Seanan McGuire (seanan_mcguire) wrote,
Seanan McGuire
seanan_mcguire
  • Mood: thoughtful
  • Music: Butterfly Jones, "The Systematic Dumbing Down of Terry Constance Jones."

Sometimes you'll never know why.

So a little while ago, I posted about self-promotion and my basic thoughts on same, which boil down to "don't be a dick" and "don't go door-to-door across the internet." Pretty basic, reasonably close to universal (although I don't really believe in universal truths, beyond "don't French kiss a rattlesnake"), generally non-offensive. Which means, of course, that some people took offense.

Sometimes, no matter what you do, you're going to offend people. Sometimes you'll never know why.

Things I have done in the past week that someone has found offensive: listened to loud, "weird" music. Had an opinion about whether or not people who aren't me should be allowed to make decisions about my body. Enjoyed bad science fiction. Had my hair highlighted in preparation for the Hugos. Implied that there's a double standard in how women are expected to dress for the Hugos vs. how men are expected to dress for the Hugos. Implied that it's more expensive to be female. Bought children's toys for myself. Bought children's toys for a child. These are just the things I know about mind you, and I only know because in each case, someone told me. I'm not sure why most of these things were offensive. I don't actually want to know. And that, right there, probably offends someone.

I do my best to Marilyn Munster my way through life, leaving fields of happy zombies and sparkly plagues behind me. Sadly, though, nothing is that inoffensive. Not unless it's, say, a rock, and even that will offend, if it gets into somebody's shoe. There is no way to avoid giving offense. Not if you're a thing that actually exists.

And it can be hard, as someone whose audience is largely online, to deal with the thought that I might accidentally offend someone, lose potential readers, and wind up living in a cardboard box next to the creek. My cats aren't supposed to go outside! (This is the "worst case scenario" mindset. It kicks in when I think I've upset someone. My brain is a theme park that hates me.) Case in point:

A while ago—within the last year, although I couldn't tell you when—someone with whom I had communicated on Twitter, but who I didn't really know, asked me "Why did you kill character X?" I gave the response I always give to that question, which is completely honest, despite having been originally stolen from Stephen King: "I didn't kill them. They just died." I have made the conscious choice to kill very few characters. Most of them are sacrifices to the story, and I'm as surprised as anyone else when I see what's coming. It's an odd answer, but a totally sincere one.

(Example of me killing a character on purpose: I killed Rose. It was sort of essential, since her story hinges on her being, you know. Dead.)

This person did not find my answer sincere. They proceeded to declare on Twitter that I was a horrible person who disrespected her readers and didn't appreciate reader questions and was generally horrid, and then went and amended all their reviews of my books to lower their ratings, so that it would be clear that they did not give good scores to mean authors. So with one statement that I still don't regret making, because it was sincere, I lost a reader, and the aggregate scores of my books went down. And I'm lucky in that this is one of the biggest "bad author, no authorial biscuit" scandals that I've had to deal with so far.

Do I know exactly why my response was offensive? Nope. I've said that to other people without causing offense (that I'm aware of). Did this person explain? Nope. Is that the only time I'm going to cause offense in this world?

Nope.

No matter what you do, you're going to piss people off. Hell, me saying "offense is inevitable" is probably pissing someone off. So take deep breaths, and don't dwell on it too much. As long as we're all doing our best not to be horrible and hurtful, it should be okay, in the long run.

Even if we never know why.
Tags: contemplation, cranky blonde is cranky
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  • 133 comments

tigertoy

August 20 2012, 16:59:34 UTC 4 years ago

I don't do Twitter, but it seems to me that by enforcing very terse answers to questions, it gives easily offended people a lot of extra chances to be offended. I know whenever I write something on LJ I spend way too much time and too many words trying to make sure I can't be misinterpreted by anyone vaguely reasonable, but if I had to say everything in 140 characters I couldn't do that.

The important thing to keep in mind is the vast gulf between someone getting offended by something you said and you actually having said something offensive.

phantom_wolfboy

August 20 2012, 17:46:37 UTC 4 years ago

Twitter is a stupid way to communicate for exactly the reason you suggest. It does have the advantage of being very fast, though.

autographedcat

August 20 2012, 17:53:00 UTC 4 years ago

Well, I think that's a bit harsh. Twitter is a bad way to communicate certain messages. I generally try to avoid using Twitter to say anything that requires a certain level of nuance.

It's good for quick updates, quips, and one-to-many announcements, link shares, and the like.

Social media platforms are tools, and like every tool, they have specific uses, and then tasks that they CAN be used for but are not ideally suited for. You can use a wrench to drive nails. It's not the right tool for the job, and there's no particular reason you'd want to, but you can use it for that.