I see as proof if you want people to support you and want you to do well, be nice to the people in the industry in question and don't insult half of them...
"Don't Attack Reviewers"
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tinkerdan
∞<Q-Satis
I'm not so sure::
::The jury is still out while there are people around RotyH who are trying to paint her/(whatever) as the victim.
Based on what I have seen on Goodreads alone I would say there are a large number of copy-cats that have been spawned with large gatherings of followers so even though the outing of RH seems big it is probably just the tip of a very dark deep iceberg.
And based on the articles related to RH I would guess that the reviews done were probably the milder end of RH's temperament.
::The jury is still out while there are people around RotyH who are trying to paint her/(whatever) as the victim.
Based on what I have seen on Goodreads alone I would say there are a large number of copy-cats that have been spawned with large gatherings of followers so even though the outing of RH seems big it is probably just the tip of a very dark deep iceberg.
And based on the articles related to RH I would guess that the reviews done were probably the milder end of RH's temperament.
psychotick
Dangerously confused
Hi,
Never heard of RH before, or any of her aliases. But my advice for those harrassed by this woman is simple:
Look, first up, this is online behaviour. It’s not real. This woman hasn’t come up to anyone in the street with a bottle of acid etc, and she won’t. The reason she feels able to make these outragious claims is because of the protection the various persona’s grant her. (Now it seems that that protection has vanished and she has been left exposed.) So instead of thinking of her as some great big internet monster, consider her instead as a sad, toothless, old dog barking in the distance, desperate for some sort of attention. And the correct emotional responce to receiving her communications is not fear, but laughter and maybe a little pity for her.
Second, she is actually afraid of consequences. I know this may sound silly, but she’s making apologies and has a long history of deleting her most inflammatory posts. If she had no fear she wouldn’t be doing that. The reason for this behaviour I would guess is that she rightly fears the consequences – and she should. Threats made online are just as criminal as those made to your face.
Third, and this is as true on the internet as it is on the school playground, bullies only have power that you give them. So don’t give it to them. Don’t feed the trolls as they say.
As a general rule I would say that if you receive bullying communications from someone, do not engage. It’s not worth your time. And if you do feel the need, then your first responce should be to report the posts etc to the moderators if it’s on a forum, as innappropriate and ask them to delete it. If the trolls don’t get fed they will quickly move on to another target. If you respond however, they know they have you hooked.
If threats are made, take a screen capture, and report it directly to your local police. Make it your go to policy. No one has the right to threaten you. And in this case, if people have the evidence, I would recommend doing just that.
Cheers, Greg.
Never heard of RH before, or any of her aliases. But my advice for those harrassed by this woman is simple:
Look, first up, this is online behaviour. It’s not real. This woman hasn’t come up to anyone in the street with a bottle of acid etc, and she won’t. The reason she feels able to make these outragious claims is because of the protection the various persona’s grant her. (Now it seems that that protection has vanished and she has been left exposed.) So instead of thinking of her as some great big internet monster, consider her instead as a sad, toothless, old dog barking in the distance, desperate for some sort of attention. And the correct emotional responce to receiving her communications is not fear, but laughter and maybe a little pity for her.
Second, she is actually afraid of consequences. I know this may sound silly, but she’s making apologies and has a long history of deleting her most inflammatory posts. If she had no fear she wouldn’t be doing that. The reason for this behaviour I would guess is that she rightly fears the consequences – and she should. Threats made online are just as criminal as those made to your face.
Third, and this is as true on the internet as it is on the school playground, bullies only have power that you give them. So don’t give it to them. Don’t feed the trolls as they say.
As a general rule I would say that if you receive bullying communications from someone, do not engage. It’s not worth your time. And if you do feel the need, then your first responce should be to report the posts etc to the moderators if it’s on a forum, as innappropriate and ask them to delete it. If the trolls don’t get fed they will quickly move on to another target. If you respond however, they know they have you hooked.
If threats are made, take a screen capture, and report it directly to your local police. Make it your go to policy. No one has the right to threaten you. And in this case, if people have the evidence, I would recommend doing just that.
Cheers, Greg.
Hmmmm, I can't say too much about her but I knew of one occasion where she quoted someone out of context without knowledge of them and with no means of comeback from them. Compared to some of the things I have viewed (but have no direct knowledge of) it was very mild and yet still very mean and caused some hurt. Her apology doesn't wash with me. If it had been a single post in anger, I'd say okay, we all do that. If it had been direct attacks a victim could avoid/walk away from/have knowledge of except through damaging secondary hearsay, I'd say at least she was up front. But it was bullying, trolling, cleverly done, often too sly to prove anything by or removed as soon as the damage was done. The industry is a small one and her actions have hurt a lot (editors accused of racism, authors attacked with no means of rebuttal) and I, for one, won't be supporting her as an author. It mightn't mean much but I am, through personal history, massively anti-bullying, and can't condone it (not that anyone here was.)
Funny thing about RH, I read one of her reviews, an actual critique based on writing rather than a checklist of offence, and it was spot on (Throne of the Crescent Moon, if you're interested). She had the capacity to add to the community but chose not to.
tinkerdan
∞<Q-Satis
The reviews alone might be passable::
::but it seems that there are elements that duck into the creepy area about this persona.
That aside despite all the negative attention the author persona's novella's seems to be doing well enough in sales on amazon.
Don't you feel tempted now to find out how well they write.
Just avoid reviewing it-that could be deadly.
::but it seems that there are elements that duck into the creepy area about this persona.
That aside despite all the negative attention the author persona's novella's seems to be doing well enough in sales on amazon.
Don't you feel tempted now to find out how well they write.
Just avoid reviewing it-that could be deadly.
Nerds_feather
Purveyor of Nerdliness
She's a very talented writer. I can't say what will happen to her career from this point on, but she is definitely a very talented writer.
tinkerdan
∞<Q-Satis
Okay; so how are we to take you serious::
:: when we know any other response might result in broken kneecaps.
http://www.elizabethbear.com/?p=2506
:: when we know any other response might result in broken kneecaps.
http://www.elizabethbear.com/?p=2506
Perhaps that should be "was". She has spat on as many people within the sff community as she could manage, writers and fans. that I cannot seriously imagine any mainstream part of the industry supporting her in any way - publishing her stories, or buying them.
tinkerdan's link to the Elizabeth Bear piece is correct - she's an abuser. Some may pity her, but IMO it's more important to sympathise with those she has hurt. Let's be clear - she's not simply said a few mean words - we had a published short-story writer join chronicles, then drop out when RH announced something on the lines that he should be beheaded. I met him at one of the cons, and he was a nervous wreck for it.
I know she's had supporters here, based on perceived political affiliation. But IMO there is no real distinction between the extreme militant left and fascist right - both seek to prey upon others to justify their own moral superiority - and RH certainly wasn't afraid to encourage that blurring with her blatant racist and sexist diatribes, usually directly very personally at others for no other reason than they had different tastes in fiction.
BS has defined herself not as a writer, but as RequiresHate - someone who continued a ten year campaign of abuse against others. Her attempts to apologise seek only to protect herself rather than honestly accept that she ever did anything really wrong. If she's really serious about being accepted, then IMO she'll have to spend a very long time proving that she is no longer ever going to be RH, instead of making excuses.
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While I find the language of all this pretty tedious (seemingly endless talk of narratives, toxicity, healing and all that stuff), it’s impossible to deny that quite a lot of amount of harm has been done to quite a few people, without any good cause, basically because one woman seems to be somewhat unhinged. Also, of course, the targets are particularly vulnerable. If you genuinely are the only (say) Sri Lankan cyberpunk writer around, having someone loudly proclaim that you’ve no right to say that you are is not going to do you any good at all.
Personally, I think this is a stern warning against people allowing this sort of thing to go on because “She makes us think”. This does rather flag up the tradition of a lot of progressive/left wing types to side with genuinely unpleasant people because they allegedly represent some sort of oppressed group. My own suspicion is that these aren’t just mistakes, but that such dangerous people have a kind of allure to people who have decided that their own cultural background is irredeemably evil and are looking for a new one to support. It’s too easy to say that progressive types “aren’t immune” to this kind of thing – I suspect that they’re particularly prone to it.
Anyhow, perhaps this will lead to a bit of clarity in writing (although I’ve just stumbled upon the phrase “centralizing her redemption-narrative”, and have doubts). I thought that the RH posts I read were cranky raving: 50% buzzwords and 50% mindless swearing, although her fiction might be great for all I know. What I hope people will think is that it doesn’t matter what your angle is – if you’re not prepared to conduct yourself with a bit of decency, you shouldn’t have much of a voice at all.
Personally, I think this is a stern warning against people allowing this sort of thing to go on because “She makes us think”. This does rather flag up the tradition of a lot of progressive/left wing types to side with genuinely unpleasant people because they allegedly represent some sort of oppressed group. My own suspicion is that these aren’t just mistakes, but that such dangerous people have a kind of allure to people who have decided that their own cultural background is irredeemably evil and are looking for a new one to support. It’s too easy to say that progressive types “aren’t immune” to this kind of thing – I suspect that they’re particularly prone to it.
Anyhow, perhaps this will lead to a bit of clarity in writing (although I’ve just stumbled upon the phrase “centralizing her redemption-narrative”, and have doubts). I thought that the RH posts I read were cranky raving: 50% buzzwords and 50% mindless swearing, although her fiction might be great for all I know. What I hope people will think is that it doesn’t matter what your angle is – if you’re not prepared to conduct yourself with a bit of decency, you shouldn’t have much of a voice at all.
To quote Snoopy from Peanuts - "Rats... I can't stand being ignored."
Publicity = oxygen.
Publicity = oxygen.
Nerds_feather
Purveyor of Nerdliness
We'll see. Time heals all but the deepest wounds, and we don't know what kind of personal apologies she's tendered (in fact one person she had a major dustup with, Kari Sperring, has stated that RH personally apologized to her 2 years ago and she accepted the apology). And she is a very talented writer. Besides, I know a lot of people who think that judging fiction should be completely separable from considerations of the person writing it, so I'd imagine when awards season comes around that she will still get votes for things like Scale-Bright, which I've heard is very good. So I wouldn't be so sure that her time is up.
Plus someone on the publishing side, at least, is bound to see the notoriety as an attraction.
On the other hand, maybe this is going to scare away editors longer-term. We'll see. I'm definitely curious to see how this plays out.
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Nerds_feather
Purveyor of Nerdliness
I don't understand what you mean--please clarify.
The cynical (and perhaps over-imaginative) part of me can't help wondering if everything she's done hasn't been an incredibly convoluted game-plan to help her eventual writing career.
Nerds_feather
Purveyor of Nerdliness
I think if you go back and read the thread about her carefully, the most-frequently expressed opinions are "she goes too far but there are some good points in there" and "there are some good points in there but she also goes too far." There were others with opinions farther in one direction or the other, but I've recently re-read the whole thread and nearly everyone seems to be of the opinion that there were things to take seriously and things not to. (And FTR, that's strictly about the blog. At that time I don't any of us was aware of her pre-blog history and certainly not of her writing as BS.)
I also think "left/right" is the wrong lens with which to view this. Most of the people involved--regardless of where they are located--are on the left part of the spectrum. And not only on the left, but a certain slice of the left (not, say, Marxist, anarchist or green progressive left, for example). Not everyone, but most everyone--Elizabeth Bear, Laura Mixon, Athena Andreadis on one side, Kameron Hurley and Liz Bourke in the middle, Alex MacFarlane, Jaymee Goh, Keffy Kehrli, etc. on the other--is located on this slice. This is why there's so much language Toby doesn't care for--it's employed strategically to frame the narrative within a very specific left-on-left argument.
Except that RH, and her supporters, absolutely advocate otherwise.
The principle is normally applied to writers for their private beliefs, not to those who sought to directly harm the very community they wanted support from.
...came from general observers. But there were people who actively sought to engage and support her through other websites.
Frankly, trolls love to be fed with attention, and the sad thing about this is that it continues. Best thing to do is just leave the entire subject - it's interesting to consider the matter concluded after RH generated so much attention, so now if the person behind RH wants to be respected, they can work at trying to earn it from those willing to listen.
The whole RH hate has been discussed quite extensively on another forum I'm part of and apparently the whole apology thing is just part of a pattern whe pulls every couple of years. Nasty things are said, vitrol increases, threats are made (including hoping an author is raped by dogs) and when it reaches a certain level it's oops, sorry, lessons have been learnt time.
Rather weirdly she also seems to have been rather active on far right sites about a decade ago.
Rather weirdly she also seems to have been rather active on far right sites about a decade ago.
And I see she accused our own James Worrad of stalking her. Which I think most of us who know him will realise is just outlandish. I think she'll do okay with her writing - most people in the world haven't heard of her. But she'll still never be welcome in the sff community, which isn't, I don't think, what she wanted when she shared her sweet new author persona....
Nerds_feather
Purveyor of Nerdliness
This is a moral argument, to say that because RH did not advocate for that, others should not extend her that courtesy. I'm coming at this from a different angle, to say that some people as a rule do not consider an author's person when judging a text. I mean, a lot of people who hate racism still like HP Lovecraft's writing even though he was an inveterate racist. He's dead, of course, but the principle is one a lot of people adhere to quite strictly.
Bottom line, don't assume that everyone or even most everyone is going to avoid her writing because of her blogging/online activity--including those who would actively disapprove of it. Actually, we shouldn't even assume that everyone knows or even cares to know about her blogging/online activity.
Nerds_feather
Purveyor of Nerdliness
Did she? I don't remember that. I do know that there is someone from the RPG forum she used to go to who did legitimately cyberstalk her (there are screencaps and such as evidence for this). But that's from a long time ago and not related to here (or even to SFF).
I also do know, when this first came out, James commented and was quite clear on his blog that he didn't approve of her doxxing.
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