Best Fantasy Poll Round 3 (And Farewell to Gavriel Kay)

It's no Mists of Avalon, to be sure.

Gavriel Kay did not survive round two.  Sorry Gav.  

The poll itself is at the bottom of the left hand "widgets" (the menus, ads, share buttons, and such that run down the left side of the screen). 

For round three, everyone only gets three (3) votes.  With five votes, everyone has one or two left over to give to The Princess Bride.  But will it do so well against The Mists of Avalon when people have fewer votes?  We shall see!

I'm getting a lot of emails from people who are upset that this title or that title is not on the poll.  Remember, the nomination process has concluded, but I encourage you to stick around as A) I'm pretty much always running some kind of similar poll (we'll be doing horror next) and you can always BE a part of the nomination process, and B) stand alone fantasy will eventually come back around as the poll subject, and you'll have the chance to get in on the nomination.

So bookmark this page and be a part of the next poll!

With two one concluded, I fleeced the bottom three performers from the list--and Gavriel Kay did not come out a winner.  Both his books on the poll were culled, I'm afraid.

I'll leave this poll up for a week.  Next Thursday I will put up the FINALISTS and everyone will get only two votes.

Remember, I'm not JUST doing this to draw out the drama.  "Changing the Creepy Guy Narrative" is still bringing in a lot of demographically atypical readers, so only the people who keep coming back each week will really be able to influence which titles move on to the next rounds.  For the final poll we should have somewhere between seven and ten titles and two votes each.

Please Excuse Our Dust

After the epic, four-part Mailbox (and due to a combination of one of the crime fighters here at the Hall of Rectitude being outmaneuvered by a super-villain and having a rough night and a dental appointment today right in the middle of my workday), I'm taking a "big article" break until the end of this week (Friday's mailbox should be interesting though).  However, after the increase in traffic, I figured it was time to put in the time to get some of my tabs and pages cleaned up.  So if you see some cosmetic changes occurring over the next couple days, that's why.  (And any design input will be welcome.  Even though I may stick with something because I don't actually know HOW to make the change you suggest, I acknowledge that pretty much everyone else on Earth has a better eye for layout aesthetics than I do.)  It's been long overdue but with thousands of people stopping by every day, I'm feeling more self conscious about it.

Of course I will still be wrapping up round two of the Fantasy Poll tomorrow, so if you haven't voted, please take a moment to do so now!  (The poll is down on the lower left, below that pretentious author's bio.)

The Mailbox: Creepy Guy Narrative (Part 4 of 4)

What about the menz!  You are badass!  Thank you. No, thank YOU!

Go here to read Part 3 or All the way back to Part 1

This is part four of a massive reply to some of the most common questions and criticisms about my article, "Changing the Creepy Guy Narrative."

Yes yes, it's wonderful what you did for her, but what we should really be talking about is how difficult it is for the poor men in our society to take the initiative in approaching women and how impossible these capricious devil women make it on us with their pesky moods, mercurial tastes, and non-standardized reactions to everything.  It's almost like they think they're individuals instead of just one big conglomerate that can be treated the same in every situation by every dude. Because that's what really led to this tragic turn of events. That poor bro didn't have a decoder ring for how to get her to drop her panties.  It's so hard for us marginalized guys and we never know when is the right time and the wrong time and how to approach all these totally secret clues when we're playing women's damned mind games.  What about the menz!

Ah yes. No post this viral would be complete without the "What about the menz" contingent.

There are two types of people who write in to complain about this.  One needs to be schooled like Wesley schooled Humperdink using small words (so they can understand) to drive home the point–which has apparently gone driven in the tenure of their narcissistic lives–that they are not, in fact, the center of the universe and their desire to get some seawater on their harpoon is not the ignition fuel for engines of all creation.

The other group is much simpler; they need to be hogtied, forced into a rocket, and shot into the sun. I say the sun only because I don't know if we have the technology needed to get them to the nearest black hole, but if spaghettification were an option, I would recommend it.

But both groups seem to be of the selfish, disrespectful variety that feels their needs should come before those of someone who clearly doesn't want to be bothered.  (That's right...even you "nice guys" are actually being monumental dillholes when you put your need to have your pool cue chalked over those of someone else's comfort on their commute.) When you insist that you're entitled to talk to someone or hit on someone, you place your desires over theirs.

This article is an supermegauberawesome illustration of what this behavior is like from a woman's perspective but written in such a way that even your average self-centered "nice guy" can understand it.  Everyone EVER ought to read it but especially if you want to try your hand at hitting on someone in public places like BART or the street.

 I absolutely hate gender courtship roles, so I appreciate that getting dates is hard as fuck.

I could never get past the pink, though.
I knew that pink meant it wasn't for boys.
If they had the black and cyan ones when I was a kid,
I might have actually learned how to cook.

I was raised by a southern belle, feminist, single mother who worked as an executive in a bank as one of three women in an ocean of guys like something out of an eighties movie. Even after she remarried, she made the bigger paycheck by nearly double (and my step-dad was a tenured professor in the California State University system) in addition to doing the heavy lifting in raising me. She made six figures in a man's world back before that was a hum-drum accomplishment. (~cough~) Though I could never be completely free of the social forces of my wider culture, I was essentially raised within a microcosmical matriarchy. It's no wonder that I was destined to become a househusband because even when I was young I wanted an EZBake oven so I could "Make Mom something nice for when she gets home."

Speaking of eighties movies, I grew up on them. You know the ones with the sexually aggressive women (usually wearing the shoulder pads) who come on to the guy?

(Actually, they're kind of creepy now that I think about them because usually the guy was saying no, the woman wasn't listening, and the audience was laughing the whole way. Unconsensual sex is so fucking hilarious, right?)

Yep, everywhere you looked in those movies there was some fantastically hot woman making the first move on some nerdy awkward (but nice)guy. It was like Beta Male Utopia. I was funny and pretty cute--I was going to have it made! So the longer I went on, the more confused I got that women weren't hitting on me. Seriously, where the fuck was my hot chick?  I made like four jokes next to a whole group of cute girls. They laughed  Why wasn't anybody asking me out? My adolescence became a chain of long-burning crushes for people I tried desperately to get close to and get them to notice me.

Southern culture, just so you know, may have its problems but has two very strong foundational pillars. One is hospitality. The other is that you don't impose. Basically you don't ask for things because the social expectation is on others to offer it. It is rude to go where you aren't invited, never mind welcome. And you can pretty much count on the fact that people will invite you due to their hospitality, and if they don't, it's very, very rude to pressure them. Should that mean you sit and slowly desiccate within someone's house because they didn't offer you a glass of iced tea in hundred degree weather, that's what you fucking well better do. (And gossip about them later.) This is why when someone does ask for something in southern culture, they often use phrasing like "Can I impose upon you for..." I may have gotten the hippie feminist version of Southern Culture (less racism and fewer corsets), but those two things were deep seated enough to come through. So I don't ask for things. I wait for people to offer.

You can probably already guess where these three forces are going to collide. Throw all of this in with some general introversion and it's a wonder I ever got laid.

I'm okay flirting. I'm pretty good at hitting on people. I'm even not-entirely-awkward at seduction, believe it or not. The irony is I'm rubbish at all of it until I know it's absolutely, positively, 100% welcome. Absolute rubbish. I have to know it's okay or there are all these psychological blocks. I just can't get past them. I've rarely ever flirted with someone who didn't flirt with me first. I can count on one hand the number of people I've asked out before their tongue spent some time in my mouth. I've only ever hit on people who either hit on my first or who basically grabbed my ears, pulled my face to theirs and said, "I would like you to make a move now, so that this evening can end with us blissed out and looking for my thong."

Pretty much everyone who has ever taken a ride on my disco stick has done the coming on.

Which is my took-forever-to-get-to-the-point way of saying, dude...

I get it.

Courtship sucks. Half the women threw out the book but didn't replace it with anything. The other half is still using the book but has a keen eye on where gallantry becomes sexism and you better agree with them right down the line.  And a third half has rewritten the book but it's not posted anywhere. An undetermined half of that first half and some of the other half still want to be chased and pursued and asked many times and know they are wanted. (My hand to God, I have sat behind a pair of women on Bart who talked about never going out with a new unless he had asked three different times because he had to prove "he was really into me." And I personally know three people who--before they got settled into long term relationships--regularly posted these memes about how guys who didn't prove their desire by pursuing them would not be getting the goods.) It is so fucking ridiculously hard to know if you're dealing with someone who wants to be pursued and wooed or someone who wants their first rejection to stick or even someone who doesn't want to be hit on at all and just wants to read their book.

Christ, it's almost like you're dealing with a bunch of individuals instead of one block group you can just treat the same.

Madness right?

But here's the problem.....

When you bring that shit up in a thread of a seven hundred comments about guys being creepy, sexual assault, and even violence on a post about a guy who was so obviously not taking what was unmistakably a genuine no for an answer....  When you say "yeah but" to a story where the woman is literally looking for an escape route and has basically begged him to leave her alone, you bring this whole package of pathetic, whiny, narcissistic stop-energy to the conversation.

Now you may not intend to do this, but what it LOOKS like to everyone watching is that you're trying to change a discussion about a woman getting harassed badly into one about how unfortunate it is that you have trouble dipping your wick.

Can you maybe see why that goes over like a depleted uranium balloon?

I have to tell you, this is a little like being pissed off that some news report about a school bus going off a cliff interrupted your soaps, and then calling in to the station to tell them that yes, you're very sorry about those kids, but was Michael the twins' dad or what?  Do you also get on domestic abuse threads and say "Yes, well, I'm surprised that no one has brought up how hard it is for men to work all day and come home to a sink full of dishes."

Yes, you really are being that inappropriate.

This is going to sting a little, but it's not about you.

Women get to not be into you.

They get to not be into talking.

They get to want to just read their book.

And they absolutely get to say no.

You're running the very real risk of being an entitled jerk-off who can't handle the idea of someone not wanting to talk to them. I know it stings, but you're just not that fucking awesome! Promise. My post wasn't a case of appropriate flirting gone wrong or mixed signals. I wouldn't have intervened with that. I would have let two adults with socialization skills work that shit out for themselves. What my post was about was one person being an intimidating bully and the other being scared.

[Don't think these guys are self-absorbed?

Here's a little thought experiment. 

Go back and check out how many comments that brought this idea up specifically said something to the effect of "I'm surprised no one else has brought this up"...completely ignoring ALL THE OTHERS who had brought it up before them with almost identical wording. If pretending you read all the comments about a serious issue so that you can bring up a point that "no one else has mentioned" without actually noticing that other people have indeed mentioned it isn't utterly self-absorbed, I don't know what is.]

So I feel pretty fracking comfortable telling you that you need to let the spotlight be off of you for a minute. Read story after story after story (after story after story) of women who weren't left alone and how it made them feel.

THEM.

Let those stories in. Let them get to you. Let the scope of this dawn on you. Realize how big a deal and how REAL a problem this really is in our culture.

Then maybe decide if this is really the right place and time and context for you to be Dawson's -Creek-Facing about the fact that you can't get someone to do some squat thrusts in your cucumber patch.

I know you were made to feel horrible and were physically threatened and wondered if you were going to get raped and this is all a larger social issue and probably leads to sexual assault and consent ought to be important and stuff and it's terrible that you have to go through this over and over again because men haven't been socialized not to be dbags and take silence to mean consent, which is a problem when a woman gets castigated for being vocal with her rejection and all....

....but I'm having trouble finding someone who'll let me feed sausage to their kitty.

Take heart. Most of you seemed like somewhat nice guys (except for your clueless narcissism and entitlement issues which you can work on by Googling "Nice Guy" and considering just how well that shoe fits). It seems like you at least want to get it right. Perhaps you're just a little self centered about how difficult it has been to cook your churro.

And let me at least offer you this word of good tidings. If you are worried about doing it wrong, you're already 90% the way to being okay. The fact that you give a shit at all about a woman not being interested in you already puts you miles ahead of actual creepers.

Just make sure you stay there, okay? Especially if you want to do something damned fool like putting the moves on women who are reading on public transit--because you'll lose what little high ground you have over those assholes if you are so full of yourself that you can't handle being rejected without turning on the person who rejected you.

The reason you can't find some paint by numbers formula or five fisted secret technique for getting your pencil sharpened is because there ISN'T ONE.  Women aren't a conglomerate block of strange alien creatures who all act one way. They are individuals with individual tastes, opinions, moods, and desire to flirt with you right that minute.  It's a sliding scale that changes depending on how hot you are, how tired she is, if Marvin Gaye is playing in the background, what she had for lunch, what underwear she has on, whether she just got out of a bad relationship (or if she is currently in a good one), and even weird shit like how much you smell like her dad. You can't control MOST of those things, so when she rejects you, it's nothing personal.

And even if it is totally about you--even if it's 100% exactly about you--it's still being an entitled ass to assume you are entitled or deserve someone to bob and bounce to your Steely Dan performance.

For more awesome stuff like this, visit:
http://reenin.deviantart.com/art/Reading-Zone-311272459

If you can't read the subtle cues for when a woman is into being approached or watch their foot position or the hair playing or pay attention to how their laughing at bad jokes to know if they're into you, you probably aren't skilled enough to be going for the interrupt-someone-reading maneuver anyway, but at least–AT LEAST–remember this: if they tell you they'd just like to read their book, you've struck out. Let go.

And in case you're keeping score, I have some very serious doubts that those of you who thought this was the place to bring up your flirting inadequacies are actually as "social signal savvy" as you think you are.

Just sayin...

Now, for the second group, those of you who honestly actually thought the guy hadn't done anything wrong or that women really do owe it to your entitled ass to be graciously receptive to your every advance:

Die.


You are a hero/badass/amazing/etc...

No.

I'm not.

I was being a snarky smartass, but I'm glad I could use my powers of sarcasm for good.  That's nice once in a while.

The truth is, if you want to know why I did this or why I'm 5'6" and get into fights with bullies, (or to a lesser--more obnoxious--degree, why I turn up my Beethoven when someone's playing rap music too loud) you have to go back to that southern belle feminist who raised me.

She was the one who would go knock on the neighbors' doors if a child was really shrieking just to make sure everything was okay. She was the one who who held babies and talked down mothers in drunk rages at 35,000 feet, when the flight attendants didn't know what to do. She was the one who spent an afternoon (and if I recall correctly, one where she should have been at work) making sure a young woman with a bruised up face had a place to stay, food, some toiletries, and a bit of cash. She demonstrated in late sixties rallies for equality.  She testified at city hall when our slumlord wouldn't fix the air conditioner. She took on the school system when my teacher targeted me for auto-punishment. And you've likely never seen anything half as inspiring as her diving into arguments over lunch with entire tables full of guys she works with--some of them above her--about some feminist issue that they were being clueless about.

If I ever seem to be fighting the good fight, I came by it honestly.  My mother really took stepping up to the next level.

She showed me (not told me–showed me) that you do NOT just pretend that nothing is wrong when it is. And she may have thought I wasn't paying attention, but I remember.  Some of my earliest memories are of complete strangers coming up to her and thanking her or telling her she did a good thing.  I was proud of her before I even understood what that meant.

She was my very first hero.

And she is the badass one.

Thank you.

As stories kept coming in--hundreds and hundreds of them--I didn't feel any less embarrassed about the pedestal some people were putting me on, but I began to realize that my sense of how common this was and how seldom anyone intervened may have been influenced in the right direction by how much I read, but that even still, I didn't really have a sense of the scope.

So, I'm going to do my best to graciously say this: You are all very, very welcome. And, despite nearly getting punched and not a few uncharitable online comments as to the nature of my character, I have to tell you...it was my pleasure.

I'm also very glad to see so many of my readers, after witnessing the outpouring of gratitude and stories of similar incidents--both with and without interventions--have told me that they will never stand by and watch something like this happen again.

It is the dream of most writers to have their writing make some small beneficial impact on the world around them, so even though it feels a little surreal to actually see things like that in print, it feels a little amazing too.

And thank YOU

I never could have expected how unbelievably viral this silly little post I made would get.  (Like I said, if I had I would have drafted it a few more times and taken out some of that "as a writer" stuff.) But for me, even though the numbers were exciting, and the donations have been amazingly generous, the most incredible thing has been how this post became a touch point for so many of your stories.  The events you've shared with me, either in comments or sent to me personally, have been unbelievable.  I've heard of amazing late husbands who would have loved to buy me a drink and survivors who saw a flicker of hope someday they might be able to be able to wear clothes they looked good in again. Though most were filled with frustrating scenarios and were even difficult to read for how painful they were, I was honored and breathless to have so many of you share with such honesty and candor your own experiences.

Yeah, let's just say it got a little dusty in the old writing room quite a few times.  Kept getting stuff in my eye...

I stopped even trying to reply to everyone after something like three hundred comments, but I read them all.  And I feel honored that you shared what were clearly some very personal and often painful stories.

Thank you.



With that, we're pretty much done with all the major themes of feedback.  I know I didn't get to some of the stuff that showed up only once (like the person who had the problem with the words "narrative" and "trope") but most comments that had some kind of echo more than two or three times are on here.  If you have any other questions, as always you can email me at chris.brecheen@gmail.com with the subject "W.A.W. Mailbox" (if you want to be featured in a future mailbox) or without it (if you just want the question to be between you and me).  But given that the article has mostly died down, and I'm getting only two or three comments a day on it now, I think this should be the end of it.

A Thought for my Subscribers

It occurs to me that I may have enough new subscribers (or people who just check whether I post on Facebook or not) that my last entry warrants some level of explanation.

I don't do the bookkeeping every month to brag.  Actually, in a month like last, it's a bit embarrassing to me.  When it's very small, it's funny to poke fun at how absurd this whole thing is, but I was raised not to talk openly about money, so when there's an actual amount worth mentioning I'm a bit red faced.

Though last month was exciting (not enough to pay the bills, but very non-trivial), I didn't put the totals by way of a *squee*.

I keep tabs each month to maintain transparency.  I reinvest 10% of everything I make back into blog improvements, and I donate 10% to a children's literacy charity.  It's all here in my financial pledge.  I want people to know that I'm not "cooking the books" so to speak. I don't boost the posts through social media or advertise them at all, but they're there for people to look at if they want.  That also means that anyone subscribed will see them inadvertently.

So that's why.

July Bookkeeping

The "Creepy Guy" article really did some incredible things to my numbers.

For three days during the apex of it's viral spread, I actually made enough from writing to consider it my day job.  Three...glorious...days.

However now things are back to a slightly elevated normal.  I'm averaging about three dollars per day.  (Which is up from two, and that is awesome.)

Still $20 of this was from freelance, so it's $360.72.

Last month was $170.27.  So I made about $210. off of donations.

This means Google will be sending me a check soon.   At that point I'll clear the Paypal account, stick 10% in HenWen for some eventual professional website design, and donate 10% to children's literacy.  I'm going to see if the Oakland library has a program I can just earmark a donation toward.  The place I found was a masajid/mosque, which while I don't strictly have a problem with, I was a little surprised to get a receipt saying that some of my last donation had gone to buying religious literature.

The Mailbox: Creepy Guy Narrative (Part 3 of 4)

This is self aggrandizing/congratulatory/indulgent!  The way you described her beauty made you just as creepy.  Why didn't you post this from her perspective?  Describing him the way you did was also a trope.

Go here to read Part 2 or All the way back to Part 1

This is part three of a massive reply to some of the most common questions and criticisms about my article, "Changing the Creepy Guy Narrative."

This is self aggrandizing/self-congratulatory/self-indulgent crap!

I suppose it is, honestly.  I agree.  I told a very, "you'll never guess what happened!" story and then it went viral.

I karaoke a mean "No more Mr. Nice Guy" too.

It’s kind of funny. I got just about an equal number of e-mails and/or comments that this was fake and I obviously did no such thing as I did that it was blowing up my pedestrian actions into some kind of heroic moment. So an equal number of people out there think there was no way this could have happened as thought it was so banal that I shouldn’t make such a big deal about it.

We can't just GIVE you the liquid anger Discord!
We need to make back our investment.
Oh dear me!  He stole it from us.....
Who could have foreseen that.

I also notice something else, and this is just a side-effect, I think, of writing something that has gone viral online. When I wrote every other of my posts that happen to be about me or something I did "as a writer," they’re just my stories, and people either read them or didn’t.  No one thought I was self aggrandizing/indulgent/congratulatory when I wrote a post about a My Little Pony L.A.R.P. where I was playing Flim (or was it Flam?) and we conned Discord into drinking liquid friendship. Now THAT was me being hella clever, lemmie tell ya.  I was no mere terrified smart ass that day.  Oh no.

I posted this story success on the same four social media that I post everything and then watched in disbelief as my numbers from a year and a half of blogging were tripled inside a week. When something gets popular, people begin to act as if their eyelids were sutured open (using eye-droppers of saline to keep them moist), and they were forced to read it.

All I really did was snark some jerk. Not exactly the pinnacle of human achievement.

Unless....wait....is this about me being a writer? Because I know you probably could tell I’m a writer from the original post.  (You could, right?  ~rimshot~) I wasn’t exaggerating about that part; I really am a writer.

I know it seems self aggrandizing to say so, but it is actually true. Writers have incredible socialization skills--we are all jet-setting extroverts with impeccable senses of fashion and gobs of charisma. Not that we need it because writers have chiseled bodies like Adonis and people form queues to be around us.  It's all that sitting--it's great for the glutes. Plus, we make off the hook money and enjoy careers of extreme glamour. And everyone really just...adores that person who corrects people's grammar and reads so much that they know something about almost everything.

Favorite. People. Ever.

Strangers buy me drinks when they find out I smith words. I've had a different pair of twins "tuck me in" every single night since I first started this blog. I call up President Obama every time he uses the subjunctive case wrong--and I put him on hold. But...I'm afraid that part is actually true. It's not congratulatory, aggrandizing, or indulgent. I really am a writer.

~sigh~

The real problem here is that I want to agree with you.  I really, honestly do.  I don't think it should have been that big a deal.  It should have been a level of common human decency, unremarkable to anyone outside my circle of regular readers.  One more article of a non-writer event awkwardly forced into the container of seeing the world "as a writer." I didn't feel heroic, and I still don't.  I'm embarrassed by the people calling me "badass."  I felt like I was being a smart ass to a jerk who wasn't leaving someone alone.  It shouldn't have taken something special to recognize what was happening or do something about it.  I should have gotten a pat on the back from my friends and a "cool story bro" from others.

I would like to live in that world.

But as comments poured in and poured in and poured in (and poured in and poured in), it was impossible not to notice...

Of the nearly seven hundred comments this article has generated so far--and another two hundred or so on other social media and through private e-mails--fully a third of them have been from women (and a couple of men) who have gone through public harassment, often multiple times, and found no one to help them. A few wrote about being alone, but most were in a crowd–a crowd that didn't notice or didn't care, sometimes with people they could see pretending not to be aware of what was going on.  Some of these crowds even helped the creeper--telling the woman that she should have been nicer.

The comments of those who had been abandoned in their own such moments just kept coming and coming and coming (and are still coming at least once a day).  The gratitude was embarrassing, but mostly it was heartbreaking.  As I heard one horror story after another that ended with "I wish you had been there for me," I realized that my story went viral precisely because it was not "common" decency at all.

Please believe me when I tell you that I wish this article, and everything in it, had gotten the usual 250 page views, one comment, three likes, and then disappeared into the night.  I would gladly endure all the negative comments about how self aggrandizing it was to write it up if it meant I really was me making a big deal out of nothing.

But I think part the reason it struck a chord with so many readers is because we all really, really wish that someone telling a story about intervening when a guy won't take no for an answer was self aggrandizing/congratulatory/indulgent. We don't want it to be worthy of this much attention. We want it to be common, banal, pedestrian.

But it isn't.


Why did you describer her beauty?  That seems a bit creepy too. Would you have helped her if she weren't beautiful.

Two reasons:

One is that it was true.  I was not writing a didactic story where everything was as it "ought to be." I was holding a mirror up to a real event and trying to be as honest as possible.  Would it have been a "better" story if she hadn't been conventionally attractive? Perhaps. I also could have added zombies, a fight between pirates and ninjas, a battle that ended on the top of the train with me holding a guy's head up as we went through a tunnel and a coup de grace pun (like "You should have quit while you were ahead!"). Then it would have been a MUCH better story.

The reason I chose to give her appearance emphasis in the article was so that I could contrast it with her body language. I noticed her, but I also noticed she was saying "Stay Away!" It also served as a contrast to my actions. I noticed that she was beautiful but clearly uninterested in social interaction and I moved on. That's the way men should behave. There was no "fortune favors the bold" bullshit.  There was no "I couldn't help it because you're so beautiful" bullshit.  There was no "baby if you didn't want attention, why are you rocking that skirt" bullshit. I noticed, admired, and then proceeded to take out World War Z and read.

Would I have helped her if she weren't beautiful? Absolutely. I wasn't trying to get anything from her. This wasn't the tired ol' "man saves damsel from barbarian--gets panties with phone number written on them as reward--saves world from crab people" trope. And other than a mouthed "thank you" I didn't get anything from her. I was sitting behind him. He was sitting behind her. She was desperately trying to go back to reading. She and I didn't really interact. My beef was with him and how he was not recognizing that he was hitting on someone who wasn't interested. I wanted to show him what that was like including the not getting the hint part. I was snarking him. Helping her was a happy side effect.

Every single "thank you" that I've gotten on this thread (anonymously and from people I have never laid eyes on) has made what I did as much "worth it" as her thank you did that day.


Why couldn't you have posted this from her perspective? [Yes, I really got this question from several people.]

Wanting to hear her story is a fine thing to want. Complaining that this is a story about a guy from a guy's perspective is a little disingenuous but I understand the impetus. Complaining to me that I didn’t post her story puts you in danger of looking a bit foolish. There are some biological realities to face.

Do you also complain that McDonalds has a terrible antipasta selection or that Glee never has a grisly murder to solve?

I’m sure I could write a story from the perspective of a character in that position, but at that point it would become fiction no matter how honestly or truthfully I portrayed her. However, to be perfectly honest, several of the comments from people in similar situations are in the replies and they are all remarkably similar. They describe an unbelievable sense of relief that someone had their back, both socially and possibly physically. (And none of them describe being annoyed at the loss of their agency or how white knighty their helper was being either.) There are dozens of such stories in the replies and even more everywhere this article has appeared. It really doesn't seem too difficult to get a sense of how she probably felt.

But I'll point you in that direction if I ever find out that she has written about it.

Pinky swear.

Describing him the way you did seems like it created its own bias and trope. You even admit that you decided to make him retroactively look like a jerk.

I wrote my post just a few hours after the incident. My fingers were having trouble hitting the right keys because I was still on an adrenaline high and shaking. There was no way I was going to be objective. I had to own that.  So I admitted my bias to my readers and let them draw their own conclusions.

But man, he really did look like a douche. Like if I met him away from some attractive woman he could harass, I would expect him to turn to me and ask, "Bro, do you even lift?"

And you might be surprised at just how comfortable I am portraying a guy who wouldn't stop harassing a woman literally begging him to leave her alone as an asshole.


Continue to Part 4 (What about teh mens!  You are badass!  Thank you.  And thank YOU!)


[So this three part article became a four part article.  I promise that the excruciating pain is almost over. I do need to give a reply to my "What about teh menz!" commenters, but I realized that I also wanted to say something in reply to the comments that were brave, candid, honest, and genuinely moving.  I didn't want a feedback mailbox to such a breathtaking thread of sharing to only be focused on the howler monkeys flinging their poo.  That meant I needed at least one more part.]

Meet Indem Niffy and Look at some Wild Numbers

I know many of you already know Cathamel, but for those who don't, she is my muse.  Not to be confused with the patron/muses of course, who are more "real world" in their support. Cathamel inspires me, winds me up, whispers ideas in my ear and once in a while even takes over blogging for me.

Plus she is the one that helps me out when I can't think of the word on the tip of my tongue.

She also pushes me, sometimes despite what I think I'm capable of.  She can be...difficult in her motivational techniques in a Darth Vader/new-ways-to-motivate-them kind of way, and I'm not just smoothing over certain words like "taskmaster" or "excruciating pain" because she's coiled tightly around my neck and digging her claws into the base of my skull.

A couple of years ago, life was pretty tough for Cathamel.  I spent a lot of time working on expository papers for school, and didn't get to a lot of creative writing.  She went hungry as many days as she ate, and when she got creative ju-ju at all it was just a few minutes I was able to steal away from an impacted schedule.  Plus my schedule changed from day to day, so she never had a particularly good sense of consistency from me.  She was just struggling to survive.  But since I started Writing About Writing, her life has been pretty sweet.  She feasts most days, and has a little something something daily with few exceptions.  So of course, now that everything is going well, it has thrown into sharp relief those things in her life which are lacking.  (Or at least that's what she said to me when she thought I didn't know she was quoting the recently promoted Commodore Norrington from Pirates of the Caribbean.)

For an immortal deity like a muse, Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs isn't quite the checklist it might be for a human.  Seeing as Cath IS self-actualization for someone else (me), the process of giving me and feeding off of my creative energy is actually most of what she needs, so it doesn't quite work to run right up the pyramid.  But since she's been forced into the shape of a wooden dragon from Chinatown instead of some hottie in a toga, she can't get companionship through her normal trick of trolling frat parties for horny college guys who don't seem to mind that she's got someplace to be early the next morning.

So she has been bugging me for companionship.  Specifically another dragon who she assures me will come to life just like she does once it's been in her inspiring presence.  She made it clear that her preference was a Western type dragon because they have that hot exotic look she likes so much.

I found a couple during my trip to Vegas, and put it to a quick question of my readers.  It had to be quick since I was with a hungry pregnant woman who was starting to nibble on my right arm, and if I didn't get out of there to the Aria buffet, there was going to be an incident.  The sort of incident that ends with me having nothing but a bone arm for my right arm--which is really a lot less cool if I'm not a dark necromancer in a fantasy novel, but just a normal dude who has been partially eaten alive.

Meet Imden Niffy.
Right next to an authentic
 dragon wine holder....thing.

This was the guy we ended up not picking.
He just looks too cranky.

So after a very swift round of feedback, I picked up Indemn Niffy (who I must say is very good at making me forget that I lost sixty dollars playing blackjack).  Niffy is pronounced with a long E sound, so it would rhyme with tree or the THREE in threesome.

At first there were some territorial issues, and they had to sniff each other's balls for a while, but within half an hour they were running around the house, knocking over stemware and having "cat riding" races.  Anyway it's all fast friends and mayhem around here, so hopefully I'll stop being inspired to write stories about lonely Eastern dragons who end up killing the human writers they live with in horrifically gruesome ways.

Cause that shit gets old.

They were just playing a second ago.
Something called "Rub my orb."

Obviously this month was a little on the outrageous side, numbers wise, and everything is basically going to be about the "Creepy Guy Narrative" article.  It kind of exploded everything...as you can see.

The monthly view.  As you can see, even "calmed down," things may never be the same.

And here we have the all time view graph...or as I refer to it, the
Look-Close-And-You-Will-See-A-Phallic-Symbol graph.
Everything I have ever done for the past year and a half
are represented by those tiny little foothills to the left.
Don't see it?  Look real close...

Not only did it get a quarter of a million page views, but the traffic brought thousands of readers to other articles.  The Prometheus review got about 3,500 page views this month--nearly quintupling it's performance so far.

But even though those articles have done well, the articles I wrote this month that will go into the "Best Of" Page are obviously "Creepy Guy" along with some of it's follow up articles, and the mailbox in which I reply to it (which I will probably finish up tomorrow and Saturday).  Plus the Pacific Rim write up did pretty well.  Amy's guest blog Mailbox about writing daily also did very well as it was linked by Writer's Write--a South African writing school that has a well-established audience on social media--mostly because of one of the images I used, but traffic is traffic.

I know it's going to be a long time before I have a month like this one again, but at least I have a sense of where Writing About Writing can go if I keep working hard.  For three days, I actually made enough each day to consider it a "real" job.

Three glorious days!!!  Of course, now I'm back to about $3/day for 5-8 hours of work, but...you know...baby steps.

Coming Next Month...

I have a few weeks before fall semester starts, so I'm going to focus on getting some good quality writing going on while I can give it a little more of my time and effort.  This weekend I plan to lock my door and put up the next part of A Demon's Rubicon if it kills me.  You should also expect another craft essay--probably the first of several on characterization.  I'm going to finish this series where I reply to comments on "Creepy Guy" and get on to some of the other cool questions people have been sending me.  The next update of the glossary is long overdue, and I'm going to get it going.  Plus an essay straddling process and craft about theme.  Our guest bloggers have been informed by Cedric that they are on notice and have to start guest blogging again, so some of their articles should show up soon.  Plus, The SciGuy says he has defeated several attempts to hack into the mainframe and piggy back another bad advice article into the W.A.W. feed--each attempt more pernicious than the one before.  He says that internet security is a bit like real security.  You can take precautions and make yourself tough to crack, but if someone is determined to get in, they eventually will.  So that doesn't bode well...

All that, a major image potpourri, and more are due to land this month.  So stay bookmarked!