2013: Top Ten Posts

Excluding posts written in 2012 (as, rather surprisingly, several of these garnered even more pageviews than things I wrote this year), in order of least to most popular, here are my ten biggest posts from 2013:

10. Sexism in Gaming – A Response to Gabrielle Toledano, 19 January 2013.

9. The Truth of Wolves, Or: The Alpha Problem, 12 May 2013.

8. On Grittiness and Grimdark, 3 March 2013.

7. Rageblogging: The Rod Rees Edition, 26 June 2013.

6. Dear Joss Whedon: STFU, 8 November 2013.

5. Mainstream YA Article Bingo: A Response to Laura C. Mallonee, 19 November 2013.

4. Reconciliation: A Response to Theodore Beale, 14 June 2013.

3. I Am So Very Tired, 4 October 2013.

2. Old Men Yelling At Clouds: SFWA Sexism, 2 June 2013.

1. This, Right Here, Is The Problem, 14 October 2013.

I’ve been angry a lot this year, it seems – but then, there’s been a lot worth getting angry about. I can’t believe that these are all things that happened in 2013 – at least half of these posts I first assumed were from 2012, but evidently not. It’s been a long year, is my point, and as much as the internet generally seems to enjoy it when I blow a gasket, I’d much rather have my pageviews drop in 2014 and write about stuff I actually like than spend most of it being tense and pissed off about the offensive witterings of strangers. Actually, I’m going to break my rule and make that a proper new year’s resolution: to write and talk more about the things I love in 2014, and not just focus on the bad stuff.

Damn. That almost felt cathartic.

2013: A Year In Review

2013 has been… well. It’s been. And I still don’t know what to make of it.

I became a mother in February, which was extraordinary and wonderful in every spiritual and familial way, but on the physical and emotional side, it was also depressing, painful and the cause of two unpleasant hospital stays, to say nothing of the still-ongoing recovery time. Let me say this flat out: in my experience, pregnancy is awful, childbirth itself sucks only slightly less than the agonisingly protracted process of recovering from childbirth, which is still quite a lot, and anyone who tells you breastfeeding is an easy, uncomplicated, pain-free miracle of nature is either a fucking liar or trying to sell you something. Barring all the obvious caveats about boredom, sleep-deprivation and guilt, however, being a parent is actually sort of awesome, the practical upshot of which is that whether it happens when I’m twenty-nine or ninety-nine, the second any sort of uterine replicator technology actually gets approved for common usage, I will buy an enormous bottle of champagne, throw a fucking party and raise successive, glorious toasts Science!, because frankly, the final, cinching proof of the non-existence of god – or rather, of an intelligent, benign creator – isn’t the poor Babelfish: it’s the whole ludicrous panoply of mammalian reproduction. I mean, growing a creature in another creature? Talk about design flaws.

ANYWAY.

On the writing front, I actually finished my new novel, which, yay! (Polyamory! Matriarchy! Politics! Portals! Ladies!) Admittedly, I’d thought it was “nearly done” in January, but as it turned out, I didn’t end up completing the first draft until August, with some further new scenes added in December. Even so, it’s going in the win column. I also snagged a few new writing gigs, which was pretty great – reviewer at Strange Horizons and A Dribble of Ink, and columnist for Black Gate – and, as an unexpected treat, an essay I wrote last year was included in the Speculative Fiction 2012 anthology. I’ve also managed some 38 blog posts – 39, counting this one, but not including extra pieces I’ve put up on tumblr or published elsewhere, which is fairly respectable. My blog readership has expanded, too, which phenomenon never ceases to surprise me – hello, new readers! – but has also brought with it a slew of new trolls, such that headdesking, FDJHFDJLing, WTFery and general out of spoon errors with regard to comment monitoring have reached an all-time high. Nonetheless, I have persevered. As xkcd has taught us, people are often wrong on the internet, and in order to weather the storms of incoherent rage these rickety douchesaddles can inspire, it’s sometimes necessary to retreat instead to the calm and icy caves of No Fucks Given.

Also, I’ve read 101 books, which – huzzah! – is one book more than my stated goal for the year. Again, admittedly, some books were rather shorter than others, or were in fact comics, novellas and magazines rather than full-length novels, but given that I’ve also given birth, moved house, done battle with the UK visa authorities on behalf of mine infant progeny and attended my first major con since 2010, I’m not about to split hairs over wordcount. As for politics, while some amazing stuff has certainly happened, overwhelmingly, the rabid shitweasels of regressive dumbfuckery have been working overtime to saturate the rest of us with toxic, moronic blah, and if the vast majority of them were to suddenly contract gangrene of the larynx over NYE and thus lose the ability to speak forever – or at least until they came to their fucking senses – I’d count their silence as a net gain for humanity.

All in all, while 2013 has certainly been an important and memorable year, it hasn’t always been for the best reasons – but it’s when my son arrived, and for that, at least, I’m grateful. 2014 can take the floor with my blessing, and I look forward to seeing where it takes us. No resolutions, this year as last, beyond a general wish for self-improvement, happiness and a thriving family. Oh, and lots of reading and writing, but that should go without saying.

Let’s see how far it gets me.

Happy new year, everyone!

2012: A Year In Review

As years go, 2012 has been something of a mixed bag. On the one hand, I’ve parted ways with my publisher, thereby indefinitely delaying creation of the final book of the Rare, while my only publication has been a single poem in the summer edition of Goblin Fruit. On the other hand, though, I’ve nearly finished one new novel, made a promising start on two others, and produced full outlines for five more;  this blog has picked up enormously, too – I even started writing for the Huffington Post – and I have a forthcoming short story in a digital anthology, more news of which as it comes. Reading-wise, I sadly fell short of my stated goal of 200 novels; still, 115 isn’t a bad effort, and as this was the year I finally obtained a Kindle, a solid 30 of those were ebooks. Looking back on my resolutions for 2012, however, it’s disappointing to find that I’ve achieved exactly one of them, and then only technically: having planned to read at least one non-fiction book a month, I managed a grand total of eighteen such works spread out across the entire year, which is better than nothing, but nonetheless something of a shortfall. Neither did I finish writing a novel by the end of February – or even the end of December, for that matter – and I certainly didn’t get fit. What I did do, however, was move cities, change jobs and fall pregnant, which perhaps goes some way towards explaining my failures elsewhere. All in all, then, 2012 has wound up being a very different year to the one I’d envisaged having, but ultimately, it’s been wonderful.

As I type this, I’m exactly 35 weeks pregnant, which means that I look like a planet and feel like a walrus. Whatever else it brings, therefore, 2013 will be inescapably known as the year I become a parent, the prospect of which is both thrilling and frightening all at once – and is, as such, the reason why I won’t be making any resolutions for 2013. My life is about to utterly change, and as I know just enough to know that I can’t possibly know how big that change will be, it doesn’t seem fair or sensible to set myself any specific goals beyond the obvious hope to that I’ll learn my way, find time to relax, get some writing done and not fuck it up too badly. Oh, and that I’ll be sufficiently un-pregnant by the time my birthday rolls around to enjoy a soothing glass of champagne.

This being so, and in light of the fact that blogging represents my greatest non-biological triumph of 2012, I’ve opted instead for a rundown of the ten most popular pieces I’ve written this year. Thus:

1. Rape Culture In Gaming, 11 June 2012: A detailed explanation of what rape culture is, why it exists and how it’s perpetuated in the specific context of gaming and online culture. This was, by an order of magnitude, my most widely viewed piece of 2012, racking up almost double the number of page views of the next most popular entry.

2. Bullying & Goodreads, 10 July 2012: A rundown of the issues surrounding the creation of the STGRB website, with emphasis on reviewer etiquette, online bullying and criticism. Though the initial kerfuffle has died down somewhat, the subsequent conversation is still ongoing, and likely will be for some time.

3. Lamenting The Friend Zone, Or: The “Nice Guy” Approach To Perpetrating Sexist Bullshit, 9 April 2012: An angry deconstruction of the sexism and gendered cultural pressures that underlie the stereotypical concept of the friend zone as deployed by a certain subset of self-professed ‘nice guys’. Despite the overwhelming success of my rape culture piece, this entry technically beats it hollow thanks to widespread quoting and circulation on tumblr.

4. PSA: Your Default Narrative Settings Are Not Apolitical, 8 December 2012: A long and reference-heavy debunking of the commonly held assumption that history, and particularly Western history, is exclusively straight-white-male dominated. Given that it’s only been live for three weeks, I’m a little amazed that this piece managed to come in fourth.

5. Penny Arcade vs Rape Culture, 2 June 2012: A precursor to the rape culture in gaming post, this was a specific assessment of webcomic Penny Arcade’s reaction to the extremely vile Hitman: Absolution trailer, and how it was symptomatic of bigger industry problems.

6. The Problem With Fanservice, 28 August 2012: A takedown of the ubiquitous, deeply problematic presence of fanservice in anime, and why it impacts on my enjoyment of the medium.

7. Racism, Revealing Eden and STGRB, 3 August 2012: An examination of the fallout surrounding the overt-yet-apparently-unintentional racism of self-published YA novel Revealing Eden, with reference to the STGRB site. It’s worth noting that the second book in the series, Adapting Eden, is due out in January 2013, so there’s a good chance the furor will start back up again with a vengeance.

8. Tony Harris Is A Sexist Ass, 15 November 2012: A response to the sexist ranting of comics writer Tony Harris about fake nerd girls, with emphasis on intentionality vs interpretation and cognitive dissonance as relevant to subconscious bias.

9. The Creepiness Question, 27 August 2012: A personal account of an unsettling childhood encounter contextualised by a discussion of male creepiness, gender roles, victim blaming and hypocritical double standards for female behaviour.

10. Why YA Sex Scenes Matter, 27 June 2012: A look at why the prevalence of positive sex and romance in novels aimed at teenage girls is not only culturally significant, but revolutionary. I’m rather pleased this piece squeaked into the top ten; for most of the year, it was languishing in obscurity, but thanks to a recent revitalization on tumblr, it’s picked up dramatically.

And finally, by way of a bonus: my recent guest post for The Book Smugglers on the bad boy trope, and its evolution into something deeply problematic.  Huzzah!

So, that’s my 2012 in a nutshell. Now bring on 2013!