Vox plays chicken with Worldcon

Sad Puppies 258 comments

Facebook is lighting up with outrage over the fact that the notorious Vox Day is threatening to go all NO AWARD on the Hugo ballot in 2016, if NO AWARD takes the Hugo ballot in 2015. Amidst the wailing and gnashing of teeth and blaming the family dog (me) for the fact a wild wolf (Vox) is growling at the door, I have to ask everybody: what did you freaking expect when you made it plain as day the whole reason for going NO AWARD in 2015 is to keep Vox’s imprint Castalia House (and Vox himself) off the trophy table? That’s like putting a bloody leg of beef into the water while a great white shark circles nearby. You are daring The Kurgan to play chicken with you. That is The Kurgan’s most favorite game. The wild wolf lives for danger. The wild wolf wants you to nuke it all from orbit. This is Mutually Assured Destruction.

Frankly, I think everybody should just do what Mary Robinette Kowal and Dan Wells and Scalzi and Correia and Jason Sanford and myself have been recommending you do, and read your voter packet and vote like the stories and books are just stories and books.

If Vox borks the Hugos in 2016, he is the biggest asshole SF/F has ever seen in its history.

Vox, please don’t be an asshole.

If the people who hate Vox bork the Hugos in 2015, they are the biggest assholes SF/F has ever seen in its history.

Vox-haters, please don’t be assholes.

Will anybody listen to me? I know Vox sure as hell doesn’t give a fuck what I think. When did he ever? He didn’t give a fuck when SFWA sent him packing. He doesn’t give a fuck who hates him. If Sad Puppies evaporates tomorrow and ceases to exist, Vox won’t give a shit at all. Because Vox doesn’t give a shit what any of us think, and doesn’t care. When did The Kurgan ever? This is a fight for The Prize. You cut off his head, he cuts off your head.

Or maybe we all just read the motherloving stories and books and act like fucking grownups for a fucking change.

258 comments

  1. Vox’s reaction is perfectly reasonable as a response. If the SJW’s want to throw a hissy fit and blow the award up in 2015, then Vox will play _by the rules they set_ and do the same thing.

    What the SJW wants is to play by one set of rules why everybody else plays by a different set of rules. That is unreasonable.

    I would support Vox in doing this next year if that is what it comes to this year.

    You are right, better everybody behave like adults and just read the stories and vote like adults. I think this is the outcome Vox wants too, in fact i’m sure of it, but he is simply raising the stakes and making it clear he is happy to play by whatever rules they want to abide by themselves.

    The only way to keep a bad faith actor like the SJW in line.

    Incidentally, a better suggestion would be to say, “Fine go ahead No Award it like a pack of spoilled brats, we will be back next year in greater numbers if you do”.

  3. I hate to disagree with you Brad, but the SJW’s don’t have what it takes to cut off Day’s head. I suspect that if one of them and he were within a couple of feet of one another, and Vox sneered that the SJW champion would sh*t himself/ herself, and turn tail and run.

  4. This whole thing is fascinating. It’s like watching the fall of the roman empire in fast forward.

  7. I think it’s a pretty safe bet that Vox doesn’t WANT to do that. The SJWs threatened it first. It’s only fair to throw it back in their faces. “Turnabout is fair play” and all. Maybe the threat will wake a few of them up and get their attention like the proverbial donkey and proverbial 2×4.

  8. Brad, I think what has pissed me off so much about all of this — besides the personal attacks against you — is the double standard that certain folks want to apply. Those supporting SP3 aren’t the right sort of fans because we haven’t been made privy to the secret handshake by volunteering at enough cons or going to enough or whatever the hell they say with each move of the goal posts. SP3 is evil because of Vox, even though Vox isn’t on the SP3 recommended list nor was he part of SP3. GG has been invoked even though it has nothing to do with SP3 other than the fact there are gamers — like me — who are also supporters. Because EVIL exists with SP3, all the good fans should vote No Award but how dare Vox suggest that turnabout might just be fair play next year. SP3, you, Larry, and everyone involved are only doing this for ego and we don’t care if we destroy the Hugos but they will vote No Award so that no major, and basically no minor, awards are given out.

    But we are the unreasonable ones.

    If they are this scared now, what are they going to do when we really get serious about having our voices heard?

  9. Sadly, it may be too late for enough people to be adults. I’m beginning to suspect that a whole lot of people on both sides are actually enjoying all this. I didn’t think it was possible for fandom to become LESS mature than it was 20 years or so ago. Clearly, it has.

  13. The nobles of a castle look out and see a mob of upset peasants at the gates. Some of them are hungry and cold, others are hurt, some are looking for work, and some are angry and blaming the nobles.

    What to do?

    Well, send them packing of course, what do they know? They’re just peasants. In fact, threaten to burn down their farms for daring to be so rude as to come at all.

    So the peasants who are just left out or hungry ask themselves, if they’re going to treat us the same as the ones who want to overthrow the castle, and threaten us, why not just join in anyway?

    It can hardly make things _worse_ for them, after all.

    And suddenly, those handful of angry peasants becomes an army of angry peasants.

    Yeah, in the end it will probably end poorly for them, but then again, it will end poorly for everyone at that point.

  14. Huh. And all this time I interpreted his threat as:

    “If you’re going to vote No Award over all our nominees, you’re going to get No Award as the winner every year we do this because we’ll keep introducing RB slates.”

    Oh, well. Guess I was wrong. But I’ll be honest, you can’t threaten to punch somebody and then get mad at them when they threaten to counter.

  15. Brad, while I appreciate your appeal for moderation, you can’t shake off the fleas once you’ve lied down with such a dog.

  16. I love SJWs. Lightspeed Magazine is up for an award and they have a reviewer who will not review white men. For some reason, SJWs lie and act as if we do that. Hurley’s article at The Atlantic was a steaming piece of shit. Get a mirror SJWs. You’re the only ones with segregated spaces. By “diversity” does Lightspeed represent the diversification of the KKK?

  17. I wonder how much value there will be in a Hugo from 2013, if no Hugos have been awarded from then to 2033. How many years can an award be no-awarded before it can be considered dead at the time, hence dead even into the past?

  18. @ James May
    April 9, 2015 at 7:57 pm

    “That’s a nice category you have there. Shame if anything happened to it.”

    I couldn’t help it, I actually fell down laughing at that. Well played, sir.

  19. @ snow1985man
    April 9, 2015 at 8:38 pm

    “Brad, while I appreciate your appeal for moderation, you can’t shake off the fleas once you’ve lied down with such a dog.”

    When, pray tell, did this occur? Citations, please.

  20. But somehow that doesn’t apply to, say, marching in a Stalinist rally, right snow1985man?

  21. And, Brad? In chess, if you want to win, you sometime or another have to demonstrate a willingness to trade queens. In grand strategy, to avoid being nuked or tyrannized, you have to demonstrate the willingness to destroy everything. In this case, if the SJWs no award for this year, I’ll join Vox and throw every effort I can into nuking the Hugos forever.

    For the children.

  22. I’m guessing it also doesn’t apply to Jim Hines, who recently had a guest blogger who fantasizes about strangling straight women with piano wire.

    You’ve had a couple of decades to get your lunatic fringe (and there are dozens, if not hundreds of them) on a leash. You haven’t. Screeching about Vox Day a hundred times doesn’t make up for it.

  23. I feel this post is somewhat misguided, but only in a practical way. One cannot win against the SJWs if they are using one st of rules and we are using another set. It’s unfortunate, but you can’t fight with a pig and not get dirty. You can’t allow the opposition to use various tactics that are verboten for us, or we will lose, again.

    Granted there is value in taking the high road at times, and especially within our own circles, as the high road is respected. There is no high road in SJW circles as applied to their own behavior, so it’s a rather meaningless concept. They have no shame. And they have a nuke (no award).

    So how many years would SP successfully submit a slate of nominations, only to be no awarded, before that tactic was ever used against them? C’mon, at least make the threat of it if for nothing else than to hold a mirror to the SJWs’ faces.

    What I read from Brad’s post is that he and the puppies are sad that this is the level the conflict has devolved to. But this was always going to be the case. It’s just the nature of the beast we’re up against, now showing itself in all its ugly glory.

  24. Once you pay the Danegeld, you never get rid of the Dane. Give Vox what he wants in the hopes he’ll go away and back he’ll come next year. “Nice awards you’ve got there. Be a shame if something should…. happen…. to them.”

    Sad Puppies last year was a proof-of-concept that showed Vox Day even he could get on the Hugo Ballot; all he needed was a slate. Now he’s running with it just as far as it will take him–and it’s nonsense to blame anyone but him and the people who showed him how.

    And in the meantime the Sad Puppies are learning what way too many people have learned before them; it’s a lot easier to get into bed with a thug than to persuade the world you have gotten out again.

    Sure I’ll read the works. There might be some good authors in there, and maybe in some more auspicious year I could even nominate or vote for them if I know about them. But slates boost nominating power ten fold and in the process harm every non-slate work, including works that the Sad Puppies would have loved if they had just let someone else put them on the ballot. Slates are so brutally destructive that I’m going to put every slate work below no award this year, no matter how good it is. My heart goes out to those authors who were slated without their knowledge or consent, but I can’t make any exceptions.

  25. We did not self apply the term Dread Ilk Brad. It was earned. Others applied it to us.

    If you think for one nano-second that we won’t burn this mother fucker to the ground and roast marshmellows over the corpses…. you’re dead wrong.

    And if you think we give a tanker’s damn about your appeal for civility…. you’re also dead wrong.

    We treat others the way they treat us.

    If they Nuke the Hugos in 2015…. You can rest assured… There will be smoking ruin the likes of which will make hiroshima survivors shudder when we’re done in 2016.

    Hell… We may nuke the Nebulas too… just because.

    That is what we do. That is who we are.

    And it is also why we win.

  26. And we will not pay your danegeld, either, Cat. We will burn it to the ground, plow the ground, and salt it. You fuckwads don’t understand war. We do.

  27. “And in the meantime the Sad Puppies are learning what way too many people have learned before them; it’s a lot easier to get into bed with a thug than to persuade the world you have gotten out again. ”

    We’re not getting into bed with the Nielsen Haydens. Even if we wanted to, there’s no room left after all of you SJWs jumped in.

  28. Jim Hines is a feminist who has abolished gender. He gets confused at times about who it’s okay to strangle.

  29. I read his comment. Someone on your FB page remarked that he read the comment as simply meaning: “If you No Award this year, I’ll just run another RP slate next year and you’ll have to No Award again. And again.”

    It could be read that way. Someone would have to ask him to state explicitly what he meant.

    But, if he means that he’ll be doing the “No Award” voting with enough votes to ensure that “No Award” wins, then who can blame him?

    The current thrust of post after post of people who are outraged at the SP success at dominating the ballot as a result of “slating,” is to actively campaign for a “single slate” of “No Award.” This is within the rules, just as what SP did (and others before) was “within the rules.” But, it is certainly not in the SPIRIT of the voting rules which demands that one vote “No Award” only after reading the offerings and determining that none are worthy of receiving the award based solely on the WORK. This is a mirror to their objection that, although individual campaigning for the Award was “okay,” an organized campaign for an entire SLATE violated the SPIRIT of the rules.

    Sorry. I don’t have much in the way of sympathy for people who are violating the spirit of the rules by campaigning for “No Award,” in violation of the spirit of the rules complaining that someone else might actively campaign for “No Award” in violation of the spirit of the rules.

    Sauce and gander.

    I am coming to the conclusion that there needs to be, as Larry says (paraphrase) an explicit statement by WorldCon as to the nature of the Award. Is it a popularity contest or is it a taste test of the “trufans” of WorldCon. It can’t be both.

    If it’s a popularity contest, then, there’s nothing morally or ethically wrong with anyone doing everything they can within the rules and within the law to try to win the Award if they so choose. Gather the votes and tally them. May the best solicitor of votes win. Worthy and non-worthy works will win, just as now.

    If it’s not a popularity contest, but an award handed out by a small clique according to their taste, then sobeit. Conservatives and Libertarians need not apply. Let WorldCon continue to die on the vine and the Hugo fade away as other neglected Awards have in the past and will in the future. Time and change and all that.

  35. Cat I’m writing in a nomination next year you’ll approve of: Best Fictional Short Story – “SFWA’s Harassment Policy” by Peter Privilege Piggy.

  36. I was apparently on both proposed slates. I’m an open anti-Voxxer, but he likes some of my works.

    He didn’t consult me, and I wasn’t aware of it until afterward.

    It’s a big internet. I have no way to, nor desire to, attempt to moderate it.

    I recall a long ago FB fight where an SJW not only unfriended me, but all my friends, and ANY FRIENDS OF MY FRIENDS.

    Never go past full retard all the way to turnip.

  38. It’s cute how some of you “dogs” think gaming an award slate is the equivalent of “war,” especially Tom Katman who claims to have seen war, albeit with an army that wasn’t up to his standards. At least Brad had the sense to promptly take down that crazy SF Civil War “the cannon have been fired” post he put up last night.

  39. “I’m going to put every slate work below no award this year”

    Any author or publisher who advocates the “no award” bullshit gets no more of my money. Ever.

  41. snow1985man: It’s cute how you think anyone here cares about your opinions in the slightest.

  42. I’m not sure my Latin is up to it, Mike. Hugo starts with a name but has become a concept and a physical award. I’m not sure what declension it would fall into or could plausibly be squeezed into.

  43. Dear SJWs, please stop appropriating my American mid-century white male heterosexual culture. You are undermining my lived experience. We were there first. Edgar Rice Burroughs learned to write the “other” by going to bars in an ape costume.

  44. One side in this comedy of the Macabre is in engaged in an incoherent, rage filled temper-tantrum. The other is exercising equivalent retaliation in the time honored tradition of Game Theory. I leave it as an exercise to the reader to determine which belongs to whom.

  45. Snowman……………….

    Disqualify, Disqualify, Disqualify…….

    What would an SJW know about anything?

  47. @Cat —

    “Slates are so brutally destructive”

    No, brutally destructive is when radical Islamists reintroduce slavery in 2015 in the process of collapsing several countries. Brutally destructive is when a typhoon completely levels a small Pacific country.

    It shows extreme dissociation from the world around you to use “brutally destructive” to a describe a rambunctious nominating process for a book award that doesn’t go your way.

  48. Once you pay the Danegeld, you never get rid of the Dane.

    Least. Self-Aware. Posting. EVER.

  49. Anyone claiming “I can’t make exceptions” about an arbitrary decision is, frankly, completely intellectually dishonest. Cat, you’re not in a position of leadership. People aren’t looking up to you for some moral example. You’re just throwing a tantrum. There’s no nobility in it. It’s just pathetic.

    Mad Mike – “anti-Voxxer” – Nice. I laughed.

    I listened to a gg’er livecast tonight. They laughed at the idea that gg was involved with SP. Well, before. Now? Heh, they poked the bear with a stick…

  50. I told SpaceKitten in the other threat that if they voted No Award, it’s going to backfire, positions will harden, and there will be no Hugos for a decade or more.

    Don’t do it Cat, you’ve been given fair warning. If you care about the Hugos listen to Martin’s advise, don’t vote No Award.

  51. Any author or publisher who advocates the “no award” bullshit gets no more of my money. Ever.

    This. So very, very MUCH this.

  53. I created a image and posted on Twitter based on Kratman’s comments. Look for it under my username @LibertyAlerts.

  55. Christopher doesn’t get it. Vox isn’t a side show, he’s just the warm up act.

  56. @TomKratman I saw your infantry badge. I read your bio. So you say.

    I find it weird that someone who clearly has problems with the army still parades around in his uniform. It’s like you want the glory of the association without the actual association. Sort of like getting nominated for a Hugo without actually writing a book worthy of it.

  57. Edgar Rice Burroughs learned to write the “other” by going to bars in an ape costume.

    James, you ALWAYS manage to put a smile on my face. 😉

  59. I don’t parade around in anything, Pussy. It’s a picture, not a parade. If you knew anything about the subject I wouldn’t have to point that out to you.

  60. I’m opposed to the anti-Puppies No-Awarding everything out of spite and I’m opposed to Vox doing the same.

  65. Heeerrrrreee pussypussypussypussypussy.

    Give him a few moments, Tom. Those fries aren’t going to drop themselves into the hot grease.

  68. Ha! What a predictable reaction. And Difster’s right. I’m totally trolling you, if that makes you feel any better.

    So, since you must know, is this really what war is like: sniping in forums and stuffing ballot boxes?

  70. You’re a pussy, boy. You don’t even have the guts to be an asshole under your own name. That’s the essence of being a pussy. I made you a fair offer. If you haven’t the guts for it, that only reflects on you. Pussy.

  72. “I’m totally trolling you”

    So… add another entry to the long list of ways in which you’ve utterly failed at life?

  75. Fine. Let’s put trolling aside. Let me ask you this: What’s the endgame for Sad Puppies? What’s next? What do the Hugos look like five years from now?

  81. Let’s talk about war. There are different means and methods to war. It’s not all physical combat. There are culture wars, political wars, spiritual wars, internal psychological wars.

    You’re a narrow-minded idiot to think the term “war” only applies to the act of actual, physical combat.

  83. Yes, but it’s the degree of the conflict I’m talking about. It’s one thing to want to get a wider selection of deserving authors on a ballot. It’s another thing for someone to write use “your guts to grease our tanks.” We’re talking about SF/F here, something we can all agree on that we enjoy and dedicate a lot of time to.

  86. Snow is also unclear of the concept of the metaphor.

    Furthermore Snowman, this isn’t just about science fiction, it’s about culture and setting the narrative. The narrative has been set for us by the SJWs and we’re sick of it and now it’s time to engage. And the SJWs are going to lose and lose badly because we play the game better than them.

  88. “I’m totally trolling you”

    Only creatures destined t die alone and unloved do that.

  89. Yes, a coordinated slate of voters can win the awards, and there’s nothing in the rules that says people can’t vote a slate. My question is, What does winning look like next year and down the road? How do you see the Hugos shaping up when opposing slates are presented?

  91. Let’s see…as of a year ago, snowpussy is still eating dinner at home where his mom has to warn him what not to talk about at the table. 29 years old, I would guess, and he’s still living at home.

  92. Anyone else amazed that the younger generation has so little integrity itself, on average, that it cannot even conceive of what a truly mortal insult it is to insult someone else’s?

  94. Ah, what the hell. Pussy, if you can’t even support yourself on your own, and your mom controls what you say, both at the probably age of 29, then I can’t see adding to you problems. Subhuman you are, of course, and a moral roach, but being you is probably punishment enough.

  95. Hell with this nonsense about distinguishing ‘what worldcon meant’.

    They took my $40, didn’t they. Then at this point, it doesn’t matter what they shoulda coulda woulda meant. I am worldcon, and so can you.

    The point of distinguishing who from who has passed. It’s as much my award to give to whom I please as it is for John Scalzi.

    So with that in mind, no award this year to spite the puppies, and they’ll see what an actual bloc vote looks like, because we’ll leave a burning hole so damn deep in the ground that they’ll still be scrambling up the smoldering wreckage when we come back for a second strafing in 2017.

  99. Well, I was hoping for Wes Stauer blowing shit up in Mexico… but Colonel, let it never be said you don’t reach peak entertainment through multiple mediums.

  102. Heh – we “gamed” the Hugos? I don’t think these people understand games, or games theory.

    Well- game theory has an ideal solution to an iterated prisoner’s dilemma. Hammer the guy who messes with you and keep doing so until they stop. Then be magnanimous.

    Sometimes ruthlessness and force are the only civilized options.

    So on one hand I appreciate your call to moderation, and hope that it works out. I pray it is not necessary – and that people can act like adults.

    If not though – well. They chose what kind of game they want to play – and we play to win.

  103. … act like fscking grownups for a fscking change … Oh, Brad, what planet do you live on that has an internet of grownups, and how do I get there?

  106. It seems to me that the Sad Puppies victory condition is to raise participation in the Hugos to the point where no small group of fanatics can covertly logroll off the ballot anyone who isn’t one of their friends or employees.
    The Rabid Puppies victory condition is to find the best science fiction of the year through public discussion and debate, then create a slate that reflects the findings. Vox does aspire to be the Hugo Pope.

  108. The partial quote? Yes. It was, if memory serves, and in full, “censeo ceterum, Carthaginem dilendam esse.” As mentioned though, I don’t know how to decline / translate “Hugo Award” ti really give the sense of the thing.

  109. …ah, hell. Brad posts a request for moderation and adult behaviour, and it’s followed by pages of Tom Kratman spewing bile and playing at doxxing? I don’t have enough hands for a facepalm that’d do this justice.

    If we’re talking war, then this is friendly fire.

  110. Oh, I don’t think snow was friendly. And, though you may be morally deficient enough not to understand the severity of a tacit charge of lack of integrity, I am not.

  111. Odin’s blood, I’m about to be labelled a concern troll…

    Tom, by his own admission snow was unfriendly. That said, I think that Brad’s idealistic appeal has merit, or at least is worth discussion. In my opinion your antics detract from that aim, and play into the narrative that the SJWannabes are pushing.

    The guy admitted to trolling you, and it was pretty obvious before that. Why? Discredit and dismiss, and shut down discussion. That’s the SJWay. Don’t be their tool, man.

    As to integrity… if a puppy pissed on my shoes, I wouldn’t take it as him criticising my dress sense, because he doesn’t even understand the concept.

  112. Ah, but I got rather more than that from the weasel, no? And, I’m not Brad; just me, unfailingly polite and civil to the polite and civil, unfailingly not to those who are not. They can pass that narrative, or any narrative they think they can get away with, as they choose.

    Brad’s approach has merit, but only if it is understood that if the SJWs don’t take his advice, neither will we. Otherwise, it amounts to preemptive surrender.

    Lots of people of late seem not to understand key concepts. Among those is that there are certain things that can be very dangerous to say in someone’s presence. Do you not spank the puppy and rub his nose in his piss?

  113. Addendum: I’ve never really cared about sports, qua sports. Shooting, fencing, combatives? Naturally, those mattered. The others? Oh, sure, they have a limited utility (highly limited, Wellington is most unlikely to have said “the Battle of Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Eton,” since Eton didn’t have playing fields for something like 20 years after the battle), but unless they had something to do with war? Meh.

    And so I used to pay attention to the Olympics, for example, to include even preposterous, useless crap like figure skating, because they were just another front in the Cold War, to include the tiny skirmish along that front that was figure skating. Very similarly, I really don’t care about the Hugos, qua Hugos, to any measurable degree. I don’t care if I ever get one and I don’t really care if anyone else ever gets one, either. Rather, I care about the war in which they are just another front. So, waxing a bit historical, Aces and Eights are just fine by me, if they’re called for.

  114. That’s the limitation of analogy, I suppose. In this case the puppy wants you to spank it so that it can cry out “see, the violence!”. It wants you to press it’s nose into the piss so that it can call out “see, the anger!”. It wants you to keep doing so, as you have been, so that it can say “watch the irrationality!”.

    That’s why the analogy fails, really; the situation is more akin to briar patching. Probably my own fault.

    Yes, the next move is up to the Noah Ward clique. Hopefully they’re rational. Hopefully they can see the consequences if they aren’t.

  115. Regarding your addendum; fair enough, if you’re in this for the ideology then I’m not going to dissuade you. I would point out, though, that the SJ side is experiencing backlash for the same offensive mentality, and that if they’d been more disciplined then perhaps they’d still be walking away with this culture war.

  116. Ah, but they’re all of them and I’m just me. And, being just me, if you google around a bit I am sure you can find that there’s just about no lie they won’t hurl at me or about me. So I and the slates have lost what, exactly?

  117. By the way, where’s the irrationality? I squeeze an apology out of an anonymous SJW, and basically drive him from further comment, in what – I really must say – was one of the more economical and tactically proficient exercises in blog domination to be found, even while demonstrating that aces and eights is, pardon the pun, in the cards. That’s not irrational, that pure rationality in action.

  118. Tom, to be perfectly honest, I was a little turned off by the – if you’ll excuse further canine imagery – hounding of said poster, combined with calling in the 155mm howitzer of doxxing. It seemed like an overreaction to something that could have been brushed off as plain ignorance and deliberate mischief.

    You had your reasons, as you say you got a result, and I’m feeling the dread of tone policing creep into my argument. On that basis I’d appreciate if we could shake hands like gentlemen and leave this thread of discussion behind.

  120. Pingback: Chicken with the Dark Lord | Neoreactive

  122. There are no gentlemen in war.

    The SJW gang doesn’t seem to realize that this is about more than SF. This (and #gg) is the first counterattack in the Counterrevolution. The goal of the new Hard Right is not to make some stupid annual award into a true merit-based competition (mission accomplished); it’s to shatter, crush, and roll over the entire Liberal project. The forces the SJWs have unleashed won’t stop wit the gaming industry and the Hugo Awards. The ultimate goal is to take over all institutions of this society and rebuild Western civilization along Traditionalist lines. In the Catholic Church, for example, there is a rapidly growing Traditionalist movement that seeks to destroy the so-called Conciliar Church, eject the Modernists, resurrect the Latin liturgy and the theology upon which it is based, and reset the Church to its condition before the Great Freakout (Vatican II). And the Trads will win. It might take them fifty years to do it, but they will win. Similar Trad movements are building in the Protestant and Evangelical world; in the arts, both popular and fine; in politics and economics; and all throughout society.

    The Revolution will be destroyed, because it is based upon ideology, and ideology is an artifice. Any social order based upon artifice will tend to collapse as the artifice becomes more complex, as the Revolutionary Vanguard imposes the ideology in every sphere of life. Since ideology is by nature contradictory to Reality As It Is, it is inherently unstable; as time passes, the ideological artifice must be taped together and propped up by force. The end result is a Stalinist/Maoist type tyranny, where the principles of the ideology are enforced at bayonet point and where mobs of Red Guards drag class enemies, splittists, and wreckers into the streets for Criticism/Self-Criticism. This is what we are rapidly coming to now.

    But it won’t last. Reality As It Is will not be denied. Individual liberty is not the greatest good; human beings are not all equals; brotherhood is based upon blood, not politics or laws. Sooner or later, the Revolution will fall; all the bayonets and SJWs and shrieking Twitter Red Guards in the world will not be enough to prevent Reality from asserting itself. The Gods of the Copybook Headings are about to limp up and explain it all again.

    Traditionalists will win in the end because Traditionalism is not an ideology. It is rooted in the recognition of Reality As It Is.

    SF is a sideshow. The Hugos are just the beginning. SJWs, the Hard Right is coming for you.

  123. “read your voter packet and vote like the stories and books are just stories and books”

    Gasp! Shock! Dismay! Other descriptive words, suggestive of a horrible situation!

    It’s almost as though there have been nominations made and books on the table to be considered on the merits, or lack thereof. IF everything turns out to be truly lacking in what should qualify a work for a Hugo, then obviously a “NO AWARD” would be fitting.

    I look forward to the inevitable debates over “for 2015, you said A, B and C were not worth an award, but this [insert X, Y or Z] suddenly is?”.

  125. > What’s the endgame for Sad Puppies? What’s next? What do the Hugos look like five years from now?

    To get deserving books, authors, editors, and publishers nominated and hopefully award then Hugo’s. The same as it’s always been. What is this, the 99th time it’s been stated?

  126. I’m 50+ years old and been reading SF since I could read. I’ve been watching this from the sidelines. The Hugos used to key me in on a good story, but I started ignoring that over 20 years ago as the stories started sucking vacuum.

    If there are more than 2 people there are politics. The Hugo rules were set up so a majority vote would show what the majority likes. The rules were set on what you needed to do to get membership. Now one political group that acts as bullies is upset when another political group doesn’t like their behavior and stands up to them. (50 years ago I was told bullies were there for character building and to go punch them in the nose – now we show our blue card, wet our panties and run for the safe space). This is old school conflict versus new school conflict – and the old school isn’t taking it anymore.

    Behavior escalates until moderated by consequence.

    Don’t you guys get it? Vox likes conflict, Kratman and Coreia are not afraid of it. They will play by the rules, if one group sets up MAD, then MAD it will be. The Hugos have been meaningless for over 20 years, blowing them up is not a bad thing IMO. Free them from a clique and let the majority decide what they like.

    Or as an alternate the Hugos can be the SJW award and the Kurgan can be the Rabid Puppy award.

  127. “Anyone else amazed that the younger generation has so little integrity itself, on average, that it cannot even conceive of what a truly mortal insult it is to insult someone else’s?”

    When that generation’s elders so utterly fail at being worthy of respect, it’s only fitting that the young fail to grant it.

    If that is the sort of thing you worry about, you certainly should try looking in the mirror. I don’t know what you thought your behavior in this thread was accomplishing or demonstrating, but the practical result isn’t anything of value to anybody.

  128. By the way, one of the problems with the SJWs nuking the award this year, and RP/SPs nuking into the far future, is that there’s really no way to stop the nuking. There is no one person who can stand up and say, “I stand for all the SJWs; let us have peace.” There is no one person or committee who can negotiate peace for the RP/SPs, either.

    Vox and Lind talk about 4th Generation warfare quite a lot. My take on it – and it does exist – is a bit different, perhaps. In any case, this is one aspect of it; once it starts there can be no peace, only mutual slaughter until one side or the other is extinguished….rather, one side or the other or, effectively, both.

  129. I think I already explained the practical value, rory, you brainless turd. Now why should I care what you think? Brainless? Yes,you incarnate insult to human intelligence, the word integrity has zero relationship to the way you’re trying to prostitute it.

    Idiot.

  130. Asserting a veteran is claiming honors he didn’t earn is a different category of insult from asserting his hair is not well cut. One earns a guffaw, the other a cuffing. If you can’t understand why, that’s as much as you need to know . . . you admittedly don’t understand the concepts involved and therefore have no authority to criticize the behavior.

  131. Here’s the basic problem……one side is trying to enforce a feminist mindset on sci-fi, Vox et al are fighting back. There’s no common ground. One side will lose. You see, sjws are a very small part of the population. They’re trying to punch way above their weight by using social media to create an impression of inevitability. Thing is, they have to lie and deceive. They know that, just as the Marxism from which they spring, they can’t tell the truth. It’s ugly and, well, that’s just the video way they are. As Vox has repeatedly pointed out, they can’t stand exposure. Fact is, best not rile someone who’s looking for a fight, and, worse, is proceeding to beat you black and blue. Rigged ballots and such, they really believe that’s all Vox is after. Hmmmm…….when you fix bayonets, there’s bloody work to be done. The wounded are ALWAYS bayonetted. Hey, crows have to eat, too. Anyways, the thing about subversive warfare is that you are attacked thru your relationships.

  133. I recall one left wing weasel who attempted to get at me through friending my 13 year old granddaughter on FB. Once I explained that there were less painful and degrading ways of committing suicide (I knew who he was, where he practiced law, his wife’s maiden name, etc.) he disappeared.

  134. I’m with Huey Golden. I interpreted Vox’s comment as saying “If you’re going to take your ball and go home rather than play fair, fine, it’s your ball. But I’ll be back next game and then what will you do? Take the ball and go home again? And the next game? And the next?” I read it as a plea NOT to take the ball and go home, because forfeiting game after game benefits nobody. Okay, not a plea, Vox doesn’t plead. But a logical justification for SJWs to drop the nuclear threat because “if I can’t have it, nobody can” is childish by everyone’s standards.

  135. Indeed, Joe; if they weren’t children and if they had two brain cells to rub together, individually or collectively, they’d zip their man and woman suits all the way up to the neck, take what’s coming or, God knows, fight back harder and actually win a few awards. Sadly, though, many of them are just children, churlish, spoiled, miserable, and none too bright.

  136. I agree with Jason way up in the thread. I support Sad Puppies this year, but if the SJW’s see fit to rally and no award everything, I’m supporting rabid puppies. If they want to burn the house down, so be it.

    I’m not quite where Vox is, but I don’t think his response is assholeish. I’m just not quite there yet.

  137. Brad, you’re wrong about one key detail.

    Was the unnamed Nephite soldier who scalped Zerahemnah also “an asshole?” Her made the same threat Vox just
    hinted at, but Vox was considerably more polite.

    Or maybe you see the conflicts differently since one was a violent existential struggle of one civilization trying to destroy another and one is merely for some awards about scheme fiction stories?

    That’s where “our side” needs to her its collective head out of the sand and realize that whether we’ve been paying attention or not, we’ve actually been in an existential struggle for our civilization as well, and its high time we showed up for the fight.

  138. Gah! WordPress comments mobile version sucks! Sorry for all the typos. Its my phone’s fault.

  140. Didn’t read the book, either, did you?

    Tell me, what is the significance of the line, “And this is for my Anna, whose name you never asked, you Nazi son of a bitch”?

  144. Waffen-SS-fanboy Kratman

    Yours is precisely the sort of mindset — smug, sour, engorged with entitlement — that has led to Sad Puppies in the first place; and will lead, inevitably, to the end of the Hugos themselves.

    *golf clap*

  146. Please, bitches. Take your high-school “the cool kids are mean to me” whining, and go pound sand. Smug? Sour? Entitled? What really pisses you off is that we’re all LAUGHING AT YOU. Nothing pushes a wanna-be-alpha’s buttons harder. And we all know it. Comedy. GOLD.

  147. Projection, again. Milton, the National Socialists, or Nazis, are very closely related to all of you social justice warriors. You’re holding a mirror up to yourself. You’re an insecure, scared little boy. And there are far more of us than you. How do you think k we swept the Hugo nominations so easily?

    Quake in your boots. You will lie, and you will lose.

  148. @ Marc C DuQuesne: “It seems to me that the Sad Puppies victory condition is to raise participation in the Hugos to the point where no small group of fanatics can covertly logroll off the ballot anyone who isn’t one of their friends or employees.”

    Bravo and well said. That is exactly the end game and victory condition.

    PS: I think you and Hunkie DeMargerie make a great couple.

  149. > What really pisses you off is that we’re all LAUGHING AT YOU

    Sure you are, Milton, sure you are.

  150. Brad: the bottom line is this – voting “no award” for any reason whatsoever is no more against the rules than is campaigning and having people vote a slate.

    Regarding the “we know how to fight a war” theme running through here – history is full of people who thought their enemies didn’t know how to fight a war or wouldn’t pursue one with sufficient vigor. It’s a dangerous assumption to make.

  152. What really pisses you off is that we’re all LAUGHING AT YOU.

    You guys have a smaller playbook than Woody Hayes did. It’s the same insults every time, whether they are relevant or not.

    Do you not understand we are not susceptible to feelbads? I will type this very slowly in the hopes you will understand it. WE ARE NOT LIKE YOU.

    We don’t think like you. What angers you is not what angers us. What makes you feel bad and scared and alone is not what bothers us.

    So stop being so bloody tedious already.

  153. The histrionic public meltdowns I’ve been watching for the last several days are about as far as “laughing” as you can get.

    Milton, you suck at trolling.

  154. Gerrib: “voting “no award” for any reason whatsoever is no more against the rules”

    Of course it isn’t. Do you have a quote from anyone here claiming that it is?

    It’s just not going to turn out the way you think it is. Sorry about that.

  155. I did a little looking to prior Hugo winners and I found an interesting pattern. Of the Hugo winning novels from 1956 to 1985 I have read all but three. Of the Hugo winning novels from 1986 to 2015, I’ve read only three. Of the three “recent” Hugo winners I have read, only “The City & The City” is what I would consider Science Fiction–the others were “American Gods” and “Harry Potter And The Bad Defense Against The Dark Arts Teacher (or whatever)”.

    In my opinion it’s way too late to talk about either saving or destroying the Hugo awards. The fact that the president of the SFWA won with Star Trek fanfic kind of proves that the award has been meaningless for years.

  157. Regarding the “we know how to fight a war” theme running through here – history is full of people who thought their enemies didn’t know how to fight a war or wouldn’t pursue one with sufficient vigor. It’s a dangerous assumption to make.

    We know. We’re not assuming anything, Gerrib. We’re in it for the long haul. The situation has been more than two decades in the making. It won’t be resolved overnight and none of us can possibly no what the ultimate outcome will be. All we know is that the old system is now as dead as the Austro-Hungarian Empire after WWI began.

    You really don’t need to bother with the military history lessons. Castalia House also publishes Martin van Creveld, after all.

  159. I was a science fiction fan for about a decade, from my mid-teens thru mid-twenties. I read all the classics. I published fanzines. I attended every WorldCon from 1960 thru 1968 (except London), and numerous smaller cons. A high point of my life was when I had the chance to meet Robert Heinlein in Seattle in ’61 (the very first science fiction I read, aged 11 or 12, was Rocket Ship Galileo). When I graduated high school I lived and traveled with and among fans. My circle of good friends included folks like Ted White, Terry Carr, Greg Benford, Avram Davidson, et al.

    Once I got into psychedelics, SF kind of lost its interest for me; I was living it. And my reading habits changed; Ted introduced me to Raymond Chandler, and for the last 50 years when I’ve wanted recreational reading, I’ve mostly turned to the mystery genre, and historical (an earlier love), and lately to the new historical-mystery. Since the 70s my primary life interest has been spiritual/religious. Put all this together, and my presently favorite reading is Ellis Peters’ series featuring 12th-century monk Brother Cadfael (which I just reread, all 21 books, for maybe the fifth time). I’ve read practically no SF/F in the last 50 years.

    Just background to explain what really annoys me about all this. I read Vox Day’s story “Opera Vita Aeterna” and loved it. I’ll go out on a limb and say that, aside from the excellent writing, deep character development, and evocative background (which led me on to Day’s other stories set in the Selenoth fantasy world, which I also enjoyed), it is really a story about personal transformation, and – pardon me if this offends you – love.

    “Opera Vita Aeterna” was nominated for a Hugo last year, but lost to some piece of crap whose name I can’t remember (I did read it; it was crap). Why? Not because it wasn’t a better story – by any objective measure – than the others nominated. No, it was all about politics; some people don’t like Vox Day’s opinions on contemporary political, economic and social issues – none of which appeared or were even implied in the story. Except, of course, for its religious theme, which said people apparently can’t abide either. So Day is to be punished by voting his story sixth of five places.

    “Opera Vita Aeterna” deserved the Hugo, and now it has no more chance to get it. And the same is true, I gather, of many other stories, of all lengths, as well as other categories in the Hugo Awards. This is ridiculous. Maybe, as some have said above, it’s time for the Hugos to be retired entirely. I don’t know, and don’t care, as I don’t read SF. But if anybody has destroyed the value of the Hugos, it’s the clique who’ve apparently been running them behind the scenes for years. I’ve recently learned that the “New York Times Bestseller List” (to which I’ve never paid much attention) is also a fraud. Unfortunate, but the world is, after all, full of lies. Everybody can choose: live by lies, or live by the truth. Take your pick.

  161. There are at least two companies advertising in public that they will guarantee to get your book on the NYT list for a fee, and doubtless several others operating with a lower profile.

  162. It must be so embarrassing when one’s paranoid conspiracy theories of “cliques” can be so utterly obliterated with cited, verifiable facts, courtesy of (arguably) the biggest writer working in the field today: http://grrm.livejournal.com/418285.html

    I get it, I really do: You like the stuff you like. But here’s the thing: that other people don’t share your tastes? That doesn’t make it a conspiracy.

  163. So then we can conclude that Vox doesn’t love the Hugos and never did, at least according to the post you did on the Solomon tale. He’s simply involved because he wants to possess the Hugos out of jealousy, at least according to the Solomon tale. And now we can see why this whole thing even started. Vox wants to destroy the people he hates.

  165. “Don’t quit my day job?” Because I posted a link that refutes the core belief of the Puppies with actual data?

    Hows that epistemic closure bubble working out for ya, Doc?

  166. Having more people involved so that no one group can dominate the Hugos is what Larry wants. It would be the best result of the Hugo Wars.

  167. Chris Gerrib: tireless defender of Star Trek fanfic, dinosaur revenge porn and stories about gay guys getting rained on. Truly, a name synonymous with “sense of wonder.”

    Your postings should be accompanied by calliope music.

  168. How’s that “failure at trolling” thing working out for you, Miltie?

    Yep, you’re right. John Scalzi having more Hugo nominations than Arthur C. Clarke is totally justified. No influence-peddling or log-rolling there. Nosirree!

    Now, go get me a juice box.

  170. “the cool kids are mean to me” whining

    It’s so adorable that you believe the Toad of TOR and her henchfrog shills in any way qualify as “the cool kids.”

    No… not just adorable. Precious.

    You’re wearing your paper hat too tight.

  171. The problem with any SP end game is that since the conditions that promulgated the project were (as has been demonstrated multiple times by people drilling down the numbers) in the head of its creators, you’ll never be done. You’ll never finish.

    Let’s take the most positive spin on what you’re doing: increasing participation in the Hugos to bring forth the most deserving authors and works for recognition. Simple, right? But your motivation here is a belief–driven by emotional responses–that people out there must be messing around behind the scenes when someone wins that you personally don’t think deserves it.

    A bunch of women voting for the same thing? They can’t all think it’s good, they’re just doing what we all know women do, getting together and voting for their friends (BUT WE’RE NOT SEXIST HOW DARE YOU CALL US SEXIST WE NOMINATED WOMEN SO YOU’RE SEXIST FOR SAYING WE’RE SEXIST!)

    As long as women sometimes like things in large numbers that Brad R. Torgersen thinks are undeserving of being liked, Sad Puppies won’t be able to claim victory.

    People who find themselves under-represented in the marketplace of creative works are excited to see a face like theirs on a cover and talk about it? OH NO THIS IS HARD PROOF THAT AFFIRMATIVE ACTION BALLOTING IS HAPPENING! WHAT ABOUT QUALITY? WHAT ABOUT STORY? WHAT ABOUT CHARACTER?

    As long as it keeps happening that people who don’t usually get to see themselves embodied as the heroes in epic fantasy and SF are excited by that, you all will still see the same evidence of sinister conspiracies to disenfranchise white men that you see today.

    You’ll never win because you are fighting phantoms. You’ll never cross the finish line because the finish line is a shimmering mirage at a fixed distance. Your “victories” will consist of the same things they have consisted of so far: you work yourselves up into an emotional frenzy, cause some institutional damage or inconvenience, and then through your rage-tears you say “NO YOU DON’T GET IT WE’RE LAUGHING AT YOU!” while grown-ups patiently explain to you where you’ve gone wrong in your very premises.

    Your “backlash” will never end. It can never end. Traditionalism isn’t as was suggested a reflection of reality as it is, it’s a continued grasp at what reality used to be perceived to be. Progressivism is a march towards the future, and guess what? That’s where we’re all headed, one way or another. When we were children we thought as children. Who would go back to that? Put away your childish things. The future is an exciting place.

  172. “The future is an exciting place.”

    I love hearing about the future from the intellectual heirs of Woodrow Wilson and Charles Coughlin.

  173. But Mav, they’re not talking about winning all the time, nor are they discounting their enemy. The gravimen of the thread is _only_ “nuke it this time and we’ll nuke it forever and a day.” That’s not a phantom, that’s an achievable goal.

  174. A bunch of women voting for the same thing? They can’t all think it’s good, they’re just doing what we all know women do, getting together and voting for their friends (BUT WE’RE NOT SEXIST HOW DARE YOU CALL US SEXIST WE NOMINATED WOMEN SO YOU’RE SEXIST FOR SAYING WE’RE SEXIST!)

    Isn’t there some book out there with a hot chick in a belly shirt brandishing a sword in defense of her hawt were-vamp boytoy you haven’t read yet…?

    Next time, just stick with “OMG I CAN’T EVEN.”

  175. “rage-tears”

    Dude. I don’t think you can possibly understand how much the sheer meltdown on the left has validated everything the Puppies started out to prove.

    Try “grinning ear to ear”.

  176. Mavericles:

    Wow, your new “make shit up” debating technique is phenomenal. I’ll have to give it a try sometime.

    Your entire comment is nothing but emotional frenzy.

    And guess what? The SP/RP group has already won. They won. You lost. Get used to it, because it’s going to be happening a lot from now on.

    Tell me, what “oppressed minority” does John Scalzi belong to?

    ‘Cause he’s racked up more Hugo nominations in ten years than Arthur C. Clarke did in 55.

  178. Tell me, what “oppressed minority” does John Scalzi belong to?

    “Creatively Impotent WorldCon Schmoozers Who Know Their Free Hugo Ride Has Finally Come To An End”…?

  179. “Progressivism is a march towards the future”

    Well, that’s a real pretty May Day speech there, comrade. How does that Pie In The Sky taste?

  182. You know… I disagree with just about all of your politics, Brad, and I don’t care much for Vox Day’s writing.

    But I absolutely LOVE what you’re doing to the entrenched orthodoxy of the Hugos this year. Keep up the good work, and let every voice be heard!

  183. Im new to this discussion in fandom I am aware of the sad puppies faction buts whats the name of the other faction and what they want?
    And please just dont say “We are against evil sad puppies without giving somekind of goal.”
    If it matters I am not really for social engineering in sci fi books. Unless its for Black Americans.

  186. name of the other faction and what they want? there is no other faction, unless “all of fandom’s many tiny interest groups” counts as a faction. What they want is to not have a group of 250 people (~20% of the Hugo electorate) completely lock up all the Hugo nominations.

  187. Gerrib:

    See above about Scalzi getting more noms in 10 years than Clarke got in 55.

    Yes, all those “many tiny interest groups” somehow converged, by sheer coincidence, to make that happen.

    Give it a rest, dude.

  188. Give it a rest, dude.

    He’s a genuine trooper, this one. Just like Jimmy Stewart, in The Greatest Show on Earth.

    EXACTLY like Jimmy Stewart in The Greatest Show on Earth, in fact.

  189. What really sticks in the craw of the Tor/Scalzi axis is that the SP/RP groups are beating them at their own game.

  191. If someone reads all of the nominees in a category and decides that none of them are good enough to be considered best, they should vote No Award. If anyone places No Award ahead of one of the nominees because of the authors perceived politics or being part of a slate, they have no ethical sense and are unworthy of being considered pond scum.

  193. Just want to jump out of the lurking shadows and mention how well this process is working where it really counts, i.e, in the pocketbooks. Since I started following this whole delightful process, I’ve bought a John Wright book, a Vox Day recommendation, dropped a Seanan book from my Amazon cart (forever to be dropped, they were only popcorn reading at best to begin with), and you, Brad Torgersen, I’ll get to buying your stuff at some point. I was already reading Correia and avoiding Scalzi – I never did care for political screed based fiction since I was force fed it in school, and have determinedly ignored anything with an award seal on it for years now. That may change based on the future outcomes, but in the meantime, thanks SJW’s! You’ve made this so incredibly easy for the average sci-fi consumer to know what’s good reading (obviously, whatever annoys you) and what’s utter dreck to avoid (i.e., whatever you recommend.)

    Sheesh, dinosaur love, my sweet rear-end.

  194. You have my sympathies Brad. But the truth here that you are desperately evading is what it is: these people are a-holes and they WANT to fight. A bench clearing brawl is a win for everyone when only a-holes are involved.

    Nobody’s listening to me either. I am just after a good read and an entertaining story. No, “Faggots In Space” and Lesbian Warlocks are not what make for good story telling. And as for the Sad Puppies – well, maybe you aren’t all sexually disturbed commies…but to be honest, your WRITING is almost as bad as the crap coming out of the SJW’s. Fact is that Scalzi is a better writer than Vox Day – and that ain’t saying much. Neither of them are fit to shine the shoes of Asimov or Heinlein or any of the greats.

    All I want is a novel that I can’t put down. That – and that lately the awards have been red flags for bad writing. Good luck, Brad. From what I can see this is a gong show that will only get worse.

  195. I don’t have a dog in this show. I am working on putting some novels out eventually and I think that when I do, Somewhere in the Bio or other part of the SF/F series I will state that it is my fervent wish that none of my work is ever considered for a Hugo. This year I will be reading the nominations and I will be voting this year and next. I will be reading everything possible and voting for the best. However, if I find that one of the stories I liked lost its chance to win because of a block “No Award” vote (and I expect that vote to come from ‘Cat and friends’ because, that’s Cat’s MO from when I used to visit Mad Genius Club) I can guarantee that I will be joining Tom and Vox in retaliation. The Hugos need to stand for the fans.

  196. Glenfilthie – Vox has repeatedly claimed to be a mediocre writer. I wouldn’t bark too far up that tree.

    For novels you can’t put down? Hard Magic. I read it (and the rest of the series) in two evenings. Monster hunter international is entertaining, but the series really got good with Alphas and Nemesis. Personally I think Larry is a much better writer the further the character is from his own personality and characteristics.

  197. Wow, that escalated quickly.

    Frankly I doubt anyone on this forum cares what I think, but I’m going to lend some support to some of the people on here.

    Larry Correia succeeded by accepting the rules that the CHORFs play by, and using those rules against them.

    Vox is proposing to do the same.

    I do not have a problem with this.

    And I don’t like people complaining about the tone, when there were no complaints about tone before Sad Puppies became a thing. It’s special pleading and you all know it. So stuff it.

    I cannot and will not comment on Vox Day’s personal worth. But I will say that I’ve enjoyed some of his books.

  198. “This is it,” Schmidt said to Wilson, and then they both stepped forward, toward the Farnutians, just as the Farnutians slid forward to them. Each line stopped roughly half a meter from the other, still parallel.
    As a unit and as they had practiced, every human diplomat, Ambassador Abumwe included, thrust forward their flagon. “We exchange water,” they all said, and with ceremonial pomp upended their flagons, spilling the water at what passed for the Farnutians’ feet.
    The Farnutians replied with a hurking sound that Wilson’s BrainPal translated as We exchange water, and then spewed from their mouths seawater they had stored in their bodies’ ballast bladders, directly into the faces of the human diplomats. Every human diplomat was drenched with salty, Farnutian body-temperature water.

    That’s from Scalzi’s “The B-Team.” No matter how well written it is, it is baby food. This is Scalzi’s idea of humor and the perceptual shift – an alien culture – get it? Even the Munsey Magazines of 100 years ago were more adult. Maybe the aliens’ ship is called “The Breaking Wind” in their own tongue. That’s pretty funny cuz it’s so unintentionally alien – alien and funny. Scalzi’s fit for writing made-for-TV-movies.

  199. LTC Kratman,

    As a fellow veteran of military service, and a veteran of at least one of the same wars, I appreciate your service. I understand what the CIB means – and I viscerally understand how frustrating it must be to have it questioned.

    But no amount of frustration towards one civilian who had the audacity to question that service requires the lack of decorum of your response — decorum, sir, that I would expect from an officer of your rank. While I would never presume to question your tactics in open combat, when I look at your tactics in this forum, I find myself nonplussed as to exactly what your objective is.

    I’m a great fan of Correia and Torgensen, and tremendously sympathetic with the goals of the SP slate. But by responding to a mendacious insult that really should be beneath an officer’s notice with such immediate escalation, I fear that you may win us the battle, but ultimately lose us the war.

  200. @James: Each and every one of his painstakingly labored “punchlines” is telegraphed so broadly, they ought to come equipped with a Fozzie Bear-ish “Wocka-wocka-WOCKA!!!”

  201. And then we arrived at planet Doon, also known as Arassis, where we were all honored by being spit in the face because precious water is so precious and it is also precious.

    Then the greatest honor came: they tortured us and cut off our nuts.

    Back on the ship my first mate arched an eyebrow and said, “Good thing they don’t like eating their own shit. Pwa-hahahaha.”

    Then the sacred loaves arrived. There would be no treaty until we’d all eaten our fill.

    For dessert we had to all kill each other in a show of good faith and friendship.

    THE END

  202. Fact is that Scalzi is a better writer than Vox Day – and that ain’t saying much. Neither of them are fit to shine the shoes of Asimov or Heinlein or any of the greats.

    I absolutely concur with the latter statement. I cannot imagine ever having as many Hugo nominations as Clarke, let alone Asimov, unless I am successfully able to follow in Campbell’s footsteps as an editor. I suggest you read two of our latest novels before claiming that the former statement is a fact. John’s not a bad writer, and his style is much breezier and reads more effortlessly than mine. But Style is only one aspect of writing.

    I suggest that if you compare Concepts, Characters, and Story, you may well change your mind.

  203. @ Marc C DuQuesne: “It seems to me that the Sad Puppies victory condition is to raise participation in the Hugos to the point where no small group of fanatics can covertly logroll off the ballot anyone who isn’t one of their friends or employees.”

    But a small group of fanatics can openly logroll off the ballot anyone who isn’t on their checklist?

  204. You may not understand what the war is, AS. Or I may not. You may assume I know what I’m doing or you may doubt it. That’s all up to you. As mentioned, though, I am unfailingly civil and polite to those who are civil and polite, and unfailingly not to those who are not. That’s all up to them.

    One doesn’t, after all, unless one is an idiot, follow the laws of war completely with those who violate them. One reprises.

    I don’t, frankly, buy – indeed I count it as nonsense – the notion that one must be above all that, and show one is “better than the enemy.” That’s their tool for disarming us and always has been.

    I say to them, along with the Blessed Fallaci, “Fuck you. I say what I want.”

  205. “He who can destroy a thing….controls a thing” MuadDib…er… Vox Day…From “A Canticle of Lebo-beale”……Voooxxxxx Day!

  206. Oh, Andrew, one of the problems with dealing with you is that, while you are malicious, you are also obvious, stupid – indeed obviously stupid – and so predictable as to make Ouija boards and the Wall Street Journal obsolete. Go away, insect.

  207. @Tom: Sure, you can say what you want, and at the same time, those sonsofbitches’ll end up taking advantage of it to produce smear campaigns. Just keep that in mind. Even if you gave them nothing, they’d just make it up though, which is why I’m not overly chiding you on it. By the way @Leit: It’s spelled with one x. The media stating otherwise demonstrates their own stupidity. I’ve had some laughs at spelling it with the double x though to make it extra silly for gamergate though, so I understand the sentiment.

    While I’m here, some of you seem to be unfamiliar with the sort of scum you’re up against, and so I have an imgur that should aid you in identifying this particular breed of foe http://imgur.com/bokLjv9

    @OP: I understand your appeal to moderation, but it will fall to deaf ears and is a waste of time. Your opposition is turning to yellow journalism in the same exact manner that they’ve done to gamergate. Study what tactics they’ve employed to keep going through the media campaign, and recognize that every lie they spit slowly but surely erodes their credibility.

    One other thing, do not fall into the poison that is identity politics, for it is something that eats away at both the right and left. Do not pretend otherwise. See Shibes for an example on the “right” side of things.

  208. Pingback: The Madness of Crowds of Puppies 4/10 | File 770

  209. I don’t think the SJWs will blow it up. Frankly, brinksmanship isn’t their metier. They’re into accommodation. “Peace in our time” and all that. Now they may overreact and “No Award” the 2015 Hugos and then there will be tearful recriminations and threats. But what there won’t be is the positive feedback loop that has fed and sustained the preachy message fic inner circle. There’s no ego stroke. No self congratulatory mental victory lap when goodthink authors and products win. Ergo, there won’t be a reason to vote again in 2016. Sure, there will be hangers on. True believers will keep on buying and those CHORF trufans who are going to attend will vote. But the folks sitting at home and willing to forego a couple of small luxuries to buy a $40 supporting membership, get their ebooks and vote will far outnumber the attending members. I mean, Worldcon is TINY.

    No, the next battlefield they’ll attack on is how the Hugo voting works. I’ll bet my bottom dollar on it.

  210. @Ray: Wrong. They’re into two categories: Stamping out or subverting. If they cannot stamp it out, they will co-opt it as best they can. Here’s another lesson to keep in mind, these jackasses are supporting each other in multiple mediums at once. Do not allow yourself to be boxed into just SFF. Watch their antics in other mediums. They’re trying to clumsily force the sad puppies into part of the war on women threat narrative, as part of a push to chip away at anonymity in general. This is why they’re blowing up these nonissues so ridiculously high. If you don’t believe me, look at Shirtstorm/Shirtgate. Same jackass who wrote a gamers are dead article, who was a member of gamejournopros, and a part of a group of idiots called Weird Twitter also started Shirtstorm. His name is Chris Plante. Even better, look at how the women who criticized it suddenly got death threats, and oh how much danger they’re now in! It’s a pattern that keeps on happening until people get wise to it.

  211. We pranked the Social Justice Klan of Peace, Love and Bitter Race Hatred.

    They were angry 3 years ago, they’re angry now and they’ll be angry 3 years from now. That’s because there’s…

    A.) no shortage of white men
    B.) most radical feminists are taking klonopin, prozac, lorzepam and trazodone.

    Only people who are nuts mutter to themselves on Twitter in extended rants against an imaginary racial and sexual enemy where no one is listening and then Storify the whole thing. Only people who are crazy get freaked out by applause or see Frank Frazetta as a personal threat. Only people who are nuts imagine an allegorical America where straight white men randomly punch out women, gays and non-whites or literally want to drag them behind a truck. Even drug dealers who might get raided at any minute sleep more peacefully than radical feminists. I get less nervous sleeping on exploding volcanoes than radical feminists do waking up in the morning and facing another day of the evil patriarchy that started oppressing women using heterosexuality in 5,000 B.C.

    These feminists are clueless mentally retarded sociopaths who have never had the word “no” uttered at them. They write blog posts about men who draw super-hero women with big breasts and then compare that “misogyny” to the Taliban throwing acid in women’s faces.

    A N.Y. Times best-selling author and Marvel Comics writer actually compared the reaction to one feminist complaining about big breasts to “‘rape cases, acid attacks, burning girls’ schools, cutting the nose and ears off women, beating women with lashes in public, executing them in public, accusing them of adultery.'” She asked and answered the rhetorical question “… are the roots of that violence the same? Yes.”

    So some few anonymous guys on the internet pranking some feminist turned into the Taliban in no time flat. Have a drink lady, settle down. Breathe deeply.

  212. Can anyone explain to me what the Puppy Saddeners strategy is here, long term?
    1 No award as many Hugo categories as possible
    2 ?????
    3 That’ll show them.
    Next year…
    4 ???????!!!????

  213. You want to know what the long term strategy is? Did you ever see “Der Untergang,” aka “Downfall?” That’s it, and the Sad Puppies are the Red Army.

  214. Troushers, it may not be possible to have a long-term strategy, it may be too late to restore the brand. As a lad, I believed the words “Winner of the Hugo and Nebula Awards” on a book cover guaranteed quality, like the Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval. Until 1992, that was true (seriously, look at the list of joint winners) and reading excellent works sucked me into reading SF. That, and the naked princess in the warrior’s arms on the cover. I was 13, after all.

    For the last 20+ years, it’s not true. One of two things happened – all the good SF writers died, or the awards were hijacked. Sad Puppies confirmed it – “Hugo” is as rotten as “NYT Bestseller” but – and here’s the really important point – newbies don’t know that. Young people looking at book covers today still want clues to quality. There are no naked princesses and if “Hugo” is unreliable, what’s the draw to create a life-long SF fan?

    SJWs destroyed the Hugo. Maybe we do need to start our own award. For the children. 🙂

  215. As I said to the ‘book blogger’ in previous years who’ve made pretty much the same overwrought claims as you guys.

    Maybe the Hugo’s can’t be saved, maybe they’re done. Create a better award, the internet is over there, have fun, let me know how it’s going.

  216. @Troushers: Their strategy is going to be No Awarding because they’ve already lost something that matters to them: Some of their ego got deflated because they aren’t representing the entire fandom anymore. They love to speak for people because it gives them power, especially when said people are afraid to counter their claims due to the usual social shaming. Their strategy is to no award it and subvert the hugo award rules in the coming years, if not, they’ll protest the spot and give as much bad press as possible due to some of their thought leader’s media connections.

  217. We’ll go over there if feminists promise they won’t follow. In fact they’re making such noises and wish we’d leave. Trust me – they’ll follow. They don’t produce anything anyone wants. For an example of what the Hugos looks like without us, I give you the Tiptrees. Without us to contrast themselves to, feminists don’t exist. On the other hand we enjoyed SFF for decades and never cared what feminists were doing, or anyone else for that matter.

  218. I’ve a question.

    What is the middle game (much less the endgame) here?

    Is all this the idea that with enough slates narrowly voted on by Sad Puppies in enough years, all the SJWs are going to dry up and blow away? That, now that everyone has seen that authors like Jim Butcher and Marko Kloos and Tom Kratman can make the Hugo ballot, no one is going to vote for the SJWs blindly because of ‘nomination lock’, and you can declare victory?

    Is that what you think is going to happen? Is that what you want to happen?

    Is there ever a time that, to stop Rat-faced little Gits and the feminists they support from ever ruining the Hugos again, the Sad Puppies will put up slates and voting them in perpetuity each and every year?

    Could a ballot, without a sad puppy slate that had, for example, Brad Torgersen, Larry Correia, Mary Robinette Kowal, Ann Leckie and John Scalzi up for best novels be seen as legitimate by you because, surely, Kowal and Leckie and Scalzi were “surely” logrolled onto there behind the scenes and thus the SJW cabal is back to their old tricks.

    Is an annual Sad Puppy slate therefore the “new normal?” to prevent this?

  219. Pingback: on brad torgersen and crocodile tears | Crime and the Blog of Evil

  220. Now go educate yourself. little putz boy, by reading this… and note that I “was way up on points.”

    Good Lord, “Cessna” is incredibly obtuse. And the rest of them were even worse.

  221. Troushers and Weimer — the culture war isn’t going to end. There will be no final victory in the Big Giant Hugo Struggle or anything else. Doesn’t mean any particular battle is not worth fighting. The SJW have made as much “progress” as they have largely because nobody has been fighting them.

  222. If “civil and polite” means “does not point out mistakes when the Sad Puppies make them,” yes, I agree I failed that bar.

    Other than that, I think I did pretty well. I invite you to go back and look at Tom Kratman’s response, and decide for yourself how civil and polite it was. While you are at it, check out the threats he directed at other people further down the comment thread.

    Then consider that he is a Sad Puppy nominee. Not some random drive-by bystander Brad couldn’t be expected to police, but someone Brad chose to represent the Sad Puppies’ taste in authors.

    This is the kind of thing that makes people, already understandably irked by 17% of the nominators locking up 90% of the ballot, think the Sad Puppies are motivated by hostility, especially to women and minorities (calling people pussies was a nice touch in that regard, very subtle) and a desire to destroy the Hugos.

    The problem with keeping bad company–and especially putting them on your slate to get them Hugo nominations–is that people assume you approve of the way they behave.

  223. “Of the three “recent” Hugo winners I have read, only “The City & The City” is what I would consider Science Fiction–the others were ‘American Gods’ and ‘Harry Potter And The Bad Defense Against The Dark Arts Teacher (or whatever)’.”

    The Hugos are not just for science fiction. They are “for work in the field of science fiction or fantasy,” as the Worldcon (WSFS) constitution states. So it’s not a condemnation of the Hugos to point out that fantasy novels have sometimes won.

  224. Since you are some version orother of lefty or feminazi, Cat, and therefore, as with most if not quite all of those, a moral cripple, I am sure you do not understand the seriousness of calling someone a liar. After all, all your political allies and friends lie continuously, without even having to think about it. I, on the the hand, place a more traditional value upon it, and spit on those who do not. In your case, however, I’ll make an exception and piss on you.

  227. Though in reference to the Rathaverse, it was actually about the Boloverse, and how some of the liberal memes in it can move even someone like me.

  229. Oh, no! We’re back to “pussies” being a gendered slur and proof of “rape culture” and misogyny just by uttering the word.

    “Elementary, my dear Watson. As soon as Prof. Moron uttered the word “pussy” I conjectured he would never have stayed at the YWCA he claimed as his alibi. From there it was a simple matter of looking at the customer ledger at the YMCA. I found a certain “Ekili Dertahnamow” who claimed to be from the domains of the Nizam of Hyderabad in the British Raj. I immediately saw that spells “I like women hatred” backwards and nabbed Prof. Moron when he realized his mistake and tried to eat the ledger when everyone knows a Hindu would never eat our paper we make from Egyptian mummies. Nothing to it, really, pip pip and all that.”

    And Cat once again proves the phrase “compared to what?” is a mythical “e plebneesta” once understood but mysteriously lost in time on whatever generationally [trigger warning] retarded mothership SJWs live on.

    “Elementary, my dear Watson. As soon as Prof. Moron uttered the word “retarded” I conjectured he…”

  230. “Throw another mummy on the fire, Watson, there’s a good fellow. I recently received a dispatch Gordon of Khartoum was keel-hauled by Sudanese Dervishes along the upper reaches of the Nile after saying “retardo” in a public slave market. Of course everyone knows saying “retardo” in an Islamic slave market violates their highly refined sense of morality. From here on in we’ll be paying a pretty penny for mummies, Watson, thanks to that rascal, the Khedive.”

  231. “rat-faced little git” is from Monty Python. It’s a joke. Get over it. It’s actually “sniveling little rat-faced git.” His wife was “Dreary Fat Boring Old.” Their kids are named “Dirty Lying Little Two-Faced” and “Ghastly Spotty Horrible Vicious Little.”

    As for declaring victory, I did that the first time I read Wheezing Brainless Vomit Zombie’s post about white privilege. The rest has been frosting, or as you educated types call it, “ekd938d.”

    Don’t worry, none of you have any problems hiring a private tutor in English and logic for 5 years wouldn’t cure.

  233. A bunch of women voting for the same thing? They can’t all think it’s good, they’re just doing what we all know women do, getting together and voting for their friends

    See, the women we know within fandom have wildly disparate tastes. (Some of them even like Heinlein!)

    So yeah, “a bunch of women“ or men, or small furry creatures from Alpha Centauri ”voting for the same thing?” You betcha we’ll assume they’re voting for reasons other than broadly shared tastes.

    As long as women sometimes like things in large numbers that Brad R. Torgersen thinks are undeserving of being liked, Sad Puppies won’t be able to claim victory.

    ‹blink›

    Oh, you’re one of those gender essentialists who believe that people’s tastes are primarily determined by whether they’re split or fringed. Never mind; we do not share common assumptions sufficient for meaningful conversation.

  234. James, I have to admit, getting over a recent insult from you, even from Monty Python, is a rather rich request from you, given that you’ve thrown tweets from two years ago at me as proof that I’m a social justice warrior.

    Also, I felt it undeserved, since I’ve tried to take pains to be civil to you/ Bemused that you read my twitter feed as you do? Yes. Go and insult you like that? No.

  235. Weimer, listen: for whatever reason, you’ve decided to throw in your hand with a cult which specializes in hate speech against ethnic Europeans, men and heterosexuals.

    The fact you don’t see it that way doesn’t move me in the slightest. What in the world in civil about hate speech? I would actually prefer personal insults based on what I actually write IN QUOTES than having some crazy fucks group me in with 100 million white men as an oppressive patriarchy out to screw over non-whites, and gay folks. My skin and sex are not quotation marks to be used as evidence I am a women-hating Islamophobic transphobic racist.

    If you wish to prove your points I have given you an opportunity to do so. I challenged you to name me 5 white male racist ideologues who are SFF authors from 1912-1970 who can compare to the 2014 Nebula winners alone. Either do that or knock off the remarks about an exclusionary white male genre. There is an ocean of difference between an ethnic neighborhood and a KKK. One is demography, one is an ideology. Purposefully confusing the two is hate speech.

    I stand by my quote about Tor. When I have to listen to Liz Bourke, N. K. Jemisin and Kate Elliott make absurd claims epic fantasy is a white male supremacist ideological literature then yes, for me that is like visiting an analogy to a white supremacist site, only in this case it is an intersectional racialized feminist supremacist ideology.

  236. Feel free to re-read my first post and explain where I called someone a liar. I disagreed with things people have said; nowhere did I say they weren’t honestly (if deeply) mistaken.

  237. You tacitly defended someone who called me a liar and criticized the penalty inflicted on him. That makes you an accessory after the fact. Now if you want to join in calling snowflake a doubleplusungood, badthinking, thoughtcriminal, and an integrity impaired piece of shit – which is to say, a splendid example of an SJW in action – I might forgive you.

  238. Sad Puppies are motivated by hostility, especially to women and minorities

    That’s pretty funny considering that the past Hugo Award winners haven’t exactly been the United Colors of Benetton. The principal objects of SP derision include John Scalzi, Charles Stross, and Jim Hines, who are as white as they come. Or are they like Bill Clinton — honorary blacks?

  239. Cat: “Then consider that he is a Sad Puppy nominee. Not some random drive-by bystander Brad couldn’t be expected to police, but someone Brad chose to represent the Sad Puppies’ taste in authors.”

    I’m not sure how to explain this.

    It comes down to a point Vox made way back upthread.

    We’re not like y’all.

    “[S]omeone Brad chose to represent the Sad Puppies’ taste in authors.”

    Based on his output. As an author.

    I think Vox has some truly abhorrent positions. I still enjoyed Opera Vita Aeterna. I think Tom can be a real jerk, and I’ve gone round and round with him on FB a number of times. I buy everything he publishes. To give you an idea of my politics, I’m a radical market anarchist. Steven Brust is a self-declared Trotskyist sympathizer. I used to go to his house every week and play D&D with him, and I own everything he’s ever written. I’ve gone round and round on FB with Tad Williams too, whose politics I likewise disagree with. And whose entire canon sits on my bookshelves. Hell, I even like what Scalzi writes, and I may well be the only Puppy who actually enjoyed If You Were a Dinosaur, My Love.

    Because I don’t fucking care. That’s the thing that the Anti-Puppies side can’t seem to grasp. These two things are completely orthogonal to one another. There is no linkage. I can spin that wheel over there as fast or as slow as I like, and it has no bearing on this one over here. Write a good story? I’ll probably buy it, read it, and enjoy it. It would take truly staggering iniquity on the part of an author to cause me to judge their work based on their person.

    And the reverse is true. When the Anti-Puppy side talks about “Increasing diversity in Hugo winners” it’s complete nonsense to me. Because it’s not about the number of ticky-boxes on the HR forms the author is entitled to mark, for me. It’s about their creative output.

    I mean, for fuck’s sake we are science fiction fans! I grew up on a diet rich in Heinlein, Niven, Pournelle, Gibson, Haldeman and so forth. I’m prepared to accept entities with 4 arms and 6 legs, or no arms and legs but lots of tentacles, or with slimy rubbery skin, or that are simply hyper-intelligent shades of the color blue, as fellow sapients. And judge them based on the output of their intelligences. “Oh, we need more representation from the chromosexual community of the color blue” just isn’t a thing I care about for the 3015 Hugo Awards, I just wanna read the best book written by a Hooloovoo.

  240. Since I didn’t run Sap Puppies 2, I wasn’t in charge of that slate.

    I am in charge of Sad Puppies 3, and Vox is not on the list as an author, or an editor.

    Somehow this doesn’t matter to people who — if Vox did not exist — would simply make up some other reason to call me a bad guy.

  241. Weimer, listen: for whatever reason, you’ve decided to throw in your hand with a cult which specializes in hate speech against ethnic Europeans, men and heterosexuals.

    That entire sentence is wrong, James.

    But I wasn’t even talking about that, i was talking about simple politeness and you bring up your challenge. Even if I did answer it, the odds of you accepting any answer I’d give is pretty close to zero, because you are convinced you are right already. I could never pass your challenge. We both know this.

    I do see a lot of anger and hatred in you. It’s probably just the internet at work, and offline you’re a pleasant guy who likes to take photos, as I do.

    All I ever really see of you online ,though, is just stirring toxic hatred of feminists, SJWs and their allies, with nary a pause for breath. It paints a picture of you that is almost certainly inaccurate, but is unflattering.

    Even I, James, have to stop with all of the drama sometimes, and just post photos from my latest adventures.

  242. What was that sign from the tea party rallies?

    Doesn’t matter what I write here, you’ll call me racist anyway?

  243. Disclaimer: I don’t personally know any of the parties authoring these comments or posts. I don’t belong to any “side” or faction (that I’m aware of), nor do I intend to affiliate.
    I’m an old bat who’s been in SF/F/H fandom for a very long time. I’ve been in long enough to see things change over and over again, and in some instances, not change. I’ve voted and not voted on the Hugos, depending on the year. Heck, once upon a time I was nominated for a Stoker, and another I was listed as an Honorable Mention in the Year’s Best SFF (atrociously overwritten story, what can I say). I came here to read what Brad T wrote, and was interested in the comments/observations of other fans. I thought, and still think that the Sad Puppies had/have some points. I have friends on both sides of this quarrel. I’d like to make some observations. You may make of them what you will.
    Controversy is not new in fandom. The entrenched Old Guard of today once railed against the entrenched Old Guard of yesterday because the times they were a changin’, etc ad nauseam. I think the difference this time is the lack of common consideration on both sides of this issue.Cries of “they started it” ring out, like playground fracases. Each side is threatening to burn down the swing set if they don’t get to keep the slide all to themselves and their friends. Aesop’s Fables, Dog in the Manger, geezus. All over a Hugo rocket statue award that at once apparently means so little, and simultaneously so much, that both sides will destroy it in a concert of mirror image mutual destruction. Oh, the hyperbole! Oh, the sadness of it all. The polarization in this portion of fandom now reflects the polarization in our country. Great. I rarely knew the politics of those I was reading for decades, and never cared. Sigh.
    Enough maundering? Nah. I have a couple of specific things to say about specific comments, and then I will leave. First, like “Cat”, Mr. Kratman, I know nothing of war on a visceral level. I’m the daughter of a WWII Marine (Pacific theater), niece of a Bataan survivor and a lifer USN Sr CPO, ex-wife of a Vietnam vet, and mom of two Iraq war veterans (1st Cav and 3ID). Suffice to say that as an inquisitive kid, and later as a mom, I heard a lot about war. But I didn’t live it.
    I think it’s because of the standards they live and lived by that I’m most disappointed in you, Mr. Kratman (don’t worry, I don’t expect you to care). Why resort to cheap, nasty epithets and intimidation tactics against someone (Cat) who was explaining a position? Why engage in “Cry ‘Havoc’!, and let slip the dogs of war” ? Is it fair to not vote for works that may be of merit because they are listed on a particular slate? Probably not. But is it any more “fair” to threaten to burn down the playground? Again, probably not. It seems to me that both sides of this are determined to exceed each other in absurdity. But yeah, you definitely won the epithet contest in that rather one-sided exchange. Wow. Apropos of nothing, my dad could curse for ten minutes straight without repeating himself (I wasn’t supposed to hear it). But I digress. You incite and encourage those who are less experienced than yourself to commit even more havoc. You have plausible deniability because you can say you were only defending yourself against (perceived) slights. You aren’t the only one. You just happened to be the one I stumbled upon.
    Generally, I know a lot of the comments are gaming metaphor, but it’s gaming metaphor with real consequences for real people on both sides of the issue. And some of those people will disagree. I know everyone is way past “Civility” and “Tone”, but I think that the line should be drawn (ON BOTH SIDES) at actual threats, as well as calling people “pussies” and “fuckwads” for disagreeing.
    And finally (omg, will she ever shut up?), Brad Torgerson. I think you give Vox Day way too much power by naming him the Kurgan. Vox Day seems to be a sad and angry little man who spends a great deal of his time plotting revenge on those he thinks did him wrong. Maybe some of them did do him wrong. Yet it seems that enemies list is getting bigger by the day. For my part, I pity him in the same way I might pity a rabid dog. You feel bad for the dog (I love dogs, btw), but you recognize that if it’s possible, he’s going to rend as many as he can before his self-destruction is complete. I recognize that the truly mad among us may be said to be gifts of one sort or another. That may be true. But we each have the right to refuse to accept that gift.
    Thanks to anyone who bothers to read my thoughts. I’ve had my say, and perhaps it will make it past whatever moderation is going on in here.

  244. I’ve been reading sci-fi for 50 years. I buy what I want to read. Here’s the way I see it. The Hugo award is meaningless. Whenever feminism is injected into the situation, ho hummm……like perlhaqr said, he’s used to reading about all sorts of aliens and such, so, I really don’t feel racist. I’m a fan of a well written space opera, and David Weber has really done a good job. Kindle unlimited is a great deal. Heinlein, Herbert, and so many others a good friends that I revisit from time to time. Do you remember Heinlein’s “Friday”? There was a very good line that said something pertinent……that the time to leave a society was when folks quit being polite. Heinlein had a lot to say about a lot of things, like having to pay for your oxygen in “The moon is a harsh mistress.” Yeah, feminist lit just doesn’t cut real life, does it? I’m a white male, bilingual, speak idiomatic Spanish, and grew up among Mexicans. Married a Black nurse who became mentally ill. So, I’m not a racist. But, I’ll tell you this…….Heinlein was a serious fan of “The God of the Copy book headings.” Kipling had a lot to say about eternal truths…..you know, just like some of the best sci-fi.

  245. Michael Z. Williamson wrote: Never go past full retard all the way to turnip.
    followed, less than an hour, by
    Tom Kratman writing: Heeerrrrreee pussypussypussypussypussy.

    ‘Nuff Said. You guys are hilarious.

  246. Hey, Weimer. Go fuck off.

    If my entire sentence is wrong then that means the entire world outside your diving bell is a giant KKK, which pretty much fits in with this whimsical cisheteropatriarchy you imagine is clamping down on everyone and has a stranglehold on SFF.

    Post your photos of your adventures and be happy. What the hell does that have to do with me? As in all intersectional semantics, I imagine your idea of adventure is bicycling to Red Wing.

    “August 18th. Fell off near Bovey Tracey. The pump
    caught in my trouser leg, and my sandwiches were badly crushed.

    August 23rd. Fell off near Budleigh Salterton.

    Aug. 26th. Fell off near Ottery St. Mary. The pump caught in my trouser leg. Decide to wear short trousers from now on.

    Fell off near Tiverton. Perhaps a shorter pump is the answer.

    Sept 2nd. Did not fall off outside Iddesley.

    Fell off in Tavistock.”

  247. Brad: Presuming your most recent comment was in response to the quotes I selected for rebuttal, to be fair, in the original text, Cat was referring to Tom, who at least actually is an SP3 nominee. I apologize for having apparently excised too much context from the quote.

  250. Pingback: Mary Robinette Kowal on the Hugo Awards | Novel Ninja

  251. You reading is incorrect Grasshopper. When you say Vox doesn’t care or give a fuck. No no. Nobody fights back with such passion who does not care or is not willing to lead a Forlorn Hope against a mighty fortress to throw it over and win.

    He played by the rules set by the WSFS and SFWA. They both agree. I read the charge sheet in full and his rebuttal, in full. All the i’s were dotted, all t’s were crossed. His argument was incontestable and that simple fact is reflected by SFWA claiming copyright over both and banning them from the web with DMCA so that others could NEVER read them and ascertain the facts for themselves.

    I get that he holds opinions that are in sharp contrast to those of others but none of them are illegal and none of them do I find all that offensive. It’s just that he is toxic because he did lead the Forlorn Hope that led to the downfall of SJB control of Hugo nominations. He’s the Martin Luther of your parade.

    He warned them that he was going to fight back. At the time I thought he’d just hire lawyers. I guess that’s not his way.

  252. Pingback: Lightning Round – 2015/04/15 | Free Northerner

  255. Brad, gotta say I think you’re worrying too much about this. First, the SJWs don’t have the votes to pass No Award in any category. They’re a pretty small group.

    Second, who gives a shit if they do? The entire purpose of SP was to expose the SJWs for what they are, a clique of destructive pecker heads bent on ruining Science Fiction as a genre, the same as they ruin everything else they touch. Them burning down the Hugos rather than let somebody else win is, as John Scalzi puts it, a Victory Condition for Sad Puppies. Gotta love using Scalzi’s own words to rub the salt in.

  256. Dude, you’re a member of the Dread Ilk. You allied with him, he was a big supporter of the Sad Puppies in 2013 and 2014 – you knew what he was when you signed him up for this. And now you’re complaining that when you lie down with dogs, you get up with fleas? That just doesn’t scan, man. It doesn’t scan.

    Forget it, Brad, it’s Chinatown. You and Correia will forever be associated as Vox’s Ilk. There’s nothing you can do about it. Your best option, since allying with him put you on his side, is to promote his every pronouncement in the hopes that you remain in his good graces. He’s the guy with the money here.

  257. So a Hugo nominated author is doxing someone on your blog Brad and you do nothing? He also appeared to be threatening him.

    Interesting.

  258. Pingback: Death Rides A Puppy 4/21 | File 770

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