I just deactivated my Twitter account, but I wanted to address false claims that I am "racist against Thea Guanzon (who I know primarily as diasterisms on AO3) for being Southeast Asian (SEA) / BIPOC / POC" in this tweet below, among other ones.
This is going to be a very long post, but one that I feel is necessary. I strongly advise you to please read the entire post through to the end before retweeting or commenting.
Firstly: No, I am not "racist" towards Thea Guanzon. None of my comments about diasterisms' Landscape With a Blur of Conquerors (LWABOC) have ever involved, nor been about, Thea Guanzon's race or ethnicity, nor was I aware that Thea was POC or SEA (Southeast Asian) - or even that she was the same person as "diasterisms" on AO3 - before discussing my constructive criticism of LWABOC with one of my close friends on Twitter a while back.
I also don't really like people using what I currently consider to be my "deadname" in tweets like this, or deadnaming me on purpose, simply because they happen to dislike or hate me. I've stated on my Twitter account many times that I identify as nonbinary/agender, and I changed my name to "Obversa" on my Twitter account some time ago, partly to reflect this. While it is a feminine form of Latin, it also reflects my experiences as a nonbinary/agender person.
I've also stated quite a few times on Twitter that I don't like people using my old name - my birth name - on social media, and prefer to go by "Obversa", at least for the time being. However, accounts like this have blatantly ignored this, and deadnamed me anyways, despite the account in the screenshot claiming to be "anti-TERF".
I've kept this private until now, but because a transgender Reylo fan asked me about my gender identity and pronouns on Twitter in reference to this tweet, I feel like I have no choice but to "out" myself due to this.
For reference, I also use "she/they" pronouns, not "she/her". However, I almost always see accounts who dislike or hate me only use "she/her", and never "they/them".
That being said, I want to make one thing clear: Just because someone happens to be white, or appears to be white, does not mean that they are being intentionally "racist" when they criticize a POC person's work(s) or writing.
If that is the case, then every white critic who will up giving Thea Guanzon's The Hurricane Wars a mixed or bad review - and trust me, that can and will happen when the book is released, because it already happened with Ali Hazelwood's The Love Hypothesis - is "racist" because "they gave a BIPOC / Asian author a mixed or bad review".
You can't just dismiss critiques or criticisms by white critics with "they're just a racist POS who hates BIPOC and Asian people", especially if there is no evidence if them being racist to the author whose work they critiqued or criticized.
In the vast majority of cases - including mine - the critique or criticism has nothing to do with the author's race or ethnicity, and only addresses the quality and content of their writing.
When I originally critiqued or criticised LWABOC, I only knew Thea Guanzon as "diasterisms" - just her AO3 handle - and had no idea who she was in real life, much less that she was BIPOC / Asian. I gave what is called a "blind critique", which means that I read and gave my thoughts on the fanwork without knowing who the author is.
Thus, claiming that my critique was "racist", when I was unaware of what race "diasterisms" even was at the time, is also blatantly false, as well as a misrepresentation of what actually happened.
Also, to clarify, since this tweet also accuses me of "getting into it" with Thea Guanzon: I've never directly interacted with Thea Guanzon, to my knowledge, except to leave positive comments on LWABOC a long time ago. Saying "I have beef with Thea Guanzon", in my view, is like falsely claiming that "Thomas Edison was an evil asshole who hated Nikola Tesla", even though Edison also praised Tesla and his work.
This isn't a black-and-white, "good vs. evil" situation. I am not the "Devil", nor is Thea Guanzon "God", to quote this Forbes article by Alex Knapp: "Nikola Tesla Wasn't God And Thomas Edison Wasn't The Devil"
I only indirectly criticized LWABOC, as written by "diasterisms on AO3", once on my Twitter account, which quite a few angry and upset Thea Guanzon / diasterisms fans then attacked en masse me for. Many of them harassed me and sent me vile, nasty messages for several consecutive days across multiple social media platforms, despite me locking my Twitter account to try and prevent harassment.
Some of them also made absolutely disgusting posts on Twitter that victim-blamed me for being in a past romantic relationship with someone who turned out to be a sexual predator, even though it had nothing to do with my criticism of LWABOC. This included blaming me for "not doing enough to mitigate" this predator's actions, even though I did confront the predatory individual in question - multiple times - about how their actions were predatory over PM/DM.
The claim of "racism" - or that I have "racist motivations" - is also a massive over-exaggeration and misrepresentation of what actually happened: An "anonymous person" sent or messaged my critique in a conversation with my friend directly to Thea Guanzon on Twitter - presumably, to cause drama, or to try to get her to make a "callout post" - and Thea got upset as a result.
I stated many, many times on my Twitter account that I do not hate LWABOC; that I think it is well-written, and absolutely worthy of being turned into an original novel. The tweet in the screenshot refers to multiple Reylo fanfictions-turned-novels, not just LWABOC, including several fanfictions-turned-novels by white authors, such as Ali Hazelwood, et al.
I do not single Thea Guanzon out specifically in the screenshotted thread, and this person's claim that I did single out Thea Guanzon specifically is also false.
My true opinion? I think it's great that Thea Guanzon is publishing The Hurricane Wars. It's great to see POC representation in romance novel publishing, but I feel that it isn't my place to comment on Thea Guanzon being a POC, because I'm not a POC or Asian myself. I'm just a white person who knows nothing about being POC, much less about being SEA, or SEA culture.
I also publicly retracted my early criticisms of The Hurricane Wars when someone pointed out to me that the book used SEA folklore.
To add to this, I specifically went out of my way not to interact with Thea Guanzon after some fans of LWABOC got upset with me for critiquing the fanfic in a discussion with one of my friends on Twitter.
This is because Thea Guanzon seemed to be distressed about my critique - which, again, an "anonymous person" went out of their way to share with her, despite me not tagging her - and I felt as though reaching out to her would have negatively impacted her mental health more.
I also did not want to cause, or instigate, more drama or issues on Twitter. My actions were done out of concern for Thea Guanzon's safety and well-being, as well as to allow her to continue to promote The Hurricane Wars on Twitter and other social media platforms without any perceived negative criticism, critique, or interference by me.
I'm not "getting into things" with Thea Guanzon here. I have no problems or issues with Thea Guanzon whatsoever. I've never blocked Thea Guanzon on any social media platform, not have I ever harassed or @'d her, because doing so would be shitty behavior.
Thea Guanzon seems like a lovely person and human being, and I genuinely regret causing her unnecessary distress due to my previous tweets.
Unfortunately, I can't say the same for some of Thea Guanzon's fans, whom have been treating anyone who critiques or criticizes Thea's work absolutely horribly.
The ones that seem to be causing problems and issues are the accounts falsely accusing me of being "racist" towards Thea Guanzon - when, in fact, I have never once said anything remotely racist towards her - and going out of their way, as the account in the screenshot did, to purposefully harass and @ me, despite me privating my Twitter account, to tell me things like "you're a racist cunt" and "kys".
Sending harassment, abuse, threats, and even suicide bait to anyone who criticizes or critiques Thea Guanzon's work - regardless if they happen to be BIPOC or white - is also absolutely unacceptable.
This also includes harassment on other social media platforms, like Reddit, despite my Reddit account and its content largely having little to nothing to do with my Twitter account.
As always, I support BIPOC authors, including Asian authors. However, "support" does not equal "never criticizing or critiquing a work by a BIPOC or Asian author, ever". Critique and criticism is not always done in "bad faith", nor is most critique and criticism done to malign, smear, or personally attack the author.
Criticism and critique is not always a personal attack on the author, and I need people to understand this. This has been discussed many times before on Tumblr when it comes to criticism and critique of popular work(s), including here, here, and elsewhere.
I can understand, and agree with, the stance of "don't give unsolicited criticism and critique on fanfictions and fanworks" - I already largely honor that as part of my personal code when interacting with fanfiction authors - but this does not in any way, shape, or form apply to original novels, even if they happen to be former fanfictions.
They are no longer fanfictions, but novels marketed for a much wider audience and mass appeal - and people can and will criticize and critique them, as seen with The Love Hypothesis by Ali Hazelwood.
Going after every person who criticizes or critiques The Hurricane Wars - or LWABOC, for that matter - on Twitter, Goodreads, YouTube, or any other social media platform or website should be unthinkable. Yet that is what is happening on Twitter, with some of Thea Guanzon's fans attacking, or even harassing and threatening, anyone who criticizes her work.
I need people to realize that, while you might have good intentions - or think that you're "defending Thea Guanzon and Asians in the publishing industry" by doing this - this just makes you, and Thea Guanzon by extension, look bad.
While your goal here is likely to try and "reduce harm" to Thea by attacking and silencing her critics, in the short term, I need you to understand that what you are doing is actually causing more harm to Thea Guanzon - and Asian representation in media - in the long run by doing this.
I also feel that the mentality here of "criticizing a BIPOC person's work for any reason is inherently racist" is in itself problematic, because it implies that BIPOC authors cannot speak for, nor defend, themselves in the face of critique and criticism - even if they are professionally published, successful authors who don't need their fans to defend them.
It also places BIPOC authors and their works on a pedestal solely due to their race and ethnicity, which is inherently unhealthy, instead of treating them as human beings, and people - and writers - with both strengths and weaknesses.
Last, but not least, it also assumes that any and all criticism of a work by a BIPOC / Asian author by a white critic is inherently "bad faith" criticism - which is decidedly not true.
I would personally recommend reading up on the concept of "Death of the Author", as well well as "separating the art from the artist", which many - if not most - critics apply to published original novels. While many on Tumblr do not "separate the art from the artist", I personally ascribe to "Death of the Author", and my criticisms and critiques reflect that.
It also means my critiques and criticisms are directed specifically at the work, not the author. This means that even though, yes, authors like - for example - J.K. Rowling, et al., can be racist, transphobic, ableist, and anti-LGBT, I feel that Harry Potter should also be judged separately from J.K. Rowling.
A BIPOC - Asian, in this case - author is not solely defined by their work, nor is their work solely defined as being "written by a BIPOC / Asian author". I feel this does a great disservice to LWABOC and The Hurricane Wars, because Thea Guanzon's work is so much more than just "BIPOC / Asian representation".
Solely boiling her work down to "You have to praise her work(s) because she's BIPOC / Asian, or else you're a racist bitch/cunt/POS!" feels not only false, disingenuous, and performative - that is, not truly supporting Thea Guanzon's work based on its own high quality and merits, but solely because "she's BIPOC / Asian" - but it also doesn't actually address the quality of her work(s) outside of her ethnicity.
To clarify: I firmly believe, and always have, that Thea Guanzon is a worthy novelist who deserves to have her published work(s) be successful. The romance genre does need more BIPOC / Asian representation. No amount of fans who hate me and call me "racist", and telling me to "kys", over what amounts to maybe one or two criticisms or critiques on Twitter is going to bait me into saying or thinking otherwise.
Nor is a single criticism or critique by me going to change that Thea Guanzon can and will be very likely achieve success with the release of The Hurricane Wars; as far as debut novels go, it's an excellent start. In fact, I would have never criticized LWABOC to begin with if I didn't think that it already stood on its own merits as a high-quality fanwork, and would go on to succeed in spite of my mixed-to-positive feelings and personal opinion(s) on it.
LWABOC and The Hurricane Wars are well-written, interesting, intelligent works with a lot of love, foresight, and care put into them by their author, with The Hurricane Wars also using SEA folklore and mythology. LWABOC is near-universally beloved by the Reylo fandom, being the #1 most popular Reylo fanfiction (not counting a troll fanwork posted by an anti-Reylo), and for good reason.
Both stand on their own value and worth as high-quality works, completely regardless of Thea Guanzon's race and ethnicity. (LWABOC especially, since that heavily borrowed from Star Wars Legends EU lore that was created by white authors, before being changed to SEA folklore in The Hurricane Wars.)
Anyways, I have no ill-will towards those who dislike or hate me - more sadness and disappointment - but I feel as though maybe some you should stop and think about what you say before posting on Twitter. I've been seeing fans who are way too quick to jump to (often false) conclusions or assumptions about people based on little to nothing, and attack them for that reason. This isn't healthy behavior, and it often contributes to drama and toxicity in the fandom.
It's partly for this reason - as well as the toxicity of Twitter as a platform in general, and how it "sucks you in" - that I permanently deactivated my Twitter account as well. Quite a few Reylos seem to be too reactionary, and take things too personally, when it comes to Twitter and social media, and that's not good for everyone involved.
As I see this as a "no-win" situation for all involved, I have opted to not engage with the fandom - that also includes not responding to the accounts trying to rage bait me into responding to their tweets on the platform right now. I originally joined Twitter to enjoy Reylo with other Reylo fans, as well as to discuss Reylo fanfiction and fanworks, not to fight and argue with other Reylos.
I personally feel that Twitter has changed some people in the Reylo fandom for the worse - something I am not immune to, and I freely acknowledge my mea culpa here. I also noticed that, despite my own good intentions, it was making me more volatile, inconsiderate, and generally negatively impacting my mental health and mindset.
Due to this, I did harm people, both indirectly and directly, despite it never being my intention to do so.
For that, I genuinely apologize, and feel guilt and sorrow for my actions. If I could go back in time, I would tell myself to never post any criticism or critique to begin with, as well as to ask questions before commenting on an author that I don't know much about. My comments were also ignorant, misguided, and ill-informed.
To those who were harmed: I apologize, and acknowledge that my actions were hurtful. Even though you may dislike or hate me, I am genuinely not trying to hurt or harm other Reylo fans - you and included - out of malice. I'm trying to help you, as well as to help myself improve, both as a person and a writer.
I am still trying to learn, as a white person, how to identify and acknowledge my own white privilege, as well as how some of my words and actions may unknowingly come across as harmful and hurtful to BIPOC / Asian folks.
However, as I feel that the Reylo fandom seems to be increasingly having problems and issues with toxicity - especially since the centralization of the fandom on Twitter - I'll be moving on to other IPs, fanfictions, and fanworks outside of Reylo that bring me happiness, joy, and fun, while also staying away from Twitter.
I'm not going to let someone else's words bring me down - and I suggest that you don't, either. No matter what, you are a human being who is worthy of love and respect, and your thoughts, feelings, words, and experiences matter. That is still true, even if not everyone agrees with your opinions on something you love.
Above all, do what brings you joy and happiness. Life is too short to allow one's mind to become clouded by negativity and hatred. As Rose Tico (Kelly Marie Tran) once said in The Last Jedi: "That's how we'll win - not by fighting what we hate, but by saving what we love."
Jesus fucking Christ on a cracker why is this mess of a post in the hurricane wars tag???
First of all, you must have forgotten what you actually did on Twitter in regards to Landscape, because unless an author asks for concrit, it is considered incredibly rude to get on your public twitter account and start giving it out unprompted. Unfortunately for you, that's not even what you did. Shall I jog your memory? You started accusing Thea of plagiarizing her whole fanfic from the Legends EU, which is hilariously incorrect, and then engaged in concern trolling about her being SUED BY DISNEY for writing a separate original novel that has nothing to do with LWABOC apart from the barest bones of the fic: there's a war, two enemies on either side who have powers get married.
This, combined with your other tweets about how it wasn't that impressive that Thea was published in a canonical Star Wars anthology, constant kvetching about how your ex left you for an Asian woman, how Asian women are "more desirable" than white women complete with graphs to "prove it", and how upset you got on Twitter when it was announced that Star Wars Celebration 2025 would be held in Tokyo complete with "But Asians only make up 10% of the fandom" while actively ignoring that George Lucas borrowed heavily from Japanese and East Asian influences when he created Star Wars and that it's a wildly popular franchise in Japan ALL DEFINITELY MAKES IT LOOK LIKE YOU ARE ACTIVELY ENGAGING IN RACISM AGAINST ASIAN PEOPLE, OBVERSA.
I don't even know where to begin with the rest of this nonsensical post. Claiming "no actually you mean ASIANS calling out MY constant microaggressions against Asians and YOU telling me I'M WRONG for constantly going after Thea means YOU are the REAL racists" Christ Jesus alive. Nobody said that you couldn't review books written by authors of color, just that it's wildly inappropriate to harass authors! WHICH YOU ACTUALLY DID, YET AGAIN by making THIS POST because you TAGGED THE WOMAN AND THE NAME OF HER BOOK IN THIS POST. It does not matter that you did not know that Thea was Filipina when you initially criticized her fanfic on twitter in public: you CONTINUED TO CRITICIZE HER for YEARS, singling her out and downplaying her literary achievements, including the fact that she was published in a Star Wars official anthology. If you actually cared about her wellbeing "my actions were done out of concern for Thea Guanzon's safety and well-being, as well as to allow her to continue to promote The Hurricane Wars on Twitter and other social media platforms without any perceived negative criticism, critique, or interference by me," then it's very simple to achieve that: it's called SHUTTING THE FUCK UP.
"Both [Landscapes and Hurricane Wars] stand on their own value and worth as high-quality works, completely regardless of Thea Guanzon's race and ethnicity. (LWABOC especially, since that heavily borrowed from Star Wars Legends EU lore that was created by white authors, before being changed to SEA folklore in The Hurricane Wars.)"
Are you fucking serious? You can't even stop with the microaggressions in your giant post about how you are totally not racist towards Asians! "Landscapes is especially good because it was built on material from white people!" My jaw is on the FLOOR.
You are not being harassed by an evil toxic Reylo fandom, either. You are being rightfully viewed with everything spanning bewilderment to outright derision for making the latest of your many, many shitty takes. This was a twenty something long tweet thread, authored by yourself, about how fanfiction authors who choose to step up to seek out being traditionally published are somehow "putting information behind a paywall", "monetizing hobbies" (somehow a bad thing) with the vague implication that BIPOC authors shouldn't even attempt to publish traditionally and should just self-publish... and YET AGAIN bringing up Thea, Hurricane Wars, and this time Ali Hazelwood, implying that Ali's books are subpar in content because her mean publisher is forcing her to churn out novellas. You also claimed a number of outrageous and easily disproven lies concerning the industry, like "publishers will force authors to delete their AO3 accounts" in an attempt to warn prospective fanfic authors from going professional.
When people stated that libraries exist to remove the paywall from published books, and also that writers should be paid for their works, you immediately blocked anyone who disagreed with you, even mildly, and then you turned around immediately to Reddit, posting in some Reylo subreddit looking for someone to agree with you there on the matter of traditional publishing and fanfiction.
Also, this is all happening two weeks before Thea's book releases in the USA. You are, it seems, wholly incapable of keeping Thea Guanzon's name out of your mouth.
I struggle to grasp what you even think your place is in the Reylo fandom apart from being known as "that person who harangued Reylos who were survivors of sexual assault about not liking or wanting to watch an Adam Driver movie where he plays a r*pist" because you have never written a single fanfic, you have never contributed to the fandom in any meaningful way, you have never promoted fanfic you liked or commissioned artists (I guess that's the sin of monetizing hobbies) and you have never (to my knowledge) even left nice comments on the AO3 accounts of authors you DO like. In my opinion I don't even think you like the pairing-- I think you simply are a fan of Adam Driver to an extent that borders between "slightly worrying" and "restraining order time".
Every time someone corrects you, criticizes you, or disagrees with you, you immediately act as if they had pointed a gun to your head, especially if they are BIPOC, using your neurodivergency and gender identity as a shield, so maybe you'll listen to my white neurodivergent genderfluid ass when I tell you that YOU NEED TO STOP. Incredibly ironic that you are accusing someone who genuinely did not know that you went by your reddit handle now, and who apologized and is referring to you in the rest of the thread that you conveniently left out of this post with your chosen name and pronouns, of purposely misgendering you and how that's at odds with them being anti-TERF when YOU YOURSELF claim Death of the Author to excuse why you still enjoy Harry Potter when JKR is a full raging TERF and the books are stacked full of gender essentialism. PLEASE.
The only toxic person here is you (and whoever was allegedly sending you death threats, although you have claimed this before and never presented any, and implying that Alice in the screenshot above personally sent you death threats is a hefty accusation. "going out of their way, as the account in the screenshot did, to purposefully harass and @ me, despite me privating my Twitter account, to tell me things like "you're a racist cunt" and "kys".)
I think you need to get off all your social media and think for a good long time about yourself. Do some serious introspection and personal growth. Work through whatever the hell is wrong with you. You have already hamstrung yourself and burned bridges with Lucasfilm due to your behavior, and you are leaving a digital footprint that will haunt you for the rest of your life.
While the giant bill was fake, it represented a very real accomplishment. The group raised more than $17,000, which purchased more than $1.6 million in medical debt owed by Philadelphians, according to their nonprofit partner RIP Medical Debt.
The fact that this can be done at all shows how utterly bullshit the entire system is. There was literally no reason for that medical debt to exist in the first place.
Let's say you owe a private hospital ten thousand dollars, but you have very few assets, so they're pretty sure they're never getting any of that back. There's ninety nine other people who also each owe the hospital ten thousand dollars. (It doesn't have to be a hospital; any debt can be sold this way.) The hospital has shit to do and the low chances of you paying them mean it's an unnecessary drain on their time and resources to hound you all for it. But they can get *some* money, by selling your debt to a third party.
Let's say the sell each ten thousand dollar debt for ten dollars (I'm making all these numbers up for simplicity). So a third party gives the hospital one thousand dollars, and now all hundred of you owe that third party ten thousand instead! You're in the clear with the hospital, you owe it to these guys now! And their job is to hound and harrass you for the money you owe. If one of you pays up more than a thousand dollars, you've covered their initial investment. These guys are gambling on the likelihood that enough of you can pay your debts that you make it worth the time they spend tracking you and harrassing you.
Or, instead of trying to get the money out of you, they can just... decide you don't owe them. Why not? They own the debt. They can fork out a thousand bucks, buy a million in debt, and forgive it. That's what these guys did. (This is also a favourite move of John Oliver; if you ever see headlines about John Oliver forgiving debt, this is what he's doing). A small payment can take a massive weight off the shoulders of a lot of struggling people.
Again, I made up the numbers to simplify the math. But this is how the process works.
There was a challenge going around on Music Twitter a couple days ago that asked folks to come up with a list of 20 songs that you really love — but no repeating artists/performers. Because of who I am as a person, I put my list in alphabetical order and made a playlist, so: here it is.
Dear tumblrverse: if I am going to haunt these halls again I need the Youths to stop clogging the “young wizards” tag with fanfic about That TERF’s characters and return it to its rightful owners (neurodivergent adults who have cried over a spaceship at least once)
I am so glad I’m not alone in this feeling and uh also I’m not very active here but HI! I’m very into BTS these days! But YW is still my first love and no, I have not and will never stop drawing/painting Wellakhit Queen Dairine!
Dear tumblrverse: if I am going to haunt these halls again I need the Youths to stop clogging the “young wizards” tag with fanfic about That TERF’s characters and return it to its rightful owners (neurodivergent adults who have cried over a spaceship at least once)
My favorite part of Dungeons and Dragons: Honor Among Thieves is that if you don't play DnD, it's a solid fantasy movie, but if you DO play DnD, you can feel in your soul the table talk that's almost certainly happening over the events of the movie. Like...
"Are you guys sure you don't want to take a perception check?"
"I said we jump out the window."
or
"And he turns and walks directly northwards away from you guys."
"The map shows a rock-"
"HE WALKS OVER THE ROCK."
or
"Fuck it, I throw a potato."
"Okay... roll for potato, I guess."
"That was a 20."
or
"I know we won, but I have bonus actions and I'm going to use them, damn it."
Breakfast with an old friend. AKA the hammer wielding butch on the left of the “Three butches”photo. It had been over 10 years since we’d seen each other. Too long my friend.
there’s something endlessly hilarious to me about the phrase “hotly debated” in an academic context. like i just picture a bunch of nerds at podiums & one’s like “of course there was a paleolithic bear cult in Northern Eurasia” and another one just looks him in the eye and says “i’l kill you in real life, kevin”
have i told this story yet? idk but it’s good. The Orangutan Story:
my american lit professor went to this poe conference. like to be clear this is a man who has a doctorate in being a book nerd. he reads moby dick to his four-year-old son. and poe is one of the cornerstones of american literature, right, so this should be right up his alley?
wrong. apparently poe scholars are like, advanced. there is a branch of edgar allen poe scholarship that specifically looks for coded messages based on the number of words per line and letters per word poe uses. my professor, who has a phd in american literature, realizes he is totally out of his depth. but he already committed his day to this so he thinks fuck it! and goes to a panel on racism in poe’s works, because that’s relevant to his interests.
background info: edgar allen poe was a broke white alcoholic from virginia who wrote horror in the first half of the 19th century. rule 1 of Horror Academia is that horror reflects the cultural anxieties of its time (see: my other professor’s sermon abt how zombie stories are popular when people are scared of immigrants, or that purge movie that was literally abt the election). since poe’s shit is a product of 1800s white southern culture, you can safely assume it’s at least a little about race. but the racial subtext is very open to interpretation, and scholars believe all kinds of different things about what poe says about race (if he says anything), and the poe stans get extremely tense about it.
so my professor sits down to watch this panel and within like five minutes a bunch of crusty academics get super heated about poe’s theoretical racism. because it’s academia, though, this is limited to poorly concealed passive aggression and forceful tones of inside voice. one professor is like “this isn’t even about race!” and another professor is like “this proves he’s a racist!” people are interrupting each other. tensions are rising. a panelist starts saying that poe is like writing a critique of how racist society was, and the racist stuff is there to prove that racism is stupid, and that on a metaphorical level the racist philosophy always loses—
then my professor, perhaps in a bid to prove that he too is a smart literature person, loudly calls: “BUT WHAT ABOUT THE ORANGUTAN?”
some more background: in poe’s well-known short story “the murder in the rue morgue,” two single ladies—a lovely old woman and her lovely daughter who takes care of her, aka super vulnerable and respectable people—are violently killed. the murderer turns out to be not a person, but an orangutan brought back by a sailor who went to like burma or something. and it’s pretty goddamn racially coded, like they reeeeally focus on all this stuff about coarse hairs and big hands and superhuman strength and chattering that sounds like people talking but isn’t actually. if that’s intentional, then he’s literally written an analogy about how black people are a threat to vulnerable white women, which is classic white supremacist shit. BUT if he really only meant for it to be an orangutan, then it’s a whole other metaphor about how colonialism pillages other countries and brings their wealth back to europe and that’s REALLY gonna bite them in the ass one day. klansman or komrade? it all hangs on this.
much later, when my professor told this story to a poe nerd friend, the guy said the orangutan thing was a one of the biggest landmines in their field. he said it was a reliable discussion ruiner that had started so many shouting matches that some conferences had an actual ban on bringing it up.
so the place goes dead fucking silent as every giant ass poe stan in the room is immediately thrust into a series of war flashbacks: the orangutan argument, violently carried out over seminar tables, in literary journals, at graduate student house parties, the spittle flying, the wine and coffee spilled, the friendships torn—the red faces and bulging veins—curses thrown and teaching posts abandoned—panels just like this one fallen into chaos—distant sirens, skies falling, the dog-eared norton critical editions slicing through the air like sabres—the textual support! o, the quotes! they gaze at this madman in numb disbelief, but he could not have known. nay, he was a literary theorist, a 17th-century man, only a visitor to their haunted land. he had never heard the whistle of the mortars overhead. he had never felt the cold earth under his cheek as he prayed for god’s deliverance. and yet he would have broken their fragile peace and brought them all back into the trenches.
my professor sits there for a second, still totally clueless. the panel moderator suddenly stands up in his tweed jacket and yells, with the raw panic of a once-broken man:
dededos
germansingergirl
kianamaiart
titsay
baratheonpilled
pixelskylines
