Are you talking about the insults? Because you WERE included... the very first one! (Are you too deaf to READ, now?)
I feel like things are possibly getting out of control... For the record - I was making a point the first time around, not announcing an actual decision to be a complete dick on the forum from now on...
Can't we have a 'BayView is a Complete Dick' thread? Because you haven't insulted me yet and I'm sad...
It's almost like it's better for everybody if we don't all put our own feelings and desires above everyone else's, and say what we want to when we want to without considering the impact it will have... Gosh, who'd have thunk it?
We should think about what we write and try to be responsible to the community? No, that can't be right! You're stupid! (Two birds, one stone...)
@BayView blew, we tossed her corpse from the lifeboat. Only @Wreybies remained at the helm, whilst @Tenderiser waved her arse around from the bows of the vessel. Perhaps, caught in some lighthouse rays her backside might show us home to shore. I nibbled at my ship's biscuit.
Yes!! I am deaf and half-blind. I must've had my head turned so my bad eye was looking at the screen when the insults were posted. NEVEEEERRR!!!
Simple. Change it to "Black Liberation Movement". Everyone will know its really BLMatter without the libel. So you can go nuts with it.
Well, don't let it happen again. My time is very valuable and I can't waste it by taunting people a second time!
PHOOEY!! >:[ Your mother was a hamster and your father smelled of rotten eggs!! <points for anyone who got the reference> <and I'll stop acting like a child now.>
(I was wondering if I was being too obscure - glad you caught it, too!) (although surely my father smells of elderberries, not rotten eggs?)
No one helms H.M.S. Offensive. She has a dodgy rudder on the best of days and in the calmest of seas, and these days in which we live are not the best and these seas are not calm. Though the conversation has lulled to a simmer, for which I am thankful, I'll still give my two bits. I don't want to live in the world that would have been without Ginsberg's Howl or Mapplethorpe's Piss Christ or Atwood's Handmaid's Tale. If we fear to call out the liars and the lies because we fear to offend, then we deserve the oppression we dare not shake off.
I don't see Handmaid's Tale (haven't read the other two) as resembling what the original poster suggested. It was set in the future, and therefore there was no realistic chance of anyone thinking that the events had actually been committed by any real-world entity. I'm not talking about offense, I'm talking about the basic ethics of making up stories about real world people that might lead the reader to say, "Wow! That happened!" As opposed to "Wow! That could happen!"
@TheDarkWriter, I haven't read the previous four pages and, ya know what? I'm not sure I'm going to. But a little thinking about this brings me to the opinion that you can depict real-life, contemporary groups indulging in this sort of violence if that kind of violence is part of the stated means to their ends. E.g., Tom Clancy uses the IRA in his novel and movie Patriot Games, and the group, as far as I know, never sued for defamation. And if they did, I guess it would be because the IRA operatives failed! Has Black Lives Matter ever claimed they would proudly use murder and destruction to gain their objectives? And they don't care who knows it? If not, steer clear. Or make up a fake group and have BLM sincerely condemn it. Or have the killer be someone who hates the MC and uses BLM as a cover for his revenge. As for not writing to promote one's political views, that's silly. If you simply hit people over the head with them, yeah, your book will fail: not because of the politics, but due to bad writing. (Though Ayn Rand might be an exception to this . . . ) Ditto for having to be part of a group to write about them. Good gosh, that would cut off all historical novels--- I've never lived in the 19th century, have you? And frankly, writers, including members of this site, write negative and inflammatory things about groups they're not part of all the time. A couple of years ago a member had a piece up in the Novel Workshop in which the villain was supposed to be a Calvinist Christian. I, thank you very much, am a Calvinist Christian (a Four-and-a-Half Point one, anyway). Did I get Offended? Did I say that writer should slink away in shame, after he'd destroyed his word processor and promised never to set down another line again? Did I threaten him with ominous consequences, in this world and the next? No. I merely informed him that the attitudes and beliefs he attributed to his "Calvinist" character would actually be rejected by a real adherent of that opinion, and filled him in on the way the genuine tenets of Calvinism could, if distorted, lead to the crimes he wished his villain to commit. I'm not saying that to prove how generous and open-minded I am, or to show how well I follow Dorothy L. Sayers' rule that in fiction writing the only moral obligation is to the integrity of the story. My point is that if you're going to make any real-world group the villain of your novel, you'd better make jolly well sure that the weaknesses and sins you assign to them are that group's genuine, "official," weaknesses and sins.
Yes @Catrin, wise folk reached a similar position already, outlined in my many ignored posts, thank you. The war is over. Pockets of Falangist - we picture the commander of resistance mounted horse-back, and she, and she, and also notorious, GCE Potter lady, they remain lurking on this thread. The outlaws dawn raiding shall be eliminated by white boys in uniform asap. Good luck, chaps.
This could still be more abstract in my opinion. It's better to think of long-term societal trends rather than specific movements. BLM is relatively new, and will probably be gone in a couple years (like Occupy Wallstreet). But there will still be racial tensions, and some of these groups will be more violent than others. Even with violent terror groups though, most Tom Clancy novels don't reference specific terror groups. The PIRA is one of the only specific groups he writes about I think. Most of his Islamic groups were fictional ones, i.e. The Organization from Teeth of the Tiger and "The Commander's" group from Sum of All Fears.
Not in my head. I'm thinking Franco's tomb. There's an enormous mausoleum somewhere in Spain, nobody ever visits. I've never been there. When I think about Spain - always wondering if I would have joined the right side with my knapsack [in '36], decision-making being what it is. I have a head full of Spanish history - and also Communist political systems - crammed in '89 when they knocked it all down. Hence, am now totally irrelevant.
If you want to do something like this, I'd strongly recommend making the connections to BLM be extremely vague and subtle. Like, mask the BLM group as something totally fictional and have them behave in a manner similarly to yet still distinguishable from the BLM group -- so that you're expressing your views on BLM, subtly, without pissing people off in the process. Like how someone would use the oppression of a fantasy race... say, elves.... to reflect upon the real-world oppression of black people in America just a few hundred years ago. Elves substitutes for black people, and some fantasy setting -- Fuqinarnia -- substitutes for 'Murica. However, I'd also 100% recommend having an important character have an opposing view to that of the protagonists and not have them played off as totally wrong/rude/mean/bad/whatever. That being said, I'm not sure how useful my advice would be, or if its already been said or not... But... Happy writing.
