i picked up my life exactly where i left off 1000 years ago

[bossymarmalade]

I'm in a tumblr comicbook RPG and one of the Youths has informed us that the professor in the university course she's in has assigned them to read up on RaceFail. 

Which is, in a word, surreal.

I know it's been just over twenty years since the whole imbroglio went down (twenty! YEARS!) [ EDIT: lol it's ten years but who can tell what time is anymore, not me ] but man. I look at that Fanlore entry and it's still vivid, and reading all those names, dear to my heart even now, brings back what it was like at the time. How new these conversations were in social media and online fan-spaces, and where we're at now.

I haven't posted on here in donkey years, and when I stopped it was because I was so burnt out -- I needed to take that break. Every time I come back, though, I remember what a pivotal time this was in my personal development.

Anyhow, that's all. Love to all you gorgeous creatures. <3

Comments

[sabotabby]

Twenty years? WTF?

[bossymarmalade]

RIGHT?? Nothing like actually thinking about how long it's been to put yourself and your own views in perspective, lord.

[sara]

The Fail was in 2009, so...no, not twenty years.

[bossymarmalade]

HOW DARE YOU COME IN HERE WITH MATH WHEN I AM TALKING ABOUT YEARS IN FEELINGS >:[

[sara]

Oh, if we're going to get feelings about it, it's been a solid five years since last spring.

[bossymarmalade]

Now THAT'S more like it.

(lol you are absolutely right of course XDD )

[sara]

I honestly felt like we should have done a history or edited volume or something for the ten year anniversary but I was too busy at the time to ramrod something like that.

[muccamukk]

Nice to see you posting again <3

[bossymarmalade]

Eeeeee familiar people! Let's see if I can keep it up, hee.

[goss]

Howdy, stranger! :D

[bossymarmalade]

MWAH!!!

[gloss]

HI YOU OMFG

...that is beyond surreal, fffffff.

[bossymarmalade]

Things that we were involved in are now *being taught in university*. Like, what the hell.

[dine]

oh wow, it's YOU! hey there, stranger - so nice to see you pop up here

it's so incredibly impossible to believe that it's been 20 years since Racefail. that's another wow moment

[bossymarmalade]

DINE I picked up a card that I wanted to send to you and it turned out to be ... okay I might mail it to you anyhow, but when you get it, please keep in mind that I DIDN'T KNOW WHAT IT SAID ON THE INSIDE when I bought it, lol XD

[dine]

oh, please do send it! I shall look forward eagerly to see what it says inside :)

[jesse_the_k]

Waves hello!

[bossymarmalade]

Hyedie-ho, neighbourino!!

[princessofgeeks]

*waves*

[bossymarmalade]

*blows kisses!*

[jjhunter]

Love to you! Did you ever see bironic's multifandom SF/F/H characters of color extravaganza vid The Greatest? It came out in 2018 drawing on ~75 (!) sources, and I keep coming back to it. More of this: let's have a hundred thousand more new sources for joy in this.

It's odd to think there were people on the internet in 2009 who weren't active in RaceFail. (Was that 20 years ago? 12 years? The last two years feel like a whole decade between them, certainly.) RaceFail was so formative for me personally - reading that fanlore summary is like an instant warp right back into that period, college, midway through the grimmest year. I'm glad it's being taught and remembered now; I found it one heck of an education at the time, more rawly important than anything in my assigned classes. I swear it aged me at least a year in a month. So many important people, so many friends, who I first met then. It was the last big anything I participated in on LJ; Dreamwidth opened in beta that May.

I'm so glad we're still here. <3

[bossymarmalade]

omg I had not seen that fanvid, no! I will settle in with it and prepare for *joy*, thank you for the link. :D

The girl in this university course just turned 22, I believe, which is ALSO bonkers to think about. I am honestly astonished that people are learning/being taught about this stuff; my fannish interactions having narrowed down to tumblr has made me feel that there's no thread of fannish history being maintained, and each new wave of Youths thinks they're the very first ones inventing this all. There's often a sense of deep suspicion and downright dismissal of us fandom aunties who came before them.

I hear you SO MUCH on feeling like RaceFail aged us, fast. As much as that list of names in Fanlore is like seeing old friends, it's also like seeing *fallen* comrades. We were up against so much and it wore a lot of us down.

But! Look at where things are now, how much is taken as foundation that we had to struggle to even have *heard*. I'm so glad we're still here, too. <3

[lilacsigil]

Only 12 years, not 20! (Unless you're counting the last two as 6 each, which is highly reasonable).

Hope you're doing well over on the tumblr RPG side!

[bossymarmalade]

Twelve, twenty, who's counting? CLEARLY NOT ME, ACCURATELY

Tumblr RPG is tons o'fun once you learn how to ignore certain types in the inevitable discord groups. But then, that's fandom for you, heh!!

[ladyjax]

Hey, hey!

I'm not around here that much but I'm still alive and glad to see you too.

And yeah, it's been that long since RaceFail. The fact that many of the same issues are still omnipresent today is at once astounding and so very annoying. But that's me with my cranky fandom old self shaking my fist at the sky.

[bossymarmalade]

Forever shaking fists at the sky! And only moreso as we get older, heh. But it IS nice to still be around, and to see familiar names <3 <3

[such_heights]

Hi, good to hear from you! And 2009 really was 20 years ago in a very real sense, I hear you.

[bossymarmalade]

Every day is another occasion for mentally trying to figure out where I am and what's happening!!

[callmesandyk]

Hi hi hi!

[bossymarmalade]

BACK TO THE OLD DIGS!!

[marina]

OMG HI

And yessss I had a similar realization in 2019, when it was exactly 10 years since Racefail and I was attending my first Worldcon and it dawned on me what an extremely full circle it was to be in that place. People there talked about Racefail or alluded to it in various ways like an event that no one really remembers anymore, but its effects were clearly EVERYWHERE. I mean, literally front and center on stage at the Hugos that year. It was a very surreal realization.

[bossymarmalade]

That is so trippy. I've found that currently there's such a disconnect from online fannish history, as if we didn't have to start many of these dialogues and resources and customs from scratch and really really FIGHT for them, to create a language and space for them that was hard-won. The Youths by and large seem to see it like you say, a vague nebulous past that nobody remembers anymore because nobody's over age 25 on the internet. :/

[frausorge]

Hello!

[goodbyebird]

Time is nonsense. I am however glad Racefail is still being taught, but sad it still needs to be :/

What an educational time it was for me though! I just remember reading everything and coming to quite a few realizations.