After I turned in my Hugo vote, I saw the Arthur C. Clarke Awards shortlist, which actually includes Dungeon Crawler Carl. Along with some other books that sound interesting, intellectually stimulating, and for Carl at least but possibly other nominees, capable of inspiring people to stay up late turning pages. There's a Korean story, Luminous by Sylvia Park, that is set in actual Seoul (a city I'm familiar with due to media even though I've never visited), which sounds, er, light years better than that (literally) shitty weeaboo story that somehow got nominated for a Hugo. There are books that have positive blurbs from people like Kim-Stanley Robinson.
All these books seem to exist in a completely different timeline from the crappy Hugo stories. It made me wonder whether I'd find the awards show for this slate more exciting than Disneyland, and the answer was "possibly."
One of the Hugo voters posted a meme the other night comparing lipstick found on a classical statue to snog marks left on a cardboard standup of Mark Lee (formerly of NCT, CEO of the recently formed music company Upper Room, creator of the album FirstFruit which was heavily praised by Rolling Stone and Billboard -- I suggest checking out the track Loser, and he's the blue-haired rapper in NCT Dream's Beatbox if you'd like a sample from his K-Pop period).
Anyway, the meme was basically making fun of Mark in that "haw haw, I'm a Murrican who thinks gurl music is stupid and so are gurls and foreigners, I only listen to barrel-chested white guys playing guitar in a manly way" sort of voice.
And Mark just happens to be the unofficial model for the lead defendant in my work-in-progress, a K-Pop star recording an album in San Francisco who rents a house from one of those house-renting companies and is later sued when one of his stalker fans gets electrocuted due to some shoddy electrical work involving the garage door. I like Mark. I've seen him live probably more than any other K-Pop star because he has been in multiple groups. Hard working guy. Canadian. Had to launch his career in South Korea because Murricans are fucking bigots who don't readily take to Asian musicians, even the Hugo voters.
That's why I'm going to avoid the part of the Hugo awards where the biggest film hit in years, K-Pop Demon Hunters, gets snubbed for an art house horror flick (Sinners) that only gets four stars from me due to trying to make music into a monolithic struggle between two forces, thereby erasing all the Polynesian (especially! go watch that PBS documentary or look up that resonator guitar!
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), Indigenous, and non-Celtic European influence on music, turning it into a Zoroastrian and splitterfied situation to enhance dramatic tension effectively yet dishonestly (yet parts of it were amazing particularly that live-performance-transcends-space-and-time part which happens to me personally on a frequent basis but I've never seen another artist mention it before) (the Hendrix homage -- he was part indigenous -- is the only nod this film gives to music outside the binary).
I am having lots of fun in the Carl cult anyway. The other day I was in an intense discussion with other fans about the symbolism of cat food in a particular scene. I am definitely getting back into role-playing games over this.
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