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"Never Again"

Have I just been making false assumptions? Having grown up as a Jew whose grandparents were all Eastern European immigrants, I know that I was educated in the horrors and specifics of the Holocaust more so than your average American child, but I just assumed everyone was taught enough to understand just who and what the Nazis were.

Maybe I was wrong. Maybe part of the problem we’re facing today is that many people don’t understand the term. They just think of it as having a nebulous "bad guy" meaning. Or at worst, "somewhat militant racist."

So I’m going to try this without screaming, just speaking.

The Nazi doctrine has, at its core, not just white supremacy, but the subjugation and annihilation of "lessers." They don’t just want to be in power, they want to lock away or kill everyone not like them. People of color, queer people, disabled people, Jews, Muslims.

They want to kill us.

And it’s not something that was tacked on to an otherwise harmless ideology. It is a core part of the identity.

And they will do it. It’s not empty threat. Twelve million people were murdered over this ideology (and that’s not even counting the soldiers who died fighting it). Shot. Gassed. Starved. Enslaved. Experimented on. (And that’s not counting the soldiers who died fighting them.)

That is the ideology that the modern Nazis have looked at and said, "I want in on that." Whether they’re as organized as the original Nazis, whether they have the capability, is irrelevant. This is what they want. This is what they work toward.

And they were nothing more than a bunch of fringe extremists when they first started in Germany, too.

This is what I shout about on social media. This is why I say that you cannot treat them as just another unpleasant political stance. They are a real threat to so many people. They are a clear and present danger.

And you cannot stand back. You cannot remain neutral. This isn’t about Democrat vs. Republican, or Right vs. Left. This is literally about right or wrong. It is one of the few times in your life you’re going to be in a position where there are no shades of gray, where you honestly and truly have the chance to fight genuine evil.

And so many of you are failing to step up, perhaps because you truly don’t understand, or don’t want to believe. But this is what it is. This is where we are.

Even if you are normally a free speech absolutist, their very ideology is an active threat, something that free speech doesn’t accommodate.

Even if you disapprove of what groups like Antifa do to fight them–and let’s be clear, a lot of what you’ve heard about Antifa is exaggerated or outright false, but even if everything negative said about them were true–it is still your duty to deal with the Nazis first, and worry about lesser wrongs after the fact.

You are being manipulated, by Nazis, and by certain Right-wing elements that mistakenly think they have to ally with Nazis, into remaining neutral. Into not taking sides because the other is "just as bad." They’re not. Nothing is.

In all the confusion and shades of gray of human history, this is one of the few true, genuine, and incontrovertible evils.

And the only way to avoid supporting it is to stand loudly and actively and yes, sometimes maybe even violently, against it.

Conceptual fandom

Do any of you ever find yourself realizing that you’re a fan of something conceptually, but not practically?

What I mean is, for instance, a conversation about horror movies at ArmadilloCon eventually turned to Pinhead and the Hellraiser movies. And I found myself putting into words something I’d thought about but hadn’t seriously considered, which is this:

I’m a big fan of the CONCEPT of Pinhead and the Cenobites (particularly in their original conception, before they just became run-of-the-mill demons in a Judeo-Christian hell). I think there’s an enormous amount of cool story and mood potential behind them, and I’d love to see it explored.

Yet I’m not actually a fan of any of their appearances. I didn’t much care for THE HELLBOUND HEART novella, and while I’ve enjoyed many aspects of the Hellraiser movies (especially scenes and segments and ideas from the first two), I’ve never actually enjoyed a single Hellraiser movie AS a complete movie.

The same is true of Lovecraft. I love Lovecraftian horror. I’ve used it in some of my work, and I sometimes go out looking for it. But I’m not really fond of Lovecraft’s own work. I find him a mediocre writer, and although I’ve read almost his entire library, I can only remember a handful of stories well enough to talk about them.

Or, for a different sort of example, exploration-based sandbox D&D campaigns. I find the potential stories and ideas enticing in the abstract, but I’ve never played in such a campaign that didn’t bore me, and I’ve had to quit every time I’ve tried to run one because I was very much not enjoying it.

Is this just me? Or do any of you guys–I’m especially, but not exclusively, curious about other creatives–find yourselves in the same sort of boat?

Twenty years

I’ve only just realized that if you count up all the years that George and I were not romantically involved–both before I ever met her and for the year-and-change we were friends but not a couple…
Well, as of this anniversary, we’ve been married (not just together, but actually married) for for an equal amount of time.
I mean, maybe not exactly–it could be off by a couple of months–but for all practical purposes.
In that time, there have been a lot of ups and downs, some extreme (and I was at fault for more of the downs than I’d like to acknowledge). But we got through them all, in part because George has been inhumanly patient and supportive, and in part because I’ve fought harder for it than I have anything else in my life.
We wouldn’t have made it without a lot of work (and I don’t think I would have made it if we hadn’t), but it was worth every bit of effort. Because things are good, and I only see them getting better. I can barely remember life before her, and can’t even imagine life without her.
I love you, George. Happy anniversary.

Star What Now?

Wait, are there seriously rumors of a Luke Skywalker-based prequel?  😯
The entire point of Luke’s story was that he was a nobody farmer to whom nothing of any real importance had ever happened. It’s a cliche, but it’s a cliche he was designed specifically to embody.
I’m not even enthused about the idea of the Han Solo prequel, and at least we know he had some stuff happen to him prior to the first movie.
Disney, you’ve been fairly on-point so far, but you’re at serious risk of dropping the ball. These standalone movies should be used to explore characters and facets of the universe we haven’t seen, not to retread characters whose biggest stories have already been told.  😐

A bit of advice

Okay, folks. The Dungeon Master’s Guild market/license for D&D stuff is a great opportunity and a lot of fun. I get why so many of you are eager to get material up there ASAP. But I hope you’ll accept a bit of free advice from someone who’s both a fan and a professional.

EDITING MATTERS.

You need to know how to put a sentence together, and you need to have your work read over by other people who know how to put a sentence together. I promise you–promise–that if you have obvious typos or overtly poor grammar in your product description, a lot of people are never going to even look at the product itself, let alone spend any money on it. There are many people who have already lost me as a potential customer based on a single sentence of their product entry, because it was so poorly written that I don’t trust them to be able to deliver a usable product.

Take your time and do it right.