Keep this literary interpretation in mind when you see SJWs in science fiction striking poses and attempting to dismiss the literary quality of the Sad Puppies-recommended works. Considering their complete lack of reading comprehension, they shouldn’t even be allowed Hugo ballots. Or any utensils beyond plastic sporks.
#313 ::: rea :::April 03, 2015, 10:07 AM:
Nancy Lebovitz @300: ‘I think that if people hadn’t been aware of VDs history, the reaction to his nominated short story would have been more like “why is this mediocre thing on the ballot?” rather than “kill it with fire”.’I read the story last year. I thought it was deeply, deeply racist, with “elves” being a stand-in for blacks and other minorities. Elves don’t have souls. Most of them commit atrocities. One elf manages to set aside his atrocity-committing tendencies, adopt the traits of human civilization, and even make friends with humans (“some of my best friends are elves”), but it doesn’t help him–he’s still soulless–and moreover all of the humans who have befriended him get massacred by the evil elvish majority. Moral–association with members of other races is at best futile, and likely to be dangerous.
Now, if you’ve read “Opera Vita Aeterna”, or any of my fiction set in Selenoth, for that matter, you will recognize that this particularly reading of the Hugo-nominated novelette isn’t merely wrong or stupid, it is downright insane.