My $.02

[glorious_spoon]

I'm aware that this has been going on for the better part of two weeks by now, and that everybody who's going to hear about it probably already has. The author in question has been taken pretty thoroughly to task, so I'm not going to go there. I will say that I skimmed the fic and that the criticism has been, in my eyes, entirely apt.

Two things:

1

Comments

[naatz]

I have a huge problem with how quickly and easily fandom shouts 'racism'. A gentle white man who weighs 300 pounds wouldn't garner the same outrage. It's like in stories, you have to make PoC absolutely perfect just not to be accused of racism, because the stereotypes that are used to describe PoC are all negative. I know that racism is a problem {understatement of the year} in the US, but by insisting that PoC are exactly the same as whites in any way, shape or form means only bad things to those populations, who are facing problems that are different in any way imaginable to those of the whites'.

No, I haven't read the story {I did leave a comment on amazonziti's post}, but I read some of the quotes, and while they come off as patronising, they don't seem to be malicious. Writer does seem to attempt to stray away from stereotyping, but instead of giving the characters depth, managed to do a 180 degree turn from the stereotypes, which sadly still refers to them

[glorious_spoon]

Taken in context, those quotes were just--IDK. The whole story left a very bad taste in my mouth.

Also, I kind of feel like if you're going to say sorry for something, you should actually say sorry, not pussyfoot around with the whole 'I'm sorry you didn't like it', which was kind of what that author did.

[naatz]

Yeah. A plain "I'm sorry that this has managed to offend some of you, this was not my intention" could've gone a LONG way. I understand why there's outrage, but I think fandom's making it too big of a deal. I find the personal attacks {like calling her 'cunt'} as simply unacceptable, and more than a little ironic.

|Meduza|

[vikki]

A plain "I'm sorry that this has managed to offend some of you, this was not my intention" could've gone a LONG way.

That's ... actually exactly what the author did.

I think a better apology would own her culpability rather than owning the feelings of others. ("I'm sorry for what I did", rather than "I'm sorry if your feelings were hurt".)

[vikki]

Your point one, it is awesome. Succinct and right to the point! ♥ I think 90% of the arguments about 'how is this racist?' can be put to rest with this paragraph.

[glorious_spoon]

I think so much of the derailing in these discussions happens because people get so defensive about that word, and...dude, it's just a word. It describes a behavior, one that can be changed.

[naatz]

Apologies in advance, but, "nigger" is also "just a word". It doesn't even describe a perceived behaviour, but outside, objective colour. It doesn't mean that it doesn't come with baggage. While 'racist' isn't as extreme, it's a word that makes people extremely emotional. Emotional people != rational, logical people. Quite the opposite. From what I've seen in the American culture, the moment one is used in a conversation -- the conversation is dead, dead, dead.

|Meduza|