#the HUMANITIES are about HUMANITY <- oddly uncritical thing for a humanities major to say while criticizing STEM for being uncritical

[kaiasky]

i think a lot of the notes on that "stemlords are nazis" post (not the post itself, but like the notes going 'yeah, the engineers at my school are weird and robots and scary') are tinged with an undercurrent of like... barely suppressed anti-indian/chinese racism too lol like. "oh they can barely form coherent sentences that's why they're using chatgpt" i mean like yeah I don't think writing a paper with cgpt is a good idea, but how sure are we that it's because they're soulless engineers vs not speaking English as a first language and chatgpt is a pretty good translation tool?

But more broadly than that it's like. "what makes a moral complete human? well it's fluency in English, exposure to the western classics in high school, believing sociology results from colonial Britain, and having grown up watching the colbert report like i did"

[brotherhoodoftheblade]

Yep, ALL OF THIS. ☝️☝️☝️😐

Problematic or not the complexities of DG's characters is what's always made them feel so human, and therefore, interesting. But that also doesn't negate the lack of awareness created by the imbalanced way she's framed the narrative as a whole.

I mean, generally it shouldn't even be necessary for an author writing books for adults to have to insert moral disclaimers that, "by the way, these morally dubious characters I'm writing aren't always wholly righteous in their actions and attitudes just because they happen to believe they are!"

Just because a character has justified their actions to themselves doesn't necessarily make them objectively 100% morally sound. That just makes them somewhat unreliable narrators because their perspective is overshadowed by their personal biases. Even villains don't believe themselves to be villainous -- they believe their actions to be perfectly justified, and so, RIGHT.

But the onus to think for ourselves ultimately always rests on the reader - regardless of whether an a character is an unreliable narrator or not, or whether the author has provided an authentically balanced portrayal of all the issues present in their narrative. Reading critically still obliges us to think deeply about the ethics and morality of the story provided to us beyond the confines the characters perspectives, and the way author's own prejudices may colour the narrative.

Especially with historical fiction. We can still sympathize with a character, care about them and find them interesting, while simultaneously recognizing that their actions and beliefs are deeply wrong from a 21st century perspective. But when the author themselves leans into the character's historically biased perspectives so heavily that it largely obscures the undiscerning reader's sensibilities of the whole picture...that IS a problem.

As @cookie-de-baunilha said, DG writes lots of problematic stuff in the books in a way that shows little to no awareness that there's even anything wrong with it in the first place. I mean, it's kind of bewildering at times. Reading the OL books is like living with someone who regularly gaslights you in the most nonchalantly confident manner possible. An uncritical reader might easily just take her words at face value and end up buying into a bunch of dubious crap as a result.

And just from the dubious comments DG's made over the years, at this point I kind of have to presume that at least some of the toxicity existing in OL is a projection of her own personal biases. Though also, perhaps a part of the mental divide is her age as well? Certainly I think a younger author would have much greater awareness of our shifting cultural mores than she seems to. Not to mention that most of her fanbase is comprised of women over 50, so it's probably not much of an issue for them either. If, indeed, they notice at all. Younger people do tend to find things a lot more "problematic" nowadays than older generations do. lol

(Hell, maybe half the reason Jamie & Claire don't interest me anymore is because they've gotten too old. :P Though mainly I think that the series has just dragged on for far too long, and I'm just not emotionally invested enough in the majority of the characters to make the length of the books feel like anything other than a slog most of the time. What I wouldn't give for another LJG novel though! The last novella DG wrote was back in 2011! T_T)

(Oddly enough the thing that illustrates to me most clearly the prevalence of the problematic in OL is the fact that I've found myself saying so much about it over the years. I'm generally a silent lurker in fandoms, I rarely say much of anything unless it's about something I really liked, so interacting with the OL fandom at all is actually quite out-of-character for me. lol But why does it feel so necessary? That's the real point of concern.

DG's gaslighting is SO prevalent that barely anyone seems to see it. In other fandoms dubious stuff like she writes gets widely called out so there's never been a need for me to stick my oar in and repeat what's already been said and circulated throughout. But in OL?? Next to nothing. Maybe it's because most OL fans are so fixated on their ships that they're simply not giving anything outside of them much attention? Whereas I don't especially ship much of anyone in OL outside of John/Percy (and they only interact a few times per book) or even particularly lust after any individual character in the show, so the vision-distorting goggles of lust and romance are pretty much off 98% of the time. lol And I'm history nerd in general so I tend to find the cultural and political aspects of the story at least as interesting as most of the average soap opera-esque interactions (or frequently more so).)

But yeah, the Richardson turning out to be an abolitionist thing...potentially interesting in the hands of a more self-aware writer, but DG? She no longer has the credibility with me to be trusted with something like that, especially given what a myopically half-assed job she's done of handling the topic of slavery over the course of such a lengthy narrative in the first place.

And if her idea of finally drawing real emphasis to the existence of the slave trade (accompanied by actual affirmative action) is to do it via the rightfully contentious "white saviour" trope...and on behalf of a major villain no less, rather than, say, your own main characters who are supposed to be the good guys and who could've been doing something all these years (or at the very least decide not to settle in the American colonies in the first place) but just...didn't?? WOW. The irony is actual pretty funny, in a horrible sort of way. 😂💀

DG, you're not supposed to be making me root for the villain because his cause is the only one that benefits the greater good! 🤣

(And yeah, sure, John says in Bees that he personally abhors the practice of slavery but does he ever DO anything about it?? Especially given that his social status makes him the person with the most influence to advocate for change aside from Hal. The Grey family is by far the most guilty for their complacency if you ask me, because they have the most wealth and power at their disposal to affect societal betterment but how much good are they doing with it?)

Hah, and yet...John and Percy are the only characters I still care about, and if Percy is gone and John is being JOHN, then what's left to concern myself with?? *shrug* DG can make as much of a train wreck of the last book as she likes and I'll either not give a fig, or sit here laughing about it. 😐

Go Tell the Bees That I Am Gone spoilers? - Richardson

So far I’ve only read some random scenes from Bees so let me get this straight…

Richardson is an abolitionist??

Is Diana Gabaldon for real? Writing the current big bad guy as an abolitionist??? How tf did she think this was a good idea??

Someone please tell me I’ve got it wrong. I haven’t read the whole book so I might be missing important things here.