#and in your wiki fans write that your bullies called you name s | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

mostlysignssomeportents · 3 years

Text

On the occasion of John Varley's quadruple bypass

John Varley, a beloved, versatile, funny, and wildly imaginative sf writer, recently had a quadruple bypass and is recovering well, but this is America, so he's also in need of financial support through his recovery.

https://varley.net/nonfiction/news/sending-prayers-to-the-cosmos/

You can donate to Varley's recovery fund via Paypal, which will support the Varley family's new expenditures (Dan Prall already helped them by buying the recliner chair John's doctors want him to sleep in).

https://www.paypal.com/donate/paymentComplete

When I heard Varley had been hospitalized, I felt that cold grue in my stomach, the dread that has haunted me not merely through the covid months, but also over the past decade, as the cohort of writers I grew up on have entered their 60s and 70s.

The news that Varley's surgery was successful came as an incredible relief - and with it, the realization that I didn't need to wait for an obit to write an appreciation of the writers whose work I love so dearly.

Varley is hugely influential upon me. I could never have written my 2003 debut novel DOWN AND OUT IN THE MAGIC KINGDOM without stories like his 1976 OVERDRAWN AT THE MEMORY BANK - a story that prefigured many of cyberpunk's central tropes.

Varley's short fiction is incredible - not just Hugo winners like THE PERSISTENCE OF VISION but also perfect gems like THE OPHIUCHI HOTLINE and THE BARBIE MURDERS - but they all add up to even more than the sum of their parts.

Much of Varley's work has been set in his "Eight Worlds" universe, where humans have been evicted from Earth by a mysterious alien race called "The Invaders," with the rump of the species being pushed out to the Moon, nearby planets, and the asteroid belts.

Varley's stories happily plunder one another for details of this scenario, lifting characters, technologies, and settings, but they make no pretense to being a "future history" of internal consistency.

The Eight Worlds stories and novels are only consistent with one another when it makes the story better - but when it doesn't, they jettison inter-tale consistency in favor of narrative. For me, the fact that writers could do this came as a jaw-dropping revelation.

Varley annihilated the pretense that an sf writer is some kind of oracle who knows the future - a bit of ghastly fatalism in that it implies that the future is knowable and thus will arrive irrespective of our choices today.

Instead, Varley treats his stories as entertainments and allegories, freed from the "Robert A Timeline" constraints, which allows him to collage his best ideas into new works, a kind of fan-service that is pure delight, freed from the tedious pretense of consistency.

This revelation led directly to my novel Walkaway, which incorporates ideas, props and scenarios from DOWN AND OUT IN THE MAGIC KINGDOM, EASTERN STANDARD TRIBE, and my other novels, without lumbering the story with the necessity to make it fit in with their continuity.

Varley is an unabashed plunderer, particularly of Heinlein, mashing up Heinlein tropes with contemporary ideas, progressive politics, and other delights to make new works that both pick apart and celebrate Heinlein's work.

This was always lurking in his work, but it became very explicit with novels like STEEL BEACH (1992), an absolute ROMP of a book that crosses THE MOON IS A HARSH MISTRESS with the then-ascendant cyberpunk genre conventions (which Varley helped invent) to outstanding effect.

I just re-read STEEL BEACH and found it every bit as delightful as I had in the early 90s, when I hand sold hundreds of copies of it as a bookseller. It's also the direct ancestor of Ian McDonald's MOON IS A HARSH MISTRESS-riffing trilogy.

https://memex.craphound.com/2015/09/22/ian-mcdonalds-luna-new-moon-the-moon-is-a-much-much-harsher-mistress/

Varley's work embodies the collaborative spirit of sf, as tropes are ruthlessly plundered and reworked without apology. It's a process that's wonderfully described in my mentor Judith Merril's Hugo-winning memoir, "Better to Have Loved":

https://memex.craphound.com/2003/08/11/science-fiction-prefigured-the-creative-commons/

"Whereas in other literary fields you wouldn’t dare take an idea from another writer and use it, because that would be considered plagiarism, science fiction people loved to build on each other’s stories.

"The business of giving away ideas and promoting other people’s work was a part of the community at large. The Futurians did this to an amazing extent. For example, every Futurian had a pen name that included the family name Conway. A good number of the stories that appeared in science fiction magazines at the time were written by someone-or-other Conway."

In other words, amateurs plagiarize, artists steal.

Think of the way that Varley's symbiotic alien spacesuits were beautfully plundered by Spider and Jeanne Robinson for their own Hugo-winning STARDANCE.

http://spiderrobinson.com/books.html

I found so many revelations in Varley's work: just the proliferation of "disneylands" on the Moon was an wonderfully economical bit of storytelling, an entire implied history of a notoriously bullying corporation in tatters after an invasion, all in a single, lower-case "d."

And then there's the RED THUNDER books, wherein Varley took apart and reassmbled Heinlein's "juvies" as parables about the paranoid, post-9/11 America, a country that occupied Iraq, Afghanistan and itself:

https://memex.craphound.com/2006/04/17/the-novel-heinlein-would-have-written-about-gw-bushs-america/

I don't think I'd have written LITTLE BROTHER - a book I thought of as an anti-authoritarian riff on HAVE SPACESUIT, WILL TRAVEL - if I hadn't read RED THUNDER.

Varley's work is worth aspiring to: a perfect mix of wildly imaginative and just plain *fun*. His most recent novel, IRONTOWN BLUES, is an Eight Worlds hard boiled noir novel starring an uplifted dog detective.

https://memex.craphound.com/2018/08/29/john-varleys-irontown-blues-noir-doggy-science-fiction-from-one-of-the-fields-all-time-greats/

Varley runs a shop for signed copies of his books, though shipping is slow ("We are strictly a kitchen-table operation. Your book will be carefully selected from our shelves, lovingly hand-wrapped, and decorated with real US Postage stamps").

https://varley.net/shop/

If you're looking for a title to order from the shop, may I recommend 2004's "The John Varley Reader: 30 Years of Short Fiction."

https://varley.net/collection/the-john-varley-reader/

Image: Arthur Jene https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:John_Varley.jpg

CC BY-SA: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/deed.en

#pluralistic

29 notes · View notes

foxgloves-fox-love · 4 years

Text

Self-shipping AU

Just wanted to do these questions hehe ;w;

1. What kind of blog does your f/o have? Do they selfship on main? Do they look like a regular fan? Quiet reblogs or lots of gushing? Lots of analyses of your character and your source or incoherent blabbering? Do they have a headcanon blog? Do they try to roleplay as you?

Ren is shameless and only has like one sideblog that he reserves for creative stuff. He posts everything else onto his main blog. He also gushes a lot just lots of keysmashing and talking about how cute I am, and not a lot of analyses just tons of blabbering. He posts all his headcanons on his main blog and frequently tags pictures with our ship name if they remind him of us.

2. Do they prefer selfshipping by inserting themselves into your source, or by daydreaming about you in their own little / personal world, or by imagining you by their side during their daily life?

He definitely daydreams about me in his own little world especially before bed and also imagines me by his side during his daily life. He would probably insert himself into my source as well bc he's not satisfied with where he is in his life. He just wants to do everything.

3. What’s their self insert like? Is their s/i literally them? Is it basically them but with just a few changes - to be more like the person they’d like to be, or to “fit in” your source better? Is their s/i totally OP or extra or more realistic? Is it an OC that’s totally different from them?

His s/i is literally him. He doesn't change parts of himself to fit into my source or to be more like he wants to be because he uses self-shipping as coping and wants me to love him for him.

4. Do they spend more time on wikipedia, on your fandom wiki, on your TV tropes page? Looking for official content they might’ve missed, like fun trivia? Looking for fanart, for fics? Looking for information and details and references for fics or art or other fancontent they’re making because they want to make sure they get everything right?

He's definitely a fandom wiki kind of guy and scours the internet for content. He doesn't need to look at references that much because he has me memorized pretty easily. There are multiple looks I've gone through in "canon" and while he loves all of them and it's hard to remember all of them, he tends to stick with the one that's most currently out in canon because it makes him feel like he's living beside me.

5. Do they create anything inspired by you and/or their ship with you? Fanart? Fanfics? Gifsets? Moodboards? Edits? Songs? Dances? Crafts? Playlists? Cosplays? Do they post them (or pictures of them) online? Do they sell any merch (online, at cons, etc)? Do they make pics of their selfship in dollmakers? Do they spend hours on otp prompt generators? Do they commission art of their selfship?

He creates fanart but doesn't draw much anymore and is kind of sad about it because he misses how much he used to draw. Instead he tends to write fic and create songs and playlists. He posts his music and stuff online on his sideblog for creative stuff and doesn't sell merch when he goes to cons. Because he doesn't draw as much anymore he LOVES making us in dollmakers and picrews. He also commissions a shit ton of art for his selfship and is completely shameless about it.

6. Does your f/o have a selfship wedding with you? Do they celebrate it on their blog or more privately, with their fellow selfshipper friends? Do they make any content (like art, fics, etc) to celebrate?

He wrote a song to propose with and is waiting for anime canon to catch up to his favorite part from the manga before posting it and making a huge deal about it. When he does have the wedding he commissions a really extravagant wedding picture and has it framed and put in his room.

7. Does your f/o have fankids with you? If not, maybe pets?

We own a dog and he wants to have kids when we get married so he can cope with his anxieties of being a bad father.

8. Do your f/o and your friend’s f/o plan for double dates since their f/os (you and your friend) are from the same source? How would that go?

lmao :') idk? >w> Maybe Farz and Ren would do that...

9. If you have multiple f/os (romantic, platonic, anything), imagine them making or joining a Discord server or a group chat about you or your source. Who gushes, who shares art and fics, who analyses everything, who sends memes?

Oh god lmao. So like I was doing this for Ren, but imagining everyone in a discord server is killing me!!! Vincent would do nothing but post porn gifs and be an absolute butt and laugh at people all the time and Jack would like never talk in it except to post the occasional psychological profile of me and talk about how interesting I am every once in a blue moon. Gengar would just cry type all the time. Craig would shitpost with memes and laugh at people because he’s a dick and not actually into self-shipping and Shino would analyze EVERYTHING from the show. The people who would gush and talk the most would be Ren and Omen ;w; Ren would share his music and Omen would think it's all very interesting. Omen might even develop a crush because Ren is so interesting and Ren would be completely oblivious bc he’s guzzling that self-ship juice lmao.

10. Does your f/o have very creative ship names, or are they bad with finding tags / ship names, or do they just use regular fandom tags?

Ren likes the ship name Rae and uses that irl, but he likes to do the fun creative ones in order to tag stuff. He uses "Little Star" for it.

11. What’s your f/o like when they read / watch / play your source? Do they reread / rewatch / replay their favorite parts over and over? Do they make comments aloud? Which parts of your story made them laugh? Made them cry?

Ren gets really happy when he watches the anime because it's very relaxing. He watches his favorite parts over and over and over again until he can say the dialogue by heart. He doesn't make comments aloud but he gets super emotionally invested. His favorite parts that make him laugh are when I say goofy or dumb things and then comment on the irony and break the 4th wall. The parts that make him cry the most are any time I get hurt and start crying. When I got bullied or felt bad with my classmates or was hurt when I was very young. All of those hurt him a lot and he cried about it.

12. Do they post any videos related to your source? Like AMVs? Or reaction vids (with them reacting to your source as they read / watch / play / etc)? If your source is a game, do they make a walkthrough? Is it a perfect walkthrough, a more casual one?

He would like to make AMVs but doesn't really have editing software for it, but wants to learn! He wants to post reaction vids but is nervous about posting his face online for...reasons. lmao

13. Which of your f/os has “y/n’s husband / wife / partner” as a username online?

Ren would definitely call himself my biggest fan. He wouldn't use husband but he'd definitely use fanboy.

14. Do they have merch of you? What kind of merch? Posters? Keychains? Stickers? Stuffed toys? (And if they have a plush of you, do they kiss it and sleep with it?)

He has a plush that he cuddles and sleeps with and sometimes makes out with lmao. He also has so much merch!!! He is the type to make ita content. On Christmas he decorates the tree with stuff and has posters all over the walls. His favorites tho are figures. He looooooooves figures the most. He's constantly shelling out the big bucks for the biggest and most detailed ones because he can look at them and feel like I exist in a 3d space.

15. What kind of content do they like / make the most? Is it fluff? Angst? Hurt / comfort? (btw: imagine your f/os going to you when they need comfort, because they love you and you’re comforting to them.) Do they respect canon or do they make lots of AUs? What kind of AUs do they like?

-rubs hands together- His favorite content is hurt/comfort both with me being hurt and me hurting the other party, depending on his mood. When he gets unstable and lonely he plays out angsty situations to further his spirals. He knows it's unhealthy, but it comforts him at the same time. His favorite when he's feeling like being healthier is making irl AUs where he can play out his trauma with me as a caretaker figure or alongside him and comforting me.

16. Which of your f/os has 1341 pics of you saved on their phone / laptop? What kind of pic did they choose as their phone / laptop background? Is it a canon pic of you, or fanart, or art of their selfship with you?

Ren definitely hoards a lot of shit on his phone, he has so much content of me on it it's ridiculous. Omen kind of does the same but not nearly as much because he has multiple f/os and has to share space with them lmao. Vincent's phone is just filled with porn ok just lots of rule 34 shit but he also like doesn't have a lot of content on it because like he's just a horndog and only really gives a shit about the dirty content. Jack has pictures but not a lot because he prefers to fantasize.

#fo: ren #fo: vincent #fo: omen #fo: jack #fo: shino #fo: craig #fo: gengar

0 notes

enuffula · 7 years

Text

Antichrist Superstar

Okay, now we’re getting to the album with the explicitly controversial title. Portrait of an American Family had a creepy doll cover. Smells Like Children’s is supposed to look like some mashup between the Child Catcher from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang and the Wicked Witch of the West. They were both characters who came off as, well... you know. And there was that Wonka font for good measure. Basically, the album cover had a “kids are in danger” vibe. But neither of them were supposed to elicit personal offense at first glance. Maybe something similar to aesthetic offense. While he and the band are all about dat straight-up grotesqueness, there’s a liberal amount of subverted innocence, too.

This album doesn’t really have that. Unless you take Christianity for the innocence that’s being subverted. (I feel like I might need to have a disclaimer saying I’m a Christian for each Marilyn album I go over.) It’s redundant to say that not only is he a shock rocker, he also has a lot of strong criticisms against how Christianity is practiced (in America). At this point, I don’t know if other belief systems are ever criticized in his work.

But going to “edginess on purpose”, the title is a play on Jesus Christ Superstar. I haven’t seen it yet but from what I’ve read it is a musical that shows the very human side of Jesus. Many fundamentalists do not like JCSS. Marilyn almost certainly knew that and he wanted to show them what true blasphemy looked like.

Cycle I: The Heirophant

“Irresponsible Hate Anthem”: At first I was worried at the beginning because I don’t care for screaming masses that much. Anyway, this song. This song. “I was not born with enough middle fingers”? Honestly, flipping the bird just looks immature and cringeworthy to me like 97% of the time. That may be because there was this bully in my math class when I was eight and one time he told me to stick my middle finger up and I was like “Okay?” because I didn’t know what it meant. The teacher saw it and looked shocked but it only took her a few moments to guess I was innocent. XD Luckily, by the next year when I had homeroom with him, he was actually nice.

“The Beautiful People”: Not really sure what to write about this.

“Dried up, Tied, and Dead to the World”: “You ride but cannot be ridden/Pinch this tiny heart of mine/Wrap it up in soiled twine.” This part stands out to me, for some reason. At first I was thinking of… baseball. There’s “Daddy” by Sylvia Plath that contains the line “Bit my pretty red heart in two” which is, well, pretty for such a sad poem.

“Tourniquet”: The description “made of hair and bone and little teeth” make me think of a messily long-haired bony woman with big gums.

Cycle II: Inauguration of the Worm

“Little Horn”: *checks the wiki as I now feel the need to before listening to a new song* Wow, I thought this one zombie nightmare I had once was terrifying. It was the kind of bad dream where you wake up and lay there, waiting for your heart to stop thumping so hard. There were these undergrown zombies with horrible green skin. They were silent and they had no eyes. We were in a forest and they were standing on these flat-ish stones and as I turned to leave more were coming down a road. There was a sign that said “Based on a True Story”. What really made this terrifying was that later as I was walking my dog I came across this wild animal carcass with rotted out eyes.

“Cryptorchid”: Kept reading this as “Cryptorchild”, which sounds like some kid who spends time down in crypts just chillin’. It’s a catchy, but disturbing (of course), song with a fitting title. By “fitting title”, I mean it’s name for a medical condition that has to do with genitalia and I would expect nothing less from Marilyn.

“Deformography”: Wondered if this would be about teratophiliac porn. It might be?

“Wormboy”: Do you, Marilyn? Do you know that you are “slipping away”? Hope not because we still have two more albums to get through until “Slutgarden”.

“Mister Superstar”: Before there was “Paparazzi”, there was...this. It’s much more raw and dirty. “Dirty” isn’t really how I like to describe sex but when you got your obsessed fan going “I want to get sick from you” and some other lines I would prefer not to type... By the way, please check out “LoveGame (Chew Fu Ghettohouse Fix)” by Lady Gaga. He’s featured in it. They’re both Interscope artists.

“Angel with the Scabbed Wings”: This is a title I like. Good imagery. Reminds me of how in Brit Lit we read this poem by William Blake called “The Sick Rose” that sounded pretty. Then the teacher told us what it was really about and it still sounds pretty but I’ll confess I was a little shocked.

“Kinderfeld”: Nope. Reading the wiki before giving a track a listen is a good idea.

Cycle III: Disintegrator Rising

“Antichrist Superstar”: It annoys me when an artist gives an album the same name as a track. “Pissing well” might make a good colloquialism for urinal if it is not already.

“1996”: A lot of anti’s there.

“Minute of Decay”: There’s a Family Guy reference I want to make here but I also don’t want people to know how much of that show I’ve watched over the years. I’ll just say it came from “Prick up Your Ears”.

“The Reflecting God”: Is there a word for someone who is no longer a virgin? I don’t mean “slut”. I mean like someone who has (at least a little) experience? There’s this weird reverence around, not virgins, but the concept of virgins.

“Man That You Fear”: I’d rather not listen to this because, again, I read the article.

“Track 99”: Not really sure why this was included.

There are some B-sides.

“Apple of Sodom”: So there was on a soundtrack for some movie called Lost Highway. Because I have no seen that, I can’t say how fitting this song is. But today I watched Dune, which is another David Lynch movie, for the second time. I actually like it a lot. Or at least like the first hour of it. Kyle MacLachlan was bae in that.

“Long Hard Road out of Hell”: This is also the name of his memoir. It can’t be as bad as (what I’ve read of) Not That Kind of Girl so I might read it.

“The Suck for Your Solution”: This was apparently for some Howard Stern movie. I don’t know enough about the man to add judgment. I haven’t really been judging these last dozen songs but they aren’t really standing out to me.

“P Is for Porno”: A demo for “Deformography”. I do prefer the new title.

“Little Black Spots”: I don’t know what the title means but this is a demo version of “Cryptorchid”. Right now I want to point out how I like the line “The time has come for bitter things.” It is probably a reference to Disney’s 1951 version of Alice in Wonderland, which is one of my favorite movies of all time.

“Wormboy Gets His Wings”: Another demo. Shortening the title was probably a good move.

“Astonishing Panorama of the End Times”: The beginning I like, good and upbeat. Of course, it quickly becomes controversial. XD

“Suicide Snowman”: Given the subject matter, I’d prefer not to listen.

“Art of Dying”: The link on the wiki sent me to “The Reflecting God”.

“D Is for Dirty”: Not much to say here.

0 notes