nominees bowing out; a variety of puppies and responses

On top of everything below, I'm mad that this Puppies slate-voting/nominations-gaming stunt happened this year in particular.

I know that's selfish, but we don't get a lot of Cascadian Worldcons; I know, I've been involved (at low levels) with a few failed bids. But more, a friend of mine won the competition to do the Hugo Award base. I was really happy for him, and now he gets to deal with this.

I mean, the whole mess is overtly political bullshit, done for overtly political reasons, mostly - when it comes right down to it - for spite, to Show Those People What. And while plenty of people have been hurt by this - to the distinct pleasure of some on the Puppy side, since after all, that's kind of the point - it's a little more personal when it's people you know.

Anyway. I've assembled a bunch of links off to other people talking about the Puppies, including - talking of people being hurt by it - Annie Bellet removing her story from the ballot, and Marko Kloos removing his novel. I had most of these already yesterday, but I wanted to keep one day clear of it.

• Brad Torgersen's self-pity-party knows no bounds, apparently. OH NOES, IT'S THE SCIENCE-FICTION GULAG! Nobody expects the Fannish Inquisition? It's kind of sad, really, as James Nicoll points out.
• George R. R. Martin has commented extensively, and the comments section is large, with lots of the Puppy leaders showing up
• Why Connie Willis Will Not Present a Hugo Award This Year
• John Scalzi comments on the conspiracy theory surrounding the removal of a John C. Wright novel from the 2015 Hugo ballot on grounds of previous publication (spoiler: It's All Scalzi's Fault, apparently)
• David Gerrold: Star Trek wasn't about social justice? Really? It was entirely about social justice, I know, I was there, in response to Puppies trying to claim Star Trek as theirs
• Vox Day still doesn't understand not to cry 'context!' when the context makes the quoted material worse (spoiler: yep, he's super racist)
• Naomi Kritzer quoting extensively from the Puppies "Evil League of Evil" posts by John C. Wright, Sarah Hoyt, Larry Correia, and Brad Torgersen in response to various later attempts by Puppies to distance themselves from Vox Day (spoiler: they're all fully involved, and the distancing attempts are bullshit)
• The Nerdvana Podcast talks about the Puppies gaming the Hugo awards, with Kevin Standlee, Christopher J Garcia and Mo "The Thrill" Starkey.
• Hugo Story Withdrawn: Annie Bellet wants no part of this
• Neither does Marko Kloos, who withdraws Lines of Departure from nomination, based on being included in the Rabid Puppy slate without his consent. NOTE: His site is currently overwhelmed; if it's still so when you read this, here's a screencap.
• Sasquan - the Worldcon this year - has reported a huge surge in supporting memberships, which, of course, have voting rights; GRRM anticiptes nothing good coming from this, which seems a good bet.
• ComicMix called for people to "game" the Amazon review system to downgrade Vox Day's publishing house's works, which as contemptible as Vox is, I have to oppose; Vox, of course, threatens legal action. Look, don't make me be on the same side of anything as Vox, it makes me feel nasty, and you don't want supervillains feeling nasty.
• Fantasy novelist Angela Highland (whose Free Court of Seattle books are the series our new soundtrack album accompanies) posts her own feelings on the matter, and also has thoughts on extremism in general.
• Nobody in Finland knows who the hell Vox Day's press is, which certainly makes them the envy of me.

Here are all of my posts on the topic so far; they've also all been added to the Sexism and Racism in Geek Culture masterpost, which is on the left in "Collections." Or, you know, right here.

• On Buying some Hugo Awards^tm, and voting No Award
• We'd Better All Be Ready To Go To The Business Meeting, on gaming the rules change process itself
• On Brad Torgersen and Crocodile Tears, and the Correia/Torgersen attempts to distance themselves from the white supremacist they invited into their campaign
• A Predicable? Doubling Down, wherein I respond to Brad Torgersen's assertion that anyone opposing the Puppy slate are Leninist Communists
• Some Puppies Are Deleting Things, wherein I repost and/or link to caches of material various Puppies - mostly John C. Wright - have tried to hide via deletion or just pretend never happened. Too bad that's not how the internet works, guys. Also wherein I get accused of libel by John C. Wright for quoting John C. Wright. That's not how libel works, either. Possibly to be followed by John C. Wright coming over here and yelling at me for this, too, because wow, John C. Wright vanity searches a lot, and this will totally come up in John C. Wright's John C. Wright search results. Hi John!

eta: I am adding to this list as I find more things today, some of which are kind of hilarious, some of which are kind of pathetic, some of which are both. Enjoy?

From Crime and the Blog of Evil; we're geek musicians, come check out our new neo-Celtic fantasy novel OST!

a sense of scale

Oh no, you fuckers do not get to make me care about Star Wars again. You have no right.

But I am going to say a thing nonetheless, about storytelling with cinematography.

J.J. Abrams was always the wrong choice for Star Trek. Always. He never got it, and really, said so, in that infamous Daily Show clip everyone's seen, and that failure to get it reverberated throughout his choices.

But I hoped, just hoped, that he might be a good choice for Star Wars. And that opening trailer shot says a lot about him getting it. At least some of it.

See, the first, opening shot in the original Star Wars? The Star Destroyer sequence? That's about scale. It's about setting a very, very large scope, without ever saying HAY LOOK HOW HUGE THIS IS. It's about dropping you in there and just letting it happen... in a way you don't expect. There's that little misdirection with the kind of a little ship that was in SF films before Star Wars... and then things change, and you know the scales have moved.

And that's exactly what this trailer does. Right out the gate. A little landspeeder going across a desert; a little ship, crashed, like you've seen before...

...and then things change, and the scales are moved. It does so more successfully than either of the prequel films I saw managed at any point. The prequels mostly just looked busy and overly-concerned with minutia and, as a result, kind of... small.

There is more sense of largeness in this one shot opening the trailer than both of the prequel films I saw managed to achieve, combined.

And unlike with Star Trek's early promotional shots, this isn't about just duplicating previous material effectively. Those looked good too - but they were duplications, re-creations. The same shots, staged with new actors.

This isn't that. This isn't just repeating but bigger. This is showing how to parallel, without duplicating.

You can't take very much from a teaser-trailer. People have noted that Phantom Menace's teaser trailers looked pretty good too. But for J.J. Abrams to get this right, so very effectively... maybe there's hope it won't be the only thing he gets right.

Echoed from Crime and the Blog of Evil. We're geek musicians; come check out our new album!