my kingdom for literary critics to stop conflating “I personally dislike the fundamentals of X genre and so have neither read nor desired to read widely in it” with “therefore the whole genre is badly-written by default, because obviously if the writing was good I WOULD like it”
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this isn’t always malicious - a lot of these reviewers don’t realise what they’re doing. they think they’re being proactive in broadening their horizons, but the mistake is thinking of diversity as a GENRE rather than a thing that ENRICHES genre.
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for ex: I was stoked to hear about a nonbinary actor playing a nonbinary character on Billions, but as that show in no other way ticks the boxes for Things I Enjoy, it would be poor criticism for me to watch for the nb character, praise their inclusion & trash everything else
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just. really think this is something a lot of privileged SFF reviewers should consider before asking to review books *solely* b/c of diversity, thinking they’re being Saviours Of The Diverse by giving promo, when it actually sets them up to pan stuff they were never going to like
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- which, of course, ends up having the *exact opposite effect* like, to be clear: it’s still good to push the boundaries of your taste and try new things! but to do that, you first need to be honest about what your existing taste is or isn’t
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End of conversation
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