Monthly Archives: May 2024

A smear and harassment campaign

This entry was posted in Commentary and tagged conventions fandom PenguiCon on by

Penguicon 2024 disinvited SF author Patrick Tomlinson after he was targeted by a major online harassment campaign. Yes, that’s right. Penguicon disinvited a program participant for being the victim of harassment. He discusses the convention’s actions on his website, and I’ve confirmed much of what he said from other sources.

What the convention did to him is known as the “heckler’s veto,” though “heckling” is far too mind a term for the stalking campaign against him. It’s often a technique organizers use to get rid of someone they don’t like or find inconvenient. USC cancelled its valedictorian speech by Asna Tabassum because of vague “safety concerns.” The administration never said what dangers concerned them or who, if anyone, was making threats. The Provost’s statement cites “security concerns that rose to the level of credible” but nothing more specific. It subsequently cancelled all commencement speeches. The message USC unintentionally delivered was that threats work.
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Elbphilharmonie concert, May 5, 2024

This entry was posted in Music and tagged Germany music on by

Another “off-topic” post, this one about a wonderful concert I attended while I was in Germany. It was at the Elbphilharmonie in Hamburg on May 5. That’s a significant date, just two days short of the 200th anniversary of the first performance of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony.

The two pieces were Schoenberg’s A Survivor from Warsaw and the Ninth. Alan Gilbert conducted the NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchestra and the Runfunkchor Berlin. Soloists were Susanna Phillips (soprano), Gerhild Romberger (alto), Maximilian Schmitt (tenor), and Michael Nagy (baritone).
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Note on mcgath.com

This entry was posted in Administrative on by

Update: mcgath.com is now hosted by Dreamhost and is working.

I just learned that the SSL certificate on my companion website, mcgath.com, is broken. The problem is with HostGator, which messed it up just a few months ago and then allegedly fixed it. It’s time for me to migrate to a competent hosting company. Unfortunately, due to other stuff I’m dealing with, this will take a couple of weeks.

It should be reasonably safe to click through any warnings, since the site serves only static content and it’s unlikely to be worth anyone’s while to set up a man-in-the-middle attack. Use common sense if you see anything suspicious, naturally.

Villains

This entry was posted in Techniques Writing and tagged fiction writing on by

Villains make stories exciting. They add an element of danger, giving the hero an adversary to overcome and the reader someone to hate. But who exactly counts as a villain? Is it any character who does bad things? This question came up in my mind when discussing the question of whether the opera Carmen has a villain. Is it Don Jose? He murders the protagonist. Is it Carmen? She leaves a trail of ruin, but that’s not her intention. Here I’ll put a few thoughts together.

First try: A proper villain does bad things with bad intentions. But do the intentions have to be bad? The classic example of the righteous villain is Javert in Les Miserables. Throughout the novel, he pursues Jean Valjean in the belief that he’s hunting down a dangerous criminal. He can’t grasp that Valjean has greatly changed, and when the truth hits him … well, that’s a spoiler. Is he a villain? Gottesmann in my The Magic Battery is similar, and I had Javert in mind when I created him. He thinks that letting just anybody use magic is too dangerous to allow, and he won’t allow the conviction of an innocent person, but his campaign kills a lot of people.
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