Another signal boost post

[rusty_halo]

Signal boosting: someone wrote a horribly racist J2 fic set in post-quake Haiti. You can read the unfunnybusiness write-up here, a collection of offensive quotes from the fic here, and a collection of links to relevant discussions here. The fic is pretty much made of racist tropes and the apology is a textbook fauxpology. *sigh*

If you don’t get what’s wrong, bookshop linked to this page about privilege, which is one of the best I’ve seen.

Also glockgal wrote this ridiculously fantastic racebending SPN comic. (If you don’t know of the racebending revenge ficathon, it’s here.)

(Between the recent Wincon thing and now this, I’m sort of going back and forth between “Why did I choose to get into this failtastic fandom?” and “Hey, wait, racism and sexism can happen in any fandom, it’s not an indictment against SPN fandom as a whole, just against the people in it who fail.”)

Originally published at rusty-halo.com. You can comment here or there.

Comments

[zafra]

The saddest thing about it all, really, isn't *you* asking yourself why you got involved with the fail-dom. It's someone like me saying 'Thank God I'm not in that fandom!' and potentially never touching it with a 10-foot pole because of stupid people. Even though I'm sure there's a whole lot of awesome to go around. :(

[rusty_halo]

Well, the saddest part is probably that people are being hurt by racism, but I think I get what you mean. I stayed away from SPN for a long time because of its reputation as "that crazy offensive fandom," and I missed out on a lot of good stuff because of it. :(

I wanted to add a longer part to my post about how annoyed I am at reactions that are along the lines of "fanfic is weird"/"Supernatural is weird"/"RPS is weird"/"AU is weird." It's irrelevant, it's offensive to characterize the entire fandom as having failed just because some members did, and it comes across as a clueless defense mechanism too, like--what, you think you're safe from coming across racist tropes just because you're in a different section of fandom? Newsflash: racism can happen in any fandom. But I'm not sure how to post about it without being derailing, because the larger issue is with the racist fic and not with the way people who recognize its racism are reacting to it.

[zafra]

Well, yeah - let's not even get into the whole "how much does the world still suck and how can we kill-off the stupid"!!! Christ, we'll be here forever.

Yes, you are right. Though I imagine if one wanted to be all intellectual about it, I'd wonder why (unless I totally missed it) I haven't seen it in my last fandom, or so far in this one. (Save for the glaring lack of cast diversity)
I mean, what is it about SPN or how someone views it, that lends itself? I didn't read the story of course, but is it 'actual fanfic' or is someone just taking the Evangelical Preacher approach and using the characters and apocalyptic/biblical themes to say Haiti deserved the Earthquake or something?!
Pardon my ignorant ranting, but I hope you can glean my deeper question out of that. :D

[rusty_halo]

I think people pick on SPN because the canon fails a lot and the fandom has had some high-profile failures, but I still think that 1) not all or even most members of SPN fandom fail and 2) many other canons fail too and people seem to be be using SPN as a scapegoat to avoid acknowledging their own fandom's imperfections.

The fic is ... I don't know, it hardly even counts as fanfic. It's a RPS AU in which the actors are doctors in Haiti, so its connection to Supernatural at all is pretty tangential, but I guess the connection is that it comes out of the SPN fandom's culture? I'd recommend reading the unfunnybusiness writeup at least, to get the gist of what happened--the problem with the story is that it uses the tragedy of Haiti as a backdrop to get the pretty white men together, while portraying the characters of color in terribly condescending, clueless, stereotypical ways.