[ SECRET POST #3364 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #3364 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

01.


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02.
[The Glass Scientists]


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03.
[Ghostbusters remake]


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04.
[All for One Webseries]


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05.
[Castle]


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06.
[DC Comics]


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07.
[Reign of Fire]


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08.
[Steven Universe]


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09.
[K. Tempest Bradford]


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10.
[Against the Wall]


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11.
[Queer Literature, "In the Company of Shadows"]


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12.
(Star Wars Rebels)


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13.
[Jeeves and Wooster, P.G. Wodehouse]


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14.
[Giles Coren]


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15.
[James Marsters/Rick Grimes of The Walking Dead]









Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 04 pages, 086 secrets from Secret Submission Post #481.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

She's a writer/activist blogger, you might've heard of her blog, Angry Black Woman:

http://theangryblackwoman.com/


More recently, this was her brainchild:

http://www.xojane.com/entertainment/reading-challenge-stop-reading-white-straight-cis-male-authors-for-one-year

[(Anonymous)]

which... isn't a bad idea, tbh? especially in genre fiction. a friend of mine did a look through his read books list from last year and it was all male. all of it. just through reading fantasy and sci-fi 'essentials'.

[(Anonymous)]

(DA) yeah i like this idea to be honest. i think a lot of times it's easy to get sucked into reading what you see the most of, without realizing it, it just seems more "legitimate" to read these certain authors. and without really thinking about it, you'll end up reading all straight cis white dudes. WOOPS.

people go "well what's WRONG with reading straight cis white dudes?" nothing really, but i don't want to miss out on a world of books because i keep only giving people exactly like that a chance. one year out of your life to expand your horizons and check out some lesser known authors? sounds good to me! who knows you might find some new faves. and the old stand bys will be there after the year.

[(Anonymous)]

DA
The problem I have with this: Minority status of any kind does not a better writer make by proxy. Especially when a lot of minority writers are either self publishing or with such small publishers that there is little to no proper editing involved and really, I can't be bothered to dig through piles of badly edited crap just because of diversity.
And to be quite honest, I don't think "no cis authors" is a bit of gamble considering that a lot of people currently claim all kinds of different flavours of ~non-cis~ just to be different.

(Also... who actually chooses their authors based on sex and race anyway? Personally, I barely register the names of authors when I read a book, and I definitely can't be bothered to do any extensive background search about their race and sexuality first.)

[(Anonymous)]

yeah i get that. its just that i don't think we live in a meritocracy where the best writers just HAPPEN to be white men (magically, on accident). I think historically in the west those were the ones that were supported and nurtured and had mentors and people taking risks on them. And it carries on to this day, in publishing people, even really nice people who don't try to have ANY bias, will have this unconscious slant towards a specific group that "feels" right.

it's sort of a cycle, we always say, well if they were good i'd already be reading them, i don't want to read a lot of boring garbage just for the sake of diversity (and i don't either) but I do think sometimes it's WORTH the concious effort of trying to see what else is there.

thats just my opinion though i wouldn't make anyone read anything they don't want.
I do know i did this for COMICS and found so many good comics i'm glad i did it.

[(Anonymous)]

Literally NO ONE is saying that minority writers are better. There are absolutely more than enough great/published non-straight-cis-white-male authors to last you a year (probably years).

Mostly no one chooses their authors solely on race or sex, it's just that sometimes if you don't make a tiny bit of effort you'll end up with straight white males authors by default. Have you ever gone to a site like reddit and read their genre recommendations? Almost exclusively white men because that's what has been recc'd to them. They're genuinely flabbergasted when they wander into a female-authors recommendation post because of all the great authors they've never even heard of that if they had bothered to step even a foot outside their comfort zones they would already have read a loved.

[(Anonymous)]

+1000

I honestly sometimes think that people have been brainwashed by Hollywood so that they assume 70% of the world is straight, white, cis men. To address only a single one of those axes, you could read nothing but female authors for the rest of your life and never run out of great (and traditionally published, if that really matters to you) books to read. By the time you add queer and/or POC and/or trans male authors to that list, as well, you're completely spoiled for choice.

And I've seen those reddit recommendation threads. I'll sometimes count 50+ recs for (white, occasionally queer) male authors before someone mentions a POC author or Ursula K. Le Guin a female author.

[(Anonymous)]

EVerybody who lost their shit over this and took huge personal offense...why couldn't they see this? It seems so rational to me. I didn't take the challenge but I also didn't want to scream to the bloody rafters about how "racist" it was and how it was hurting the poor male authors!

[(Anonymous)]

Except the problem is right there in the title: stop reading straight cis white men. It is literally a challenge to stop reading, not to read more poc authors or women authors or queer authors or anything like that. Hell, I could do this challenge and not read a single book. It makes it abundantly clear that the most important part is shitting on cishetwhite men instead of actually promoting anything in particular.

As a side note, I went through my reading list after this thing broke, and when I added up all the non white, non male, non straight authors they accounted for well over half and I give not one single shit about this sort of thing. How hard can it be?

[(Anonymous)]

Seriously? Are you being clueless on purpose or do you really need everything spelled out for you? Obviously it's implied that you're expected to read books that aren't by straight cis white men if you do the challenge, and not reading at all doesn't count. Fucking christ.

[(Anonymous)]

You're one of those people who thinks reverse racism actually exists, huh?

[(Anonymous)]

Of course, that means I can still read Larry Correia and (gag) Vox Day, because neither of them are white...

[(Anonymous)]

Larry Correia's Portuguese. VD's brother took a genetic test that indicated he had some (almost certainly miniscule) percentage of Native American heritage. Based on those facts and on other things Correia and VD have said, I'm comfortable asserting that they're self-identifying as POC solely to muddy the waters while they troll the Hugos for fun and profit.