Hate and the Perfect Victim

I don't do this.

I don't comment on current news stories, I don't do tribute art. I try VERY hard not to jump into publishing industry drama and genre drama. It's kind of my rule. I don't do anything that might capitalize on somebody else's misery.

But the Chapel Hill shooting has affected me.

One, because nobody IRL is talking about it past "He (the shooter) was angry over parking".

Two, because this should not have happened. 

In case you live under a rock (or get all your news from mainstream media) three beautiful people, a newly married couple and the wife's sister, were killed by an asshole who hated them and everything they stood for. The couple were deeply into charity work. The man seems to have been an all-around ass. And in a perfect world this would be all we'd need to say. We'd be able to grasp the gravity of what happened. We'd be able to comprehend the tragedy, speak for how unfair it is, shake our heads and then make an effort to make sure it never happens again. But we don't, and so we have to bring in details.

 The murder victims were muslim, and the shooter was an athiest.


These details should not matter. Our first question when someone is killed by someone else should not be "what did the victim do" or "what were their races?" or anything other than "How do we make this stop?" Victims of violent crime should not have to display their history to be helped. The clothes of a rape victim should not matter, or their blood alcohol content, or their gender. The victim of harassment should not first have to display their life story to "prove" that they did not deserve what they're getting. People who are hurt should not have to prove that they don't deserve pain.

We should not have Chapel Hill.

We should not have Gamer Gate.

We should not have Charlie Hebbdo.

We should not look at that list and think that any one of those people deserved it.

But we do. We look at rape victims and rate them on a scale from Virgin to Whore. We look at a murder victim and ask what they did and why. We say "This shouldn't have happened, but look at what they did" in the same breath, as if the first part has anything to do with the last.

We walk over homeless people. We deny the mentally ill necessary medications because they have a history of addiction. We tell women they asked to be raped and tell men that they can't be raped at all. We write stories where a young woman's death is justified by her sex life and her words, and another's survive by her pre-determined goodness. We indicate who the valued are through how pleasant they are to look at and be with.

We tell people that their pain is their fault.

We tell them that if they were only better, we'd care.

And then we celebrate the people who "fit" our victim checklist. Which is, if anything, just as bad. When we find our Perfect Victim, we put them on a pedestal. We look at them and point at them and go "Isn't this just horrible, what happened to them? Isn't it clear, how little they deserved it?" We treat them as if they are a broken treasure that must be kept and built back up and lauded.

We trap this person in the horror of the worst moment of their life. We keep them in a box labeled by the scars they carry forever. We make them choose between hiding their pain or having that pain be the definition of their relationship with us. We make them tell that story, THE story, over and over and over again until it's some malignant catechism they chant with their eyes closed, hoping that this time the words won't catch on their soul and hurt them all over again. We make the event that tore their life apart be the thing immediately following their name.

Sometimes we even use that in place of their name.

We become so caught up in the headiness of finally, finally having someone to rescue, we forget that victims are people, and by the time they have a story, they no longer need you to save them. Either they're recovering or their dead, and either way their story is not and never will be yours. Feeling sympathy does not entitle you to someone's life story. It just means you're a decent person.

Hate isn't only a problem when the victims are the nice, shiny people we want to know. It's a problem when the victims aren't lovely, when they're somebody you'd rather forget, and when something about them makes you squirm. Because the problem is not the victim. The problem is Hate.

There's a lot of bible verses that get flung around like confetti, but one that doesn't is the bit where Jesus says it's not what goes into a person that defiles them, but what comes out. The emotions and events and information you receive do not make you less of a person. A hurt one, yes. Even a scarred one. One thing I learned this past year that PTSD is a scar of memory. But that doesn't diminish you, build you up or break you down. It's what you do that counts. It's what you think, what you say.

And hate only exists inside you.

The only hate you will ever truly feel, the way you see the sky and taste your food and hear your music, is the hate that comes from your own brain and heart. That heady, hot, volcanic urge to destroy that's so addictive, so good to feel and so horrible to remember. That's the worst hate in the world. That feeling is what will destroy the world...and you in the process.

This is why it is so important to guard yourself, and your thoughts. Why it is so important to be generous to others. To make the joy of others your passion. To look at a person's pain rather than the circumstances around it and no matter what say "I'm sorry." To make other people valid, and the fact of their existence, rather than the nature of their lives, the definition of their value.

We need to learn how to love, not eros but agape, unselfishly and unconditionally, with the object of the beloved's own good above our own. Not because it makes us better people or because we get a benefit, but because it's right. This kind of love is literally what the bible repeats, over and over again. When Jesus says "Love your enemies" he uses the greek word agapāte. It is literally a command to care so deeply for those you currently hate that you would die for their welfare.

Because it's hard.

Because it's dangerous.

But most of all, because the people you hate are worth it.


We need to learn how to say I'm sorry without conditions.

We need to learn how to say I forgive you without conditions.

The details--the wonderful, myriad differences that make each of us unique, our religion and our sexuality, our gender, our heritage--should enrich our lives, not define our value as people. We should hate what people do. Hate the unfairness, the inequality, the cruelty, the blood letting. But don't hate them, because you might as well be the murderer when you do.

We need to learn that each individual person is the most priceless thing we will ever see.

Penguin news and e-book views

To explain why what I'm about to post is a big deal, let me explain what the SFWA are.

The Science Fiction Writers of America is kind of like a guild. You have to have professional sales to qualify for membership (so self pubbers are out) but once you do, there are a LOT of benefits.

However, a service they offer to EVERY writer is they keep track of shady publishers, nasty agents, and general publishing nonsense that writers need to know about and stay away from. Victoria Strauss and Writer Beware (which you have bookmarked now, RIGHT?) are affiliates, and I believe Ms. Strauss herself is a member. If you are a writer of speculative fiction and you get a qualifying sale of a book or short story? JOIN SFWA. IT IS WORTH IT.

Okay? Got it?

Good.

SFWA HAVE RULED THAT RANDOM HOUSE'S HYDRA AND ALIBI IMPRINTS ARE NOT QUALIFYING MARKETS.

This is a big deal.

In effect, they've just said that Hydra is dishonest, is exploiting their authors. Furthermore, the discussion thread over on Absolute Write is focusing not on the Life-of-copyright rights grab that got me so riled up, but on how Hydra's terms make you pay for their operating expenses by docking your royalties until they decide those expenses are paid. 

Folks, that doesn't just mean they can charge you for editing, artwork, and paper and ink costs should you qualify for that. That means they can charge you for their electricity bill. They can charge you for their paperclips. The computers they do the editing on. The carpet they happen to be walking on. This is called "Hollywood accounting" and it is how the writer of Forrest Gump never saw a penny of the movie money. If they are paying royalties on net after their expenses they can raise up those expenses and drop down the net until you don't see a dime.

Now, a reasonable person could say that Random House and Hydra won't do that. That they are an outstanding and honest company with a long history of treating authors relatively fair (I suspect anybody with half decent google-fu can refute that in two seconds, so I won't bother) and that they SURELY wouldn't dock authors for every single little penny they can.

Random House is owned by Penguin.

Penguin also owns Author Solutions.

Author Solutions have a long history of being scumbags.

I would recommend having NO FAITH AT ALL in a company that has contracts this shitty that also owns a company that can't even do business under its own fucking name.

Don't submit to Hydra.

Don't submit to Alibi

And in the interests of CYA? Don't submit to Flirt or any other e-book only imprint attached to the Random Penguin. If they stop being dicks and/or show a willingness to negotiate on the nasty contract terms I may revise. But to play it safe? Avoid until SFWA revise their statements.


OTHER THINGS:

NEW SALES PLATFORM! That OMG I think I like the best out of all of them so far.

Deviantart.com has begun allowing artists to sell "premium content" via their DA pages. And the method lets me do these awesome little packages that are actually something I've wanted to do for a while.

Sadly, sales on DA won't help me with sales ranking and street cred (because nobody's watching DA for things) BUT it allows me to reach an audience that I normally wouldn't have, and I think that is very cool.

For now, all I've got is Blue Ghosts (because everything else I'd start with is tied up by F***ing KDP Select. I hate amazon right now) but I'll probably put Silver Bullet and Starbleached up there as well.

ALSO: PRINT BOOKS!

Thanks to a WONDERFUL Anon on this post, I now have ideas about binding all the smaller books at home. It's not financially viable to do the omnibus that way (Not to mention I DO NOT WANT TO FUCK WITH IT) but the smaller ones, it'd work. Also, it'd give me practice for putting the omnibus and any future books together. Selling self-printed and self distributed books wouldn't help in terms of online book sales (or verifying to anybody with real money that I know what I'm doing) but I could definitely do homemade copies, of, say, Starbleached and Silver Bullet and Blue Ghosts et al. And sell them to ya'll, of course, and also at cons and things as long as I can keep the prices sane.

WHICH WOULD BE AWESOME.

So if any of you wonderful folks with good google-fu wish to help me further persue this (and I am googling the crap out of the 'net right now, I assure you) the ONLY part of this I cannot logic my way into is how to bind the damn things. The video Wonder-Anon showed me had a guy using a glue gun (this is good) and a thermal binding system (THE CHEAPEST MODEL IS A HUNDRED BUCKS. Sorry. It's just...it's a heater. It's a goddamned heater with braces on it. WHY SHOULD THE STICKER SHOCK BE SO HIGH?).

And the internet has failed me because nobody has DIYed the heater part. The thermal strips? Yeah, they've done that (gauze and a hot glue gun) but not the rest of it. So here is my question, my wonderful, wonderful blog readers:

-a way to melt hot glue that is between two pieces of paper without damaging said paper?

OR

-Air drying uber-glue that can hold paper together forever?

This is a brainstorming session, folks. And your reward would be books.