Esplain?

[mr_mercutio]

Alright, so as Metafandom had made painfully clear over the last little while, there's some kind of brouhaha going on in fandom-in-general about race? I'm hearing it called Race Fail 2009 in some circles. I have no idea what the hell is happening, only that apparently there have been heated debates and hurt feelings and a lot of white people vs.

Comments

[furiosity]

aang_aint_white.

[mr_mercutio]

Okay, so that gives me some context, thank you F. I'm still scratching my head as to why there are so many hurt feelings and cries about racism inherent in fandom, etc. I mean, I can definitely understand the idea of being annoyed/upset with the casting of the Avatar thing, but wow, people seem to be really up in arms against each other here.

I really should just try to sift through all the posts on Metafandom, but there are so many! *sooo laaaazy*

[xtricks]

Yeah, it generally ends up more or less tearing at our own. Elizabeth Bear was the most recent spark for the racewank.

[xtricks]

It comes up repeatedly in various incarnations - last time there was a blow-up about yuletide and jews, there was another racewank six months or so?? There was a kink comm that used the word miscegenation as a kink, rather than the less inflamatory 'interracial'. Etc, etc. Seems to happen approximatly every six months - though the frequency seems to be slowly increasing.

As far as I can tell, they almost always end up being huge, unweildy, make lots of people very angry and - IMO - the level of frustration generally makes people more entrenched in their views rather than less.

Fandom Wank for all that people fuss about the way the posters behave there, is a good source for the varous fandom upsets.

[mr_mercutio]

Oh yes, I remember the yuletide thing now. Sigh. Perhaps I had blocked it from my mind lol.

But I do think you're right in that it just seems to just make things worse as people get all up in arms about it. I never see so many posts on Metafandom as I do when there's some gigantic wank happening that people feel offended by. I usually try to ignore it all, but this seems to just be escalating so much that I thought it might actually be important this time. Starting to think that it's just yet another fun time on the Livejournals.