OH, okay. Now I get it. I'm white, so I need to have that kind of hate thrown my way and STFU. <- Jim Butcher (Twitter Account)
Also this:
LucyZephyr I did respect them, actually. Up until the "fuck you Jim Butcher" part. < - Jim Butcher (Twitter Account)
Ghost Story comes out this month. The 26th, I believe. And Jim Butcher has opened his mouth and I have heard about it and now, now I can't fucking FINISH the damn series!
I want to. I really, really want to. I've more invested in Harry and Murphy and Tom and Ivy and Mouse and Mister than I had in Miles Varkosigan.
But the tone argument? THE TONE ARGUMENT?!
Your Chicago IS the most white washed thing since ever. And it IS no consolation that somehow people of colour just don't SHOW in your universe all that much, but werewolves, demons, fairies, fairy tales, do. That it's a hesitant feeling when Indigenous American Folklore is invoked, cause 'Injun Joe' is mystical red man of mysterious powers.
He honestly doesn't get it? Can't project it? Imagine it? Hypothesize it? He's writes what he writes and he honestly can't see/hear the hurt and disappointment and sorrow in that 'FUCK YOU JIM BUTCHER' ? He can't get inside another person's head at all? His privilege as white and male is THAT FUCKING THICK? REALLY?
He can't see it as akin to Murphy saying 'Fuck You' to yet another person disparaging her because of her size, her gender, her sex, or her appearance happening to match some cute fragile woman ideal?
He can't see it as akin to Tom saying 'Fuck You' to any person who thought Vampires can't want more than they are? Or that his only interest in Justine could be as food?
He can't see it as aking to HARRY saying 'Fuck You, COUNCIL' for thinking that people don't grow and change, don't and can't learn discipline or different forms of discipline, can't be led unwilling and unknowing into things? But turn it around, make a change and become BETTER?
HE of all people, given the characters he writes, can't imagine the bound up emotions of someone screaming out 'FUCK YOU' at their disappearance? At their malignment?
He has his character scream 'FUCK YOU' to the Christian Deity, and to Arch Angels, and it mean so much, so very much and be all about not expecting a reverent tone when respect and trust aren't even jagged and broken but crushed glass pills?
He can't get it? Privilege is too thick? He has to pull an Elizabeth Bear and an Emma Moon and a Patrica Wrede?
All these years I've been reading more skill into his writing than is really there?
Well fuck. Fuck indeed. Fuck you, Jim Butcher.
Aside: I want to hold out hope for him. I really do. I think this might be the first time RACE FAIL has touched someone whose work I enjoy so much. Not respect, but enjoy; their universe being a place of actual escapism; a safe place. So I know that my lingering stupid hope that something will somehow hit his forebrain and illuminate and enlighten is the remnant of that the trust I'd placed in him as a writer - the trust that let me follow him when dabbles in chauvanism and dangling plot ends and shortened classism issues and all the damn gay jokes.
But sweet spikey haberdashery, I know better than to expect change.
PS: I saw the tumblr response to the series weeks ago and agreed with it, and put my hope in the new book. And now I laugh, I laugh that NOW near the release date it's apparently been linked to him and he's being ass enough, loud enough, that it lights up the boards in my circles.
[ETA: Link to OP. (July11th)]
