Book is great. T7 interview is great. FFG S&H is opposite of great.
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Lol true. I just want future politics, not today politics. I really liked the idea that Android was free of racism and sexism, and didn’t want that being changed.
Have you noticed that the corporate executives we’ve seen are a much less diverse bunch than the runners? I think that’s pretty clear evidence that racism already exists in the Android universe. And it’s clearly still a world where women are judged by their appearance a lot more than men are; substantially more female characters than male characters wear close fitting, revealing clothes, and many female characters wear makeup but few or no male characters do.
Besides, basically all fiction has “today politics” in it in some form, even if the author didn’t intend it to.
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Yeah, the whole point of sci fi imo is to tackle “today politics” (and many other “today” topics) through the prism of our fears / hopes about the future.
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It isn’t and never was.
We’ve seen 12 Executives, out of which 5 are women, 7 are men, one is African American, one is Russian, two are German, two are Japanese, one is Indian, one is Scottish, one is British and two are caucasian American - and then there’s the head of GlobalSec from New Angeles, whom I can’t find a picture of right now.
I’d say that’s actually rather diverse?
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The Japanese execs are both Jinteki. I’m not sure that Jinteki preferring Japanese execs is really a mark for corporate diversity. Diversity in companies, maybe, but not in hiring practices. The Indian exec is in India. And the Russian, German, Scottish, British, and caucasian American execs would all be considered white in the present day, I think, so the diversity there is of a more limited sort than the runners.
Here’s the head of GlobalSec. Also German, I think.
Incidentally, a NetrunnerDB search for executives only has ten results. Raman Rai is missing the subtype. I’m going to submit a fix in the GitHub card data for him. When you said twelve, were you including the new GlobalSec head, or is there another exec that needs their data fixed?
I was not including Raman Rai (whom I had forgotten about), but rather the Weyland PR chief from New Angeles, who - I’m fairly sure - is Indian, but located in New Angeles.
My point wasn’t that racism doesn’t exist in the Android universe, but rather that the corporate executives we’ve seen have been fairly diverse so far.
I don’t think it’s an issue that the Android universe will acknowledge or tackle, though. With G-Mods, the Mars revolution and the whole Android/Clone-debacle, it just seems like the developers will keep themselves away from the subject; there are plenty of other subjects to work with, that seem more fitted to the Android universe.
EDIT: what is it that you’re hoping to see? I’m a tad confused.
This is a really important point, but the flip side of it is that we can’t necessarily assume that the “today politics” criteria of marginalization are still going to be relevant. How stringent can/should we be about boardroom racial quotas in a future that we’re told is overwhelmingly multiracial? When aesthetic g-mods are widely available, will beauty standards (and the “makeup tax” etc) affect women in the same way that they did in 2016?
(Apropos of nothing, I love that we can have conversations like this here.)
Ah, I had missed him.
I’m not saying that they aren’t diverse, I’m saying that they seem to be noticeably less diverse than the runners. The diversity suggests that the Android universe may have less racism in some ways than the real world, but the difference in diversity between the two groups suggests that racial prejudice still affects people’s careers.
I’m not sure that there’s anything wrong with the current situation, necessarily? I think the corps being portrayed as not that much more diverse than their present day counterparts maybe adds to the picture of racial politics in the Android universe. On the other hand, I’m white, so my view on whether it’s ok for the boardrooms of Android to be largely white is probably not that useful overall.
Had to chortle a bit considering your avatar.
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Yes, and it makes sense, not all women fall in line with the feminist agenda insofar as being “above” makeup and beauty and all that Jazz. Women like looking better than everyone else, and in the future, the ridiculous ways women will be able to augment their physical appearance will be staggering. This is just a thing people will have to deal with forever and ever until we’re all genetically modified to not find anything attractive except personality and wisdom. So never.
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“I call it the Schwong Field. It makes you look how everyone wants you to. Unfortunately, due to a trending issue getting out of hand, everyone now wants everyone to look like everyone else.”
First, that’s a remarkably sweeping statement about what women like and why.
Second, for a lot of European history, men’s clothing and hair was just as fancy as women’s, and nobody wore makeup. It seems unlikely that a feature of our culture that’s only been around for few hundred years represents a universal truth about human nature.
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Good god.
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The book looks sweet, I really loved the graphic design of the inserts like we saw in San San cycle and the World of Android. I really excited to see FFG pushing that great work in their book publishing. Color me excited
Picked up a copy at GenCon and read through it that night. (Basically the reason why I didn’t ACTUALLY test my decks for Friday.)
Good read, and reinforced my resolve to never play NBN. Because eff those guys, holy shit.
Also, I can totally imagine some of the people that have to work with JHow fantasizing about going all Office Space printer on him. His Bullshit Per Minute in spoken words is quite high.
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LMK when you find one of those ‘good Corps’. I heard Weyland have some very humanitarian divisions.
The ancient Sumerians wore make-up, as did people in biblical times (see ‘painted jezebel’), and although european history has some periods opposed to cosmetics they are outweighed by the times that didn’t (albeit it reserved for some socio-economic classes).
Though I agree it was just as much a male thing as female.
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No no, Haas is the good corp. They just want to protect you and help you. Nothing bad there!
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