beautiful and badass and believable (with occasional superpowers)

[harborshore]

GAIL SIMONE IS WRITING BIRDS OF PREY AGAIN, TO BE PUBLISHED IN THE SPRING. Do you have any idea how much I love them? It's Babs! And Dinah! And the one writer in comics that I trust more than anything to write stories that are just full of women I can identify with and love and follow without constantly worrying about eventual fail. GAIL SIMONE. BIRDS OF PREY. :DDDDD ETA: And here is a recent interview! GOD I LOVE HER. (Thanks to nokomis305 for the link.)



Ahem. Sorry. Now that it's out of my system, I'm going to remind everyone that help_haiti's auction ends on the 20th, that the bandom bid list is over here, and that I'm offering a fic of at least 2500 words of fic over here. I'm waiting to see if I get outbid on the things I bid on--I'll still be donating the money if I do, obviously. I don't have words for this, partly because it's too horrible and partly because it's just a second-hand pain I feel.

And what they feel is nothing like what the people who are there have to go through.
And one day we have to learn to get better at this--it shouldn't take a natural disaster.

I thought about the fact that this entry is half squee about something that is trivial in comparison, because no matter how important representation is, no matter how much I love stories where I don't have to compromise, stories that pass the Bechdel test on every goddamn page, all of that fades when thinking about what Haiti is like right now. Obviously. So maybe writing about them in the same breath is weird. But then, we kind of have to make empathy and compassion part of everything else if it's going to stay with us, right? If it's always this isolated now-it's-a-disaster-now-we're-looking, then it's not going to be sustainable. I don't even know if that makes sense, I've been transcribing phonetics for most of today and it makes me fuzzy-headed, but there you have it.

Comments

[jubella.livejournal.com]

I think the hardest thing to swallow about Haiti is that people may care today, wanting to help and feeling empathetic and touched, and that's great because no one has cared about Haiti in so long. But I know that it won't last and people, my family, will be hungry, and there's nothing I can do about it.

[harborshore.livejournal.com]

Yes, that's what I was trying to get at--the idea that we're supposed to care because of the earthquake and that there's some kind of last date for it. And oh, darling, I'm so fucking sorry about all of this. It's really hard to know what to say except that I promise not to stop looking--as little as that means and as little as that changes things.

I'm hoping some of what is coming in will be put toward sustainable projects that won't end just because people get "compassion fatigue." (Which, holy fuck, how selfish are we?) Some of what came in after the tsunami did end up going towards that, and if we learned anything last time, there should be more of that now. Please, please.

[harborshore.livejournal.com]

I don't know if I said any of that well at all. I don't know what it's like to be directly affected by something like this, and that is probably painfully obvious. I implicated myself as well when I wrote this, because it's true that while I knew a little bit about Haitian history (courtesy of college), I wasn't looking like I am now. And that's horrible. Anyway, feel free to tell me if I get shit wrong, is what I'm saying here.

[jubella.livejournal.com]

It's okay, I understood you well. I also didn't mean to come across like Haiti is entitled to aid, either. It's something that I've noticed often throughout the course of natural disasters -- the struggle to understand the devestation, the loss, the grief -- but the quickness we tend to "move on" from it. This can also be said about most major historical events, say for example, the Iran elections last year. This is inevitable and I'm not particularly putting anyone at fault, it just sucks when it hits way too close to home.

I think you explained yourself well, and hopefully I did, too. I'm really tired! /o\

[harborshore.livejournal.com]

♥ I do think it should be possible to figure out a way to be compassionate and help other people and have it just be part of life, nothing extraordinary, if that makes sense. Eventually, maybe.

You did explain yourself well! The tiredness is not noticeable in your writing at all. And you didn't come across as if you were saying Haiti is entitled to aid--just that you wish people would keep caring after the immediate aftermath is over. Which, fairest of all fair points, that.