Off topic, but I keep meaning to say: I sent your Northanger Abbey game to Nenya and she's enjoying it SO MUCH!
The "who is a peer?" thing is so blurry, you're right! I think half my flist has SF/F or romance stories published in one venue or another. As far as I know, Isabel Fell could be one of them (I'm pretty sure I'd have heard, but she COULD be). And some of the people who called at that story had multiple actual Hugo awards under their belts (rather than the 1/500,000,000th variety), some people were presidents of professional associations. That's not punching up, and it's debatably not even if it were just within non-pro-writer spaces (which are where, exactly, given how many side hassles we all have?). But where's the line. The multiple Hugo people are also often simultaneously in fandom. Is Naomi Novik my peer? Is her fandom pseude? I've publicly criticised both before, not feeling like I was risking a dog pile, but that could have turned out differently if I'd been unlucky or leveraged it differently. We're all sharing space to some extent.
I have similar problems with critiquing individual actors themselves (especially mid list or lower ones) for agreeing to take roles. Like, if Redmayne had turned down The Danish Girl, the same writing/casting/directing/producing team would likely have hired another cis guy. (Though there have been cases of an actor turning down a role and insisting on diverse casting, and getting it, but they're not that common.) The problems with that movie weren't the front man, so much as *points to comment above.* (I don't care about Redmayne one way or another, maybe he's a dick who deserved to get yelled at, who knows, but he wasn't the biggest issue with The Danish Girl.) But finding the people making the choices, and getting access to them, that's another problem. So often it seems like people fall for an easy target.
(Aside: like the Dr. Mae Jemison quote: "It's important not only for a little black girl growing up to know, yeah, you can become an astronaut because here's Mae Jemison, but it's important for older white males who sometimes make decisions on those careers of those little black girls.")
I'm trying to follow my own Take a Goddamn Breath Challenge form January more. I found that writing out long posts and then using the words to fight monsters on 4thewords instead of posting them helps. I know how much I like the emotional high of being in a pile on, and really don't want to be that person. Sometimes what you can do is not do more harm?
But that too risks going to far back into "if you see something, say nothing, and drink to forget," territory, which leaves fans actually dealing with problematic shit and being marginalised with the community out on their own. Which is also less than ideal.
I haven't found a balance, and I feel like the whole latest round of racism in fandom discussion has really highlighted how much I haven't found a balance.
Not really a lot of solutions in this very long comment, sorry.
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The "who is a peer?" thing is so blurry, you're right! I think half my flist has SF/F or romance stories published in one venue or another. As far as I know, Isabel Fell could be one of them (I'm pretty sure I'd have heard, but she COULD be). And some of the people who called at that story had multiple actual Hugo awards under their belts (rather than the 1/500,000,000th variety), some people were presidents of professional associations. That's not punching up, and it's debatably not even if it were just within non-pro-writer spaces (which are where, exactly, given how many side hassles we all have?). But where's the line. The multiple Hugo people are also often simultaneously in fandom. Is Naomi Novik my peer? Is her fandom pseude? I've publicly criticised both before, not feeling like I was risking a dog pile, but that could have turned out differently if I'd been unlucky or leveraged it differently. We're all sharing space to some extent.
I have similar problems with critiquing individual actors themselves (especially mid list or lower ones) for agreeing to take roles. Like, if Redmayne had turned down The Danish Girl, the same writing/casting/directing/producing team would likely have hired another cis guy. (Though there have been cases of an actor turning down a role and insisting on diverse casting, and getting it, but they're not that common.) The problems with that movie weren't the front man, so much as *points to comment above.* (I don't care about Redmayne one way or another, maybe he's a dick who deserved to get yelled at, who knows, but he wasn't the biggest issue with The Danish Girl.) But finding the people making the choices, and getting access to them, that's another problem. So often it seems like people fall for an easy target.
(Aside: like the Dr. Mae Jemison quote: "It's important not only for a little black girl growing up to know, yeah, you can become an astronaut because here's Mae Jemison, but it's important for older white males who sometimes make decisions on those careers of those little black girls.")
I'm trying to follow my own Take a Goddamn Breath Challenge form January more. I found that writing out long posts and then using the words to fight monsters on 4thewords instead of posting them helps. I know how much I like the emotional high of being in a pile on, and really don't want to be that person. Sometimes what you can do is not do more harm?
But that too risks going to far back into "if you see something, say nothing, and drink to forget," territory, which leaves fans actually dealing with problematic shit and being marginalised with the community out on their own. Which is also less than ideal.
I haven't found a balance, and I feel like the whole latest round of racism in fandom discussion has really highlighted how much I haven't found a balance.
Not really a lot of solutions in this very long comment, sorry.