This is sorta getting buried, but it's possibly the most important part of the report
Unclear, but it looks like the Chinese noms may have gotten ROYALLY screwed (for "slating"?? wth? you CAN'T THROW OUT SLATES, that's what EPH was FOR!!)
Ch noms possibly should have dominated several categories??
So. I looked at the hugo validation spreadsheet. 😭 If I am reading this right, none of the fiction winners, myself included (Short, Novelette, Novella, Novel, Series) would have been on the final ballot if there hadn't been a slew of Chinese nominees yanked off.
drive.google.com/file/d/1rhCw...
This struck me, too, when I read it and agree that everyone seems to be burying the lede. They just arbitrarily redlined nominations because they "felt" like something fishy was going on.
Barkley and Sanford had some extreme tunnel-vision. Which I get, given what most of the reporting has focused on. But this might’ve been the biggest bombshell in the whole report and it’s like they barely knew it was there
Because they are both fucking idiots.
You know that the guy they quote as speaking on behalf of Chinese fandom appears to be one of Dave McCarty's best buds, per FB posts?
Wonder why they didn't mention that?
I don’t want to make too many generalizations on one report, but…well, I’ll be disappointed if people try to push this for Best Related Work. I’m glad we saw the emails, but there were a lot of elements that didn’t get adequate treatment
I would be amazed if (a) there aren't big pushes for this in BRW, and Sanford for Fan Writer, and (b) at least one doesn't win.
It was good that they got Diane to talk *publicly* (hint, hint), and to share the emails , but most of the verbiage around that material is, ugh.
(But I'm very biased.)
There's actually far worse (IMHO) racism involved in the Chengdu con that just the bloody Hugos, but because that manifested in the con organizers (Chinese biz people) wanting to impress Westerners at the expense of local attendees, it got very little attention...
... because the SMOFfy types who got all expenses paid trips were so blinded by being treated like rock stars, they didn't know or care what was staring them in the face.
I believe you can read the attached bullet comment, from a Bilibili livestream a couple of weeks ago that discussed all this?
Yeah, I've heard a bit about that. Dug around in Weibuo and found a hint here and there.
There's also the issue with the use of tokenistic representation during the Sad Puppy period which returned to just rewarding white authors as soon as the uncouth puppies were dismissed to the margins.
