Ursula K. Le Guin’s 1969 novel The Left Hand of Darkness was a big deal in feminist science fiction for being one of the first widely popular and critically acclaimed works to do cool shit with sex and gender (which was certainly nothing new, but previous such works had rarely “taken off” the way LHoD did). It was criticized for referring to the genderfluid characters with the indefinite “he,” which was a la mode in style guides at the time, instead of using alternating or gender-neutral pronouns. In time Le Guin came to agree with this criticism; she considered her decision not to take things further one of her biggest literary regrets, stating that “I am haunted and bedeviled by the matter of the pronouns.”
I tell you this only because the phrase “I am haunted and bedeviled by the matter of the pronouns” is one I think about a lot.
“Eli Jacob Crowley, the famed pioneer figure who spearheaded America’s westward expansion by blazing the Crowley Trail in 1838, was an awe-inspiring figure of a man, as stout as a four-century-old oak, as intellectually complex as the fronds of a Florida palm, as singularly focused as the trunk of a Giant Sequoia, though in all other respects, not like a tree at all.” (John Hardi)
“Talila Norpiros, heir to the elven throne and commander of her people’s armed forces, chose a slightly more risqué outfit that morning than she would normally wear to battle, theorizing that if she were presented as a sex symbol as well as a dynamic protagonist, the series might attract a few more male readers and finally make the New York Times bestseller list.” (Bridget Parmenter)
“It wasn’t fair to call Michael a scum-sucking monster from the deep, the miserable, fetid descendant of some unnamed demon who, after centuries at the very depths of the ocean, had somehow surfaced and found his way to Wall Street—it was accurate, of course, but he preferred Michael.” (Allison Bryski)
and my personal favourite:
“Once upon a time, there was a place where things happened; allow me to be more specific.” (John Wallace)
just fucking remembered contest again so nobody asked but here are some 2019 winner highlights
“It
was a dark and stormy night, and since this was Miami in July and
everyone had left their convertible tops down, the rain fell in
Cadillacs.” (Andrew Lundberg)
“When
the tall dark, handsome, buff, and wealthy cowboy moseyed into my
“Blazin’ Six-guns” novelty shop, I felt a wave of heat flood through me,
as if I had accidentally swallowed my sub-lingual nicotinic acid
lozenge, causing the niacin to be released instantaneously, rather than
in a more controlled, extended, low-potency dose, for which means the
prescription had been written.” (Randall Card)
“Zajaxian
Planetary Law required that war, if it must be fought, be fought not
with bombs, bullets and blood, as on our own primitive Earth, but with
serried banks of immensely powerful mainframe computers, even though
they were bulky to carry and unwieldy to throw.“ (Jeremy Das)
“The
High Gondonderil gazed on with horror as the Elgaborian legions marched
at a single, pitiless pace into the once peaceful streets of
Sar-Andrada, the capital city of the kingdom of Xanthil, located in a
fantasy universe which might seem extremely confusing at present but
which will doubtless make perfect sense to you, dear reader, once you
realize that, like most fantasy universes, it’s basically just Tolkien’s
Middle-earth with different names for things.” (Harrison Glaze)
would you look at that its time to talk about my favourite bad fiction contest!! here are some 2020 winner highlights
“The
first thing I noticed about the detective’s office was how much it
reminded me of the baggage claim at a nearby airport: the carpet was
half a century out of date, it reeked of cigarettes and cheap booze, and
I was moderately certain that my case had been lost.”
(Paul Kollas)
“’You
may know my true name,’ gloated Archmage-Emperor !Gfńatt’ Bdúnśṽiobfhńr
to the foolish traitor who had dared try to end his glorious
mage-empire’s reign, ‘but can you pronounce it?’”
(Gideon Gordon)
“The
sound of his raspy voice and the feel of his chilly hand on her
shoulder made her shudder, like the wooden things on the sides of
windows, but a verb rather than a noun, and with two d’s rather than two
t’s.” (Kagte Minyard)
“Jarrod,
lying in the bed next to Selina, on his side with his head in his hand,
asked, ‘What would your husband do if he saw me right now?’ and Selina,
who was watching her husband sneak up on Jarrod holding a tire iron
with two hands raised above his head, replied, ‘Probably sneak up on you
with a tire iron raised above his head, preparing to use it for
something other than its intended purpose.’” (Randy Blanton)
it’s 2021 winner time and i want to be clear this time that “bad fiction” is not a judgment on my part, it’s the whole goal of the contest. the about page says, “…the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest challenges entrants to compose opening sentences to the worst of all possible novels.” i’m not insulting them. anyway here are my faves <3
“It was a dark and stormy … morning, Gotcha! – this is just the
first of innumerable twists and turns that you, dear Reader, will
struggle to keep abreast of as I unfold my tale of adventure as second
plumber aboard the hapless SS Hotdog during that fateful summer of 1974.”
(Louise Taylor)
“Our story begins in the cozy cottage of Bynnoldh-Dyr, son of
Asgwitch-Torgwyr, in the idyllic elven village of Myrthffolwrd, but our
book actually begins some two hundred pages earlier, in which you are
pummeled by irrelevant history and unpronounceable names, because my
publisher is paying me by the word.” (Neil B Harrison)
“As the dawn begin to break, Debby and Robert, their arms tightly wrapped
around each other, watched in awe as the sky turned a brilliant pinkish
red as the sun’s rays inched their way down the slopes of the craggy
peaks of the Rocky Mountains, but this was Canada so the rays were
centimetering their way down the slopes.” (Daniel Leyde)
“She had a deep, throaty laugh, like the sound a dog makes right before it throws up.” (Janie Doohan)
These are absolutely not, by any means, bad.
One of my personal faves
“Little Timmy suffered from Claustraphobia: the fear of being trapped in a closet with Santa Claus.”
Do consider submitting something; there’s no entry fee, no prize (sans bragging rights) and you can submit as many times as you want.
shakespeare characters having weird reactions to deaths: macbeth / hamlet / julius caesar
sorry to be pedantic outside of the tags but i love these as exhibits a b and c of why the “shakespeare is meant to be performed” cliche is real; on the page they look wild but actors know how to read the embedded stage directions
two of these examples can’t be shared lines of iambic pentameter (both gertrude’s line and brutus’ are already rushed and irregular at eleven syllables, so laertes and cassius both get their full ten beats for two or three words) and one of them doesn’t have to be (macduff and malcolm’s lines add up to ten beats indicating that it’s shared but no one will call the scansion cops on you if you split it into two and divvy up the extra ten syllables between them, which imo is the more playable option)
remember that verse is symphonic and that those extra syllables are notes in the orchestration of the scene— they have to go somewhere, either into beats of rest or sound. there’s a lot of ways to score any of these moments but one possibile notation for the first is
MACD: your royal father’s murdered.
(rest/ rest/ rest/ rest/ rest/)
MAL: oh.
(rest / rest / rest/ rest/ rest/) …
by whom?
all that silence affords the director a moment to let a lightning-fast scene (the entire cast pouring onstage in ones and twos, yelling over each other at varying levels of authenticity) come to a screeching halt, and the severity of the situation set in. for the actor it’s playable as all hell, and ultimately very human: the kind of raw shock that makes you ask stupid questions. you get the same thing with laertes. tbh i’ve always found “drowned? (rest / rest /) oh. (rest / rest / rest / rest/ rest /) …..where?” to be utterly goddamn devastating in how realistic it is, bc what else can you say to that? if someone told you with no warning that your sister drowned, what else would come out of your mouth in the moment but something stupid and mundane? oh. ……….where did it happen?
the other notable similarity in these three moments is the use of un-words: two ‘o’s and a ‘ha’ (they aren’t meant to be pronounced exactly like “Oh” or “Ha”; traditionally shakespearean un-words are performed as unarticulated sounds, sighs, groans, exhalations etc). un-words leap out to the actor because it is a character rendered speechless. i made a post a few weeks ago about how big of a deal it is when people written by william shakespeare dont have words for what they’re experiencing/when the pain is so big that even in a metanarrative universe where you are only the words you speak you are forced to admit that something is unspeakable, and every “o” or “ha” or “ah” etc is a moment of this horror, this defeat at the hands of your own medium
it’s a rich moment for actors because in classical text it’s frowned upon to act “outside” of the line (to waste vocal qualities on things that aren’t words, ie to take a pause from speaking your richly layered monologue to let out a pained exhale. “act on the line” says your director, smacking you on the knuckles with a copy of freeing shakespeare’s voice), it’s diva-y and amateurish to take more syllables than you’re given. but when you’re given the space of ten beats for “ha portia”, who will dare call you a scene hog for stretching that “ha” into five notes of agonized, wordless noise?
in the same way that lear’s “howl howl howl” is very much not just the word ‘howl’ said three times these moments demand full, shattering vulnerability from the actor, a dive into the place in the body where pain lives. maybe laertes and malcolm really do say “oh.”, quiet and childlike, or maybe that ‘o’ is a stand-in for the all-air sound that shakes out of you when you get punched in the lungs and try to talk through it, or for that deep animal groan you heard that made you think what was that before you realized it was coming out of your own throat
anyway you get what i mean. you wouldn’t look at a blueprint and say you saw the house, you wouldn’t read the sheet music and say you heard the symphony, etc
Rocky Horror is turning 50 next month and people still act like being gay was invented by Ellen in 1997
But honestly! Renowned French poet Théophile de Viau wrote the poetic ode to King James titled “The Duke of Buckingham,” containing the immortal lines “One man fucks Monsieur le Grand de Bellegarde/Another fucks the Comte de Tonnerre/And it is well known that the King of England/Fucks the Duke of Buckingham” exactly 400 years ago and people still act like being gay was invented by Oscar Wilde in 1890
Niankhkhnum and Khnumhotep were buried together in the 25th century BC and people still act like being gay was invented by renowned French poet Théophile de Viau 400 years ago
Gilgamesh and Enkidu “loved each other like man and wife” in 2700 BC and ppl STILL act like being gay was invented by Niankhkhnum and Khnumhotep in the 25th century BC
Nearly every social species on the planet has a non zero frequency of homosexuality and most likely had for millions of years before primates first evolved and ppl still act like being gay was invented by Gilgamesh and Enkidu in 2700 BC
thinking about the scene where merry pledges his service to theoden and then immediately says “youre my father figure now. btw.” and theoden is like “☝🏻temporarily”
theoden watching this plucky young guy say theodens his new dad and then proceed to demonstrate a complete disregard for theoden’s opinion that he should not go to war: hey i know who you would get along with
theoden lying underneath his dead horse watching the witch king of angmar get fucking obliterated: ok yes perhaps i should have foreseen this when i introduced them. thats on me.
Level 1: There are no surviving records of what this was about.
Level 2: There are some surviving records of what this was about, but they’re from centuries after the fact and may be speculative or fabricated.
Level 3: We have writings from a contemporary primary source regarding what this was about, but it’s unclear whether writer is speaking from first-hand experience, and also they’re known to have sometimes just made shit up.
Level 4: We have writings from multiple contemporary primary sources which broadly corroborate each other regarding what this was about, but – and hear me out – what if they’re all lying.
Me: Literature grad, cis girl, bi, group mom, mega nerd.
Expect: literature, SF & fantasy, terrible jokes/literature jokes, art, intersectional feminism, D&D, animation/anime, gaming (esp. Undertale, Transistor, Pyre), sobbing over all the above.
ALT
