A Minor Announcement, A Recommendation, and a Contemplation

It has been quite a while since I've used this thing and I have a sneaking suspicion that a lack of chattering in blog posts is probably one of the many things I'm doing to sabotage myself as far as getting active interest and commentary on my writing. I suppose I just don't have a great deal to say, at least nothing that makes me think of opening a blog and posting something in it. Based on how long it's been since I did this... well, I'm clearly kinda of lazy.

Now, the announcement. I'm thinking of doing a soft hiatus on Game of Worlds. By "soft hiatus" I mean that I'm not actually ceasing work and short of death, nothing is deterring me from finishing this work; I just enjoy it too much. Rather, I'm going to sidestep the main story and try to stretch my writing chops with a little grab bag of viginettes to fill in random gaps. Probably nothing that people were madly curious about, but little things that I thought would be fun to tell a story about. For example, my plan for the first of these is going to run though the life of Queen Chrysalis and how she found herself the partner in crime to a benevolent eldritch horror with a sisterly fondness for a certain moon goddess. Maybe I'll do snapshots of ancient history; certainly, it would be fun to tell stories about who the changelings were to the Equestria of a thousand years ago, and use Queen Amaryss as a viewpoint character. Bouncing off into things like the discovery of the Archive, the odd situation of Penumbra, maybe even how Lashaal ended up striking a deal with a remarkably polite world-killer seems like things that could be fun to talk about too. I'm not committed firmly to any of them (except the first one, already on its second Google drive page) but being about something more than a long, intricate, three-direction through-line might actually make the whole work more fun for whoever is still paying attention.

The contemplation relates to a couple critiques I've read of the FimFiction community. The author I'll credit by name for one of these is a MrNumbers; whatever my particular disputes with his reasoning, he is thoughtful and in earnest and his perspective deserves to be widely-read and thought about; you can find it here: https://www.fimfiction.net/blog/841036/the-state-of-fimfictions-fading-erotic-scene While I've not read any of his other blog entries, I'm quite certain he has many other things to share worth reading, and I encourage anyone who runs across this blog entry to explore his blog content and especially his story content; his story Vertigo is tender and beautiful, and represents him being the change he wants to see.
The other critique I shall not attribute to an author, nor describe it with any great specificity; regrettably, the author has many worthwhile things to say but evidences a closed mind and the viciousness of someone who has been badly hurt and would very much like you to share their pain. The discussion is one worth having: what is the importance of, and the best way to carry out, the representation of historically mistreated and ignored groupings of people? But having followed a comment thread in which polite and well-meaning disagreement was treated as if the person expressing it was being profane, cruel, and ignorant, it's tragically clear that for the particular author, there is no way to create progress; being the change, and encouraging others to be better in the way that MrNumbers seemed to in the blog entry I referenced above appears to have been dismissed out of hand.

My impression is that both people are broadly in agreement with one another, and support the same things. Their causes are noble, and what they believe clearly has merit. And yet a community is far more likely to change in response to the chastisement and earnest appeals of one, and fairly unlikely to give the other the fair hearing their overall point deserves. There is a great deal of contempt, from what I can see, for the idea of being polite, soft-spoken, and choosing one's words carefully in advocating for change, and the betterment of a community; it's contemptuously called "respectability politics" and the view seems to have become that the time for moderation and maturity has passed; only with the closed fist can progress be brought about. Perhaps I'm just a softer touch because I'm tiptoeing gradually towards middle-aged, and with that progression comes a certain degree of patience and a perspective on history that sees lasting and durable change coming from respectability and patience... and being concerned that waving a match around a powder magazine for fun is ultimately not going to do what reformers might wish. I'm told, also, that the patience of the internet generation rising behind the activists of today for that hard-edged barn-burning activism is becoming very strained; a historical perspective make me suspect that there is a whiff of grapeshot in the future of current efforts to achieve social good by the cry of "crypto-bigot" and the endlessly multiplying versions of oppression, isms, and ists.

But to bring it back to the real point, and dispense with all the vague references to methods of action and stylistic peculiarities, I think that the future is brighter for a MrNumbers who mixes the stick of condemnation with the carrot of work illustrating how beautiful a thing his ideal could be. I fear that the future is dimmer for the other whose reaction to someone attempting to considerately remonstrate with them was loathing and contempt. And I would say that with all of the good now being attempted, there is a lesson to learn about which reformer will most easily stir the hearts of good people to action.