Something for Everyone

fierceawakening:

earlgraytay:

isaacsapphire:

rocketverliden:

kontextmaschine:

You know, I think a lot of modern internet culture war shit goes back to the ‘60s-‘70s (counter)cultural refoundation that both sides claim lineage from. ‘cause there’s a sense it was sold as something for everyone – women, racial, and gender/sexual minorities would get their civil rights and inclusionary movements recognized, in return straight white guys got the consensus that Cool People agree: sexualization is Correct, being offended is Incorrect. And there’s a growing sense (from all sides) that the terms have not been upheld.

Sad Puppies and the Hugos. Because that’s what we’re talking about now, apparently.

Both sides claim to be the true heirs of SFF. The antis sniff that it’s obviously them because the genre has always been committed to a progressive vision, especially starting with the ‘60s-‘70s and the New Wave.

And that’s not wrong, but there’s a lot of stuff under that aegis. You have Left Hand of Darkness, with LeGuin all “gender fluidity would be great; we could experience our true selves independent of mutilatory social structures, and it would give rise to meaningful new cultural practices oriented around the beauty of self-discovery and self-crafting”.

And then there’s Varley’s Eight Worlds, which is like “Just imagine, if perfect sex changes were consumer services like haircuts, you could experience banging-hot hetero sex from both sides!”

Or Marion Zimmer Bradley all “adding strong female characters to fantasy allows us to escape tedious military epics towards an exploration of the importance of emotional labor, correctly identifying life-creation, not -destruction as the fundamental force of history”.

And meanwhile, “Red Sonja, DAAAAMN. She could force herself on you, how hot is that?”

(Joss Whedon postures like he’s from the Bradley tradition, but he’s toooootaly from the Red Sonja tradition.)

And then you have stuff like Stranger in a Strange Land, which is about interspecies tolerance, peace, love, and understanding, as enabled by author-insert dirty old man Jubal, attended poolside by his harem of buxom secretaries, including the one trained to totally suppress her personality so to better serve.

Like I said, something for everyone.

(Modern equivalent being Kim Stanley Robinson, recurring theme being “If scientists ran the world, there would be peaceful, multicultural, inclusionary socialism. And also collective nude bathing, where young female students seduce their mentors.”)

And you know, I’m still waiting on the WisCon panel on “Recovering the Promise of Teenage Groupies”.

Honestly I’m not much in the fandom these days but I do get Gardner Dozois’ “World’s Best” anthology every year, and I have noticed an increase in stories where nothing happens, but at least it’s brown and queer folks it’s not happening to.

One story a bit back that stuck with me, the message seemed to be “working in a Foxconn plant would suck”, which okay but I couldn’t even tell what was SF about it. Another that started promising – in an Islamic country (bcuz good point, the future won’t just come for white Anglophones), polygamy and semi-arranged marriage coexist with social media (ditto), and men hire Cyranos to polish their appeal, under the pressure that not every man can win even one wife. That’s a solid premise! But once this is established, the protagonist just throws up his hands and experiences a wave of relief as he realizes he could just be gay instead.

And it’s like… wut.jpg

In a proper world an editor would’ve returned that with a note saying “great story, can’t wait to see it when it’s done”. But that’s exactly the issue, isn’t it, that box-ticking and message Correctness are being accepted in lieu of quality.

Actually, you know what that really reminds me of? Christian rock.

Christian rock? How so?

I wasn’t aware there was this much focus on sexuality. I mean, it makes sense, though, if it emerged in those decades of Free Love. Does this mean you’d characterize the Campbellian vs. New Wave thing as “military adventure vs. sexcapades”?

(Also, I am here for Red Sonja, though I’m willing to bet that her depiction has changed considerably in the comic world. No idea about the original source material, though.)

EDIT: Also, we see more general fanservice-y stuff, from modern anime like Infinite Stratos and maybe Macross, to older stuff like BattleTech (where MechWarriors canonically wear little more than shorts and tank tops because heat buildup radiates into cockpits).

It’s that modern, SJW approved media, specifically SFF created and published to be SJW approved, is very similar to the Christian publishing and music industries.

Being in The Industry myself, I’m gonna expand on this a little. 

I don’t entirely agree with isaacsapphire, in that there are plenty of talented writers publishing “SJW-approved” media.

It’s not just whatever’s happening to win the awards this week.

 (I’d recommend Roanna Sylver, Austin Chant, and Shira Glassman, and out of the more famous authors Seanan McGuire is really good in her own right.) 

That being said: Christian publishing has notoriously low standards, because The Message is more important than craft or polish. As an example: the Left Behind series, one of the most infamous works of “Christian fiction”, was written in one draft, received minimal copyediting, and then was published. It shows- the characters meander all over the place, make a lot of phone calls, and often seem to forget that there’s an apocalypse happening around them.

But it had The Right Message- it was explicitly Christian, it had nothing to offend the right-wing Purity Police in it, and it trumpeted anti-abortion, anti-gay-rights, and pro-Family Values causes. So it got published. And then people bought it by the score because it was the closest thing to SFF they were ‘allowed’ to read, and in some Christian bookstores it sold more copies than anything other than the Bible. (Mostly because it’s a 12-book series, with prequels and multiple spin-offs.) 

… If Message is more important than craft, if the ideology of what you’re writing is more important than the story you’re telling, you’re going to put out crap. It’s inevitable. A story can hit all the right MESSAGE tickboxes and still be ridiculously awful. Likewise, you can disagree with every bit of the message a story is trying to press, while still enjoying it as a story. (Narnia, anyone?) 

I do think SF/F Media Aimed At A Lefty Audience has this problem- particularly literary SFF- though I don’t think it’s anywhere near as bad as Christian media. There’s still plenty of quality art out there being marketed in that intensely SJ way (OMG IT HAS GAY CHARACTERS). But there’s also a lot of hype for stuff that’s mediocre at best and wouldn’t be getting nearly as much attention if it WASN’T targeted at SJ people (and if MRAs weren’t raising a stink about it). 

We need to be critical about the quality of what media we’re consuming, and not just about whether OMGITHASLADIESDOINGCOOLTHINGS or OMGTHEREISQUEER. Otherwise people will try to feed us shit and call it sweet corn. 

…And after all, one of my short stories got published and won an award, mostly because it was about a trans person. I think that says everything you need to know about the quality of the industry right there.

“There’s still plenty of quality art out there being marketed in that intensely SJ way (OMG IT HAS GAY CHARACTERS).”

Yeah.

Like, I’m published by queer presses, so all my protagonists are some flavor of gay. But I also tend to write very dark stuff, full of power games and drama. I feel like if I said, like, “Salvation has gay men in it!” and the usual people who go for that kind of ad bought it… well, some folks would like it, or at least I hope so. But I get the sense some of them might be unpleasantly surprised.

Which is why I’m not a huge fan of that type of ad. I won’t say I’ve never done it–I did yell pretty loudly that The Cyborg He Brought Home has a trans dude in it!–but it seems a bit empty. What are your gay or trans or POC characters actually doing? What’s your plot?