Month: October 2022

The Use of ‘Female’ & Fourth Wave Feminism

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I don’t know anything about anything. But I think that we may be in Fourth Wave Feminism. Gone are the days of Third Wave Feminism which, relative to me being a smelly boy, were pretty cool. The ideology of Third Wave Feminism was that women could do whatever they wanted from sex worker to medical doctor. This lead to lots of young women running around with no clothes on and dudes getting an eye full in more ways than one.

Ugh

But now, things are changing.

Apparently, we may be on the cusp of Fourth Wave Feminism which is something of a downer relative to the good old days of “liberated strippers.” In general, I don’t care. I’m not a woman and it’s not really my place to get involved in which particular wave of feminism we might be living in.

So it’s not that I’m concerned about. What is bother me is the idea that somehow using the word “female” is now taboo and “gross,” if all the videos I see now on Tik-Tok would be any indication.

What the what?

Words are really important to me –obviously — and the idea that I can no longer use the word “female” of all things is really, really shocking and aggravating.

It will be interesting to see if the malignant idiots of Fox News will pick this new attack by the “woke cancel culture mob.” Whatever. But all I can say is the center-Left will do itself no favors by attacking clueless men for simply using the word “female.”

I just don’t know how much the forming taboo about using “female” is a Tik-Tok thing and how much is real. Only time will tell.

Of Jessica Chastain & This Six Novel Project I’m Working On

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I think I’ve written about this before, but, lulz, it’s not like anyone reads this blog on a regular basis outside of a few random stalkers. Wink. Anyway, I really like the vibe of the acclaimed Hollywood actress Jessica Chastain. And, almost from the beginning of this old six novel project I have wanted a character that, if somehow miraculously somehow Hollywood got involved with an adaptation, she would be interested in playing.

Jessica Chastain

What I didn’t expect when I started of all of this, of course, is, well, when the character first appears she will be so young that Sadie Sink will have to play her or something. Some younger beautiful red head. If it was Sophia Lillis, well, then, that would be great but at this point something of a cliche.

So, the plan now is we open in 1995 and we see, over the course of six novels a collection of characters interact with each other until the modern era. Since ultimately one of the heroes of this project is well, me in proxy form, I needed a character who thought I was an drunk ill-focused loser and someone like Jessica Chastain fits the bill.

Anyway. The character inspired by Chastain is a straight edge who ultimately causes a lot of problems for proxy me.

But at this point, I’m really, really being delusional to believe I will get through all the hoops necessary to ever see Chastain on the silver screen making my vision a reality.

The Framework For Something Pretty Cool Now Exists With This Six Novel Project

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

After a number of years of hard work and spinning my wheels in a very conspicuous manner, I finally feel like I have the framework I need to achieve something akin to my original goal — entertain the same audience as Stieg Larsson did with his original Millennium series.

It’s not a one-to-one for a number of reasons.

He is far darker than I am. And I think he was probably a conspiracy theorist. And, what’s more, he breaks a lot of rules of modern novel storytelling that just don’t have the luxury of doing. I mean, I can’t just spend 135 pages getting to the fucking point like he did with The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo.

As such, I have structured my first novel in a far more traditional manner. My inciting incident is far closer to the beginning of the story. It’s taken me so much hard work and trial-and-error to get to this point, in large part I was using Larsson’s work The Girl Who Played With Fire as my “textbook.”

While I love that novel — so much that I can read it over and over and over again — it’s structure is totally fucked up and it’s simply way, way too long for what I need to use as a guide. I have a strict “sweetspot” of between 80,000 to 120,000 words to play with.

Will I pass the test? Maybe! (I fucking hate this test, by the way.)

I have a lot of work still to do. And one key element I have to do is read. I have to grit my teeth and read some books that will help give my characters, well, character. Quirks. Color. You name it. I have a number of books that if I actually sat down and fucking read them would really improve the end product. As it stands, I have a general vision for my characters, but, too often, they just “moods” that with character traits that exist solely for expediency’s sake.

But recent my self-confidence with this project has improved. I have finally found the land over the horizon that I was looking for so long.

I Want To Write An ‘Old Brown Shoe’ For Stieg Larsson Fans

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

As I keep saying, I want the novels in this projected six novel project to be an old brown shoe for the audience of Stieg Larsson’s work. In other words, I want people who enjoyed the Millennium series to “get” these novels from the moment they read the first page.

This is what the heroine of this first novel looks like in my imagination.

That’s been the goal of all of this from the very beginning. The biggest problem has been I’m very reluctant to “just write” if I don’t believe in the product. I have very high standards for myself and I don’t want to fucking embarrass myself.

So time and again, the whole thing has collapsed and I’ve started all over again. Then there has been significant mission creep, with this starting off as just a novel, then two, then three, then four then five and now six. This has happened after a series of major turning points, the biggest among them being Trump being so stupid and lazy that the he actually manage to do what I thought was impossible — lose the 2020 election.

Trump losing the 2020 election was a huge turning point in this project because suddenly I was freed from the original goal of using this project to rant, directly about Trumplandia. I realized I had all these stories to tell in the same universe. But to tell them, I would have to go back in time.

I fucking hate MAGA and Trumplandia. Enough to write six novels generated off of that rage against them.

And that’s how I found myself writing about events that kicked off the whole series, set 25 years ago. So, in a sense, I’m consciously writing prequels in a sly way. Or, had Trump not lost, I probably would have keep pounding away at a two-novel story set in the modern era.

But as it stands, I’m doing all this work to explain, to show, to the reader, the origins of a very fucked up situation that happens somewhere later down the the line. I like this idea because, well, it’s weird and I’m weird and also, most importantly, there’s a lot of slack in it.

I have a lot of room to grow. I have a huge universe of pretty well fleshed out stories I can now grow into should I somehow manage to sell this first novel. That, unto itself, will be a miracle. I know that. I get it. But it’s not a crime to dream.

Taking This Novel To The Next Level

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Things are going well with this latest attempt at a first draft — knock on wood. But I’m facing a cold hard fact — if I’m going to flesh out these characters, I’m going to have to do some fucking reading.

So, I hope to gradually work into my very lax schedule a lot more time for reading over the course of the next few months. I hope that by the time I’m working on the second draft that I will have read enough that I can flesh out the characters a lot more.

That’s the thing about so much of this first novel, it’s been such a struggle to get to this point that it’s really beginning to dawn on me that I need to flesh out the characters so someone actually wants to hang out with them the number of hours necessary to finish reading the damn thing.

What If You Held A MAGA Autocracy & Nobody Noticed?

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I have pretty regular political debates with my far more conservative relatives — sometimes despite myself — and it seems clear that they just want to crush the “woke cancel culture mob” and that’s it. They just don’t care what happens after that.

The thing is — for all its soft power to make conservatives fear that their lives will be ruined “just for being conservative” — the center-Left has very little hard power. Yes, it has some hard power now because of the historical quirk that was Trump being very stupid and lazy…but otherwise…meh?

As such, it’s inevitable that Republicans are going to gain power again. And, unless Blues fucking leave the Union at the state level, MAGA Republicans are going to establish an honest to God autocratic white Christian ethno state in the United States.

But will anyone really notice?

I think way too much about this. I think about the real-world implications of a MAGA autocracy all the time. The element to such a thing that I keep bumping up against is race. It’s race that would make any MAGA-themed autocracy unable to simply stop at gutting the social safety net or making it impossible for women to have an abortion legally.

As such, while it’s theoretically possible that the only thing the average person might notice once the United States is an autocracy is all the liberals they know are fleeing the country….there is also a pretty good chance that some sort of weird Qanon Pol Pot situation might happen with the “liberal” cities emptied and there being Killing Fields in Upstate New York, among other places.

I don’t know what is going to happen. I can’t predict the future. But I do know, in general, the we’re fucked. We are totally, completely fucked. We’re in the twilight of the America we’ve known since at least 1865. Something is is about to replace it. Who knows what it ultimately might be.

The Academy Needs To Give Up On The Oscars

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I love movies and I love the Academy Awards. Growing up, they were one of the highlights of my TV watching year. But now, in our hypermedia Tik-Tok, post-Slap era…the Academy Awards finds itself at a crossroads.

My favorite podcast about Hollywood and showbiz.

The Academy needs to give up. Give up on broadcast TV. Give up on trying to appeal to anyone but the base. Just wallow in why people watch the show to begin with and move on.

Move the Oscars to a streamer and let the thing run for four or more hours. No more playing people off when they give their acceptance speech. Just let the Academy Awards evolve into the niche product that it inevitably will become anyway.

The media world is just so diverse and fragmented that the Oscars don’t have a chance. They’re never going to garner the huge audiences that they once did. The mainstream audience has moved on. The Oscars should, too.

Imagining A (Peaceful) ‘Conscious Uncoupling’ Of The United States

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I’m in a bad mood. The prospect that Republicans will impeach everyone they can think of in the Biden Administration out of spite in 2023 if they have the power is making me take a strong, hard look at a National Divorce — with Blues being the one serving the papers.

But there’s a problem — I’m a man of peace, a man of ideas. And any “National Divorce,” no matter who started it would turn nasty and violent pretty quick. Maybe even WMD would be used before it was all over with. But let’s run the scenario — how might you peacefully break the country into two, one Blue, one Red?

The key issue going into all of this is what state is Blue and what state is Red? There are plenty — PLENTY – of states that are either Blue States with MAGA legislatures or two states fused together that make one Purple state. That’s why any true National Divorce would turn bloody soon enough.

But, I suppose if you wanted to try to split the country into Red and Blue you could have some sort of an attempt at self-determination referendums. But then you get back into the same dynamic of MAGA Republicans believing that, by definition, if they don’t win then Stop The Steal, yadda, yadda, yadda. And then you have states like Virginia that would simply implode into chaos if they had to decide if they were more Red or more Blue in nature.

Then you have the issue of how Red States mooch off the Federal Government, using Federal taxation wealthy Blue State economic production to survive. This is another reason why, in the end, Red States will suddenly decide — if there was a National Divorce — that maybe they like Blue States enough to keep them around, after all.

Also, who gets the military? Who gets the what when it comes to debt? American politics is not known for its subtly as it stands. It’s more of a grunt. So, in the end, if there is any form of National Divorce, we’re fucked. We are so totally fucked that the wealthiest, most powerful nation humanity has ever seen will willfully blow itself up.

Apparently, If Republicans Take Control Of The House, They’re Going To Impeach Everyone In The Biden Administration

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Jesus Christ, is there anyone in the Biden Administration that Republicans AREN’T going to impeach if they take control of the House? At last count, there is a real move to impeach not just Biden, but the DHS Secretary AND the Attorney General.

Biden and the DHS Secretary will be impeached — at a minimum — for their “mishandling of the border crisis.” I still believe that Biden may be impeached within a few days of Republicans taking the House for no other reason than they want to take a talking point away from “libtards’ about Trump being “twice impeached.”

Republicans both want to make being impeached THE WORST THING IN THE WORLD, AND make it a lulz “everyone gets impeached now.” They want it both ways. They want to hurt Biden politically by impeaching him…while helping Trump politically by impeaching Biden a few times and making Trump’s status as the only twice impeached president a political lulz.

Anyway, the point is — if Republicans take the House, all the Senate will do for two years is sit as an impeachment jury. Given that Republicans hate a functioning government they will be quite pleased with that situation. We have to let the fact that Republicans are fascists and hate democracy sink in and appreciate the implications of that cold, hard fact.

Any power that Republicans get, they will abuse and use to end American democracy. As such, as I keep saying, Blues really need to be prepared to gird their loins, take a deep breath and seriously think about leaving the Union at the state level.

I hate violence. I am a man a of peace, a man of ideas. But if Republicans really do hate the “woke cancel culture mob” so fucking much and they want a “National Divorce” so fucking much, maybe we should give it to them. I’d much rather live in a stable Blue Union than a Purple Union that is unstable and being eating away from within by fucking MAGA New Right fascists.

Cover Me, I’m Going In (Eventually)

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I’m working my way towards actually reading J.K. Rowling’s very, very indulgent novel about something near and dear to her heart — cancel culture. I’m reading it one, out of spite to the “woke cancel culture mob” (wink) who is aghast that she would write on such things and two, I want to see how she pulls it off. Or doesn’t pull it off. But she did manage to get a 1,000 page novel essentially flicking her bean mentally sold and published so, I’m very interested in what it’s like.

Or, put another way — there’s no such thing as bad publicity.

But I am honestly interested in what she has to say and how she says it. I am pretty indifferent to the controversy surrounding her — I’m not a fan and I have no emotional attachment to the Harry Potter franchise. The whole thing is just a curiosity to me.

I have a huge library of books to read and this particular book keep staring at me as a I walked around the house, so I finally took the dust cover off and sat it down in a strategic location to start reading it.

I have so very many books to read. It will be interesting to see if this novel that the “woke cancel culture mob” hates so much is actually any good or not. I haven’t been Red Pilled — I just refuse to be told what media I can, or can not consume.