Thread by @tinytempest

A thing I've been saying for a while, and a thing people continue to ignore when I do, is that WorldCon is designed to be for people who don't like progress, which is odd given that we're an SFFnal community.

The Hugo Award nominations and winners are not that, but the con?

https://twitter.com/nameshiv/status/1289537146567553024

I have been skeptical of & grumbly about WorldCon for over ten years. And I always warn BIPOC people away from it (and everyone else, too) and I always hear how This Time It's Better or Don't You See The Progress? And then a year like this one will come around & everyone is angry

But then we went thru some of the *exact* problems of this year in San Jose. And we've been through other versions of this problem in years past. I cannot remember what happened with the Hugo ceremony or presenters one year that was so bad, but I do remember that the next year >

< @scalzi was the toastmaster and *the only presenter* except in the categories he was nominated for because of it. And yet after this they went back to allowing effing nonsense on the stage.

For the entire time I've been in this community WorldCon programming has been a fight.

A fight for more representation on panels, a fight to have panels with BIPOC or disabled people or LGBTQ+ people that wasn't ABOUT being BIPOC, disabled, LGBTQ+, and etc. How many effing years have we been screaming PUT US ON PANELS ABOUT WRITING CRAFT AND MEDIA AND GENRE TRENDS?

Every single problem we saw on display at this WorldCon (with the exception of the lack of local NZ writers & creators & culture) has been a problem at multiple WorldCons of the recent past and has been talked about and yelled about by the wider fandom.

WorldCon. Doesn't. Care.

And I think that we're been... fooled? misdirected? ...by the progress made with the Hugo Award nominations and winners into thinking that this progress reflects *WorldCon's progress*. It does not.

There is no clearer example of that than last night's award ceremony.

Award after award after award given to incredibly talented writers and artists and editors from a true variety of backgrounds and experiences and phenomenal works of fiction and narrative that showcase diverse points of view...

...sandwiched in-between bloviating white men.

Bloviating white men who lovingly mentioned fascists and racists of the past over and over, who talked about themselves at length, who made jokes at the expense of women, trans folks, nb people, and more.

And the people running things let them.

Those men are who WorldCon is for

And I really wish everyone else in the community would wake up to this and let them effing have it.

Seriously, why do the rest of us need WorldCon, exactly? There are dozens of SFF cons with far larger attendance with fans more eager to embrace our varied voices.

And you may start nattering about how I must mean media cons and no one there cares about literature and blah blah BUT THEY DO. But the kind of people who cling to WorldCon don't wanna go to those cons or embrace those attendees because they aren't hyper focused on books.

But YOU like books *and* anime *and* the MCU *and* RPGs *and* video games and you manage just fine. Why do you think the folks at larger, better run, more diverse, more forward-thinking, more inclusive, more accessible cons don't?

Y'all spend too much time in this bubble.

Becoming the most popular person at WorldCon, having WorldCon as your fandom domain, is so limiting, so small, & not worth the fight if you're marginalized. Go out and conquer the real world, not just this narrow-a** world that continues to put HP effing Lovecraft on a pedestal.

We deserve better than WorldCon.