Lulz. No one cares. But I really like what I’ve managed to come up with when it comes to the third draft of this novel — but for one thing. And that one thing is it’s kind of risky and potentially controversal.
I can write a great pop novel all I want to, but there will still be members of the woke cancel culture mob (wink) who will be enraged that a smelly CIS white male has a heroine who is both a sex worker and the owner of an alternative weekly.
And, yet, Barry was a success, so why can’t this be a success.
But I know how the world really works. I have to accept that the whole concept is so loaded that there will be some members of the woke cancel culture mob who get REALLY UPSET that I’ve done such a thing. Maybe if I was a transgender undocumented woman they would give me a pass, but, lulz, that ain’t me.
But. Shrug. I’ve always been different. I’m a creep. I’m a weirdo. What the hell am I doing here, as the song goes. I know my vision for the novel and that’s what I’m doing, come what may.
All I can do is just write the best possible novel and tell the best possible story I can think of.
There was a version of the first scene of the third draft of the novel where the novel passed the fucking Bechdel Test. I unfortunately(?) had to re-write it to add some tension the scene.
And, yet, given how many women are in this novel it definitely seems inevitable that there will come a point when it passes the Bechdel Test. I wish I could feel some satisfaction in doing so, confident in the knowledge that I have passed an ever-so-important metric of the woke cancel culture mob.
AND YET.
I AM a smelly CIS white male and, as such, according to the woke cancel culture mob, by definition, I have no write to do anything. I can’t even give them the representation they claim to want because, lulz…I’m a white dude. That’s why I always get angry when I’m attacked online by people to the Left of me.
“I’m on your side!” I think.
I don’t know what to tell you. The two sides are receding from each other at an alarming rate. There’s just no middle ground anymore. Sometimes I am astonished by how self-defeating the woke cancel culture mob can be. While, in general, I’m pretty center-Left, too often “woke” people seem so consumed by their ideological goals that they miss sight of how they’re driving a lot of people who believe they’re “centrist” into the arms of fucking fascism.
Ok, I got beef with the film reviewing community of Tik-Tok. Too often, they go out of their fucking woke way to shit on movies like Avatar — Way of Water for some bullshit woke reason.
Fuck this test.
And, yet, they liked Babylon?
I don’t get it. I really liked Babylon, too, but you would think the tender hearted people of woke FilmTok would not be able to bear how gratuitous and over the top the movie was. I’m reminded of the one time I used Twitter clone Mastodon, only to be driven off the service by fucking woke cocksuckers who jumped on me the moment I didn’t follow their strict woke orthodoxy. They, too, did not see the contradiction when they told me they like Dave Chappelle and Richard Pryor.
It’s because of bullshit like that that we’re probably going to lose our democracy. When “cultural Leftists” have such a strict orthodoxy that they attack anyone who doesn’t know the ends and outs of their “woke” agenda that the efforts to keep America a democracy falls into serious, serious trouble.
I just had to get that out of my system. I fucking hate the woke orthodoxy because of how dangerous it is for democracy. Sometimes you want to tell a story that will “trigger” people — because that’s the whole point! The issue should be telling a great story, not if two women have a conversation about something other than a man.
Fuck that.
My frustration with the “woke” agenda grows the better my first novel gets. Given how much representation there is in this novel — and who I am as a CIS white male — half the readership will think I’m too woke and half its audience will think I’m an evil representative ogre of the patriarchy because I’m writing from a non-white, non-male POV at times. (Ok, maybe a lot.)
But that’s my vision and I’m willing to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune over it.
I generally don’t believe that the “woke cancel culture mob” exists. What we refer to as the “woke cancel culture mob” is an amalgam of technology speeding up social change along with younger people having different expectations. Throw in how fucking MAGA cocksuckers use anything that makes them feel uncomfortable as an excuse to rant about people being “canceled” and, well, there you go — woke cancel culture mob is born.
But there are a few things that really irritate me when it comes to what the whippersnappers believe relative to me, the graybeard. One of those things is how passionately they believe in the so-called “Bechdel Test.” This test, proposed in a comic(!) is referred to even by its creator as a “half joke.” But the way the more woke among us view this test, you would think if anything you read that doesn’t pass the test, the book in question has be thrown across the room with great vigar.
I call bullshit.
But let’s look at what the test is. In essence it’s: “Two women must have a conversation about something other than a man.“
Now, it’s not so much that the test exists that enrages me, it’s that if I tell a great story and it (tragically?) doesn’t pass the fucking test that somehow I’m dinged for being a bad storyteller.
THIS MAKES ME VERY ANGRY.
The point of any art is to be provocative and to tell a great story. You go where the story takes you. It seems like the Bechdel Test is a hack crutch for people with no talent to make people who do have talent feel bad. I’m well aware that taking such a stance may not endear me to some literary agents when I start to query later next year. Ok, I get. But it’s not like I don’t validate those people who are really into the Bechdel Test. I do. Have it.
But any sort of test for art like the Bechdel Test seems…rather hackish? Great art isn’t supposed to have rules other than whatever you have to follow to convey a great story. And telling me that I have to twist and contort my work to pass the fucking Bechdel Test is not cool.
What’s more, I have so many female characters in my work that it’s probably going to be pretty easy for me to pass the fucking test that I keep ranting about! Now what?
Anyway. What’s the point of having principles if you’re not willing to suffer for them?
Oh boy. Where to begin with this one. This is a very touchy subject because a lot of well meaning people take it for granted that any piece of art with dialogue in it has to pass the Bechdel Test: two women talking about something other than a man.
Now, it’s my impression that the test was proposed originally as something of a “half joke.” But it’s a testament to how segmented pop art is now that it definitely goes against the media narrative to quibble with the importance of the Bechdel Test.
So, in a sense, the less I say about it and my very strong opinions about it, the better. But I’m an idiot, so I’m going to talk a little bit about it anyway. I have absolutely no problem with someone thinking the Bechdel Test is important. But I also know that on a personal level, I fail any test I’m given and so it make sense that the novel I’m developing and writing would fail the Bechdel Test.
The thing is, there are an unusually high number of female characters in this novel — which, me being a male author brings up a whole different set of problems for some people — but I’m not going to worry about if the novel passes the Bechdel Test or not. The point of this whole endeavor is tell a great, engaging story. If it happens to pass the Bechdel Test, great. If it doesn’t, I’m not going to worry about it.
Given how extremely self-conscious I am ensuring the female characters I’ve come up with are not simply women I want to bang, I think if I fail the Bechdel Test — which I inevitably will — then maybe I can get a pass on it. Or if you refuse to give me a pass on it, then maybe my novel — given that it was written by a man — maybe isn’t for you.
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