I Hate It When People Recommend Music To Me

So I’ve gotten into one of my I LOVE NEW MUSIC rampages, which I do about every six to eight months – these temporary quests where I comb Spotify for all the hot tracks that I will be playing on repeat for the next few years.

But I hate it when people recommend music to me. You know why?

Because most people don’t actually recommend music.

See, I think “recommending” has an element of “I know you well enough to think you’ll like this” embedded in it – I’m not recommending a Clive Barker horror story to an eight-year-old, nor a sweet romance story to someone who only likes Clive Barker horror stories.

Yet whenever I’ve said, “Hey, I like this music, it’s kinda nu-metal with an edge of rap to it” people just blare out whatever they like regardless of whether it’s even close – “HAVE YOU HEARD THIS ACOUSTIC COVER OF A 1940s JAZZ SONG?!?!?”

It’s alienating. It’s like I’m not even there – that I’m just a mirror to shout enthusiasm into.

Now, of course that’s different from someone celebrating their own musical tastes – “I’m bopping to this new K-Pop tune” is both awesome and encouraged. But me opening up the door for “I like this stuff, what else is like this?” usually gets met with a bellow of “IT’S NOT LIKE THAT BUT I LIKE THIS SO FUCK YOUR PREFERENCES HERE’S MINE”

To which I’m like, “…do you sell people on bands with that approach?” It’s the ol’ “Construction workers whistling at hot ladies” trick in that I’ve never seen it work myself, but I assume it must succeed sometime… that, or it’s kind of terrifying how many people are doing it with so many shitty results.

But you! You I trust. Maybe.

Because so many people have asked, “What are you listening to, Ferrett?”, I compiled a Spotify list of my current favorite tunes.

What’s there is mostly pop and hard rock, but there’s some weird edges thrown in there because I am super-eclectic with tastes ranging from They Might Be Giants to deep Zappa to Home Free, and by Lord am I not expecting anyone to follow me down my path.

BUT. If you listen to a song there and go, “This artist has a lot in common with the vibes there,” then hit me up. I don’t really hate genuine recommendations. I’m just… burnt by the number of folks who blast their own radio in through my car window.

Anyway! A bunch of possibly new music for you! Go and look! (And friend me on Spotify if you like, for whatever that means. I don’t know what the benefits are, but some folks like it.)

You’re Not Demanding Things Of The Person, You’re Demanding Them Of The Relationship

I said this yesterday:

“Remember: There’s a ton of ways to do polyamory. It’s not wrong to demand what you want out of a relationships; it is wrong to demand that any relationships that don’t do that are somehow flawed.”

To which some folks asked, “Demand? Is it healthy to have a relationship where people are demanding things?”

My reply is that it’s unhealthier to have a relationship where people don’t demand things.

You are, whether you want to use the word “demand” or not, quietly demanding things in your relationships – baseline expectations that you probably don’t even think about, because they’re so non-negotiable you couldn’t consider a relationship without it.

“I demand that my partner doesn’t hurt me nonconsensually” is a big one for a lot of people, as is “I demand they only have sex with people of a legal age.” But even excluding those unthinkables – and you shouldn’t – there’s plenty of other baseline demands like “I demand they treat my job with respect” and “I demand they stay faithful in the ways I define fidelity.”

“But those aren’t demands, Ferrett….”

Really? Are they negotiable for you? Will you look at someone seriously threatening to cut your throat with a knife if you ever go out in that outfit again and go, “Well, maybe if they brandished a paring knife?”

No, there’s certain lines people can’t cross with you, or they don’t get to stay in your life in this way. That’s extremely healthy behavior.

That’s a demand.

The trick is that your baseline needs are not necessarily a demand of the person. There are certainly dysfunctional relationships where people find folks who are utterly not what they need in life and try to warp them to fit, like banging a piece of tin to wrap around an anvil. And that’s a terrible idea.

It’s true that good relationships are built on negotiations.

But good negotiations come from knowing when it’s time to walk away from the table.

As such, it’s good to think about your non-negotiables – and they don’t all have to be life-threatening. These are the things that will absolutely break you if you try to bend the rules on ’em, and they can be both extremely specific and seemingly trivial to other people.

For example, if someone I live with is out late, they have to call to tell me when they’ll be back, or else with each passing hour I can’t stop imagining that they’re dead in a ditch somewhere. I don’t care where they are, I just need to know they’re safe now and when I need to start up my worry-clock again – I panic, and all that panic vanishes the minute they text me “I’m at a party, it’s great, I’ll be back before 4:00 am.”

(Just kidding. My wife and I are elderly. We don’t go out to parties any more.)

But the trick with that is that I’m not necessarily demanding the person I’m living with has to change! (Though it’d be nice.) I’m saying, “This is a thing I require to be in a relationship where we live together, and if you can’t do that, then we can’t be in that type of relationship.”

That relationship can shift! I don’t worry about the people I’m not living with, so maybe that person moves out… or I do.

Likewise, if someone in an intense romantic relationship can’t provide your required level of intimacy or fidelity, maybe you downshift the relationship to FWB or even just F. Maybe your mom won’t stop tromping on your boundaries, so you shift that from “Weekly conversations” to “Monthly texts.”

If the person can change, great! But the demand is on the relationship, not the person.

Which is scary, because in romance, those demands can mean “We can’t date” and no one wants a breakup; it’s easier to try to browbeat someone into changing. And again, if they’re amenable, fine, but often altering a person to suit your needs is an act of harm.

And also… make super-sure that these demands are actually non-negotiable, and not just things you really like having. Would you actually leave if that happened, or would you just gripe a lot? It’s fine to say “My partner and I have to have sex every day,” but if everything else is wonderful and you’re only having (very hot) sex two to three times a week, is that a “demand” so much as “my ideal”?

Ideals are different than demands. Demands are what you need because you will break in fundamental ways without them. Ideals are what you’d want in a vacuum, but it turns out when you balance them out among all the other good qualities a relationship provides, you can kinda slack on one individual point when the rest is eminently satisfying.

And yeah, sometimes demands turn out to be ideals, and vice-versa! I never said this was easy. Learning how you function with other people is a constant process, not an event you graduate from.

Finally, maybe you don’t like the term “demand.” Fine, I don’t care what you call it – a necessity, a dealbreaker, the core stuff. But if you’re healthy, you do have ’em. And learning what those non-negotiable aspects of your relationships are makes you both wiser and more able to change relationships when they become unhealthy for you.

And if you’re angry that someone might require something of you to remain in a relationship with you, well, that might be a sign that there are certain relationships people shouldn’t get into with you. Good people understand that other people have boundaries for a reason. (Great people support and expand other people’s safe boundaries.)

My Latest Podcast Is Out, My Latest Newsletter Is Out, I’m Out All Over

1) My newest “And We Will Plunder Their Prose” podcast is out! How did Seanan McGuire write a very passive character in a very dynamic way? Find out!

2) My latest newsletter is out! This one’s called “Can You Control Whether You’re A Bestselling Author?, a.k.a. ‘Sins Of The Publishing Industry.'” And if you’re just starting out writing, there is some vital advice for you in there.

(Oh, and don’t forget that you can, y’know, subscribe to the newsletter.)

3) Don’t forget that I still have my Board of Happiness ™ that you can contribute to, if you have something that fits in an envelope! (Just send me an email, I’ll shoot you the address.) Here’s this week’s decoration, and it is indeed loading itself down with flair:

Why I Don’t Like Playing Dungeons And Dragons Any More (But Love Other RPGs)

I recently joined a Discord devoted to homebrew RPG mechanics, and I realize the more people talk about hacking D&D, the less interest I have in playing D&D ever again. And here’s why:

1) I Know All The Stereotypes.
Part of the appeal for new players is what makes me weary – I’ve seen the bearded dwarf, the archer elf, the whacky kender a billion times, and my thirst for novelty makes it hard to get excited about playing with the pixie faerie rogue who steals everything that’s nailed down again.

Which isn’t to say that you can’t play unique characters in D&D – folks certainly have! But the class-and-race structure of D&D draws people towards certain well-worn archetypes, and while it’s certainly possible to play a half-orc paladin struggling against his inner bloodlust, in practice most groups are gonna have another Drizzt Do’Urden clone shuffling up to the table just because unless everyone’s committed to wild novelty, the game encourages players to trod down those dusty roads.

There’s nothing wrong with it if you enjoy that! But for me, I’ve played so many sessions with the furious barbarian that those sessions feel like reruns.

2) D&D’s Broken After About 8th Level.
Because D&D has precisely one form of common damage, the hit point, at some point higher levels degenerate into “Save or die” scenarios where the amount of damage has to be threatening, but will absolutely kill the squishier characters. So the game becomes filled with literal GM dodges where they struggle to keep characters alive.

D&D has a serious sweet spot issue, where playing PCs of around 3rd-8th level are the most satisfying, and after that they either die or they run into D&D’s other issue…

3) D&D Is A Ramp To Godhood.
It’s not like other systems (and videogames!) don’t do this too, but D&D is so based on “You fight, you get stronger” that you encounter pushback if you give the hero a permanent injury or take away a magic item without giving them a better one.

I like games that have consequences to bad decisions, and they’re hard to engineer in D&D without player resistance – there’s great stories like Jaime Lannister losing his hand and having to find some other way to be relevant.

But in D&D, unless you’re constantly levelling you’re dying – and while, again, you can tell those stories if you’ve got a committed band of players who are genuinely protective of their NPCs, in most cases the mechanics and the player expectations make it feel like punishment.

And to repeat: Nothing wrong with a good ol’ slog towards 20th level. But I like to think about character level, and it’s hard to engineer serious setbacks when any mechanical setbacks are against the system’s grain.

4) Combat Is Character-Free.
We’re playing a Blades in the Dark campaign, and the fighting is always character-based because of the way the system (and our excellent DM Jim) keeps throwing specific drawbacks at us – one character fighting the impending insurrection of his troops, another character’s wasting away due to his usage of magic.

And in D&D, it always seems like character should matter… but then the swords come out, and the system encourages people to turn into these statistics-based machines of death. It’s very much about accounting, position, the right bonuses, the right spells – and there’s so much of that that it often overwhelms the heroism moments.

And for the third time, again, sure, a group can battle past that to concentrate on the emotions! But a friend of mine likened it to a car that pulled hard to one side; he could never take his hand off the wheel and enjoy the ride if he wanted to encourage the kids he was DMing for to do any sort of narrative gaming.

D&D’s not bad; I’m glad it has a place in the industry. But while any TTRPG can be a place for high emotion, depending on the players (hell, there’s probably a heartbreakingly epic saga told in TOON somewhere), D&D’s mechanics – and, more importantly, what most people expect when they start a D&D game – tend to create an environment I’m not all that into.

If you’re into it, swell! But I’ve got the Dungeon World-style bug, the Unknown Armies itch, that Delta Green dependency. And so I leave you to your enjoyment…

And if you’re not enjoying it, well, maybe think about jumping ship to those other games?

My Board Of Happiness ™ Awaits Your Contribution!

1) My Board of Happiness ™ is evolving as people have sent me little pins and I’ve purchased my own decorations. If you’d like to contribute to my Board of Happiness ™, just email me.

2) I have a new essay up on Tor.com asking the question, “Is there such a thing as a necessary prequel?” I’m quite proud of the way this article takes cheap shots at Tom Bombadil’s slam poetry, so go check it out.

3) I mentioned it before in a status update, but my new podcast …And We Will Plunder Their Prose is now listed on Apple podcasts like many of you asked. This will be coming out every other week, so the next one won’t be until next Wednesday, but it’s listed in more places!