What should I do about my tattoo dilemma?

View Answers

Skip the whole thing, spend the money on new cowboy boots.
0 (0.0%)
Skip the whole thing, put the money in a 401K
0 (0.0%)
Stick with the tattoo idea, but wait until you're inspired
0 (0.0%)
Go to the studio, pick out a random tattoo, slap it on.
0 (0.0%)
Get a dragon. Everyone needs a dragon.
0 (0.0%)
Get a sparrow. No one else has a sparrow.
0 (0.0%)
Get a -clockwork- sparrow.
1 (100.0%)
"Amor Vincit Omnia"
0 (0.0%)
Something else, suggested in comments (keep it clean, folks!)
0 (0.0%)

http://www.journalscape.com/kblincoln/2012-05-16-10:20/

http://www.journalscape.com/kblincoln/2012-05-16-07:37/

http://whatever.scalzi.com/2012/05/16/seriously-what-the-hell/

http://whatever.scalzi.com/?p=18593

Over on Facebook, friends of mine from high school are taking pictures of this bumper sticker, which they allege to be finding out there in the world. The quote comes from something I said on the Alien Encounters TV show, about how even if we find out that aliens exist, we’re sooner or later going to have to get back to our lives, up to and including taking out the trash. So far four or five of them have posted the bumper sticker.

I have to say I’m suspicious about this. The quote is kind of random, I’m not anywhere near famous enough to warrant a bumper sticker, and this is exactly the sort of brain-messery that friends of mine would engage in; specifically, this is the sort of thing my friend Norm Carnick would likely mastermind, because apparently he’s got a lot of free time. The telling detail for me is that as far as I can recall it’s only high school friends and acquaintances that have reported seeing the thing.

All of which is to say I AM ON TO YOU MY HIGH SCHOOL SO-CALLED FRIENDS AND I WILL HAVE MY REVENGE BWA HA HA HA HAH HA unless of course these bumper stickers really do exist non-affiliated to my high school chums, in which case, seriously, what the Hell. I’m definitely not getting a percentage of the profits. I find the picture amusing, however.

Edit, 7:32am: The plot thickens. On eBay!

http://whatever.scalzi.com/2012/05/16/a-childs-treasury-of-deletions/

http://whatever.scalzi.com/?p=18589

Yesterday’s post garnered 800 comments before I put it to bed and I ended up deleting a record number of comments out of it, largely from presumably straight white men enraged at the idea their life doesn’t necessarily suck as much as other folks’ and/or because they ate lead paint chips as children and have impulse control issues (plus a couple from other, calmer folks following up on posts I later deleted, so theirs needed to be deleted too). Whatever the reason, I thought it would be fun to post a compendium of Malletings here for your enjoyment.

So without further ado: The Deletions of May 15, 2012!

Warning: Intemperate language follows.

[Deleted because inasmuch as the author of it admits to not reading the entry at all, anything he has to say will be aside the point for the thread -- JS]

[Deleted for pointlessness. Did some site with exceptionally stupid readers just link in? -- JS]

[Deleted because being a troll isn't merit badge-worthy -- JS]

[Deleted for garden variety racism, misogyny and assholishness -- JS]

[Deleted for trollage -- JS]

[Deleted because That Guy is a homophobic moron -- JS]

[Deleted because Scorpius was already told he was off the thread -- JS]

[Aaaand now Scorpius has earned a place in the moderation queue. Enjoy it, Scorpius! You'll come out again when I decide you're not trolling -- JS]

[Further deleted because That Guy is nowhere as clever as he seems to believe he is -- JS]

[Deleted because That Guy is tiresome -- JS]

[Contentless troll deleted -- JS]

[People who comment to tell me that they didn't read get deleted! Because they're jackassed trolls who have nothing to add to the conversation! -- JS]

[Deleted for pointlessness -- JS]

[Speaking as a white male, I have deleted the comment because of its abject stupidity -- JS]

[Deleted for spittle-flinging assholishness -- JS]

Originally published at John Joseph Adams. You can comment here or there.

Here’s the preliminary cover for one of my forthcoming anthologies, THE MAD SCIENTIST’S GUIDE TO WORLD DOMINATION (Tor, January 2013).

From Victor Frankenstein to Lex Luthor, from Dr. Moreau to Dr. Doom, readers have long been fascinated by megalomaniacal plans for world domination and the madmen who come up with them. Typically, we see these villains through the eyes of superheroes (or other good guys) as they attempt to put an end to their evil ways. This anthology, however, will explore the world of mad scientists and evil geniuses–from their own point of view.

Evil geniuses are always so keen on telling captured heroes all their fiendish plans. Isn’t it about time someone gave them a platform such as this one to reach the masses with their messages of hope death and prosperity destruction?

Featuring stories by: Carrie Vaughn, Alan Dean Foster, Daniel H. Wilson, L. E. Modesitt, Jr., L. A. Banks, Austin Grossman, Marjorie M. Liu, Ben Winters, David Farland, Mary Robinette Kowal, Harry Turtledove, Seanan McGuire, David D. Levine, Genevieve Valentine, Naomi Novik, Jeffrey Ford, Grady Hendrix, Theodora Goss, Jeremiah Tolbert, and David Brin, plus a new 40,000 word novella from Diana Gabaldon! Also featuring an introduction by legendary X-Men scribe Chris Claremont.

In early April, I went to talk to the doctor about depression, and walked out with a prescription for Zoloft.

It’s been an interesting month. One of the things that surprised me was how many people talked to me about their own experiences with depression, both on my blog post and in person. When I went to Penguicon, the depression post came up in conversation almost as frequently as my cover poses. Depression is far more common than I realized … which reinforced that I had made the right decision to blog about it.

Almost immediately after I left the doctor’s office last month, I started feeling a little better. Since it takes time for the meds to build up in your system, I ascribed that initial improvement to the fact that I was doing something about the problem instead of feeling stuck and hopeless.

I’ll be honest, I wasn’t expecting much from the pills. I wasn’t convinced the meds would help — I wasn’t even entirely convinced that I was really depressed as opposed to just feeling stressed out — and even if it was, I wasn’t sure the dosage I was on would be enough. But damn if I haven’t noticed an improvement. I’ve been able to take things in stride that would have been far more upsetting a month ago, from the suicidal raccoon that busted up my headlight to schedule snafus with my wife and kids to the Great Flea Invasion at home to assorted work stuff.

It’s not all happiness and rainbow-farting unicorns yet. The other day, something knocked me back into that ugly/hopeless/fugitall morass, and it took about two days to pull myself out. But overall, I’m doing better.

I feel more like me.

This isn’t the first time I’ve experienced this. Back in 1998 when my pancreas took early retirement, the diabetes seriously messed me up before I got diagnosed and brought my blood sugar under control. I was, to put it bluntly, a cranky, miserable asshole. And it had snuck up on me over weeks or months, so slowly I hadn’t even noticed. When I finally got on insulin, I was amazed at how much better I felt, how much I had missed me, if that makes sense.

It happened when I lived in Nevada, too. Elko did not agree with me, and looking back, I was seriously depressed by the end of it, though I didn’t recognize it at the time. I quit my job and moved back to where I had friends and family, and just like in ’98, I found me again.

I missed me. And I’m a little disturbed that I seem to make a habit of losing myself…

I’ve kept an almost paranoid eye out for side effects. I noticed a little bit of dry mouth early on, but that might have been psychosomatic. I’ve heard people talk about antidepressants making them mentally fuzzy, which was probably my biggest fear. I don’t think that’s happened, but I’m not completely sure. I’m struggling with the sequel to Libriomancer, but I was struggling before I started the meds too. I think it’s just a pain-in-the-ass first draft, not a consequence of extra mental sluggishness on my part.

The current plan is to stay on the Zoloft for six months to a year, then reevaluate where I’m at. I’ve also got a list of possible referrals for counseling that I’m planning to follow up on. (I’ve been procrastinating, partly due to lack of time, and partly due to the lingering shame of needing help.)

I really dislike the idea of being dependent on pharmaceuticals for my happiness and mental/emotional well-being. Insulin for a messed-up pancreas? No problem. Medication for a messed-up brain? That’s harder to accept. But I’m even more scared about the idea of going off the pills and sliding back into the space I was in earlier this year. I’m hoping the counseling will help with this and give me some longer-term solutions.

For the moment though, things are pretty good. I’ve been able to enjoy more of my life than I was before. The good parts actually feel good, and the bad parts, while still present — damn fleas! — aren’t as overwhelming.

Score one for the happy pills.

Mirrored from Jim C. Hines.

Originally published at John Joseph Adams. You can comment here or there.

This year’s World Fantasy Award nomination period is still open. The 2011World Fantasy  Awards will be presented in Toronto, Ontario during the World Fantasy Convention (November 1-4). Deadline for nominating is May 31.

Anyone who has a supporting or full membership from the 2011 World Fantasy Convention, or the upcoming 2012 World Fantasy Convention may nominate works. If you didn’t attend World Fantasy last year, and you don’t plan to attend this year, you can still nominate by purchasing a supporting membership.

Already registered? Go and nominate your favorite works! Here’s a link to the PDF of the nomination ballot. (Note: You may email your ballot to the award administrator, Rodger Turner, to the email address listed on the ballot.)

Here’s a list of works published in Fantasy Magazine in 2011 that are eligible for the World Fantasy Award this year. (Note that the World Fantasy categories are slightly different than the Nebulas and Hugos in regard to word counts: World Fantasy considers a Novella to be 10,000-40,000 words and Short Story to be 10,000 words or less, whereas the Nebulas and Hugos divide those categories differently, and have a third category [Novelette] in between.)

Short Fiction (under 10,000 words)

March 2011

• The Sandal-Bride by Genevieve Valentine (Fantasy)
• The God Orkrem by Tanith Lee (Fantasy)

April 2011

• Choose Your Own Adventure by Kat Howard (Fantasy)
• The Woman Who Married the Man in the Moon by Peter S. Beagle (first appeared in Beagle’s collection Sleight of Hand, reprinted in Fantasy)
• House of Gears by Jonathan Howard (Fantasy)

May 2011

• Study, for Solo Piano by Genevieve Valentine (Fantasy)
• The Devil in Gaylord’s Creek by Sarah Monette (Fantasy)

June 2011

• The Prince of Thirteen Days by Alaya Dawn Johnson (first appeared in Welcome to Bordertown, edited by Holly Black & Ellen Kushner, reprinted in Fantasy)
• The Immortality Game by Cat Rambo (Fantasy)
• You Have Been Turned Into a Zombie by a Friend by Jeremiah Tolbert (Fantasy)

July 2011

• Union Falls by J. S. Breukelaar (Fantasy)
• The Wolves of Brooklyn by Catherynne M. Valente (Fantasy)

August 2011

• The World is Cruel, My Daughter by Cory Skerry (Fantasy)
• Crossroads by Laura Anne Gilman (Fantasy)

September 2011

• Lessons From a Clockwork Queen by Megan Arkenberg (Fantasy)
• Three Damnations: A Fugue by James Alan Gardner (Fantasy)

October 2011

• The Secret Beach by Tim Pratt (Fantasy)
• Absolute Zero by Nadia Bulkin (first appeared in Creatures, edited by John Langan & Paul Tremblay, reprinted in Fantasy)
• Unnatural Disaster by Kristine Kathryn Rusch (Fantasy)

November 2011

• Red Dawn: A Chow Mein Western by Lavie Tidhar (Fantasy)
• Seven Spells to Sever the Heart by K. M. Ferebee (Fantasy)
• Christopher Raven by Theodora Goss (first appeared in Ghosts by Gaslight, edited by Jack Dann & Nick Gevers, reprinted in Fantasy)

December 2011

• Her Lover’s Golden Hair by Nike Sulway (Fantasy)
• Crystal Halloway and the Forgotten Passage by Seanan McGuire (Fantasy)

Additionally, I published one story in Lightspeed in 2011 that I feel could be interpreted as fantasy, or at least is close enough to be considered for the award:

November 2011

• How Maartje and Uppinder Terraformed Mars by Lisa Nohealani Morton (Lightspeed)

And, finally, as usual, I am also eligible for:

Special Award, Professional

• John Joseph Adams (for editing & Fantasy Magazine)

Parenting is one of those issues in life that suddenly takes on completely different angles when you start doing it yourself. It was a shock, when I had my baby, to find myself suddenly a "mom", expected to be ever-nurturing, ever-compassionate, ever-strong. When you have a child, you stop being just a person - in a lot of ways, socially, you also become a construct: The Mom (or: The Dad, which has its own intimidating set of cultural ideals).

When I studied American Women's History in college, I remember my professor, with a wry quirk to her mouth, writing the phrase: "It's all Mom's fault" on the chalkboard, as she discussed the rise of that psychological approach. There can be a real sense of betrayal for a child (even a grown-up child) whenever we see a mother who has done something that isn't objectively right (or in other words, the way moms are supposed to behave).

I think the years of MG fiction are the years when many kids first start really noticing the ways their moms are failing to live up to that cultural standard. I know that my friends and I were vocal in those years whenever we noticed our moms' failures.

Well. Now I'm a mom, and guess what? I fail to live up to that cultural standard every. single. DAY...

http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2012/05/stuff.html

We are surrounded by stuff. Physical property, objects we use. Even the poorest of us have some basic stuff: footwear, clothing. Having possessions is one of the defining characteristics of being human—with the questionable exception of a few animal species that have been observed using ad-hoc tools in the wild, nothing else owns anything (and even the tools used by chimpanzees or crows appear to be spur-of-the-moment constructions, abandoned after their immediate use rather than retained for their future potential).

But where do our priorities lie? I am thinking that there are at least two categories: stuff we pay too little attention to, and stuff we prize too highly. And sometimes there are types of stuff that fall to a greater or lesser extent into both sets ...

Stuff we pay too little attention to:

Our beds. (Bruce Sterling flagged this up in a memorable essay a couple of years ago.) You spend roughly a third of our lives sleeping. Your bed is therefore the single piece of furniture you use the most. Nevertheless, because we're unconscious most of the time while we use them, we tend to discount their importance. It's not just a matter of comfort: poor or interrupted sleep is associated with a variety of medical problems, some of them quite serious. (It doesn't get much more serious than tail-ending a truck on your motorway commute to work because you didn't sleep well, does it?) If you're going to spend on household furniture, it should rationally make sense to spend more on your bed and bedding than on everything in your living room put together, 42" 3D LCD TV set included.

Our chairs. I'm not sure I buy into the argument that our chairs are killing us: what's doing the killing is our working practices, which promote long periods of immobility while seated in cramped or poor conditions. But our chairs certainly aren't helping, and if you use one at work, it's the second piece of furniture you use most of the time. Yet all too often office supply departments buy work chairs strictly on price rather than on ergonomics or fitness for purpose. (Memo to self: investigate new office chairs.)

Stuff we pay too much attention to:

Wrist watches. Once upon a time—not so long ago—the capacity to accurately time was an expensive instrumentation problem. A town or village might have a central clock, in a tower; setting it and keeping it running accurately was a technical task. It became critical for trans-oceanic navigation (and if you want to know why and don't know, you could do worse than read this book), leading up to the invention of the portable chronometer in the late 18th and early 19th centuries; for a long period, portable nautical chronometers were used (frequently being carried by hand) to copy time callibration from the Greenwich observatory to other master clocks around London. By the mid-19th century the vast expansion of railway networks made accurate time-keeping a matter of strategic military importance; and the increased availability of horological skills bought the compact pocket-watch, and then the wrist-watch, within the budget of every gentleman.

But today we're surrounded by clocks—fast, accurate, ubiquitous. Clocks are literally everywhere, inside every computer, cellphone, GPS unit. Young folks today, in many cases, don't wear (have never worn) a wrist-watch, because they're never without a pocket phone. The wrist watch is, in fact, comprehensively obsolete.

Despite its obsolescence, the wrist watch has been reincarnated as an article of jewellery. They're everywhere in the shops around us, not merely accurate quartz-controlled watches (or devices controlled by radio-broadcast time signals) but archaic geared analog devices. The user interface—digits or traditional clock-face—is increasingly embelished, while usability takes a back seat to fashion. At the high end, one-of-a-kind individual works by master horologists sell for six-digit prices.

I'm not mocking the cult of the wrist watch as jewellery (I own a couple myself) but I am, nevertheless, puzzled, if not baffled, at the way an obsolete technological niche has been repurposed as a luxury item.

But.

All of this is leading up to me asking a simple question.

Given the technologies we can foresee arriving within the next decade, and the stuff that's already here, let's look forward 30 years. What everyday items in 30 years time will we not be paying enough attention to? Or continuing to use despite their obsolescence, for purposes radically at odds with their original role?

(My money is on: smartphones, in both categories. Maybe laptops in the former. And rooftop solar panels as a social signaling mechanism about the degree to which their owners are concerned for the environment. Bicycles ...? Toilets ...?)

. . . that I married this woman.

Easily the smartest decision I ever made in my life.

Happy anniversary, my love.

Originally published at finding my words. Please leave any comments there.

Today, I’m pleased to feature fantasy author K. Bird Lincoln!  Please read to find out many interesting tidbits about her.

1.  First things first… a name and bio:

K. Bird Lincoln is an ESL professional/writer/mother living on the windblown Minnesota Prairie with her family and a huge addiction to frou-frou coffee and chocolate. Originally from Cleveland, Ohio, she has spent more years now in Japan and on the West Coast than in the Midwest. Her speculative short stories are published in various online and paper publications such as Strange Horizons and Abyss and Apex. She also writes tasty speculative and YA fiction reviews under the name K. Bird at Goodreads.com and Kblincoln on Amazon. (Because sometimes reading a book is just like eating a bag of potato chips.)

Want to read free speculative fiction short stories? Listen to K.Bird sing a Japanese lullaby? Check out http://www.kblincoln.com

2.  Where are you from and what’s your favorite thing about where you live?

I’m from a suburb of Cleveland, Ohio. Cleveland gets a bad rep…but you know, we have a world class symphony, an amazing art museum, and….and…okay. My favorite thing from my suburb is Pierogi. Bacon, butter, cheese. You can’t go wrong. Even former President Clinton ate our Pierogi.

3.  Tell about your latest book.  What made you want to write it?

My historical fantasy novel, Tiger Lily, was just published through the Amazon Kindle Direct Program. It’s based on three short stories published in different venues over a period of about ten years. I’ve lived with her character for a long time, but it’s actually Tiger Lily’s foil, Lord Ashikaga, that was the actual impetus for writing.

You see, in Japan, the whole transvestite/transsexual thing is treated A LOT differently than in the United States. There’s the whole Noh actors (all male) portraying women for hundreds of years considered actually more “feminine” than actual women. It’s very interesting how you can take a culture very focused on outward forms and rituals and have a person living a different gender than the one they were born with. If the outward form is feminine…than that’s how society treats you, no matter the “underneath.”

I wanted to explore how a person might deal with being born in a society that considered your birth year “unfeminine.”

4.  Where can people find your books and stories?

Tiger Lily is available online at http://www.amazon.com/Tiger-Lily-ebook/dp/B007Y7094O/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1335742745&sr=8-2.

Previously published short stories are also available at my website, http://kblincoln.com/mossyglen.html.

5.  What are you working on right now?

A science fiction story featuring a boy who hangs out with giant Kabuto beetles (goliath beetles.)

6.  What inspired you to be a writer?

Although I wish I had a cool story about an inspiration, I don’t actually have one. I’ve just been writing ever since I can remember being able to hold a crayon. Or actually, I don’t remember writing. Is it creepy to say I don’t ever remember the process of writing? Sometimes I just wake up with a Microsoft Word document covered in words….

7.  Who is your favorite character in your stories? Why?

Currently I am IN LOVE with the Kabuto beetle sidekick in the current novel. He’s so big, and strong, and hard-shelled…

8.  What is your favorite comfort food?

Chocolate. There is nothing else.

9.  What character from your stories was the hardest to write?

The Kabuto beetle. Because he’s a bug. Not much personality there to work with, right?

10.  What’s the biggest challenge about being a writer?

I’m a writer? I think despite the over 10 years I’ve spent writing and submitting stories to various markets I still don’t think of myself as a real writer. I keep waiting for the beam of light and the angel choir to signal my assumption into the hallowed ranks of WRITERS. So until that happens, it’s hard as a semi-full time working mother to feel non-guilty about taking time away from laundry or kids to write. Hopefully it won’t take another ten years to get over that.

11.  Do you have any advice for beginning writers?

You don’t need what you think you need to write. You don’t need uninterrupted blocks of time or certain music or a certain chair or place. You can write anywhere and anytime and you should. Write down your ideas, or they’ll slip away. I write during swim lessons and dance classes, while my girls are doing homework, and waiting in the car to pick them up after school. Any unoccupied ten minutes is fair game.

12.  Who are your favorite authors and why? 

Guy Gavriel Kay because he makes me cry. Robin McKinley because her stories always make me feel like a hormonal teenager again. Haruki Murakami because the utterly self-absorbed, over-explanatory vagueness of his characters fascinates me.

13.  What books have most influenced your writing?

Every single book I’ve ever read. From One Fish, Two Fish to Moby Dick. But mostly whatever I’m reading now.

14.  What tools are in your writer’s tool-kit?

The ability to leave my writing alone for a few months until I can read it without the influence of what I WANTED to say and actually read it as it is written. Probably the single, most important tool I learned when making the jump from “writing” to “polishing.”

15. Where can people find out more about you and your books/stories?

Kblincoln.com

16.  What question(s) did I forget to ask?

Is your middle name really Bird?: Yep, it is. My grandmother’s maiden name.

What’s the most delicious latte you ever drank?: Honey ginger latte in Tokyo, Japan

Your highest-scoring song on Wii Just Dance?: Sway

Favorite red wine under 10 bucks? Menage a trois red

Latest show addicted to, but semi-ashamed to watch: Game of Thrones

Blood type: A positive

Zodiac sign: Saggitarius

Grossest thing you ever ate?: Raw sea cucumber

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

If you are a writer interested in participating in Writer Wednesday, please send an email with a short biography to ww (at) ambersistla (dot) com.

Recently there’s been a great deal of discussion on the topic of whether women did actually exist in “historical times,” by which I mean to say that all too often “common knowledge” of what women’s roles were in historical periods is a mythology. If writers and readers base their expectations of women in fantasy fiction on these erroneous stereotypes, then not only is our literature and our reading the poorer for it but it is also getting it wrong.

Today I offer a guest post by Australian writer Tansy Rayner Roberts on this very (and very important) subject.

Looking for the Women (in Ancient Rome)

by Tansy Rayner Roberts

I was inspired to write this after Kate’s post about looking for women in historically-based fantasy worlds.

It’s long frustrated me that a great deal of fantasy fiction in the long tradition of the genre underestimates women.  In particular, I am tired of worlds which are supposedly ‘based on medieval history’ and yet seem to be under the impression that women in the Middle Ages only turned up when a hero needed someone to marry, or to pour him a drink.

And I’m especially, especially tired of any attempts to interrogate the gender politics in fantasy fiction being shut down with the argument: it’s based on real history, so the sexism is AUTHENTIC.

I’m not going to lie to you.  Every historical period has been unkind to women, up to and including our own.  But that doesn’t mean that there weren’t complex and interesting possibilities available to women of all eras, in between stirring the turnip soup and being oppressed.

My favourite fantasy fiction is fed by history, by the nitty gritty details of things that really happened, people who had real lives, tossed around with magic because that automatically makes things more fun.

I wanted to bring my knowledge of Ancient Rome to what Kate has already talked about, largely because I think we can all take a rest from pure Anglo medieval-inspired fantasy for a decade or two, but also because Rome is what I know best.

Ancient Rome is packed with the types of historical issues we see people running up against when trying to write non-sexist stories set in mostly-sexist societies.  In Rome, there was a very clear division between the public and private spheres.  Sadly almost every historical document that survived to document their society was kept because it related to the ‘obviously important’ public sphere in which men were dominant.  Most of the sources we have about private life are conveyed in the words of men, such as the Letters of the Younger Pliny.

But while women had no technical power in that public sphere (which mostly consisted of military issues, senatorial politics and toga parties) they had immense power behind the scenes.  They had their own religious rituals which were considered just as important to the well being of the state as the public, mostly-male rites.  For a long time, scholars assumed women’s religion was less important because they weren’t allowed to make blood sacrifice, and it’s only recently that scholars have gone, um, maybe we only assumed blood sacrifice was more important than, say, baking the sacrificial cakes, because the men were in charge of it?  Oops.

Women of all social levels ran businesses, owned property and slaves, and moved freely around their local city or, if they preferred, the Empire itself.  Even aristocratic women could do those things, though they were more likely to have male relatives who wanted to control them.  The older a woman got, the greater her status.  Divorce was easy to achieve (as long as you weren’t too emotionally attached to your children, one hell of a loophole) but there was special social status granted to a univira, the rare woman who had only had one husband in her lifetime.

We know that Augustus, the first emperor, brought in legislation to try to control women, a little under two thousand years ago, and that tells us a lot about how unruly they had become!  In particular, he brought in a law to force women of the upper classes to remarry within two years of being widowed (and one year of divorce).  This was somewhat devastating, as divorcing your husband or becoming a widow had previously been the best way for  a woman to achieve independence.

Still, we have some great examples of interesting women in Roman history, who had rich and fulfilling and complex lives, despite the patriarchal society in which they lived.  Such as:

THE VIRAGO
The word ‘virago’ was supposedly coined by Octavian (later the emperor Augustus) to insult his rival Marc Antony’s wife Fulvia.  It means ‘women who acts like a man’ and referred to the fact that Fulvia joined her husband on military expeditions.  She wasn’t actually wielding a sword or wearing armour (not that I’d put it past her, she was a feisty lady), but it was apparently unusual for a woman to prefer to rough it in a tent with her husband rather than stay home in comfort with her children.

Having said that, we know of several other women who did the same thing, including Agrippina Major (the granddaughter of Augustus) who raised her children in military camps so they could be near her their father (and so they would all be far from the dangerous politics of the capital).  Later, the Empress Faustina Minor discovered that following her husband to war allowed historians to trash talk her reputation (though the accusations that she had affairs with gladiators had little to do with her own reputation and everything to do with how much the Romans hated her son, the Emperor Commodus).

THE VIRGINS
While having a husband was the key to many social successes and honours in Ancient Rome, it was not always compulsory.  The Vestal Virgins were the among the highest status women in the city.  While there were some scary stories circulating about what would happen to a Vestal if she broke the chastity rule (buried alive for a start) they were nevertheless trusted to regulate that chastity themselves.  They were not shut away or guarded by eunuchs as some 1960’s movies might have you believe!

In fact they moved through the city in freedom and comfort, attended dinner parties, performed rituals, and took part in several business-related duties including the receiving, archiving and dispensing of the city’s legal wills and other documents.  They often had political influence, and had the same status in a law court as a man – which is to say their word had greater legal weight than any other woman of the time.
After thirty years of service (they sign up as children) each Vestal would be released with a generous dowry, and could either live independently or choose to marry.

THE MISTRESS
One of my favourite historical characters (only partly because of the marvellous historical novel written about her, The Course of Honour by Lindsey Davis) is Caenis, the mistress to the Emperor Vespasian (he who built the Colosseum).  Caenis’ story is fascinating because it goes against everything we think we know about Roman society and their class system, and what women were allowed to do.

Caenis began as an imperial slave, serving Antonia (niece of the Emperor Augustus, mother of the Emperor Tiberius) as a personal secretary.  She appears to have had an eidetic memory, and served her mistress dutifully through a time of great political scandal.  When she was freed, she took the name ‘Antonia’ as was tradition.

But while freedwomen could run businesses and own property, one thing not allowed to Antonia Caenis was to marry above her station.  Her love affair with the ageing general Vespasian thus was unlikely to be officially sanctioned by the state, but the class divide broadened when he became the surprise Emperor of a new dynasty.  Luckily he already had two adult sons.  He and Caenis lived happily together in the imperial quarters, she providing him with great advice and wisdom, until her death.

Even in a world where the rules of marriage and social status were quite complex and technically restrictive, love and smarts could beat them all into the ground!
There are so many other specific women I could have talked about – the further they got from the city of Rome itself, and the lawmakers who thought it was okay to dictate what women should do, the more likely they were to take all kinds of freedoms for themselves that the law didn’t actually allow for.  Take mixed bathing – the public baths were supposed to have separate areas for men and women, but half the time they all jumped in together, with all the social ramifications that might imply, regardless of whether or not the current Emperor though it was a good idea.  In smaller towns we even have women running local councils, or breaking with all manner of traditions expected of ‘good’ Roman matrons.

Then there’s the time that the Emperor Augustus gave a lecture about what men should demand of their wives, with all the senators laughing up their sleeves because they all knew that the women of his family had other opinions on the matter.

If we learn nothing else from Roman history, it is that there have always been strong-willed women who get their own way, no matter what the law or the ideals of the society say about it.  Personality can rule over technicalities, and even a sexist society can produce some amazing, capable women, those who work with the system as well as those who work against it.

Too often, female characters only get celebrated in fantasy fiction if they are behaving like men, or taking on traditional male attributes – the kickass lady in armour, the sorceress who can zap you if you say the wrong thing, and so on.  But while I’m all for putting women in (sensible) armour and throwing them out on the battlefield, I also would like to see greater use of other female roles in fantasy – of women’s brains, in particular.  The further back you go in history, the smarter women had to be in order to exhibit and use the power they had.  So let’s see more of THAT in fantasy.

If a story starts with a maiden, let’s not assume that she has to get locked in a tower.  There are alternatives…

This post was written by Tansy Rayner Roberts for her Flappers with Swords Blog Tour.

Tansy’s award-winning Creature Court trilogy: Power and Majesty, The Shattered City and Reign of Beasts, featuring flappers with swords, shape changers, half-naked men and bloodthirsty court politics, have been released worldwide on the Kindle, and should be available soon across other e-book platforms.  If you prefer your books solid and papery, they can also be found in all good Australian and New Zealand bookshops.

You can also check out Tansy’s work through the Hugo-nominated crunchy feminist science fiction podcast Galactic Suburbia, Tansy’s short story collection Love and Romanpunk (Twelfth Planet Press).  You can find her on the internet at her blog, or on Twitter as @tansyrr.

Mirrored from I Make Up Worlds.

http://www.journalscape.com/kblincoln/2012-05-15-19:34/

http://xkcd.com/1056/

Managed a meager thousand words on the rewrite of “Just a Game” last week—fighting through a fair amount of inertia—but even that little bit felt pretty good.  It’s always that way when I return to writing after a break.

Of course, getting back in harness means I once again have to wrestle with the whole “making it not suck” thing, which, you know, ain’t easy.

Yeah, it’s always something.

Anyway, it occurs to me that even though I’m classifying this as a rewrite, almost all of it is new material.  So I suppose I can fire up Magic Meter again:

And what the hell, here’s a snippet:

Lucas dug the trowel into the south end zone.

He had to push hard; the ground wasn’t frozen yet, but it was close.  He leaned on the trowel, working it in slowly, trying not to be too destructive of the painted grass, lest a groundskeeper notice the damage and get curious.  He needed only a small, surgical hole for this; no need for hackwork.

Besides, it felt worse than mere vandalism.  It felt sacrilegious, as if he were profaning holy ground.  Which, in a sense, he was.  This place, this stadium, was a temple erected by and glorifying powerhouse college football.  The mighty Stampede—a stalwart and storied program, long on tradition, always a player on the national scene, the pride of Illinois.  Eighty thousand congregants worshiped here on autumn Saturdays, Lucas not the least among them.  His father had instilled that much in him, if nothing else.

Not that he thought this would actually work, of course.  A man who had dedicated his life to the cause of science, Lucas Frazier didn’t believe in curses.  He was doing this strictly for his father—even though his father would be none the wiser whether he did it or not.  No, he had made a promise, and he would keep it, however ridiculous it might be.

Besides, it couldn’t hurt.

No updates for Write Club.

Back to making it not suck.