And The Mammoth You Rode In On
I've been following the fallout over this trainwreck of a book all weekend. This one hits me where I live.
You know that scene in Princess Bride, where Humperdinck is going on about bringing back in the armada as part of the wedding ceremonies, and Buttercup reminds him, "All but your four fastest ships, you mean." And he goes blank for just a second, before agreeing, "Yes, of course, I meant all but my four fastest ships." But he hadn't meant that. He hadn't meant that at all.
I have that moment with people a lot. Except they're talking about U.S. history or how "we're all immigrants" or something else in which they have once again overlooked that American Indians exist. And I say to them, "Except Indians, you mean," and they go Humperdinck-blank for a second before saying, "Yes, of course, I meant except Indians."
Except, you know, they hadn't. People seem to have a hard time remembering we exist. I suppose that isn't too surprising. From the way history and stories get told, we didn't exist, or if we did exist once, we don't exist now, and even if we did exist once, we never really mattered. You know how it is.
So when someone writes a shiny American frontier alternate history in which there are no Indians, but it's still recognizably the American frontier of the popular social mythos? Just all pretty and guilt-free now, like how it was supposed to be? Well. I'm unlikely to think of that as a fun little shiny romp. That's my family that just got casually written out of existence in that world, for no good purpose that I can tell, and I have a hard enough time getting people to remember that my family existed as it is.
But then someone surfaced this conversation in which Ms. Wrede discussed why she was making the worldbuilding choices she did. Apparently she saw her choice as being between savages, elves, and nothing, and she decided to go with nothing. (I dunno why "people" never occurred to her.) And somehow, she thought that "nothing" wasn't a wildly divergent history. gryphonsegg says it very well: " It's like our people really don't exist in this world either, except as symbols that white people sometimes use in stories."
I suppose I could say something here about, oh well, I guess she's no historian, or hey, there's a lesson about how things you say on the internet have a way of coming back to haunt you.
But what I really want to say is this: FUCK YOU, PATRICIA WREDE. FUCK YOU AND THE FUCKING MAMMOTH YOU RODE IN ON.
Oh, hey, and while we're speaking of SFF authors who have been casually denying the existence of huge swaths of SFF fans... Lois McMaster Bujold? These people exist. Some of them were even your fans.
You know that scene in Princess Bride, where Humperdinck is going on about bringing back in the armada as part of the wedding ceremonies, and Buttercup reminds him, "All but your four fastest ships, you mean." And he goes blank for just a second, before agreeing, "Yes, of course, I meant all but my four fastest ships." But he hadn't meant that. He hadn't meant that at all.
I have that moment with people a lot. Except they're talking about U.S. history or how "we're all immigrants" or something else in which they have once again overlooked that American Indians exist. And I say to them, "Except Indians, you mean," and they go Humperdinck-blank for a second before saying, "Yes, of course, I meant except Indians."
Except, you know, they hadn't. People seem to have a hard time remembering we exist. I suppose that isn't too surprising. From the way history and stories get told, we didn't exist, or if we did exist once, we don't exist now, and even if we did exist once, we never really mattered. You know how it is.
So when someone writes a shiny American frontier alternate history in which there are no Indians, but it's still recognizably the American frontier of the popular social mythos? Just all pretty and guilt-free now, like how it was supposed to be? Well. I'm unlikely to think of that as a fun little shiny romp. That's my family that just got casually written out of existence in that world, for no good purpose that I can tell, and I have a hard enough time getting people to remember that my family existed as it is.
But then someone surfaced this conversation in which Ms. Wrede discussed why she was making the worldbuilding choices she did. Apparently she saw her choice as being between savages, elves, and nothing, and she decided to go with nothing. (I dunno why "people" never occurred to her.) And somehow, she thought that "nothing" wasn't a wildly divergent history. gryphonsegg says it very well: " It's like our people really don't exist in this world either, except as symbols that white people sometimes use in stories."
I suppose I could say something here about, oh well, I guess she's no historian, or hey, there's a lesson about how things you say on the internet have a way of coming back to haunt you.
But what I really want to say is this: FUCK YOU, PATRICIA WREDE. FUCK YOU AND THE FUCKING MAMMOTH YOU RODE IN ON.
Oh, hey, and while we're speaking of SFF authors who have been casually denying the existence of huge swaths of SFF fans... Lois McMaster Bujold? These people exist. Some of them were even your fans.