It’s a new year of NanoWrimo, and this year I’m participating. I’m using it to break a serious case of writer’s block. I’m not tearing up the charts, with my 1,473 word count over three days, but it’s a start.

With it though, I think I’m going to say good bye to Christian spec-fic/geek culture.

I find myself becoming more and more at odds with the way it is now.

It hasn’t really changed much from when I first found it, maybe four years ago. It’s still a writer culture on the one hand, and a teacher culture on the other. The fan culture-the fact that people actually read those books with no ulterior motive-seems impossibly small. There is no fan art, no real top ten lists of favorite Christian authors, no awareness of Christian comic books, and more. Either you write it, or you use it as an object lesson. There’s nothing else.

I think that’s what killed my desire. It’s not that it’s hard to write, but to be blunt, Christians really don’t care about Christian fiction. Maybe they care about it as an idea, but not enough to read it. They don’t care about Christian movies, comics, or any specifically Christian artistic field. The lot of them are happy if a secular actor converts, however briefly, or are happy if they can get a nod or a Christian-friendly spin on some secular work. They just don’t care, and won’t admit it.

Heck, Christianity in general. It’s now a religious gloss defending two sides of the current culture. Progressives use God-talk to baptize what the secular left thinks is good. This is how you get Christians in favor of gay marriage when its impossible to be such, or the fringe believing more in polyamory than sin. Conservatives do so for the right. I don’t recall Jesus spending time on abortion, or chiding everyone for not being married. It’s the political belief.

I’m also tired of being used. Christians don’t  care about people as people, but as what they can do for them, and how well they shut up and fill their roles. I can’t play the wise teacher or dutiful agreeing fan. 

There’s also culture in general. I think I’ve just fallen out with conservative Christian culture. Like the number one thing of it is you HAVE to be married, white, and mid or upper middle class. If you’re cultural, it’s in the blandest, most safe way. Wow, you like the avengers. Wow, you parrot what the average college age person does. It never occurs to you that not everyone is like you, or not everyone loves the status quo like you. Someone like me, who exists outside of the usual culture, and who tends to be highly critical of it for those reasons, is a bad fit. There’s nothing I can write to them. And to be honest, I have enough issues of my on where I can’t be a missionary of weirdness or what have you.

I don’t think it was always like this. There was a time when culture did exist, before people piled on it. Christian contemporary music in the 80’s and 90’s really wasn’t that bad. Christian fiction wasn’t the best, but it wasn’t bland. It had its own weird energy to it. People didn’t bash Christians for being Christian then, it was new. But now even Christians internalize the idea that art about Jesus is second best. Stuff that people loved, like Left Behind, was turned on in five-ten years. I’m not really a fan of it, but I’m not a fan of Christians savaging their own either.

So I’m tired I guess. Tired of it being in a holding pattern. Tired of it being writers and teachers, not fans. Tired of the homogeneity of Christians left or right. Tired of the self-denigration or refusal of a Christian culture. Tired of using and being used.

I guess I’m done.

I’ll go back to my original plan, just writing light childrens’ stories. Not sure what this means for the site. I know I’ll probably pull Swordcrossrocket down at the end of next year, but all that site got was writers anyways. I might keep this site as a blog, or I may change it to a static page. I don’t know.

I’ll quit posting on Christian spec sites, and purge my Facebook feed. No loss. I really don’t care about Christians obsessing over the latest Harry Potter book or Flash episode. I don’t need to read sites that spend a month asking different people whether or not it’s good for Christians to evangelize in fiction. I really don’t have the energy to spend caring about something that it’s obvious people don’t care about. I don’t want to be the token outsider/nagging voice any more.

So, there’s that. The consequences of that, well. I don’t blame anyone who reads this if you want to head off for greener pastures. We kind of were a gathering place for people that tiny culture didn’t know what to do with, and it was fun. Not really much got done, but at least we were different. Well, the few of us who weren’t bots that is. The future doesn’t really belong to us, though. But we fought as much as could be expected, I guess.

That’s all you can really do.