Sometimes you'll never know why.

I've been offending people with my very existence for years. Seriously, the number of people who have hated me on sight since the age of five until I moved out of the olde hometowne is large. (I am convinced that wearing glasses alone is like waving the flag in front of the bull with some people.) And that was before I even opened my mouth and really gave them something to hate.

Annoyingly, this seems to be part of the notoriety package of life. In order for you to make a living off of being creative, people have to hear about who you are. This multiplies the number of people who like you and who hate you by a lot, more than most boring stiffs have going on IRL. And for all of those who love your stuff, it seems like you have to pay an equal price of people just spontaneously hating your guts at random--and some of them, well, doing more than just bitching about it. I hate that that seems to be the case, but...hell, what do you do?

I keep trying to figure out how to resolve this within myself before I start choosing to put myself out as a target to shoot at, but so far, I don't know. At this point in my life I am all, "fine, haters gonna hate, whatever just don't try to stalk and kill me," but...oh wait, I'm a woman, that will probably happen anyway. Mostly I think that if I ever go for the notoriety, I'll have to shut down blog comment options (and I already avoid social media) and hide the e-mail address and in general just make sure that people can't talk back to me. If I don't want to hear about the hate, that means I can't hear about the love either. But I suspect publishers and publicists would bitch if I did that, too.

Argh. Fame. Has its plusses and minusses. On the plus side, money, some adoration, getting to work at your calling, and access to The Cool Kids Club. On the minus side...assholes. Whee.

I find if I try not to offend people, I step all over their toes. If, however, I actively try to offend people, no one gets offended. I am, to this day, confused by this.

Also, in regards to killing characters, I just have to figure out how to stop bringing them back to life when I kill them off. Stay dead, jerks!

Just in case- you didn't offend me about hugo's, and men's clothing :)

And I think it sucks that looking good (for whatever value you choose) is expensive :(

Here ends the (what should have been) completely unnecessary affirmations :)

And darn it! *2* books come out on the day after I'm likely to see the authors!

Great post, and thank you.

Although I know that there is no way not to offend someone sometime on the internets, I still find myself stymied and anxious and worried sometimes about what I post. *sigh* Posts like this remind me that I should stick to what's true for me, and let the rest fall where it may.

This is something that I'm trying to prepare myself for. I don't anticipate being a Name in writing, but when you're trying to be, you need to ask yourself if you can hack it, if you can support your stories and yourself when other people are telling you How It Should Be. I'm so easily a people pleaser, and I keep having to tell myself, like a mantra: It is literally impossible to please everyone. So just write the damn thing as it wants to be written, and we'll work from there.

There is so much judgement, so much certainty of what is right for all (which is usually, coincidentally what said person either does do or thinks they *should* be doing), so much involvement in others lives and business. I'm not sure if it's worse now than ever or if it's just easier to spread opinions to so many so fast, but it is exhausting. So many have been telling me my whole life how to be a better me. You know I'm pretty satisfied with most incarnations of the me I've put together so far and am pretty excited to see my next chapter. I like you too, and like that you're not me. In fact you're different enough to enlighten me yet similar enough in interests to make you enjoyable to listen to and interact with. Thank you for being you. :)

Sometimes characters just die. Sometimes you kill 'em off. And sometimes you look ahead at the plot, and realise oh damn, so-and-so is going to HAVE to bite the big one, or this is not going to work, and you don't want to do it, but... if you don't kill the character you're going to kill the story, which will take ALL the characters with it, and what can you do?

(And I only write fanfiction! How much more true is it for a Real Author (TM)? XD)

In other news, you haven't offended me yet. If you do, I promise to at least try to respond in a mature and sensible manner. ;)

I don't find your response offensive at all. I don't like what authors do with all their characters, but hey it's their story and their choice. If it really hacks me off and I can't see any reason I'll stop reading the books. I try not to do anything deliberately offensive, but if I spent my life trying not to offend everybody I'd probably never get out of bed.

I LIVE to offend people. I push boundaries. I went to school in vampire make up in the 70s, long before goth came around. But then I sjock people by being as nice to them as I always am to you.

As for killing off characters, in your own dern story, well...I was mad at the story when George died. I am mad at Shaun for accepting the clone. But YOU? My shmoopie? My thoughts were 'Damn, she can twist that knife. She made me FEEL that." .

That "Why did you kill character X?" reader is someone you're probably better off without.

I mean, think how very bizarre it is to demand that sort of information from an author. Not to merely ask, because hey, we can always ask. But being pissed off that you didn't give some kind of answer that satisfied them, that indicates that the request was a demand. That reader felt that whatever fraction of a dollar in royalties you got from their purchase entitled them to more than a story that they liked --- it entitled them to demand a performance of you. What if all of your readers did this? You'd never have time to write any more books, or even to sleep.

And as it is, you're a high-performance author! Imagine being a fan of JD Salinger --- no original works for the last 45 years of his life, and not even any interviews for the last 30. A Seanan McGuire fan, on the other hand, gets a steady stream of novels, stories, songs, blog posts, and tweets. Some people are just never satisfied.

Someone is always getting offended about something, somewhere.

I'm very hard to offend, actually. Once I offended a cow-orker by not completing a task to her satisfaction, and she hated me the rest of my time there. It upset me then (20 years ago) but now I would be like "Whatever, hag" and just do my job. I never understood why she was so hateful to a newbie with less than two weeks on the job.

Given the context of said Stephen King quote, you're fortunate that Twitterperson didn't come and saw your foot off. I'm sorry you never got an explanation for Twitterperson's reaction, because I know what it's like to be left wondering what the hell it was you did wrong. I can assure you that you are most definitely awesome and I have always been delighted with just how much you do communicate with your readers. I think we're lucky, and I think Twitterperson completely overreacted.

♥

I don't get the need for something about which to be offended. You have my respect- I don't think that I could deal with that on any kind of regular basis.

I was telling someone the other day about the hate-mail that you got about getting cats from breeders. I am a staunch adopter (generally of the dog closest to getting put to sleep), but not everyone is meant to have shelter pets. I would love for them to be a good fit for everyone, but reality says that different people have different needs.

If it's any comfort, as someone who's tried it both ways, being a woman is waaaay more expensive. Just saying,

This was a good thing to read this week. Thanks. ^_^

Coincidentally enough, The Guardian UK had an article today about Social media and online comments 'causing writers to self-censor'

Except I don't think you would bother with the self-censoring business, and we love you for it. Personally, I don't think you could really offend me unless you started advocating for the Tea Party, killing abortion providers, or banning gay marriage. Somehow, I don't think you'd be doing that any time soon (if only because I've seen almost no politics on your blog)

"...someone with whom I had communicated on Twitter, but who I didn't really know, asked me "Why did you kill character X?" "

I swear this question is the writer's version of the instant trouble question reporters ask politicians: Sir, is there any truth to those rumors that you've stopped beating your wife? (There's no way to answer this question or dodge it that doesn't make someone absolutely furious!)
:}

There are some things I find offensive, no matter who does it, and they basically all boil down to "treating people as things"*.

You going about your life in the way you live it seems utterly inoffensive, but people getting upset because you don't act the way they want to you act, well that comes dangerously close to them treating your autonomy as unimportant, in other words seeing you as less of a person.



*This is pretty much Kant's Categorical Imperative as phrased according to Granny Weatherwax.

Good reminder. I definitely need to be reminded sometimes that people can be offended at anything, and I don't need to fix it all. (I read through your list and just went, "that makes even less sense to be offended by" with each item.)

Also, a field of "sparkly plagues" makes me think that there's a virus that will turn people sparkly, like Twilight vampires. (Not that I have read the books or seen the movies, but that's still the association my brain made.)

People suck. SET THEM ALL ON FIRE!!

At the end of Feed, I was so angry that I threw the book across the room. But not, y'know, AT YOU, because that would be dumb. Also, I had to appreciate how genius it was.

Bottom line? People are weird. Like, really, really weird.

Back when I was a frosh in college, the phone rang one night. My roommate picked it up, listened a moment, then held it out saying, "It's for you."

I reproduce the entire phone call here for posterity: "Shame on you, whoever you are, you lowdown scum."

It made my day, and it took me a while to unpack why. See, I'd only been there a month or so, and this was literally a group of people with whom I'd had no prior contact. So what I did is go over my time at college, think a bit, and realize that not only had I done nothing to be ashamed of, I'd done nothing I'd be afraid of telling my mother about, or the upright citizen of your choice. And that had me realize that some people are just full of hate for no apparent reason, and that nothing I could do would have an effect on that, and therefore, if people hated me and I couldn't figure out why, it was probably because they were total weirdos and I had no moral obligation to try and get them to like me. Very liberating.

And probably not the effect the caller intended to have at all. :)