A Massive Disappointment

Posted on by Victor Fernando R. Ocampo

I just can’t keep silent on this any longer.

This whole thing that’s happening to Rochita Loenen-Ruiz is real and has affected me personally as well. I am choosing not to talk about my own experience because I feel that it is irrelevant and takes away from the larger narrative. This whole affair pains me a lot as I had nothing but the greatest respect and admiration for some of the writers involved. However I am aghast to learn that that this kind of crap/shit storm is what we should expect as a new writer coming from the fringes of the SFF world.

Is this really what we have to look forward to?

Whatever your skin colour, your nationality or your gender preference is you have no right to bully and troll. You have no right to blacklist writers you do not like just because they have dissenting opinions or are not part of your cult of sycophants. You are free to judge a person’s writing as long as you do it fairly and objectively. You can even eviscerate it if it sucks – but you have no right to judge the person. As many before me have pointed out, this is not literary criticism, this is silencing. Those of you who enjoy hate as entertainment should take a long hard look into your mirrors. You may not like what you see.

I won’t say anything more about this other than the fact that I have made the conscious decision to make most of my submissions to regional Asian publications. I believe that the only way to make a safe place for people like me to write our stories is to create and nurture our own markets — however small that may be for now.

Here is Rochita’s post on this and she has my 100% support – “Standing Up and Speaking Truth”

Here is the original report on this matter from Laura J. Mixon –  “A Report on Damage Done by One Individual Under Several Names“

Published by Victor Fernando R. Ocampo

Victor Fernando R. Ocampo is the author of the International Rubery Book Award shortlisted The Infinite Library and Other Stories (Math Paper Press, 2017 ; US edition: Gaudy Boy, 2021) and Here be Dragons (Canvas Press, 2015), which won the Romeo Forbes Children’s Story Award in 2012. His play-by-email interactive fiction piece “The Book of Red Shadows” debuted at the Singapore Writers Festival in 2020. His writing has appeared in many publications including Apex Magazine, Daily Science Fiction, Likhaan Journal, Strange Horizons, Philippines Graphic, Science Fiction World and The Quarterly Literature Review of Singapore, as well as anthologies like The Best New Singapore Short Stories, Fish Eats Lion: New Singaporean Speculative Fiction, LONTAR: The Journal of Southeast Asian Speculative Fiction, the Philippine Speculative Fiction series and Mapping New Stars: A Sourcebook on Philippine Speculative Fiction. He is a fellow at the Milford Science Fiction Writers’ Conference (UK) and the Cinemalaya Ricky Lee Film Scriptwriting Workshop, as well as a Jalan Besar writer-in-residence at Sing Lit Station (2020/2021). Visit his blog at vrocampo.com

2 thoughts on “A Massive Disappointment”

  1. […] A Massive Disappointment by Victor Fernando R. Ocampo. “This whole thing that’s happening to Rochita Loenen-Ruiz is real and has affected me personally as well. I am choosing not to talk about my own experience because I feel that it is irrelevant and takes away from the larger narrative. This whole affair pains me a lot as I had nothing but the greatest respect and admiration for some of the writers involved. However I am aghast to learn that that this kind of crap/shit storm is what we should expect as a new writer coming from the fringes of the SFF world.” […]

  2. […] Victor Fernando R. Ocampo: A Massive Disappointment: “As many before me have pointed out, this is not literary criticism, this is silencing. Those of you who enjoy hate as entertainment should take a long hard look into your mirrors. You may not like what you see.” […]

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