Category: The Ramble (page 164 of 463)

Okay, so, let’s just get this out of the way — Necrotech is a fucking blast. (If you’re a fan of my Miriam Black books, I posit you might like the hard-heeled throat-kick that this book provides. It’s edgy, don’t-give-a-shit fiction, which is probably my favorite non-genre genre.) Anyway, K.C. Alexander, who is a delight, is here to flip the script on you.

* * *

So, NECROTECH is out. Awesome. I’m pretty well excited for this one. Granted, it helps that it’s been three years in the making, and a lifetime in the learning, so I think my patience is as stretched as it’s going to get. It’s already snapped once.

But then, that snap heard ‘round my world is probably the reason I find myself in the position that I am: with a new agent, in a new genre, writing under a new name, divorced, in the studio apartment of my dreams (well, almost, needs more Hawaii), and working with a publisher who gives two flying douchenuggets and a bleached shitstain whether or not I’m “aggressive.”

You see, being aggressive is a compliment when you’re a guy. Writing a balls-out, kick-ass female character with little interest in redemption, a mouth foul enough to make a sailor flinch, and a propensity for blood and death is a bonus when you’re a man—or have the right sort of public manly support.

But when you’re female-presenting? Being “aggressive” is the same as being a bitch. Now you and I both know that bitches get shit done, but you know what they also do? Piss off fragile egos. Primarily male, but there’s plenty of room in the Big Book of People Aggressive Women Piss Off for a wide array of samples. Women are expected to be nice. Period.

One of the first compliments I received on NECROTECH was for Riko: “She reminds me of a cyberpunk Miriam Black.” Yaaaaassssssss. Given I’d set out to write an unapologetic thug of a woman with all the sexual and behavioral agency of a man, I took that as an immensely on point compliment. Riko is not a woman who cares what you think about her—so long as she’s got your attention. Love her, hate her, fuck her, fight her; as long as it’s her, she’s good.

Redemption is a word that belongs on a tattoo. Probably with, like, bloody hearts or roses or something.

With this wholehearted, bleeding wreck of a badass woman in hand, I sent my manuscript out to publishers. I did so under my previous author name—an obviously female romance author, a steampunk urban fantasy author, often accused in both of not having enough romance in my works. Or being too hard. Or too gritty. An easy transition, I figured.

So off the book went, after revisions my agent at the time asked for (revisions I’d realize much later felt like selling out to me). It wasn’t sent to romance lines—save one or two, who were dabbling in more SF/F at the time. But it was, as it turned out, sent to editors who were not ready to deal with… well, me.

The responses I’m about to list out are real, but paraphrased because, you know, I’m not trying to be an ass. Just reporting the rejections I had to wade through.

“There’s too much romance in this book.” This one makes me laugh. Once you read Necrotech, you will absolutely understand why, but for those of you may not want to, here’s the short version: Riko gets less onscreen ass than most male SF/F heroes whose goal is to “save the girl,” but she has all the sexual agency of any man ever. She likes people. Sex is a thing. So she comments on it. Blatantly. That’s romance, now? …Has anybody warned the SF/F writers with sexual material in their books?

Otherwise, all I’m left to consider is that my name, linked to past romance books, told them I’d sneak romance in—somehow magically under all the words on the pages they were (or were not) reading?

“I don’t know what Karina’s intentions are, but this is absolutely the wrong direction for her to take.” This one pissed me off. Can you guess why? Another short version: because an editor decided that my leaving romance, my writing “like a man,” was the wrong decision. That because I was a) a woman, b) a romance author, or c) me, that I could not be encouraged to take a path—that anecdotally, historically, statistically is reserved for men.

“It’s just too hard and unrelenting for the direction of this line.” Fine, fine, that’s absolutely fair enough! … Of course, the other editor then signed an equally as hard, if not harder and more unrelenting, author a few weeks later. We could chalk this up to “that’s the biz, yo.” I mean, luck and who you pitch to and all that is so very much a thing. And maybe it was exactly that. But it was also shitty timing.

I’d also like to note that most of the rejections came in with praise—brilliant pacing, very well written, the character just leaps off the page. But…

Too hard. Too aggressive. Too much romance. Too much focus on physical description. (Given this is an incredibly diverse cast of characters, that’s a whole other post on a whole other day—I don’t have the spoons right now to unpack that one. Subtext is a bastard.)

Two years ago, when I got my last rejection decrying my efforts to write a bold, badass woman in the vein of what I dare to call “man-SF/F” firmly tongue in cheek, I shelved the book and returned to writing what everyone said I did best—woman books, romance books, redemption books, hero books. Safely ensconced in the genre that the industry had decided I belonged.

And then something changed.

One day, I cracked open Riko again. I stripped out all the edits that pulled her punches, removed all the requested softening that made her “likable”. I sharpened her edges and bloodied her wake and as I lifted layers and layers of “be nice” and “be likable” and “be considerate and respectful and submissive,” I realized how much of that bullshit I’d internalized. How much of the gendered expectations of women authors in any genre are encouraged to absorb. “Be glamorous, ask instead of declaring, soften your questions, pitch your voice high, defer to industry standards that have been around for a hundred years.”

Never let them see you struggle.

My life has been a struggle since the moment I was born. My marriage was a struggle. My career a struggle. My finances are a struggle, my depression is a struggle, my desire to stop kissing ass and start kicking it is a struggle that feels like it never ends. The gendered expectations around me are a struggle.

Sometime over the next year, I scrubbed Riko free of the stain of those expectations and as I did, I scrubbed them off me, too.

It was hard fucking work.

The first thing I had to lose was my name. My name, you see, is incredibly feminine—so feminine that I have never really liked it (sorry, mom and dad). When you see the name “Karina,” you cannot help but thing “girl.” Girl. (Or Karina Smirnoff, and rowrrrrr, but definitely womanly.) Karina is a girl’s name. It’s a romance author’s name. It’s the name of a girl who grew up internalizing the expectations levied upon a girl, a woman, a female author, a romance author.

It declared loudly on the cover, “This sci-fi was written by a girl!”

Not that anyone pays attention to the gender of the name on a book, amirite? That’s okay. I just made it easy to ignore entirely. That’s why I chose the name I did. It’s me and not me but it’s way more me than Karina Cooper was allowed to be.

My perseverance landed a new agent who will swing hard and fight smart for me and my work, who is patient and supportive and doesn’t expect anything of me but what I want to write. I landed a publisher who read Necrotech and immediately loved her aggression, her swagger, and my words. “Go harder,” they said. “Go edgy and bloody and raw.”

Somewhere between that last rejection and this book launch, three years in the making, I stopped sitting down when told to. I started to stray from my lane—and when I realized how much hate I got for doing it, I also realized people do not like it when a woman is anything other but what a woman should be.

Well, I am a pansexual nonbinary fierce motherfucker and I will write what I know. Keep up.

As Necrotech launches, I’m daring you—yes, you—to read Riko’s story without any gendered expectations at all. To get to know Riko from page one and take her as she is. To love her, hate her, want to fuck her, want to fight her; whatever it is she makes you feel, I dare you to feel it without mentally adding “like a man” or “like a woman.”

And then when you deal with me, online or in person, I dare you to do the same. You can call me Kace when you do.

* * *

K.C. Alexander is the author of Necrotech, an aggressive transhumanist sci-fi with attitude. She has contributed SF/F stories to Geeky Giving and Fireside Fiction, obsesses over art journals and washi tape, and will not tolerate your shit. Visit at kcalexander.com.

Necrotech: Amazon | B&N | Powells | Indiebound

I met Mike back in the Summer of ’69 — wait, no, that’s not it. I forget when it was. Secret Beard Convention? Beer Heist, 2014? Whatever. Point is, he’s got a new (and damn good) book out, and with that, he’s got some words of advice for you whippersnapper writer upstarts out there.

* * *

I was about 10 years too old for The Magic School Bus when it first came out, but having a kid will bring you full-circle on stuff like that, so I’m now quite familiar with that hapless band of elementary school students hijacked by a demented science teacher who obviously used Satanic magic to force a demon to possess a vehicle and then utterly endanger her charges via horrific tortures designed to “educate” them about science….

Er. No, wait.

The Magic School Bus is cool! Embark on adventures inside a polymorphic bus that sends you into someone’s intestines or to the furthest reaches of the galaxy, and still be back in time for recess! My science retention would’ve gone through the roof that way. As it stands, the only thing I remember about science from grades K-12 is dissecting a rat (gross) and spilling water all over myself and my lab partner as we tried to learn how to use the gear in chemistry class. (“If that were acid, you’d both be in the hospital,” my teacher said as he passed by us. We nearly died of laughter.)

Anyway, if you were gonna point to the single most important lesson from The Magic School Bus, it would be the catchphrase from the teacher, Miss Frizzle: “Take chances! Make mistakes! Get messy!”

Words to live by, y’all.

I took a chance five years ago by submitting a novel to agents. It worked. My Daedalus trilogy of Napoleonic Era space opera mash-up shenanigans did pretty well despite nobody really knowing where to stick it on the shelves. (Is it space opera? Steampunk? There’s no steam, but it’s old-timey!) Fans actually sought me out at cons. I got to hang with some pretty amazing people. It was a whole new world. (Cue the song. Yeah, it’s a different cartoon. Whatever.)

So now what? The Known Worlds universe of that trilogy is huge and theoretically infinite. I could’ve done more. Maybe I will later on. But that felt like the safe play. Meanwhile, I’d been doing some short fiction that was scratching my itch to try other things — I did a Pathfinder Web serial, a Cthulhu Mythos story for a Lovecraft anthology and a strange humor story about art, feces and fraud that landed in another anthology. I donated a hard SF story to charity, and have another short coming out in a Vampire: The Masquerade anthology that makes my proto-goth college-self happy…or at least less tragically morose.

And now, this week, I have a new novel out. It’s not space opera, or Napoleonic. It’s not any of the other stuff I just mentioned either. It’s a Cold War spy thriller…with superpowers. And Area 51.

Why? Because just as I read a lot of Lovecraft, and just as I played D&D and Vampire back in the day, I also loved the classic Tom Clancy thrillers, too. Heck, I even applied to CIA once, and got invited to the informational session (whereupon I decided that a newlywed who wanted to have kids would not, in fact, be well served by haring off on such a journey in a post-9/11 world). I write about the stuff that interests me. This interested me.

Is it, strictly speaking, a logical career move? I have no idea and really don’t care a whole heap. I’m fortunate enough to have opportunities to explore, and I jump on the opportunities that appeal to me at the time. I wanted to write something dark and morally gray and nuanced, about real people in the 1940s who are suddenly imbued with strange abilities. I wanted to explore how the government would treat, and ultimately use, these poor souls in an era where paranoia was considered a virtue against the godless Red barbarians at the gates threatening to destroy our way of life. (Yeah, there’s no parallels there. None at all.)

I want to write the stuff that does heart and soul good. And right now, that’s the MAJESTIC-12 series. I think MJ-12: Inception is a nifty book, and there are enough blurbs on the cover to make me think others see it that way as well. But we’ll see. It’s different and I’m taking a chance on it and let’s ride this horse for a while and see what happens.

Of course, I have…three? Four?…ideas right now for stand-alone novels. I’m gonna get to them eventually, current contract and day-job permitting. (And family. Priorities, man.) These novels are all utterly different from both paranormal Cold War spy thrillers and Napoleonic Era space opera. One may involve a chef. (No, really.) But I’m gonna get to them and write them and throw them out there into the void and see if there’s an echo that replies back.

Look, if there’s room on bookstore shelves for my books, which smash together genres like a toddler with building blocks, then there’s room on shelves for whatever you got going. Don’t worry about the ephemeral vicissitudes of “the market,” or fret over what’s trending with agents and publishers right now.

Write the story that screams to get out of you. Take chances. Make mistakes. Get messy. Don’t be like Arnold on The Magic School Bus, the kid who always said, “I knew I should’ve stayed home today.”

Nobody liked goddamn Arnold. He should’ve stayed home. Don’t be Arnold.

***

Bio: Michael J. Martinez writes all kinds of things for a living, from PowerPoints to pastiches, and is only occasionally alliterative. He lives in the greater New York City area with a fantastic wife and wonderful daughter, along with two cats and three chickens. They’re Jersey chickens, which means they have attitude.

Michael J. Martinez: Website | Twitter | Untappd

MJ-12: Inception: Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Kobo | Goodreads

The English language is a machine made by mad engineers using whatever spare parts they had at hand. The whole kit and kaboodle was not designed intelligently from the ground up — it was cobbled together over many years, MacGuyvered as new widgets are smashed indelicately into open slots, as a fan belt is replaced by the elastic in old underwear, as words are thrown into a meat grinder to lubricate the whirring gears. Because of this, English as a language is constantly evolving — and in some cases devolving. It defies easy categorization. Every rule is buried beneath a teetering Jenga tower of exceptions. For every DO THIS or DON’T DO THAT, there exist countless opposing examples illustrating glorious violations.

Of course, though, this leads some young writers to think they can just make shit up as they go, even though the reality is that they still need to learn the rules. As I am fond of saying:

We learn the rules in order to break them, and we break them in order to learn why we needed those rules in the first place.

That brings us to this bit that’s been winging around Author Social Media:

(That is from a book called The Elements of Eloquence, by the way.)

I like it because it speaks to some of the unspoken, unstated patterns in language.

It’s also not entirely true.

It’s true-ish. In that it feels true, and it’s true some of the time.

(Never mind the fact that a green great dragon would be just fine, as long as we’re talking about cumulative adjectives instead of coordinate ones.)

Consider instead that the list of adjectives is subject in part to preconceived but unspoken patterns (“little old lady” is a common phrase, for instance) but also subject in part to rhythm — to the way a sentence sounds, to the way words work when spoken next to each other in a given order. Words on the page are a proxy, a middle-man. Words spoken aloud are the real deal — we form these complicated grunts and bleats and bugles in other to identify THAT THING or THIS OTHER THING or DON’T EAT THAT, IT WILL MAKE YOU SHIT UNTIL YOU DIE. The words on the page are a proxy for the spoken tongue. We do not necessarily read the words on a page aloud, but our brain still does a little trick where it translates them mostly as something we hear with our ears, not just with our mind. As such, the sound of the arrangement of words matters, even when it’s written on the page and not bugle-bleated directly into our ears.

We cleave more to the rhythm, the sound, than we do to this above pattern.

If you limit the list, restricting it to only a couple of the aforementioned adjectives, you can play with the order and see how things sound differently — and in some cases, better, when they vary from what’s noted. The book notes that shape precedes color, which would be a “rectangular, green knife.” (And yes, I’m putting commas in here because we are talking coordinate adjectives. And the list misses that a bit, because “whittling knife” is a singular object, the adjective cumulative to the noun.) But I’d argue that “green, rectangular knife” sounds — and looks — better. (By the way, what is a rectangular knife?)

Would I say “raw, red wound,” or would I say “red, raw wound?” Both sound fine to my ear. (Would “raw” be considered opinion, or material?)

Consider the issue of size — “a lovely, little knife” works fine, as per the rules. ([Opinion, size noun].) But change “little” to “large” and the rhythm changes — I no longer like “lovely, large knife,” and favor a switch up to “a large, lovely knife.” ([Size, opinion noun].) Consider that “little old lady” is, as discussed, a common phrase. But consider the phrase, “young, dumb idiot,” which to me sounds better despite it breaking the pattern.

The pattern noted is generally accurate, but it’s not written in stone, and it varies quite considerably under real world use. (I understand however that this pattern noted above is actually being taught officially in some places? Um.) Rules are rules in writing until they’re “rules,” until they flex and shift and shimmer and become something else. They’re “rules,” wink wink, nudge nudge, which is to say they change shape and become insubstantial when we need them to. And sometimes things we think are rules (“don’t use adverbs, don’t start a story with weather, don’t name a character Spaetzlenuts Amberjack Filigree, the 3rd”) are really just cultural ideas someone got a hold of and people parroted because we need a lifeboat in this formless, watery, white chaos.

At the end of the day a rule fails and falls apart when either function or style eliminate the value of the rule in the first place. Or, as the saying goes, no battle plan survives contact with the enemy. It’s good to know the rules. It’s also good to know when — and why — the rules stop working, or at least, when they stop mattering. We don’t break the laws because we love anarchy. We break them because it is the right thing to do at the time we do it. And because we jolly well fucking want to, goddamnit.

Even if it makes us sound like maniacs.

* * *

INVASIVE:

“Think Thomas Harris’ Will Graham and Clarice Starling rolled into one and pitched on the knife’s edge of a scenario that makes Jurassic Park look like a carnival ride. Another rip-roaring, deeply paranoid thriller about the reasons to fear the future.” — Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

Out now where books are sold.

Indiebound

Amazon

B&N

Click this link:

Who The Fuck Is My D&D Character?

It’s amazing.

In a short amount of time I got:

PARANOID TIEFLING RANGER FROM THE RUINED SEA WHO REALLY KNOWS HOW TO PARTY

and

MOROSE DWARF ROGUE FROM A SMALL TOWN WIZARDING SCHOOL WHO LOVED, LOST AND NEVER LOVED AGAIN

and

FLAMBOYANT ELF DRUID FROM THE FREELANDS WHO IS QUICK TO TAKE CREDIT AND ASSIGN BLAME

and it’s really just a delight.

So, you’re going to use this for your fiction.

Now, the question is, does this set you up only for writing fantasy?

On the surface, sure, though realistically, you’re free to tweak this to whatever genre you feel is appropriate. (Or maybe it’s a story about playing a *game* of D&D. Certainly D&D is having a lovely moment in both celebrity culture and from Stranger Things.) You can make this as flexible as you need it to be — it’s just a starting point, not a RIGOROUS EXERCISE WHOSE RULES ARE IRONCLAD.

Length: ~1000 words

Due by: Friday, 9/9, noon EST

Post at your online space. Drop a link to it in the comments below.

Elsa S. Henry returns to terribleminds (when last we saw her, she wrote the vital “So, You Wanna Write A Blind Character?” — she’s now going to teach a class on the subject of representing disability in fiction. Would you like to hear more? You should.

* * *

Six years ago in graduate school was when I realized that my identity as a disabled person mattered, whether I wanted it to or not. There’s something really scary about sitting in a room with a bunch of your peers, and suddenly realizing that they’ve made assumptions about whether or not you can have children all because you’re deaf and blind.

Six years ago was when I transformed from a person with a disability to a disabled person. For me, that shift meant that I stopped distancing myself from the body I was born in, and gave voice to a whole list of frustrations I’d been telling myself didn’t matter.

I’d been telling myself for my whole life that my disabilities didn’t shape me, or my life. That people didn’t give a fuck whether or not I could see – but the truth was, they did, and they still do.

Which is why I started speaking out about why representation matters. It doesn’t just matter because my feelings get hurt, it matters because the world around me judges me based on what they see about disabled people out there in the media.

When George Takei posts a meme joking about how a wheelchair user stood up and could reach for alcohol because that was “a miracle,” that reinforces that wheelchairs are only for people who can never stand up. (Link: http://rampyourvoice.com/2014/08/19/the-george-takei-disabled-meme-controversy-the-offense-response-public-apology/)

When Daredevil throws his cane away in an alley, it reinforces the fact that people with disabilities are faking.

When I flinch because someone grabs my arm and asks me if I need help while they’re moving me in the opposite direction from my goal- well, they learned that because the media tells them that blind people always need their help.

Representation fucking matters.

I’m the kind of person who wants to fix things, so when i realized that I had the skills to fix some of the problems that I see out there, I started writing. I started speaking. I started pitching books and articles, and asking people to listen to me.

And not everyone was happy about it.

I’ve gotten threats through email and harassment on twitter, all because I’m just saying we should have better representation of blind people. Just because I don’t think it’s useful to only represent tropes of disability as the only disability representations out there.

So now I’m teaching.

A few months back I went on a bit of a rage spiral about how an able bodied person was teaching a class about how to write disabled characters. I basically threw down the gauntlet, and I said I wanted to teach. And boy, I should always think about what I put out into the universe because I got plenty of teaching offers. Including the one coming up next month.

I’m teaching a Master Class on deaf and blind characters for Writing the Other.

You should come. It’ll be great.

It’ll be great because I’m deeply invested in changing the way that people write about disabled characters, the way that we develop a fictional world matters. Because science fiction and speculative fiction aren’t just reflections of the world we already live in, they’re reflections of the world we want to build, the place we want to claim as our own in the future. If we keep writing stories and futures where we don’t include disabled people, then disabled people will continue to be invisible, until someone decides we don’t exist anymore.

Dystopian futures don’t include us, even though our stories would be fascinating to tell. Cyberpunk futures erase our bodies, claiming that to be augmented is better than anythng. Erasing disability from your future doesn’t just suggest that we won’t matter in the future, it suggests that we won’t exist.

I don’t want to live in a world where I have no claim to my body, or to the identities which have shaped me.

My disabled identity only came to me six years ago, but now that it is a part of me, I know I could never give it up without a fight.

Claiming crip (Link: http://www.rootedinrights.org/claiming-crip-to-reclaim-identity/)  gave me more than just an identity that meshed with my experience of the world – a place where I have been denied opportunities on the basis of my disability, a world where I have literally been blamed for the bad things that have happened to me because I am blind. Claiming crip gave me a place where others would lift me up for being who I am, and for inhabiting the body that I have.

When I teach Writing the Other, I’ll be giving able bodied writers a glimpse into the world of disability, a chance to understand what it means to make choices based on the body you own, not just the one you might rent in a cyberpunk future.

I promise I don’t bite. But I do want to give you an education. One that’ll change the way you look at disability, from heroes to people. From overcoming narratives to living. From wheelchair bound, to valuing the chair as an equalizer.

So join me on September 10th.

* * *

Elsa Sjunneson-Henry is a half-blind, half-deaf, half-Scandinavian writer who haunts New Jersey. She’s worked on tabetop RPG books, been in fiction anthologies (check out Ghost in the Cogs from Broken Eye Books), and has written a number of nonfiction articles about disability. You can find those floating around on the internet. She can be found on twitter @snarkbat and at feministsonar.com. When she’s not frantically scribbling, she can be found singing Hamilton lyrics to her hound dog.

Elsa Henry: Website | Writing The Other

Gather around, those who identify as menly mens.

We need to have a talk.

A number of of you are doing some things very badly. You’ve gone awry, you poor fools.

(And already I know there’s some suppurating human blister out there about to hop on social media and call me Cuck Wendig, but trust me, if “cuck” is your go-to-insult of choice, we all know you’re a greasy, blubbering shit-baby who still lives with his parents.)

Let’s highlight some areas of improvement, gents. Because you’re getting to be a problem.

What Did You Do To The Restroom, You Animal

Merciful Jesus, what the fuck did you do to that public restroom?

I go into the rooms where men are supposed to take out the biological garbage, and fucking god how are we fucking this up? There is piss everywhere. How is that happening? Are you whizzing into the Dyson Airblade with the hopes of misting the entire room with your urine? At each urinal, there is a small pond — nay, a lake — of pee underneath. I go to the airport restroom with the express purpose of sterilizing my suitcase’s caster wheels in the collective urine of a thousand men. Urinals aren’t thimbles. It’s not a difficult carnival game. Each urinal is very generously sized for the meager stream of Mountain Dew that will exit your body. Point yourself at the welcoming porcelain and hold steady. How is that much urine getting outside the urinal? I’ve literally seen urine on top of urinals. As if you thought the goal was to hit the wall and then drizzle it downwards into the urinal’s mouth. (I’ve also seen poop in a urinal. Which, y’know, I guess I’m happy it was in it and not outside of it.)

I once, while waiting for a urinal, watched a guy piss all over his own shoes because — and this is just a guess — he was afraid to look down at his own dong or accidentally grab a glimpse of a neighboring dong. Instilled with sheer dick fear, he chose instead to just wee all over his feet instead of casting his gaze south to see how the whole “peeing in a urinal” business was going.

Don’t even think about looking in the stalls. The stalls are practically sweating with urine.

Then there’s the sink area. Oh my god, that’s wet, too. Moistness, moistness, everywhere. Granted, some bathrooms suffer from poor design (WASH HANDS HERE, WALK 100 YARDS TO A TOWEL DISPENSER THAT DOESN’T WORK), but even still, why is everything so wet? Are we in that much of a hurry? If we could collect all the wasted water in a men’s restroom, we could save California from drying up and going full dustbowl.

Men, get better. Control yourself in the bathroom. Fix your business.

Enough With The Fucking Cologne

Ye Gods, some of you smell. And not in the way where it’s like you’ve been digging ditches in a hot swamp. No, the odor is like you took a shower underneath a nozzle that dispenses only CK-1. You smell like bug spray and fraternity hazing. You stink like you just took a dunk in the same tank of noxious chemicals that birthed the Joker.

Listen, I get it, you think, UGH, MY MALODOROUS SWEAT, and guys are sort of inundated early on with this sense that we’re not supposed to have any kind of smell beyond that which we choose to apply to our bodies. Puberty hits and suddenly it’s like, HEY NOW YOU LEAK AND STINK, SO HURRY UP AND ELIMINATE YOUR NASTY HUMAN MIASMA LEST THE WORLD RECOGNIZE YOU FOR THE NERVOUS, OOZING PIG THAT YOU ARE. And we have a wide range of deodorants and anti-perspirants and colognes and shampoos and other pesticidal stench-fighting unguents to help us combat that human miasma.

But here’s the thing.

First, your sweat probably smells better than you’ve been told. Okay, it’s one thing if you’ve been pickling in your own manbrine with no interest in actually showering. But as long as it hasn’t been a protracted amount of time, you probably smell, well, normal.

Second, if you do wish to apply some kind of chemical scent to your body, more power to you. Just don’t use an amount equivalent to what it would take to drown a human toddler. A mist here, a spritz there, okay. Fsst, fsst, psshhh, done. Stop there. Put down the can, the tube, the mister, the hose, and walk the fuck away. If you’re going through more than one bottle of cologne every, say, ten years, you’re almost certainly overdoing it.

Third, soap is actually a nice smell. Just soap. Regular soap. A little bit of it. Soap.

I was at the beach this summer, and so many men there who gave off a mephitic, eye-blistering wave of horror — this corpse-sweet frat-boy rape-culture Windex smell that summarily overtook the normal beach smells of sand, salt, suntan lotion. And they were at breakfast, too — you’d try to take a bite of sausage and with it you’d inhale a mouthful of Axe Body Spray so thick it had weight and texture. A stink you can chew.

Just, god, fuck, stop punishing yourself and the rest of us us with your unholy sheen of venom. Wash your body from time to time. Use soap. That’s it. Cool it with the nerve toxins, you’re killing birds and frogs and other nearby wildlife.

Go To The Doctor Already

Men don’t like to go to the doctor.

It’s some combination of I WAS TOLD THAT TOUGH GUYS DON’T GO TO THE DOCTOR I CAN FIX IT MYSELF and ALSO SECRETLY I’M AFRAID TO GO AND I DON’T WANT PEOPLE TO SEE THAT I’M AFRAID SO INSTEAD I’LL JUST PRETEND I’M MISTER BULLETPROOF. Add in the fact that the occasional doctor’s visit requires the doctor to:

a) handle your privates, whatever they may be

b) stick a finger or probing device up your no-no-hole

And suddenly guys are all stoic and cocky about it, until of course their prostate swells up to the size of a cantaloupe — but ha ha, at least nobody ever shoved a finger up your butt, big guy.

Seriously. Get your shit checked out. Go to the doctor. Get your health dealt with, you coward. Your manliness is not in danger. Your manliness has nothing to do with it. Your manliness isn’t even a thing. Be a person who gives a shit about themselves and about the people around them and get your business handled. I got my prostate checked out by a big-fingered doc who said my sphincter had “nice snap.” It was not my most dignified moment but the silver lining was, hey, I don’t have prostate cancer and also, I will accept any compliments about my sphincter, that’s fine, that’s very nice, thank you, large-knuckled doctor. Don’t be Mister Tough Guy who dies because he’s too tough or because he’s homophobic.

You Can’t Fix Everything

Put. That toolbox. Down.

Toolboxes are for closers only.

You can’t always fix that thing you think you can fix. And that’s okay! I can hang a shelf. I can maybe replace a ceiling fan or a light fixture. But good goddamn, you have to know your limits. Buying a house becomes an exercise of, HEY, I WONDER WHAT JOE-BRO OWNER “FIXED” WHEN HE OWNED THE HOUSE LAST. You get an actual repairman in there and they open the walls and suddenly it’s all, “The last owner tried fixing everything with duct tape and lamp-cord. This pipe over here is just a Pringles can and chewing gum. You were about ten minutes from everything exploding.” I recognize the need to be frugal, and I also recognize that it is perfectly wise to try to develop the skill-sets necessary to perform certain kinds of repairs within a certain purview. But you know, sometimes you have to call in the expert. They’re the ones who can save you from spending more money to fix the thing you just fucked up when trying to fix the thing. They’re the ones who can prevent you from injuring yourself or from burning your dumb house down because your Amateur Hour Electrician status jolly well won’t cut it.

To repeat: KNOW YOUR LIMITS. You can’t fix everything. And you don’t have to. We need to as men stop judging other men who aren’t handy with tools or who can’t fix every last machine in the house. (My wife is actually the one who fixes shit, for the record. I do the cooking, and she does the home repair. I have no problems with this arrangement.)

Hitting On Women, Catcalling, And Other Shitty Shittiness

*sighs*

*pinches bridge of nose*

I once watched a guy try to hit on a blind woman in a grocery store.

It was gross.

Yesterday, an article went boomeranging around social media from a PUA MRA knob (some fuck-man named “Dan Bacon,” if you can believe that, god help us), and this ‘article’ was about how to properly engage (read: “hit on”) a woman who is wearing headphones. Which is asinine because of course a woman has headphones on because she doesn’t want to talk to you — either actively or passively, it doesn’t matter. She’s busy. She doesn’t need or want your shit up in her shit. I said on Twitter that the best way to talk to a woman wearing headphones is:

a) punch yourself in the face

b) when she looks up and removes her headphones, apologize for thinking she owes you her time

I would then add c) run home and stare at your bloody face in the mirror and think about what you’ve done, you belligerent cankermonkey, and also be thankful she did not open her mouth and consume you in a howling vortex of spiders.

Women don’t owe you anything. They don’t owe you a smile. They don’t owe you kindness. They don’t owe you a single moment of their time, much less any kind of romantic or sexual gratification. They aren’t animals who temporarily escaped their fence and it’s your job to convince them with cooing noises or a cracking whip to come back to their stable. Don’t catcall them. Don’t hit on them. Don’t touch them if they don’t ask to be touched. Get enthusiastic consent in every possible interaction. They have power equal to yours. Yours does not eclipse theirs. Your manliness is so not a thing.

We have these outmoded ideas of manliness that replace confidence with aggressiveness, that exchanges basic human strength of character with dominance and ownership. Get shut of all that. Your idea of masculinity is brittle, over-worked steel — it is fragile because it simply cannot support itself. It’s toxic because it’s off-gassing centuries worth of bad ideas about how men must conquer and compete and control. You need to do better. You need to be better. You need to stop giving the rest of us a bad name, damnit. Stop giving into the bullshit.

P.S. nobody wants unsolicited dick pics

P.P.S. seriously the dick is the least-most interesting thing about you and probably the least-most interesting thing in the whole world, put that thing away, you’re upsetting everybody