The Airing of Grievances – Smugglivus 2016

2016 is over, 2017 has begun, and Smugglivus is nearly complete! Which means that we must also undergo another very important ritual…

THE AIRING OF GRIEVANCES!

(In which we air out any dirty laundry from 2016. Warning: plenty of swearing, engaged CAPS LOCK OF FURY, and spoilers athoy, baby!)

We’ve been Airing our Grievances since 2008 and friends, there hasn’t been a year like 2016 ever. On a global scale, we have wars, deaths, terrorist attacks, and political upheaval. From a personal point of view, this was the year when Ana’s baby sister had cervical cancer and like that wasn’t enough already, she almost died after catching a FREAKISH hospital infection with an ultra-resistant bacteria when she had her surgery to remove her fucking womb (Thankfully – the one thing to be thankful for in 2016 – she not only survived but her cancer is gone).

This means, we don’t even know where to start with this year’s grievances. But we do know one thing: 2016 was the year of the WHAT.

Like, so many people we loved are just… gone. To name a few, Alan Rickman, Leonard Cohen, Muhamad Ali, Prince, David Bowie and in the period between Christmas and New Year, George Michael, Carrie Fisher and Debbie Reynolds…

And then there was that one time when a favourite character died too, and he was one of the few POC characters in a major show and…

Meanwhile, racist shit is happening all over the world. Like that one time when we all went to bed in the UK and we woke up and BREXIT happened…

In publishing and on Twitter, advocates for equality, feminists, poc readers and authors were attacked left and right every time they called out racism and sexism in publishing. And folks, there was a lot of that this year. Like that one time when a publisher had a book of “parody” covers that was so racist it almost made our eyes bleed. White authors continued to be awful and show their asses, like that one who said that those who call out cultural appropriation are getting “too precious.” And just a few days ago, we all found out that racist nazi piece of shit Milo Yiannopoulos got a huge book deal with a major publishing house…

In the meantime in the SFF sphere, the Whiny Puppies attacked the Hugo awards again, white dudes got super upset about Ghostbusters having a primarily female cast and the same contingent called for Rogue One boycotts because the movie having a POC cast was too political…

Yeah, this year has been rough.

But that’s not all folks. There was also that one time when the US elected Donald Trump as their president.