Rethinking my Hugo voting

[sashajwolf]

I'm beginning to have doubts about the voting strategy I outlined in my previous post on the Hugos ( LJ/DW), where I said I would place No Award ahead of any slate nominees that had not distanced themselves from the slate, even if they were not themselves actively involved in the disgusting hate speech that some of the ringleaders have spewed over

Comments

[atreic]

This is an interesting, articulate and wise post. I think the insight in "this style is so far removed from what I like that not only do I not understand how anyone else could possibly like it, I actually think it's Objectively Bad Writing. Therefore people who nominate this must be doing it to promote some other agenda. But it's at least possible that really, the authors and nominators are just quietly getting on with writing and nominating the sorts of things their lived experience leads them to find interesting, and despite all that these authors and nominators aren't necessarily acting in bad faith" is worth thinking about more than we have been in the Hugo Storm - principle of charity and all that...

I guess the main take home message is 'if you can't understand why someone is doing something that you dislike and that hurts you, go and listen to them and meet them in their own spaces' Not that everyone should be _obliged_ to do that, but if we want to understand, it's where the answers are.

[purplecthulhu]

Very interesting post - thanks! On slashdot I'd mod it up as 'insightful

[purplecthulhu]

Yes - that was an interesting post and, as I see it, fully consistent with VD's past practice.

[sashajwolf]

Yes, I saw Scalzi's after I wrote this. I agree with a lot of it.

[nancylebov]

Thanks for doing the work of exploration.

I bounced off Ancillary Sword, though I might give it one more try. However, I think that most people who like milsf want something pretty much like real world military in sf settings, and AS might be too different from that, aside from any other issues.

[nwhyte]

On the first point, VD is obviously trying to troll us. A victory for him, objectively, is when candidates win whose nomination he supported. If he suddenly decides that No Award, whose nomination he did not support, suits him better, that's his business. But objectively, if No Award wins, VD's candidates lose, and his assertions to the contrary are desperate attempts to deny reality.

I do accept the point that aesthetic judgements still have a role here. But my own view remains that we are not being offered a choice between like and like. A majority of the nominees got on the ballot because of VD's campaign, ie as the result of a political campaign led by a misogynist racist. I can't ignore the issue of the integrity of the process; for me it is determinative.

Obviously, others take a different approach!

[woodpijn]

"for others, I think it's genuinely "this style is so far removed from what I like that not only do I not understand how anyone else could possibly like it, I actually think it's Objectively Bad Writing. Therefore people who nominate this must be doing it to promote some other agenda, and since it has gender ambiguity in it, or since the author is a woman/a feminist/etc, I'm going to guess that agenda is feminist," when really, the authors and nominators are just quietly and in good faith getting on with writing and nominating the sorts of things their lived experience leads her to find interesting. Whereas I think on my side of the fence, we collectively and I individually have a tendency to read a Puppy recommendation and think "this style is so far removed from what I like that not only do I not understand how anyone else could possibly like it, I actually think it's Objectively Bad Writing. Therefore people who nominate this must be doing it to promote some other agenda, and since there are some racist/sexist/homophobic tropes in