raven | (no subject)

I'm not usually in the habit of crossposting between social media––y'all put up with enough of me without having to put up with it twice––but for some reason I want to keep a more permanent record of this twitter thread, which does some work explaining why I think a) a sense of place in fiction is important and b) how this is often a cipher for rebutting white and Western assumptions about my work.

As a bonus, it features the novella I'm allegedly working on, the one about the other Archivist. (By which I mean, the soft-spoken, contending-with-eldritch-horrors, completely-lacking-in-self-awareness archivist who belongs to me, as opposed to the one who's the Magnus Archives Archivist! I have to watch the first very closely to make sure he doesn't turn into the second.)

I think it's also worth reposting this alongside the general statement that I fucking hate George R.R. Martin. If pushed to it I could say some things about how cringingly masturbatory and grabby it is to spend hours talking about dead white guys at the Hugo awards ceremony in this year of our Lord 2020, and also about how mispronouncing the names of black and brown people is the paradigmatic small violence against us, but honestly I just really fucking hate the guy.

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So I wasn't gonna get into it on twitter (not least because twitter is on my phone and too much phone typing ugh) but reading that thread was a real 'oh - OH!' moment for me. Because I have been grouching about that BS advice that basically says 'strip everything out, mention only what's plot-vital, the readers know about busses/postmen/whatever and you don't need it' all my life, and thinking it was just genre-snobbery from the lit-fic world.

I mean I've spent a significant chunk of the day stopping what I was doing to go 'wait what THE ACTUAL FUCK' about it, because it unravels out into this whole huge Thing of how the closer your setting is to that particular privileged default the less you can get away with and there are people out there pushing this as a measure of worthiness and seriousness and just, ugh.

OK I'm gonna stop there as I am in danger of unloading at you and that's like, the opposite of fair, as it is entirely on me that I somehow didn't add this up before (despite being granddaughter of immigrants, even - though the paternal culture-of-origin is central European so not entirely distinct, it's distinct enough I don't feel qualified to write in it.)

Thank you for telling me this! I'm really pleased this thread brought so much to you. <3

"Cultural place" is a succinct phrase I may have to use myself, since it gets right to the heart of the matter.

(In the absence of anything else I've uploaded, this is my general Judaism icon for the moment.)

Edited 2020-08-02 00:39 (UTC)

I'm glad it resonates for you. :)

A lovely thread :)

<3 <3

That is such a great twitter thread. Thank you for linking it here!!

You're very welcome, I'm glad you liked it!

Yeah. The whole WorldCon GRRM thing is such a shitshow, though I can't say I'm surprised. I'm at least glad to see a LOT of yelling about it and a lot of pushback against it. Maybe if enough people yell, this kind of nonsense in the field will stop.

I hope so! I always think nothing else ridiculous/appalling can happen at the Hugos, and I'm always wrong.