Please don’t CHORF it

108 comments

1. We’re all fans, and we all should read and nominate and vote. Surest way to get a better consensus and lock out shenanigans – more warm bodies in the booth.

2. Amanda was far, far nicer in her response than I was in mine. I just focused on the part where Davidson demand nominees disavow the fans that nominated them in exchange for the approval of the CHORFs.

   Oh, did that piss me off.

3. ‘It’s my ball, and if you don’t do what I want, I’m taking my ball and going home!’
   Only it’s not -their- ball.

4. Yeah. That part was really something else. Never a good sign when comparisons to McCarthy are completely apt.

5. I didn’t think about McCarthy comparisons, but yeah, they’re apt.

6. I’ve been really quiet recently, but it’s not because I don’t support the cause, it’s because I have two jobs and a very full school schedule. I’m following this all, and shaking my head, and what Davidson said today made me very angry. I was placed on the Sad Puppies 3 slate without having been asked first. Let me make this VERY clear. I have absolutely no problem with that. None. I was honored to be considered as part of that list, which I saw as helpful suggestions, rather than ‘you must vote this way.’ I didn’t nominate myself (duh) but I don’t care if I actually get to the short list. Having been on the SP3 list makes me very happy in the aw, shucks, guys, I really don’t deserve that… way.

   I stand with the puppies. Saturday morning I’ll be liveblogging at Mad Genius Club, up until I have to leave the house for work, which fortunately won’t be until after the nominations are announced. I’ll be starting off early morning Eastern Time, and it should be fun, hope to see you there.

7. How messed up is it that some people are using authors asking to be removed from the list – because they’d already received threats and attacks – as a way to attack SP?

   Like its our fault somehow that these authors are getting attacked.

8. Because the threats and such are to be expected and perfectly justified. The fact that we didn’t warn people that the hordes were coming? HOW DARE US!

9. The really scary bit is that a lot of them didn’t even think about it at all, much less the implications.

10. Jared Anjewierden, ATTENTION. As of this moment your comments comprise 0.444444% of all comments on this thread. Slow down or you’ll burn up on re-entry and destroy the WordPress server in San Francisco.

    THAT IS ALL.

    T. L. Knighton, you are also redlining it at 0.33333333% This is a school crossing.

    Hahahah. Just kiddin’, buddy.

11. Please contrast Mr. Davidson’s current howls with his column on the Hugos and fandom from April 5, 2013. Coincidentally the same date as that Scalzi quote.

    The older generation? The Establishment? It needs to remember that sharing was once a high Fannish ideal. As were openness and the aggressive embrace of diversity. It’s not enough to state that anyone can attend a convention if they want to. It’s not enough to say that awards can be changed or improved – join up and work for change. The divide between old and new is a cultural one. Many in the newer generations simply don’t know how to participate or rather, they’ve been taught that their means of participation is to simply show up and have most everything handed to them. They’ve been taught to expect an experience, a fait accompli. They don’t know that they’re supposed to MAKE the experience. And it’s not that they wouldn’t volunteer to work a con, starting out as a gopher to learn the ropes if given the opportunity. They just to don’t know that the possibility exists. Outreach needs to take place much further down the line than is currently being offered. Traditional Fandom needs to explicitly state that it wants new people and then it must do what it once did: hand-hold those new recruits through the process of learning how to become a Fan. Teaching them that Fandom is about participation, is about tradition and about passing on its ideals. We need to show them that Fandom is a place where THEY will be supported as they express THEMSELVES, just as we support each other now.

    Apparently outreach is no longer wanted. What a difference a couple of years can make, no?

12. We’re apparently not reaching out to the “right” people.

13. Eight months later Davidson ran a post by Felicity Savage called “What’s the Trouble With Selfies? Speculative Fiction and the Mirror Effect.”

    That piece was instantly swarmed by the Inquisition, mostly off-post. They called it racist, said they were throwing up on their monitors, it was toxic, poison, the whole nine yards.

    Davidson went into damage control and I think afterwards, seeing how the wind was blowing at that time in SFF, he decided on the better part of valor. He has not been making waves since but been conciliatory. I don’t know that I blame him. From his point of view and considering the Weird Tales and other then recent witchhunting destructions, he may have felt there’s little point to a fight if you’re not even in the picture.

    Things weren’t like they are now. The witchhunters were in their full stride and taking no prisoners. I could be wrong but I think they put the very fear of god in him for the survival of his project.

    I was disgusted by the hysteria over nothing. The man couldn’t even speak his mind without being threatened by the usual race-baiting weirdoes who are today are more than sick of being quoted and rather quiet comparatively speaking. But it was a different story back then. They would swarm anything that moved, even completely obscure blog posts they somehow found out about. Yup, a couple of years have made a vast difference. Now the hunters are the hunted and they predictably don’t like the taste of their own medicine.

    Fuck ’em.

14. Err, if Steve Davidson puts “No Award” at the top, wouldn’t that be almost the same as not voting at all? In other words, it would have almost the same effect as not voting and have little impact on the statistical overall result?

15. No if No Awards total beats any other novel then no award will be given.

16. Douglas: “No Award” is actually a full-fledged ballot choice for the Hugos. It’s possible for it to win (and indeed, it has won before), so, nope, it’s not the same as not voting.

17. But you’d still need to have a large number of people vote “no award”, wouldn’t you?

    How so very juvenile. And asinine. Which means I’ll bet that is exactly what they’ll try to do.

18. explicitly or implicitly disparaging their intelligence, taste or standing to make choices when you try to do that is unlikely to persuade them to decide anything other than that you’re probably an asshole. Except that’s exactly what you, Brad, are doing to me. You’re telling me that when I say there was no whisper campaign for specific works that I’m a liar. You’re telling me that I’m following an “SJW checklist” in selecting my ballots.

19. There is a difference between saying “I saw no evidence of this” and “I saw no evidence of this therefore you are lying when you said you did.”

20. @Tully Apparently outreach is no longer wanted. What a difference a couple of years can make, no?
    Outreach is only wanted when they are in control of it, and they get to teach everyone how to be the ‘right’ kind of fan.

    Political Correctness destroys all that it touches. When you believe you must cut people down to make them equal, you only destroy. It’s nice to see people working to take back our fandom from these PC posers. And taking over the name of a magazine just because you bought up an expired trademark, does not give you the authority that the previous owners of that name may have once had.

21. You’re telling me that when I say there was no whisper campaign for specific works that I’m a liar.

    You are a liar, Gerrib. You have lied repeatedly on John C. Wright’s blog. You ran away from my blog before I finished pinning you down to a lie. And you’re not telling the truth now, although it is possible that you are merely ignorant rather than lying. But you are an SJW, and we know the truth means absolutely nothing to you.

    Regardless, the fact that a nobody like you wasn’t privy to one of Tor’s annual whispering campaigns doesn’t mean they don’t exist. We KNOW they exist. Some of us have seen the emails mistakenly sent to the wrong people. We even have The Toad of Tor complaining publicly about results that have not been announced because this year’s whispering campaign did not achieve the usual, expected results.

    Where do you think all these “I am hearing” reports come from? I mean that literally, who do you think is talking to TNH and Jason Sanford and Damien Walters? Give us the actual names.

22. Started to do a parody of the “I had a dream” speech, but I really like that speech, so, no. But I do wonder if any of this is getting through to those guys. I mean to say, I have followed this for several months now, been a helluva education and a lotta fun, but will any of them “get it”?
    Some of these guys actually have an economic interest in this business, will they at least “get it”? It will be interesting to see what happens.

23. 

24. Wasn’t someone trying to claim that no one had actually threatened to punish authors for mere association with those concerned about Puppy Sadness?

25. Thankfully, Mr. Davidson has provided us a handy example to hold up.

    Unless he wusses out and deletes it.

26. ” Does having n+2 final nominees and n slots per ballot actually help that much? well, to lock up all six slots requires a hell of a lot more organization. Somebody needs to keep a master list and assign people to certain parts of the ballot..” –Chris Gerrib 4/1/15 (Making Light blog)

    Wow, I can’t believe what this idiot is suggesting. These SJW morons are really digging a hole for themselves. I am almost ready to do damage to myself financially and buy a supporting membership just so I can vote.

27. This sentence is hilarious:
    “There’s strong evidence to suggest that Sad Puppies, or some faction of Sad Puppies, have begun to engage with the GamerGaters.”

    That translates to “Danny Warpig said ‘hi’ ” a thread or two back.

    Pathetic.

28. No award only wins if it is a majority because of their own Australian ballot rules. All we have to do is simply set the priorities to vote for ANYTHING before no award. Funny part is that NO AWARD is a vote I’ve used myself on categories where I only knew some of the choices. Go figure that I’d turn into a trend setter. ROFL. Sad Puppies Rule!!! And anyone who wants to puke on their monitor please post videos so I can laugh.

29. EXHIBIT A: #39 “Redpillers really have a thing about being lectured by women.”

    #124 TNH: “True… they can’t tolerate my occasional use of language that has a power component.

    “If the same speech is an explanation when a man says it, but a lecture (and intolerable) when a woman says it, they’re seeing the category, not the person — and they’re hostile to the category.

    “Guys like that don’t actually like us as people. They’ll act offended if you say so, but they don’t.”

    Where do these people come up with this shit? Wouldn’t I just say so? They have no problem with making racist sexist remarks a zillion times a day. Why would our human natures be so different? That’s the usual ploy – put scare quotes in our mouths, declare a Jim Crow, and then march from Selma.

    See how I used actual quotes there, SJWs? Try it on for size, because who’s “they”?

30. Perhaps the most amusing part of this stretch has been completely missed by the oblivious CHORFs. They are so mired in their sense of self regard, entitlement & lack of introspection that they will probably never realise how fully they have humiliated themselves. Every single second of the controversy so far has taken place before the ballot has been announced. It might sound plain but it seems that they have all missed it. Everytime TNH wrings her aquatic hands pathetically, everytime Sandford stamps his feet childishly, everytime Buhlhert blares her senseless foghorn, the undecided ask one question “How do you know?”

    They have done more damage to their own cause than SP3 ever could simply because of their inability to restrain their wounded egos & frustrated self entitlement for four days. No matter how this all shakes out, no matter who wins, the cat is out of the bag now. To the CHORFs, wrapped in their delusions, they have done nothing wrong. To anyone neutral, anyone without a dog in the fight, they have proven beyond all of our expectations that the motive force driving Sad Puppies is true. Anyone who asks the question “How do they know?” will see the immediate & obvious conclusion that eludes these morons, insulated by their self righteous anger. They know because many of the people who ‘should’ have been given the nod haven’t. Is there any other convincing reason why people un-nominated for any award seem to know the entire final slate? You could excuse knowing one or two finalists in a given category but the entire list? The only ways to have their level or knowledge at this stage are (a) Worldcon leaking or (b) interval communication based on information from the people on their own slates that were ‘supposed’ to get through. I know which one my money is on.

    Thanks CHORFs, your squawking and wailing has not only made me laugh but also provided some compelling and amusing evidence to shove down your throats when the inevitable backlash begins in earnest and you predictable bastards start trying your sad little narrative revisions

31. 

32. Pingback: How do they know? | Neoreactive

33. If the Hugo Voters think that a minority of Hugo nominators nominating in lockstep is unfair, they have a way to say so. I get why slate nominators wouldn’t like that, but I don’t see the problem, really.

34. Ironic that the author quoted widely practices “…explicitly or implicitly disparaging their intelligence, taste or standing to make choices when you try to do that is unlikely to persuade them to decide anything other than that you’re probably an asshole.” of various people.

35. I get why slate nominators wouldn’t like that, but I don’t see the problem, really.

    Neither do we. Go for it. Hey, guess what happens if we do it too….

36. “Are you now, or have you ever been, a member of the Sad Puppies slate?”

37. “John Scalzi @scalzi · 23h 23 hours ago It appears that people with persecution complexes are feeling persecuted. What a refreshing change from their usual state.”

    Scalzi wins the “Lack of Self-Awareness” award for riding herd on a cult of paranoid “marginalized” for 5 years and being unaware of it. If he wants to see persecution complexes, he just needs to read the Twitter feeds of his “marginalized.” It’s non-stop 7 days a week.

    Second place, Abi at #282: “you can’t judge anyone here on any words but their own.”

    If SJWs actually believed that, there would be no Sad Puppies. That’s because SJWs have enrolled all straight white males into a woman-hating homophobic KKK using scare quote-ology and privilege theory.

    I’m still challenging any SJW to list me all the dust ups in SFF in the last 5 years which were not laid at the feet of straight white men as an entire group.

    Also, which of those dust ups have NOT employed intersectional gender feminist dogma to make that case.

    I have a new one too: Considering the defamatory accusations about Golden Age SF, show me 5 authors from 1912-1970 with a shared racial and sexual supremacist ideology complete with the faux academic semantics SJWs use comparable to the 5 authors who won Nebulas in 2014 ALONE. You have 6 decades of racist sexist straight white men to choose from so it should be a slam dunk.

    If you have a case to make – make it without using scare quotes, assumptions and innuendoes.

38. By the way, those authors are Ann Leckie, Vylar Kaftan, Aliette de Bodard, Rachel Swirsky and Nalo Hopkinson. Good luck with that bunch, you’re going to need it.

39. I know exactly what their response to Brad will be:

    “You should have thought of that before you tried to push your bigoted politics on the Hugo!”

    I’ve been depressingly prescient these past few days.

40. Point of information on how “No Award” works for Hugo voting: it is indeed an entry, but it doesn’t need to come in first to win. After the winner is determined*, there’s a test done comparing 1) the number of ballots on which the winner was ranked higher than “No Award” and 2) the number of ballots on which “No Award” was ranked higher than the winner. If 2 > 1, no award is given in this category.
    (* not as simple as first-past-the-post, but that’s irrelevant here)

    You can see how this makes a blacklist into a plausible tactic, if the anti-Sad Puppies faction is large enough and still thinks this is a good idea when it’s time to vote. Whether that will happen, I wouldn’t venture to predict. While the nomination process hasn’t yielded very impressive results the last few years, the voters have generally done a respectable job of selecting among the nominees. (Yes, I agree Redshirts is an exception. But note that same year, Brandon Sanderson won best novella for “The Emperor’s Soul,” which was less SJW than at least two competitors.)

41. Quick primer about how Sad Puppies operates:

    Step 1: Someone puts up the Official Sad Puppies ™ slate of nominees. Step 2: Readers look at those, look at the stuff they’ve read that year, and say either, “Yes! I think all of those are award worthy by my own personal criteria” or “Nope.” Failure to agree with the Sad Puppies slate is seen as nothing but a disagreement in taste. Step 3: Readers make their own nominations.

    Then, the nomination period closes and it goes to voting. Here’s where things get interesting. You see, while a large number of us agree that certain books and authors are worthy of nomination, we’re not necessarily going to agree on who should win. That’s why Sad Puppies got so much nominated last year, but none of it won. It’s because SP blocks will agree enough on general concepts (like nomination), but contrary to what some think, we’re not in lockstep. We’re going to vote for who WE think should win regardless of what Larry, Brad, or anyone else says.

    Now, unsurprisingly, Cat thinks it’s just peachy to vote No Award instead of a Sad Puppies nominee. For a change, I actually agree.

    Especially since the whole point of Sad Puppies was that the Hugo’s had stopped being about the award and about rewarding the “right” people. A No Award win proves that these people care nothing about the work and all about the ideology behind the scenes.

    Go ahead and choose No Award. That just means that we win.

42. Go ahead and choose No Award. That just means that we win. Under what set of circumstances would you consider yourself to have lost?

43. Chris, I would suggest you look up the definition of a Xanatos Gambit

44. I would say we’ll lose when we join a feminist version of the KKK and really believe we should use jazz hands instead of clapping because PTSD. Given McGuire’s behavior and success vs. Jonathan Ross, you’re only a hair from having jazz hands at the Hugos, since you never say no to these freaks. Actually, what’s the difference between banning a comedian because someone might have a breakdown over just the thought of fat-jokes and Anti-PTSD jazz hands? Very little I’m afraid.

    In the old days a clever SF writer would’ve written about a future culture so insane they were afraid to clap and who Scarlet Lettered racial privilege based on a cult led by President Banhammer convincing others they could mind-read the racist thoughts of 200 million people.

    Today that’s called Chris Gerrib’s ideological colleagues.

    Tough break dat.

    Be real – how do you lose to an asylum?

45. In other words, no matter what happens you’ll simply declare victory.

46. That is not a Xanatos Gambit. That’s delusion.

    In this case we already won. We won when the Grand Smof came out of the shadows and publically said all those lovely things.

47. Chris, what do you think the goal of Sad Puppies is? What do YOU think is victory and defeat for Sad Puppies?

48. Jared nailed it. Given the situational fundamentals, the only way for the SP3 strategy to lose would be to get nothing or near-nothing on the ballot in the first place because of a lack of popular support. Judging from the panic attacks and pearl-clutching in certain quarters, that doesn’t appear to be the case. All other scenarios produce varying degrees of “win” for the stated purposes.

49. “Under what set of circumstances would you consider yourself to have lost?”

    None for this year, even if there isn’t a single Hugo win. Selling thousands of short fiction by authors we enjoy, increasing the numbers of nominating voters for an award that has always been decided by a rather anemic slice of fandom, driving the conversation about sf fandom again, and a reasonable amount of success in nominees all speak to winning.

50. I declared victory over this dotty cult the day I read Scalzi’s piece about white privilege. Aside from the fact is betrays a weird obsession to stick such a thing into SFF, only a moron could’ve written it. To say white privilege is as obvious as “gravity” is another bell-ringer. There’s something really wrong with you people.

51. What do YOU think is victory and defeat for Sad Puppies? Winning Hugos? I mean, usually when one nominates something for an award that means one want the item to win it. But apparently we’re through the looking glass here, people.

    Or shorter Sad Puppies: “We’re winning!” (delivered in the same coked-out-of-his-gourd manner as Charlie Sheen.)

52. That’s just it. The isn’t just one win condition.

    Just by getting more people involved we won.

    This is the long game man, or hadn’t you realized that when the spokesperson for SP4 is already chosen?

    We win by having book bombs and getting authors paid and introduced to new fans.

    We win by getting stuff we like nominated and introduced to more people. The majority of voters are still not Chorf or SP.

    We win everytime someone on your side opens their mouth and says something like we’re not real fans, or to vote all SP stuff below No Award because every rimesone regular fan sees it and joins us.

    Yep, that’s right. Your side is about the best recruitment tool SP has.

    We win when peopleput forth ideas to change the rules and make even more blatant their desire to rule.

    “Grand Smof Teresa, the more you tighten tour grip the more star systems will slip through your fingers.”

    And yeah, winning a Hugo is winning too, but the point is to get to a point where the numbers are there for that be meaningful again.

53. So, because you lack the imagination to consider that there might be secondary objectives (or that winning the Hugo itself might be a secondary objective, as it was last year), we’re “through the looking glass?”

54. Listen, Gerrib. It’s not like we haven’t given these people a chance to knock it off. I mean, think about it. Exactly what have we been demanding other than stop with the ceaseless innuendoes we’re a bunch of racists who hate women? Is that really so unreasonable, to ask SFF’s most venerable core institutions to stop with the hate speech against over 200 million whites and 3.5 billion males? It’s frickin’ SFF fer christ’s sake. What the hell’s all this stuff about whites and men?

    We’ve asked in comments sections hundreds of times and been banned and deleted – over and over and over again. We were not only laughed at as sexist racists too stupid to examine our cis-hetero white privilege but insulted too. And we were told by both past presidents of the SFWA to #JustListen, even to obvious rape hoaxes cuz wimmen. Fuck that.

    So last year SJWs double down and basically reward the concept – in both the Hugos and the Nebulas – that white men are intellectually, spiritually and morally inferior not to mention oppressors. Okay, fine.

    Now fuck you.

    2 years is plenty of time to knock it off. Y’know, it’s one thing for idiots like Kameron Hurley and Ann Leckie to say we’re all out to get them but for you all to buy into that stupid siege mentality is just unnecessary. So, take it and like it. And honestly, you’re still not listening. Now we’re all men’s rights activists and are STILL conniving to keep out women, gays and non-whites. And that is based on ZERO evidence. We exist therefore we oppress. You just will not stop. I don’t think you ever will – it’s a bizarre compulsion considering all the bullshit you have to make up out of whole cloth to fuel the whole thing. It’s like an addiction.

    It just never ends with you people. You are obsessed with this weird feminist bullshit and just can’t let it go and think you’re all marching from Selma and marginalized this and blah, blah, blah and fuck off.

55. Exactly what have we been demanding other than stop with the ceaseless innuendoes we’re a bunch of racists who hate women?

    It isn’t innuendoes.

    Chris Gerrib from the nailhouse thread:
    James May – would you like some cheese with that whine? Seriously, dude, the last two straight white male presidents of SFWA hurt your fee-fees?

    That’s basically a presumption that “we” must prefer straight white males in charge.

    As if: “Hey, you guys are all so racist, I can barely manage to come in here and try to talk y’all out of your racism!”-thinking.

    But he lives for trolling, so whatever.

56. If the purpose of Sad Puppies is to bring dignity back to the Hugos–to see that really worthwhile works win the award–then a No Award is not a victory.

    If the purpose is to bring more notice to the Hugos, to draw in more fans, then getting more attentions on the awards is a win, whether or not any given work actually gets an award.

    I cannot speak for anyone else, but I believe the purpose encompasses both of these goals.

57. We’re not done with the SFWA. Now that folks are epub eligible we can flood that bitch with a flick of the wrist. When sad faces are done announcing the winners I’ll be sure and announce “No asshat racist feminists won an award tonight!! Woo hoo!”

    Get out your grammar books cuz you’re going to be conjugating the shit out of the word “marginalized.”

    Remember: we didn’t start this but we’re liable to finish it.

58. Short term, sure, No Award isn’t a victory.

    That’s the trick with Xanatos Gambits – some victories are better than others. We’ve already won in some areas, but not all.

    I’ve said elsewhere that the majority of voters are neither Chorf nor SP. I honestly believe that if the Chorfs manage a No Award result rather than relinquish the control they crave it will only drive large numbers of general fandom away from them. And then next year will be better. More fans voting from all corners, more good works nominated.

    One of my hoped for victory conditions is an ever harder decision about who to put at 1 on my ballot.

59. If the purpose of Sad Puppies is to bring dignity back to the Hugos–to see that really worthwhile works win the award–then a No Award is not a victory.

    Along these lines, having “No Award” win is a loss for the Hugos and science fiction in general.

    We all know what the reaction would have been if, rather than nominating worthwhile but overlooked works, Sad Puppies had gone the burn-it-all-down “No Award” route.

60. FWIW, while I do consider it a win if “No Award” wins, it’s a pyrrhic victory IMHO. However, I’ll take it. It proves the point that the other side will do anything to keep unapproved books from winning their beloved award.

    I’d much rather see books I enjoy get awards.

    Apparently, that makes me and those like me horrible human beings according to some folks.

61. I’ve found another favourite bit of the controversy embedded in Sandfords mewling, it’s the passive aggressive hints at the Hugo Admin people being furious about Sad Puppies.

    “I’m also hearing that the people who help run Worldcon are outraged that this gaming of the awards succeeded. As a result, a number of proposed rule changes are already being considered.”

    This really HAS to be nothing more than a rallying call to bolster the troops right? No one with an adult level of cognitive ability could swallow this backwards line of reasoning surely? Put it this way, if the above line of reasoning is true then these following statements would also be true:

    – The people who help run Worldcon are outraged that so many extra people paid for memberships that it took them three weeks to complete the manual steps & send out the passwords
    – The people who help run Worldcon are outraged that they are raking in far more money than in previous years
    – The people who help run Worldcon are outraged that they have essentially been given free advertising & marketing
    – The people who help run Worldcon are outraged that even with no effort on their part this years Hugos will be more heavily promoted to a wider audience than any before

    Really proves two oft repeated points doesn’t it. 1) SJWs always lie. 2) SJWs cannot accept that basic economics have nothing to do with feelz. Put simply, it’s childish nonsense disguised as a thinly veiled threat. It’s the same kind of vague, warning, half threats that pop out of these automatons with the regularity of a pre-recorded alarm. It’s noise to signal the troops and terrify the naive.

    I recall similar squawkery last year with their pronouncements of doom. Particularly Deemian P Whathefucksisname splurting out, during one of his public written masturbation sessions in the Guardian, that Larry et al would be punished once it was revealed who had missed out on nomination because of Sad Puppy shenanigans. Many of the glittery hoo haa twitterati ran with this intellectual drudgery and joined in the collective nostradaming. Then MHI Nemesis came out…don’t think that SJWs went to that particular well again. Wonder why?

    Until now. The last couple of days on Twitter have seen the usual suspects blogs (typical crayon to bog roll excreta) and they are warming to their dire portents of doom laid out to any author daring to be on the slate. Unfortunately for the table chewing crowd, as VD pointed out, they are unable to think past the end of their nose. Let the mindless fools work themselves into a lather of naysaying because we have a wonderful chance to shine a light, once again, on their idiocy.

    In October Jim Butcher will be releasing the first book of a new series. If Skin Game makes the final ballot (I don’t know, unlike some I’m not privy to a whisper campaign) then the SJW predictions of irreparable career harm by virtue of associational badthink will no doubt mean that his fledgling series will tank, no? Either that or it will clearly demonstrate the impotence of these goosestepping dickheads and show they are so full of shit that they could open a methane factory.

62. Gerrib, I realize it is difficult for you to realize what we are talking about, but it is a matter of honor.

    If the most prestigious award for SF goes not to the most deserving, but to the most politically correct, it is not longer a SF award, but a political award. It is no longer trumpet inviting readers of SF to read the work, but a leper’s bell warning the wary to stay away.

    You ask under what set of circumstances would we consider us to have lost? To understand our victory conditions is to understand what loss of that victory would mean.

    Our goal is twofold: first, to draw attention to the longstanding domination of the Hugos by the politically correct social-justice morlocks of whom you yourself are a spokesdolt.

    Second, to wrest the votes away from these morlocks and restore dignity and honor to the Hugo, whose reputation has been gravely tarnished.

    Hence, our success and yours are mutually exclusive.

    If you successfully convince the consensus of science fiction fans that the current corrupt Hugo practices are legitimate, honest, and fair, and that, for example REDSHIRTS won its Hugo due to the merit of the work and not the good-ol’-boys whisper campaigns of the insiders, and if the dignity is never restored to the Hugos, you have won.

    If we expose and explode the practices of your faction, and honor is restored to the Hugo, so that it once again becomes a trustworthy sign of which works for that year are the best, actually the best, not merely the favorites of a sick-minded political cult, then we have won.

63. “What do YOU think is victory and defeat for Sad Puppies? Winning Hugos? I mean, usually when one nominates something for an award that means one want the item to win it. But apparently we’re through the looking glass here, people.

    Or shorter Sad Puppies: “We’re winning!” (delivered in the same coked-out-of-his-gourd manner as Charlie Sheen.)”

    There are only 15×10^28th power of electrons in the observable universe. I am so, so sorry I wasted a small but real number of those electrons actually writing an answer to you as if you were a grown male instead of a teen girl having her period, and going into hysterics of snark. She has a perfectly valid biological excuse for her lack of self command, her high strung emotions, her inability to focus on a topic for a span to four paragraphs. You have not.

64. http://www.teleread.com/award/sad-puppies-sad-gits/?utm_medium=twitter&utm_source=twitterfeed

    The comments are more interesting than the article itself, I think.

65. So, from those comments….

    “Zora says:
    April 3, 2015 at 3:02 pm
    Goblin Emperor is one of the novel nominees. I loved it so much I read it four times. Had I the money to vote, I would have voted for it.”

    Didn’t they try to crucify Mad Mike for accidentally announcing his place on the short list?

66. Yeah, I was thinking that when I read it. Where did she find out that Goblin Emperor was on the nominations list?

67. I’m absolutely fascinated how they already know that the Sad Puppies slate swept everything except best novel.

    I mean, I thought the announcement wasn’t until tomorrow. Yet, somehow, they all know.

    Interesting, isn’t it?

68. Yes. Interesting.

    Maybe they’re all just psychic or something?

69. My privilege is precioussssssssssssssssssssssss

70. Did you misspell psychotic?

    Just checking, that’s all. I probably agree either way.

71. It feels like I’m in the minority actually waiting in anticipation for the announcement at this point.

    They keep saying 3 of 5, but which 3? All five I nominated were awesome, dangit, and all these people flaunting they know and I don’t is really getting annoying.

72. No, I’m still in anticipation too.

    Mostly because I’m going to laugh my butt off if they’re wrong.

73. My bet as to the novel slate:

    * Goblin Emperor
    * Three Body Problem
    * The Dark Between the Stars
    * Skin Game
    * Monster Hunter Nemesis

74. When I look at old lists of Hugo fiction nominees, I am filled with great memories of using the Hugos as a reading list in high school and junior high, and discovering a whole new world of interesting, exciting, thoughtful stories.

    (Except for They’d Rather Be Right. Tracked that down in college. Man, does that novel stink!)

    The same thing was true for most of my life, until we hit an unremitting bad patch somewhere in the 2000’s. My hope is that we are finally getting back to Hugo nominee lists that are chock full of awesome reading.

    In other words, I don’t want Sad Puppies to win. I want ALL OF FANDOM to win.

75. Not going to venture an opinion as to the shorter works, but if the rumors are correct, then Analog will be very represented this year.

76. BTW, “DeTroyes” = “Douglas B. Killings”. I seem to be posting as Detroyes when I post from my cell phone.

77. The most amusing part of the whole process is the level of self-importance that some of these people have arrogated to themselves.

    There’s the one who thinks she can command others to appear and defend themselves in her personal spider hole, surrounded by her sycophants, at a time of her choosing, while reserving (and freely exercising) the power to alter or delete any such response. I’m surprised that she doesn’t simply provide a pre-written confession, Stalin-style, for the crimethinkers to sign. High comedy indeed.

    (to be clear, she’s perfectly within her rights to delete anything on her server, and I am perfectly within my rights to point and laugh).

    Then there’s the “Amazing Stories” fellow. Amazing Hubris would be more like it. I cannot fathom the kind of personality issues that might lead one to imagine that the editorship of a recycled knockoff of a defunct B-List pulp magazine provides authority for demanding *anything* from *anyone*, much less a freakin’ loyalty oath.

    Finally, we must not forget Mr. Amateur Webzine (Unreadable Stories, or something of that nature. Sales rank for the most recent issue: 160,000) whose argument is, roughly:

    No SP author has submitted anything to his publication.
    Therefore, he has not rejected any of them.
    Therefore, this somehow proves that there’s no prejudice.

    Leaving aside his numerous offenses against the rules of logical inference, why does he think that any SP-style writer would submit to the freelance MFA seminar he calls a science fiction magazine?

    The (unlikely) prospect of a munificent $0.08/word? Dude, Larry Correia probably gets more than that for the Manx, Cree, and Tok Pisin translations of his work.

    The vast audience? I would be flabbergasted if anyone who isn’t a personal acquaintance or relative of the editors or one of the writers has ever bought a copy of that magazine. With that sales rank, he’s likely moving less than one unit per day.

    His claim appears to be that the SP writers “can’t get published”. Under Best Novel I see Baen, Roc, and (cough) Tor. Granted, that’s not quite the same thing as receiving an imprimatur from Mr. Unreadable, his basement, and his card table, but I’m pretty sure they do all count as publishers.

    (/me makes note to lay in extra popcorn for this weekend)

78. My version of “victory” for SP is this:

    I’ve been an SF & Fantasy fan for over 40 years. Until this year, I never bothered to join a WorldCon and vote for the Hugos. I heard about the SP thing, and realized that remarkably few books *I* like had won awards in recent years. Some, but few.

    I looked at the SP slate, and saw a bunch of books on it that I had read and liked. And I thought to myself “Hey! I could buy a supporting membership, and nominate stuff *I* like!” So I did. Only about half of the choices I made came from the SP slate. The other half were things I chose for my own reasons.

    I’m pretty sure that the organizers of the SP effort would happily consider *each* individual like me to be another small piece of what “victory for SP looks like” — whether or not that person nominated or voted for *any* of the SP slate. Just for the “Hey! I could buy a supporting membership, and nominate stuff *I* like!” part.

    Xenophon

79. Yeah, Xenophon, that’s the long game – bringing more fans into the nomination and voting.

    By the way, at Worldcons I kept hearing laments about the “graying of fandom” and mutters about “bringing in new blood so the genre would not die.” I think younger folks should just ignore the whole All-of-you-kids-get-off-my-lawn old guard and give them what they want. More fans. 🙂

80. “1. The Book Smugglers ‏@booksmugglers Apr 2 i am VOMITING all over this post. BARF. https://bradrtorgersen.wordpress.com/2015/04/01/the-fear-factor-in-sff-publishing-and-fandom/ …

    2. The Book Smugglers ‏@booksmugglers Apr 2 Do you know WHO lives in fear? Those of us on the receiving end of sexist, homophobe, racist, abusive, shitty societal atitudes.

    3. The Book Smugglers ‏@booksmugglers Apr 2 So I am really not sorry that folks are feeling ‘excluded’ for being held accountable when they sprout views that ACTUALLY hurt people.

    4. Daniel Carpenter ‏@DanCarpenter85 Apr 2 @booksmugglers Idiotic isn’t it? I think publishing and genre fiction is braver than it has ever been, and more inclusive too.

    5. Alice Nuttall ‏@Ally_Nuttall Apr 2 @booksmugglers ‘Let’s make sci-fi DANGEROUS again! To everyone except white cishet men, that is.’

    6. a wastrel ‏@wa7trel Apr 2 @eilatan @booksmugglers I love the way it never occurs to him that for some people, none of this is new…..

    7. Haralambi Markov ‏@HaralambiMarkov Apr 2@booksmugglers I’d definitely want bubble-wrap protection… considering where I live. Where, you know, I can face physical violence.

    8. Cora Buhlert ‏@CoraBuhlert Apr 2 @booksmugglers The SP sent trolls to my blog last year and one of them stalks everybody’s Twitter feed. And yet he claims he lives in fear.

    9. Cora Buhlert ‏@CoraBuhlert Apr 2 @eilatan @booksmugglers Classic tactic. ‘I can’t be racist, my wife/girlfriend is POC’

    10. Cora Buhlert ‏@CoraBuhlert Apr 2 @booksmugglers Especially since they want to exclude all of us who don’t write SFF they approve of.”

    Affirmative action and the KKK make a nice mix. These types of people actually do need to be marginalized out of SFF. This is the face of hate speech from our Orwellian anti-racists. There is never any doubt as to who they are talking about and it’s 365 days a year. Straight white men are to intersectional feminists what Jews are to neo-Nazis.

81. “they sprout views that ACTUALLY hurt people.”

    You mean like the way Marxists murdered 100 million people? That counts as “hurting”, right?

    “one of them stalks everybody’s Twitter feed”

    Reading and responding to someone’s publicly visible posts on a public, worldwide computer network, is now “stalking”?

    That’s an…interesting…theory.

82. I see that Mr. Amazing is now trying to pay the “Do you know who I am?” card.

    Buddy, I don’t care if you stamped Gernsback’s passport when he got off the boat.

83. It’s funny how he defends a cult that tried to hound him off the internet and which will never let him forget he is white and a man. I don’t want to hound him anywhere. I used to own tons of those old Amazing Stories pulps. I’d like to see that tradition restored but with the following words left out:

    “Cis-het,” “heteronormative,” “cissexist,” “transphobic,” “homophobia,” “cis gender,” “able-bodied neurotypical,” “privilege,” “colorblindness,” “genderblindness,” and “patriarchy.”

    It’s a fair bet the original magazine went the entire run without once using one of those. In the ’40s it had monthly print runs of 400,000.

84. The question about victory vs. defeat is actually a quite good one. Sad Puppies have a history of naming whatever happens a success — if we win, it’s because our candidates are superior, if we lose, it’s because Hugo vote is politicized and that losing actually proves our point. Shaky logic.

    The positive aspect of SP has been that new people have been involved with Worldcon (in case the new voters who commented above are genuine individuals and not SP trolls). The campaign has not only been about celebrating the good stuff, though, but also attacking previous years’ winners and voters. In this very thread you have called writers idiots and nazis and told people who disagree to fuck off. That tactic can backfire come the voting time. I was going to write “Don’t whine about it then”, but then I realized you’re probably going to write that off as a victory also. 😀

    In the future, I hope there are so much more people nominating and voting that tactical voting won’t have enough of an impact.

85. *shrug* Larry said at the time (before the nominations even) that a win would actually have been a loss – he would have been proven wrong.

    Keep in mind, SP3 is a Xanatos Gambit – all likely foreseeable outcomes result in a win. Some, like the Chorfs burning the award to the ground, are at best Pyrrhic, but it is still a win. Other wins are better than others, like where some of the SP slate wins.

    Still other results are wins that don’t appear so at first – I keep hearing how amazing 3-Body Problem is. Personally I didn’t nominate it, since I haven’t read it yet. If it were to be nominated by other people, the bunch of us read it, (SP and not) and agree that, yeah, it was the best of the ballot, we still win if it does, even though the SP novels lost.

    SP2 was NOT a Xanatos Gambit. It was a Batman Gambit.

    Basically, it relies on your opponents doing precisely what you expect them to do based on psychology and your knowledge of them. (Like Batman being forced to work with a villain against a third party, his plan will hinge on the villain betraying him. All the villain has to do is not try and off Batman for Batman’s plan to fail, but of course the villain will take their shot.)

    All that had to happen for SP2 to fail was for the Chorfs to not mess with things, not get SP nominees voted down while loudly saying the books were terrible and they never read them anyway.

86. If five people say in the Internet that they are not going to read SP books, that doesn’t mean that SP books lost unfairly. There’s no indication that the majority of the 2000 voters were even aware of Sad Puppy (or anti-Sad Puppy) campaigns. My guess is that they read everything and just liked the winners more.

87. Awww, made a mistake. The number or voters was 3,500. All the more reason to believe everybody was not following the Sad Puppy thing closely.

88. Silly people are using silly words to turn people with a liberal bent into conservatives and people with a conservative bent into liberals.

    Telling people what to do, enforcing rigorous standards of behavior in public arenas and censoring comments are innately conservative acts. Telling young people to tuck their shirts in and get a haircut is what conservatives do, not liberals. Liberals have a live and let live attitude.

    There is no censoring or banning on Sad Puppies blogs. We are not extorting conventions into compliance by using boycotts such as John Green and John Scalzi are regarding all-white, all-male panels and harassment policies respectively.

    We are not organizing the mass blocking of accounts on Twitter. We have no interest in Men’s Rights or men’s studies at universities, or in white studies. The idea we don’t do so because we have a de facto lock on power or that demography equals ideology is a spurious argument. A male or white ideological supremacy would still express itself formally and institutionally, not casually. Ideologues don’t leave such things to chance nor can they do away with their obsessions. That is the nature of identity narcissism and supremacy.

    It is not our side which wishes to censor video games and art but Brianna Wu and Anita Sarkeesian, each of who self-identify as “intersectional” feminists. Like the Portuguese Inquisition, they want to know whether you boil your rice with salt or not.

    “‘Partial nudity, the aggressive display of cleavage and the navel, and shorts/skirts higher than 4″ above the knee are not allowed.”

    That bit could’ve come from the Fredric Wertham-inspired comics code or the old Hayes Office movie censorship code and yet it is a feminist-inspired rule about “booth babes” for a convention. For the entire 1965-70 run of the TV show I Dream of Jeannie her navel could not be shown. In the ’80s it was feminists like Andrea Dworkin who testified at the Meese Commission against pornography and Al Gore’s wife Tipper who went after music lyrics. On the other side was Frank Zappa. Who would you want at your party and which side do SFF’s SJWs stand on? The answer is obvious.

    Where SJWs and their daffy feminists have been able to they have banned Frank Frazetta and language itself, as in the case of the SFWA’s own in-house magazine. They will ban and censor everything in sight, including clapping, til we sit “With Folded Hands,” or rather – “feminist jazz hands.”

    One of the most insanely liberal cartoonists in American history – R. Crumb – suddenly defaulted to a right-wing reactionary because he donated an illustration following the religious assassinations at Charlie Hebdo, a act that was sickly defended by SFF’s SJWs and even lied about as a killing inspired by “racism,” as in the case of John Scalzi, which it was not.

    That’s the sick semantic trick in play here. In fact anyone who pushes back against SJW feminist ideology is said to default to “conservative,” or Islamophobic, or transphobic in the same way George Zimmerman suddenly defaulted to “white,” though this same race-obsessed cult otherwise jealously claims any one-drop of non-whiteness for its own.

    All the above shows this liberal vs. conservative is a sleight of hand. In fact what the opposing sides are is the highly ideologically sexualized and racialized ideology of intersectional gender feminism that is now orthodoxy within core SFF vs. people who just want to be left alone. That latter is “conservatism” to an SJW. Either confess to your white male privilege and legacy of colonialism and genocide or the inquisition will declare you a heretic.

    That is a fact backed up by literally hundreds of quotes obsessively and hysterically thumb-tacked onto Twitter 365 days a year. SJWs thrive on scare quotes, myths, lies and innuendos. It’s easy to say one is an “internet racist,” or a “conservative,” quite another to prove it. That’s why the very worst SJWs sit on Twitter bitching all day and conspicuously avoid any neutral arenas they can’t control. They are liars.

89. Pingback: Blood Moon Setting | madgeniusclub

90. You are mistaken about Brianna Wu or Anita Sarkeesian promoting the censorship of video games.

91. “You are mistaken about Brianna Wu or Anita Sarkeesian promoting the censorship of video games.”

    ‘Censorship’ may not be a technically correct definition, but forcing video game companies into a self-regulating content code (similar to the old Comics Code Authority) should be just as reviled by anyone that enjoys video games. Calling it censorship is certainly more accurate than claims that the SP campaign (or any expression of anyone’s views) is actually “hurting people” or making sci-fi “dangerous”.

92. Sad Puppies loses if the status quo remains in place, with awards going only to those politically correct enough to meet the approval of the CHORFs. There are no outcomes which would be worse than the current state. As such, while there may be defeats, we only lose if we stop fighting.

    One of the mistakes in some conflicts (especially non-violent ones) is assuming that both sides have mutually oppositional goals when the goals aren’t. If the Sad Puppies goal is to have better Sci-Fi, including those by politically marginalized writers, win awards, and the goal of the CHORFs is to have the awards only go to people they feel are politically correct, then the goals are mutually oppositional and only one can win. But if the goals of the CHORFs are to promote the best of progressive Sci-fi by diverse authors, then both sides can win by consistently putting forward better authors and winning awards on a level playing field. In that case, over time, everybody wins, especially the reader that gets the best Sci-Fi works.

93. Spacefaringkitten, call Brad a conservative again. Please. I want to laugh at something this morning. Talk more about how much you don’t know about Wu and Sarkeesian. I’ll pass it along to my liberal gamer friends and *they* can have a good laugh.

    You don’t understand the difference between the years of SP slate and what they were meant to prove, so you foolishly assume that “everything is a victory.” And then you repeat that over and over again in the typical fascist tactic of overload to accepted truth.

    Typical.

94. Do your homework about Australian Greens senator Larissa Waters in Australia pushing “No Gender December” and “the damaging influence of gender stereotypes.” That rhetoric is identical to that of Sarkeesian and Wu and happened at the exact same time Australian Target stores stopped selling Grand Theft Auto V in early Dec., 2014 due to an online petition by activists.

    And have you already forgot about “Shirtgate?” And Sarkeesian’s list of ways to improve video gaming has “8. Include female enemies, but don’t sexualize those enemies” and is the same nonsense we heard in the ’50s.

    You have to remember that Sarkeesian claims she underwent a profound awakening when she discovered gender feminism and exposed herself to all the literature. Among that literature is stuff like this:

    “‘Male sexual violence against women and ‘normal’ heterosexual intercourse are essential to patriarchy because they establish the dominance of the penis over the vagina, and thus the power relations between the sexes. . . . When a male sexually violates a female, he is doing work for patriarchy.’ – Dee Graham, Loving to Survive: Sexual Terror, Men’s Violence, and Women’s Lives (1994)”

    You have this from Feminspire a few months ago about “… gender dynamics are such that male attributes are often inherently toxic towards or come at the expense of women

    After the Maryville shooting you have this from Sarkeesian “We need to seriously address connections between violence, sexism and toxic ideas of manhood before boys and men commit more mass shootings. Not a coincidence it’s always men and boys committing mass shootings. The pattern is connected to ideas of toxic masculinity in our culture.”

    Sarkeesian talks about the “flagrant use of the male gaze” in gaming and Tweets a picture of a woman in cutoffs and a belly shirt with the remark “Note to video game makers: This is a perfect example of how NOT to include women in your trailers. #CallOfDuty.”

    “Feminist Frequency @femfreq · Oct 25 Since so many seem confused. Masculinity ≠ male. Masculinity is a socially constructed and performed gender identity: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sociology_of_gender#Masculinity …”

    That is doctrine straight out of Judith Butler’s Gender Trouble. The dead giveaway there is her use of the word “performed.” That is very specific Butlerian and gender feminist semantics particular only to that ideology when it comes to issues of sex.

    “Feminist Frequency @femfreq · Oct 24 Mass shootings are one tragic consequence of a culture that perpetuates toxic ideas of masculinity. This is how patriarchy can harm men too.”

    “Feminist Frequency @femfreq · Oct 24 Interested in working toward a feminist masculinity? See @bellhooks’ ”

    Brianna Wu is quoted at The Guardian as saying “‘I think there is a war on women in technology… It’s not like I’m advocating that we ban Call of Duty or anything silly like that, I’m asking is for companies to look at their hiring practices, to hire more women… and make sure they portray women in their games in a socially responsible way.'”

    Who decides what is “socially responsible”: radical feminists?

    “Feminist Frequency @femfreq · 6h 6 hours ago The system of Patriarchy privileges men as a social group, however a byproduct of that system is that men and men’s humanity is also harmed.”

    “Feminist Frequency Verified account ‏@femfreq 6h6 hours ago There’s no such thing as sexism against men. That’s because sexism is prejudice + power. Men are the dominant gender with power in society.”

    Sarkeesian says straight out she has no interest in equality with men and refers to the “oppression of patriarchy.” Sarkeesian says “we don’t want equality within these oppressive systems.”

    It remains only to imagine what Sarkeesian and Wu would do to achieve all those ends. We already know how such feminists operate and they are not asking or sitting around waiting for things to fix themselves. They obviously have no interest in a ratings system but instead pressure people to deep six comic covers and pressure colleges using Title 9 funding and the NFL to set up extra legal kangaroo courts for men.

95. I have to agree with Civilis; victory consists of dislodging the status quo. I have no trouble with the idea of “progressive” SFF on the ballot, but not to the exclusion of everything else (as it has been for a few years now).

    Re: 2014 Worldcon voting

    I am of the opinion that the 2014 Sad Puppies voting results were skewed by the double fact of CHORF backlash and European tastes. Remember, this was a UK Worldcon, and European fandom was very much in evidence. I’m not knocking European fen, but I will say their tastes in literature are markedly different from mine. Not better or worse, just different. This years convention will be held in Spokane, and next years will be held in Kansas City; between those two conventions, I think SP noms will probably fair better.

    Re: That Amazing Stories guy

    I would point out that Mr. Davidson’s connection to the original Amazing Stories is tenuous at best. He merely noticed that the trademark on the title and logo had lapsed, and so registered it under his name. He does not own any other assets or intellectual property connected with the original publication (all of which, last I heard, had been owned by TSR, which presumably means they are now owned by Wizards of the Coast). And yes, there are some. To be fair, he has stated a desire to legally obtain some of those rights so as to establish more of a continuity, but at the rate his version is selling I think it will be a very long wait.

    Re: What this fight is all about

    I think the Left vs. Right divide in this fight (and I do think there is one) is mostly a dog whistle. Its a symptom of the real debate, but its not in itself the entire debate. The real fight to me is between those who view SFF as “Real Literature” which needs to make Stirring Statements About The Human Condition in order to be considered “good” (the CHORF) , and those who view it as Entertainment and just want a rollicking good story (the Sad Puppies). That one side or the other tends to attract people of certain political ideologies has more to do with those ideologies world views than with the quality of the works in question.

96. Notice how in that last Tweet Sarkeesian refers to men as a “gender” rather than “sex”? Given her education that is no accident. That’s because the fundamental belief of gender feminism is that being a man is like a suit of clothes one can put on and take off. It is a “performed” fake social construct.

    “Feminist Frequency @femfreq · Oct 17 Transgender women are women. End of discussion.”

    People who think these folks want equality are in for a shock. They use the word “feminism” to get in the door but in fact this cult of gender abolition has no interest in equality and they say so again and again. Their goal is to get rid of the concept of the male “gender” and to destroy the systems that patriarchy has set up to control women, and that includes the concept of heterosexuality itself.

    “One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman. No biological, psychological, or economic fate determines the figure that the human female presents in society; it is civilization as a whole that produces this creature, intermediate between male and eunuch, which is described as feminine.” – iconic feminist Simone de Beauvoir in The Second Sex, 1949

    Once you start to dig into this shit you realize A.) these are completely nutty people and B.) they and their ideology are dug in like ticks in the core SFF community. That includes the past 2 presidents of the SFWA. At least part of this research is based on their suggested readings. Gender feminists are obsessed with the idea men are nothing more than an oppressive Halloween costume.

    “I had taken it in that it was important to treat everyone equally. No one ever pointed out what this meant in an unequal system.” – Hugo voter Abigail Nussbaum

    “‘Patriarchy, although it takes different forms in different cultures, always depends on the ability of men to control women through heterosexuality…’ – radical gay feminist Joyce Trebilcot”

    ”There is so much pressure on women to be heterosexual, and this pressure is both so pervasive and so completely denied, that I think heterosexuality cannot come naturally to many women: I think that widespread heterosexuality among women is a highly artificial product of the patriarchy. . . . I think that most women have to be coerced into heterosexuality.’ – Marilyn Frye, ‘A Lesbian’s Perspective on Women’s Studies’ speech to the National Women’s Studies Association conference, 1980″

    “White male privilege cares ONLY about white male privilege, and there is no goal except maintaining that position of power.” – Marjorie Liu, writer of X-men comics.

97. One hour to go until H-Hour.

98. (roughly)

    4 of 5 in fan writer
    3 of 3 in fancast
    3 of 4 in best fanzine
    2 of 4 in semiprozine?
    4 of 4 in professional artist
    3 of 4 or more in best editor long form
    4 of 4 in best editor short
    1 of 3 in best dramatic
    3 of 4 best dramatic long
    1 of 1 best graphic story
    5 of 5 best related work
    3 of 4 best short (one not eligible)
    4 of 4 best novellete
    3 of 4 best novella
    3 of 5 best novel

    Not going to have to read all that much new material to decide on number ones. And lot of fellow travellers along not strictly on the sp “slate”.

99. I think we just marginalized a lot of the marginalized, i.e. racial and sexual bigots hiding behind fake oppression by the white patriarchy.

100. And a LOT of John C Wright 😀

101. Was surprised to hear some people I already know in the fanzine category getting a nomination. Which means I’m going to vote for them just because.

     And yeah… Pretty much close to half this ballot I’ve already read now. Usually I’m lucky if there’s only one item on the ballot I’d have already read.

102. At this moment I think Skin Game is the oddsmakers favorite. Have not read Goblin Emperor or Lines of Departure, but they sound interesting and I’ll certainly give them a fair shake. Not sure I have the patience for another trip through Ancillary Pronouns, tho.

103. Lines of Deparure is really good. You’ll enjoy it.

104. Skin Game (Awesome book) is far enough along in the series that “Doing a quick recap of the series thus far” is a novella in its own right. I’m not sure how that plays out.

105. A professional author encouraging others to deep six nominees at Amazon:

     “Paul_Cornell @Paul_Cornell · 8m 8 minutes ago How about we go to Amazon, having read these nominees, and review them? #hugoawards”

106. > A professional author encouraging others to deep six nominees at Amazon:

     That’d be hard to do with Skin Game, seeing as it currently has almost 3,000 reviews of which 97% are 4 star or better. And Lines of Departure has about 1,000 reviews of which 92% are 4 star or better.

     And I’m not surprised Paul Cornell is being an annoyance. I remember him from his RADW days and his attacks on fellow Doctor Who novel writer David McIntee.

107. Yes, it is possible. At Suncon, No Award took Best Dramatic Presentation. To a standing ovation.

108. I saw the nominations list for that year (1977). I can believe it.

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