Mile'ionaha posted:

I've never quite understood why someone would complain about leftist politics in Science Fiction unless they had never actually read any, but there you go.

MizPiz posted:

What's the numa numa guy's political stance?

Bip Roberts posted:

Dunno but starwars kid is doing 20 years for serial rape.

Mile'ionaha posted:

Noted cosplayer and glowing potato Jay Maynard (better known as Tron Guy) has decided he's taking his kilobuck and leaving.

Make PenguiCon Great Again

I'd seen him at the con in years past but never met him. This year he was spotted wearing a 'write-in your pronouns' badge that said "My Pronouns Are not a political statement" and generally complaining that people cared too much about asking permission before feeling someone up and being relevant.

An example of the signs he was complaining about :


I've never quite understood why someone would complain about leftist politics in Science Fiction unless they had never actually read any, but there you go.

Click here for all your Glow Potato needs.

rudatron posted:

Wait, seriously?

Baloogan posted:

theres a great tradition of insane libertarian space crap that gets super short changed in this era of terminal wokeness. but yeah tron guy is a fat old cuck and why o why does anyone care what he has to say

rudatron posted:

Wait, seriously?

quote:

The bandit hero -- the underdog rebel -- so frequently becomes the political tyrant; and we are perpetually astonished! Such figures appeal to our infantile selves -- what is harmful about them in real life is that they are usually immature, without self-discipline, frequently surviving on their 'charm'. Fiction lets them stay, like Zorro or Robin Hood, perpetually charming. In reality they become petulant, childish, relying on a mixture of threats and self-pitying pleading, like any baby. These are too often the revolutionary figures on whom we pin our hopes, to whom we sometimes commit our lives and whom we sometimes try to be; because we fail to distinguish fact from fiction. In reality it is too often the small, fanatical men with the faces and stance of neurotic clerks who come to power while the charismatic heroes, if they are lucky, die gloriously, leaving us to discover that while we have been following them, imitating them, a new Tsar has manipulated himself into the position of power and Terror has returned with a vengeance while we have been using all our energies living a romantic lie. Heroes betray us. By having them, in real life, we betray ourselves. The heroes of Heinlein and Ayn Rand are forever competent, forever right: they are oracles and protectors, magic parents (so long as we obey their rules). They are prepared to accept the responsibilities we would rather not bear. They are 'leaders'. Traditional sf is hero fiction on a huge scale, but it is only when it poses as a fiction of ideas that it becomes completely pernicious. At its most spectacular it gives us Charlie Manson and Scientology (invented by the sf writer Ron Hubbard and an authoritarian system to rival the Pope's). To enjoy it is one thing. To claim it as 'radical' is quite another. It is rather unimaginative; it is usually badly written; its characters are ciphers; its propaganda is simple-minded and conservative -- good old-fashioned opium which might be specifically designed for dealing with the potential revolutionary.

In a writer like Lovecraft a terror of sex often combines (or is confused for) a terror of the masses, the 'ugly' crowd. But this is so common to so much 'horror' fiction that it's hardly worth discussing. Lovecraft is morbid. His work equates to that negative romanticism found in much Nazi art. He was a confused anti-Semite and misanthrope, a promoter of anti-rationalist ideas about racial 'instinct' which have much in common with Mein Kampf. A dedicated supporter of 'Aryanism', a hater of women, he wound up marrying a Jewess (which might or might not have been a sign of hope -- we haven't her view of the matter)Lovecraft appeals to us primarily when we are ourselves feeling morbid. Apart from his offensively awful writing and a resultant inability to describe his horrors (leaving us to do the work -- the secret of his success -- we're all better writers than he is!) he is rarely as frightening, by implication, as most of the other highly popular writers whose concerns are not with 'meeping Things' but with idealised versions of society. It's not such a big step, for instance from Farnham's Freehold to Hitler's Lebensraum.

Tr33 posted:

If you need a sign to tell you these things your stupid society is already hopelessly broken

SpaceGoku posted:

he runs a charity to help quebecois kids go to college or something

Tr33 posted:

If you need a sign to tell you these things your stupid society is already hopelessly broken

Larry Parrish posted:

The fact these signs are necessary tells me schools really oughta make doing sports and having a hobby mandatory

Helsing posted:

MODS CURE JOKES posted:

word on the street is tay zonday is a nation of islam black separatist looking to turn the mississippi delta into a shining black city of righteous boogie-down beats

Helsing posted:

Startin a petition right now for Paul Verhoeven to come back to Hollywood and make an adaptation of Farnham's Freehold, a Heinlein book where a brave white California man builds a time traveling bomb shelter, knocks up his college daughter's best friend and then battles a futuristic society of degenerate Africans who like to castrate white men and keep them as slaves.

Helsing posted:

Startin a petition right now for Paul Verhoeven to come back to Hollywood and make an adaptation of Farnham's Freehold, a Heinlein book where a brave white California man builds a time traveling bomb shelter, knocks up his college daughter's best friend and then battles a futuristic society of degenerate Africans who like to castrate white men and keep them as slaves.

TheDon01 posted:

The real question is where does Boner Robin fall on the political spectrum?

Pener Kropoopkin posted:

Science Fiction is a playground for the reactionary imagination, where the ancien regime can be restored with laser pistols and robot hookers.

Mile'ionaha posted:

I'd seen him at the con in years past but never met him. This year he was spotted wearing a 'write-in your pronouns' badge that said "My Pronouns Are not a political statement"

Vox Nihili posted:

but star trek...

Agnosticnixie posted:

Star Trek had some seriously hosed up episode ideas that made the cast stop and ask "are you really sure you want to do something that stupid" to the showrunners, although iirc that was mostly TNG and VOY.