Awkward Conversations With George Zimmerman
Okay, so George Zimmerman is now being asked for grip-n-grins, where well-wishers at a gun show line up for his autograph.
Thing is, I get tongue-tied talking to celebrities in general. I have a fundamental dislike of saying something cliched, and usually all I have to say to a musician or a writer or a comedian is “Hi, I’m a fan of yours, just like the other seventy people behind me.” I may venture, “I really love this song of yours,” but usually, I just clam up and tell them my name if they ask.
Then I wish I had something really interesting to tell them. Like the Farscape convention. That time, I got to say “My wife and I came to see you guys for our honeymoon!” to the entire cast of Farscape, and oh, how the laughs did flow. Virginia Hey recognized us two years later, waving to us from a staircase, going, “It’s the newlyweds!” And I felt all beamy because hey, that was something new.
But most of the time, I schlump along.
…what the fuck would I say to George Zimmerman?
What kind of fandom does George Zimmerman have?
I suppose “I loved the way you shot that kid” might be a common sentiment, but that sounds so harsh when you say it out loud. “You looked so debonaire on the stand” might be a valid approach. Perhaps an enthusiastic “You got away with it!”
I mean, seriously, even assuming you wanted an autograph of Zimmerman (and, bizarrely enough, his dog), I’m finding it hard-pressed to know what to say as you get to the head of the line. “You shot a kid who probably would have turned out to be a criminal, and I’m a big fan of proactive murder” seems the best bet. Or maybe “It was him or you, except he didn’t have a gun and you did, and even then he was pounding the crap out of you, so hooray for demonstrating how a gun provides a dangerous sense of invulnerability!”
Yet even if you believe it was in legitimate self-defense, rejoicing in the death of another human being by wanting proof you met the man seems bizarre. Then again, maybe not. I know a lot of people who’d want an autograph from the man who shot Bin Laden, and they’d stand in a much longer line. And the conversations in that line would be just as crazy.
How To Be A Good Depressive Citizen
Author Libba Bray has a wonderful post on what it’s like to have depression – a post that, sadly, follows the Grand And Stilted Tradition Of Authors Admitting Their Depression.
They have to speak of depression a certain way, lest they be labelled a Bad Depressive Citizen.
Now, the gold standard for a writer suffering from depression is to Not Say Anything. Spend all that sadness with your mouth firmly shut. Then, after months of hard-pent silence, as you are emerging from the depression and find yourself in a place that you can properly control yourself, you write a Very Articulate Post detailing your pain…
…but do it from a distance. Write about it in a sad, somber tone. Do not evince an ounce of self-pity. Hold this odious disease at a distance. End it with a triumphant note that yes, you too can fight back!
Because God help you if you write your depressive post when you’re actually depressed, and uncertain if you’re going to make it. That worries people. You don’t want to write about yourself in a way that gets your audience concerned about you, because then you’ll just have told a bunch of people that maybe you’re not okay. And what will they do then? How will they rest until you’re in a stable place?
That’s rude. Button that shit up, depressive person.
And as a public figure, you can’t share your actual fears either. Maybe you’re melting down because you’re afraid you’re a lousy musician. But if, as a depressive, you slip up and post “I AM A SHITTY MUSICIAN AND I SUCK,” then everyone knows what you are: you’re an attention whore. You’re asking for people to suck up to you! All you want is positive feedback? What a drama queen (or king) you are!
(Even if you don’t want positive feedback, you know the positive feedback will bounce off your shields, you just wanted to stop swallowing this terror back all the time and give it a voice so it’s somewhere outside of your fucking skull for once.)
And shit, if you’re lucky enough to have had some success, that public outcry? It’s ungrateful. Hey, your band got signed – that’s farther than I ever got, what kind of asshole are you for dismissing my lack of accomplishments? Christ, what a whiny bitch you are.
And then someone who was a fan of yours feels completely dismissed because you’ve just told them that everything you did thus far was crappy and thus they, in turn, must be crappy for liking you, and how dare you tell them that? God, what a jerk you are for pissing on your fans.
And then someone says, “Wow, X is having a meltdown,” and people tune in to watch the trainwreck that is you, and you get a reputation as someone unstable. People start to edge away. You fucked up, man, you just let the mask slip, and now people see the quivering Jell-O underneath – and some people are repulsed by your slippery innards, and others see a feast of despair to chow the fuck down on.
A couple of outbursts like that can change your whole life.
And God forbid your despair involves other people. If you post about your worry that you’re a terrible parent, congratulations! You just hauled your kid into the shining spotlight of a talk show, and that show is entitled, “Is X Actually A Horrible Parent?” Your parenting styles are going to be discussed, debated, with people actually having real investment in this, and some people are going to come to the conclusion – whether this is fair or not – that you are an awful fucking parent. In some cases, all the evidence they’ll have is that you’ve raised the question. But that’ll be enough.
And that reputation will follow your ass around, my friend. People will question your stability. They’ll have Heard Things. They’ll wonder how you’re doing now, with the understanding that you could break at any moment, that you’re crazy deep down, that you didn’t have the maturity to mash that ugly shit down like you fucking well should have.
Now, I’m not kidding, or being in the least sarcastic, when I say that Libba has written a wonderful post. That is part of what it’s like to be depressed, and she expresses it well, and eloquently. It helps, and I am glad she wrote it.
But notice how carefully she speaks. She doesn’t say what, if anything, she is depressed about – and she’s a good enough writer that that omission is clearly on purpose.
Because she knows how to be a good depressive citizen.
Depression is messy, and ugly, and sticky. You don’t take it out in public until it’s thoroughly sanitized, freeze-dried, and vacuum-packed – or you make yourself a reputation that you don’t want. It is okay to be depressed, even valorous, so long as you never actually demonstrate depression.
Right now, dressed in the blog-equivalent of a crisp business suit, some depressive is blogging as the Good Citizen, tears wiped off of blotched cheeks, a stiff upper lip, toeing the party line that we can all get through this if we just keep swimming. She is an inspiration.
You do not discuss your depression until you can be an inspiration, or you are just fucking crazy.
Nobody likes crazy.
And there are very good reasons why maybe going off on one of your social networks during a depressive breakdown is a bad idea. Living your life via the equivalent of emotional crowdfunding is almost guaranteed to be ruined. And hauling your friends and family into the spotlight against their will to be discussed among strangers is a toxic fucking thing. And depression lies, so a lot of the things you say will be so utterly foolish and untrue that one day you’ll regret writing it down, simply because some idiot took you at face value, and some other idiot now thinks you’re an idiot for believing that guff in the first place.
So it’s not necessarily a bad thing to only discuss depression when you can hold it at a distance and analyze it.
But this need to be a Good Depressive Citizen makes the journey that much more alone, sometimes. You can have thousands of people following you on the social network of your choice, and yet here you are alone in your apartment, trying desperately to keep this despair properly tamped down. You have to clutch your knees and choke back those cries of despair, because if you share this angst with the world, then you might get a label you can never take back.
And deep down, this need to be a Good Depressive Citizen fuels the fear that you’re really not lovable, or worthy, as you can’t share this shit-fountain of diarrhetic despair welling up inside of you with the world at large. You can only share it with the pre-screened handful of friends who understand you, who have demonstrated they know how to deal properly with this malfunctioning beast that is your brain, and maybe you’re not worthy of love maybe you’re just finding people who are stupid enough to take pity on you.
Then, after months of that, when medication and time and circumstance and habit have worn it down, you can write a dispassionate blog entry. On how hard it’s been. On abstract terrors. With a good, solid, “We’re all in this together.”
And you’re a Good Depressive. Someone people can point to as an example for others. Not one of those hair-tearing lunatics who can’t function, amiright?
So You're A Couple Going Poly: Some Quick Advice
A friend of mine wrote to me the other day that one of her husband’s buddies had been flirting heavily with him, and she was… kinda okay with the idea. As was he. As was, after some investigation, the buddy.
“So what next?” she asked. And here, in a nutshell, is my advice on what to do when you’re a couple, opening up to poly.
(NOTE: This is written to the female partner of a male-female married couple, because that’s how I wrote the email, but really, the advice applies for all genders and sexualities.)
When you’ve got an untouchable couple at the center of things, I think it’s best to really set expectations as to what you want out of things. After all, your obvious goal is to keep you and your partner intact as a unit. If it comes down to you or her, at this stage, it’s almost certainly going to be you. So why hurt this friend (and your husband!) unnecessarily by being unclear about what’s cool with you?
The problem is, you don’t really know what’s okay yet. You’re not poly yet. Maybe you’ve read some books, but polyamory is like parenting in that you can read every book and still get whomped by unexpected emotions. Right now, you’re theoretically okay with your husband sleeping with some third party, and maybe even falling in love, but hypotheses are not data.
And so you’re going to have that uncomfortable conversation of, “Here’s what I think I’m comfortable with you guys doing, but it might be less than this if it really triggers me, or maybe a lot more if it turns out I’m unexpected awesome.”
You have to talk, really. It’s just not as super-helpful as you’d think, because realistically this is jumping into a pool to see how it feels.
But I’d definitely talk to him, to see what your husband wants. Is it romantic snuggles and candlelight? Single swinging? FWB? Or just the right to explore and find out what the hell it is he wants? Maybe you don’t even need to be poly, you just need to be swingers – which is easier. Less attachments generated.
Then, if that’s cool, probably let him go on a date or two with the buddy. Make it clear that these are no-sex dates (though maybe some smooching is cool, if your husband can restrain himself to your comfort zone). I mean, your husband and his buddy might not hit it off – maybe s/he smells funny – and there’s no sense in generating a Big Important Conversation if this is going to end up in a thanks-but-no-thanks situation.
Yet if all goes well, then, yeah, talk to the buddy with all of you at a sit-down dinner. Say, “Hey, we’re new at this, I’m totally cool with you sexing up my husband, but here are my concerns.”
Now, maybe, yeah, that sort of intense conversation may weird the buddy out. But my take is that if talking to you about what you guys need as a couple weirds them out that they skedaddly, then they really were NOT the right choice for you.
Because that sort of three-way communication is gonna come up. You’re married. And even if you weren’t married, the fact is that your husband’s known you for longer, and (assuming that you’re happily married) would more likely to weight your opinion even if there were no other mitigating factors. It’s an uneven relationship – and sure, that may not be fair, but the buddy needs to know that your emotions are part of this mixture. If that’s a dealbreaker, then it’s only fair to the buddy to give them this opportunity to move on.
(Which isn’t to say that you should use this as an excuse to be a monster – the buddy’s feelings should always be taken into account. If you’re the kind of person who’s going to take all of your insecurities out on the buddy, using them as a flashpoint to blame them for everything that’s currently wrong in your relationship with your husband, then… you probably shouldn’t try poly. Poly’s about getting your needs met, but it’s not about getting all your needs met.)
And then they start dating, and you hunker down for drama. I know you want the no-dramaness, but there’s rarely a time when you open up poly in an established relationship that at least a little drama is not generated. Maybe it’s not big drama, but you only really discover what makes your relationship unique to the two of you when you find someone nibbling at its edges. You’re probably going to find a couple of things that you thought were unique to your husband and you, and whoops, he doesn’t think that. And if you’re typical you’re going to fluctuate between “Wow, how bizarre, I feel no jealousy at all” and “I’m alone now, how sad,” and a newfound appreciation of your husband’s qualities now that other people are appreciating them and “Am I good enough?”
All that’s cool. It happens. And when you do that, you’ll be waist-deep in the poly pool and well on your way.
"This Should Not Be Hard Between Two Sane, Consenting Adults."
I was writing about the difficulties of communication over on FetLife, and I got a sniffy comment that was essentially, “This is not a difficult thing to work out between two sane, mature adults.”
No. It’s not difficult between two sane, consenting adults. It rarely is.
Unfortunately, we’re also rarely entirely sane.
Thing is, sanity is a percentage. We all have weak spots where if you poke us, we melt down. We all have embarrassing hotspots that we reflexively conceal, whether we should or not. You can be perfectly sane about 99% of things, but everyone has some crazy spot that triggers them into overreacting. And everyone has some emotional issue that, when raised, makes them word not so good that communicates are mall workingfail.
And when someone skips across your insane zones – you have them – then you react in bizarre ways, and God forbid your bizarre reactions trample on your partner’s insane zone. If you’re lucky, eventually you deal with it. But that doesn’t make it magically “not hard” to do, especially when your monkey-brain wants to bite their face off for leaving toothpaste on the sink again.
If I only wrote essays aimed at sane, mature adults interacting with other sane, mature adults, the entirety of my output would consist of “Trust your instincts.” But no. I’m writing essays aimed at people who are, say, 86% sane (which is actually a pretty good sanity ratio), and dealing with someone who, up until now, has appeared to been sane 100% of the time (but we both know that’s not true). And we’re asking what happens when either you’re walking into the minefield of your 14% craziness, or are unsure what proportion of crazy your partner has or even where their crazy-zones are.
Of course this issue is not difficult to work out for two sane, consenting adults. No issue is. Might as well say that “Being married is not a difficult thing to work out between two sane, mature adults” or “Raising a child is not a difficult thing to work out between two sane, mature adults,” or any other number of other flabbily unhelpful things, mainly because the definition of “a sane, mature adult” usually lines up darned closely to “someone who never has problems with common issues.”
But as for the rest of us, we’re navigating a list of unspoken assumptions with people we don’t know quite as well as we’d like (which is, actually, everybody we love), trying to see whether the insanity lies within them, or within us, or within both.
And making the blanket assumption that everyone will be as sane as you on this topic tells us that a) this place is somewhere that you are perfectly sane, and b) one of your insanities may lie in the field of empathy.
Numenera Write-Up, Or: My City Of Echoes
As a Numenera GM, I have a love-hate relationship with the game. I love the setting; there’s just not enough of it.
Which is to say that by the time I got to Planescape, there were fifteen sourcebooks detailing the setting, and I did not have to make anything up. Now, I’m not opposed to making things up; hell, “generating worlds” is what I do in my fiction.
But when I’m GMing, I want to play with my characters like Barbie dolls, making them walk through the big Barbie Dream House. I don’t want to make up a town myself; no, I want to fall in love with a town that someone else has made up, and then bring it to life for my PCs! And so Numenera, which currently has no detailed sourcebooks, makes me a sad GM; I have to take the three paragraphs detailing, say, Eldan Firth, and make it all up.
And what if future sourcebooks contradict my ideas? What if some day, Monte and Shanna write the Eldan Firth sourcebook, and it’s not at all what I envisioned? I’m a canon freak, I like playing in other people’s sandboxes, so the idea that they could shatter the concept of what my town is unnerves me. I want to be faithful to Numenera’s setting, not create some home brew!
And yet Numenera is so awesome as a game that I must make things up, or else I cannot play it. And so I present to you, my take on one of the classic Numenera cities:
Shallamas, City Of Echoes. (P. 139 in the sourcebook.)
Shallamas is a city twisted by love of assassination. Those who murder in the dark here are celebrated folk heroes – even the ordinary citizens cheer when a stranger is abducted and never heard from again, for assassins were all that drove those Draolish bastards from their beloved city.
The history is simple: years back, the Draolish made a push from down South and captured Shallamas. They garrisoned the town, filling it with their best guards, as Shallamas was one of Navarene’s most prized trading posts – and having captured it in a hard-won campaign, they were determined to keep a grip on it. The city, which had relied on Queen Armalu’s troops for protection, found itself helpless.
So they did what smaller forces always did: they struck where they could, striking in the dark, chipping away at the edges of the Draolish power. But Shallamas had a unique issue that made it harder on the locals –
– the echoes.
Without warning, residents of Shallamas will see and hear “echoes” of recent events, so accurate a picture of the past that viewing an echo is accepted as evidence in court. Knife a man in a back alley at night, there’s a good chance that three days later your crime may be replayed at noon. And so any criminal activity is extremely dangerous in Shallamar, as the people in power have a decent chance of stumbling across replayed evidence.
The Shallamarians took this as a challenge.
Led by One-Eyed Argrash Provani, the rebellion created a vast set of tunnels and traps underneath the city, to this day proudly called The Murder Holes, where unwitting guards could be tricked, dragged, or abducted. They wore identical hoods to ensure that if they were seen, no one would notice. They struck from places no one would think to look in, so even the murder was replayed, who would be watching the rafters? The Provani used poisons, cyphers, never using the same approach twice, filling the Draolish with fear…
…and eventually, after a celebrated coup known as the Night of the Black Knives that took out three Draolish captains in one night, the Draolish retreated.
Years later, the Provani still rule the town, and assassination is seen as the reason no one else has invaded. Only servants and peasants wear bright clothing, purposely given to them to mark them as targets; those in power wear loose-fitting robes of black and silver, seemingly identical from a distance. (Nobles in Shallamas quickly come to mark distinctions in fabric and weave to see which robes are the most expensive.)
The Provani, a large and loosely-bonded family, pride themselves on their ability to still kill quietly. From a young age, the Provani children are taught that stealing isn’t a crime, getting caught is. A nobleman who can’t climb a rain-slickened wall or sneak past his own servants is considered a fool – though such noblemen often hire younger assassins to look out for them, a tactic that sometimes backfires. The weakest of the Provani are assigned to bureaucratic positions, the lowest level of which are the tax collectors; it’s considered a deep shame to have to walk into someone’s house and take money by force.
The Provani are clannish but bored. They’ve shredded the power of all the competing families, and so have begun to play elaborate power games among themselves. The prosperity of the town is working against them, as the quiet peace leaves a family of killers little to do, and so the Provani are beginning to fragment as infighting and boredom take their toll. Only the constant machinations of the current head of the family, Argust Provani, keeps the Provani in line, earning him the name Lord of Intrigues.
As for the people of Shallamas, they harbor the deep suspicion that if an assassin has killed someone, then that person must have deserved it. They’re still horrified by death – the ideal is someone who vanishes without a trace, never being seen again. (Clever merchants have discovered that if they can slip out of town unnoticed, they can often abandon some great debts under the pretense of being “assassinated,” so long as they commit to never returning to Shallamas.) Finding a body in the street has a double horror for the people of Shallamas – at seeing a friend killed, and knowing that they were killed clumsily, doubtlessly by some outsider ruffian.
As such, Argust Provani uses his Shadowlings (secretly family members who he trusts) to stamp out “crime” – which is defined loosely as “Anything that interferes with the goals of the Provani family.” The Provani, despite their infighting, want the town to prosper through merchant trade, and so merchants find it to be a very safe space. Anyone who steals from a merchant is likely to find a short and violent retribution awaiting them. Unless they steal in a surpassingly clever way, in which case the thief might find a highly-placed Provani willing to bring them in as a new “cousin.”
There are four marketplaces in Shallamas – one at each of the three Great Gates that allow entrance to the city, and one in the center. Visitors note that the walls of Shallamas appear to be stone from a distance, but up close are made of some granular material that shifts slightly when no one is looking, and seems to expand and contract slightly as the day goes on.
The three marketplaces at the gates are split up by what merchandise they sell. There’s Devour, where all the foodstuffs are sold – a mucky market filled with blood from the slaughterhouses. There’s The Bleed, where weapons, armor, and training are sold. And then there’s the Turned Eye, the fashion district.
All three gates are guarded by an affable man called Tryp, a man who used to Exist Partially Out of Phase before a cypher accident caused him to split into three equidistant blurs. Now he exists in three places; as you talk to him at the Devour gate, he’ll often pause and mutter an aside to thin air as he answers a question posed to him at the Turned Eye gate. Tryp can no longer be touched or interact with the physical world, a fact he laments, but a squadron of guards at each gate serves him loyally and without question.
The real jewel of Shallamas is The Culvert, the central market surrounding the Provani palace where “all the interesting things wash up.” That’s where merchants ply the most intriguing wares – almost any numenera can be found here, if you look long enough. Getting a slot in The Culvert is a highly political thing; many a provider of exotic armor or bizarre foodstuffs has petitioned the Provanis to be put in The Culvert, only to be stuck in the Turned Eye or the Bleed. In particular, there is a decanted merchant named Liquil who sells exotic animals, condemned to work in the slaughterhouse of the Devour even though he’d be horrified if anyone ate his singing pigs or the brown-winged wagonhauler.
The Culvert bumps up against the batwing-shaped curve of Inviola, the large and mazelike warren-castle that the Provani inhabit. Made of an unknown black material that makes an unnerving chiming noise whenever rain falls on it, it’s rumored the Inviola was here when Shallamas was created, and the town elders built around it. What is known is that the warrens seem distinctly unfit for human habitation, with some hallways small enough that even tiny men must crouch, opening up into huge cavernous rooms with alcoves that could not be possibly reached unless you flew or were pulled up.
Some claim the Inviola is the source of Shallamar’s infamous Echoes. Others claim that’s ridiculous, if that’s the case then why don’t the Provani simply turn them off? And a third faction claims that the Provani know what would happen if they shut down the Echoes, and the ramifications were too terrible for them to consider.