troubling situation

[fpb]

I generally take no interest whatever in the people who tried (when I knew nothing whatever about them) to make me a fandom wolf's-head. However, there have recently been some violent ructions whose echoes reached me through friends. This has made me curious; and, following up a series of fairly vile LJ entries, I have made a discovery that troubles me greatly.

Molly Moon suffers from a frightful, probably incurable and certainly hideously painful condition.

Let us get things straight. This is the person who (edited)was the first to rush in with the GAY BAR witch-hunt. She has spent months lying about me and misrepresenting me. She has done her best to turn all her friends against me, and a number of the people who are on my never-speak-to-again list have got there because of her incitement. I have not read, and will not read, her fic "featuring" me; but the fact that Chthonia, who knew nothing about the whole matter, was stunned by its contents, tells all that needs saying. This is a person whom I have banned from this LJ as soon as I knew how, and whose "anonymous" posts I have been deleting for months. This is a person whose behaviour towards me (and, I gather, towards one or two other people) I can only describe as despicable.

At the same time, she is in the kind of condition with which, had I known, I would have not wasted a second in offering sympathy and any help I could.

This does not make her behaviour any less putrid. Let us not forget that (edited)she threw herself into the GAY BAR witchhunt with enthusiasm, without making any attempt to understand what it was about and what I was about, at a time when I knew nothing whatsoever about her; she was inspired purely and simply by the need to hate, to find a target for some inner fury that has nothing to do with me, to persecute and misrepresent and tear down. (Incidentally, madam, I have only a BA and am self-taught in all essential areas from Latin to drawing. This for the record.) It may even have something to do with her condition; although I have known many disabled people (having had a little to do with disabled organizations and pro-life groups) and many, perhaps most, of them, however terrible their condition or their pain, were sweet, open-minded, kindly and untroubled souls. I suppose that pain may make you better, or may make you worse.

And here I am. I would be a fool if I forgot what this person has actually done, what she is still both capable and willing to do; at the same time, I really have a violent personal reaction against doing or saying anything against her, because I feel very strongly that birds with broken wings should not get extra kicks. This is my situation.

Let me however say that the other people who involved themselves up to their necks in the witch-hunt, especially the odious person who signs herself with the significant name Narcissa Malfoy, have no such excuse. I feel no compunction whatever about labelling this egotistical, lying, emotional-blackmailing drama queen for the scum she is. And I will be glad to go on doing so.

EDITSomeone whom I have no compunction at all about deleting sent a post full of inaccuracies and persecution-minded nonsense. There was however one statement there that I have also received from another source, namely that Molly Moon did not actually start the GAY BAR witch-hunt, she was only the first to publish. OK. But the rest of the charges stand, and I know for a fact that she has chosen to take the above remarks as insulting. Evidently her hatred for me is too precious a thing to forego lightly - another reason, perhaps, to feel sorry for her.

Comments

[fpb.livejournal.com]

I'm sorry. If people had, at the beginning, taken the courteous road that you, Ashfae, and another person - three in all - did, I might have thought about recasting the damn thing. You know that I asked for your opinion at one point. But as the beginning of almost every review but yours is with a heartfelt wish for my evisceration or less pleasant things, then I fucking well tell you and everyone else that the fic stays. Because my estimate is that the extremely vast majority of the people who object to it are thugs, and I will not do anything to appease them. End of story.

[(Anonymous)]

But isn't this a matter not of appeasing the thugs who object to the story, but of ceasing to misrepresent yourself? The thugs who attack you are appeased by your hatred and stubbornness because that's what they want to believe you are. You didn't write that story with any intention of gay-bashing, so if you edit it to make that more clear, you actually would appease new readers who will then read your story without misunderstanding what you wanted to say, giving them a chance to read the story you wanted to tell. The thugs, far from being pleased, will instead have lost their original excuse for the war they so seem to love waging against you, and you will have shown yourself capable of accepting criticism (not mindless insults, but the evenhanded criticism you have gotten, rare as it was) with an open mind.

If you'd rather leave it as it is, that's certainly your choice. But it seems a shame to abandon a fic that could be quite good with a bit more work.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

Good point. I'll think about it.