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FPB's Marvels of the Natural Universe
Aug. 24th, 2004 08:46 amAhem! Are you sitting comfortably? Then we'll begin.
Several months ago, I published a story called GAY BAR on Fiction Alley. GAY BAR was the shortest fic I'd ever written, deliberately craggy, presenting a few images of unhappiness with no comment or explanation, setting up a situation with no plain moral. The reader, you see, had - shock! horror! - to do his/her own interpreting; and the images shown were a postwar Harry Potter, unhappy, dumped by a boyfriend, drunk, and still the hero who had saved the whole magical world from a monstrous tyranny; and Draco Malfoy, married, rich, comfortable, with five children - and still a monster, hankering for tyranny and murder.
Well, the demand that readers should understand the images placed before them was clearly too much for many feeble minds. Astonishingly, people began to say that the fic was anti-gay - because I had presented a gay man as a hero and a straight married man with five children as a monster. But the worst was yet to come.
At the time, I did not know about backstabber threads; so I was not prepared for a sudden outpouring of vicious hatred, a month or so AFTER publication. Within a couple of days, some twenty hate-filled posts went up, with no interference from FA's contemptible mods, who forbade me to reply as the filth deserved. (It was then that I concluded that the FA mods are morally null, eager to root out misplaced commas, but utterly indifferent to public lies, defamation, and gang assault; and conceived a contempt for them that I have not yet seen reason to alter.) People just queued up to revel in prejudice and deliberate misconstruction. More than one post showed evidence of never having read the fic at all. I found the whole experience physically revolting, like coming into contact with excrement; and I withdrew the fic (only from FA) out of sheer disgust.
Truly, as the poet said, there is no marvel more wonderful than man. Within a few months of these events, three of the worst offenders, and one person who had insulted me in a related thread, had the unimaginable cheek to write to this LJ. I could not believe my eyes. Of course, the persons concerned were immediately banned and personally informed of the ban with short and pregnant private e-mails; and, to my everlasting astonishment, most of them showed hurt surprise, as though, after what they had done, they still imagined that civilized intercourse with me was a right of theirs.
Several months ago, I published a story called GAY BAR on Fiction Alley. GAY BAR was the shortest fic I'd ever written, deliberately craggy, presenting a few images of unhappiness with no comment or explanation, setting up a situation with no plain moral. The reader, you see, had - shock! horror! - to do his/her own interpreting; and the images shown were a postwar Harry Potter, unhappy, dumped by a boyfriend, drunk, and still the hero who had saved the whole magical world from a monstrous tyranny; and Draco Malfoy, married, rich, comfortable, with five children - and still a monster, hankering for tyranny and murder.
Well, the demand that readers should understand the images placed before them was clearly too much for many feeble minds. Astonishingly, people began to say that the fic was anti-gay - because I had presented a gay man as a hero and a straight married man with five children as a monster. But the worst was yet to come.
At the time, I did not know about backstabber threads; so I was not prepared for a sudden outpouring of vicious hatred, a month or so AFTER publication. Within a couple of days, some twenty hate-filled posts went up, with no interference from FA's contemptible mods, who forbade me to reply as the filth deserved. (It was then that I concluded that the FA mods are morally null, eager to root out misplaced commas, but utterly indifferent to public lies, defamation, and gang assault; and conceived a contempt for them that I have not yet seen reason to alter.) People just queued up to revel in prejudice and deliberate misconstruction. More than one post showed evidence of never having read the fic at all. I found the whole experience physically revolting, like coming into contact with excrement; and I withdrew the fic (only from FA) out of sheer disgust.
Truly, as the poet said, there is no marvel more wonderful than man. Within a few months of these events, three of the worst offenders, and one person who had insulted me in a related thread, had the unimaginable cheek to write to this LJ. I could not believe my eyes. Of course, the persons concerned were immediately banned and personally informed of the ban with short and pregnant private e-mails; and, to my everlasting astonishment, most of them showed hurt surprise, as though, after what they had done, they still imagined that civilized intercourse with me was a right of theirs.
