[ SECRET POST #5227 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #5227 ⌋

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


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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 01 pages, 13 secrets from Secret Submission Post #748.
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

[fscom]

03. https://i.imgur.com/9vUqoJg.png

[(Anonymous)]

So the problem here is only the assumption that she wants, or is only doing this for, woke points?

[(Anonymous)]

They're mad that they got what they wanted by accident?

They're mad that the author created a piece of art, realized it wasn't perfect, and agreed to let someone else improve it, and this is bad because the author should've made a perfect piece of art without help in the first place?

Oh.My.God that's ridiculous.

[(Anonymous)]

I mean, all of Sarah Dessen’s characters are primarily white and her most recent book was in 2019, so it’s not like this author is the only one who doesn’t have a diverse cast in her books. I don’t know this author and I’m not familiar with her work, so this is an assumption, but maybe it never crossed her mind to have a diverse cast for any number of reasons. She may be doing it for woke points or good publicity or maybe she genuinely feels that she should have put POC in her book now that she has a fresher perspective on the importance of diversity in literature.

[(Anonymous)]

I'm confused by your first sentence. Was anyone actually contending that this author is the only writer who doesn't have a diverse cast in her books?

[(Anonymous)]

sarah dessen writes the same book every time, do people really expect diversity (of any kind) from her?

[(Anonymous)]

Not familiar with the book/adaptation but...

You say "you published the book in 2012, not 1980", as if most popular media in general in 2012 was not overwhelmingly white and homogeneous. It was still kind of a Big Deal at that time to see a racially diverse cast in anything mainstream, so it sounds like this book is more or less as diverse as most things produced in 2012 were.

[(Anonymous)]

/checks journal to see what I was doing/what was the atmosphere in 12

Yep you're on the ball here. 2012 was very much Not Woke by 2021's standards.

I would kind of actually side-eye the author for trying to insert POC if she wasn't envisioning them in the first place. It would probably be better for her in all present and ongoing/future publications to do differently, instead of trying to retcon whatever she was doing 9 years ago. Which, you know, should actually point to how quickly the tides are turning - it used to be we would have to wait more than 20 years for someone's mind to change. Now it's under 10 years, and possibly under 5. That's a good sign overall.

[(Anonymous)]

I don't think books have to have diverse casts, because they're someone's art, and people shouldn't be told how to make their art in order to fulfill a quota somewhere.

I view novels more like indie films than corporate entertainment. IMO, Marvel, for example, has something of a duty to be diverse with its offerings, because it is a product and major employer. Novels and indie films have smaller audiences (generally) and they don't pretend to represent everybody ever.

[(Anonymous)]

Yeah, I think I agree with this. And I definitely agree with the first part. Novelists can write their novel however they want to, and it's fine. It's their fucking novel. Don't like it, don't read it.

That's not to say that lack of diversity in (most genres of) original fiction isn't an issue. But it's a systemic problem. An individual author isn't doing anything morally or ethically wrong by writing the story they want to write, even if their story is extremely non-diverse.

[(Anonymous)]

"I don't really like the usage of the terminology 'POC' or saying 'Black Lives Matter' as if that wasn't obvious." "oh my God what are you you dirty racist."

"I don't think books have to have diverse casts, even though life is diverse." "Wow yes hot take gurll"

[meadowphoenix]

Unless they are actually from indie publishers, there is 0 reason to believe that novels are less corporate than other entertainment. Size of audience isn't the primary measure of that lmao.

[(Anonymous)]

To be fair the scrutiny has wildly increased since 2012. That's Harry Potter part 8, Batman Dark Knight Rises, Hunger Games, Avengers territory. Aka, you've got one non-white character with a speaking role and you're good to go baby!

But also, there's something about *seeing* faces that's important. You can describe the characters however you want in a book and they're just kind of blobs in wigs to me. But seeing actors is different. And by narrowing down the allowed races for a character you're limiting the talent of actors you can bring in and that's just not something you worry about in books.

So idk if that's what the writer wanted or what the studio pushed for or if they're making up for perceived shortcomings or just trying to appeal to a wider audience, but even if it's super crass and hypocritical I still appreciate them doing a thing I like.

[(Anonymous)]

Not OP - In my understanding, the writer shouldn't get any cookies for it, but it's still nice that they're going to hire a cast full of people of different ethnicities IMO.

[(Anonymous)]

better late than not at all. also, maybe she genuinely felt like crap for not realizing how homogeneous her books have been. but also, probably she realized a lot of people won't settle for watching lily white TV anymore.

[(Anonymous)]

I don't know anything about this book or author, but 2012 was almost ten years ago. Ten years seems like sufficient time for someone to educate themselves further on a topic and realize their faults.

[(Anonymous)]

I just started watching this series and initially thought it was pretty cool to have a diverse cast, but they're doing some things with racial issues that feel slightly forced.

[(Anonymous)]

She fixed the lack of diversity by miles in the books she wrote after these ones, Six of Crows and Crooked Kingdom. (They're even set in the same universe... and to be honest, much, much better books altogether.) That was in 2015, and there was no TV show in the works. Oh, but I'm sure it was all the feedback and her editor telling her to make those more diverse, too. /s

[(Anonymous)]

So what is our goal here? To change people’s minds, to have more diverse faces on television, or to prove that people are bad and have always been bad forever more? A book published in 2012 was probably written a good ole decade ago. That’s a third of my life.

[(Anonymous)]

Sounds to me like a middle-aged white woman learned something about her internal biases over the last decade and decided to do something with her new knowledge.

Good for her.

[(Anonymous)]

I mean, better than insisting that the main characters have to be white because that's how she imagined them, like in Twilight (or Native American for some characters even though she picked a real tribe, knowing absolutely nothing about them).

[(Anonymous)]

People can change their minds about something over the course of a few years?

[(Anonymous)]

I think that diversifying was a good choice, but now there's this straneg side-effect that all there's some racism against (fantasy)Chineses (?) in the text, but every other non-white person seems to be exempt, which is not how it works in RL. Still, that's more of a strange element than an issue.

[(Anonymous)]

don't ever improve anything unless you can prove beyond reasonable doubt that you do it for morally pure reasons

[meadowphoenix]

look....who is giving her woke points? her fans? I mean......