Benjanun Sriduangkaew and RotyH

[Darth Richard II]

You are all much better people than me.

Except peterbound, fuck that guy. :P

Edit: You know, it would actually be nice if she WAS actually soryy for all this shit, but the fact that she tried to publish under a completely different persona, has been deleting all her old posts from the last decade or so, and that the apology had a "sorry I got caught" feel to it, doesn't give me much hope. But who knows.

[Theda Baratheon]

Never heard of her until now. Got no time for bullies and abusers and I am sure there are many, many equally good and much better pieces of writing waiting for me to read that have nothing to with her. I don't know whether I'd be a hypocrite if I condemned people for enjoying her fiction though as I enjoy Sean Penn as an actor but he has a past of being a violent, physically abusive shit. I just think this 'don't deprive me of art' is a bit weak - what high calibre are is she really producing? Im sure if i knew about her before I'd be more forceful in my language but not knowing about her until now i can't feel passion - i just have no interest in reading the works of someone living who i know is a total shit. But i also dont condemn the people who want to read her work even if i dont really understand why.

Like DR i find the idea of drastically changing your persona to sell better as cynical in the extreme and pretty horrid.

[Sci-2]

Edit: You know, it would actually be nice if she WAS actually soryy for all this shit, but the fact that she tried to publish under a completely different persona, has been deleting all her old posts from the last decade or so, and that the apology had a "sorry I got caught" feel to it, doesn't give me much hope. But who knows.

Oh, I think it's safe to say her apologies are utter bullshit. And she's deleting at least a subsection of the most valuable things she produced - her RotYH content so we can pretty much scratch "integrity" off her character list.

But she doesn't need to be a good person to have been a valuable critic. Let's not forget the massive amount of discussion she generated here on misogyny in SFF.

[Darth Richard II]

Mostly I remember a lot of yelling and bans. don't remember anything of value from any of those conversations

[SkynJay]

Mostly I remember a lot of yelling and bans. don't remember anything of value from any of those conversations

Abercrombie himself came in and admitted he wasn't thrilled with the way he had portrayed Terez (spelling?) at the end of Last Argument. I would say there was some value and reflection.

[Darth Richard II]

He also said something about the bodies of his enemies on the first page of this thread, but I am unfamiliar with the quote, so.. *shrug*

I'm never going to agree she had any value as a critic and sci is never going to say she doesn't. We;ve had this discussion like 100 times already and we both have our opinions on the matter. Having it again would be fruitless.

[Larry.]

This is ridiculous, but I'm glad you got to get your digs against "SJWs" in there.

I still think that Prince of Misogyny piece is hilarious, and even RotYH noted it wasn't a review of TDTCB. But before you get on your high horse, if you check out Larry's blog, Foz Meadow's blog, and Liz Bourke's Sleeps with Monsters Tor blog for their posts mentioning Bakker you'll see me noting that it's important to separate Bakker as a person from textual evaluation of his work.

As for the blowout, Bakker's problems began when he wrote on his blog about how Larry was clearly manipulated into liking some of RotYH's reviews. Even Larry noted a private email to him would've worked better. After that, Bakker's personality carried him into deeper waters.

I assume you were thinking in part of this long debate from April/May 2012 on my blog? I think that covered why some of RH's points were worth considering and others were easy to dismiss due to the message content system. Of course, this was before the worst of the alleged Twitter/DM abuses (I missed those, especially from mid-2012 through 2013), so I can't comment on those, as I had lost interest in the main issues due to the lack of development of anything other than an intensification of the acerbic haranguing.

As for Bakker, I do plan on reading TUC whenever it comes out. I can separate the work from any frustrations I had at the time with him! Too bad I still feel he never really addressed my critiques of Haidt and crew in the interim. But that's a topic for another day.

In regards to the moral issue some have raised, I don't want stones thrown at my glass walls. After all, in my youth, I could have been charged with much more serious stuff than abusive language on internet forums. But people do change, sometimes...

[Shryke]

Oh, I think it's safe to say her apologies are utter bullshit. And she's deleting at least a subsection of the most valuable things she produced - her RotYH content so we can pretty much scratch "integrity" off her character list.

But she doesn't need to be a good person to have been a valuable critic. Let's not forget the massive amount of discussion she generated here on misogyny in SFF.

I wouldn't say that. Especially since the way she's not a good person are exactly the ways that prevent her from being a good critic.

The very style and content of performance art prevents meaningful discussion. It actually does the opposite.

[Larry.]

I wouldn't say that. Especially since the way she's not a good person are exactly the ways that prevent her from being a good critic.

The very style and content of performance art prevents meaningful discussion. It actually does the opposite.

Does it? Ever read Mencken, most notably "The Sahara of the Bozart?" Granted it doesn't have the cursing and ranting of early 21st century rant-crit, but a century ago, he was one of the most acerbic critics around and his comments did outrage an entire region of the US back in the day. It also generated a bit more than just meaningful discussion, but I suppose things were different then than they are today?

[Darth Richard II]

That's really the crux of the argument in here, though, isn't it?

The very style and content of performance art prevents meaningful discussion. It actually does the opposite.

Right there. You either agree or disagree with that statement and I don't see any of us changing out minds anytime soon.

I still think the biggest issue is in the way she decided both her readers and other authors with not just a fake personalty but an entirely fake history, but no one seems to want to address that recently.

[Larry.]

Yeah, not much to say on that other than due to the elaborate set of personae on display that I have no trust in the veracity of the person. That being said, even despicable people can on occasion write or say something that moves others. After all, Victor Hugo was not a saintly man, but some of his prose and poetry is outstanding. All a matter of what one can tolerate or condone, I suppose.

But then again, my grad research revolved around Hitler's speeches and writings on religion, so... ;)

[Shryke]

Does it? Ever read Mencken, most notably "The Sahara of the Bozart?" Granted it doesn't have the cursing and ranting of early 21st century rant-crit, but a century ago, he was one of the most acerbic critics around and his comments did outrage an entire region of the US back in the day. It also generated a bit more than just meaningful discussion, but I suppose things were different then than they are today?

Or the two aren't comparable perhaps.

[David Selig]

Yeah, that's why I think a lot of authors who got criticized are now raising such a stink. But I think a lot of RotYH's criticisms continue to ring true - for example I recall Kiernan's original defense regarding her depiction of PoCs being rather weak.

What do you see see as weak about it? I thought it was spot on.

[Darth Richard II]

I don't remember this Kiernan incident, are there links or are they gone?

[David Selig]

I don't remember this Kiernan incident, are there links or are they gone?

This is what I found - http://web.archive.org/web/20120126142024/http://requireshate.wordpress.com/2011/12/29/caitlin-kiernans-silk-in-which-a-novel-reads-like-a-story-arc-from-the-dreaming/

Basically, the book is total racefail because one of the character (an American teen) considers an East Asian stamp "exotic" and her East Asian character is thought to be "exotic" by her too once. Oh, and another character noticed that the persons watching him pass along some street were black, which is totally racist obviously.

[Darth Richard II]

Oh, I meant kiernans defense, but that is interesting, thanks.

[Errant Bard]

The idea of reading good guy authors strikes me as particularly silly. I'm wondering how many of you won't read works by slave owners, colonialists, racists, sexists... after a few hundred or more years dulls the wrongs of the authors.

Personally, it's not so much about how wrong the author is but more how the author being a spectacular asshole should not make anyone consider reading his book, when he would not have read them if there had been no drama. It promotes the same behaviour for future artists, and more generally for our whole culture, and, I feel, it drags it down to a level where if you are not the jackass of the month you have no visibility and no sales (not like we have not seen that happening in politics or media, right?)

The difference with slave-owners authors is two fold: One, I don't read the slave owner books because he just got outed as a slave owner, I would likely learn the author is a slave-owner after the fact, it is not my motivation for reading; Two when I read a book written by a slave owner, I am not promoting slave-owning as a form of effective PR strategy. Racism and sexism, you find me some unknown author who spouted stuff like that for a decade and make a scandal about it, it will not make me buy his books because now he has visibility, no.

[mormont]

Abercrombie himself came in and admitted he wasn't thrilled with the way he had portrayed Terez (spelling?) at the end of Last Argument. I would say there was some value and reflection.

Yeah, but there's no need for a total scorched-earth blitz of Abercrombie's entire oeuvre to get him to admit that. You can't cite something that could easily have been obtained by other, less radical, means as a good outcome justifying bad behaviour.

As to the issue of BS's fiction: well, as I say, what I've read (before this farrago) left me a bit cold, so I probably wouldn't have read more anyway. But, I'm not sure I completely buy the idea that to read it is in some way to endorse or reward the other bad behaviour. Other than the fact that it's the same person, there's no link here: it's not like a Lovecraft, or even Card, where the problematic issues are right there in the work. There's a different decision to make here. Is this separable? Are we really rewarding the bad behaviour by buying the work? Or can we condemn the bad behaviour and still see the writing as another aspect of the person?

[Callan S.]

I don't understand why people think she should be granted the sort of charity she didn't grant - it was a 'message content system'? When did she describe anyone else that way?

Cancer - it's just exhuberant cell growth!

This is the real issue - how it's made to be about her and so it distracts from those that clustered around her. And her enablers slip away into the night, looking for their next righteous trigger, not learning anything from it.

But hell, shouldn't she be given the charity she didn't give anyone else? Of course, because...?

[David Selig]

Oh, I meant kiernans defense, but that is interesting, thanks.

http://greygirlbeast.livejournal.com/900453.html - here it is.