So. A while back, there was an incident over at das_sporking when sweettalkeress decided to spork one of Farla's earlier works, Unoriginality. I was one of the fans of said sporking and got involved in the mess that happened in the comments section, and I'll take all the blame I deserve for what happened afterwards. I won't apologize, but not because I see myself as righteous. I just won't apologize to Farla because I don't have any respect for her and she's not shown any reason why I should.
Among the readers and commenters was Act. Act talks to Farla regularly. When Farla arrived at the community to say her piece, she claimed she found it on her own, but I hope anyone can understand why I'm not so convinced of that. It's 'convenient' enough that Farla already had someone who knew and could've linked her to it from the start to tell her about it.
Is what I'm saying true? No. I'm actually not accusing Act of telling her, because I have no evidence. Act has no reason to say she linked it either, and it benefits Farla to claim she's the only one who found it, because counter-accusations are impossible without something like hacking their accounts, which I refuse to do. This isn't a formal accusation. It's me not liking what happened and making up my own claims.
At any rate. At first, the sporking had only Act as the dissenting voice. Act kept on mocking sweettalkeress in none-too-pleasant ways, still keeping up a level of civility to keep from outright flaming, but the annoying part was the insistence that sweettalkeress had received a bad review from Farla and thus had a grudge against her. No matter how many times sweettalkeress answered in the negative, the accusation returned.
Shortly after the sporking started, posts about it started appearing in Farla's livejournal. I will not link to them here, but it is not impossible to see them; they are public and it requires no effort do check on them. This is possibly one thing I can respect her for: she's got enough courage to stand up for her words and ideals, even when it means people hate her.
For the most part, discussion on the subject was peaceful, until sweettalkeress reached chapter 14. This was the first of the two major events of this thing.
There's one point where Farla brings up that the name Ivy is sexist. I've seen similar arguments before so I will confirm that I actually understand why it can be seen as such, and I don't disagree. sweettalkeress did not think so, and by pointing that out she made it clear that she did not see the sexism in it herself.
Act did not take that well. At all.
To summarize the argument, Act insisted the name was sexist and that sweettalkeress was misogynistic for disagreeing. People started asking why it was an issue, and Act continued to insist that it was. When people, including myself, suggested that the character was sexist due to her portrayal as a whole - being a beautiful woman in a swimsuit and coat and other traits, Act not only disagreed and insisted that her issue was primarily with the name, but that the people involved were being sexist by not considering her argument and instead trying to silence her argument because she was saying things we disagreed with. She also had a major issue with people arguing against her point of view that Professor Juniper, from the Gen 5 games, was less sexist a character than Ivy.
I will not speak for everyone here, but the problem I have with this is different from what she claimed.
Act declared misogyny for people who disagreed about a name being less sexist than an appearance. This is a bold accusation on a livejournal community which, as far as I've noticed, is mostly staffed by and filled with women. I do believe women can be misogynistic towards one another - look at the social justice mishaps on tumblr or twitter, where third wave feminists are quite prone to telling women they're wrong if they're not being victims the right way - but the subject matter of the sporkings, as far as I've seen, make it hard to make this conclusion, considering most of the books they have issue with are legitimately sexist and misogynistic.
When she accused the community of sexism and misogyny, she was dismissing the community out of selfishness and because she knew she had to defend her friend while she wasn't involved. She also refused to accept any arguments to the opposite, under the grounds that they were sexist and misogynistic arguments.
I do not speak for any female posters who replied to the major argument at the time. I can't tell who is and who is not a woman in that board, and in fact, I make it my business to imagine that, unless stated otherwise, it's a girl who I'm talking to. So I can only assume that there were girls other than Act in that discussion, which makes the argument unfair.
The argument led to one of the nastiest points in the whole debacle. Over at Farla and Act's livejournal, the two of them had a good old time trash-talking sith-droideka, whose major faults were:
-not agreeing with her arguments;
-disagreeing that Juniper is a sexist character [because Cedric Juniper leads her by the hand like a Big Strong Man that he is];
-being a man;
-having some incriminating evidence in his FanFiction.net account, which may or may not have been simply his choice image of Mitt Romney.
They were far more hurtful about the sporking there, where they had the home advantage and could simply declare people were stalkers for coming over to question the discussion. No one did this - this is simply what I've seen elsewhere, in other incidents. They spoke quite badly of not only the sporking but das-sporking itself, claiming that it was not really feminist and that it indulged in female-shaming and pro-sexism messages.
The post after this one was the last in the sporking, and the second incident as well. It can be summarized as a simple thing: Farla got involved.
Things were ugly. Very ugly. Anyone who checks the community's history at around that time can see Mervin had a lot to say about it. All the posts involved were deleted, which is why there's no evidence, but I can give at least an idea of what happened.
First and foremost, Farla denied the right to spork her work. She insisted that the biggest issue was that it was not being 'done right', but the issue there is one of Death of the Author, which she is claiming does not apply to her. I am not talking about the fact that the author cannot deny a point of view - I am talking about the fact that Farla refused to accept the criticism aimed at her story because it was wrong to see it at all like this.
This is equivalent to Meyer claiming that it is wrong to see racism in her stories because she is not racist. It is perfectly valid for a reader to ignore her claims if the text supports their view more. Farla was similarly claiming that there is only one possible way to read her story and that people who disagree are wrong and thus should not at all try to describe their point of view.
Death of the Author should be used responsibly. However, it cannot be denied either. Death of the Author, ultimately, means 'once something is published, it's fair to come to different conclusions from the original intent if the text supports them'. It's why so many people have come to conclusions like 'Sailor Pluto is evil' or 'Dumbledore is evil': they think the text supports this opinion, in part based on what other people have proposed as actual fact.
Another issue in this mess is Farla claiming that this story was not a good target for judgement of her person because it is almost ten years old and she is, in theory, no longer the same person as she used to be. While one can agree that using outdated content to judge an author now is not the fairest, it so happens to be a fact that Farla has refused to be judged on the contents of her stories when they were more modern.
Farla accepts no criticism about Lucki because she used it to prove a point, nevermind that she phrases her final response in one of the most mean-spirited manners she could have done and she refuses to accept that a Sue written well is no longer a Sue, or that the reason why people supported and cheered for the Sue was poor writing not making the character unlikeable like she expected/hoped she was. Or, if the intention truly was to criticize the state of Pokémon fandom, then she still indulged in Affirming the Consequent, which is not exactly a good method of proving a point.
Farla doesn't take Pokémon Revolution criticism seriously if they act like the characters are some sort of hivemind where they must all be one side or another, each side can't have rotten members and good members, and Protagonist-Centered Morality is a myth.
Farla does not accept Unoriginality being criticized because she was fifteen years old when she wrote it and now that she is older this is no longer a valid reading of her personality or character at all. She spent most of the time she was there ordering sweettalkeress to stop her sporking because it was wrong for this very reason.
I understand we cannot be judged for our acts forever. A crime has a set punishment time and all. But the fact is that if you're an idiot when you're a kid, the correct response to being told you were an idiot back then is not to tell the other person they are not allowed to say you were an idiot then because you are no longer an idiot. I did some very unpleasant things when I was a child and teenager, things I regret. And of course I would have a problem with being told about that when I grew up, if I showed that I was a different person. But Farla doesn't show it. She makes it clear she's still the same person she used to be, who likes to troll people, laugh at people who disagree with her, and does not regret her work.
This is relevant. She does not make it clear she regrets her work. She may not declare pride, but nowhere in her comments about the story has she said she was a stupid teenager when she wrote it - and yes, one must admit they were stupid, because using their age as an excuse does not work. She simply demanded to not be judged for her older work, which is not how a reviewer must behave.
Because then it brings up a question: HOW is one to review her work?
Unoriginality cannot be criticized because it was written years ago, even though it contains many of the same issues that were displayed in Lucki and Pokémon Revolution, where they are played closer to fact. Lucki cannot be criticized because it was always meant to prove a point, even though said point she was trying to prove boiled down to 'the masses can justify why they like non-heroic characters'. Pokémon Revolution cannot be criticized because it's trying to be dark and gritty and serious and the characters are legitimate and fair, even though the story verges too much on portraying everyone as assholes and yet promote the view that Pokémon training is evil - which Farla reiterates in as many of her works as possible, without changing her tone.
Farla acted persecuted through the entire mess. When the mods tried to stop the arguments from growing too nasty, as they had been in previous posts, she took offense to it because the moderator used 'you' as a generalizer and she thought it was all about her. When she was told that it was assumed someone had linked her, she took offense to it. When the mods tried to be respectful towards her and solve the situation in a manner they deemed fair, she took offense to it.
Farla has described das-sporking as part of a 'culture of nice', a circle-jerk, and overall has only negative feelings towards the community, because their response was not to her liking. Because nobody was banned from it. Because the only punishment sweettalkeress received was to have her sporking frozen and all comments deleted.
This is what happened. This is my report on the whole situation, mostly collected from the messages I exchanged at the time and from memory.
