(1) Today in History —
1846 – Eighth planet discovered — “German astronomer Johann Gottfriend Galle discovers the planet Neptune at the Berlin Observatory”.
Neptune, generally the eighth planet from the sun, was postulated by the French astronomer Urbain-Jean-Joseph Le Verrier, who calculated the approximate location of the planet by studying gravity-induced disturbances in the motions of Uranus. On September 23, 1846, Le Verrier informed Galle of his findings, and the same night Galle and his assistant Heinrich Louis d’Arrest identified Neptune at their observatory in Berlin. Noting its movement relative to background stars over 24 hours confirmed that it was a planet.
(2) A judge checked in with the Salt Lake Comic Con and San Diego Comic Con folks this week, who assured him they are working on a settlement:
Settlement talks are under way between San Diego Comic-Con and Salt Lake Comic Con over the use of the words “comic con,” FOX 13 is told.
Lawyers for both conventions met with a federal judge in San Diego on Tuesday to update the status of the lawsuit. Salt Lake Comic Con co-founder Bryan Brandenburg said both sides were working to reach an agreement.
“The judge wanted us to check in to see if progress had been made in the settlement. We reported the parties are still working out an agreement, but that we haven’t reached settlement, at least not yet,” he told FOX 13.
Brandenburg would not reveal any details about a possible settlement. The judge scheduled another hearing next month.
(3) Forbes writer Scott Mendelson theorizes a trailer will help draw people to theaters when The Martian opens this weekend in “’X-Men: Apocalypse’ Trailer Is Hyping ‘The Martian’”
If the rumor mill is to be believed, and in this case it makes sense, 20th Century Fox will be debuting the first much-anticipated teaser for X-Men: Apocalypse over the next week alongside the theatrical debut of Ridley Scott’s The Martian….
Back in the old days, you attached an important trailer to a big movie so that lots of people would see that big movie. Or at least you attached the trailer for your next big movie before your current big movie. That of course still happens, was we’ve seen from Universal/Comcast Corp. all summer long (Furious 7 trailers Straight Outta Compton or Fifty Shades of Grey trailers Crimson Peak)….
But here is a situation where the presence of a trailer for an upcoming blockbuster acts as major marketing not just for the movie in question but for the current (and arguably less commercial by default) release. At this point, a X-Men trailer helps The Martain more than it helps X-Men: Apocalypse. None of this is problematic in any real way, it just amused me.
(4) SF Signal’s new “MIND MELD: The Translated Books and Why We Love Them”, curated by James Aquilone, discusses the favorite translated sf of Aidan Doyle, Justin Howe (10badhabits.com), Tiemen Zwaan , Rachel S. Cordasco (facebook.com/bookishlywitty), Anatoly Belilovsky (http://loldoc.net), Sylvia Spruck Wrigley, Amy Sisson, and Matthew Johnson (www.irregularverbs.ca).
(5) I tend to be interested in what Mad Genius Club columnists say specifically about the craft of writing,such as Sarah A. Hoyt’s advice about revisions.
[First of eight points.]
1- when polishing a story limit yourself to three passes: sense, wording and typos. Chances are if you go on (and boy, could you go on) you’ll take all the flavor and individuality out of the piece. Flavor and individuality is why we read your story, rather than someone else’s. Yes, I know it’s not perfect. Let it go. No story is ever perfect.
(6) In her post “Harassment: What do we do?” dated August 20, Lydy Nickerson took Sasquan’s recent experience as a starting point to analyze the handling of harassment at conventions.
The thing that’s most recently caught my attention has been Lou Antonelli and Sasquan. For those of you who haven’t been making a hobby of the Great Puppygate Train Wreck, the extremely short version is that some guy, in this case Lou Antonelli, sent a letter to the Spokane police alleging that David Gerrold, one of the GoH for Sasquan, was dangerously mentally unbalanced and might incite violence. He then bragged about it on a podcast. There was a round of shock, awe, and horror; an apology to Gerrold from Antonelli; and other things. Sasquan was notified, as is proper. David Gerrold accepted Lou Antonelli’s apology. Sasquan issued a statement saying, very roughly, that Antonelli had violated the Code of Conduct, but for Reasons, including a request from Gerrold, they’ve decided not to ban him.
So, then there’s a bunch of Monday morning quarterbacking from just about everybody. Which is fine by me, I like detailed analysis, outrage, and train wrecks. But I’m paying special attention, because on a much smaller scale, this could be me. A lot of people were very upset, and there were two things that caught my eye. The first was a demand for consistent application of the rules, and the second was for transparency. There’s a lot of variation on those two themes, but those were the two I am currently noodling on. Consistent application was often equated with zero tolerance.
So, let’s start with the actual, root problem. People who feel vulnerable to harassment at science fiction conventions do not trust those conventions to fairly and justly administer the rules. I cannot come close to doing justice to how very reasonable it is for them to feel that way. That distrust? We’ve built it, brick and mortar, over years. It’s not just well deserved, it’s hugely massively utterly deserved. Harassment policies have been non-existent, or poorly explained or hugely badly enforced. We have multiple known cases of people being allowed to fuck up because they were well connected, or because the concom didn’t want to be arsed, or because concoms just didn’t think there was a problem….
(7) Paul Weimer on “Orwellian unpersoning on the Sad/Rabid Puppies Part” at Blog, Jvstin Style.
You know, its rich that Sad Rabid Puppies would go so far as to unperson someone they accused of being a “Social Justice Warrior”
http://leogrin.com/CimmerianBlog/your-cimmerian-bloggers/ http://www.scifiwright.com/2015/09/leo-grin-grins-when-he-slays/
Sure, freedom of association and all that…but this looks awfully…Orwellian?
The actual thing that caused this seems to be that one of the former bloggers said something bad about someone and their association with super genius Theodore Beale.
(8) John Scalzi in “eBook Sales and Author Incomes and All That Jazz” at Whatever.
I’ve noted before that I think in general there are three kinds of authors: Dinosaurs, mammals and cockroaches, where the dinosaurs are authors tied to an existing publishing model and are threatened when it is diminished or goes away, mammals are the authors who rise to success with a new publishing model (but who then risk becoming dinosaurs at a later date), and cockroaches are the authors who survive regardless of era, because they adapt to how the market is, rather than how they want it to be. Right now, I think publishing might be top-heavy with dinosaurs, and we’re seeing that reflected in that Author’s Guild survey.
What we’re missing — or at least what I haven’t seen — is reliable data showing that the mammals — indie/self-publishing folks, in this case — are doing any better on average. If these writers are doing significantly better on average, then that would be huge. It’s worth knowing.
(9) Deborah J. Ross in “Gossip and Controversy”
I have refrained from any commentary on the Hugo Awards and all the events that led up to them. This does not mean I have not had opinions. Excuse me, Opinions. Only that I saw no point in adding gasoline to the burgeoning wildfires. Now various voices are urging everyone to play nice, to not harbor grudges. To get on with the business of writing (and reading) the best stories we can. Here’s a post I composed a few years ago on the subject of gossip. I should add that I am not entirely innocent, and I have been on the receiving end of some vile accusations, as have folks I care about. It is helpful to me to consider my own behavior (both passing on gossip and being appalled by it) in a larger — and hopefully, more compassionate — context:…
A huge piece of the problem, in my experience, is that we are inundated with role models of gossipers. We are told overtly and covertly that it is not only acceptable but enjoyable to speak ill of others and to relish their misfortune. If they have no discernible misfortune to begin with, well then we will create some! If media portray the pain of those who are gossiped about, it is often to glorify retaliation in kind. Almost never are we taught what to do when we speak badly. Saying “I’m sorry,” or “Shake hands and make up,” (as we’re forced to do as small children) does not make amends.
Certainly, we must begin by looking fearlessly at what we have done or said (or left undone and unsaid), but we must also be willing to accept that there is no justification for our behavior. It doesn’t matter if what we said was true or not if it harmed someone. It doesn’t matter if we were hurting or grieving or too Hungry-Angry-Lonely-Tired.
What we have done does not make us unworthy, unlovable, inadequate, or anything except wrong. Good people can be wrong. Good people, when wrong, strive to make things right.
(10) Ruth A. Johnston, author of Re-Modeling the Mind: Personality in Balance, was interviewed by L. Jagi Lamplighter at Superversive SF about the psychology of science fiction. In “The SF Culture War Posts – Part Two” Johnston applies her theory to characters in John C. Wright’s Night Land stories.
Part Two of our multi-part look at the psychology of Science Fiction, as explained by Ruth Johnston, author of Re-Modeling the Mind, a new book that takes a fresh look at Jung’s work on personalities…
Q: Let’s talk about the ideas you share in your new book. What light can they shed either on the original Night Lands or on John and his version?
Science fiction fans are usually personalities in which Intuition is a very strong part, often the strongest and most dominant. When it’s Extroverted, the universe seems full of possibilities waiting to be connected. Under every rock or behind every star could be a great invention or cure. When it’s Introverted, the personality usually has an innate feeling of knowing the truth of the world, so that exploring ideas is a matter of looking inward, following an inborn map of meaning. It’s also a bit more pessimistic and idealistic: under every rock there might be a rattlesnake, not a cure for cancer. But the rocks do need to be turned over, because it’s terribly important to find truth and roll away anything that covers and hides.
William Hope Hodgson’s original story seems full of Extroverted Intuition to me. Technology keeps mankind alive and there’s no real downside. His dark world is filled with evil spirits and creatures, but mankind’s ability to solve problems keeps one step ahead so that they can build a good way of life. The optimism of his Intuition feels so powerful in the story that I believe he probably had this kind of Intuition in his personality. It creates a sort of worldview.
I think this is some of what charmed John when he read the 1912 novel, and because I know John from college, I can say without guessing that he has that kind of Intuition. In his mind, the world is full of dots to be connected, and we’ve barely begun to connect them all.
Now the other half of the polarity I’m calling A is Introverted Sensing, which can show up as an intense idealism about human social roles. In fantasy and science fiction, it comes out in taking fairy-tale roles like king and knight very seriously. It also believes strongly in archetypal images like mother and father, male and female. When someone with A writes SFF stories, the setting and events can become wild and even chaotic, but the human roles never move much from archetypes. We see this clearly in both Night Land versions, the original and John’s. Anyone walking in the Night Land is going to be surprised by whatever comes next, whether it’s a fire pit, a dangerous creature, an oddly detached spirit, a living stone monument, or a cluster of blind worms. The stories depend strongly on human thought, activity, and roles to give them structure: like putting a snail into its shell. Human roles are stable, not flexible and random like the setting and ideas….
(11) Vivienne Raper asks “Do the Hugo Awards have a short fiction problem?” at Futures Less Traveled
At least one person complained that the Sad/Rabid Puppy nominees kept award-worthy short stories off the 2015 Hugo ballot… So I was curious. Was this true? Were these stories better than the stuff I’d read? An experiment was in order. I’ve now read the nominees on io9’s Puppy-free ballot. Here’s how I’d have voted.
#1 WINNER – When it Ends, He Catches Her, Eugie Foster
When It Ends, He Catches Her has a tale behind it, and it’s the saddest in the Hugos. The day after Daily Science Fiction published the story, Eugie Foster died. It was her last chance to win the award.
There is no doubt – to me – that When It Ends, He Catches Her should have won Best Short Story. It is a story I wish I could have written. That – to me – is the purpose of the Hugos, to showcase work that I know I can’t… Perhaps can never write.
But don’t stop there – Vivienne ranks No Award in second place, then goes on to discuss several proposed runners-up.
(12) Prometheus and Alien sequels are expected.
Ridley Scott set tongues wagging the other day by suggesting he might make as many as three more Prometheus sequels before tying it up with the Alien franchise, reports Comicbook.com.
Scott has promised that Prometheus 2 will answer many of the questions left open in the 2012 film. However, Scott has told German website FilmFutter (via bloody-disgusting) that he won’t show how the Prometheus franchise connects to Alien in the next film. He’s saving that reveal for … Prometheus 4?!
“It won’t be in the next one. It will be in the one after this one or maybe even a fourth film before we get back into the Alien franchise…,” explained Scott. “The whole point of it is to explain the Alien franchise and to explain the how and why of the creation of the Alien itself. I always thought of the Alien as kind of a piece of bacterial warfare. I always thought that that original ship, which I call the Croissant, was a battleship, holding these biomechanoid creatures that were all about destruction.”
Jon Spaihts’ original script for Prometheus was a direct prequel to Alien. In it, David (Michael Fassbender) the android comes across and revives the Space Jockey (also referred to as The Pilot) who was last seen as a fossil in the 1979 film. We would’ve seen how The Pilot ended up dead on LV-426 from a Chestburster, but that storyline was jettisoned during extensive rewrites. Instead, Scott chose to have David and the rest of the crew end up on a whole other moon and come upon the Last Engineer.
Prometheus 2 will begin filming in February of 2016.
“Maybe the next Alien will burst out halfway through the third Prometheus sequel??” joked Will R.
Earlier than that, figuratively speaking, There is an Alien sequel aiming for release in 2017.
Director Neill Blomkamp got media attention last February when he released concept art images from a new Alien movie he was working on, reportedly without authorization from any studio.
Variety reports separately that Blomkamp has a deal with 20th Century Fox to direct the movie, which will be a different project altogether to Fox’s Prometheus sequel with Ridley Scott. According to The Wrap, the untitled Blomkamp movie will be produced by Scott and take place after the events of Prometheus 2.
And he generated some more word-of-mouth for the project in July by repeating the stunt. First Showing then recapped what it knew about the prospective movie.
We don’t know too much about Blomkamp’s new Alien movie yet, however we’ll recap what we do know. Between this concept art and the last piece, it definitely looks like Sigourney Weaver will be back as Ripley. A few months ago, Blomkamp explained that “She knows about it, and part of it was just inspired by speaking to her on set when we were filming Chappie, and getting her thoughts on Alien and what she thought of the movies that came after Aliens and what she felt about Ripley and what was incomplete for her about Ripley. There was so much fuel in what she was telling me.” Fellow filmmaker Ridley Scott is also producing this new Alien, so he is directly involved in it and working with Blomkamp. The film is currently aiming for release in 2017, so stay tuned for any more updates.
[Thanks to Will R., L. Jagi Lamplighter, and John King Tarpinian for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day James H. Burns.]
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And I just realised I managed to make my examples opposite. Well done me. Still… I hope the point can be worked out, nonetheless.
ETA
@snowcrash
Yep, that was Hampus.
Not a problem.
I think this comment (assuming it was intended as a sarcastic characterisation of either Lauowolf:September 25, 2015 at 11:16 pm or Tintinaus:September 25, 2015 at 10:41 pm or the set of similar comments that I had precipitated from September 24, 2015 at 10:09 pm) –
– misrepresented the discussion as being mockery of religious people for making use of icons. Note that there had been no specific reference to Greek Orthodox traditions and the only use of the term ‘icon’ had been in my use of the word ‘iconography’. Indeed I found the remark genuinely puzzling and commented on it in a way that took it at face-value rather than sarcasm by asking: “Why would you think religionists are silly for having icons?”
In a second discussion about religious art between myself and Snowcrash that followed on from my reply we discussed approaches to art in different religions. I made reference to a notable example of Islamic art in the Hagia Sofia.
To which you replied:
I believe that comment contained two substantial misrepresentations of what people had said. There had not been ‘solid mockery of the icons a couple hundred million people venerate’ nor was the example I gave intended to be a reminder of ‘the slaughter and oppression of millions of them’. Note at that point nobody (including yourself) had made a specific mention of Greek Orthodox (or Orthodox Christianity more generally) other than your brief mention of ‘icons’. I believe this was an attempt to recast the previous discussion in terms which it had not taken place and also in terms AS IF you had made a specific and clear objection to the previous discussion. For example you replied as if you had overtly said that you felt the preceding discussion was mocking Greek Orthodox beliefs and then criticized the discussion that followed as if people had read such a comment and responded to your comment in that way.
Much of the discussion that followed preceded along the lines of people asking you for clarification or explaining their previous posts. You gave various kinds of uninformative answers.
So you have chosen to double down on the idea that a discussion of iconography does not necessarily include icons.
Me:
Nick:
In terms of anyone being able to know how to avoid repeating the offense, you did leave people without an inkling. You just ensured that a bunch of people were confused and upset while not having any idea how avoid repeating the offense.
So, more upset, more widely spread, no way for anyone to know how to avoid repeating the offense. I fail to see how that is in any way better than eithersaying nothing, or speaking up and telling people clearly what we did that was upsetting.
And it didn’t have to be anything complicated or lengthy. “Because of the role and use of icons in my religion, I’m finding this upsetting” would probably have done it for most people.
So, at this point, I’m done with this discussion, or at least I intend to be, since isn’t accomplishing anything.
As I’ve already said, it doesn’t matter if the offense is repeated.
I certainly believe that a given discussion about iconography is not a specific discussion of the veneration of icons in Orthodox Christianity. Is it a related topic? Obviously. Might a discussion of iconography move onto the specific domain of the veneration of icons? It could but it isn’t obliged to and it is certainly fallacious to conclude that a reference to iconography in one context NECESSARILY applies to a specific context that has not been mentioned.
But more relevantly I believe it is clear that jokes about fannish people behaving in a quasi-religious way that includes pictorial representation is not ‘solid mockery’ of the Orthodox veneration of icons. I may, of course, be mistaken but I would genuinely be interested to hear your views to the contrary.
This conversation is utterly fascinating in light of the last one, by the way.
(Commenting equivalent of subtweet?)
This. Why is it so hard for Nick to give a simple explanation? It’s his unwillingness and what feels like “toying with us” or “if you were only as smart as me you’d get it from my oblique comments” that feels like trolling.
Obviously Filers were trying to understand because we don’t want to cause harm and offense to people we consider part of the community. And generally we try to give doubt to newbies if they don’t come barging in spouting rabid puppy nonsense.
Nick doesn’t want to or care if he is understood. He doesn’t consider File770 one of his communities (see comments over the last 2-3 pages in this thread). But he does love watching us thrash around trying to figure out what his cryptic comments mean and trying to please him while claiming not to care (also see comments on the last 2-3 pages of comments on this thread).
I’m sorry you felt people were being disrespectful to your religious icons when they were making fun of Laura being mistaken for her dad and used fannish iconography in doing so.
I’d go into a burning synagogue to save a Torah and our holy books putting my life at risk. But I also make plenty of jokes around our very serious holy object. If the Torah is dropped it requires 40 days of fasting. I might get a little out of shape if people made jokes about burning or defacing a Torah, a synagogue, a Jewish cemetery, etc. But I’d tell them why I was upset not expect them to guess. And I’ve had to do so among family, friends, coworkers, online acquaintances.
I think (one of) the confusion(s) might be between iconography, the art history term, and iconography, the term that refers to the production of icons. I suspect most people are using the former.
CF,
There is a certain irony in this idea that the iconography discussion was in reference to the almost religious esteem that fans hold writers when the immediate antecedent of the discussion was the inability of a fan to tell the difference between Mike Resnick and Laura Resnick. Good thing we’re not all so esteemed.
I’ll also note that this particular discussion of iconography, especially when discussing how a Saint Laura Resnick might be depicted, and how an iconographer might make an error in selecting which vegetable she should be holding, clearly is not some broad discussion of iconography as mere symbolic representation.
And further I’ll note that I said that the discussion of iconography necessarily includes icons—it is you who introduced the idea of veneration of the same into the topic.
Tasha, thanks for your note, particularly the apology. How wonderful that you enjoy a good Torah joke now and again. I’m afraid I don’t know any. I suspect fairly strongly that not all Torah jokes are created equal. I bet the ones you make among your co-religionists are somewhat milder and more affectionate than the ones I might find with a quick Google search. I have tons of priest jokes, by the way. They are not for your ears. It all boils down to that sticky question that came up today: what is reasonable.
Well, the overwhelming majority of my friends and acquaintances would find it entirely reasonable for me to enter a shared kitchen, take a plate from a cabinet at random, and prepare a ham and cheese sandwich on that plate, cut it in half, and then offer another person of the shared-kitchen community half. Some small number of my friends and acquaintances would find this an utterly unreasonable action on my part. Whether friend or acquaintance, I consider it my job to know who is who, or at least to err on the side of caution and not make ham and cheese sandwiches in any space I share with someone who might be inconvenienced, repulsed, or insulted by this entirely reasonable and tasty and absolutely-scientifically-proven-not-to-be-unclean-by-our-most-powerful-microscopes sandwich.
(At my multicultural workplace, which I do not represent in my comments here, we actually have some pretty useful rules about food pungency.)
I do not believe it to be appropriate or useful to either be the person who, with a mouth full of ham and cheese, says, “Hey man, what’s your problem? Explain to me exactly what the issue is, and convince me!” or to be the person who somehow has to explain, otherwise the kitchen-sharers will sure be sore.
Ditto picking up dog shit on a shared sidewalk. I actually make a point of scooping up dog shit from other dogs when I am out and about with my own.
@Nick Mamatas
You used ‘venerate’ in your second comment on the subject – the one about Hagia Sophia.
I was referring specifically to the idea that a discussion of iconography doesn’t necessarily include a discussion of icons. One of the claims made was that icons weren’t under discussion and another was that I had decided that iconography==icons (oh, and a third was your own claim that people were perhaps talking only using iconography in the art history sense).
@Nick Mamatas
I do think people were using the term in its art history sense, not least because of the person who explicitly referenced art history. But perhaps I’m projecting – I was only familiar with the art history term and didn’t know about the other version until I looked it up. If I’m wrong I’m sure people will tell me.
Meredith, iconography in the art history (and design) sense can refer to basically any kind of symbolic representation.
Clearly, the comments made at the beginning of the Resnick portion of the thread are referring to something more specific:
but the original artist got confused whrn at the grocers. So to this day the Blessed Laura is often mistaken for the patron saint of dip makers.
As often happens in traditional cultures, Her cult expanded to include followers of both the written word and the culinary arts.
…or possibly confusion stemming from the oft-depicted belt-hanging stick of celery present in many aged frescoes.
That is very true. It was part of what I thought was funny
Correct – and as discussed previously this is an aspect of a tradition in art that is not specific or limited to Orthodox Christian icons nor does a reference to it necessarily mean that the topic under discussion is Orthodox Christian icons nor does the humor involved necessarily involve mocking the practice in scared art. Nobody was saying that artists (secular or religious) were silly for using simple motifs to identify figures but rather that it would be silly to do so for figures in fandom.
Unless I’m very much mistaken I think that was actually you in your comment about my mention of the Hagia Sofia:
@Nick Mamatas
Sure, but I think most of the original funny stuff was riffing off Catholicism and branches of Protestantism with a High Church aspect. Partly because of all the follow-up comments saying that either they were using their own Catholic background or that they don’t know jack about Orthodox. 🙂 As far as I’m aware on my extremely quick definition check, iconography-re-icons specifically refers to Byzantine or Orthodox, and so wouldn’t be the definition used by people who don’t know jack about Orthodox. That’s why I think they were using the art history term, and why people here in general might be confused about the idea that a discussion of iconography necessarily includes Orthodox icons.
(And, again, though they may do in the future, none of those people have told me I’m wrong yet.)
I meant things like this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_School_of_Athens#/media/File:Sanzio_01.jpg
I’m joining Jim Henley’s protest against clouds. The moon just went behind one as I was trying to show the red bit to my partner. *angryflail*
Not a cloud in the sky here…but no moon either. Some great big yellow* ball of screaming radiation instead.
[*not actually yellow – just yellow in how it is normally rendered in art work in a way that allows the viewer to quickly identify the said object without reference to an explanation by way of shared cultural understandings when it comes to figurative representation]
Correct – and as discussed previously this is an aspect of a tradition in art that is not specific or limited to Orthodox Christian icons nor does a reference to it necessarily mean that the topic under discussion is Orthodox Christian icons nor does the humor involved necessarily involve mocking the practice in scared art
Ah, so if I were to say “Science fiction fans are simpletons basically useful only for the carbon they sequester” and you objected I would of course not that science fiction fandom isn’t limited to or specific to the commenters here on File770.
Unless I’m very much mistaken I think that was actually you in your comment about my mention of the Hagia Sofia
See prior comment to Meredith.
I meant things like this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_School_of_Athens#/media/File:Sanzio_01.jpg
What does this have to do with the comments I linked to earlier, which were explicitly about icons of a notional Saint Resnick?
I should like also to rail against the clouds. Also against the timing of this eclipse, in not being obligingly at midnight where I am, such that I could have seen it high up in the sky rather than, as it probably is, hiding behind the trees as well as the shreddy clouds. Because cosmic phenomena need to consider my convenience at all times, dammit!
Sorry to come back to the conversation so very late, but I did want to give @Lydy Nickerson all the appreciation for her gracious responses here and at her own LJ, and to respond in turn to a couple things she said:
This is me being relieved I didn’t come across as flogging a dead horse or unnecessarily browbeating when I wrote that. I’m glad that it had value to you and helped make communication successful. That in turn is good feedback for me.
I like what others have said about singling out the “prosperity gospel” / “just world fallacy” type belief rather than pointing to a particular religion (despite that, yes, the term “prosperity gospel” comes right out of a particular subset of evangelical Christianity). I think it shows up wearing a many different religious outfits across various cultures, and should probably be chalked up to humans having a tendency to rationalize their bad behavior in light of their faith, whatever their faith is.
My New Orleanian Catholic family usually doesn’t tend that way, but every once in a while I’ll get some well-meaning family member making an off-hand comment about how my “good attitude” and/or “all the people praying for [me]” are part of why I survived leukemia at age 11. I try to push back when I hear stuff like that–like, it was good to know everyone had my back, and a “good attitude” can make a bad experience less horrible, but–do they really want to imply that the girl my age I befriended in the hospital, who was going through chemo neck-and-neck with me, died because her attitude was less good or because less people were praying for her? Generally, no, they don’t, and the topic of conversation changes quickly after that.
Anyway.
Would it be stretching the metaphor too far to say that there was all sorts of tasty candy in that bear trap? Because the conversation that resulted from us startling each other like that has been really worthwhile, I think!
I believe they were quoting me – or my earlier message when I talked about ‘fannish iconography’ etc.
There’s a dark blood-red (for clotted values of blood) moon being hidden and revealed behind scudding wispy clouds right now.
It’s very atmospheric. Pun intended.
You could say that and your counter argument would not be a valid one. Likewise if I said “all representational art is secular” then you could validly respond that Orthodox icons are representational art and not secular and thus demonstrate that my claim was incorrect.
However, as interesting as those examples are they aren’t valid comparisons with the issue of the discussion about iconography and Orthodox icons. For example if I say the works of Dan Brown are based on a confused understanding of iconography I am not saying or implying or suggesting that any one of his novels demonstrate confusion about Greek Orthodox icons and it would not be a valid inference to say that I was claiming that Dan Brown’s* novel contain incorrect information about Orthodox Christian icons.
A different example. If I say I find economics amusing you would be wrong to infer that I find the US economy amusing. The specific fallacy involved is the Fallacy of Division, which is about as classic a fallacy as you can get and allows me to win this extended game of Puppy-Mornington Crescent by saying ‘Aristotle!’
[*disclaimer: I don’t know if he does mention any actual icons in any of his books.]
Meredith:
Sure, but I think most of the original funny stuff was riffing off Catholicism and branches of Protestantism with a High Church aspect.
It’s worth noting that Catholic iconography (in a broad scene) also includes sculpture, which seems absent from the comments I linked to above. At any rate, since when is ignorance an excuse? Note that there are between 2-3 million Orthodox in the US, and as many as 6 million if you count nominal adherents, plus another 500,000-2,000,000 Oriental Orthodox and other broadly related churches (Assyrian, Syriac etc.). The numbers and proportions are lower in the UK, but the presence is significant enough.
For example if I say the works of Dan Brown are based on a confused understanding of iconography I am not saying or implying or suggesting that any one of his novels demonstrate confusion about Greek Orthodox icons and it would not be a valid inference to say that I was claiming that Dan Brown’s* novel contain incorrect information about Orthodox Christian icons.
This, of course, does not map at all to the comments of the past few days.
How do we know that the works of Dan Brown don’t make confusing or any remarks about GO icons? Well, can open the books and see.
How do we know that the notional icons of Saint Resnick aren’t mockeries of Orthodox icons? After someone objects, you insist that you didn’t mean them—they just happen to match exactly. (NB: a significant number of Orthodox saints are also Catholic saints, with identical iconographies.)
@Nick Mamatas
I’m honestly not sure what your reply has to do with my comment.
The fog cleared!
And there it is, right over the hills, with the thinnest thread of light starting.
Love this stuff.
None for my kids in Canberra though:
http://www.smh.com.au/technology/sci-tech/lunar-eclipse-howling-at-a-blood-moon-but-no-world-demise-likely-20150922-gjsd0j.html
According to Science:
“In Australia we’re going to see diddly,” said Perry Vlahos, of the Melbourne Astronomical Society.
Moon visible where I am and also, as it turns out, in South Berkeley.
Sigh.
This all started off:
Camestros Felapton on September 24, 2015 at 10:09 pm said:
…and so began the trend in fannish iconography that whenever Laura Resnick was portrayed in frescoes, murals or portraiture, the artist would include a stick of celery in her hand…
That’s it.
What we see here is a list of the specific fannish productions in which Laura Resnick is said to be portrayed: “frescoes, murals, and portraiture.
Does anyone see “icons” on that list?
Fannish “iconography,” is clearly being used here in the sense of the details to be employed by any artist to identify the individual (celery) , rather than in the sense of the process of creating actual icons.
That is also the order in which I’m finding those definitions for iconography: first the characteristic identifying details used in art history, and secondly the actual creation of icons.
But there are no icons here.
Fannish artists are using iconographic details, in this case celery, to identify the writer in a short list ofspecified artistic creations: frescos, murals, and portraits.
It would have been easy enough to have included icons in this list, had anyone intended to refer to them.
But icons are not there as a possible fan production.
They were not named in the space for explicitly listing things to be made.
Maybe, if the poster had gone full-scale Tom Lehrer, icons might have made the list, perhaps somewhere around stained glass windows.
But this was only a short list.
And icons are not on it.
“How do we know that the notional icons of Saint Resnick aren’t mockeries of Orthodox icons?”
Because there are no fannish icons, that’s how we know.
Meredith:
One developing objection to my annoyance is that of course nobody was talking about Orthodox icons; they were riffing on Catholic/Protestant, right?
Well, how can one tell? One way to tell would be to see if the references included anything that would not be found in Orthodox iconography but that would be found in the West (e.g., sculpture). Well, nope.
Another suggestion is that of course any relationship to Orthodoxy is purely coincidental, because whoever heard of that shit. Well, in the US, about 5-6% of the population practices that shit. Basically, roughly the same as the number of Chinese-Americans in the United States.
Sigh all you’re like, you’re just cherry-picking.
Nick Mamatas on September 27, 2015 at 8:38 pm said:
Sigh all you’re like, you’re just cherry-picking.
Nope, those are the actual words, all of them, no editing.
That is the entire post that set you off.
There is no cherry-picking here.
The specific word “iconography,” does not, in fact, primarily refer to Orthodox religion, and it was not so used in this context.
There are and were no icons.
@Nick Mamatas
Okay, now I get the thought process, thanks. However, I don’t see what anything in either of your two comments has to do with whether people are all using the same definition of iconography, and since I’ve repeatedly expressed the desire to not get drawn into the wider discussion, I think I’ll leave them be.
I’m just going to observe, broadly and in reference to nothing in particular, that there’s vastly more about Chinese culture that I don’t know than what I do know, whether as practiced at home in China, or as practiced here in the US. And that despite coming up in a local fannish culture where Chinese food consumed in the real Chinese restaurants in Chinatown was a common, even traditional, thing.
Which means I had a great deal more exposure than to some other cultures that might be under discussion somewhere hereabouts.
Nope, those are the actual words.
The entire post that set you off.
Nope. Did you bother clicking through the link I provided, or the three links in that link? Or hell, did you read the text I quoted for those links?
You just arbitrarily, and frankly stupidly, decided that a post other than the three I actually linked to “set [me] off.”
Hell, the post you cite is here. (9/24, 10:09). My next post on this thread is the next afternoon and is about…Leo Grin as potentially a “beta male.”
I was so “set off” that I had zero comment about CF’s post, and actually started talking about something else. It was after the first two comments of the next evening, I’ve already linked to, that I responded to the issue of icons for the first time (my first comment comes in all of two minutes, and the third cemented the continued religious riffing.
CF of course defensively dove in to pretend he didn’t understand my comment, and then we were off to the races.
Lis:
I’m just going to observe, broadly and in reference to nothing in particular, that there’s vastly more about Chinese culture that I don’t know than what I do know, whether as practiced at home in China, or as practiced here in the US.
Oh yeah? Do you think you know enough not to walk past a Chinese restaurant and say “I hear Koreans eat dogs! I wonder if they have any in there! Haha, it’s all the same anyway, right”? I suspect you do.
@Meredith
“I’m honestly not sure what your reply has to do with my comment.”
Well, it certainly does save him from having to address the cryptic nature of his initial comment and follow-ups regarding this….whatever it is.
I think one way or another we’ve established that I did not understand your comment and I still don’t. Did I think that you might have been sarcastic? Yes, but I wasn’t sure and when in doubt I take comments about face value and ask people about what they wrote. Which is what I did. I don’t trust my sarcasm detectors online particularly for people I don’t know.
It is a safer option because the person being sarcastic naturally won’t object to being taken literally on the grounds of insincerity because if insincerity was a big deal for them they wouldn’t be writing words they didn’t mean. On reflection my reasoning here may be faulty.
Not relevant to the main discussion but: Where are those statistics on Orthodox population in the UK hidden? I can’t find them.
The census was very unhelpful: Everyone gets sorted under ‘Christian’.
(I mean, in general, I think an expectation of specific knowledge about any religious branch people don’t belong to is probably doomed to disappointment. My Polish Catholic friend who was primarily raised in London could fit her knowledge about the Church of England on the back of a postcard, and even then she’d probably get half of it wrong. That’s the dominant religion here, where she grew up. So numbers wouldn’t change my opinion whether it turned out there were millions or half a dozen. But still. I like statistics and not being able to find them makes me grumpy.)
(I would also like to suggest that if one has said:
One might not be in a good position to complain about others having a lack of knowledge about [any religion really, doesn’t matter which one].)
(Note: I know there are more than half a dozen. There are more than half a dozen churches, and I assume they aren’t run by a small group of multi-lingual people who can run very fast on the Sabbath.)
@snowcrash
Oh, no, my bit was all a minor digression on whether a confusion in terminology was creating more upset than there needed to be, so replying to it on those terms wouldn’t make any difference to that at all. If anything, he was pulling the conversation further towards the overall thing and away from the side discussion of ‘I think everyone might be getting upset over a difference of definition and wouldn’t that be a problem if yes’, which was why I didn’t continue it even after clarification. There be bees.
Well then, here it all is, is up to your first reaction:
ULTRAGOTHA on September 25, 2015 at 6:59 am said:
Camestros Felapton on September 24, 2015 at 10:09 pm said:
…and so began the trend in fannish iconography that whenever Laura Resnick was portrayed in frescoes, murals or portraiture, the artist would include a stick of celery in her hand stuck to her lapel…
brightglance on September 25, 2015 at 10:18 am said:
ULTRAGOTHA on September 25, 2015 at 6:59 am said:
Camestros Felapton on September 24, 2015 at 10:09 pm said:
…and so began the trend in fannish iconography that whenever Laura Resnick was portrayed in frescoes, murals or portraiture, the artist would include a stick of celery in her hand … stuck to her lapel… tied to her belt, as was the fashion in those days
Tintinaus on September 25, 2015 at 10:41 pm said:
…and so began the trend in fannish iconography that whenever Laura Resnick was portrayed in frescoes, murals or portraiture, the artist would include a stick of celery in her hand stuck to her lapel… tied to her belt, as was the fashion in those days.
The only problem was that the celery was meant to be asparagus(the foliage of which stands for curiosity or fasination), but the original artist got confused whrn at the grocers. So to this day the Blessed Laura is often mistaken for the patron saint of dip makers.
Lauowolf on September 25, 2015 at 11:16 pm said:
Tintinaus on September 25, 2015 at 10:41 pm said:
…and so began the trend in fannish iconography that whenever Laura Resnick was portrayed in frescoes, murals or portraiture, the artist would include a stick of celery in her hand stuck to her lapel… tied to her belt, as was the fashion in those days.
The only problem was that the celery was meant to be asparagus(the foliage of which stands for curiosity or fasination), but the original artist got confused whrn at the grocers. So to this day the Blessed Laura is often mistaken for the patron saint of dip makers.
As often happens in traditional cultures, Her cult expanded to include followers of both the written word and the culinary arts.
Devotees copied out Her sacred texts with pens of celery stalk.
Understandably enough, these are referred to as The Resnick Mysteries. Deciphering them can be the work of a lifetime.
Some scholars maintain that She was rather a male deity, but clearly this is merely some patriarchal back formation.
Nick Mamatas on September 25, 2015 at 11:18 pm said:
ooh tee-hee those silly religionists and their icons hoo hoo look at ’em
So, the reason I “cherry-picked” was that no one adds anything remotely related to the creation of icons in any of the later posts.
The only icon is embedded in the word “iconography.”
Furthermore I conclude my own post:
Some scholars maintain that She was rather a male deity, but clearly this is merely some patriarchal back formation.
I would take that last bit as pretty strong evidence that no one was satirizing Orthodox religion.
I’m pretty sure it is short on other deities, debatably male or female, having only the one.
Interestingly enough, that’s the point when you started getting upset about people being silly.
And no one had to “pretend” not to understand your comments.
You had, and frankly still have, many people pretty much baffled.
There continues to be no icon.
There continues to be no icon.
Oh, and there are four lights.
I don’t trust my sarcasm detectors online particularly for people I don’t know.
It’s 2K15. That ironical content is difficult to discern online is no longer an excuse, especially when it comes to an utterance like “ooh tee-hee those silly religionists and their icons hoo hoo look at ’em”.
Meredith:
I didn’t cite any statistics on Orthodoxy in the UK. It’s significant enough that the Greek Orthodox church has an Archdiocese, two for Russian Orthodox (semi-political reasons there), an Antiochian metropolitan, seventy-nine English-language parishes etc.
Meredith:
(I would also like to suggest that if one has said:
I have no idea if Western sects take the material culture of their faiths as seriously as Orthodoxy takes icons, but only because except for a few weddings and such (and a religious/horror convention called Mo*Con), I’ve not really interacted with Western churches.
One might not be in a good position to complain about others having a lack of knowledge about [any religion really, doesn’t matter which one].)
What you don’t understand here is that there is a time to confess one’s ignorance and a time to simply own it. I could have given a reasonable guess, but what would the point of that had been?
When someone asks you a question, it is perfectly reasonable to say “I don’t know.”
When you have annoyed someone, it is not perfectly reasonable to say “Well, how the hell am I supposed to know that?”
Also worth noting: of all the people I’ve ever annoyed, I’ve managed to never annoy anyone by making light of a religion of which they were associated. Not so they told me anyhow. Saying “I don’t know” is very handy when it comes to that.
@Nick Mamatas
I don’t believe anyone did.
You are mistaking an explanation for an excuse. I have no personal ethical objection to responding to clumsy sarcasm with a disingenuous response – it is just in this case that is not what occurred. The issue for me was whether your response was clumsy sarcasm, some sort of misplaced attempt at humor or just somebody trying to join in the fun in a really awful way by mocking people for their religion. It would be nice to think people don’t do the latter but unless you are claiming that is an unreasonable assumption to make about people commenting here (which would be a VERY odd thing to claim in the circumstance) then it was reasonable for me to take the safest route. After all if your comment was meant to be sarcastic it would be have been very easy for you to clarify what you meant.
You have every right to choose to be obscure in your communication but you will be misunderstood as a consequence. You could, of course, try addressing people directly – as I note you have praised others in doing so towards yourself.
So, the reason I “cherry-picked” was that no one adds anything remotely related to the creation of icons in any of the later posts.
Don’t be ridiculous.
You don’t think artists using particular visual cliches to represent the life of a “Blessed” figure is remotely related to icons?
You don’t think the idea of a cult created around an artistically rendered human historical figure that represents a phenomenon or line of work, that later expands to claim additional phenomena or lines of work is remotely related to icons?
You don’t think a reference to Mysteries is remotely related to Orthodoxy, which uses the word mystery to refer to various religious and social rituals?
As far as the gender of deities, Hagia Sophia (both Holy Wisdom—basically Jesus Christ—and “Saint Sophia”) is just the sort of thing that leads to such confusion, confusion adopted by a number of gnostic and neo-gnostic groups as an article of their faith (ie, Hagia Sophia as the female aspect of God). On the nose.
Does this mean I think several posters decided “Aha, now I shall mock Greek Orthodox icons!” and did so? No. Did they manage it anyway? Yes. Has, with the end of the Puppy wars, the rump of new File770 regulars become a hothouse where even a one-line negative comment must be countered for days on end with whining, passive-aggressive commentary, foot-stomping, Some-Of-My-Best-Friends-Are-Ukranian nonsense, and plain ol’ dumbass comments like yours? Uh-huh.
Or, to put it another way, if there were a bunch of heeelarious comments about, say, “thugs”, and someone objected to the racist content of the comments, you’d be the one to explain that he saw some young white guys wearing baggy pants and listening to the hip-hop once and doing crimes too.
You are mistaking an explanation for an excuse.
No, I am just noting that your explanation is a poor excuse. Part of engaging online in 2015 is being able to tell sarcasm from non-sarcasm. If you have problems doing so, then you’re going to have problems.