Camestros Felapton

FELAPTONL

Wrapping up a controversy

The drama and dogpiling around Marscon 2024 inviting Larry Correia as a guest of honour has reached a conclusion.

“The MarsCon Board of Directors would like to officially welcome of Larry Correia as our Writer Guest of Honor for MarsCon 2024.
We realize that when this was announced, there were heated discussions on our Facebook page. As a result, the MarsCon Facebook page will now be a moderated page. Our goal is to ensure that all feel welcome so attacks or insinuations against others will not be allowed.
John Desmarais
Interim President, MarsCon Board of Directors”

https://www.facebook.com/groups/MarsConVa/posts/10167556700480048/

I’m not surprised by that outcome. As I said in a previous post, once you’ve announced him as a guest, you’ve basically made your convention a hostage in an online culture war. If you are managing a con and you are OK with that, then I guess that’s your choice but mild pushback (e.g. this most recent incident started with somebody simply saying that they didn’t think he was an “appropriate choice”…) or indeed no pushback at all except RUMOURS of somebody saying something mildly negative about him and you’ll be coping with online flame wars.

Meanwhile, apparently Larry is cross about this comment I made at File 770:

“It is an extraordinary coincidence that Larry is involved in a Facebook storm of high dudgeon whilst in the midst of promoting a new book”

https://file770.com/the-culture-war-comes-to-marscon/#comment-1571036

Not sure why that comment hit a nerve.

camestrosfelapton

44 responses to “Wrapping up a controversy”

  1. I’m not at all surprised by the decision either, because the whole issue was just so public (within the convention community) that frankly anybody who invited Correia at this point was already declaring which side of the culture war they stood on. (Either that or declaring that they were living under enough rocks to make sunlight difficult to find.) It’s like the Kitchener Comic Con that invited Vic Mignogna and the guy who helped fund Mignogna’s lawsuits against his accusers… past a certain point it’s really hard to claim ignorance. The point at which the guest’s personal fans start a harrassment campaign using your web space is far past that.

    And the line about ‘ensure that all feel welcome so attacks or insinuations against others will not be allowed’ while supporting someone whose fans had been actively attacking the people who vaguely implied that this might not have been a good idea and were wondering how the con was actually going to handle its code of conduct on site… well, it’s a good thing I wasn’t holding that irony meter anywhere close or I might have been hit by the shrapnel.

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    • Good points. I think Mignogna is a clearer case of somebody no con should be inviting just on general safety reasons. Correia can be a jerk but he’s not the liability Mignogna is. Interestingly though in terms of degrees of seperation, Nick Rekieta (the lawsuit guy mentioned in your link) is a fan of Correia’s and vice versa and Correia has been on his you tube show

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      • Well, yes. Correia is (as several of his defenders and even more neutrals have pointed out) relatively affable and seemingly aware of boundaries in person, even if he’ll breach said boundaries casually once behind a keyboard. Mignogna on the other hand was actively creeping not only on co-workers but in at least one case on someone in the masquerade at a convention, so he’s quite happy to push boundaries in person that he thinks he’ll get away with, and just can’t stand that he isn’t getting away with it as easily anymore.

        Of course, Correia’s ‘brand’ is ‘gun aficionado and culture war fighter’ while Mignogna is less about the ‘culture war’ as such and more about the ‘personal Alpha Male predator’ even if that often ends up as an aspect of the culture war. Mignogna is the sort of creep that there is an unfortunately long history of at conventions, and the reason why code of conduct policies exist. By contrast, Correia is ‘just’ an asshole whipping other people into a frenzy for personal and political purposes.

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  2. I’m not going to read Larry’s toxicity on FB, but is it the case that he’s attacking your File 770 comment but none of these posts you’ve been doing about him? And that he has never acknowledged that you did an entire uncomplimentary book about him? We know he’s the thinnest-skinned person in the sff field, and now we know he’s afraid to take you on, too, except under cover of blaming File 770 for what you said.

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    • That is more or less it. He has indirectly mentioned Debarkle claiming nobody read it and that it was exclusively about him. And yes, it is notable that he blocks people he struggles to debate with but is happy to engage with new targets on social media.

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      • He knows that Debarkle wasn’t all about him, but his ego won’t allow him to say otherwise. Probably just wishes it was, and still can’t acknowledge that Teddy made him his bitch and took the whole thing over very efficiently, very quickly.

        But I guess, as always, “nobody read it” means either “nobody I know read it” or “we all totally read it but can’t admit that”.

        I suppose he can’t bear to actually read what’s written about him here since a) he knows Cam has the receipts and b) he’s such a lying sensitive snowflake.

        And c) he’s really stupid, as the convo between Ryan and Cam below points out.

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          • “He has indirectly mentioned Debarkle claiming nobody read it and that it was exclusively about him.”

            Which means that either (1) Correia has read it and he’s lying about its contents, or (2) he’s opining on it without any real knowledge of what it contains.

            Either way, his claims aren’t the flex he seems to think they are.

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            • It’s another example of “so is he lying now or was he lying then”, just like his claims about his experience in Reno.

              Also another in the infinite examples of “Larry: Lying, Stupid, Or Both?”

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    • Maybe but then again he does actually boast that this sort of stuff helps him sell books, so it is especially weird for him to get annoyed with me saying it helps him sell books. I’ve said a lot about Larry Correia over the past couple of weeks that was less than flattering, this is a really weird point for him to object to.

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    • Yep, Camestros called him an opportunistic hypocrite, which is exactly what he is, quite openly.

      What always happens with these cons is that there are one or two people with power in running the con, usually but not always white men, who basically think all this code of conduct thing and concerns of marginalized attendees is overblown and that as long as the right wing blowhards they want to invite as honored guest speakers behave themselves at the event, and they personally like the right wing blowhard, that the marginalized folk and friends should be excluded and shut up in the name of including right wing blowhards. Somehow the right wing blowhards are always much more important to make sure you include than, say, black people, and the black people must bend over backwards for the right wing blowhards who call them lazy Marxist criminals. Or not attend the con at all.

      These are the same people who, when concerted pushes were made to get established codes of conduct for cons at all back 5-10 years ago, declared that we didn’t really need it and if any one acted up, they’d just handle it. They don’t want to deal with the discriminatory and sometimes violent history of conventions. So they want to invite right wing blowhards to prove everything is fine and serious harm isn’t happening, thus causing serious harm.

      And it’s not just people who are right wing themselves running cons who do this. It can be anyone with privilege who thinks that they should be able to ignore and break standards of conduct because they know and like a person who has made it part of their brand to be hostile and discriminatory to marginalized people. Neil Gaiman, for instance, thought bringing in a t.v. host he was friends with who made it part of his show brand to harass and discriminate against women would be fine as host for the Hugos. This was right after the mess with the discrimination towards women in the SF Bulletin and a lot of women authors were upset at the brainless choice of a sexist for awards where they were hard won nominees. They were condescendingly told that they shouldn’t be so upset about it because the t.v. host would behave himself at the event.

      Behaving at an event where you are being watched isn’t the point. Spending much of your professional brand demonizing, harassing, speaking against the civil rights of marginalized groups and getting to be venerated for that at the event, excluding and dismissing the targets of that behavior, is the point. It’s not neutral and apolitical because the entire field of SFF and its fandom aren’t neutral and apolitical. People and societies they build are not neutral and apolitical.

      Larry is going to use this con within an inch of its life for his benefit. That’s what privilege does. The con runner got played just like Larry got played by Beale. But the con runner made his choice and can now be perpetually astonished that people object and are getting harmed by his decision.

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      • Looking at their recent guests, it’s been pretty Baenish line up for awhile (David Weber, Chris Kennedy etc) so (a) Correia isn’t out of keeping but also (b) Correia is the only one that resulted in a big stoush. If it was evil leftists objecting to right-leaning GoH, why didn’t happen only this year?

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        • Can confirm it’s a very Baen-friendly con. Weber even admits to having helped craft their new joke of an online policy. -A former senior staffer at Marscon

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          • HaRoSFA, the Hampton Roads SF Association, started as a gathering of NASA employees. When we moved to the area around 1985, the club still met at NASA Langley’s activity center. The oldest members of the club, and the rising generation after it were all gamer-friendly. The last gamer-type stuff I remember doing is playing Cosmic Encounter with folks there.

            Not that this excuses the present colossal blunder.

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        • Can confirm it’s a very Baen-friendly con. Weber even admits to having helped craft their new joke of an online policy. -A former senior staffer at Marscon

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        • Because Weber hasn’t made it as much a part of his brand to be outspokenly harassing and discriminatory. He still has that dominance cultural rep of respectability as again a white man venerated bestselling author who feels and others feel should be able to do what he wants and it should be accepted without complaint. It’s what they all come up with in the business, the kind of thing where Asimov was the venerated man so others would hold down young women and let him grope them as a joke at convention. And then those young authors or fans who did that for Asimov went on to expect they should be able to do it also at conventions because that’s the discriminatory, political culture of the cons. (And Kennedy’s a bit less known, didn’t lead the Puppies, etc.)

          Weber, as we know, took over a whole con because they invited John Ringo and his gang of goons, numerous other authors and attendees were upset, so they clumsily disinvited him and Ringo did his harassing attacking thing. Weber, being the big poobah guest, insisted that Ringo be re-invited and declared that the con’s code of conduct would be what he said it was and if women authors were unhappy, too damn bad. Again, the important thing is to include right wing blowhards who are used to being not just included but a priority. And the others who have been traditionally discriminated against are expected to suck up the abuse or lose the opportunity/entertainment of the con. The populace is assured that this time the right wing blowhards will behave appropriately at the event and if they don’t, well again too damn bad. They rule, so shut up.

          So that seems to be the culture of that con too. They’ll deny it’s discriminatory or harassing and they will refuse to have it changed. I’m sure that not offending Weber is probably a factor too. And when con runners with power decide that right wing blowhards not only participate, which, freedom of trade, they are allowed to go if they follow the con code of conduct and people accept that, but should be the venerated guests of honor, that is the political position of the con that discriminatory harassers are priority choices and concerns and objections are not legitimate. That’s certainly the argument that Larry is making — while sending followers to harass a woman who was concerned, dared criticize the con for bringing in his form of disruption.

          So they are welcome to have all the joy of his GOH appearance but they made a choice and it wasn’t neutral and apolitical. And now many marginalized authors and fans — who have been putting up with Larry’s abusive and lying attacks of their demographics throughout the last nine years or so — know the con can’t be trusted to uphold their code of conduct and it’s a more risky venue.

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          • iawkg, of course. But an honest question: who even reads David Weber, much less LC, these days? Are there still large-ish audiences for their stuff? Back in the day Weber was capable of extruding MilSF/Space Opera which was reasonably well-crafted and entertaining. I bought it, I’ll admit that. But during the last 8 or 10 years, his work fits neither of those descriptors.

            Since I avoid LC like the plague for political reasons, I’ve no idea whether his career path tracks Weber. And aside from one or two authors (Wen Spencer and LM Bujold, if she’s even still with them) I find nothing at Baen worth reading. Am I missing something here?

            Or is it just the fact that even a miniscule percentage of the total SFF market is still large enough to keep authors like these still going?

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            • Some people are still super-into Weber, literally doing cosplay in his fan club. I invite you to guess the age, race, and gender of the majority of them.

              I guess he’s probably still their biggest cash cow, but every novel he’s come out with since 2018 — and much before it — was written with or by others.

              Spencer: maybe still with them, but apparently hasn’t published anything in 5-6 years, and I never cared for her longest-running series, though I liked the Ukiah one a lot.

              Bujold: the Miles ebooks (they’re not in paper any more) and the Penric ebooks are published by… I dunno, her and her agent? Not Baen, anyway.

              Baen still gets to publish the dead-tree collections, which I guess is nice of her? I dunno, when there’s new Penric, everyone I know just jumps on the ebooks rather than wait around a year for another collection. So they’re basically only reprinting because paper books are a hassle to produce nowadays, and Lois is nice.

              Sooo… I’m thinking the generic extruded sf/f/pew-pew serieses is most of what they’ve got left. I guess their margins are low enough — since they haven’t had an office in years and don’t handle their own distribution — that they can get by on people who like that sort of thing.

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              • David Weber, John Ringo and Larry Correia still seem to be popular in parts of the US and probably coasting on the earlier success of their long-running series. They’ve never been particularly popular in Euorpe, also partly because of Baen’s distribution issues. The Royal Manticorean Army or whatever those Honor Harrington cosplayers call themselves had a table at the Dublin Worldcon and mostly sat there alone and ignored, because no one knew what they were even supposed to be about. I actually went over and talked to them (they were right across from the crafting table), because they looked so forlorn.

                In general, pew pew military SF has a dedicated fanbase (also see all of that extruded military SF product clogging up the Kindle store) that reads a ton of it and very little else. It also seems to be a fanbase that’s isolated from (and sometimes hostile to) the wider SFF community.

                Sharon Lee and Steve Miller are still with Baen, but in their case it seems to be Stockholm syndrome. Baen is also something of a publisher of last resort for authors with existing fanbases that have been dropped by their publishers. That’s probably what happened with Simon R. Green and Tim Powers.

                Baen is apparently planning to move into sword and sorcery, which is currently experiencing a small press driven revival. Personally, I suspect Baen is moving into S&S, because the small press stuff shows that there is a market and because they suspect that there will be some overlap with their conservative white dude base. Which is kind of ironic, because the thrust of the S&S revival is “all the adventure without the sexism, racism and homophobia”. Still, Baen have signed some good authors and hopefully we’ll get some good books out of their foray into sword and sorcery, even if it means that I’ll actually have to order Baen books with their fugly covers, if I want to read them.

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                • Lee and Miller deserve much better, too. Especially since their work has much less pew-pew and is full of romance and comedies of manners. And non-macho men who still do manly things, plus actual strong women.

                  I think they publish the ebook collections of short stories on their own, though — at least they used to.

                  They are very nice people AFAIK, true partners in everything, and are owned by lorge floofy cats.

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                • @Cora: The cosplay guys seem very nice in person and they serve great drinks (shots). I even did one with Weber and them at a con.* But they really should have done 5 minutes’ research about the lack of Baen distribution outside the US (and *maybe* Canada?) before ponying up all that money to go overseas. That’s on them for not looking outside the bubble.

                  I used to know women who were seriously into both Honor and Vorkosigan. Read the books, wore the t-shirts. They haven’t been into the Honor-verse for years, but they still love Miles and the women in his life, even though the series is over.

                  *A con which had a CoC with teeth, mostly written by marginalized groups, so Weber and his fans had to behave. But as I said, the cosplay guys seem polite anyway.

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                • I agree that Sharon Lee and Steve Miller deserve better, but they had such terrible luck with publishers that I understand that they stay with Baen. Interestingly, the Liaden Universe has made the longlist for the Best Series Hugo several times (I keep nominating it myself), yet the Baen fans don’t even seem to notice.

                  And the Honor Harrington cosplayers were very nice, when I talked to them in Dublin. They seemed a little lost, since no one knew what they were about, plus they were stuck in a corner of the art show and crafting area, approx. 800 meters from the main convention center.

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                  • I’ve probably talked to the same guys. They are very nice, have manners, never caused any trouble at any con I’ve been at where they were. Weber was perfectly charming too at one, and everyone complained when security closed down the room party they had with Weber (an invited guest) holding court because they apparently weren’t checking IDs before serving up the fun booze. There’s a procedure and they didn’t follow it, which is their bad — not following orders!

                    I do feel sorry that they didn’t check how Europeans don’t (and almost can’t) read Weber. To spend the money to go all the way there and end up at a table a mile away from the action, that gives me a sad. They are nice guys and didn’t deserve it. But don’t get me started on my opinion of the facilities management and organization (or lacks thereof) of Helsinki again, I complained about it enough here and on File 770 then.

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            • They have Tim Powers and P C Hodgell. Both of whom deserve better.
              I’ve read the first two of Tim Powers’ latest series, but they aren’t especially great additions to his body of work.

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            • Weber is a NYT bestselling author. While he’s not a big global selling author, he has a solid base for his Harrington series, though that is basically kind of ended. His Safehold co-written series has been a category bestseller and he teams up with other big name authors like Zahn and the late Eric Flint. But yes, his impact is probably waning a little.

              I was a big fan of Tim Powers until I found out he’s anti-choice. (That explained some of the choices in his novels.) Larry’s Monster Hunter series hit the NYT list but I don’t know that he’s done that well since then. But he has a solid fan base also. Baen is libertarian land, but their team ups of older authors with newer ones is an effective strategy and they have stuck with the mass market paperback-oriented approach, which gives them a bit of a niche.

              Still, having lost Bujold and Flint now, they will need new stars to their list. And they aren’t in a super growth position. They’ve remained a medium sized SFF press focusing on high action titles. Their distribution is good because it’s through Tor/Macmillan still, I think. And their early investment in e-books paid off for them. But it’s not exactly an easy house to work with.

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              • “Their distribution is good because it’s through Tor/Macmillan still, I think.”

                Tor founder Doherty is an investor in Baen but Baen’s distribution is through Simon & Schuster, not Tor. I think S&S wanted Baen to run a replacement for Timescape for them, but he negotiated this arrangement instead.

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      • There’s much truth in that, although it’s been my experience that white men also aren’t allowed to criticize Larry. At least in his view.

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        • True, he has such a hissy toddler fit over anyone suggesting he’s less than perfect, even SWM doing it triggers him so badly. Maybe even more since he thinks they should be on “his side”.

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          • Certainly the ‘even more’ has long seemed to be part of the Scalzi-hatred. There was an implicit assumption that as a SWM living in the rural U.S. who wrote MilSF, he should be on ‘their side’, and the fact that he wasn’t was this ultimate betrayal.

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                • It is kind of ironic that the slap-dash approach to space safety DD Harriman feared did come to pass and that there was a later hiatus in space travel. Not sure there is a causal link, though.

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        • No one is allowed to criticize Larry Correia except God maybe. And I’m not sure if he would accept a divine voice straight from heaven telling Larry to stop behaving like a jerk either.

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  5. I have to confess I’ve never read any Correia, Ringo or Weber or indeed anything at all published by Baen – there’s so much good stuff out there, why would I even bother?!

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