Now if only someone would update/rewrite the plugin that allows comment syncing between LJ and WordPress, we’d be in business.

This is what I get for not updating my plugins enough is a post from: K. Tempest Bradford

I know that pointing out RoF Fail is a little like kicking a puppy, but you know how it is when Nick Mamatas sends you a link clearly meant to induce blog-worthy rage — you just have to accommodate him.

So, LJ user torrain was reading the latest issue of Realms of Fantasy and didn’t get far before the facepalm reached epic proportions. Inside the magazine’s movie review of The Last Airbender ze found this awesomeness:

However, The Last Airbender has already caught flak for “whitewashing,” meaning, the casting of white actors (or actors who appear to be white) to play non-white characters, especially when those characters are heroic. It’s a hot-button issue that dredges up memories of images like Al Jolsen wearing black-face makeup. Of course, there are two sides to this coin. On one hand, whitewashing can feel insulting, disrespectful, and disappointing to movie-goers. Many may label it as politically incorrect. On the other hand, anyone who has run a casting call will tell you that when you find the right person for the role, something magical happens. Time seems to stop, and you feel as if the character comes to life right in front of your eyes. The character is no longer ink on paper; the character begins to live and breathe. It has nothing to do with race and everything to do with the individual human being reading for the part. Adding to the mix is the fact that some roles written for white people have been won by actors of color, and some roles written for men have been played by women. In other words, whitewashing isn’t a one-way street. It’s a difficult situation that places filmmakers between the goal of finding magic and not offending audiences. At the end of the day, most directors simply want to tell a good story.

There’s a lot of obvious fail going on here, and it’s hard to know where to begin, but I’ll start with this notion that “something magical happens” when the right person comes along for the role, even if that person is white and the character is not. Even if this was ever true somewhere in the world, it’s not true in this movie. Let’s quote Roger Ebert talking about the casting, specifically:

Shyamalan has failed. His first inexplicable mistake was to change the races of the leading characters; on television Aang was clearly Asian, and so were Katara and Sokka, with perhaps Mongolian and Inuit genes. Here they’re all whites. This casting makes no sense because (1) It’s a distraction for fans of the hugely popular TV series, and (2) all three actors are pretty bad. I don’t say they’re untalented, I say they’ve been poorly served by  Shyamalan and the script. They are bland, stiff, awkward and unconvincing.

Entertainment Weekly:

The trouble with The Last Airbender is that Aang, as a character, is a saintly abstraction (Noah Ringer plays him with a sensitive pout that grows cloying), and he’s surrounded by generic young actors who are like place holders for real stars.

Variety:

Shyamalan has worked wonders with child actors before, but Ringer is no Haley Joel Osment, delivering some fancy footwork but zero charisma in the pic’s key role. Most dialogue scenes are framed in tight Sergio Leone-style closeup, emphasizing the actors’ wooden nature. At that proximity, we notice that Rathbone never blinks; nor can he be counted on to deliver any of the comic relief of his animated counterpart.

I could go on. The issue here is not that M. Night just happened to find these amazing kids to play these roles who just happened to be white. This is what he or the producers or the studio set out to do from the beginning because, even though millions of people love the cartoon and its clearly Asian characters, they felt that audiences just can’t handle brown and yellow people as the heroes. As the evil villains, sure. But protagonists must be white, right?

Whitewashing, no matter how much you pretty it up with the magical casting feeling of amazingness, is still just damn wrong.

The second half of that paragraph, which you probably didn’t even read because the first part was so rage-inducing with its faily wrongness, I shall paste again, because it also needs addressing:

Adding to the mix is the fact that some roles written for white people have been won by actors of color, and some roles written for men have been played by women. In other words, whitewashing isn’t a one-way street. It’s a difficult situation that places filmmakers between the goal of finding magic and not offending audiences. At the end of the day, most directors simply want to tell a good story.

Jesus. Okay, deep breath. First of all, the conceit of having women play roles written for men is usually about deconstruction more than it’s about some magical audition process or someone being “right” for a role. And I can’t come up with any examples of people of color playing roles “written for white people” unless you’re talking about classical theater or something. Maybe they mean Sam Jackson as Nick Fury? But again, when POC play, uh “white” roles, that actually has a different weight and purpose behind it than whitewashing. The power differentials there are NOT equal. Are POC overrepresented in Hollywood movies and American television? No. Are white people? Yes. So when whitewashing occurs, do you know who it hurts and disrespects and diminishes? POC.

The fact that this Realms columnist doesn’t understand any of this is already major fail. The fact that his or her editor doesn’t understand any of this is even bigger fail. And it’s leading many people to question why they would even bother to save such a magazine from its impending cancellation when all they have to look forward to is a bunch of racefail in the non-fiction section.

I’m just going to bottom line it for you: Whitewashing is never okay no matter what. If you don’t agree, then you’re really too far gone to exist in polite and cultured society and perhaps you should do us all a favor and go back to the cave you most certainly crawled out of.

Is that too harsh?

Realms of Fantasy: Full Of Some Whitewashing You Don’t Care To Read About is a post from: K. Tempest Bradford

* Actually, we all had a really lovely con.

A picture is worth… is a post from: K. Tempest Bradford

Looks like I will be on four panels/discussions at Readercon this weekend. In addition to that we’re having the eBooks and SF Magazines discussion on Saturday night. Here’s my schedule for those who are interested:

Talk / Discussion: How Electrons have Changed Writing and Reading — Friday 4:00 PM, ME/CT
Cecilia Tan with discussion by Inanna Arthen, Leah Bobet, K. Tempest Bradford, Barbara Krasnoff, K. A. Laity

eBooks, the Internet, social media networks, PayPal — have these really changed the writer/reader relationship forever? Not surprisingly, SF readers are early adopters of new tech and sf publishers are leading the way in new content delivery. Is it really possible with new tech for a writer to cut out the publisher and still make a living? Is the writer who wants to “just write” doomed to obscurity now? Writers, what forays into the new frontier of electronic publishing have you made and what did you find out there in the wild lands? Readers, what have you enjoyed and sought out, what would you welcome?

Panel: The New and Improved Future of Magazines – Friday 8:00 PM, Salon G
K. Tempest Bradford, Neil Clarke, Liz Gorinsky (L), Gavin J. Grant, Matthew Kressel.

After last year’s “The Future of Magazines” panels, participant K. Tempest Bradford wrote: “The magazines and anthologies that I love tend to have editors who have taken the time to examine themselves or their culture, to expend their knowledge of other people and ways of being, to open their minds. These magazines and anthologies contain far more stories I want to read by authors of many varied backgrounds. As I said, it’s not fully about print vs. online, it’s about better magazines and books.” This time, creators and proponents of both print and online magazines collaborate on determining ways that any genre magazine can create a brighter and better-read future for itself, using Bradford’s comment as a launching point^[1].

eBooks and Magazines Planning Discussion — Saturday 6:00 PM, Meet in the lobby

Those of you interested in discussing the Magazine/eBook open source project, we’re going to meet at Readercon during the dinner break since this is the time that’s none of us are likely to have something else scheduled.

If you can’t make this time, that’s fine. We will also have an online space to discuss things after the con is over.

And yes, we will eat dinner while we discuss if we all decide the dinner time is fine. :) Meet in the lobby of the hotel, then we’ll decide where to get dinner. (Facebook event is here if you want to RSVP.)

Talk / Discussion: Interstitial Arts Foundation Town Meeting — Sunday 10:00 AM, RI
Sarah Smith with discussion by K. Tempest Bradford, Theodora Goss, Alaya Dawn Johnson, Shira Lipkin

The IAF is a group of “Artists Without Borders” who celebrate art that is made in the interstices between genres and categories. It is art that flourishes in the borderlands between different disciplines, mediums, and cultures. The IAF provides border-crossing artists and art scholars a forum and a focus for their efforts. Rather than creating a new genre with new borders, they support the free movement of artists across the borders of their choice. They support the development of a new vocabulary with which to view and critique border-crossing works, and they celebrate the large community of interstitial artists working in North America and around the world. The annual Interstitial Arts Foundation Town Meeting at Readercon is an exciting opportunity to catch up with the IAF and its many supporters to hear about they’re doing to support the interstitial art community in 2010, solicit your ideas for future projects, and to give you a voice in the development of interstitial art.

Talk / Discussion: How to Write for a Living When You Can’t Live Off Your Fiction – Sunday 11:00 AM, RI
Barbara Krasnoff with discussion by Inanna Arthen, K. Tempest Bradford, Jeffrey A. Carver, Rose Fox, Jeff Hecht, Alison Sinclair, Gayle Surrette

You’ve just been laid off from your staff job, you can’t live on the royalties from your fiction writing, and your Significant Other has taken a cut in pay. How do you pay the rent? Well, you can find freelance work writing articles, white papers, reviews, blogs, and other non-sfnal stuff. Despite today’s lean journalistic market, it’s still possible to make a living writing, editing, and/or publishing. Let’s talk about where and how you can sell yourself as a professional writer, whether blogging can be done for a living, and how else you can use your talent to keep the wolf from the door. Bring whatever ideas, sources, and contacts you have.

Footnotes

1. Yes, it is a little weird for me that they chose a quote from something I wrote to base this discussion on…

My Readercon 21 Schedule is a post from: K. Tempest Bradford

The Doctor Who season finale was just as mediocre and disappointing as the rest of the season. I don’t know what the hell everyone else is so happy about, except perhaps Steven Moffet’s lackluster turn as head writer has somehow lowered everyone’s bar and they were happy to see anything resembling a moving bit of drama. Cut for spoilers, unfortunately too late for many… sorry. :(

Yes, that last scene at the wedding was the kind of moment that’s supposed to make your heart swell along with the music, but at that point I was just so done with everything about that episode that I found myself kind of bored. I feel like Moffet wanted to capture the essence of the Doctor’s previous sacrifices for the common good, like when he ended the time war by essentially destroying almost everything he loved along with almost everything he hated. But there comes a point where that meme gets old. And since we know there will be no real and lasting consequences, it ends up not mattering in the least.

And to top it off, we don’t even get to know who was pulling the strings. I mean, we have an idea, but I like it better when I know.

Also: leave the fucking Daleks alone, Moffet. Jesus.

I hate to harsh anyone’s squee, but… is a post from: K. Tempest Bradford

Shorter Kathryn Cramer: How dare conventions promote panels that are hostile toward people who repeatedly engage in racist, sexist, or otherwise prejudicial speech or actions against oppressed groups within the SF community. You are making those of us who want to prop up the oppressive status quo that has served us so well feel uncomfortable, and I think that’s just wrong.

Anonymized link, for those who care.

And she says this without any sense of irony, too… is a post from: K. Tempest Bradford

Remember that he is the masshole^[1] who compared including women and minorities in an anthology of science fiction stories to finding lettuce in reams of copy paper.

In other words, he is not to be taken seriously at all, ever. His ignorance stands as a monument to his vast privilege wanking which stands as a monument to… something. So of course he doesn’t understand Who Fears Death. It’s not like he tried. It’s all just lettuce and potatoes to him.

Footnotes

1. that’s mass asshole to you all playing at home

Before you get too upset at Paul DiFilippo’s review of Nnedi’s book… is a post from: K. Tempest Bradford

So I have a couple of stories that I’d like to sell as individual eBooks, just to try the whole process out. I’ve made the ePub file — which took more doing than should have been necessary… — and I’ve tried it out on the eReaders I have around. But I’d really appreciate it if those of you out there with an eReader or a smartphone that has an EPUB-reading app would check it for me as well. Just let me know in the comments if you’d like a copy and I’ll send it to the email you leave there. Thanks!

Next step is getting accounts on and uploading my story to some eBook stores. I’m thinking iBooks, Kindle, Sony, Kobo, B&N, Scribd and maybe B&N once their self-publishing thing happens. Anyone have experience with these they want to share?

Trying Out This eBook Thang is a post from: K. Tempest Bradford

So, normally I am an RPatz fan, though not a fangirl. I think the dude is pretty sharp looking, and I love the way he makes fun of Twilight and Stephanie Meyer. But looking at the new trailer, I am sort of appalled at Bella. Perhaps because I have never seen Jacob and Edward standing together on screen, but Edward looks really fucking nasty in this new movie, and even moreso next to shiny, brown-skinned Jacob. I mean, I have have never been struck by that horrendously applied white makeup before and WTF is up with the yellow-ass eyes? How is it that people in Forks or whatever town they are in do not know that the Cullens are vampires? They look like a baker attacked them while they’re recovering from malaria. WTF.

I suppose that this should not make any sense to me because, if it did, then the books would start making sense, and one of y’all would have to kidnap me and stage an intervention or something. Still, I have seen other vampire movies that manage to make them look all sexy while pale and this is not one of them. Why didn’t she choose the brown wolf boy? Maybe Bella is racist! Or… maybe these books (and the makeup crew) just suck.

Anyone care to help me out here?

My Reaction Upon Viewing The Twilight Eclipse Trailer is a post from: K. Tempest Bradford

I’ve been thinking about writing this post since the Take Back The SciFi Redux panel at WisCon where we talked about media that portrayed rape in a horrid, sketchy way but also mentioned some media that did it well. The latter list was very small, as you can imagine.

I’ve railed against the way writers of books and television shows and movies use rape at least twice before. But there are obviously some people who still don’t get it, and they don’t know why they don’t get it. What makes the portrayal of rape in book X palatable to me, but the portrayal in book Y sends me into a fit of rage?

There are three books I’ve read in recent years that make excellent examples – two bad examples, one positive example:

• The Two Pearls of Wisdom by Alison Goodman
• Life by Gwyneth Jones
• The Privilege of the Sword by Ellen Kushner

Below is a description of each book that contains spoilers for the story and possible triggers for those who’ve been raped or sexually assaulted, so please take care when clicking. Though my hope is that the issues raised will be more helpful than harmful.

The Two Pearls of Wisdom by Alison Goodman

The basic premise here is that the protagonist, Eon, is in training to become a Dragoneye — a magic-wielder who helps to channel the powers of the ascendant dragons in this Asian-influenced fantasy world. There’s a dragon for each year in a 12-year cycle — Rat Dragon, Tiger Dragon, Horse Dragon, etc. — and apprentice Dragoneyes are chosen in the year their Dragon is ascendant, then come to full power 12 years later when the cycle comes back around again.

Only boys are allowed to train and become Dragoneyes. Eon is actually a girl in disguise. Her master decided to train and disguise her because she can see the dragons when most people – including the Dragoneyes – can’t, except during special occasions. When Eon goes through the public ritual where the dragon appears and chooses the apprentice, something unexpected happens: a long lost dragon called the mirror dragon (since it’s the dragon for the year of the dragon) appears even though it’s the year of the Rat Dragon, and chooses Eon as apprentice. This very naturally pisses off the Rat Dragoneye dude because he was all set to come to power, and he’s a bastard, anyway.

Though this book is full of a lot of stock elements and plot coupons, I found myself completely engaged by Goodman’s writing and drawn to her characters. There’s a lot going for this book, but my enjoyment of it stopped dead about a third of the way through.

Around this time the Rat Dragoneye dude discovers that Eon is actually a girl disguised as a boy. This is wonderful news for him because he’d been trying to find a way to regain the power he lost when the mirror dragon showed up, was annoyed that the other Dragoneyes on the council and the emperor were politically against him, and he really hated Eon’s master. He pulls Eon into his room and is all “Hahaha, I have found you out! Now you will do what I say and align yourself with me politically or I will expose your secret!”

You’d think that would be enough, right? Oh, but no. After that’s all settled, he decides that he needs to rape Eon, too.

I did not throw the book across the room, but I came really, really close.

It was over a week before I picked it up again and found that Eon didn’t actually get raped because someone came knocking at the door with an emergency. That doesn’t make it any better.

The first thing that annoyed me about this – other than the fact that it happened – was that I wasn’t convinced the Rat Dragoneye would go right for rape. After all, he had multiple ways to exert his power over Eon and he enumerated those ways, so why the hell did he then decide rape was a good idea? Furthermore, it had already been established that for years the Dragoneye dude had been taking an herb or potion or whatever that had the same effect as steroids, including the impotence part. So… WTF?

Second, I am always annoyed when writers go right for rape because it smacks of lazy writing. Yes, rape happens in real life. I am well aware. But I’m also aware that, as a writer, I get to choose what kind of world I build. Goodman chose to build a Chinese-influenced world, yes, but she altered aspects of culture and history. This could have been another alternation. She could have – should have – chosen to create a world in which sexual violence is not part of the default character of the society.

Goodman compounds her error by having the Rat Dragoneye almost rape Eon again at the end of the book. And this time there’s no one to knock at the door or anything. It’s just a really long, drawn out scene of him trying to get at her in a public place in front of other people… and then something magical happens and it’s all okay again.

This is not the way to do it, people. All too often writers use rape or attempted rape to show that a character is a Very Bad Person. In this case, we didn’t need the rape to show us this. Goodman did a wonderful job of painting the Rat Dragoneye as bad, scheming, evil. She gave him plenty of ways to have power over and control Eon. It’s like she did all the good work of creating complex characters and then, in a fit of madness, threw in this bullshit. Or in a fit of lazy writing. Or maybe a fit of “well, it has to happen this way because he’s evil and she’s a woman.”

No. This does not have to be the way. Like I said, as a writer, you can choose not to make it this way.

Life by Gwyneth Jones

It’s been a long time since I read this book, so details are sketchy. I’ll relate what I remember as best I can. This novel is a fictional biography of a woman named Anna Senoz, a scientist who makes a potentially breakthrough discovery about gender while contending with her life as a mother, wife, etc. I was a big fan of this book until, again, I ran into an unnecessary rape scene. But this one wasn’t of the “Here’s why the bad guy is bad” variety, but instead of transparent author manipulation, which is just as bad but for different reasons.

At the end of Anna’s university career she has to work with this guy who is a typical alpha male and who gets annoyed with her because she either won’t let him take credit for something she did or won’t let him take full credit or maybe she plans to report something he did to their professors. I honestly can’t remember. But essentially whatever this dude wanted from Anna, doing it would be detrimental to her future career and she doesn’t want to do it.

He comes over to her flat, tries to convince her to do what he wants, fails. He refuses to leave. He cooks for her. More convincing that fails. Then he forces himself on her all while attempting to convince her it’s something she wants.

The result of this rape is that Anna curls into herself. She lets him have whatever academic thing he wanted or, at least, doesn’t challenge him. It changes the whole track of her career, which eventually leads to the breakthrough discovery she makes near the end of the novel.

When I read the book (I did finish it) I felt like giving Gwyneth Jones the evil eye and saying “I see what you did there.”

Blatant author manipulation is annoying no matter what form it comes in, but that it came in the form of a rape just pissed me off double. And the thing is, Jones is an amazing writer and (I would have assumed) better than such trickery.

Thankfully, the rest of the book isn’t all about Anna’s triumph over the devastation rape wrought on her – another tired trope of tiredness. It certainly affects her throughout life, but her life is not about that rape. This is one thing Jones did right.

But I cannot get behind the rape because it was not in any way organic to the story nor necessary except in that Jones needed Anna derailed somehow. I felt, and still feel, that if Jones couldn’t have figured out a way to do this without getting painted in the corner, there’s something really wrong.

The Privilege of the Sword by Ellen Kushner

I’ll reveal two things up front about this book. 1: It’s one of my favorites. I just love it. 2: It’s written by one of my favorite people. That may color my opinion in this case, but others are free to chime in and refute or back me up.

This book is about Katherine Talbert, niece of the Mad Duke Tremontaine in Kushner’s secondary world (first introduced in Swordspoint). The Duke brings her from the country to his home in the city and makes her learn swordcraft. At first she resists, because fighting with a sword is not something young ladies are supposed to be up to, but then she becomes quite good and learns to love it.

One of the secondary characters in the book is Artemesia Fitz-Levy, a girl about Katherine’s age (16?) who is on the verge of coming out in society at the beginning of the book. By the middle she’s been to many balls and parties, found herself courted by a couple of nice boys, but gets a marriage proposal from Anthony Deverin, Lord Ferris. Ferris is the main antagonist from Swordpoint, though Kushner does a good job of showing us that he’s a jerkwad at the beginning of TPOTS as well.

Ferris is much older than Artemesia – he’s the same generation as her father – and she’s not strictly attracted to him. But her family convinces her that the match is highly desirable and she’s in favor of having a powerful, well-off husband.

Artemesia learns that there are balls and parties that she’s unaware of and not invited to – because they’re for the seedier element in the city… and men – and challenges her fiancée to take her to one of these parties, so he does. At the Rouge’s Ball Ferris seriously gets off on watching other masked men dance with Artemesia in ways that are not, shall we say, proper. Then, when he’s supposedly taking her somewhere to rest and collect herself, his “passion” for her overflows and he pushes her up against a wall and rapes her.

Afterwards, as she’s hiding from Ferris, Katherine stumbles upon her. Finding out what he did, she immediately finds a relative of Artemesia’s to see her safely home.

The closest real-world analogue to this is obviously Date Rape. And what follows in this particular subplot is typical to what many women experience after this type of assault. Artemesia’s parents think she is being absolutely silly when she wants to break off the engagement with Ferris. It would cause a scandal! Plus, she was going to marry him, anyway, so what’s the big deal if they had sex before the wedding? Plus, she was foolish to have him take her to such a party as that. And really, she’s always been overdramatic. She should just get over herself and feel lucky that nothing worse happened to her.

Ferris, of course, tells her that she wanted it, it was her fault, and that she’ll learn to like it when they’re married.

The only person who feels that she was wronged, that it was not her fault, and that she absolutely should not marry Ferris, is Katherine. And this is where the book gets awesome. Katherine, who is now a swordsman (swordswoman?), challenges Ferris to a duel to settle the matter of honor. Though her family feels that their honor has not been impinged, Artemesia rightfully feels that her personal honor, which matters just as much if not more, has certainly been. Katherine feels the same. And so she fights for her friend’s honor. And wins.

Here’s where I think Kushner’s portrayal goes right where many others go wrong.

First, the rape was not used to establish Ferris’ evil villainy. We knew he was an ass and, oh look, more proof. (ETA: This is not necessarily an issue with the other two books under discussion, but is a problem in general with books that include rape or sexual assault. Sorry I didn’t make that clear before!)

Second, the whole situation arises naturally from what we’ve seen of the characters, culture and situation in the novel. Even more so if you read Swordspoint. The sequence of events that happen before the rape don’t feel like author manipulation, and you don’t get a sense she just dropped it in there because Katherine needed someone to duel, or because Artemesia needed to be “ruined” or whatever.

Third, the reactions of Artemesia’s family and her attacker are so fucking typical it makes you want to scream, especially if you’ve been through something similar or watched a friend go through it. But the attitude of the book is always: These people are wrong. Dead wrong. Look at how wrong these people are. Even though Artemesia is depicted as being a bit silly and too concerned with clothes and balls and such, it is never, ever implied by the authorial voice that this was something she deserved or had coming.

Fourth, when her family and society fail Artemesia, it’s another girl her age who believes her, consoles her, and then fights for her honor. Because of Katherine she doesn’t have to marry Ferris and she gains a personal triumph, though of course it doesn’t erase what happened to her. The whole novel is about how Katherine becomes powerful and empowered because she has skill with a sword, and this subplot is one part of that. It’s also a big Fuck You to a society that tries to keep girls confined to a narrow social construct.

I guess what it comes down to is that The Privilege of the Sword does not merely reflect the way things are except with fantasy furniture, but points the way toward the way things should be by modeling it in many different ways in the book.

Conclusion

One good thing I can say about all of these books is that the rape or attempted rape is never written in a way that’s meant to titillate or blur the line between sex and rape. It’s never ambiguous or labeled “seduction” or any such bull. When you start looking at depictions of rape written by men, you get way more of that.

But with the Goodman and Jones novels I ended up feeling very negative toward them overall – even though there was plenty to like otherwise – due to the rapes depicted. And this is how I feel about almost every other book with a rape, attempted rape, or sexual assault.

I just wish that writers would stop using rape as a shorthand or shortcut. I have said in the past that we should just set rape aside all together since most people don’t seem to know how to handle it right. But TPOTS is the example that makes me say instead: why can’t you all be more like this, if you must?

Portrayals of Rape in Fiction: An Exploration of Where It’s Done Wrong or Right and Why is a post from: K. Tempest Bradford