I’ve been showing movies I loved in high school when they came out to my kid & it’s troubling how they all seem to have become Important Works In Film History.
Kid: stares blankly at movie I said was impressive Continue reading “Rewatching Scream”
Am I Furry? — Fandom vs. Genre
by Mary E. Lowd
“Outside of a dog, a book is man’s best friend. Inside of a dog it’s too dark to read.” — Groucho Marx
“I refuse to join any club that would have me as a member.” — Groucho Marx
There’s a question that floats around the furry writing community occasionally: how do you define furry fiction? At first glance, this question seems similar to the age-old, what’s the difference between sci-fi and fantasy? A nit-picky question about the borders of a genre that can be endlessly debated. Hours can be lost to arguing over whether Star Wars is sci-fi because of spaceships, or fantasy because of the Force. I would expect arguments about furry fiction to fall along similar lines. For instance, does Robert T. Bakker’s Raptor Red anthropomorphize the raptors enough to count as furry? Or is it simply a piece of speculative naturalism? Continue reading “Am I Furry? — Fandom vs. Genre”
There Should Be More Songs About Centaurs
Music (the album “Hearts” by America: “I’m only half a man…”
Me: “BECAUSE YOU’RE A CENTAUR?!?”
Music: “…when you’re not by my side!”
Me: “It’s a song where a centaur is singing to his horse half!”
Furry Matrix???
Watching The Matrix and thinking about how fun it would be to write a piece inspired by it where the people are sheep and the agents are sheepdogs…
I think I’d start it like this: “To stop the sheep from dying, you must first imagine every possible way the sheep could die.”
All Sci-Fi in a Single Show
The thirteen-year-old, every time I show them a seminal work of sci-fi:
“Futurama has parodied this!”
That show is a crash course in every piece of sci-fi up through the time it ended.
Flash Fiction
Me: finishes writing a flash fiction
Seven-year-old: “You finished the book?!?”
Me: “Uh, no, a short story.” Continue reading “Flash Fiction”
On the Eve of the Apocalypse
by Mary E. Lowd
Originally published in Theme of Absence, March 2017
Dear Patriarchal Genetic Progenitor,
In spite of my requests that you leave me alone, I find notifications and messages from you, little traces of your electronic existence, in every aspect of the virtual world whenever I dare to tread in it. Generally, I ignore your unwanted advances toward a relationship that I gave up long ago. But tonight, knowing that the Elasporians will descend to Earth tomorrow, I find that the idea of reaching out to you and your myriad tiny abuses is less painful and frightening than the reality that all flesh-bodied humans will face tomorrow. Continue reading “On the Eve of the Apocalypse”
Pre-NaNo Dithering
I keep going back and forth about whether I should try to write Unexpected Voyage for NaNoWriMo this year. I already have 8-10k starts on Otters In Space 4, In a Dog’s World 2, and Xeno-Spectre. So I feel like I should focus on one of them instead… and yet…
I figure, if I hit Halloween midnight without having picked a different novel to focus on, I’ll go ahead and start Unexpected Voyage. So, I have five days to re-familiarize myself with the other options and see if I can commit to one. Continue reading “Pre-NaNo Dithering”
Anniversaries of Traumas
That feeling when you try to summon next week’s news by just refreshing Twitter hard enough.
Anniversaries of traumas are hard. I could barely sleep for months after the last election, and I can feel my body is already gearing up for that, preparing to brace itself and be always awake, always wary. It is not helpful.
Tidbits of Rage
So long as people in this country can call themselves “pro-life” without being roundly met by derision and condemnation of their evilness, every person with a uterus is in danger of losing their right to control their own body.
The term “pro-life” is hate speech. Continue reading “Tidbits of Rage”