Aargh, I just need to turn off the Internet or something

[layla]

Gaaahh, I've gotten very little done this weekend except for watching an increasing number of pro SFF writers and editors get drawn into an ever-expanding black hole of stupid. The comics industry, I seem to recall, was a never-ending series of little mini-stupidstorms, moving around each other like weather fronts, sucking people into their vortexes and then spitting them out, dazed, into the path of another oncoming stupidfront. Apparently fiction publishing is not too different.

I'm frustrated and furious on behalf of people I know, people I care about, who are being cut down and hurt by stupid racist stuff that's being said by people who really ought to know better. At the same time, I really do feel for pro writers who are stuck in the unenviable position of having to either stay quiet, and look like they approve of the general fail all around, or speak up against someone who they might one day depend on for a job. I should write more about this, but ... I'm tired. I've been arguing with people online all day, I'm suffering from a major case of Someone Is Wrong On The Internet, and ... blech. Why can't people who are supposedly adults and professionals act like it? (And I've been that stupid white person, too. I've had my own moments of major fail, and one reason why I want to fight the fight now is to try to make up for the person I was then.)

Jane wrote here about confronting her own white privilege in her current project. I can relate; boy, can I relate.

The weather skyrocketed from 40 below early in the week, to 54 above(!!!!!) last Friday. The roads are slick, slick, slick, and the car conveniently broke down on Thursday, leaving us with the truck which has summer tires, a high center of mass, and basically drives like a sliding deathtrap on ice.

Most of the snow has melted. This is going to suck when it gets cold again, as it inevitably will. But the chickens are happy (as happy as chickens get, anyway), and the house is warm, and I like taking the dogs for walks in weather that doesn't require bundling up to my eyebrows.

Comments

[naye]

Driving a deathtrap on ice does not sound good. (See, I'm going straight to worrying about the stuff that's not making me want to run and hide from the internet!) Do you know how long it will take to fix the car? Is it worth getting winter tires for the truck? Knowing just what happens when snow melts and then freezes and then melts a little again, I worry.

As for the rest of it. Just. Yeah. The latest round is. Um. Someone's WRONG. On the INTERNET!

Only in this case it's a whole ton of someones, and I can't even tell who's being wrong-wrong, and who is just coming across as being wrong, and. In the end, I get the feeling it's still okay to just learn and listen, so that's what I'm doing.

I wish I could offer you happy distractions, but my current fannish interests are in things that are quite hopelessly silly, and not really given to distracting people as much as EATING THEIR SOULS.

Well. There is this. Which is quite literally beyond words for me. Wow. Proving that the world is not ALL made of fail. ♥

[laylalawlor.livejournal.com]

Don't worry! We're careful! And, um, Orion does most of the driving, because I traumatized myself by sliding off the road in the truck a couple of years ago and now I'm a giant wimp about driving the truck in the winter. ^^;;

SOMEONE IS WRONG ON THE INTERNET sums it up brilliantly. I feel like it's gotten to the point where arguing isn't helping, and I've already read pretty much everything that I can absorb, and I already know where I stand ... so, yeah. Time to shut up, maybe.

(You can't go wrong with Obama pictures! :D I keep telling myself that I will not fangirl the President, but I'm not sure if it's working. And that's a nice antidote to all the fail today.)

[zixi.livejournal.com]

*nods*

I've seen the people complaining about Elizabeth Bear (and someone else? I completely lost track of who in these discussions is in the sci-fi writing/publishing world) hasn't spoken out against what her "friends" are saying and I'm torn. For one, I don't know who of those "wrong" people are people Bear has chosen as friends and who are people who have decided to defend her whether she wants it or not. And for two, what you said - she has that tightrope like of speaking up versus alienating people she might depend on for a paycheck. I don't have an answer to the question, just a vaguely uncomfortable feeling that I don't know everything that's going on.

Still, yes, someone is VERY wrong on the internet.

[laylalawlor.livejournal.com]

I am currently cracking up at the fact that all three of the major instigators -- pnh, medievalist and mac_stone -- have apparently flounced off LJ completely. Two journals deleted, one locked down. I, I just ... NO WORDS.

But, yeah, Bear's between a rock and a hard place here. As a woman trying to make a living in a very insular field full of very touchy people, can she risk alienating the editor at one of the big SFF publishers by telling him he's acting like an asshat? It's really the same dilemma anybody faces when the company they work for does something stupid -- I know it's a little different because she's a freelancer, but it's still something that could come back and bite her in the paycheck. Do you speak up or stay silent and go along with it? It's tough.

[zixi.livejournal.com]

Oh, wow, TWO of them? I'd like to imagine this means they know they said bad stuff and are embarrassed, but I fear that's not the case. I think it would save more safe to just admit they were happily munching on their own feet and not seeing past their noses and take the consequences of their actions.

Exactly. And I keep wondering, looking at what people are saying, what Bear could have done/said differently that wouldn't have people upset with her. I mean, I don't know her, I've rarely read her blog, and I've never read her books but I feel like she came out looking a lot better than lot of other people in this mess, and she's still getting attacked a fair bit and...I do think there's *something* to be said for trying and listening and I understand why people are upset but...*flails around and keeps talking in circles* It's just...she does have that tightrope and she isn't omniscient and she can't see the future and *know* how people will react to her posts (or which ones will get that much attention).

I don't know the right answer. I don't know if there is one.

[laylalawlor.livejournal.com]

Yeah; there are definitely people in this whole thing who deserve all the castigation they get, and I'm certainly not saying that either E. Bear or her response to the situation is perfect, but I think to some extent she's being expected to have been somewhat prescient about the outcome of this, and there's just no way she could have. Yes, she could have moderated the original thread more heavily, and maybe she should have; yes, maybe she ought to have posted on this earlier, rather than having several days of blog silence. But she's also a self-employed person who's trying to earn a living, and if she's spent a lot of that time away from the computer, working on the job that pays her bills and just avoiding the conflict, I can totally sympathize with that. And no one can know how any of this would've turned out if she'd handled things differently. Maybe if she'd done a second post earlier, it would have blown up into another big conflagration; maybe if she'd frozen threads and failed to approve comments in the first discussion, the conversations would have gone elsewhere and blown up even worse. Or maybe it never would have reached the point it did -- but we just don't know. I think that of all the pros involved in this mess, she's the one who has been the classiest and come out looking the best. (She's also, incidentally, the one who writes the most multi-ethnic and politically aware books out of the bunch of them -- at least, that's my impression looking at the biblios of everybody, since besides Bear and Monette I'm generally unfamiliar with the others' work.)

[zixi.livejournal.com]

*nods*
I mean, yes, discussions like this do often devolve into asshattery, but could she have been sure this one would, sure it would get this wide of notice, etc, etc? And is it her job to police every comment that comes to a public post on her blog or can those people speak for themselves? I don't know that answer to that? (I mean, when people say they're her friends....I assume most of them are random fans and not people Bear chose as friends)

And, yeah, what you said - of all of them, her ass showed the least and I feel like...smacking her so hard distracts from the argument (and, yes, I realize that's a tone argument and all the reasons why a tone argument isn't okay and yet...I still thing sometimes there is something to it). I just feel like if the ones who are trying are pushed away, what's to encourage the others to consider trying and what's to consider the trying one to keep trying and keep listening?

I don't really know the answer here. And I'm probably scoring bingo points in my dancing around it.

[laylalawlor.livejournal.com]

If Bear is really as open-minded about this as she's putting across that she is, though, I think she'll let it roll off her -- or take it to heart as valid criticism for the next time that something like this happens, if it does. I imagine that, as a fairly high-profile SFF author, she's had plenty of experience at dealing with strangers saying uncomplimentary things about her.

I guess I can see both sides of this ... on the one hand, I think that Bear is definitely trying harder than anyone else in this sorry mess, and I think she's doing a good job especially considering the professional considerations that I'm sure she can't help but take into account. But on the other hand, I can certainly see why people who've been hurt and insulted and abused by Bear's friends and professional associates aren't willing to let bygones be bygones. And quite honestly, I'm starting to wonder who would voluntarily associate with A Certain Quasi-Famous Person Whose Initials Are W.S., let alone marry him -- have you seen his latest post? I think he's well into troll territory by now.

[zixi.livejournal.com]

*nods* to everything you said

(and YES to the W.S., dear god. He posted MORE? Does he like the taste of his foot so much that he wants to sample his knee?)

[laylalawlor.livejournal.com]

I was just rereading this comment thread and thinking, wow, how naive I was ten days ago. I had no idea it'd get so much worse, or that the behavior of some of the "pros" would end up being so flat-out appalling.

[zixi.livejournal.com]

*nods* I'm still torn between a few things but mostly that's overwhelmed by "DID YOU SERIOUSLY JUST SAY THAT?" because so much of this has just been...GAH!

I keep having trouble believing how far this has gone. It seems so very surreal.

[laylalawlor.livejournal.com]

Er, and my point with the last bit is that maybe the two -- her willingness to accept criticism and her relatively good ability to write ethnically diverse characters -- are connected. Except this is a free account, so I can't edit comments. *g*