound to happen, too bad, on to the next juicy world. Seeing as we can't just move on to another homeworld, it's sort of like saying if you're on a ship, some damned fool is bound to drill holes in it, but if he can make money at it there's no way to prevent him. BS--high class BS, but BS nonetheless. And I could never quite believe the books he wrote from 1st-person female POV--they didn't sound like women, they sounded like guys with tits--always hot to trot, never any PMS, perfectly willing to marry the hero at the drop of a pin... um, no.
I think Bujold should inherit Heinlein's mantle of 'Dean of Science Fiction,' because not only do her science and plots hold up (one of her books has been used in a military academy class on ethics), her male and female characters are believable human beings with the ful range of sexuality (including gene-manip, functional hermaphrodites.) LMB has shelf space in my 'stranded on a desert island' chest--I'm afraid Heinlein doesn't. People do seem to adore or hate him, generally... I see him as a master storyteller, but I think his flaws matched his abilities.
Sorry about the rant...
Re: exactly
Date: 2007-05-20 11:23 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-05-20 11:54 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-05-21 01:00 am (UTC)Bujold doesn't put sex on the page, but the core of her world-building deals with gender identity -- and there are no cliches.(Well, until the series gets to an issue too close to the author, but a lot of authors with bad divorces let that creep into their work).
Probably should be read in order, certainly to appreciate the late-series complexities in A Civil Campaign, a comedy of manners and courtship novel in space.
I use my Athos icon, because Bujold loves Dumas.
no subject
Date: 2007-05-21 03:10 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-05-21 03:33 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-05-21 05:47 am (UTC)Gah, these people make me want to load all my slash stories up, create a bunch of sockies, and bombard them with submissions. You never know, the 'gay' might rub off on them with repeated exposure.
One good thing, I know I need never bother wasting money on their output.
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Date: 2007-05-21 06:57 am (UTC)I get militant in that sort of way, I'd love to write something coded, like Moby Dick or Dorien Grey and get it past the censors!!
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Date: 2007-05-21 07:01 am (UTC)I guess I can forgive him the obsession for making babies, particularly when he was so rabid about making sure that the children were well looked after, and the way he went to describe how polygamous marriages needed to work to protect the rights of all, it was interesting to read.
But I can forgive him all for Galahad and Lazarus, two of my favourite people in sci-fi. Specially Galahad. There's just not enough of him. Oh And "The Adopted Daughter" sob. I'll never get over Dora.
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Date: 2007-05-21 07:04 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-05-21 07:04 am (UTC)*G*
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Date: 2007-05-21 07:07 am (UTC)oh and yes, I agree. especially for HALF A CENT a word. What upsets me is that people WILL submit to these idiots. The rights should be "one publication only" and that's it.
*smites*
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Date: 2007-05-21 07:08 am (UTC)The only excuse for that cover is "my child did it"
Thank you so much for the morning giggle.
Re: exactly
Date: 2007-05-21 07:09 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-05-21 07:12 am (UTC)There's only one, supporting character, and Bel Thorn is far more important plotwise for military skills and personal loyalties. In the broad cast of Bujold's galaxy, this is just one variation from what we experience on Earth.
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Date: 2007-05-21 07:20 am (UTC)Secondly, that Journeys thing. My parents express that attitude all the time, like homosexuals choose to be that way and are just doing it to piss people off. God it makes me mad.
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Date: 2007-05-21 07:23 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-05-21 07:24 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-05-21 09:14 am (UTC)the dollar is almost exactly half of the pound, so our tickets are $12, nachos $7 and so on.
no subject
Date: 2007-05-21 10:24 am (UTC)Very weird people.
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Date: 2007-05-21 11:44 am (UTC)Ugh. Live and let live? As long as you're living the way they want to, apparently.
I second that!
Date: 2007-05-21 01:15 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-05-21 06:08 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-05-21 06:10 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-05-22 12:51 am (UTC)het sex. EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEUW!!
;-)