Sir Terry Pratchett awakens. A skeleton stands at his bedside, wearing a long black robe. He sits up. “Well, hang on, let me get my hat,” he tells it.
The skeleton reaches into its robe. From abyssal depths it produces a heavy book bound in sheets of lead and night. It is the kind of book that gets stolen by a rugged adventurer from a temple with more spike-traps than the average house of worship contains. It is the kind of book to which the word “tome” might properly be applied. Frost forms on its pages from the lingering chill of the void.
The skeleton coughs once and holds the book out to the man sitting on the bed.
Imagine having been born in 1905… And all your life it doesn’t fucking stop. The Great War, the Spanish Flu, and then you go out of your mind for 7 years. Everyone is traumatised and nothing matters. Then another crash. And then the rise of fascism, and the War to end all Wars didn’t and it’s 1945 and you’re just about still there. You may have fought or ferried the boys from Dunkirk or sabotaged the Nazi occupiers or worked in the factories and put out fires during the Blitz and you’re lucky to be alive, because not all your friends made it. But you are and finally, fucking finally, it stops. It stops. You are tough as nails and you can put that strength to work into building something and you do, and people have cars and can buy icecream and you have a pension fund and the kids have money of their own and no nightmares.
I want that for us. I so want that for us. I want to be the generation that has seen fucking everything and is like a MRSA bug and unfazed and when that Cheeto finally dies, I want us to. Plant the gardens and clean the seas because we can and we want to and we remember some joy, some time of trust even when it got broken and we can say to the 20 somethings “let us show you what we can build, how it can feel.”
And maybe Gen beta will take it all for granted like the boomers did, but we can give Gen Z and Alpha some peace because we, and Gen Z and Alpha have seen the Dark Times and fuck that noise.
At the start of the Pandemic, my spouse’s grandmother was in an assisted-living home, and of course they were severely locked down, because with no vaccination available and we don’t really know how it spreads and no tests and anyone over 80 is deffo gonna die…. They couldn’t take the risks. So they weren’t even allowed to leave their rooms. Staff brought meals and left them outside the door, and they left dishes outside, and that was just their life for the foreseeable future.
So we tried to make sure someone called her every day, so she would have some kind of interaction, and one time my spouse asked how she was doing, and her attitude was basically, “Yeah, this happens sometimes.”
Because that was her life. She did live through the depression, she did lose three siblings to the last pandemic. She did live through WWII, and sent a son off to Vietnam, and made a family and a household and a career while knowing one slip of a button might wipe out all life on earth. And she lived through it; she survived.
And so 2020 wasn’t the end of the world, for her. It was just another thing. Because life is made up of sunshine and rainbows and puppy dogs, AND ALSO fascists and violence and rancid millionaires living high while people starve. And when you are in the middle of the shit times, you acknowledge that they’re shit, and also that they are not exclusively shit, because they still include spring days and new flowers and people taking care of each other.
And it was just… a really helpful perspective to get. You can survive it, you can become strong enough to live to 103 despite everything, you can become a source of strength and joy for everyone around you.
It has been way over a decade since this happened, so some details are a little blurry, but I still have to tell this story here too:
So, my dad’s colleague was on a trip with their friends, who were a couple. Now, the wife of this couple was a huge U2 fan, and the highlight of this trip was going to a U2 concert. Later that night, after the concert, they went to a restaurant, and who do they see there at another table? Bono. The wife wants so badly to go and ask for an autograph, but in a typical Finnish fashion, she doesn’t want to be a bother because surely Bono just wants to enjoy his night and not be surrounded by fans all the time, so she doesn’t go.
Then, she notices that someone from Bono’s table gets up and goes to the men’s restroom, so she also gets up and goes to wait outside the men’s room, until the guy comes out. She then stops him and goes excuse me, I saw that you were at the same table as Bono, would it be in any way possible that you could ask for an autograph from him for me? (because apparently it is much less mortifying to bother someone else you don’t know than to bother the guy directly, I guess).
The man apparently kinda stands there for a moment, just looking at her, before he asks, sounding just a tad bit confused, if he heard her right. You want me to go and ask Bono for an autograph for you?
Yes, she says. She’s being very polite about it. If you would be so kind. That would be great.
The man says yes, sure, I’ll see what I can do about it.
They then part ways and go back to their own tables and continue the night, and some time later, they notice that Bono and the rest of the people who had been at that table have left.
Oh well, the wife thinks. No can do, maybe he just forgot or something or just didn’t want to do it. It’s okay.
They finish up their meal and ask for the bill. The waiter tells them that their meal has already been paid for, and then tells that they were left with two notes.
The waiter gives them the notes. They are both autographs. One of them says Bono.
All your hellraising (especially with my suggested targeting of state AGs, especially Democratic AGs) is working! Keep it up! There will be many bad news days to come, but remember: pushing back is always worth it and it is already working.
Remember: They’re not winning. They haven’t won, and they’re not going to.
They are a fading minority that won an election through voter suppression and outright lies - they didn’t convince anyone they’re actually right. Nobody wants the world they want to build. (Which is not possible to build; they’ve removed too many of the support structures over the years.)
We are fighting to reduce the damage they’ll do as they fade, not fighting to win the culture war.
We won the culture war. Now we’re working to keep them from burning the fields on their way out. It takes a different approach from “win hearts and minds” activism.
Keep pointing out the damage - and the ways it can be mitigated or prevented.
This is why I became a lawyer. Because when shit goes down, lawyers are the first to respond, the vanguard. When someone tries to do something illegal and fucked up, a lawyer will be the first one there to stand in the way.
Tl;dr how you can personally make Neil Gaiman lose money (and not be a jerk to others.)
I see a lot of folks upset that NG will financially benefit from residual and other compensation surrounding his involvement in the adaptation of Sandman and Good Omens (and he will.) But the answer isn’t “rage at the fans who are so emotionally attached to his blorbos because they grieve differently, and then somehow NG will be financially punished.” That’s lower-class/middle-class thinking. NG is too rich and financially diversified to really be hurt by little boycott or a couple of show cancellations (though said cancellations can cause life-changing poverty to the little guys who signed contracts and turned down other opportunities before all of this came out. And boy does NG love women in poverty 🤮)
So if you want to substantially reduce the wealth of someone at NGs financial level—you need to do it with professional services fees.
Someone mentioned on another tumblr post about how nobody complained that Agatha Christie wrote ANOTHER book about murder.
Write your story. Write it again. And again.
Okay but do you understand the TREASURE TROVE of reading a fic you enjoy and then looking at the author’s page and discovering they have written multiple just like it?! That is the ultimate score!
Nobody complained that Agatha Christie wrote ANOTHER book about murder
