I’m reassured that I’m doing something right in my life when I know so many people who annoy regressives just by going about their lives, by saying who they are, by making art. So it was with the Sad Puppies of Hugo Award infamy. They saw stories about queer people celebrated where they were not, so they knew there must be something wrong with the celebration.
These days, the Sad Puppies have mostly stopped jerking the awards around. They’ve left that to the Rabid Puppies, who are like the Sad Puppies but think it’s good PR to cackle and rub their hands together while monologuing. (Somebody really wants a movie made about him, especially if he doesn’t have to be an interesting bad guy to do it.) But jerking the awards around still means keeping queer and POC writers and themes out of the awards.
Rachel Swirsky, whose story “If You Were a Dinosaur, My Love” makes puppies feel all squicky, has decided to do something about it. She’s using her Patreon this month to raise funds for queer health care, with the promise to do more things that will make puppies feel squicky and entertain the rest of us as she hits various fundraising targets.
In my family, humor has always been a way of putting crap into perspective. When life hands you lemons, make jokes. And then possibly lemonade, too. It is coming up on summer.
In that spirit, I’m trying a self-publishing experiment. And that experiment’s name is “If You Were a Butt, My Butt.”
If my Patreon reaches $100 by the end of the month [Note: it has!], I will write and send “If You Were a Butt, My Butt” to everyone who subscribes with at least $1.
I will be donating the first month’s Patreon funds to Lyon-Martin health services. Lyon-Martin is one of the only providers that focuses on caring for the LGBTQIAA community, especially low-income lesbian, bisexual, and trans people. They provide services regardless of the patient’s ability to pay.
You don’t have to keep on paying into my Patreon in order to participate! It’s just fine if you want to sign up, get your silly thing, and just support Lyon-Martin. I’ll send out a note after I release “If You Were a Butt, My Butt,” and remind folks to unsubscribe if they want to.
Those of you who have been following this year’s puppies news may already understand the joke in that stories title. If you don’t, well, it involves gay erotica that is also performance art and a poor attempt at trolling, and you should go read about it. Then consider donating to Rachel’s Patreon this month. It costs very little, and it helps and pisses off the right people respectively.