Some thoughts before the Hugo Awards
- Thread starter Robert B. Marks
- Start date
Recommended Videos
Is that why those they formed as a group in opposition to decided to ruin the awards for everyone instead of letting the Puppies win in more then three categories, an act of childish vandalism that only left the Rabbit Puppies happy since they're the ones who wanted to watch the whole thing burn?LifeCharacter said:
Plus, I don't think misrepresenting the group helps anything. I mean hell even if one does assume there was no in-group trying to keep all non-radicals out it's still pretty damned suspect that for the decade before their formation only those with a very specific ideological view where getting nominated or winning. We saw outright trash winning awards, and conservatives and liberals basically barred from entry. Are you really going to argue that trash was winning and that both mainstream political leanings has no representation in the awards all of a sudden when no cultural shift in either society or the readership of the genres shifted?
Again, examples. You've claimed that the Hugo judges are politically biased, but haven't given any direct evidence. Not saying that evidence is easy, but that's how burden of proof works. I at least took the time to directly quote Brad Torgensen on his stance.Zontar said:
Again, examples. You keep saying that trash is winning, but declaring a work to be trash is a subjective opinion in most cases.Zontar said:
Award ceremonies are generally gigantic circle-jerks as it is.
Does this one matter any more than others?
Does this one matter any more than others?
http://www.theverge.com/2016/8/20/12551696/2016-hugo-awards-nk-jemisin-fifth-season-science-fiction
So there's the results. I guess it's nice to see Andy Weir/The Martian get some recognition (moreso the book, less so the film), and I'm left to ask why The Cutie Map of all MLP episodes got nominated, and how an episode of anything could be better than Heaven Sent, but hey, don't ya know that it's all politically biaised?
No seriously, I'd love to hear what people thought of the 2016 list.
So there's the results. I guess it's nice to see Andy Weir/The Martian get some recognition (moreso the book, less so the film), and I'm left to ask why The Cutie Map of all MLP episodes got nominated, and how an episode of anything could be better than Heaven Sent, but hey, don't ya know that it's all politically biaised?
No seriously, I'd love to hear what people thought of the 2016 list.
Just took a deep breath, decided "what the hell," and read the list of winners, and...
Oh, thank God, they didn't blow it up this year.
There's a long way to go to undo the damage, but not throwing authors under the bus left, right, and centre is a good place to start.
EDIT: For those reading this thread wondering what the big deal is, you can read my previous coverage here:
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/video-games/columns/garwulfs-corner/14559-The-Night-The-Hugos-Burned-The-Sad-and-Rabid-Puppies-Explained
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/video-games/columns/garwulfs-corner/15523-Garwulf-Revisits-the-Night-the-Hugo-Awards-Burned
Oh, thank God, they didn't blow it up this year.
There's a long way to go to undo the damage, but not throwing authors under the bus left, right, and centre is a good place to start.
EDIT: For those reading this thread wondering what the big deal is, you can read my previous coverage here:
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/video-games/columns/garwulfs-corner/14559-The-Night-The-Hugos-Burned-The-Sad-and-Rabid-Puppies-Explained
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/video-games/columns/garwulfs-corner/15523-Garwulf-Revisits-the-Night-the-Hugo-Awards-Burned
The Hugo Awards are irrelevant anyway, a relic of a bygone age. The Sad Puppies should just move on, maybe organise their own awards if they think they could do a better job.
For some reason, MLP is big with Neo-Nazis. I haven't had the bravery to look into why exactly.Hawki said:
Kinda a shame Space Raptor butt Invasion didn't win, if only for missing the mass head explosions from certain quarters from Zoe Quinn accepting the award on Chuck Tingles behalf.
EDIT: Oops, misread your question, sorry.
For some reason, people always seem to not know how the Hugo awards work, so to pre-empt that, here we go.
Nominations can be voted on by anybody, Internet randos included. The 5 works with the most votes get put on the ballot. Each rando can vote for 5 different works.
The finals are cast by the members of the World Science Fiction Society. Membership isn't terribly expensive, but there is a cost. Voters vote for one work in each category, or, if said voter doesn't think any of the five options was a work that deserves a Hugo that year, they can vote "no award". No Award winning the top spot usually means that it was a bad year for that category, full of mediocrity. "No Awards" are usually very rare. (This is a massively simplified version of how the vote works. For more detail, go here.)
If you're clever, you've already seen a problem with this system. If any Internet rando can vote for five different books/comics/movies, and there are only five nominations put up for a vote, what's to stop a bunch of bitter assholes from gathering together and getting excitable redditors and channers together to make sure only their style of fiction gets nominated? Short answer? Nothing but scale.
51 out of 60 on the Sad Puppies slate and 58 of 67 on the Rabid Puppies slate got nominated. On top of that, five categories, "Best Related Work", "Best Short Story", "Best Novella", "Best Editor (Short Form)", and "Best Editor (Long Form)", were composed entirely of Puppy nominees.
Suffice to say, the actual members of the WSFS didn't take kindly to Internet randos so blatantly breaking a system that's largely worked just fine for 70 odd years. In each of those five categories with only puppy nominees, none of them got ranked higher than No Award. The rest of the puppy slate? On top of 6+ authors declining their nomination, the only puppy nominee that got rated higher than No Award was Guardians of the Galaxy.
So here's the rub: if the Puppies were really in the majority, really striking a blow for the majority of science fiction fans out there who want to leave that SJW crap by the way side and go back to the supposedly non-political way science fiction used to be (ha!), why would they fail so miserably as soon as you needed to pony up $40 for a vote?
Incidentally, the one category this year that was entirely filled with Rabid Puppy nominees, "Best Related Work", the winner was No Award once again.
2017 or 2018, the nomination process is going to be changed slightly to reduce the impact of slate voting. Last I heard, they were going to use fractional votes. Instead of nominating fives works and each of them getting one vote each, you nominated up to five works, with each of them getting and evenly divided fraction. Vote for one thing, it gets a whole vote. Vote for five things, they each get a fifth of a vote.
Nominations can be voted on by anybody, Internet randos included. The 5 works with the most votes get put on the ballot. Each rando can vote for 5 different works.
The finals are cast by the members of the World Science Fiction Society. Membership isn't terribly expensive, but there is a cost. Voters vote for one work in each category, or, if said voter doesn't think any of the five options was a work that deserves a Hugo that year, they can vote "no award". No Award winning the top spot usually means that it was a bad year for that category, full of mediocrity. "No Awards" are usually very rare. (This is a massively simplified version of how the vote works. For more detail, go here.)
If you're clever, you've already seen a problem with this system. If any Internet rando can vote for five different books/comics/movies, and there are only five nominations put up for a vote, what's to stop a bunch of bitter assholes from gathering together and getting excitable redditors and channers together to make sure only their style of fiction gets nominated? Short answer? Nothing but scale.
51 out of 60 on the Sad Puppies slate and 58 of 67 on the Rabid Puppies slate got nominated. On top of that, five categories, "Best Related Work", "Best Short Story", "Best Novella", "Best Editor (Short Form)", and "Best Editor (Long Form)", were composed entirely of Puppy nominees.
Suffice to say, the actual members of the WSFS didn't take kindly to Internet randos so blatantly breaking a system that's largely worked just fine for 70 odd years. In each of those five categories with only puppy nominees, none of them got ranked higher than No Award. The rest of the puppy slate? On top of 6+ authors declining their nomination, the only puppy nominee that got rated higher than No Award was Guardians of the Galaxy.
So here's the rub: if the Puppies were really in the majority, really striking a blow for the majority of science fiction fans out there who want to leave that SJW crap by the way side and go back to the supposedly non-political way science fiction used to be (ha!), why would they fail so miserably as soon as you needed to pony up $40 for a vote?
Incidentally, the one category this year that was entirely filled with Rabid Puppy nominees, "Best Related Work", the winner was No Award once again.
2017 or 2018, the nomination process is going to be changed slightly to reduce the impact of slate voting. Last I heard, they were going to use fractional votes. Instead of nominating fives works and each of them getting one vote each, you nominated up to five works, with each of them getting and evenly divided fraction. Vote for one thing, it gets a whole vote. Vote for five things, they each get a fifth of a vote.
He/She/They/It immediately and hilariously started slamming Vox Day, the Rabids, and Anti-SJWs in general and, far as I can tell, never let up. Just hard pounding, from a variety of angles, with more stamina than I thought possible.Fox12 said:
Just pounding it. Pounding it.
Pounding it.
That assumes that the majority of science fiction fans think the Hugos are important enough to pay $40 for a vote. If they really were sick of the SJW menace in science fiction, the most obvious solution would be to not buy any of it and vote with their wallets (or purses or money pouches).altnameJag said:
For that $40, you get sent all the works nominated and that are available in a mailable format, so you get your money back with interest.Breakdown said:
Though I think this year, one of the rabid nominees could not be sent out as it contained material that could have got anyone owning it arrested in several countries, and only included a URL to it instead.
They generally like voters to actually be informed on what their actually voting on. Though in certain categories older voters tend to stick with 'old favorites'Breakdown said:
This is the kind of silly bullshit that any adult would be ashamed to explain to their other adult friends, or worse, their parents.
Don't get involved in something that would only make people think, "WTF?" if you had to explain it. I'm not saying everything in life deserves to be seen through that restrictive lens, but I think it's a good reality test for internet drama.
Don't get involved in something that would only make people think, "WTF?" if you had to explain it. I'm not saying everything in life deserves to be seen through that restrictive lens, but I think it's a good reality test for internet drama.