an observation on a certain person
There’s this woman, Ann Somerville, who has become notorious and infamous in multiple, overlapping fandoms: most notably, SFF, YA, and romance. Since last November, her big cause has been “RH” (i.e. Benjanun Sriduangkaew); she attached herself, lamprey-like, to the sides of the various Outraged White Ladies, declaring common cause despite - like most of the Outraged White Ladies - never having been a target of the RH blog or Twitter account when they were active.
Somerville involved herself by collecting links and blogging and tweeting about it, including attacking K. Tempest Bradford over Bradford’s doubts about the Outraged White Ladies’ collective narrative (summarized in this blog post), yelling at Charles A. Tan for being insufficiently Outraged, and calling Naamenblog an “arsewipe”. I think the only one of those three she hasn’t described as one of Bee’s “minions” is Charles A. Tan.
When Somerville piled in on Na’amen? He and Bee were completely unaware of each other (even though they were both friendly with Tempest). They only started talking to each other after she’d already lumped them together.
Then, last December, Somerville got into a fight over something on Goodreads, where a handful of people poked fun at a review that treated all Goodreads reviews as SERIOUS BUSINESS, including one Julio A. Genao, or agenao on Twitter. A handful of people pointed out that this was a bunch of het white women piling on a gay MOC, and that this was a problem, including fangirljeanne.
Somerville then declared that Genao was the Eron Gjoni of m/m, and also decided that Jeanne is one of Bee’s prime minions.
Bee only became aware that Jeanne and Genao even existed because of this blow-up.
Essentially, Somerville appears to now believe that anyone who disagrees with her in fannish spaces is either one of Bee’s “minions” or has been misled or brainwashed by them, and that she (Somerville) is the focus of some sort of Secret WoC Cabal or somesuch. If anything, she’s actually driven people who were, at most, peripherally aware of everything going on around Bee into sympathy and friendship with Bee, if only out of solidarity at being blindsided.
Meanwhile, over in FFA, they’re lauding Somerville as a Great Hero who stands up to the Mean People over “RH/WF” in Namespace. Despite Somerville’s antics, if anything, actually creating more support for Bee than Bee might’ve otherwise had.
I think this qualifies as irony.
