Who is the BEST Written Villain? (Nominations Needed)

Edit: Nominations have concluded, but you can still vote in the poll.

Hi all,

They are the mustache twirlers, the misguided, the people doing the right things in the wrong way, the agents of chaos, those who repent any single good they've done from their very soul, those who let their personal loyalties cloud a greater good, or those who've just lost their sense of morality along the path of their growing fanaticism.

They are the villains.

And they are our October poll.

I must stress that it is already October 15th, so the nomination process is going to go VERY quickly. If I have enough nominations by tomorrow, the poll will go up then so move quickly if you want to get in on this.


It's been a while since we ran a poll here (not that we forgot or anything.....MARK), but a quick reminder of how the rules work.

The Rules

1- As always, I leave the niggling to your best judgement because I'd rather be inclusive. If you think that Shylock is a villain rather than a victim of Christian oppression, I won't argue.

2- You may nominate two (2) villains. Remember that I am a horrid despotic power hungry beast who hates free will and all things good. To encourage reading and reading comprehension I will NOT take any villains beyond the second. (I will consider a long list to be "seconds" if someone else nominates them as well.)

3- You may (and should) second as many nominations of others as you wish.

4- Please put your nominations here. I will take villains nominated as comments to this post on other social media; however, they may not get the seconds you need because no one will see them. (Seriously, last month there were lots of great FB nominations that no one saw or seconded.)

5- You are nominating WRITTEN VILLAINS, not their movie portrayals. While we have all been blown away by Donald Southerland's ability to be actually sinister with Snow's goofball lines in The Hunger Games Trilogy, the book villain is very different.

Vlog Question (Polls)

September's Best

Here are the best and brightest (or at least the most page-viewed) of our September posts. Though September felt like kind of a flomphy month after I abandoned "Blogust," it had a couple of seriously powerhouse articles.

Remember, you can find all of our "Best of" articles by year and by month in The Best of W.A.W. (either follow the link right there or on the little tab at the top of the page).

Terry Pratchett and "Real Literature"

Reports from Burning Man (A Writer's Life)

Why do I hate NaNoWriMo? (FAQ)

Flipping the Script

There's a part of me that sort of wants to completely flip the script of the "logical and rational" actors in social justice discussions.

You see, we place a "value" and a "high ground" on the rules of discourse that in many way reflect the power dynamics of the larger society themselves. Being emotionless about a topic makes you seem to be better able to speak about it because emotions are thought to cloud your ability to be rational. People who don't experience something are thought to be the only ones who can be objective about it. Women, for example, can't talk about workplace sexism, because they are not objective. Only men are considered objective enough to tell them what they experience isn't really misogyny at all. Black people can't talk about racism because they have a "chip on their shoulder" and white people need to explain to them that though racial inequality exists, somehow no specific example they bring up is ever really racist.

See how that works?

What if we could completely flip that script? What if the value and high ground could be placed on emotional investment and critical thinking that involved listening to the stories of people who have directly experienced something. (And while my examples will be "men" and "sexism" this can really work with any kind of social power dynamic in our society between the powerful and the marginalized.) If we imagined this, what would it look like?

Like start ridiculing men who are "impartial": "It's clear you don't even care about this. Why should we listen to you? You're completely uninvested."

Berate men for having NO vested interest in women's issues: "How can you be objective when you're not even a woman. Clearly not being affected by this creates an unsurmountable bias."

Dismiss "logic" that ignores subjective reality: "It's clear that your logic hasn't progressed beyond the freshman survey course if you think every linguistic shortcut about what "men do" is open to hyperskepticism and "fallacy whack-a-mole." So the complexity of this discussion will obviously elude you until you have a deeper sense of critical thinking and how humans who aren't writing syllogisms actually interact with each other."

Discount their contributions if they are uber-objective and kick them off of threads if they continue to do so: "I'm sorry. I simply can't take this lack of passion and empathy seriously. You are just making your argument look so bad." (Later) "If you're wondering why you're being kicked off this thread, it's because you're talking about major issues of misogyny and the humanity of women like they are mathematical proofs. No one who can be so emotionally detached from the issue belongs here. If you maybe had a slightly less disinterested tone, I might be willing to consider your points."

(For bonus points, if they persist, start holding their past behavior against them: "You clearly have a problem with being unable to invest in this as an urgent and critical issue. I've seen you be totally cold on several threads. It makes it really hard to take anything you say seriously.")

Of course emotions do have the ability to cloud clear thinking and we would acknowledge this in our new world–conceding examples of red-faced, furious creationists or white nationalists whose emotions have blocked all paths to sincere self criticism. Naturally we would argue about the epistemology of emotions, just like we do the sources of "rational facts" today. But most people who show emotions would simply be thought to be invested and you wouldn't trust anyone who was disinterested.

Point out how irrational it is to eject half our thought process from thinking about issues that concern us deeply: "You're trying to separate reason from emotion. How can we trust your perspective as accurate when you make such an effort to compartmentalize mental processes as though they're not completely interdependent and dismiss everyone who does not? That is completely unreasoned thinking."

Mock their lack of commitment: "You don't talk about this incessantly. Are you some sort of dilettante or something? Why should I listen to anything you say if you're not constantly getting educated and struggling. Pfffft. Get the fuck out of here, you tourist."

Point out studies that show how unable they are to speak on matters: "There is research on how being in a position of power makes you ignore details. So men are not objective when they speak about women's issues. Men are utterly biased. They should acknowledge those filters and let women do most of the talking. And listen."

Yeah....imagine that. 

That Actually Worked (Meta)

So, last week after my huge personal issues, I pushed everything to Wed, Thur, Fri. I put up some filler, but the whole week's worth of blogging happened in three days.

And that....really worked.

Like it really, really worked well. I was stressed and frazzled and I actually got more writing done than during a normal week.

During the other days I wrote fiction, I tinkered on a few of the bigger articles that I either posted later or are still coming, and I cleaned up some of the menus that have gone neglected here for YEARS. I even put up some filler but didn't feel guilty about it because I knew the real action was still to come. And it did. All the posts I wanted to get up for the week went up, but they did so at the end of the week when I have a little more time and a lot less stress.

It's possible that I'm just not accounting for how much stress and schedule impact teaching one class a week really adds. (I would need about $250 a month more than I'm making now to drop my last night of teaching and give writing that time and energy.) I also don't tag in quite as long with The Contrarian on Wednesdays and Fridays. I also usually have evenings before those days to outline or think. For some reason the start of the week is just a little tougher.

So I think that's what's going to happen from now on. You'll still get all the same Writing About Writing quality that you've come to expect, but squished into the end of the week.

I've already updated the Update Schedule.

Reckoning

Today I walked into an intervention.

The whole staff was there, even the cheese guy, Grendel, and Grendel's mother were all assembled. The guest bloggers took point. Leela Bruce finally spoke.

"Okay, noobcicle. Something has to be done about the Evil Mystery Blogger or I'm just going to start kicking asses and I'm okay starting with yours," she said. "It was bad enough when it was shitty writing advice, but this is just.....this is shitty all around. I mean it reads like some kind of cutting satire or something."

"We are all going to do four things if you don't do something: 1) quit, 2) leave, 3) never look back, and 4) gladly pay full price for value meals at the local fast food restaurants," Ima said. "This has gone too far."

"Ima," I gasped. "You too?"

"You can't ignore this," Ima said. "That last post. I mean, I like me some satire, but.....damn."

"I don't know what to do," I said. "Sci Guy has beefed up internet security three times. He's sure the hacks are somehow coming from within the building, but all of you assure me you're innocent and are offended at the implication otherwise. What am I supposed to do, start the inquisition around here."

"Actually," Sci Guy said, "I have an postulate about that. In his last transmission he said that he would 'continue looking for back doors.'"

"Right," I said.

"Well, basically, if I create a back door by fluctuatting the quantum negspace in the webosphere, I can create a tempting and juicy back door into the blogoverse, and when he goes through it, we can find out exactly which computer he's logging in from, and keylogs and probably even figure out who it is and even their quantum state and everything. We'll have him."

"Really," I said. "You can do all that?"

"If I calibrate the positrons and tachyons to proper angular modulation and write a bit of intentionally shitty code, yes."

"Okay," I said. "I hate to say we might have to endure another post like that last one, will that be enough that you don't leave."

"For now," Leela said, cracking all her knuckles by making a fist. "For now."

Cedric

[This is one of the long-overdue bios for the Writing About Writing Staff Page.]

Cedric- During the Octorian Wars, Chris ended up on the wrong side of the temporal event horizon for several days and befriended one of the Octorians. They went through a real trial and like every Enemy Mine/The Enemy ST:TNG trope they ended up realizing that they had a lot in common. Cedric helped Chris survive and get back to his own dimension, and then (because Cedric kind of liked pretentious artists) he stayed and has been working as Writing About Writing's administrative executive since.

His loyalty to Chris is only matched by his loyalty to the Human Dor who is his fan--his specifically.

He is glad no one has ever made him choose between them. Chris probably wouldn't like that.