So, to continue from last Friday’s musings, I was going back through my RSS feeds and going through some articles that I’d put aside, because it seemed like I should actually read them and I didn’t have time earlier while I was catching up.
Every now and then, some controversy comes up in the scifi/fantasy community–someone does or says something sexist or racist, whether it’s an author or something at a convention, or everyone hate-tweets someone they don’t agree with hosting something or other, or someone insulted something they’d never read and received fandom backlash because of it, and I read a whole bunch of posts on the matter (usually a week or two after they happen, because I am always late to the party) from a bunch of other writers, all of whom have excellent points and are witty and brilliant.
And I almost never say anything (because, again, late to the party), but part of me wonders if eventually I’ll have to. Like, if someday, when I (hopefully) become a best-selling fantasy author, will I need to comment on the latest sexist thing that’s popped up in medieval-based fantasy or hard science fiction? (I’ve noticed people really only talk about things that directly relate to them. Probably for the best.)
I have John Scalzi’s blog on my feed, and on his blog, he’ll have controversy-related posts, and a lot of times they’ll start out something like “Well, a lot of you have asked me about x-controversy (some not even scifi-related), and so here’s a post about it.” And maybe he answers them because he’s also president of SFWA and feels some sort of social and/or political necessity to do so.
And I suppose it’s my blog and I don’t have to talk about anything I don’t want to, and it’s entirely possible that everyone else rambles about their current projects and writes alpaca poetry when they’re not writing insightful posts about the state of things.
But part of me wonders, if the day ever comes, if I’ll be able to express myself as elegantly as everyone else seems to be able to.
