fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #820 ]

⌈ Secret Post #820 ⌋

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

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[Brick]

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[Stargate Atlantis]

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[Ace Attorney]

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Notes:

Guys. I can't note the fandom if you don't tell me what it is. "Please note the fandom!" tells me nothing.

Secrets Left to Post: 17 pages, 422 secrets from Secret Submission Post #118.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 1 - broken links ], [ 1 2 3 - not!secrets ], [ 1 - not!fandom ], [ 1 2 3 - too big ], [ 1 2 3 - repeat ], [ 1 - doing it wrong ], [ 1 - IC secret ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Basically it goes like this:

A sf/f writer, Elizabeth Bear, who is white, decides to make a post on her journal telling everyone how to write characters of color. Some people take issue with the tone/wording of parts of her post (which has distinct overtones of "I don't see race!"), and others point out that she hasn't done such a hot job of it herself in the past. A number of fen of color write up posts of their own to this effect, adding their own thoughts on the way race is often treated (or not treated) in the sf/f genre as a whole. Bear responds by being wanky and condescending. Several other big-name (well, more like medium-name) sf/f writers get in on the act, mostly defending Bear and/or white sf/f writers in general in an equally wanky fashion. I haven't heard anything about it lately, so maybe it's not still ongoing, but even if it's not, I don't think any real conclusion was reached.

There are several collections of related links floating around, but I'm too lazy to find them right now, sorry.

This is a pretty good collection of related links:

http://logophilos.net/blather/?p=1162

Elizabeth Bear was responding to a controversy that was already going on which was started by a rant about one of her books. The person who wrote the rant did not finish the book (and they were completely honest about that) and, while they had every right both to have and to express their opinion, the post was linked all over creation and discussed in depth mostly by people who had also not read the book and who therefore were using it as a jumping off point to have a discussion which had little to do with the book.

Many good things came out of the discussion. Cool stuff, like

verb_noire!!!

So did a lot of ugliness. I continue to be amazed by the attitude of many people in fandom that it is our civic duty to read every single word of the ugliness and the fact that all the shaming and exhortation is directed not in the direction of, go thou to

verb_noire or other such places and support the awesome, but rather along the lines of, "if you haven't read every word of RaceFail, made all your friends read it and commented at length, you must agree with Will Shetterly that there is no such thing as racism, only classism, and think that outing people's RL identities is totally reasonable behaviour, and you probably also spit rather than swallow."

Really? I was under the impression that Bear's "writing the other" post predated Avalon Willow's post on the problematic treatment of race in one of her books, but I could be mistaken. If so, sorry.

...OK, it's possible we're conflating two posts here, and lord knows I tried to put both Seeking Avalon's post and Bear's response post far far out of my mind for a really long time--but the post on Bear's journal upon which all hell broke loose was, IIRC, a response to the general controversy. Bear has written several posts about "writing the other" all of which I personally thought were very good (and which are about writing all kinds of others, not just racial and cultural others), but that's not what started this ball rolling.

Personally, I would categorise Seeking Avalon's post as a personal reaction to a plot twist in the first half of one of Bear's books. It's clear by the end of that book that what is actually going on is not even close to what Seeking Avalon thought was going on (and I'm not quite sure why she thought what she did, because it is not difficult to find out that kelpies don't come from Africa and that when they appear to be human they are always pretending to be something they're not--they're horses, and putting a binding and a bridle on a horse is perfectly fine). By the end of those books everyone of any race, gender or sexual orientation has fucked over everyone else to some degree anyway.

It is also perfectly clear and understandable that the appearance of unpleasantness was sufficiently strong that Seeking Avalon was unable to finish the book, and I am not going to say she should have tried to--just that I can't quite see treating her post as a critical review on the problematic treatment of race in that book.

It's a good thing that people are talking about racial issues and a GREAT thing that people are taking positive action; but I really wish people wouldn't make this all about Bear, all about the book (frankly if I were offered $500 to name a racially suspect plotline in that series of books I know what I'd name and it would not be that--it would be the Native Australian mythical creature in the second book who was totally out of his element and did almost nothing but get his ass handed to him by faeries), or all about the angry arguments. (You can make it all about Shetterly's batshittery if you like, but that's also probably counterproductive. Will Shetterly is as useful in discussions of race as tits on a boar hog and there's no debate about what he did to coffeeandink, which was unforgivable.)

It's clear by the end of that book that what is actually going on is not even close to what Seeking Avalon thought was going on

Another person (

deepad, I think) actually commented agreeing with AW's analysis. She was, of course, completely ignored by all of Bear's defenders.

but I really wish people wouldn't make this all about Bear, all about the book

Excluding summaries, no one has been talking about Bear's initial post for several months. She brought the focus back on herself last month with a few new posts. One where she admitted that she'd lied about accepting AW's critique and another about how all this was hurting her feelings, so everyone should STFU.

No one has talked about her since. Seriously: go read

rydra_wong's linkspam (http://rydra-wong.livejournal.com/tag/gcadod+09). None of the most recent posts mention her at all.

No, you're not mistaken. Bear's first post in the imbroglio was written not longer after a post about cultural appropriation by Jay Lake, which I suspect was what prompted it.

The critiques of Blood and Iron by Willow and by

deepad (who did read all of the book and agreed with Willow's critique, a fact that was widely ignored) came in response to Bear's post. You can check dates on the posts in the linkspam here:

http://rydra-wong.dreamwidth.org/148996.html

(Of course, 99% of the subsequent debate wasn't about Blood and Iron at all, but about the catastrophic Fail displayed by various authors and editors in their attempts to dismiss criticism.)

"if you haven't read every word of RaceFail, made all your friends read it and commented at length, you must agree with Will Shetterly that there is no such thing as racism, only classism, and think that outing people's RL identities is totally reasonable behaviour, and you probably also spit rather than swallow."
1) No one said that. I can only think of three posts out of hundreds that even come close to saying that under the most generous definitions: Two were specifically aimed at professional writers/editors and were along the lines of "Don't think we haven't noticed that you haven't commented, even though you must be aware of the problem. It's really uncool that you're standing by while your friends make asses of themselves." One was a plea that people stop complaining they don't have time to read about racefail, especially if they're going to comment on it anyway.

2) Even if someone said that, so what? That's your example of the "ugliness" of Racefail? Really? Give. me. a. break.

[ SECRET POST #820 ]

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