Queer & afab though I am, I know that I'm still privileged in con spaces as elsewhere: I'm white, English-speaking from a western country, middle class. I'm not trying to paint the white women of SFF as its universal saviours: I've seen *plenty* of appalling white lady behaviour.
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I'm achingly aware of how many POC especially, how many marginalised writers, never had anyone welcome them into SFF the way I was welcomed by the writers I grew up admiring; who've had to fight to clear space for themselves. I hate that this is the case!
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Nor am I saying that the fuckery of GRRM and Silverberg at the 2020 Hugos somehow magically ceases to matter just because I've never considered either to be integral figures in my mental genre-gospel. What they did was lazy, gross and self-serving in every way.
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What I *am* trying to get at is why their decision to ramble on about Campbell, Lovecraft and their own glory days under the guise of Representing The History Of The Awards And Genre is so goddamn obnoxious: because it assumes a universal entry into SFF that does. not. exist.
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The fact is, there's as many ways to get into SFF as there are SFF fans, and while there's always going to be overlap, telling the same old war stories over and over again doesn't remotely acknowledge the plurality of where the genre has been - or, crucially, where it's going.
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An uncomfortable truth about SFF - which is, I suspect, also true of most other creative niches/fields - is that it's always going to be cliquey. When your peers are your peers because you share an interest that is also your joint profession, friend & professional circles merge.
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It's a feature as well as a bug, which means that, while you can't eradicate it, you absolutely have to be *aware* of it, because while you might not notice Your Circle forming? Everyone on the outside of it sees its circumference lit up in neon.
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So, what do you do with all those circles? Ideally, you try to make them into chainmail, not polka dots: you want connections that links groups together in a way that acknowledges both overlap and difference, not variously-sized, solid-colour blocs broken up by gaping spaces.
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The past is important, but it shouldn't be elevated at the expense of the present, nor lauded to the exclusion of the future. And when GRRM and Silverberg get up and tell the same six stories every year, that's what they're doing: speaking just to Their Circle, the glorious past.
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Replying to @fozmeadows
Come to the
@SecondLife Book Club and we will devote the show to this topic. We are booked almost a year in advance but we can coordinate a special time that works for Australia
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I’d love to! I’m based in California, though, so no need to coordinate for Australian time :)
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Replying to @fozmeadows @SecondLife
just saw >>> Irvine = I am working with UCI at the moment on a new documentary about virtual worlds and embodiment/place = will ping in DM before heading to German analog Sunday
0 replies 0 retweets 1 likeThanks. Twitter will use this to make your timeline better. UndoUndo
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