mormont Posted October 22, 2014 Share Posted October 22, 2014 Well, Nick Mamatas says they are one and the same: both have posted apologies on their blogs, within the space of days: several other people have stated it as true: and nobody has denied it. At this stage, I see no reason to demand 'hard proof'. ETA - at least, not any more than already exists. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Darth Richard II Posted October 22, 2014 Share Posted October 22, 2014 That apology on her blog reminds me of a kid who gets caught doing something bad and is forced to apologize by his/her parents. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
polishgenius Posted October 22, 2014 Share Posted October 22, 2014 Not seeing any hard proof Benjanun and Requires are the same person? Well, she's apologising for it on her own blog too. Tell you what though, it's obviously not good for her but that Nick Mamatas guy is coming out of this looking like an incredible arsehole. Just shit-stirring in the extreme, both in outing her without her permission, and his comments on various posts discussing the issue since. She can't really call him on it right now because he could just go SEE! SEE! HORRIBLE PERSON! but glad to see a couple of other people pointing out that he's not covered himself in glory in this whole affair. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sci-2 Posted October 22, 2014 Share Posted October 22, 2014 Well, she's apologising for it on her own blog too. Tell you what though, it's obviously not good for her but that Nick Mamatas guy is coming out of this looking like an incredible arsehole. Just shit-stirring in the extreme, both in outing her without her permission, and his comments on various posts discussing the issue since. She can't really call him on it right now because he could just go SEE! SEE! HORRIBLE PERSON! but glad to see a couple of other people pointing out that he's not covered himself in glory in this whole affair. Ah, interesting. Sad there won't be any new ROTYH reviews. And she took down the Prince of Misogyny piece? Sadness. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SkynJay Posted October 22, 2014 Share Posted October 22, 2014 That apology on her blog reminds me of a kid who gets caught doing something bad and is forced to apologize by his/her parents.Maybe. On the other hand it is a rare public apology that actually admits to harm. No 'I am sorry others are offended' doublespeak. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Darth Richard II Posted October 22, 2014 Share Posted October 22, 2014 Maybe. On the other hand it is a rare public apology that actually admits to harm. No 'I am sorry others are offended' doublespeak.True. Well have to see how it plays out I guess. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Maester Llama Posted October 22, 2014 Share Posted October 22, 2014 So when this started up about a week ago I went "hrm. I liked some stuff about RH's reviews, but they did disturb and upset me sometimes; I did find them occasionally abusive above and beyond the call of necessarily mean criticism. But I've been interested in trying Benjanun Sriduangkaew's fiction. I must go forth and educate myself, to make sure I'm not supporting the career of someone who has done things that I find totally unacceptable." And so I went forth, and I dove deep into the internet's turgid waters, and I spent far too much of my time looking at records of terrible things people had said to each other. And I have come to the conclusion that Sriduangkaew has done and said terrible things online, things that are absolutely not okay, *but also* that I can't agree with the sentiment that her career should be torpedoed. Watching this hideousness play out over the past week has allowed me to clarify my own response to RH's writing: Speaking as a straight white male, RH's reviews taught me stuff, fairly regularly. They pointed out things I had not noticed, and things of which I was ignorant. It was not incumbent upon RH's writing to teach me stuff, but it did, and I was grateful. However, I often found the ways she went about making her points unproductively vicious and, in some select cases*, genuinely troubling. I've had several conversations in which I've been told, directly or by implication, that abusive language and intimidating discourse is tactically appropriate when the person using it is "punching up," and that RH was therefore cool, and also that RH wasn't trying to engage in conversation and so the inflammatory nature of her reviews didn't matter as related to ongoing discussion. I wanted to buy these points. I think it is far more important that disadvantaged, often-voiceless and under-represented groups be spoken for and represented in the sf and fantasy community than that the language used in a review while laying truth down hurts some feelings, so I really, really wanted to buy these points. But watching all this nastiness splash everywhere has solidified my belief that while much of RH's analysis was good and helpful the ways she expressed it did often overstep into diminishing and abusing others, that they did in fact negatively effect discourse, and that death threats suck no matter who is using them. This kind of bile, as we're seeing now, only leads to more bile. *I was not around for any of her apparent trolling and harassing under other online handles and am not talking about those instances of bullshit. What applying this recognition means, though, is that I find the prospect of a hate-thread devoted to RH not just ironic, as someone said above, but pretty fucking depressing. Tacit gloating on behalf of authors whose work she reviewed negatively? Also a bit depressing. What can responding to RH's outing with bile possibly accomplish? When this train started rolling I went and read some of Sriduangkaew's short fiction. It's pretty damn good. So those apologies on RH's blog and Sriduangkaew's own site are conveniently timed? Well, yeah, maybe they are. So maybe she doesn't mean them? Well, yeah, maybe not, but who knows when anybody means anything? They're pretty solid apologies; they don't evade; they say "I did wrong, and I am sorry." If she wants to do better now, to contribute to the community by writing awesome stories that broaden the genres' horizons and introduce new perspectives instead of ripping into other people's stories and making folks on the internet feel like shit for liking those stories, I don't see why that should be anything other than welcome. I hope the community gives her another shot. I wanna read more of her fiction. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Andrew Gilfellon Posted October 22, 2014 Share Posted October 22, 2014 Maybe conveniently timed in the sense that she finally has to and has faced up to what she's done. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sci-2 Posted October 22, 2014 Share Posted October 22, 2014 Looking at the Twilight for Boys style fiction that gets praised in the SFF sphere, or just the misogyny of grimdark -> ROTYH was the reviewer we needed not the one we wanted. The one we deserved...something something Dark Knight....something.... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Richard Posted October 22, 2014 Share Posted October 22, 2014 I'm inclined to view this fairly cynically. In my experience, (adult) people don't change, unless it's as a result of some fairly major personal trauma, and I don't see any indication of that here. People do, however, sometimes learn to behave better or worse as a result of incentives, both positive and negative, and I suspect that's what we're looking at. In the end, though, it's almost irrelevant. There's no rule that says good art has to be created by decent human beings. And if what she writes is good, it will continue to find publishers and readers regardless. So she's an obnoxious asshole (in recovery or not) - no shortage of those whose work gets hung in galleries, projected onto the big or small screen, or shelved with reverence in libraries the world over. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Darth Richard II Posted October 23, 2014 Share Posted October 23, 2014 YeAh, soon as you tell someone to go Kill themselves I'm not buying or reading your shit. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Richard Posted October 23, 2014 Share Posted October 23, 2014 I agree - forgiveness is overrated. But that's just you, and it's just now. Longer term, people will forget, and a lot won't care anyway. Look how many people buy and read Orson Scott Card. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Darth Richard II Posted October 23, 2014 Share Posted October 23, 2014 Well, I don't read Card anymore either, so at least I'm consistent? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Myshkin Posted October 23, 2014 Share Posted October 23, 2014 I'm inclined to view this fairly cynically. In my experience, (adult) people don't change, unless it's as a result of some fairly major personal trauma, and I don't see any indication of that here. People do, however, sometimes learn to behave better or worse as a result of incentives, both positive and negative, and I suspect that's what we're looking at. In the end, though, it's almost irrelevant. There's no rule that says good art has to be created by decent human beings. And if what she writes is good, it will continue to find publishers and readers regardless. So she's an obnoxious asshole (in recovery or not) - no shortage of those whose work gets hung in galleries, projected onto the big or small screen, or shelved with reverence in libraries the world over. I agree with both points here. I don't buy for one second that she is genuinely sorry for her behavior, only that she is sorry that her behavior may now negatively affect her career. I think too that despite owning her behavior there is still plenty of evasion in her apology; the examples she uses of her bad behavior are no where near the worst of what she's done or said. I don't know much about RH or her activities, but from what I've seen she's a pretty awful person. And yeah, maybe on some level she was trying to educate about racial/gender stereotypes and dangerous cultural biases, but the tactics she used don't often change minds, they generally only serve to solidify stances. But despite all that, if her fiction is any good I'll still read it. After all I still read Knut Hamsun, still think that Orson Scott Card wrote at least two great novels, and still believe that V.S. Naipaul is the world's greatest living author, despite the fact that those three are/were all, to varying degrees, shitty people. But in the end, if this does hurt her career she has no one to blame but herself. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sci-2 Posted October 23, 2014 Share Posted October 23, 2014 It is sad she turned out to be a sellout who is trying to make nice. Though her being outed is rather creepy. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Darth Richard II Posted October 23, 2014 Share Posted October 23, 2014 Yeah it's always sad when the type of people who drive people off the internet, encourage people to kill themselves, selectively delete blog posts and comments to make themselves look better and past date posts have to, God forbid, deal with the consequences of their actions. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sci-2 Posted October 23, 2014 Share Posted October 23, 2014 Yeah it's always sad when the type of people who drive people off the internet, encourage people to kill themselves, selectively delete blog posts and comments to make themselves look better and past date posts have to, God forbid, deal with the consequences of their actions. Yeah, actually it is sad. I'd hate to think people could out me if I hadn't already made little secret of my real name, my country, and a bunch of other details here and there. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Myshkin Posted October 23, 2014 Share Posted October 23, 2014 Though her being outed is rather creepy. If you read this http://www.awesomedome.com/requires-only-that-youre-fake/, the author claims that Mamatas told him that he "outed" Sriduangkaew as a calculated move to try and get out in front of the whole thing. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Darth Richard II Posted October 23, 2014 Share Posted October 23, 2014 The outing of someone on the Internet is never cool. I just gave a hard time feeling sorry for someone so vile. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sci-2 Posted October 23, 2014 Share Posted October 23, 2014 If you read this http://www.awesomedome.com/requires-only-that-youre-fake/, the author claims that Mamatas told him that he "outed" Sriduangkaew as a calculated move to try and get out in front of the whole thing. I read that, and his rationale made little sense to me. I just figured Mamatas was desperate for attention and this was a pathetic way to garner page views. The outing of someone on the Internet is never cool. I just gave a hard time feeling sorry for someone so vile. It's not about feeling sorry for her - like I said she's obviously a sellout who's apologizing to protect her career. It's more about the idea of respecting privacy. Anonymous critics are valuable, though admittedly ACM's twitter was full of crazy sauce that went well beyond the remit of literary criticism. Guessing she's deleted her tweets about the Boston bombings by now though. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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