Wednesday, June 8, 2016

More Food for Thought from YouTube


The phenomenon TL;DR discusses here with respect to the upcoming Ghost Busters reboot is a phenomenon I've also witnessed in my own fandom. Those of us who have doubts about the current direction of literary science fiction are repeatedly told that we must hate women writers/"writers of color"/gay writers/etc. when we have never actually said anything of the sort. What we have done is complain that works boosted by self-described progressives as being oh-so-new and subversive are either uninteresting as stories or are otherwise flawed in comparison to award winners of the past.

Over the next few weeks, I'm going to discuss my thoughts on this in greater detail, but let me note briefly now that I think rendering any group of writers essentially immune to criticism because oppression actually harms the writers you're trying to help. Criticism makes us better. Without it, we end up like those contestants on American Idol who are crushed - crushed, I tell you! - to hear for the first time that they actually can't sing. 

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