mari-the-mole replied to your post “so I was just in a situation where I had to make a couple apologies...”
wait what <italics>what</italics> <and yes I know html doesn't work here w/e> what
I cannot tell exactly what your "what"s are what-ing. My first guess is that you seek more detailed context...?
The context is, if you write without in-depth awareness of your political context, nasty implications creep in:
I've been semi-aware of this one for a while, and on some level I've been waiting for someone to call me on it. Makes sense that it would be now; the ebola outbreak and the reactions to it in the US media cast that chapter in a much worse light. (And it was already problematic.)
I feel like apologizing for an accidental political implication is a bit of a right of passage for a writer; you never know enough about every issue to not tread on them in unfortunate ways. Like, I'm not currently well versed in certain aspects of ableism; I'm sure people will start calling me out on that if/when I get famous enough to be more widely criticised. And once I get a reputation as a feminist writer, people are going to critique And When It Does in terms of the more subtle aspects of gender issues and... I can already tell some of the flaws they're gonna bring up. The career I desperately hope to have involves a lot of "Why yes, I did screw up that representation. Oops, sorry."
Resisting the urge to cut the tension with terrible jokes is an important skill... and a more difficult one than I had initially envisioned.
