Lit Ignorance is Bias: The Diversity Manifesto

Did you read the GRRM stuff or did you go deeper?

The depressing part is that it's something that has been going on for a LONG time, and it's a flaw in the way the voting for the Hugos was set up, but at the time I think there was an assumption that anyone who had memberships would automatically be going to the conventions and would obviously be involved in the culture.

There's three main authors behind a lot of the Puppy nonsense, both Sad and Rabid Puppies (yes, there's two groups), and then there's Gamergate who have jumped in to help push the Sad Puppy slate and the Rabid Puppy slate.

However, if you look at the three remaining "big" outlets for short prose, which is actually where some of these people come from, it breaks up into three distinct "cultures" of science fiction and fantasy between Analog (which never publishes fantasy and is more hard science fiction), Asimov's, and Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction.

Analog is very, very much still set in the old ideas of 1950's science fiction and they don't really even like the New Wave stuff that revolutionized science fiction in the 60's. It has a place but it's been far over-shadowed by the other two, which embraced more fantastical elements, things like magical realism, new wave science fiction, and basically all the additions to SF that came after the Golden Age.

And that's before we even get to the fact that instead of looking at it as changing tastes and more diversity, a lot of the Sad Puppies have looked at it as a culture war of the "SJW's" bringing "bad science" into the awards and field and all this icky sexual identity and new fangled diversity messing up their hard science fiction with manly men doing science man things.

Vox Day and John C Wright are even worse than the Sad Puppy founder, and they've brought in a lot of Gamergaters and just plain reactionary right-wing voters who bought up memberships to be able to vote and puts "approved" authors and works on the ballot.

It's a mess, and a problem with the rules, and sadly it has ruined the Hugo awards for at least a stretch of three to five years since any rule change has to be voted on two years in a row before being able to take effect.

 

The Nebula Awards are still good though, right?

 

Nebulas, IIRC, are chosen by the SFWA, which consists of science fiction writers (which, also IIRC, Vox was the only one ever to be booted out of the organization).

 

Holy sith, seriously?? Major props to them, then,

 

Well... technically, no. SFWA was a Massachusetts corporation. While the board voted to boot him out, under MA law the entire membership needed to vote on it, not just the board.

So they reincorporated themselves in California, sans Vox Day.

 

Ha, that's even more awesome.

From what I'm gathering, it was actually Vox's Rabid Puppies that stole the victory out form under the Sad Puppies - and left the Sad Puppies to take the blame (not that they don't deserve it). It appears the Sad Puppies are now trying to reinvent themselves as some sort of "moderate" position between "two extremes" (in the case of the hyperbole-laden "nuclear option" of voting NO CHOICE), but since they seem unwilling to actually decry Vox on any real level - sorry, but referring to him as 'the Kurgen' from Highlander is just pathetic - I'm guessing it's not going to work.

 

It's not quote as large of a gap as you'd think, and Sad Puppies are really being run by Larry Correia, he's just staying low after people called him out because one of his novels was potentially on the slate, so he took himself off, but he and the other Sad Puppy leaders are far closer to Vox Day than they are to say....Sclazi or whomever you'd like to put forward as the vocal wing of those who are seen as liberals and the dreaded "SJW's"

Oh, and so as not to make multi-posts; it's not too hard to get membership in SFWA, you only need three "pro" sales, which are outlets that pay over...I think it used to be $.03 a word when I got my sales, but I believe they may have raised it to $.05 because it was becoming a joke the way people would hit three sales to outlets that barely made pro status and then just be in for life.

SFWA is kinda nice because you get access to a greater market list and you can put "SFWA member" in communications, but at the same time if you're a working writer the field is so small people will have some idea of you in your area of writing.

 

I'm curious as to what Michael Z. Williamson has to do with the whole thing. I've read Freehold, and his Valdemar short stories - and I never got the impression from any that he was racist, sexist, or homophobic - quite the reverse.

 

You could say the thing about Card after reading the first few Ender books (especially Speaker for the Dead).

 

Freehold wasn't nearly as long ago as Speaker for the Dead though.

I've occasionally seen Heinlein's work described as "old ideas of 1950s fiction" - but I got the impression that over time he was becoming increasingly progressive in certain respects - and that his aliens certainly weren't always enemies to be gunned down - plenty were allies, or even heroes.

 

Yeah, people's views change over time. Some creators become progressive, others grow more conservative. Some authors write books that don't reflect their viewpoints at all. (A lot of people thought Scalzi was very conservative after Old Man's War, a traditional military sf, but obviously that's not the case.)

 

I honestly do think there are people on the Sad Puppies side who believe in the argument that they want to take SF back to the roots of it being grounded in hard SF, but the Hugo award and SF in general long ago diversified into more than that, whether it's cyberpunk or steampunk or New Wave or whatever.

The only problem I'd have with the good people who get caught up in it because it may seem like a worthy goal, besides the rather dubious gatekeeping about what is REAL SF and who is a real SF writer you have the fact that they're allowing some people to speak for them who are saying some rather nasty stuff.

I don't know Williamson so I can't really comment, but there are people on the Puppy's slates who might not have all the info and there may be people who honestly think it's fair in some manner since it technically doesn't violate the bylaws.

It's completely destroying the Hugos, as Connie Willis just announced she will not MC the awards this year, and it's turned the Hugo into a laughing stock, and that's a problem.

It's also annoying that this has been going on forever. People announce on blogs or mailing lists or whatever which stories, shows, etc they liked for the year and since they have people who follow and respect them that carries some weight. However, that's not the same as creating a movement against a political position and the position of diversity and having people buy their $40 tickets who don't participate in the events but can now vote and leverage the votes towards a few core writers who agree with the Puppies and a few random books that the vote wreckers happen to like.

I honestly don't have any answers, but I do think that if people read GRRM's ongoing discussion of this which has turned into an attempt to dialogue with Correia, it's one of the better discussions and overviews of the whole thing.

 

http://www.rotoscopers.com/2015/04/...ing-interest-in-female-led-animated-features/

 

Has anybody tried to follow the Celebration live chat on YouTube? I tried for a total of five minutes and there were so many horrible things said about "girls only pretending to like Star Wars" that it was just...scary.

 

What?

 

What to what exactly?

Basically, a bunch of kids in the livestream of Celebration on YouTube constantly claim that no girls can like SW and that it's all pretend. I am...negatively fascinated, if there is such a thing.

 

I think it is a 'What kind of stupid belief is "girls only pretending to like Star Wars"'-what.

What next, people saying that boys only pretending to like My little Pony?

 

One of my friends has a four year old daughter. He shared this recently:

The law of unintended consequences:
I introduced my daughter to Star Wars. She LOVES it. I couldn't be happier.
Weeks later . . . I spend more hours of the day as C-3PO than as Daddy.
DAUGHTER: "I want you to be C-3PO all day and all of the night!"
ME: "But then, won't you miss Daddy?"
DAUGHTER: "No. Because then I will have C-3PO."

 

OMG. That was funny...and awesome. My parents never bothered to remember who my favourite SW character was and I was really obsessed as a kid (hence this username and all).

 

I went as Vader for Halloween in second grade. The kid dressed as Luke couldn't understand why a girl would dress as a Star Wars character and said so, repeatedly. And then couldn't understand why I refused to reciprocate his schoolboy crush. C'mon, kid. Even if I wasn't a little gay seedling, that's not how you woo a girl. Unfortunately, I don't think he ever figured it out.

 

I've been watching the live stream on and off but I did not catch that part. The actual programming is really fun to watch (eg. the panels--especially Carrie Fisher.)

One thing that I noticed is that the commentators aren't very diverse. For example, they pulled a bunch of folks from fan sites like AICN to do a shot-by-shot breakdown of the trailer (a very tedious exercise), but they were (as far as I am aware) all white dudes.

The two main hosts of the livestream are white guys (one is Canadian.) There was an awkward moment where one of the co-hosts said he had "fangirled too hard" the day before because he was practically crying on screen with excitement about the trailer. So I guess being emotional=something fangirls do.

Some of the interviewees are diverse, like they interviewed Guillermo from Jimmy Kimmel Live and a Japanese sushi artist who knifes sweet potatoes into Star Wars shapes. They also interviewed Ashley Eckstein. One of the on the floor interviewees is the host of Rebels Recon (for people who watch the behind the scenes thing.) I also caught an interview with two women who work on Rebels.

One moment I thought was interesting was a guy dressed like Darth Maul roaming the floor and prompting attendees to answer Star Wars trivia (some of it EU stuff not mentioned in the movies). Some of the attendees he picked were attractive young cosplaying women. I found this interaction particularly interesting because regardless of the intent of this segment, it reminded me of all the times I have been "fake geek girled" in fan communities and quizzed on obscure trivia as if knowing trivia is the only way to prove you are a "real fan." (Look, if you spent the money and time in line to get into SW Celebration, there's no way you are a real fan in my book.) But I as a woman fan I think being quizzed on camera like that adds an added dimension of pressure and awkwardness to the interaction.

There was an ad for Toys R Us in front of the Darth Maul panel that featured a little boy in the toy aisle playing with lightsabers. To be honest, I think retailers like Toys R Us and Disney Store are MAJORLY responsible for the perception that Star Wars is primarily for boys. As much as I am disappointed to hear individual fans espouse this view that girls aren't meant/into Star Wars, the way this franchise is commercialized is still really sexist and totally explains why people think this way.

(Don't get me wrong, I think Her Universe is a fantastic women-owned/run licensee in Star Wars that proves that women are just as eager to part with our hard earned dollars, but it is still treated like it targets a niche part of the fandom.)

For sithsake they sell Rebels plush toys of the Inquisitor and Stormtroopers but not plush toys of Sabine and Hera. If there's any stereotypical subset of merchandising aimed towards girls in Star Wars, you'd think it would be the plushies.

 

So I really hope Moff Mors isn't just a lesbian so she can be an evil sexpot. We've had enough lady Imperials who "slept their way to the top" already.

 

From the preview I am pretty sure she made it to her position by being really cunning and now is just reaping the “benefits” of that position.