Rant(s) of the week
There are, in fact, various things I could rant about, and the trouble is to choose between them.
I could, for example, rant about the online writers' workshop of which I am a member, and how irritating it is that they do nothing to guarantee any particular number of critiques in any particular period of time, so that I post a story and wait and wait and wait, and after long waiting get maybe one crit, which usually is unhelpful. Adding to the irritation is the fact that one can see how many people have viewed the story how many times, and these numbers make clear that *the majority of the viewers* have viewed the story more than once without bothering to leave any comments at all.
I'd really rather be paid for my stories before they are used for someone's reading pleasure.
I could rant about the insensitive, or at the very least poorly phrased, recent complaints of two commentators on TVG that handicappers had been "considered last" in the decision made by Hollywood Park to install an artificial surface. Are we to believe these commentators would like the convenience of handicappers to preempt the safety of jockeys and horses? Or the financial, time and emotional investment of trainers and owners? Or the image of racing in the eyes of the public? Surely that was not what was meant to be implied. And surely people who present themselves to the public as expert handicappers should not be afraid of a challenge.
(Hints: watch, don't bet, for a month or so; stick with turf races; stop fucking whining.)
Or, OK, I could rant about faux kink in fiction. I just read a book -- a very long book -- in a series that enrobes itself in a mantle of Gothic fantasy kink.
The brooding, handsome, absolutely fucking tedious main character spends the entire VERY LONG book brooding handsomely about the Darkness In His Soul.
In the scene meant to impress this Darkness upon our shrinking senses (or our heaving bosoms), he gets into some BDSM Lite, soft leather thongs, safewords, yadda da yadda, with a hooker who is enthusiastically consenting (like all the hookers in this wish-fulfillment world for the Gothy young.)
This is not kinky. This is not dark.
It's fake, silly and pretentious. And it's really, really irritating (and LONG). In addition, the book has this sort of fake "gay--friendlyness", because, MY GOD, the protag kisses a guy once and, well, people make coy references to gay sex and stuff. This is particularly irritating because the heterosexual scenes are graphic -- so, in other words, the text is pretending to be liberated and unprejudiced when in reality the gay stuff is off taking place somewhere in, you know, a closet.
Lord, people, it's 2006. Get over it.
I could, for example, rant about the online writers' workshop of which I am a member, and how irritating it is that they do nothing to guarantee any particular number of critiques in any particular period of time, so that I post a story and wait and wait and wait, and after long waiting get maybe one crit, which usually is unhelpful. Adding to the irritation is the fact that one can see how many people have viewed the story how many times, and these numbers make clear that *the majority of the viewers* have viewed the story more than once without bothering to leave any comments at all.
I'd really rather be paid for my stories before they are used for someone's reading pleasure.
I could rant about the insensitive, or at the very least poorly phrased, recent complaints of two commentators on TVG that handicappers had been "considered last" in the decision made by Hollywood Park to install an artificial surface. Are we to believe these commentators would like the convenience of handicappers to preempt the safety of jockeys and horses? Or the financial, time and emotional investment of trainers and owners? Or the image of racing in the eyes of the public? Surely that was not what was meant to be implied. And surely people who present themselves to the public as expert handicappers should not be afraid of a challenge.
(Hints: watch, don't bet, for a month or so; stick with turf races; stop fucking whining.)
Or, OK, I could rant about faux kink in fiction. I just read a book -- a very long book -- in a series that enrobes itself in a mantle of Gothic fantasy kink.
The brooding, handsome, absolutely fucking tedious main character spends the entire VERY LONG book brooding handsomely about the Darkness In His Soul.
In the scene meant to impress this Darkness upon our shrinking senses (or our heaving bosoms), he gets into some BDSM Lite, soft leather thongs, safewords, yadda da yadda, with a hooker who is enthusiastically consenting (like all the hookers in this wish-fulfillment world for the Gothy young.)
This is not kinky. This is not dark.
It's fake, silly and pretentious. And it's really, really irritating (and LONG). In addition, the book has this sort of fake "gay--friendlyness", because, MY GOD, the protag kisses a guy once and, well, people make coy references to gay sex and stuff. This is particularly irritating because the heterosexual scenes are graphic -- so, in other words, the text is pretending to be liberated and unprejudiced when in reality the gay stuff is off taking place somewhere in, you know, a closet.
Lord, people, it's 2006. Get over it.
posted by Kyri at 5:32 PM
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