The thing I wasn’t prepared for when I fell into this world of football fandom was how emotional it all is. From the outside, it just looks like little men running around a field, and the distinctions between teams appear entirely arbitrary. But when you choose your own team, when you get attached, you learn the stories that come with each player, and the threads of narrative weave together in deeply emotional ways. So as fans we follow the team, we learn their stories, and we retell them to each other.

When Zeft first started teaching Kaia and I about Premier League football, and the new team we had pledged to support, the first story she told us was the story of Cesc, her favourite player. How he had come from Barcelona to play for Arsenal as a young teenager, and was now one of the best creative midfielders in the world. Even before I knew what a midfielder was, I knew that Cesc was an exceptional one. He had been our youngest ever player on the first team, and youngest goalscorer. He was ours.

In my first year as Arsenal fans, I saw the developing legend of Cesc for myself. I learned to watch the games and to understand them, and it was pretty damn evident that Cesc stepping on to the pitch made a difference, to everyone’s game. Also, he was adorable. Then Arsene Wenger took the captain’s armband off the badly-behaving William Gallas, and Kaia and I shared Zeft’s utter glee that it was presented to Cesc – at only 21 years old, though he was a five year veteran of the team. He was our captain now!

The way football works, and I don’t just mean the media and reportage, but in fandom itself, it’s all about the narrative beats. The story practically told itself: with our new young captain and a new lease of life, we’d regroup our strength and win something, right? Only we didn’t. Cesc was struck down with a knee injury for four months, and the season ended with us barely hanging on to our place in the top four. It was the same story every year – periods of hope that this would be the year that our young, hungry team would fulfil their potential, then injuries and disappointment and a lack of silverware.

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For those looking for a World Cup update from me, all I can say is it is no shame at all for the Matildas to have lost to Brazil, because come on, it’s freaking Brazil, they were up against Cristiane and Marta, so I’m really not being an Australian apologist to say that it’s impressive the gap between scores wasn’t much wider. (here’s a summary of the match from the Boston Globe)

Meanwhile, thanks to a combination of the ‘women’s football’ RSS feed from the Guardian and the presence of at least 4 Arsenal players, I’ve been paying a lot more attention to the England team, which is amusing to me because when the England men’s team plays anything I normally spend most of my time muttering at them with very narrowed eyes. I kind of love the video diaries the team have been releasing, if only to listen to their cute accents, though sadly they didn’t win their match either. (1-1)

Moving aside from sport now, here’s an extra plug for Marianne de Pierres’ new project, cowpunk webcomic Peacemaker. Check out the first issue now for a measly 99¢ – much though I disapprove of people pricing whole novels at 99¢, I think it’s exciting for shorter pieces, and as an Australian it’s rather nice to actually get the 99¢ price for once (yes, iTunes with your $1.19, I’m looking at you, you know what the Australian dollar is actually worth, right?). I believe later issues will be priced higher, so now’s your chance to find out if you like Peacemaker!

Speaking of awesome Australian women (and fictional heroes) here’s a great interview with Anna Torv from Fringe.

I have been so impressed with Torv’s performance throughout the third season of Fringe, playing two versions of the same character, and managing to make both utterly compelling rather than falling into the Spock’s beard style of parallel world characterisation. Speaking of Spock’s beard, the episode which required Torv to channel Leonard Nimoy for a whole episode was amazing. Kudos to the show for the subtle and powerful writing, too. Having loved Fringe in spite of itself in season one, and gone through such excitement when season two was so very good from beginning to end, I’m somewhat beside myself that Fringe is now some of the most exciting and interesting SF TV in years, and mark it as a coup that my honey now watches it with me. It’s gone from a show I considered a guilty pleasure to one that so many of my friends respect, like and get excited by. So hooray for the excellent cast, whoa for the spectacular final episode, and woohoo for season 4 on the horizon. I’m glad to hear that Torv’s performance is being heralded (finally!) but I really really hope John Noble gets the Emmy or the GG – his Walter Bishop has always been exceptional to watch, and it feels like every time the rest of the cast rise to his challenge, he just gets better.

Some shorter links now, I promise!

Forbidden Planet asks, Are you a misogynist?

Kate Beaton makes a very good (and hilarious) point about ‘strong female characters‘ through comic art.

Ben Peek writes about the small world view of speculative fiction in the 21st century.

From Meanland, the death of the book and other utopian fantasies (via @vodkanlime)

The Women of Solaris.

Two from Tor.com re-reading Joanna Russ (in order) starting with The Adventures of Alyx and Greg van Eekhout & Carrie Vaughn talk about YA, middle grade fiction and how The Kids Are All Right.

And in closing, Pixar finally have a female protagonist. The film looks awesome and I love the title so very much.

I’d got the days mixed up, as often happens when you’re in a country half a day ahead of your football team, and didn’t realise until I got up this morning that the game was on right now. I could only really keep half an eye on it as I got the girls ready for their day.

It didn’t really matter. It’s Barca, after all – the best we could hope for was not humiliating ourselves, and getting out of the Champions League nice and early so we could concentrate on that other trophy, the one that maybe, MAYBE this year, we might have a chance at.

I found a feed briefly and saw a rather dull ten minutes of the game before it crapped out on me, so I didn’t bother. Twitter kept me informed. Like when they got their first goal…

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So school is back! I’ve been lucky enough to be able to shift most of my workload to, well, now, so that the last several weeks of the summer holiday were all Mummying all the time. Now, of course, I have to go from nought to typing maniac in 60 seconds, and I’m not *entirely* sure I remember how to do it. Stay tuned!

In the meantime, here is a delicious mix of tidbits from the internet over the last week or so and some great things I’ve been listening to while catching up on the housework, supervising trampoline time, and sewing an Alice in Wonderland wallhanging.

Ben Peek wrote a post which completely blindsided me, about an author who embodies perseverance, “the one who to me sucked up the bad times and pushed through them, and the one who should stand as an example for new authors…“ The twist is, it’s me!

N.K. Jemisin writes about gender assumptions/associations surrounding epic fantasy, and why anything that deviates from the masculine norms of the genre are seen as suspect. There are some brilliant, intelligent comments about gender, romance and the male gaze. Lovely stuff.

Alisa posts about Twelfth Planet Press award eligibilities for the coming awards season. Have you nominated for the stuff you can nominate for yet? Don’t forget that all of us who were at Aussiecon can nominate for the Hugos this year. Would be lovely to have some Aussie names on that ballot.

This amazing, powerful post by Juliet Jacques about being a trans woman and a football fan really affected me, to the point where I read through her whole year’s worth of columns about transition. I can really recommend these for anyone looking to educate and inform themselves about some of the issues affecting people trying to transition. I found it a real eye opener, and she’s an entertaining and funny writer with it. Plus, football fan!

Jim Hines had some pointed things to say about the ‘self publishing ebooks is totally the way to make a career sing like a canary’ people and the way that ‘ebooks are the future’ so often gets turned into a bashing of commercial publishers and their methods.

So that’s the links done. Now for the listening…

The latest Salon Futura podcast has a great round table discussion about small press publishing featuring our own Alisa Krasnostein (plus Sean Wallace and L. Timmel Duchamp) – those of you mourning the lack of a Galactic Suburbia episode this week (sorry, we’ll be back with all guns blazing next week!) may like to check it out. There’s also a cool interview with Ann VanderMeer about her editorship of Weird Tales which was great to hear, especially the bit where they both start talking about Peter M Ball and unicorns.

My Big Finish obsession has been continuing apace. I have been relistening to all my Ace and Hex plays, and really enjoying the first two seasons of the 8th Doctor and Lucie Miller, which were designed to fit the tone of New Who a bit more firmly than the monthly series. They’re fast paced, funny and character-crunchy 50 minute episodes, with some fantastic casting. The whole first season is great, though the quirky Horror of Glam Rock (featuring Bernard Cribbins before he joined RTD’s Who crew) by Paul Magrs is a stand out, as is the exceptional two part finale, Human Resources.

I’m currently on the finale of the second season, which features a return of the Sisterhood of Karn and (quite possibly) Morbius, though I haven’t yet heard him with my own ears. The standouts for this season were Max Warp, a quite stunningly outrageous Top Gear parody with spaceships and Graeme Garden, and the comedy-romance-tragedy of The Zygon Who Fell To Earth (featuring Tim Brooke Taylor and Steven Pacey), but I also really loved the creative anachronisms of Dead London and the splendid historical heist story Grand Theft Cosmos. The return of the Headhunter, who is officially my favourite female villain of Doctor Who’s history, was a cause for much glee.

Elsewhere, I also discovered the Big Finish Comedy Podcast, which was released fairly recently as a limited series of 5 minute episodes to promote the Mervyn Stone mystery novels by Nev Fountain, which revolve around a script editor of a defunct cult sci-fi show of the late 80′s, who also solves crimes. The podcast is a great introduction to the character and his world, and over the course of about half an hour of bite sized, highly entertaining interviews (the conceit is that this is a DVD extra for “Vixens from the Void”) presents and solves the mystery of who killed the actor who played the quirky translator robot Babel J. It’s very funny, featuring among other things the note-perfect tones of Nicola Bryant, and absolutely free.

There is more, I expect, but I’m sleepy, and it’s school tomorrow!

So the World Cup has crashed to a close, and around the world, millions of people are losing interest in soccer/football for another four years (cough, or one year if you’re interested in how awesome the Matildas are going to be in the REAL World Cup next year).

Unless, you know, you follow a regular team!

For Arsenal supporters, the next few weeks are critical. We’re watching the slow, painful process of our boys making their way back into regular training, sporting bruises, groin strains and emotional scars, and knowing our boys a few of the ones who spent their holidays at the beach will have been accidentally decapitated while sunbaking. Yes, they’re that fragile.

But just because the season is several weeks away doesn’t mean there isn’t a rollercoaster of melodramatic angst, heartbreak, romance and hope to keep us all riveted to our laptops.

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Being a football fan didn’t come easily to me. It didn’t even come naturally. I was raised with a pathological disinterest in sport and it took a lot of effort to overcome that social conditioning. I developed an interest thanks to the support and encouragement of my good friends Kaia and Millie.

Me being me, this quickly turned into an obsession. It’s really not about the novel any more. I’ve seen Arsenal through two seasons, through joy and heartbreak, and I’m not going anywhere. One of the things that has added pleasure to my new interest, as well as educating me about the history, culture and in-jokes of football, has been the great writing by bloggers and commentators such as Arseblog, Gunnerblog, LadyArse, Lee McGowan, and Amy Lawrence of the Guardian. The weekly Arsecast was my first real podcast love, long before I actually started listening to the things as nature intended, on a genuine iPod. While the Arseblog has been my main cultural hub (this is where I learned to refer to international football fortnights as ‘interlulls’ and Liverpool supporters as ‘Mugsmashers’ which I embarrassingly assumed for a year was universal vocab before I learned that Blogs himself has a Liverpool-supporting brother who once smashed his Arsenal mug) I have had something to learn from each of these writers, and they have all contributed to my understanding and enjoyment of the game.

Our last season was significantly livened up by the addition of Up For Grabs, a brilliant, at times screamingly-funny podcast starring comedian Alan Davies and a bunch of his mates, ranting and raving about being an Arsenal fan. What I love most about this podcast is that it’s not just about the games, it’s about fandom, and it’s the first time I’ve really got a feel for what it must be like to be able to go to actual games.

Basically, I’m listening to funny men geek out about their obsessive historical perspective on their hobby. Sound familiar? I’ll get back to that analogy later.

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On 27 February 2010, 19 year old footballer Aaron Ramsey had his leg broken in two places.

Over the last couple of years, Ramsey has worked his way up from being a Welsh youth player with great potential to signing for Arsenal, one of the top four teams of the Premier League, to playing with the first team. He’s very young still, but he was building momentum and there was much talk about the career ahead of him. On the day in question, he was tackled by the Ryan Shawcross, the 22 year old captain of the Stoke team, causing his tibia and fibula to be broken. The injury was so horrific that the game came to a halt, players were sick and visibly shaken, and the incident was not replayed. Ramsey was stretchered off the pitch, and Shawcross was given a red card – which took him out of the game, with a three match ban.

The backlash began almost as soon as the game ended.

Players, fans and pundits excused Shawcross’s behaviour, insisting that he didn’t mean it, he wasn’t that kind of player, it was a fair tackle, he was crying when he saw what had happened, he felt really bad… The story even circulated that the ref himself didn’t think it was intentional, and had only felt he “had to” send Shawcross off because of the extent of the injury.

A media storm unfolded, with one side pointing out that, you know, they had a player in hospital who might take 8-18 months to recover, and this was in fact the third similar injury inflicted on Arsenal players in under four years. Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger said that the injury was “horrendous” and “unacceptable.” Shawcross’s supporters responded with “he didn’t mean to do it.”

Indeed, the sympathy for Shawcross began to snowball, taking on epic proportions. It was suggested that Wenger should apologise for suggesting that breaking his player’s leg was unacceptable, well before Shawcross himself had apologised for breaking said leg (there has still been no public apology though apparently a private one has been accepted).

One of the best posts on the subject I have read is this amazing, powerful piece on the Arseblog, which points out that in fact no one is saying that Shawcross meant to break Ramsey’s leg, but that the kind of behaviour he exhibited on the pitch (“he isn’t that kind of player” was also trotted out in 2007 whenShawcross broke Francis Jeffers’ ankle) makes the injury his responsibility. Arseblogger also points out the collective responsibility of the media and culture that enable and encourage dangerous play.

When Arsenal fan, actor Alan Davies, suggested on Twitter (immediately the incident) that Shawcross should be kept out of the game as long as it would take Ramsey to recover, he was met with a hail of hysteria and abuse. As Arseblogger put it: “the Shawcross ‘is not that kind of player’ brigade have been out in force.” Complaints were made that the whole incident was spoiling Shawcross’s delight in being called up to play for England, the day after the leg-breaking incident. (one blog compared Google hits for ‘feel sorry for Ryan Shawcross’ vs ‘feel sorry for Aaron Ramsey’ and even including websites which are saying things like ‘how the hell can people feel sorry for Ryan Shawcross’ the results are a little startling).

“There’s no way in a million years that he would ever, ever go out to hurt a person. He’s a lovely kid and he’s been exemplary since he’s been at this football club. It was breaking his heart coming off the pitch.”
(Stoke manager Tony Pulis)

“It’s a disappointing challenge and as I say it’s so ironic that Ryan’s involved in it because of all the players that we’ve got here he’s such a gentle kid, such a gentle lad.”
(Pulis again)

“There was no malicious intent from Ryan, he’s not that kind of player.”
(Stoke midfielder Danny Pugh)

“He’s a committed player, but he’s never going to go into a challenge looking to hurt someone.”
(Stoke player Rory Delap)

“I was with him at United for a couple of years and he’s not that type of player.”
(Wayne Rooney, striker for Manchester United and England)

“Shawcross has been called into the England squad and he doesn’t deserve the grief he’s getting.”
(Paul Parker, former England player)

“I’ve got to say I felt sorry for Shawcross. Not just because of all the hoo-ha over the challenge, but the fact it overshadowed one of the greatest moments in his life after being called up by England for the first time… I suppose the furore over the Ramsey injury is a bit of a spanner in the works, but the call-up is still a feather in his cap and he should go there and enjoy the experience as much as possible.”
(Lou Macari, sports journalist and former Scotland player)

It’s worth noting that no one has actually accused Ryan Shawcross of being malicious in his tackle. No one, not even Ramsey and Wenger and Arsenal’s most froth-mouthed supporters, has said that he deliberately set out to break the Welsh teenager’s leg in two places. Saying that a violent result of a tackle is unacceptable and was caused by reckless behaviour is not the same as saying that the result was intentional. And yet the backlash continually fights this straw argument, insisting that Shawcross is so nice, sweet, honest, gentle and kind to his mother, and more importantly, he didn’t mean to do it.

As has been pointed out calmly and clearly by many people so far, intent is important, up to a point. It’s the difference between manslaughter and murder, for example (both of which are in fact crimes). But crude, clumsy and careless can still have some pretty horrific results without there being malicious intent. Think of the damage someone can do at the wheel of the car if they are crude, clumsy or careless, not to mention drunk, tired, distracted. If you hurt someone out of reckless behaviour you get punished for it by law even if you didn’t set out to cause injury. Everywhere except the football pitch, where intent can apparently erase even the most aggressively stupid mistakes. Where spitting at someone, swearing at them or breaking their leg in two places attracts exactly the same punishment.

But I can think of another example where, socially and through the media, intent can become the difference between an incident being considered ‘a crime’ and ‘something best put behind you, eh.’ It struck me right between the eyes when I saw the language being used. About how Shawcross wasn’t that kind of player, wasn’t that kind of bloke, that he meant well, he was a good egg, that we wouldn’t want to ruin his life over something that wasn’t his fault because, after all, he didn’t mean to do it.

It’s the language of the patriarchy protecting itself. It’s the language of the privileged, scrambling to excuse the inexcusable, on the grounds that he’s a young lad, a good lad, has his whole life and career ahead of him, you wouldn’t want to spoil it for him would you? After all, he didn’t mean to do it, therefore it doesn’t count.

(psst, can’t you see just by looking at him that he deserves special treatment?)

It’s the same language that is used to excuse rapists because the rape was “only technical” and his behaviour was “out of character” and he had “a good employment record.” The same language used when a judge is concerned that a man (who pleaded guilty) might be “marked with the grave offence of rape for the rest of his days” for having sex with an unconscious woman. Chris Brown’s sister told the media that he was “a good boy, never violent” shortly after he was arrested for beating and nearly strangling his girlfriend Rhianna, and it wasn’t long before she was being blamed for her own abuse. And let’s not forget how sorry we were asked to feel for child-rapist Roman Polanski when he wasn’t allowed to pick up his Oscar in person, let alone when he was finally arrested for his crime.

This is not in any way to equate recklessly violent football players with rapists. There is no comparison to be made in that regard. But it is absolutely worth looking at the way that certain people in society – those who are privileged for their gender or race or country of origin, and particularly those who are privileged because they belong to a particular class of celebrity (artistic geniuses and sports stars are pretty high on that list) – are treated differently when they do something wrong. It’s worth looking at the way that so many people flock to excuse them on the grounds of intent, past character, and in many cases, on the grounds that being called on their inappropriate or criminal actions might disrupt their incredibly privileged lives.

Apparently 300 Arsenal fans sent letters of sympathy to Ryan Shawcross. I can’t quite get over that.

Aaron Ramsey is young and white and good-looking and healthy (apart from the broken tibia and fibula, obviously) and a British footballer, so under most circumstances he would be the most sympathetic party in a media skirmish. But Shawcross is all those things and he plays for England. Which, apparently, beats Wales. So it’s not his fault, and he’s a good bloke, and the most tragic outcome of that particular game is that the experience of being called up for the England team might be spoilt. The patriarchy has chosen a side, and closed ranks.

The patriarchy is not just a cultural phenomenon that raises men and their values above women and theirs. The patriarchy harms men, too. Particularly men who step outside the culturally approved masculine behaviours. More importantly, it protects men against what others might see as appropriate consequences for inappropriate behaviours.

Intent matters. It’s important to have good intentions, and particularly important not to have malicious, violent or abusive intentions. But intent is not everything. And it really is time that people stood up and said – no, actually. You don’t get to feel sorry for yourself right now. You might have had a hard week, but your victim has had a worse one. The fact that you cried when you saw what you had done is in fact less important than the fact that his leg will take seven months minimum to heal and that his first season playing as a starter for a Premier League football club is over four months early. Assuming, of course, that he does come back as anything like the same player he was before. Injuries like this can ruin careers, and lives, before they’ve even got started.

You don’t get cookies for not meaning to hurt someone when you have, in fact, hurt someone. Whatever the circumstances.

And maybe, if you’re not willing to change after three incidents of seriously hurting people on the pitch, maybe you actually ARE that kind of player.

“I had a tough weekend, but to come and join such a great team was absolutely fantastic. Just to have been involved with the squad has been great. All the England players have been fantastic about what happened with Aaron Ramsey. They’ve got my mind on football really, nothing else. I’ve enjoyed their company and it’s been a good experience… What happened will not be a factor when I next play again for Stoke. Whenever I pull on the Stoke shirt I have to be 100% committed and the same as ever. Hopefully, when I am back from the suspension, I can do well again.”
(Ryan Shawcross)

It happened again this week. I have lovely, understanding and supportive friends & family, but I have one hobby that many of them ( jumbled_words and  zeft aside) just can’t wrap their heads around. Arsenal. Football. I not only follow a team and show every appearance of understanding what goes on both on and off the pitch, I am to all intents and purposes, obsessed with the game. Which is, for those of you completely lost at this point, a sport.

Me being interested in sport goes completely against every version of myself that people may have met prior to about October 2008 and thus it is a hard thing for them to cope with. My Dad tends to produce a quiet, stunned silence every time he is reminded of this bewildering fact. Occasionally he is roused to recall why it is that everyone he knew supported Manchester United in the 1970′s (in a vague “if I have to pick a team” kind of way), and I have come to the conclusion that he says this because it is the only football anecdote that he knows. I have tried to explain how deeply insulting it is that he might think I would be willing to change allegiances at this point, but it hasn’t sunk in, not even after the second time I gave him the “diving ballerina” speech about Cristiano Ronaldo that is now tragically out of date. I need to work up a new one about how often Wayne Rooney cheats… None of these speeches are any use to my mother, who just smiles brightly as if I’m discussing an embarrassing medical complaint and changes the subject. (they both raised me with a fervent dislike of team sports.)

[my honey's reaction to all this was the best, which was to choose the highest-ranked team which was a direct rival to my own and claiming to support it. If you can't beat me, join me!]

Anyway. Football. Now an intrinsic part of my soul, and something I pay attention to on a daily basis. Over the Christmas break, I have been asked at least twice by dear friends I love and respect why the football thing? Given that they’re not challenging my team choice but the entire issue, I do try my hardest. I talk about the narrative of football, about the highs and lows, about becoming invested in every member of a team, about the stresses of the transfer period (two days and counting), about the weirdness of removing one’s attachment and loyalty to a player once they, oh, get themselves transferred to another team and act like a dick the first time we play them, to the point of stamping on Robin Van Persie’s head…

Ahem, yes. Have you spotted the problem yet? It starts out all metaphors and similes and literate examples, and always descends into me ranting about the awesomeness of Cesc and Arshavin’s four goals in one game, and cute little Gibbs, and how the World Cup (along with the Olympics, the only kind of football/soccer that civilians understand) is a blight upon humanity because all our players go out to play for their countries and come back broken… and I see their eyes glaze over and that panicky ‘shouldn’t she be talking about books or something’ look cross their face, and I pull back and start calmly talking about how cute the boys are when they cuddle after goals, and all is right with the world.

Explaining football to civilians is hard.

Which is my way of saying how brilliant Unseen Academicals by Terry Pratchett is, because he gets it. He gets football, and unsurprisingly has a longer and wiser grasp on it than I can possibly manage, with less than two seasons of supporting under my belt. More importantly, he is able to explain it in the language of story: in the Discworld, everything is about story, and the magic of football is expressed as usual through sly jokes and powerful characters and pithy phrases like “the thing about football is, it isn’t about football.”
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