(1) TAKEDOWN. The New York Post tells how “Accountant embezzled $3.4M from famed literary agency”.
A Manhattan accountant cooked the books at a prestigious literary agency that represents top writers, including “Fight Club” author Chuck Palahniuk, bilking its clients of millions and leaving the company on the brink of bankruptcy, according to legal papers.
Darin Webb, 47, faces 20 years in jail on wire-fraud charges for embezzling $3.4 million from storied Manhattan agency Donadio & Olson, according to a recently unsealed federal criminal complaint.
Although the agency, which also represents the estates of “Godfather” writer Mario Puzo and radio legend Studs Terkel, was not named in court papers, a lawyer representing the firm confirmed to The Post that Donadio & Olson was the subject of the alleged theft.
…The stolen money — allegedly lifted between January 2011 and March of this year — was earmarked for author royalties and advances, the complaint says.
But the theft could be exponentially more, a source told The Post, noting that a forensic accountant is combing through Donadio & Olson’s books all the way back to 2001, Webb’s first year at the agency.
He allegedly fessed up to the theft in March in a videotaped interview with company executives and their attorneys at the agency’s Chelsea office, saying he filed monthly financial reports that “contained false and fraudulent representations in order to accomplish the theft and evade detection,” the complaint states.
Webb was arrested May 15 by the FBI and is out on $200,000 bail.
The Guardian reports on a celebrity victim: “Chuck Palahniuk ‘close to broke’ as agent’s accountant faces fraud charges”.
Palahniuk – one of many starry authors represented by the firm, including the estates of Mario Puzo and Studs Terkel – said his income had dwindled for several years. He had blamed multiple factors, including piracy and problems at his publisher, for the decline in earnings.
More recently, Palahniuk said, “the trickle of my income stopped” and payments for titles including Fight Club 2 “never seemed to arrive”. He wondered if the money had been stolen, but told himself he “had to be crazy” – until the news broke.
“All the royalties and advance monies and film-option payments that had accumulated in my author’s account in New York, or had been delayed somewhere in the banking pipeline, [were] gone. Poof. I can’t even guess how much income. Someone confessed on video he’d been stealing. I wasn’t crazy,” wrote Palahniuk in a statement on his website.
The novelist said that “this chain of events leaves me close to broke”, but that he had found himself to be “rich … with friends and readers who’ve rushed to my rescue”.
“On the minus side, the legal process will be long and offers an iffy reward. On the plus side, I’m not crazy. Nor am I alone,” added the author.
(2) WISCON. Sophygurl, a Tumblr blogger, was present at a controversial WisCon panel and has written an account of what she heard: “WisCon 42 panel The Desire for Killable Bodies in SFF”. The post begins –
This is going to serve as my panel write-up for this panel, but it also a copy of what I wrote as a report to the Safety team about the panel. I am posting this on DreamWidth and Tumblr and will be linking to Twitter and Facebook. Please feel free to link elsewhere. This should all be public knowledge, imo.
For anyone who doesn’t know – this panel included a panelist who ended up talking about the importance of sympathizing with Nazis. This is obviously not the kind of thing you expect to find at an intersectional feminist convention. It was upsetting and disturbing. Most of the panel was actually very interesting and even funny, and I appreciated what the other two panelists had to say. I even appreciated *some* of what the panelist in question had to say. All of this was overshadowed by the awful things she said, however.
(3) BRANDON SANDERSON WARNS FANX. Utah author Brandon Sanderson has raised his voice against “Harassment at FanX”. (For background, see “FanX Salt Lake Comic Convention Sharply Criticized for Handling of Anti-harassment Complaint”.)
I don’t normally discuss charged issues on my social media, but I do find harassment at science fiction conventions a topic that is very important to discuss. It is also very relevant to my fans, as conventions are often how they interact with me.
Recently, Salt Lake City’s biggest media convention (FanX, formerly called Salt Lake Comic Con) has made some troubling missteps. First, it grossly mishandled harassment claims—then it doubled down on its mistakes, bungling interactions with voices that have called for reform.
Some authors I respect deeply have composed an open letter to FanX, calling for them to do better—and I have co-signed it. Many of these authors have spoken better about this specific issue than I can, and I encourage you all to read what they have said. I believe that conventions like these (alongside the smaller literary conventions that were so instrumental in my road to publication) are important parts of our community—and it is essential that they provide a place where victims are not silenced and harassment is not tolerated.
For now, I am still scheduled to appear at FanX this fall. My team and I have been evaluating whether or not this is a position we can still take—and it will greatly depend on how FanX responds to this letter in the next few weeks. I will keep you informed of our decision—and if I do decide to bow out of FanX, I will try to schedule some replacement signings instead.
(4) OPEN LETTER. The “Open Letter to FanX” that Sanderson refers to calls on the convention to do the following thigs:
One: In a public statement, and without disclosing her name, apologize to the victim who filed the sexual harassment report for disclosing their private report to the media without their knowledge or consent. Admit that the victim’s trust was violated, and promise future attendees who may report incidents that they will never undergo the same scrutiny or mishandling. Assure everyone that all reports will be heard, evaluated, and confidential. Keep the victims’ names confidential at all times.
Two: Hire a professional with experience writing, implementing, and upholding sexual harassment policies. Clarify the consequences for breaking the policy and reiterate that those consequences will be upheld. Removal and banishment from the conference should be among those ramifications.
Three: Address harassment complaints quickly. The past complaint was filed in October, and the complaint was not investigated until January. This shows a lack of concern and a reluctance to address the situation, as well as disregard for the seriousness of the issue.
Four: Recognize that trust is earned not through words, policies, and statements, but by a proven track record of implementation and action over time.
It’s signed by Robison Wells, Shannon Hale, Bree Despain, Emily R. King, Ally Condie, and Dean Hale, and co-signed by Brandon Sanderson, Maureen Johnson, Dan Wells, Howard Tayler, Annette Lyon, Mette Harrison, J. R. Johansson, Jessica Day George, Courtney Alameda, Lindsey Leavitt, and Sarah M. Eden.
(5) BOMB DISPOSAL. The Washington Post’s Steven Zeitchik, in “How Disney could get Star Wars back on track”, says the relative failure of Solo at the box office shows that Disney will have to take steps to make Star Wars films more appealing, including spacing them out more, making them edgier, and not releasing Star Wars films in May or June.
Fewer movies. Five months is not a long time for Star Wars to be away. Certainly it’s not the year that stretched between the previous three movies, or the 10 years between the last of the George Lucas movies and “The Force Awakens” in 2015. With Marvel that seems to help — releases in quick succession enhance one another. But with Star Wars, seen less as the rapid-fire sequel, novelty and absence may be the key to the game. Disney could do better by going back to the 12-month spacing — or even longer.
Why it’s tricky: This sounds good to fans. The problem is it doesn’t sound good to Wall Street or Disney financial executives. Star Wars movies are such juggernauts that Disney wants to cash in whenever it can. Waiting that long doesn’t help in that bid. Disney and Lucasfilm are encountering a major paradox here. Modern Hollywood says when you have successes you should replicate them early and often. But making Star Wars movies early and often may make them less successful.
(6) SOLO ACT. Guess who’s writing the tie-in? “’Solo: A Star Wars Story’ Novelization Coming In September 4th, Written By Mur Lafferty”.
The Solo novelization is continuing the trend that The Last Jedi novelization started of being released several months after the film. Previously the novelizations have been released closer to the films theatrical releases. The original and prequel novelizations were released before the films, while The Force Awakens and Rogue One adaptations were released as e-books the same day as the film and as hardcovers shortly thereafter.
(7) SFWA STUFF. Security protocols may have been breached….
I feel you are overly careless with the @SFWA Top Sekrit Plans for Total World Domination.
— Cat Rambo (@Catrambo) May 29, 2018
(8) BIG BOX STORE. Adweek reports “Amazon Is Driving Around a Jurassic-Sized Box, and You Can Ask Alexa What’s Inside”. (Registration required to read full article.)
The last time we noticed Amazon driving around a giant box, the mysterious delivery turned out to be a Nissan Versa. But this time, perhaps it’s something a bit more … carnivorous?
(9) COMICS SECTION.
- Chip Hitchcock thinks those penguin prognosticators might be right about what’s coming: Arctic Circle Cartoons.
- Not sure whether I should thank Chip for also making sure I didn’t miss a horrible pop-culture pun at Bliss.
(10) THE DIRECTOR VANISHES. Comics shop owner Cliff Biggers showed this photo to his Facebook friends.
UPS employees like Alfred Hitchcock so much that they opened our package, tore open the action figure packaging, stole the figure, and then re-taped the box and sent it to us.
(11) LISTEN UP. The Parsec Awards Steering Committee is accepting nominations for the 2018 Parsec Awards through June 15 – submit nominations here.
Any material released between May 1, 2017 and April 30, 2018 is eligible for the 2018 awards. Material released needs to be free for download and released via a mechanism that allows for subscriptions. Thus, YouTube, Facebook, etc.. series are eligible.
If you are a podcaster or author, please feel free to nominate your own podcast or story. It is one way we know that your contact information filled is correct.
(12) KEEPING SCORE AT HOME. Seanan McGuire, in the area for ConCarolinas this weekend, took time to rate Ursula Vernon’s cats. Start the thread here —
CAT #1: Smoky. Bluepoint Siamese. Loves love. Does not like to be picked up. Practically perfect in every way. A+.
— Seanan McGuire (@seananmcguire) May 30, 2018
(13) THE LAW & ANN LECKIE. A little known fact (in some quarters).
https://twitter.com/ann_leckie/status/1000128319474536448
(14) SPEAKING OF WHOM. Joe Sherry launches his Nerds of a Feather post series with “Reading the Hugos: Novel”:
Provenance: This is a novel which took a while to settle out from under the weight of unfair expectations that I placed on it. Once it did, I was able to engage more fully with Leckie’s story of truth, lies, and cultural identity. Provenance is a strong novel in its own right, and in the end, I appreciated Leckie’s light touch in how she connected it to the larger Ancillary universe.
It’s just that when we look back on Leckie’s career in twenty years, I suspect Provenance will be viewed as minor Leckie. It’s good, please don’t take this the wrong way, but the Ancillary trilogy was a major accomplishment and Provenance is “just” a very good book. I appreciated how Provenance pushed me to think about historical documents and relics, how their perception of importance could override the truth they should represent. There’s great stuff to chew on here
(15) SOLO REVIEW. And Nerds of a Feather contributor Dean E. S. Richard sounds relieved as much as anything in “Review: Solo: A Star Wars Story”.
The good news: it doesn’t suck! I mean, there’s some forgettable stuff, and Han Solo isn’t, like, Han Solo, but if you’re willing to watch it for the sake of itself and not expect Harrison Ford, it’s fine. It tries a little too hard for quips, and his against-odds/I-don’t-actually-have-a-plan moments come across a little forced, but, again, we’re measuring this against complete disaster, so I’ll take it.
(16) SIPS OF CEASELESS. Charles Payseur comments in “Quick Sips – Beneath Ceaseless Skies #252” —
Competition can bring out the worst in people, but as this issue of Beneath Ceaseless Skies proves, it can also bring out the best. Both stories this issue are about races, and magical ones at that, featuring women who find themselves squaring off against their lovers (former or current) for the chance to win a great prize. In both stories, though, the actual prize might not matter as much as the competition itself, as the thrill of the race. Because when these characters are faced with what they’d do if they won, the results are…interesting. It’s a wonderfully fun pair of stories, expertly paired, and I’ll stop yammering on in introduction and just get to the reviews!
(17) THE ORIGINS DEBACLE GOES ANOTHER ROUND. According to Larry Correia, who was dropped as a GoH of Origins Game Fair two weeks ago, “Origins sent out yet ANOTHER message about me, and my response” [Internet Archive link].
At Monster Hunter Nation he cites this as the text of Origins’ Executive Director John Ward’s message to educate vendors about the social media uproar following the “disinvitation.”
Good afternoon Exhibitors,
We are a few weeks away from Origins and the anticipation is building!
Things are looking great for this year’s show. The Exhibit Hall is officially sold out and badges are currently trending 15% above pre-registration numbers from 2017.
We have taken a brief hiatus from social media but are fully prepared to continue promoting the show and its exhibitors starting this week. Before we begin communicating through social, there are a few things we wanted to bring to your attention.
Some individuals have rallied online with plans to harass companies exhibiting at the show—this is in response to the disinviting of Larry Correia as a guest at Origins.
To provide you with some background: our original decision to invite Larry as a guest at Origins was simple—he’s a successful author, has been a guest at other conventions in previous years, and any one that knows him knows that he is big into gaming.
Unfortunately, we were not aware of Mr. Correia’s online presence and following. Upon further research we found an abundance of confrontational discourse and polarizing behavior online.
We have nothing against Larry as a person or as a professional, but we have seen the drama that follows him, and we do not want that at Origins.
As an exhibitor at Origins, we wanted you to be aware of the general MO of the group we are explaining:
Company pages are inundated with comments and negative rankings
Employers and publishers are contacted
Messages with keywords regarding to the show are targetedTime has passed, and things have calmed down, but we should all still be aware of these potential behaviors. If you receive any threats or libel regarding you or your company, please send them to John Ward.
Thank you for your support. Good luck with the final preparations for the show!
Correia explains that he actually believes vendors should be left alone. Except for the ones that deserve what’s happening to them, that is.
My only comments during this entire debacle concerning the vendors was that they should be left alone. The vendors are just small businessmen trying to have a good sales weekend, and they have nothing to do with the incompetence of John Ward. I’ve specifically gone out of my way to say that to my fans on multiple occasions.
The only vendors I’ve seen animosity directed at were the ones who specifically went out of their way to virtue signal on Twitter about how booting me for having the wrong opinions was So Brave. And that’s a short and very specific list who did that usual social media thing where they decided to throw punches, and then cry about getting punched back afterwards.
But hey, toss that out there. The important thing is that everyone knows Origins is the real victim here.
(18) GAME LOSES STEAM. Who thought this was a good idea? “School shooting game Active Shooter pulled by Steam”.
A game pitched as a “school shooting simulation” has been ditched from Steam’s online store ahead of release.
The title had been criticised by parents of real-life school shooting victims, and an online petition opposing its launch had attracted more than 180,000 signatures.
Steam’s owner, Valve, said it had dropped the game because its developer had a history of bad behaviour.
But the individual named has denied involvement.
Active Shooter came to prominence after the BBC revealed that an anti-gun violence charity had described it as “appalling” last week.
CNN subsequently reported that the families of two students killed in February’s high school attack in Parkland, Florida had described the game as being “despicable” and “horrific”.
(19) LE GUIN FILM. I’ve linked to the trailer before, but here’s a new Bustle post about the project: “This Ursula K. Le Guin Documentary Reveals How Much The Author Struggled To Write Women In Sci-Fi”.
Worlds of Ursula K. Le Guin, a new documentary by Arwen Curry about the life and legacy of the late author, explores Le Guin’s long career as a pioneer in speculative fiction, including the role of feminism in her work and the struggles she faced teaching herself how to write women into her novels. In the film, which Curry worked on with the author for 10 years, Le Guin admits that “from my own cultural upbringing, I couldn’t go down deep and come up with a woman wizard.” According to the author, she had been “a woman pretending to think like a man,” a behavior she had to unlearn before she could create some of her best work.
As Le Guin tells Curry in the film:
“I had to rethink my entire approach to writing fiction … it was important to think about privilege and power and domination, in terms of gender, which was something science fiction and fantasy had not done. All I changed is the point of view. All of a sudden we are seeing Earthsea … from the point of view of the powerless.”
(20) BIG HERO 6 THE SERIES. Coming to a Disney Channel near you. (Which means not very close to me, but maybe to you.)
Hiro, Baymax and the Big Hero 6 team are back and ready to save San Fransokyo! Big Hero 6 The Series premieres Saturday, June 9 at 9A on Disney Channel. The adventure continues for 14-year-old tech genius Hiro and his compassionate, cutting-edge robot Baymax. If dealing with the academic pressure of being the new kid at the prestigious San Fransokyo Institute of Technology weren’t enough, it’s off campus where things really get tricky. Hiro and Baymax, along with their friends Wasabi, Honey Lemon, Go Go and Fred, unite to form the legendary superhero team Big Hero 6, protecting their city from a colorful array of scientifically-enhanced villains intent on creating chaos and mayhem!
(21) EXPANSE. Already linked in comments, but let the Scroll Record reflect: “It’s official: Amazon has saved The Expanse”. The Verge story says —
It’s official: The Expanse has been saved. After the Syfy Channel canceled The Expanse earlier this month, Alcon Entertainment has confirmed that Amazon will pick up the show for a fourth season, after after outcry from the show’s fans.
[Thanks to John King Tarpinian, JJ, Andrew Porter, Cat Eldridge, Carl Slaughter, Martin Morse Wooster, Chip Hitchcock, IanP, and Mike Kennedy for some of these stories, Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Paul Weimer.]
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I think the most common behavior that we want to strongly discourage is the whipping up of an Internet mob to harass or bully people. Which certainly can be and has been associated with a culture-war affiliation, but it doesn’t have to be. There are couple of authors on my Do Not Buy list who have engaged in that kind of thing purely out of ego or the authoritarian impulse, with no clear political affiliation attached.
So yeah, in general, describe the behavior you want to discourage or prevent, then apply that impartially.
@rcade: “I see a lot of attacks coming against SF/F fandom and fan institutions from right wingers over a span of years. I don’t see that from the left.”
Yet. That it is not currently happening, or has not happened recently, does not prevent it from happening in the future. Someone whose politics lean left is bound to try it someday.
I agree with you in assessing the current state of affairs. I simply see no need to write politics into codes of conduct, no benefit to be had from doing so, and considerable downsides to doing so. Not only would explicitly anti-Puppy/anti-right language leave us open to problems from a future RequiresMoreHate, but it would immediately give the Puppy-adjacent a truckload of free ammunition. (“See? We knew it was about our politics all along! They denied it, oh yes they did, but here’s the proof!”) Why do that?
Rev. Bob – It wasn’t Duck Hunt with human targets.
Lightgun games that are mainly Duck Hunt with human targets have been around for some time too. Not that it makes it any better, but even on the NES there was Wild Gunman, Hogan’s Alley, Freedom Force, etc. They even sold a sniper like lightgun peripheral call the Super Scope (later brought up in congressional hearing about video games). In fact one of the weirdest examples of the disposable bodies trope in games may come from a lightgun game called Revolution X, where the future is a distopia and there’s a group trying to keep kids from having fun, and that group decides to kidnap Aerosmith. So you have to shoot through hundreds of enemies in order to rescue Aerosmith and save the future from boredom or something.
As for the scroll part of who thought this games was a good idea, it would actually be the 5th game based school shootings after Super Columbine Massacre RPG, School Shooter: North America Tour 2012, V-Tech Rampage, and Pakistani Army Retribution. Since it’s not very difficult for a person to use assets and make a mod of an existing game someone determined enough to try and capitalize on a tragedy will do so, and sadly there’s usually someone willing or determined enough to do so, which then leads into arguments about censorship and so on. Glad Valve is choosing not to sell it.
It would make sense to draft language for the policy as politics-neutral. If it ends up only affecting the guilty side, that’s fine by me.
Soon Lee:
I thought you were quoting me, but it turns out that not only did I say “David File” instead of Dave Kyle, but I said it almost a year ago.
I mention this because I thought I had suggested it very, very recently. Then again, I also thought I said “Dave.”
I am not senile, you know. There is a rational explanation for this.
(3) (4) Good on those authors for doing something. They are setting a good example to follow. Speaking of which…
(17) This is a twist. For good or ill it sets a new precedent.
LC and his ilk continue to be their brands own worst enemy.
“Virtue Signalling” is a new one for me. What does that even mean? I know the Puppies like to make up new words/slurs/jabs/insults for people and things they don’t like but come on.
I distinctly remember Game Designers exhibiting at Origins that I follow on Twitter being a part of the exchange Larry described as talking about specific instances where Larry insulted people and how he brings with him an atmosphere of free-flowing toxicity that would be bad for the Origins Show.
If other conventions follow suit and start dumping Guests of Honor, this could get…I can’t think of a good word. Not “interesting” or “entertaining” in a sarcastic voice(this isn’t fun). “Complicated” in a voice of dread might be more appropriate.
“Virtue Signaling” is when you say or do something, not because you actually believe it, but want to end a signal to like-minded SJWs that you have virtue.
It’s been around for a while, but, yeah, like the term “Social Justice Warrior” itself, it’s a sneer from the people who hate ‘politically correct’ speech, insist on being NOT ‘politically correct’, until some ‘politically INCORRECT’ speech is aimed at them.
Then they turn into special snowflakes looking for their safe spaces…
@rcade
What about the attempts to make sure Laurie Forest’s The Black Witch wasn’t published? That wasn’t specifically an attack on SF/F fandom or fan institutions, but it was an attempt to de-platform someone for very flimsy reasons.
The Freitag banning also seems worrisome if bannings like that spread out from Wiscon into other areas of fandom.
@Lanodantheon
It means pretending you disapprove of racism, homophobia, misogyny, and other essential alt-right values, in order to win the approval of your fellow cultural marxists. Because in the toxic wasteland of the alt-right mindset, everybody is actually racist, homophobic, etc., and the only reason to repudiate those values is to gain status with SJWs and their credentials.
@Lanodantheon
The term may be relatively new (two or three years), but the behavior has been around since the dawn of history, and I think it’s a useful phrase. For example, I’d claim that homophobes who go out of their way to let everyone know how much they hate gays are virtue signaling to their buddies.
To me, the term implies that the speaker doesn’t actually believe what they’re saying. Or, at a minimum, they’re trying to convince themselves as much as anyone else. In the case of the homophobes, it has always an article of faith among gay people that any straight guy who had to virtue-signal by attacking us is probably not all that straight after all.
When you accuse someone of virtue signaling, it’s doubly insulting. It says they’re doing this for themselves and they don’t even believe what they’re saying.
@ Rev. Bob:
It depends entirely on where you look. Tumblr is a both a major locus of fannish activity and also a place where Baby’s First Lefty Fandom Crusade slacktivists are currently getting their toes wet attacking the Organization For Transformative Works and An Archive of Our Own for not actively censoring works that they find “problematic” — and by attacking, I mean there’s an active movement to mass-report AO3 to the FBI for hosting/disseminating child pornography including multiple posts widely shared with easy click links for the truly hapless but emotionally outraged.
For the record: AO3 does not host child pornography and a great many of these young activists have serious difficulty differentiating between “fictional content that makes me feel icky” and “actual criminal activity” and “things people read/write about in fiction that they wouldn’t tolerate in real life.” The lefty fandom purity crusade is a real thing and its current favorite passion is suggesting that cartoon/anime/video game characters should be just as protected under the law as real children and that anyone over thirty in fandom who writes about fictional teenagers doing anything more advanced than holding hands and blushing at each other is clearly a gross pedophile writing grooming fic.
For the record: 43, flaming lefty, finds all these kids weaponizing social justice concepts to run their elders out of fandom extremely tiresome.
Re: Virtue Signaling. I’ve seen it used to mean that I am buying and reading books and stories that I don’t like, in order to make a political point or support.
This has cheesed me off.
I don’t have time to read or money to buy books just for “virtue signaling”. Who does?
@Paul – Yes! I have a massive TBR pile that’s grown by several books this week alone. I have no time for virtue reading!
@Paul Weimer
You’re doin’ it wrong, dude! Just read the blurb and maybe a review (if that). 🙂
Note that when Puppies post comments saying things like “I never read Hugo nominees; they haven’t been any good since 2000” they’re virtue-signaling in the reverse direction. (Less work that way though.)
“All the Hugo winners from the 60s and 70s are giants, all time classics! Now the winners are just some new crap.”
This is, in fact, the law where I live. Anime/manga/written works/games/etc. depicting acts of pedophilia or sex between minors for erotic purposes are classified at the same obscenity levels as child pornography here, and are illegal to create, distribute, and own, even though no real children–no real people of any age–are involved at all. This has been true for decades, possibly for my entire life (38), and anime/manga/western comics are seized at the border regularly. There are some exceptions for certain kinds of “artistic” works not primarily seen as or intended to be erotic (which is why books like Lolita are still legal here), but they are vague at best. It’s an extreme attitude for some cultures and communities, and not for others.
The pixel that parsed the hornets text.
Virtual signaling Is a word the right likes to use a lot, which makes me wonder, if they are the ones doing it (its like „false flag attacks“ which is a fundamental right tactic-Im not saying the Left never used it, just that all false flag attacks I can think of, were from the Right. Yet the Right always like to point out this possiblility if there was a racism-induced crime here in Germany).
@ august
It’s a fairly extreme attitude within the sectors of fandom I frequent, where knowing the difference between fiction and reality tends to be a prized attribute. ::dryly::
Also, too: there’s a couple distinct factors that blur the edges here because, frankly, a good chunk of the fandom purity crusaders operate under some fairly expansive definitions of terms such as “child” (which now includes grown-assed fictional adults in their late teens/early twenties), and “pedophilia” (which now includes relationships between fictional characters who are within a peer-aged group, grown-assed adult characters in their early twenties, grown-assed adult characters who knew each other as children and didn’t get together romantically until they were adults but whose relationship is “clearly based in pedophilic attraction”), and “incest” (which now includes fictional characters who are not actually related to one another but who are in possession of popular headcanons concerning a parent/child or sibling relationship). See also: the current enthusiasm for describing anyone over the age of thirty who writes fanfic or produces fanart of teenaged characters as a pedophile. It’s gotten really nasty, really quickly.
Yeah, I’ve always observed that the behaviors the right likes to call “virtue signaling” are prevalent on the right as well. You see them all the time (e.g.) in the white American evangelical community. You may not personally care all that much about culture-war issues X or Y, but you have to be seen to care about them, and even be seen using the same catch-phrases for them, or else you’re suspected of not being a real member of the tribe.
At its core, it’s an exercise in defining an in-group (especially as opposed to an othered out-group) and building in-group solidarity. Finding examples of this from right-wing members of the fandom community is left as an exercise for the student.
I’ve learned not to use the term “virtue signaling” unironically, though, because it’s one of those terms that is self-referential; it both describes and is an example of tribe-marking behavior. And the pertinent tribe is one for which I’d rather not be mistaken for a member, thanks.
(Mike: I have no idea how, but this comment ended up at the end of the 5/29 post’s comment thread instead of here, where it belonged. By the time I realized, the edit grace period was over. Feel free to get out your zap gun and kill the other copy.)
@Techgrrl1972, kathodus and others who defined “Virtue Signalling”:
Thanks so much for the definition.
I figured it referred to something really really stupid like that but…that dropped my IQ for a second there. That is some mental gymnastics. Possibly those Steel Rings into a belly flop onto a Paranoia trampoline.
But that’s if I take them at their word that “Virtue Signalling” is actually a thing that goes on. It isn’t. I know this because it makes no sense, is stupid in and of itself and feeds the Alt-Right’s persecution narrative by assuming the supporters of their challengers are not sincere and just want control. It seems like they can’t just accept that times are changing and people are getting more progressive as technology and culture advances. *Gasp*
@Jon F. Zeigler That analysis is spot-on. It is just labelling.
If you are going to make up a term for something you are pretending is happening, or just to call people you hate something bad, at least make it sound scary and bad. Make it sound like a threat or sinister.
“Virtue signalling” just sounds dumb and nonsensical. Almost sounds like an off-label Bat-signal. But that also assumes signalling a virtue is a bad thing. It isn’t.
“Social Justice Warrior” I know was co-opted from other places and has been taken far out of its original narrow context to the point where it has become just a synonym for anyone even remotely progressive. It also assumes that Social Justice and fighting for Social Justice is a bad thing.
It’s all just dumb.
A question just popped up: Are there any football (i.e. soccer for American) matches played in genre works?
The Olympics were covered (I remember Archilöes choice by Niven), but I cant think of a football book…
I cant help, I always think of Batman when I hear the phrase.
(Some puppies are trying to come up with a new word, like social justice zealots, but it doesn’t really catch on. I would guess, because „zealots“ wouldnt be able to „signal virtue“, but that would grant them too much consistentcy in their posts)
@Peer: “A Slight Case of Sunstroke” by Arthur C Clarke. One of the ships in Walter Jon Williams Praxis series is very devoted to its football team and a tournament is used as cover for events.
IIRC, the narrator in Alexei Panshin’s Rite of Passage is a soccer player – a goalkeeper, I think.
@Peer Akata Witch by Nnedi Okorafor has a football-loving female lead who plays in a significant match partway through.
@Lanodantheon: Virtue signaling is, among many other definitions: a GOP candidate waving a gun around at a rally, a wife-beater carrying a big black Bible to church every Sunday, and roughly 90% of what Trump says when someone either points a camera at him or gives him access to Twitter.
Different crowds, different virtues, different signals, same behavior and purpose.
@August: “This is, in fact, the law where I live. Anime/manga/written works/games/etc. depicting acts of pedophilia or sex between minors for erotic purposes are classified at the same obscenity levels as child pornography here, and are illegal to create, distribute, and own, even though no real children–no real people of any age–are involved at all.”
I get that. It makes sense, on many levels, to say that Thou Shalt Not Normalize The Eroticization Of Children. That’s a good rule.
The trouble is, some self-publishing companies go even further. Smashwords has said on at least one occasion that children are forbidden from appearing in any context whatsoever in a work classified as erotica. I ran into that when a book I was editing featured a scene where a trans woman told her boyfriend a story about her childhood, of the first time she first realized that “girl” felt more right than “boy.” I thought – and think – that this is an important scene. It establishes some important background and character development, and it contributes to a plot point a few chapters later. Never mind that she’s an adult as she tells the story or that no sex or arousal happened in the remembered event… nope, there’s an under-18 character in the same novel as an explicit sex scene, and that’s all that matters!
I find it strange that, according to a strict reading of their Terms, a story where a monogamous married couple puts their kids to bed in one room, closes and locks their own bedroom door across the house, and engages in explicit-yet-vanilla sex would be forbidden… but a story about a randy lass who goes into town on her eighteenth birthday, stumbles upon a pack of were-insert-critter-here bikers, and gets them to use her in every conceivable manner for several hours would be just fine. Would the “babysitter smut” genre be okay if the author never actually mentions the existence of the babysat kid, or do all those stories need to use “housesitters” instead?
See, I’m a programmer by trade. I seek out edge cases almost reflexively. Sometimes the ones I find turn out to be real head-scratchers.
@Peer: “Quantum Soccer” shows up in an Egan story (“Border Guards”) – and you can play Quantum soccer online http://www.gregegan.net/BORDER/Soccer/Soccer.html
@August: I’m very happy the series is getting saved, but I’m wondering what this will do to the distribution deals outside the US. Right now I have access to the show via CraveTV, a mediocre-at-best streaming service run by a cable company that just happens to have a decent collection of TV shows.
I’m not an expert on such things, but based on the diagram of the ownership structure that’s included in this lengthy piece, I don’t think it will affect anything for you: Quantifying The Expanse Cancellation: Diving Into the Numbers, Syfy, & the Future at Amazon.
@ Peer
IIRC, football (and fashion) are central to Terry Pratchett’s Unseen Academicals.
(2,3) good on all these people for trying to make things better.
(19) can’t wait to see the Le Guin film. “A woman trying to think like a man” sure sounds familiar. In my day, girls serious about literature were encouraged to take a “universal approach”, in which male protagonists represented everybody: Everyman as Everyperson. As Joanna Russ noted, only men’s lives could show the hero’s story. One of my favorite things about Le Guin was exactly this struggle to change her thinking whenever she encountered facts or situations that necessitated it.
@Peer
Seconding Unseen Academicals by Terry Pratchett and also raising Knees up Mother Earth by Robert Rankin
Everett Singh in Ian McDonald’s Planesrunner is a goalkeeper, but I don’t remember any actual games played in the story.
@Peer The Dread Empire Space opera novels by Walter Jon Williams are full of soccer, its the #1 sport on human-run ships.
@PhilRM
That bothered me as well in the story. Then again, maybe he DID embezzle $n^3.4m with n>1 ?
I think the football in the Praxis is American football. I remember thinking it was ridiculous that if only one game survives from all of Earth it would NOT be soccer.
@Niall. I looked to recheck myself, and Jo Walton mentions it in a post of hers as definitely being soccer.
https://www.tor.com/2009/05/26/aliens-spaceships-and-fun-walter-jon-williamss-dread-empires-fall/
Sort of depends on the exponent.
x^y where y<<1 can turn into a pretty small number pretty quickly.
Regards,
Dann
CENSORED BY THE TAGLINE POLICE
Roy of the Rovers played a team of robots once. The entire Melchester Rovers squad were kidnapped while they were on a European tour and forced to play a team of robots designed by a Communist* scientist.
* Probably described as Eastern European.
@KipW,
Aha! I thought someone had suggested something similar but my Google-fu failed to turn up anything, so I went ahead and (re)suggested it.
Dav(e/id) (Kyle/File) Says You Can’t Scroll Here
(Too mash-up?)
But now that I go and look, I am wrong. Soccer balls are explicitly named
Edit: ninja’d by Paul
“This was the day of Complete ConScroll”
@Rev Bob
I must admit that the Sniper Elite series is a guilty pleasure for me, where in addition to all that, you get a lovely X-ray side view of the bullet destroying vital organs.
Obvious trigger warning is obvious
But hey, it’s just Nazis getting killed, so it must be OK.
@Stoic Cynic
My impression from reading the exposés at the time is that the RH mobs were about as vicious as one could possibly get short of physical violence.
I remain puzzled why Jonathan L Howard of Johannes Cabal fame, who otherwise appears to be a great guy and attuned to harassment concerns, keeps promoting her work.
Soon Lee:
I don’t know. I just thought it had been more recent than that. Maybe I thought about it this time and didn’t say it. That’s the best I can come up with, since it stubbornly refuses to be found to my searches.
@ Lanodantheon
I see the term itself as a sign of social progress inasmuch as that crowd probably would have employed “N—- Lover” as their epithet of choice in such circumstances 50 years ago.
@Nate Harada:
I had been hearing rumbles of this attitude growing the past few years (I tried Tumblr and could not make sense of it!). When I came into the LOTR online fandom in 2003, there was a strong current of calling people writing hobbit/man slash pedophiles on the grounds that hobbits were described as the size of a child. It was clearly a precursor of the current expanded term.
I find it unfortunate that so many are characterizing the problematic part of apologetics for heinous behavior as “empathizing” with Nazis or whoever.
This is because I think being able to empathize with evildoers is important. Not in order to excuse their evil, but the opposite – to better apprehend the capacity for evil in oneself. Only if you can understand that “good people” can and do commit genocide, can you realize when you find yourself on the path to such a thing and stop yourself before it’s too late. If you keep believing evil is only done by “evil people” then you’ll be more likely to miss the signs within your own cultural group and your own self if they happen.
So the empathizing is fine; it’s the excusing and apologizing for that’s not OK by me.
There is also a bit of hypocrisy going on. I’m willing to bet that there is a huge overlap between those who 1.) oppose the death penalty and think economy, education, and childhood environment should be taken into account in the sentencing of violent criminals and 2.) those who are saying that any attempt to understand soldiers of nasty regimes as human beings with complex lives and motivations is “apologetics.”
Not a book, but if you ever wanted to see a British Star Trek comic where Kirk and company play soccer against a team of aliens…
https://static0.cbrimages.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/star-trek-soccer.jpg
Still, as a spectator at the Wiscon panel itself said, the panelist was asking for sympathy for Nazis as a group – and understanding motivations and sympathizing with them are two different things. Which is why every criminal defendant requesting evaluation of extenuating circumstances in their case must expound his individual circumstances and why they apply to extenuate guilt in each case – and why it’s a crapshoot every time as to whether the jury will buy it – that is, whether they think the extenuating circumstances credibly affects their guilt in the crime – which necessarily requires that the jury to some extent sympathize with the defendant and their circumstances.
Which is why the panelist saying that Nazis as a group merit sympathy met with such pushback, IMO.
Not directly relevant, but one of the better historical books I’ve read recently is The German War by Nicholas Stargardt, a study of the German experience of WW2. Here is a review:
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/sep/06/the-german-war-nicholas-stargardt-review-john-kampfner
Nah, I’ll wager that a lot of the people who are aware that “There were good people among the Nazis/Confederates/Stalinists/enemy du jour” is almost always a bad sign still like having complex villains with understandable motivations.
@Steve Wright: Rite of Passage was the first thing I thought of, but the narrator is definitely not a keeper; there’s a character-defining subscene in which she’s blatantly fouled, then scores a ?free kick? by faking and then using her off foot. (Yes, it’s really weird what sticks in the memory.)
@Andrew: if that’s the reference I think it is (from a story in which the plot loops that line around a circle of characters) it’s even more obscure than the doorknob. Kewl!
I’m really glad I haven’t been following the net closely enough to see the arguments about how much can be called pedophilia.