Today’s meditation is about the dangers of being a creative person in a time of political turmoil. Naturally, this applies equally well to most other walks of life, but we focus on writing here.
Chuck Wendig is a successful novelist. You can see his credits at his site, Terrible Minds. You’ll note some Star Wars titles among his own original novels. He blogs at his site, discussing the writing life and doling out wonderful free advice. He’s collected this advice into a few books, too, and he truly knows his art and craft. He also gets political on his site and on his Twitter account. He pulls absolutely no punches when opinionating; anyone the tiniest bit interested can easily know where they stand vis-á-vis Wendig’s politics. There should be no surprises.
But Wendig was surprised last Friday. The responses to his political stands drew more attention than Marvel Comics was willing to put up with. He told the story on Twitter and collected the tweets into readable form at his blog.
Before we go further into the morass, there are some players you need to be aware of. First, the Gamergate morons. Briefly: Gamergate is a war over who is truly a nerd. Women and minorities need not apply, those with liberal political philosophies are banned as are men who support women and minorities, and the tactics used against anyone the gaters hate include threats of rape and murder, and swatting. Second, the chairman of Marvel Entertainment is a Trump fan and was one of the men listed as running the Department of Veterans Affairs from outside the government. There are credible reports that he is homophobic, racist, and misogynistic. Exactly as one would expect of a friend of Trump.
I could all too easily broaden the scope and mention many more who have hurt and been hurt in creative industries, but I’m going to stay focused on Wendig. Even so, let us not forget the many others whose careers have been harmed and whose lives have been made a hellscape because of horrible people. Wendig notes some of them in his blog post.
Chuck Wendig is a successful white man in a white man’s America. But he doesn’t wear Trump’s red cap or the Klan’s white hood (interchangeable, of course), and he believes that everyone should be treated fairly, so he still ends up being targeted by people with room-temperature IQs and negative empathy scores. It took some time, but they finally scored a hit against him.
What does this mean for us? Two things, I think.
1) It’s not safe to play in someone else’s sandbox. There’s no inalienable right to write Star Wars books and comics. That’s a privately owned universe, and the owners get to pick and choose who gets to have fun telling those stories. Also, the nutjobs among the fans will punish you for stepping outside what they consider the lines of their fandom. A writer is better off in the long run to create his own characters and build a fortress from his backlist. Then, if you like, cross your moat to see about other people’s characters.
2) It is crucial that we all get out and vote Democratic, retaking as much of the Congress and as many governors mansions and state legislatures as possible. The so-called Blue Wave is primarily about voting, but the purpose of voting is to try to push the haters back under their rocks. To make racism and sexism and all the other hate-isms shameful again so that people can’t run about proudly declaring their hate. To rebuild an American society that looks less like Nazi Germany’s than ours presently does. (N.B.: I’ve read a lot of history, and I do not consider that I am being either melodramatic or hyperbolic.)
Nothing in Wendig’s sad tale urges us to give up or to make no waves. We have to be fearless with everything we write. Art is political. Use your art to everyone’s best advantage.