The Great Divorce

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The Great Divorce

As someone who has spent a considerable amount of time studying history, I have my personal theories about why societies and civilizations fall apart. And, I think we are in the last few years of our current globe-spanning Western civilization. Whether those years will be counted by actual years or by decades is still up for debate. But, the end of the world as we’ve known it is upon us and I believe it is for the same reasons that Rome, Greece, Egypt, China, and Mesopotamia failed.

We are divided into two major groups: the urban group and the agricultural group. Each has its own discrete set of interests based on location, lifestyle, and local culture. Neither group is better or worse than the other and, in many cases, there is considerable overlap in interests. No, the true division is in prioritization and in means of achieving those interests. And therein lies the reason why I no longer think this divide can be bridged.

Civilizations have fallen in the past when the urban elites overruled and ignored the plight of the agricultural base that made their lives possible. Think about it: the city of Rome (or Constantinople or Athens or Beijing or Cairo or Memphis or Baghdad) does not have enough arable land attached to it to support itself. It needs to bring in wheat, meat, and wine from the outlying agricultural districts. Therefore, it needs the people working that land to either 1) feel like they have a vested interest in supporting Rome (or wherever) or 2) be serfs who have no choice. The most successful civilizations have been those that were able to convince the agricultural regions to continue to support the urban regions and who, to some extent, ennobled the idea of the citizen-farmer (such as in the case of Cincinnatus). But, when urban interests and priorities caused the ruling class to ignore, disparage, or enslave the agricultural workers, things started to go downhill very quickly.

That’s not to say that there was some kind of conspiracy or mass strike where food didn’t get sent to the urban regions. Instead, there became less interest in working the land and more in moving to the city where franchise was possible. Sons no longer remained to work the farms of their fathers and instead moved to the cities. Some places tried to undo this or force people to remain on the farms (a la the Roman tax-farmers who were a precursor to later European serfdom). Others sent soldiers to force the farmers to keep working the fields (and that usually led to a lot of other problems since soldiers weren’t paid well and often used their authority to enrich themselves).

But, when the divide gets too big, the society breaks down. And we’ve reached that point.

So, what do we do? In the natural course of things, one group or the other or both take up arms against each other, there’s a series of bloody wars that span decades, then one group triumphs over the other and the civilization restarts. In this case, I don’t see things working out too well for the urban group in the United States. They’ve helpfully (to those they term their enemies) isolated themselves in small easy-to-destroy zones. For instance, a few years ago, while writing my Zombie Apocalypse Survival Compendium, I worked out exactly how to make it impossible for anyone to survive in Los Angeles. It’s surprisingly easy and would require no more than a few hundred people and some commercial-grade explosives. Taking out Las Vegas is almost as trivial. New York City is a bit more of a challenge but not overly difficult — especially not Manhattan island. Chicago presents a definite challenge but, again, if you control the zones around it, it’s not difficult to use standard siege tactics and a small strike team to shut down air access within the city itself.**

And if I, working with no resources and only a few maps, can figure out how to do it, chances are someone who doesn’t view it as a mental exercise to contain zombies has worked it out in far greater detail. And it won’t be pretty. We’re talking tens of millions dead inside a few months from starvation, dehydration, lack of sanitation, lack of access to electrical power, and then the plagues that seem to follow from such disasters.

Meanwhile, the agricultural region is not going to be easily conquered. The population density is low and living off the land is not only a cultural expectation, it’s a real possibility. There are no high-impact damaging targets to hit that are the equivalent of even one of the urban cities. I mean, sure, taking out some monuments would make people mad but it wouldn’t lead to the deaths of millions. Then there’s the fact that most of the current armed forces are culturally inline with the agricultural regions — they are more likely to refuse to obey orders or even kill their commanders if ordered to take control of what the urban dwellers call “Flyover Country.” And then, within those regions, while there are those who sympathize with the urban regions, they are generally well known and if they started trying to begin a grassroots terrorist campaign, they will find themselves woefully outnumbers and outgunned. Even if you could take out the entire electrical grid in “Flyover Country” and wrest control of the ports and rivers from them, it’s still difficult to conquer them. You’re dealing with people who routinely lose access to power and water for days or weeks on end and who have cultural expectations that they will be able to deal with it. So, short of killing mass numbers of them and sending the rest to re-education camps, there is no easy way to destroy the current agricultural region or its political movements.

So, what can be done that will not result in massive death?

The Great Divorce.

I propose that we break into two nations — an urban nation and an agricultural nation. Further, I propose that the current national debt be divided by the number of total people and that each new nation take that percentage of debt as theirs to pay off. If the urban group refuses this, then the agricultural group should assume 100% of the debt but, in return, retains access to all armaments — nuclear and otherwise. In this case, the new urban nation starts with no military assets. Urban sympathizers living in agricultural areas can either move to the new nation or can opt to give up citizenship in their local zone and become citizens of the urban zone but will no longer be allowed free access to services supported by local taxes. Same with agricultural sympathizers living in urban zones. So, if you’re an urban citizen who has chosen to live in the agricultural belt for whatever reason, your taxes go to support your urban nation and not to support the local schools. Therefore, you would have to pay to send your children to state-funded schools. Same for agricultural sympathizers living in the cities.

Trade and treaties between these two nations can be hammered out but any current agreements between regions will be null and void and will have to be negotiated fresh. That means that if the agricultural region wants access to a West Coast port, they’ll have to negotiate for it. It also means that if the urban region wants access to fresh water from the agricultural region, they’ll have to negotiate for it. Same with electrical power generation, mining rights, etc. The agricultural group could, as a gesture of good faith and good will, agree to cede a certain amount of arable land non-contiguous with an urban region to the urban nation to use as a breadbasket for itself. However, that land and free access to it would be contingent upon the urban citizens finding people with the know-how and willingness to go work on the farms and on them not spitting on the agricultural citizens who have graciously given up their land.

After that, the citizens of one nation go their way and the citizens of the other go a different way. Neither gets to rule over citizens of the other. If citizens of the agricultural nation are up in arms because citizens of the urban state can have abortions, well, they have as much say in that as the US currently has in abortion laws in Finland. If the citizens of the urban nation are up in arms because the citizens of the agricultural nation decide that the drinking age should be fourteen, well, again, they have as much say in it as the US currently does in British tax rates.

Both nations, if they chose to remain open to each other, could conduct various campaigns to try to win hearts and minds to their nation. Children born in either nation would not have citizenship rights until at least eighteen and at eighteen could very well decide to go live in the other nation. Immigration policy between the two will be up to the new governments, of course, but I would propose that there be a cooling-off period of five years between settling in a new nation and receiving franchise rights.

The only real issue of contention I see that is not easily resolved is that relating to the broadcast spectrum but, with the airwaves becoming less important due to the advent of the Internet, I don’t see it as a major stumbling block.

So, people on the left and right — what do you think? Are you willing to give up power over those who disagree with you in order to have your own nation? Or is all your caterwauling and hand-wringing just the same tired clichés that all tyrants trot out whenever they decide that they need to rule over people “for their own good?”

A house divided cannot stand but then a marriage where the parents do nothing but fight and scream at each other doesn’t last very long either.

— G.K.

**I am not going to post details of how to do any of these things here since I don’t want to give any local wackos ideas. Suffice it to say, I ran it past several of my friends in the military and the words “Yes, it would work. What is wrong with you that you think this shit up?” were uttered.

Video-games and Storytelling

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This will be a new series about how storytelling is done in video games. As I learn more about programming and as I think about video games I have played over my lifetime, I will be making new posts to explore the dynamics of gameplay, storytelling, and graphics. Right now, I am working up a post about the Uncanny Valley effect and modern games — mostly those by Square Enix. If you know of games that have successfully crossed the Uncanny Valley, post the titles in the comments below and I will check them out as time and funds permit.

This is going to be a very long, somewhat rambling, and at times incoherent series of posts as I learn more about programming in general, game programming in specific, and the history of gaming.

I hope that you who still read this site will enjoy it! If you have suggestions or questions, post them in the comments.

— G.K.

So…

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So...

It’s been a while since I posted anything here. A lot has happened in my life since the last time I posted. Back then, I was engaged. In the years since, my engagement ended somewhat abruptly. Oh, it’s all my fault. I wasn’t good enough, I wasn’t what my fiancé needed when he got sick, and I was too stupid and stressed to be the woman he deserves. I hope that, one day, he’ll find someone worthy of him. For myself, I’ve decided to return to my fictosexuality and only fall in love with fictional characters. I will not seek to enter a relationship with a real man ever again. It seems that, somewhat tragically, I got it right the first time around when I married my ex-husband. Since there is no chance of us ever being anything other than good friends, I’m giving up on romance entirely to focus on my career and my writing.

That leads me to the next bit I have to announce. Back in 2017, under some pressure, I became a teacher. I have taught high school and elementary English and French over the past three years and I have learned a valuable lesson: I am not cut out to be a teacher. I’m too introverted, a few standard deviations too distant, and just too much of an INTJ to be a good teacher. Especially in the impoverished districts that are hiring. Therefore, I will be returning to the IT world as a web programmer. I already have a position lined up for me.

So, why am I giving up teaching? Simple. I’m no good at it. Oh, I can reach most students — that’s true. I can break down concepts and get my students to understand them. I can teach. The problem is — I can’t inspire. I can’t make connections with most of my students. Part of this is down to me being an INTJ — we don’t make connections with anyone easily. The other parts come down to me being a very different generation, class, and race than my students.

See, I graduated from high school back in 1998. Back then, students were expected to just do whatever the teacher asked. There was no arguing. There was no getting Mom and Dad to come up and defend us for being special little snowflakes. It was “do the assignment or take the zero.” If we wound up in a class we didn’t want to take or didn’t have the pre-reqs to take (as happened to me my senior year when I landed in Trigonometry after having eked out a “D” in Algebra II), we were expected to give it our best regardless. None of us thought about complaining that we didn’t understand, that we didn’t want to be there, that we were bored, that we hated the class. Our thoughts, feelings, and opinions were completely irrelevant. We were expected to do the work, to give it our all, and to go along to get along regardless of whether we wanted to be there or not. If we were ill-brought-up enough to complain, we got sent to the principal’s office and there we got set straight that what we wanted did not matter at all and that life would never conform to what we wanted or wished.

I could go on and on — and will, probably, in a different series of posts — about the problems with modern students and the current education system. However, for now, all you need to know is this: do not become a teacher. Unless you feel the same level of calling to be a teacher that some feel to become a priest, a nun, or a pastor — don’t. Why?

Well, first of all, being a teacher is a lot like being in an abusive relationship. Unless you are prepared for it and have the kind of personality that is able to withstand the abuse, it’s not worth it. You will rarely ever hear anything positive. Your academic coaches and principals will instead focus only on test scores, absences, and lack of willingness to follow arbitrary rules that you will be held to while their favorites and they themselves will be exempt from upholding. You might manage to come in every single day — even on days that you are ill — but you will be yelled at and held to account for all of the teachers who don’t come in every day. Your test scores might be in the highest percentile for the school — but you will still be shouted at as if you were in the lowest percentile. And God help you if you have troubled students. For every write-up you send to the office, not only will nothing be done, but you’ll be considered a “bad” teacher who is “unable or unwilling” to control your class.

If your students threaten you, you will be ignored when you report it. If they complain and make up a whole lot of crap about you, they’ll be believed and you will be ignored. If you start to record them, you’ll be in trouble. If you can’t keep 100% of your students 100% engaged, then the problem is with you.

You will be told to “teach to the test.” However, when you do that and your students go off to college completely unprepared for the rigors of university-level courses, you will be blamed for “teaching to the test.” Even if you record your principals demanding that you do just that (teach to the test), you will be held accountable when your students aren’t college-ready. Your principals and department heads will throw you under the bus. You will have no support, no back-up, no authority, and no respect from your students, their parents, or your administration. Instead, you will be the first to blame for any problem, for any issue with other teachers in your department, for anything that has annoyed the administration. You will work at least 30 to 50 hours overtime (unpaid!) per week. You will sacrifice time with your spouse, with your children, for your hobbies — all to try to make the administrators look better. If, through your sacrifices and efforts, the school does start to do better, you will NEVER be given credit. Instead, it will be the superintendents and principals who get the credit.

Everyone will talk about how lucky you are to have so many paid holidays — ignoring the fact that you forgo several hundred dollars per month so that your paycheck can be stretched from 10 months to 12 — and that the amount will always favor the school district and not you (after all, you might think that $48,000 would mean $4k per month but no, it will get you around $3k per month after benefits, withholding, retirement, and whatever other tricks your district comes up with). You will spend most of those holidays working — trying desperately to keep ahead of the demands. Should you be lucky enough to make it five or more years in teaching, you will find yourself forced to kowtow to the whims of an idiot who brags about not bothering to teach third-graders how to read but instead managed to get their test scores higher.

You will work, you will slave, you will sacrifice, and you will give and you will be told that all of that is not enough. You will never hear a single positive thing. You will be blamed for everything that goes wrong. You will be held accountable for all of the students who just got passed along until they got to you. You might be teaching 12th grade with students who are on a pre-K reading level and it will be YOUR FAULT that they can’t struggle through Beowulf or Macbeth. Never you mind that their previous teachers promoted them because it was easier to 60 them out than to deal with the paperwork. It’s still your fault that they got to you unable to read on grade level.

And your paycheck and benefits? Sure, if you manage to suffer through 30+ years, you’ll get a good retirement package. Unless, of course, the State needs that money to fund something else.

In short: entering into education is stupid. It’s like willingly getting into a relationship with a drunk who has a history of beating their partners. Only do it if you enjoy being a martyr. If you have an ounce of self-respect, go into something else. You’ll not only work less hours, have more time to yourself, and get paid more — you’ll add years to your life.

From one who has survived three years of absolute hell,

— G.K. Masterson

Announcing new stuff!

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Announcing new stuff!

So, last week I went up to visit my First Reader in the near-middle of the United States. We had an absolutely great time together and are looking forward to many more great times together in the future. Additionally, while I was up there, I began working on my latest WIP series: the Blade of Fate. I am planning to release this in two versions: one version as a more straight-line fantasy story with just a touch of romance and another, steamier version (under a different pen name). I also seem to have gotten myself roped into helping a fellow teacher-person with some non-fiction books which may mean yet another name.

Therefore, if you see stuff that is identical to something I’ve written as G.K. Masterson but under a different name, check with me before you take out the torches and pitchforks. Chances are, it’s a re-release into a different market. I want to keep my brands separate instead of getting known as “that chick who writes kinky fantasy novels.”

In other WIP news: I am almost finished with Lanar’ya 3. I am planning to have a long talk with my publisher on that series about getting the rights back and then re-releasing it once I have found an editor to re-edit the series. And, I’m still working in the Cycle of the Eternals universe but I’m not planning to actively put out the first book until I have a few more in the kitty. Had I known that Lanar’ya 3 was going to be so stubborn about being written, I’d have held off a bit on that series, too.

Lastly, if I have time between all the traveling, other writing, and teaching-prep I have to do this summer, I will start trying to update my serials more often. I may give Patreon another go to see if I can make “gas and milk money” off it.

However, all that said, I am not going to promise to blog more often. As explained above, I have about eight hojillion projects on various burners not to mention finishing up my Master’s degree which involves plenty of writing there, too.

Thanks to all of you who have stuck around!

— G.K.

Origins and the Canary in the Coal Mine

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I think what bothers me more than just the whole “weak woman” thing (and, once again, thank you so much for setting us back again, Whitney!) is the chilling effect that dis-inviting folks like Larry Correia, Jon del Arroz, John Ringo, and Tim Bolgeo from conventions has on free speech and free thought. I mean, let’s assume for the moment that every negative thing said about these guys is true. Let’s assume — again, for the sake of argument only — that they are the horrible things that the crybullies say they are.

Does silencing them do anything to prove them wrong? Hell no. All you’ve done is show that you don’t have an effective argument against whatever it is you are strawmann-ing them to have said/thought/believed. You are, in essence, saying that they are right. Do you want to know how we got the Civil Rights Movement to work? It wasn’t by silencing the segregationists — it was by answering their speech with our own and proving them wrong. It was about refuting their arguments. It was about reaching out to them and connecting with them as humans and helping them to see that segregation was a bad thing for whites and blacks. And it took a long time to get where we are and, while we still have a ways to go, we’re all in a much better place than we were in the 1940s and 1950s.

In a way, this bothers me so much because gaming and sci-fi/fantasy have become the new canaries in the coal mine for the free speech movement. Everywhere else, people have caved in to the crybullies — tech, science, literary works, romance, horror, religion, history and historiography — but the geek world fought back. The geek world said “we really don’t care what you have in your pants, who you like to hump, or what the melanin ratio in your skin is — if you like our stuff, we like you” and refused to bow down to the crybullies and the Stalinists who would, quite frankly, like it if everyone to the left of Mao got sent to the gulag. When our world starts getting invaded by people who are NOT part of it — and seriously, a playboy billionaire and his rich bitch probably do not spend their Saturdays playing D&D — and who insist that we have to exclude people for wrongthink instead of engaging them, it’s time to fight back and to tell them to go back to their segregated, gated neighborhoods where the domestics are invisible and leave the rest of us the hell alone.

We are the gutter genre — we’re where everyone mixes together, tells good stories, experiments with exploring cultural problems by substituting elves and dwarves and whatever else for humans, and who honestly don’t care that much if you’re male, female, transsexual, gay, straight, bi, poly, white, black, yellow, red, purple with green stripes. We’re the place where all the outcasts are safe to hang out and talk. We are the United States of the writing world — a place for the oddballs to mix, have more oddball kids, and then dream up awesome stuff that the elites can’t think up because they’re too trapped in their boxed-in, fenced-in, invitation-only worlds. We need to stay what we are and not let the mainstreamers screw us over by imposing their whitebread blinkered view of reality on us and hemming us in with boxes — check boxes, tick boxes, political boxes, socio-economic boxes — and keep mixing it up. We need to bring in people who are interested in telling great stories with great characters — characters and stories that can appeal to many different audiences.

If we let them win, if we give up and let them segregate this last place where we all meet and mix, we’re boned. Big time. So, roll up the sleeves and let’s start building a new place for people of all races, genders, creeds, and socio-economic brackets (not just the chardonnay sippers from the “right” neighborhoods in the “smart” cities) to meet up, talk games, swap stories, and to have all the cultural miscegenation we want.

— G.K.

Weak Woman Ruins Origins

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Weak Woman Ruins Origins

So, I know I’ve not been blogging much. First year teaching, wrapping up a MAT program, writing, life… However, after hearing about Origins dis-inviting Larry Correia (one of my favorite authors and people) because some woman got her feelings hurt because Larry fisked her fiancé’s article on GenCon four years ago and decided that a fisking means she’s “not safe” at a convention with Larry goes to the con organizers and gets him dis-invited, I knew I had to come back because this. is. bullshit.

See, crap like this is why women don’t get taken seriously in male-dominated industries. So, screw you, Whitney Beltran. Screw you for setting us back with your inability to control your “vapors” and deal with the fact that not everyone thinks your HoneyBooBoobear is right. Screw you, you stupid fucking Mrs. Brady “my man knows best” for this.

You are a special kind of stupid

Women — real women — like Sarah Hoyt (an actual real minority and an immigrant to boot!), Cedar Sanderson, and even Cat Romero can handle the fact that not everyone thinks their husbands/boyfriends/girlfriends/whateverbecauseIamnotajudgymcjudgerson are right and perfect. These women can do remarkable things — like work with people they may not agree with, go to conventions that have Guests of Honor who might disagree with them, and can live without needing the world to think that their SOs are right about everything and that only wisdom and truth come from their men’s mouths. But you… you make us all look bad. Women like you are why women in tech can’t get mentors — we might get the vapors or make false accusations and try to ruin a man’s reputation or cost him opportunities if he says something we don’t like. Women like you are why we have trouble getting our games developed or having our voices taken seriously in gaming development. After all, we’re just going to make a mushy game all about feelings and where the characters have to navigate a minefield of never offending the perpetually offended and dealing with womanish vapors and no one wants to play that or walk on eggshells around other developers — not that you’d understand the desire to play a game that doesn’t involve the heroine being rescued by someone else.* Easier to just keep it all male. Women like you are why we have a hard time making it in the sciences — after all, if our hypotheses (or our boyfriend’s hypotheses) gets proven incorrect, we may lash out and do everything we can to ruin that person’s life, bringing it up years later and talking about how we don’t feel “safe” using the same grocery store as them.

So screw you. I hope that your fiancé protects your weak-minded, lily-livered, thin-skinned, meek self from the real world. I hope he’s provided you with the June Clever/Carol Brady cotton-wool-wrapped existence that you need, you delicate little fainting lily. I hope that you and your sister-in-spirit Rose Eleveth — who went out of her way to prove that women aren’t concerned about or interested in science; we’re all about what people are wearing and celebrity gossip! — are able to live in a bubble world where nothing ever happens to you and you never encounter any kind of disagreement. I really hope that is how it is for you and I really wish that you would stay in that bubble world and quit trying to bring your whole patriarchal “My Husband Knows Best” attitude on those of us who actually do believe in things like freedom of speech, having disagreements civilly, not ruining people’s lives over them not worshiping our husbands, and that women can deal with encountering things that they may not like or people with whom they may not agree without getting the vapors.

Don’t get me started on your ignorance regarding the Sad Puppies and the Hugos. Seriously — if you’re thick enough to think that “all whites + one Asian” counts as representing PoCs, then you’re too thick to be able to understand something as complicated as the politics behind the Hugos. Get your husband to explain it to you, Whitney, because I have neither the time, the inclination, nor the crayons to do it myself. I’m too damned busy working in an impoverished school district teaching students of color — the ones you probably shudder at and cross the street to get away from — and actually making a difference in the world, you chardonnay-sipping, privileged, white, limousine liberal.

I don't have the time or the crayons for this shit

— G.K.

*Seriously — Twelve reviews on Metacritic is all that thing got? Right. That’s beyond sad.

These Three Things…

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These Three Things...

So, yeah, I am a terrible blogger. I got a job teaching English at the high school level and haven’t had the time or the energy to blog much since it came down to “write” or “blog” and I opted for “write.”

That said, I’m in-between projects at the moment and figured I’d take a crack at trying to keep this place from getting too cobwebby. Granted, I did have to take a flamethrower to it in order to clear up the arachnid infestation…

But I digress.

In recent days, I’ve had love on my mind. No, not like that (not that I’d be against it but the likelihood of it working out is somewhere between zip and zilch). Rather, I’ve been thinking about how several of us who are single are probably not doing much to improve our chances of getting in a relationship because we’re confused about what love is at a fundamental level. It doesn’t help that we’ve been force-fed a steady diet of lies in this arena all of our lives, either, and that, really, it’s only through Orthodoxy that I began to get a glimpse of the truth about love (which means I don’t hold out a lot of hope for my Western brothers and sisters).

Living in our times, we’re confused about a lot of things. For instance, we have no clue what love really is. Speaking English (or any of the Romance languages) compounds the problem because we’re all using one word (“love” or a derivative of “amare”) to describe what is actually three different things. The Greeks had this one right when they used three words: agape (the pure sense of love/affection/connectedness), eros (sexual attraction), and philia (a more distant affection/affiliation than agape). Of these three, the “best” kind — the kind that makes marriage work — is agape (αγαπε). Now, relationships should begin with a touch of either eros or philia (ερω or φιλια) and that should be enough for both parties to decide that there is a basis to build a solid partnership on.

There’s no “falling.” No sudden epiphanies as seen on the Hallmark channel. There’s no Road to Damascus moment where you move from “not loving” to “loving” someone. Actually, as Christians (and yes, I’m Christian), we’re called to love all people. After all, God loved us all enough that He became Incarnate and died to free us from Death. So, I have (and am called to have) a basic level of love for everyone. For me, this is generally philia that, over time, matures into a platonic agape relationship or moves into familial territory (like my Orthodox Ma — the lady who sponsored me when I converted). For most people, this kind of love is easy and natural because it’s not been surrounded by cultural mythology, fancy advertising, and baggage enough to sink a cargo ship.

But romantic love? The love that most of us spend our lives yearning for? The love that our culture holds as the pinnacle of existence? The love that so many chase in the wrong places — bars, clubs, the hook-up scene, singles mixers, church meetings, etc? Yeah, we’re pretty good at chasing the “wrong” things and ignoring the “right” ones because we’ve completely lost sight as to what love and marriage really are.


We’re so blinded by our ideas of love that we can no longer see the Real Thing.

Y’all, it’s not complicated. Love, followed by marriage, is a decision. It’s as simple as that. It’s a decision that is consciously controlled — indeed, it only works well when both parties consciously decide to love each other and to commit to each other. They may base their relationship on a foundation like friendship, common interests, or a shared faith and vision of family. They may have a mild erotic attraction to each other — though I think many would be amazed to learn that simply getting to know someone can spark an attraction where one didn’t exist earlier — but they both understand that the attraction is like the paint, curtains, and furnishings of a house — without a solid foundation and support structure, none of those things matter. Without the “unsexy” part (the walls, the foundation, the siding, the roof), the fun parts (the romance) will be ruined at the first sign of rain.


Not as cool as it looks here, tbh

Now, I know some of you are thinking “but G, you’re divorced.” Yes, I am divorced. Yes, I made a lot of mistakes in my marriage. I feel like I demanded more from my husband than was reasonable — I wanted him to be more emotionally supportive than it was in his nature to be. I was a bit more introverted and more of a homebody than was good for him. I wasn’t willing to learn more about his field to help him and to support him in it while wanting him to listen to me yammer on about mine incessantly. In the end, I’m not surprised he was unwilling to remain married to me after a few really crappy years for us. I’ve spent a good bit of time reflecting on why my marriage failed and, in the end, it really did come down to a decision. We decided to let life part us and we parted amicably. He’s a great guy and I wish him well in finding another wife.

So, if, like me, you’re single and you want to stop being single, quit waiting for lightning to strike. Find a single friend and see if he’s interested in being more. Or, fellas, think about that one female friend you’re always saying would make an awesome girlfriend and go for it. Look around you and make that decision — the decision that you are going to see if that other person is willing to at least consider deciding on you. If they aren’t, then keep the friendship and move on to someone who is willing to decide and to choose to build a life with you.

Right now, that’s what I’m weighing for myself and it’s not easy. But then, nothing worthwhile ever is. And remember that in your writing. Take what you’re feeling — all of it — and use that to build a connection to your readers like I’m doing right this minute. The fear, the hope, the exhilaration, the guttedness, the despair, and then, at long last, the contentment.

I’ll let you jokers know if I ever get to the last one. 😛

— G.K.

Epic Adventures in Aunting

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Epic Adventures in Aunting

So, my niece Mini-me is down here making my life interesting. And, by “interesting,” I mean “why did you do that? What part of you considered it a good idea?”

An example of this that just happened: Mini-me has an old bike. She knows she is supposed to put it away when she’s not riding it. However, today she decided that “away” meant “right behind the Kabota.” Auntie GK needed to take some meat that had spoiled over to the dump so, like a moron, I got in the Kabota without checking all around it thoroughly to ensure that nothing would be destroyed. I put the thing in reverse and noticed that, after a few feet, it was dragging as if the tire was flat or something. So, I get out and lo and behold, there is a little girl’s bike wedged under the Kabota. And I mean wedged. As in “we’re going to need a hydraulic jack to lift the Kabota and get this baby out.”

So, I come inside to tell Mom and Mini-me about the demise of her bike. Mom takes it in stride — she’s raised two kids of her own and is used to Mini-me’s antics. Mini-me, on the other hand, is convinced that her Pawpaw is going to turn into a “complete psychomaniac” and seal her in a bottle and drop it in California. I’m just wondering how long the ribbing is going to go on over me running over her bike. This will probably be my Pizza Box story.

Kids. I love ’em.

— G.K.

MBTI is a Tool, Not a Justification

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MBTI is a Tool, Not a Justification

Occasionally, as a writer and a complete and utter smart-ass, I trawl through the deeper corners of the Intarwebz in search of information, funny meme images, and to find other writers who, for whatever reason, have decided to remain trapped in the Twelfth Circle of Online Hell known as Tumblr. One thing I’ve started noticing over the past year or so is the obsession therein with the MBTI.

The MBTI is a temperament assessment tool. It measures four “areas” of cognitive processing to determine how, in general and on average, a person will react to common situations and how they will process them. It doesn’t tell you if a person is an asshole, a saint, a liberal, a libertarian, a genius, or a twit. All it says is “this person is, on average, processing things in this manner.”

For instance, I’m an INTJ. That’s the rarest of all types for a woman (and yes, I am a woman). On average, that means that I rely heavily on introverted intuition to process things, I tend to plan ahead in everything, I value efficiency and effectiveness, I’m great at abstract concepts and theories, I like to learn, and I can be about as blunt as a sledgehammer to the head. It also implies that I tend to avoid most social situations, I get worn out in crowds, and I prefer to live in my head.

It does not mean I’m rude. My mother beat manners into me, y’all. It does mean I’m oblivious sometimes (like the time I walked right past the preacher in her church because I didn’t know it was him and, frankly, didn’t really care that much). It means that I tend to have better control over external expressions of my emotions and I tend to control them instead of letting them control me. It doesn’t mean that I’m heartless — though I can come across that way sometimes. It does not give me any excuse to be an asshole just because. No, if I’m an asshole towards someone, I have a reason for my behavior. Generally, though, I’m not much of a jerk to anyone. If I don’t like or don’t trust a person, I just avoid them entirely. I don’t make a big deal out of it.

I’ve written characters who are INTJs (and NTs of all types as well as a lot of NFs). They’re not always the bad guys or the heroes. They’re not Machiavellian-esque. They have no plans to take over the world and rule it with an iron fist. For the most part, they want to be left the fuck alone to chill with their friends (and yes, INTJs have friends. Few of them and only those who can keep up with us but we have them, dammit). Occasionally, one of them will get tipped over into extraverted sensing, go a bit off the rails, and Bad Shit Will Happen. However, they always have a strong moral and ethical code and they will not violate it. And do you know what part of that code is for almost every last INTJ?

It’s don’t be a dick for no reason. Honestly. It’s not so much because we care about how people will feel (though there is some of that to us). No, it’s more the fact that there will be fall-out and we’ll have to spend longer dealing with that than with the actual damned problem. Not being a dick to people for no reason is simply more efficient than being an ass just because we can be. We also don’t need to be dicks to people to get them to leave us alone. Avoiding social situations is something we can do without much effort and being a dick is often counter-productive to that since the person will want to know why we’re being such assholes towards them.

We also generally will plan out how we would, hypothetically, take over a government/nation/the world or destroy a city with minimum/maximum fatalities but, for God’s sake, most of us will never actually get pissed off enough to put those plans into action. After all, if we did that, we’d have to deal with people and, for most of us, limiting our contact with the rest of the world is simply part and parcel of our nature. We don’t hate people (though, in general, most of them annoy us a bit) and we have friends. We can be quite social and even charming at times. But, for the love of Cthulhu, we don’t want to have to do the thinking for everyone and world rulership tends to involve just that.

However, assuming that we’re all Machiavellian sociopaths isn’t the worst offense that writers, Tumblr, and others make about us.

No, the major thing that people get wrong about us is our emotions. See, we have them. We do experience them. We’re not cold, callous, and robotic. Hell, the other day when a man indicated he was interested in me in a manner beyond merely platonic, I felt an honest-to-Cthulhu ten minutes of pure exhilaration, a sharp upward spike in contentment, and enough happiness to actually make me smile for longer than a couple of minutes. However, yes, I did revert back to a slightly-higher baseline level of amused neutrality (more amused-leaning-towards-content than normal). The difference between me and a more normal person is that there were very few outward signs that I was feeling anything in the moment and it actually took me some time to realize that I was feeling something and analyze what I was feeling and trace the cause. Then, and only then, having come to a logical explanation for it did I allow myself to enjoy and indulge in the sensation for a reasonable amount of time.

After that, it was back to normal (albeit a slightly higher baseline level of normal).

I do feel flashes of emotions. I can get angry. I can feel sad. I can feel happy. However, yes, my normal state is neutral and calm. I also know that, for physiological and biochemical reasons, I cannot permit myself to be caught in the grip of a strong emotion for more than a few minutes unless I feel like going to the hospital for a powerful painkiller to rid myself of the migraine that will happen. Most INTJs will show little to no outward expression of an emotion and, if we do experience one strong enough to overwhelm our control, we will excuse ourselves from public view and try to reason our way through it or come to a more logical understanding of just what the hell is going on. That’s how we survive. That’s how we function. It’s not how most people do things and, frankly, I don’t recommend they try. It would be extremely unhealthy for an NF, SF, or ST to attempt to manage their emotions the way an INTJ does. The converse is also true — if we tried to “feel” things the way an NF does, we’d go insane.

That means that yes, powerful emotions can unseat and unsettle us. Especially if those emotions are our own (shit, just witnessing someone else’s emotions tends to frighten us a good bit because we’re not tuned into that, it takes a lot for us to manage to tune-in emotionally, and generally we’re better problem-solvers than we are shoulders-to-cry-on). It means that we can, if it is logical, be driven by an emotion. There have been times when I have been driven by annoyance, anger, outrage, sadness, or joy to do something. *shrug* Not often and generally the emotion peters out and I’ll either continue the action (if logical) or drop it (if I merely needed to exhaust the emotion so I could return to baseline).

INTJs, emotionally, tend to be like very deep rivers, guys. We’re calm and placid on top but the currents down below can be fatal. Unlike a river, we can analyze what is going on “down below” and we will spend time trying to trace the cause and determine if the emotion is logically justified or if it is superfluous. While we’re doing that we will come across as calm and rational because we’re so used to being in that state that it really and truly is no energy for us to maintain (certain rare exceptions aside). When we feel something, it’s generally quite intense.

This is also part of why we tend to be so blunt. Without taking the time and energy to consider that our processing methods aren’t universal, we’ll generally assume that someone wants what they asked for. Over time, we learn better but we do tend to prefer honesty over flattery. Some of you value that — some of you find it annoying. That’s okay. We’re an acquired taste.

— G.K.