As someone who was working on a novel at the time of the big racefail in '09, I definitely wondered if I had written hundreds of pages of something insulting, and whether it would be best to make the Black character a white man just in case I'd made some mistake. I realized after a while that whitewashing my story wasn't the right thing to do... but I did, indeed, get defensive, and did wonder for a while if it would be the lesser of two evils to pretend that There Are No POC In Space.
I eventually realized that makes no sense, and looking over what I'd written I didn't *think* I was doing anything I didn't see. But I worried. So all that I mean is... I agree that huffs are unproductive, but the defensive "I don't know what the hell to do! I've put a lot of work into this -- years of writing -- and it's easier to get angry than to consider that I might need to spend another year fixing it all" reaction is... natural, I think, for all that it's really fucked up TOO.
no subject
As someone who was working on a novel at the time of the big racefail in '09, I definitely wondered if I had written hundreds of pages of something insulting, and whether it would be best to make the Black character a white man just in case I'd made some mistake. I realized after a while that whitewashing my story wasn't the right thing to do... but I did, indeed, get defensive, and did wonder for a while if it would be the lesser of two evils to pretend that There Are No POC In Space.
I eventually realized that makes no sense, and looking over what I'd written I didn't *think* I was doing anything I didn't see. But I worried. So all that I mean is... I agree that huffs are unproductive, but the defensive "I don't know what the hell to do! I've put a lot of work into this -- years of writing -- and it's easier to get angry than to consider that I might need to spend another year fixing it all" reaction is... natural, I think, for all that it's really fucked up TOO.