I look back on my own time in those days with disgust and increasing horror, for the reasons you bring up. By the 1980s, it was practically a competition to dogpile on projects like this, goaded and cheered into punching down because punching up did so to some incredibly thin-skinned people who were only authorities and Names because nobody else wanted the job. (In particular, I’m reminded of a certain big-name editor who had regular midnight readings of stories that arrived in the slush pile, encouraging his audiences to laugh harder and harder at those who couldn’t respond and dared not respond without risking a blacklist in the future. I beat this editor to the punch when, at a big convention in the 1990s, he proceeded to smirk at a table full of writers dependent upon his largesse for publication “As you know, I refer to my penis as ‘Mel Gibson,” and I tossed out “You mean ‘Mel BROOKS’.”)
I am definitely including myself in the snob department. I began the "nightly chapter reading," with the full intent to mock. But my love of Thongor and Kyrik prevailed and I began to see the seedling of what could have been.
Good reminder that behind every creative work is a creative worker who doesn’t deserve ridicule
I look back on my own time in those days with disgust and increasing horror, for the reasons you bring up. By the 1980s, it was practically a competition to dogpile on projects like this, goaded and cheered into punching down because punching up did so to some incredibly thin-skinned people who were only authorities and Names because nobody else wanted the job. (In particular, I’m reminded of a certain big-name editor who had regular midnight readings of stories that arrived in the slush pile, encouraging his audiences to laugh harder and harder at those who couldn’t respond and dared not respond without risking a blacklist in the future. I beat this editor to the punch when, at a big convention in the 1990s, he proceeded to smirk at a table full of writers dependent upon his largesse for publication “As you know, I refer to my penis as ‘Mel Gibson,” and I tossed out “You mean ‘Mel BROOKS’.”)
I am definitely including myself in the snob department. I began the "nightly chapter reading," with the full intent to mock. But my love of Thongor and Kyrik prevailed and I began to see the seedling of what could have been.