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amazonziti has done a lot of link collecting re: gatorgrrrl's J2 big bang story, Caught between the earth and the sky: http://amazonziti.livejournal.com/52274.html
The fail really is nothing less than epic. Racism, colonialism, appropriation, and such massive insensitivity to human suffering that I really can't comprehend it.
The story is about Jensen and Jared finding each other and falling in love against the backdrop of post-quake Haiti. The original artwork to illustrate the story used photos of actual survivors. The author says in her notes, "The Haiti earthquake was still in the news and the more I saw about it, the more I wanted to use it until it seemed like the best idea ever."
As conflict-avoidant as I try to be online these days, something
amazonziti / amazonziti said hit a chord with me:There is nothing quite like experiencing racism and having the world around you ignore it. That is some damn hurtful silence. SO DON'T BE SILENT.
So, this is me saying: This is really, really not okay with me.
The author has frozen comments on the story and issued an apology that started off okay and then went sadly off the rails; and then she froze comments on the apology as well. She says a lot about her intentions in the apology.
I get screwing up unintentionally; I do it all the time. But I have to admit, the sheer extent of the callousness and insensitivity required to conceive of this story in the immediate aftermath of the quake; to use the photos the illustrator used to illustrate it; to say the things the author said in her notes -- I mean, seriously. How...?
I think I would find it easier to believe she had an evil hand that wrote the story in secret while she was sleeping than to believe it never occurred to her -- or her betas or her artist or her friends, any of them -- even once that this was a very, very, very bad idea.
And frankly, I'd find the evil hand excuse more comforting than the assurance that she didn't mean to.
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Date: 2010-06-15 04:14 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-06-15 04:19 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-06-15 03:05 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-06-15 03:52 pm (UTC)*HUG*
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Date: 2010-06-15 05:25 am (UTC)And frankly, I'd find the evil hand excuse more comforting than the assurance that she didn't mean to.
Haha I thought about this and actually I agree with you! Conscious prejudice is one thing; thoughtlessness of this magnitude is entirely another and I find it SO DISTURBING. Like, thoughtlessness, generally speaking, I understand and do, of course, lapse into on occasion because I am only human. But the self-absorption required to write 80K words over five months without ever considering the extremely important issues involved just ~boggles the mind.
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Date: 2010-06-15 05:52 am (UTC)And this is the thing that I keep coming back to! All the people she thanked, everybody involved in this, all the time to write that much story, the artist, the beta readers, the friends... how is it nobody ever realized this was ... I mean, even if she just comes from a circle of friends that universally Does Not Get It, how is it nobody ever realized that at the very least, fandom was going to fall on her like pile of angry hammers?
Anyway, thank YOU for doing all the work of rounding up links and connecting people. You're awesome. :)
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Date: 2010-06-15 11:04 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-06-16 04:23 am (UTC)It isn't a problematic story about the country of Haiti and some people who happen to fall in love there, or even a story about two Haitian people who are affected by the disaster and how they handle it and fall in love or whatever; it's a romance that just happens to be set in during a tragedy, and that's two really different things, and it's not exactly a subtle distinction.
Dear God I hope I said that right; it just seems (to me) obvious from the beginning that the story was on the wrong foundation (that's leaving out the questionableness of writing fanfic about Haiti or any natural disaster in a non-white or predominantly non-white country because that's an issue I'm not at all qualified to speak about without a lot more reading and thinking on the motivations and reasons for doing so) and how did no one notice that. I don't get being able to sustain that kind of bubble.
I'm still really unable to articulate everything that was wrong with this from the first.