RWA ... the bane of romance

Over the last few years, lately (2020) more pronounced, comes an internal battle with the arcane Romance Writers Association, which has been universally panned, dissected, drawn, quartered and burned at the stake by almost everyone.

It's easy to do that when you have people patting you on the back for joining in on the torch-burning procession up Frankenstein's Hill.

RWA is one of those demagogue organizations that was set up to promote an agenda and allowed the agenda makers to change the rules. Chief complaint evidently is about racism.

Well, that is the chief complaint about everything now. Success or failure depends largely on which side of the fence you choose to stand. Even if you don't have a fuckin' idea about racism, you get to have an opinion about it. If you don't have a fuckin' idea, the people who are being racism-ed will surely let you know this. (You can't know what it's like to be ................)

To RWA's credit, they've apparently come out publicly saying they intend to address the problem. That's not good enough for the steamroller faction, which insists that RWA is lying about that and the proof is .......... well, somehow out there.

Women of color or indefinite gender are the heroes of this story, since they apparently are the chief victims. The regular (white, racist, southern) writers are the villains because they allowed this culture to exist and thrive.

I reckon that's true.

Romance as a genre contains 4 characters -- the two would-be lovers and somebody on either side of that line who either promotes the relationship or is determined to see it fail. There's not much of a story line beyond that. They skip over the plot to get to the sexy scenes, then pretend they are doing the plot again until the climax, where HEA or HFN happens.

Being angry about how that happens is the current trend. The gayness of it all is apparently abhorrent to RWA and lord-forbid, a "colored" perspective should emerge.

The Inuits of northern Alaska are yet to weigh in on that, but as a representative group, RWA has caustically overlooked it in favor of Paula Dean southern fried chicken and the 21st century version of Rhett Butler.

Whatever RWA does to fix its image will never be enough, the critics say, because it will have been a sham and a superficial lie that will re-emerge later on. Of course, it's impossible to not be a member of this group.

Everybody else just thinks they need to file a lawsuit, which never fixed anything but the lawyers' bottom line. It's always better to sink the ship than inspect the cargo before it sails.

The Inuit are interested in seeing their romance stories explored. Anybody advocating for them this year?