#Arkhaven INFOGALACTIC #Castalia House
A History of Strategy chapter 2.
If you want to get caught up and take the first one, you can find it here. If you still haven’t picked up a copy of the book, A History of Strategy is now available in hardcover for $14.99 as well as in Kindle format.
Discuss the quiz and the chapter in the comments below; don’t check out the comments before you take the quiz.
I thought John Scalzi’s new book deal to lock in his retirement was an interesting indication of his intrinsic insecurity as well as the practicality that distinguishes him from most of his SF colleagues.
John Scalzi, a best-selling author of science fiction, has signed a $3.4 million, 10-year deal with the publisher Tor Books that will cover his next 13 books.
Mr. Scalzi’s works include a series known as the “Old Man’s War” and the more recent “Redshirts,” a Hugo-award-winning sendup of the luckless lives of nonfeatured characters on shows like the original “Star Trek.” Three of his works are being developed for television, including “Redshirts” and “Lock In,” a science-inflected medical thriller that evokes Michael Crichton. Mr. Scalzi’s hyper-caffeinated Internet presence through his blog, Whatever, has made him an online celebrity as well.
Mr. Scalzi approached Tor Books, his longtime publisher, with proposals for 10 adult novels and three young adult novels over 10 years. Some of the books will extend the popular “Old Man’s War” series, building on an existing audience, and one will be a sequel to “Lock In.” Mr. Scalzi said he hoped books like “Lock In” could draw more readers toward science fiction, since many, he said, are still “gun-shy” about the genre.
Patrick Nielsen Hayden, the executive editor for Tor, said the decision was an easy one.
I imagine it was a very easy one. Scalzi is, nominally, Tor’s big dog. He’s not a proper big dog, as he isn’t one of their ten annual biggest sellers or even a bestselling author, but he’s their most important SF figurehead author. Who else do they have? Of their better-selling authors, Frank Herbert is dead, Robert Jordan is dead, Orson Scott Card is hated by their core audience, and they can’t control Microsoft or the game companies whose tie-in novels are their biggest sellers. They have Scalzi and Brandon Sanderson, both of whom appear to have more or less peaked in terms of their careers. It’s not as if the award-winning Jo Walton or the award-winning Catharine Asaro or any of their other award-winning authors sell enough books to support all the SJW non-SF they keep trying to push on an unwilling public.
So to be gifted the opportunity to lock in one of their top authors for a decade at little more than 250k per book at an initial cost of $1 million up front is an absolute no-brainer. Scalzi is a hack in the positive sense of the term; unless he’s dead there is no chance he’s not going to be able to churn out the sort of mediocre material he produces. To break even on the initial advance, (the payments are usually divided into signing, delivery, and acceptance these days), Tor only has to sell an average of about 15k books each. Assuming all 13 books are delivered and paid for, they have to sell around 40k copies apiece, which should be doable considering that Redshirts sold nearly that many ebooks alone in the first eight months of its release. It’s a great deal for them, especially since they likely have the ability to get out of it down the road without paying two-thirds of it if they wish.
NB: The mainstream publishers now pay book advances in thirds. One-third on signature, one-third on delivery, and one third on either acceptance or publication. So, the contract is most likely $1 million up front, with two payments of $75k for each book upon a) delivery, and b) acceptance or publication.
This isn’t a bad deal for Scalzi, it is merely a very conservative deal. What Johnny Con is attempting to do is to secure his retirement and look for any upside to come out of the various media deals he’s got going. It’s a perfectly reasonable strategy, particularly in these uncertain economic times. The bolder strategy would have been for him to go into self-publishing, where as I’ve demonstrated, there is considerably more upside to be had. But Scalzi is neither a self-confident man nor an entrepreneur, so it is entirely in character that he’d prefer to give up the equivalent of about five birds in the bush in favor of the one in Tor’s hand.
There is absolutely nothing wrong with that. And since he has a reasonable shot at other upsides, I think it’s an entirely sensible deal on his part. Lock in the base, then see what you can leverage elsewhere. It’s a conservative move, but not one that I would criticize him for making. Everyone has different appetites for risk. Indeed, as I have often said, McRapey has an unusual talent for self-promotion. The fact that a mediocre and derivative hack without any discernible talent beyond self-promotion and petty snark could turn 300k monthly pageviews and a color-by-numbers Heinlein ripoff into a near-guaranteed $250k per year is borderline astonishing. If he’d somehow managed to do it without repeatedly lying his ample ass off and consistently misrepresenting himself, I’d consider him to be downright brilliant.
What is much more important is what the deal indicates for science fiction publishing, and that is where I see problems on the horizon. If one of the best-known authors in science fiction can only command $260k per book from the biggest science fiction publisher, then conventional publishing does not appear to be long for this world. Which is, in fact, exactly what I believe to be the case.
Of course, I was genuinely amused to see McRapey omit making any traffic claims for the blog that made him “an online celebrity”. I wonder why he doesn’t brag about those two million monthly pageviews or 50 THOUSAND DAILY VISITS to reporters anymore?
The Campbell-Delany divide pretty well sums up the two sides in the science fiction culture war. To translate how the New Republic describes it, it is scientagic realists against child-molesting pedophiles and their defenders in the science fiction community:
To outsiders, the struggle over the Hugos can be confusing. It involves the arcane details of a complex nomination procedure and factions named Sad Puppies 3 and Rabid Puppies. But the ruckus makes a lot more sense in the context of science fiction’s historical lack of diversity, and there’s perhaps no better illustration of that problem than the career of Samuel R. Delany…. John W. Campbell, Analog’s editor, claimed that he enjoyed shaking up his audience with outrageous ideas, but [Delany’s] “Nova” proved too much for him. According to Delany, Campbell called the author’s agent and said that while he liked the novel, “he didn’t feel his readership would be able to relate to a black main character.” Campbell’s contention that fans weren’t ready for a book like “Nova” was belied by the fact that it was shortlisted for a Hugo in 1969.
Campbell used his audience as a cover for his own racism. He had published editorials arguing that slavery was a perfectly sensible system for pre-industrial societies, championing the racial theory that whites have a fundamentally higher level of intelligence than blacks and asserting, “One of the major reasons the Negro people are having so much trouble gaining acceptance is, simply, that the Negroes are not doing an adequate job of disciplining their own people, themselves.” Campbell was no fringe kook. He was the most influential science-fiction editor of the last century, whose vision of rule-based, scientifically informed fiction shaped the careers of such canonical writers as Heinlein, Isaac Asimov, Theodore Sturgeon and Frank Herbert.
Amid the strife of the 1960s, which polarized science fiction no less than the rest of culture, it was easy to cast Campbell and Delany as diametric opposites: Campbell as the old reactionary apostle of heroic, manly tales of space cowboys, and Delany as the young subversive practitioner of cutting-edge speculative fiction that challenged certitudes about identity.
We have called for a Cambellian revolution in science fiction; to a certain extent, that’s what Blue SF is. And “subversive speculative fiction that challenges certitudes about identity, morality, religion, sexual orientation, and tradition” is about as good a way as any to describe the Pink SF we oppose. Campbellian SF vs Delanyite SF. Science vs Subversion. White Male Racists vs Gay Child Rapists.
One thing you’ll note that the mainstream media never does is to dig up and expose the evil that lies at the heart of Pink SF. They love to point-and-shriek at the late Campbell’s racism, never mind that he was, and is, absolutely correct, as whites have been reliably observed to possess a higher average intelligence than blacks. One would expect a top science fiction editor to be up on the relevant science, after all. Here is a quote from William Saletan, a writer of whom Delany himself cites respectfully:
Among white Americans, the average IQ, as of a decade or so ago, was 103. Among Asian-Americans, it was 106. Among Jewish Americans, it was 113. Among Latino Americans, it was 89. Among African-Americans, it was 85. Around the world, studies find the same general pattern: whites 100, East Asians 106, sub-Sarahan Africans 70.
So, are we all East Asian supremacists now? Is science intrinsically racist and therefore anathema? In the meantime, both the media and the science fiction community resolutely avoid looking into the likelihood that good old “Chip” Delany is a criminal pedophile, like Walter Breen, like Marion Zimmer Bradley, like Ed Kramer, like David Asimov, and like other members of the science fiction community whose sex crimes the science fiction community has either ignored or defended for decades.
The New Republic article quoted Delany talking about Campell; what a pity they didn’t quote Delany talking about himself.
“I read the NAMBLA [Bulletin] fairly regularly and I think it is one of the most intelligent discussions of sexuality I’ve ever found. I think before you start judging what NAMBLA is about, expose yourself to it and see what it is really about.”
– Samuel R. Delany, June 25, 1994.
“Since I spent eighteen years of my life as a child, and nine years of that life as a pretty sexually active gay child, my complaint against the current attitudes is that they work mightily to silence the voices of children first and secondarily ignore what adults have to say who have been through these situations. One size fits all is never the way to handle any situation with a human dimension. Many, many children—and I was one of them—are desperate to establish some sort of sexual relation with an older and even adult figure.”
– Samuel R. Delany, Wednesday, July 9, 2014
“Adults hurting children is my notion of a bad thing, whether it is through corporal punishment or in any other way. Children hurting children is equally bad. Pain is not a good teaching tool. So that’s where I tend to stop.”
– Samuel R. Delany, Wednesday, July 9, 2014
That last quote is particularly problematic, as contra his self-appointed public defenders’ claims, Delany is clearly referring to physical pain, not sexual contact, when he says “hurting children” is his “notion of a bad thing”. Most people assume that sexual contact is intrinsically harmful to children. Delany actively denies this.
Delany has admitted to being in sexual contact with adult men since the age of 6 and considers himself to have been sexually active since the age of 9. He has attacked the idea that children cannot consent to sexual activity with adults and only opposes children being hurt in the sense of physical pain, and has even quoted a Carlin joke in claiming that it is less harmful to a boy to receive oral sex than be spanked. He has written, repeatedly and at great length, about his fantasies of pre-adolescent boys and girls being raped and otherwise sexually molested by men in a number of his novels, most particularly Hogg: A Novel, which was published in 2004 and is described as follows by Publishers Weekly:
Hugo-and Nebula Award-winner Delany – whose early books were fascinating but whose recent efforts have grown increasingly obtuse – has been trying to get this pornographic novel published since 1973. The main narrator here is an 11-year-old boy who joins up with a raping, murdering pederast named Hogg. Coprophiliac Hogg violates women for pay. He enlists the help of other pedophiliac murdering rapists – Nigg, Dago and Denny – and the group sets off to perform acts of hideous violence. After the attacks, a biker friend of Hogg’s sells the boy into sexual slavery to dockyard slum resident Big Sambo, who keeps his 12-year-old daughter for prostitution and his own perversions. The traumatized little girl is gang-raped by Hogg’s crew as well. Meanwhile, teenaged Denny goes on an insane mutilating and mass-murder spree, eludes the police and finally returns to Hogg and the hopelessly confused narrator, who has been “rescued” after Hogg murders Big Sambo. Gang-rape attacks and criminal sex orgies are detailed at excruciating length, with photographic realism. This potent emetic is all the more disturbing for want of modulators of honest outrage.
If one can reasonably declare John W. Campbell a racist on the basis of his essays and reported words, then one can absolutely, and with utter certainty, declare Samuel R. Delany to be a child-raping pedophile on the basis of his own stated beliefs and published fantasies. This is true despite our limited information about his actual historical actions. Whether or not Delany is a literal child rapist, he certainly has child rapist views. And as for his past actions, we certainly know a hell of a lot more about the SFWA Grand Master pedophilic inclinations than we did about Marion Zimmer Bradley’s only eleven months ago. Is anyone going to even pretend to be surprised should evidence be uncovered that good old “Chip” acted on his criminal fantasies at some point in the past?
Here are two questions for Samuel R. Delany. If the media or SFWA continue to avoid asking them, you’ll know they’re simply afraid to receive the answer; even Will Shetterly, who otherwise addressed the issue in a forthright manner, failed to ask the obvious and important question. I will say one thing for Mr. Delany, he is alarmingly forthcoming, he hasn’t been afraid to answer difficult questions posed to him in the past, and one can’t blame him for not answering questions that were never asked. So here they are:
Until those two questions are answered honestly by Mr. Delany, anyone who denies that good old “Chip” Delany, SFWA Grand Master has ever behaved inappropriately is doing so dishonestly on the basis of no information at all and in the face of considerable evidence to the contrary. What a pity that Delany didn’t throw a few spaceships into Hogg or it might have made the Hugo shortlist too.
On a lighter note, this quote from George R.R. Martin cracked me up:
“We’re SCIENCE FICTION AND FANTASY FANS, we love to read about aliens
and vampires and elves. Are we really going to freak about Asians and
Native Americans?”
Well, George, judging by the continuing series of articles about Sad Puppies and the Hugo Awards, to say nothing of your own copious posting on the subject, you certainly appear to be freaking out about this Native American.
So are their allies in the media:
If patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel, then these people went out of their way to prove that social justice is the last refuge of bullies and cowards.
But real life is not high school, and now the worm has turned. Like clockwork, nearly every alleged “victim” put forward with oozing crocodile tears by these journalistic reptiles has been discredited. Their narrative that sexism dominates Silicon Valley has been crushed under a judge’s gavel. Their claim that depraved captains of tech exploit rape culture to ravish the vulnerable appear to have been exposed as rank opportunism at best. Their allegations that rape has swept America’s college campuses now look like the fabrications of pathological liars and jealous exes. The allegedly “sexist” and “violent” #Gamergate has braved a bomb threat without incident, while its media critics have either been fired, lost millions of dollars for alienating their core audience, or have simply revealed their extremism too publicly to be taken seriously. An army of science fiction fans determined to see merit returned to the criteria used for awarding the prestigious Hugo Awards have stormed the leftist bastille that is Worldcon and reduced their opponents to (ironically) suddenly discovering that an uncritically “inclusive” space might not be all it’s cracked up to be.
And if that wasn’t enough, this week, the Society of Professional Journalists has agreed to hear the case made by #Gamergate supporters that the entire field of gaming journalism has been turned into a hotbed of cronyism and ideologically motivated deceit. This mark of legitimacy was sensibly conferred after a particularly conscientious member of the SPJ quite reasonably pointed out that an accusation of unethical behavior deserves a hearing, no matter how unfashionable its exponents.
This didn’t start overnight. It won’t end overnight. But we’re winning our Lexington and Concord.
It’s rather funny reading the midwits at Popehat attempting to describe me for the benefit of each other. Even Clark himself doesn’t grasp what all of the Ilk have with ease:
Clark, I appreciate your description of Vox as a performance artist; it gives me a bit better perspective on his schtick. Given the “anti” in many of his expressed views, I can see what attraction he has for you. Yes, he’s brilliant; he has constructed an immense Vox-world, with its own social rules, heirarchy and mythos. He’s positioned himself in a pseudo-intellectual gaping hole and become the god of the whiny, sniveling mysogynistic mouth-breathers that inhabit its nether-regions. He is so over-the-top that it must take an enormous, expansive intellect to keep all that crazy consistent in some sort of weird Vox-world logical way. He’s also one of the nastiest narcissitic psychopaths to inhabit the planet Earth. The evil demons seem to dance at his command, as he draws the most vile thoughts out of his subjects to pour forth onto the internet – and he does it all with flair, making it seem effortless. Reading his posts and the comments is like looking beneath a rock and being blinded by the awful blackness of the anti-Christ. Some people say he’s insecure, but I think he’s doing pretty well at holding on to his Vox-world god-throne. I suspect much planning and deliberation go into his performance, because being Vox must be exhausting. I don’t know how he sleeps at night.
Count the obvious flaws:
She certainly does better than Gunnar:
My attack on Vox Day’s anti-scientific nonsense is from the perspective of a biologist btw. I’ve seen a lot of anti-scientific nonsense over the years and I’m somewhat familiar with Vox Day’s creationist arguments, and I have dismissed them as completely nonsensical and generally awful. Now this Clark dude is telling me that I’m either being dishonest or illogical because I think Vox Day is peddling anti-scientific nonsense and I dismiss the idea of him as a serious thinker. Clark probably doesn’t even realize that by his argument he’s dismissing most of the biologists (and probably most scientists) on this planet as either being dishonest or illogical, but that is what he’s doing by claiming those are the two options if you think Vox Day is bad at logic.
This is amusing. What Gunnar doesn’t understand is that I am considerably more intelligent than most of the biologists and most of the scientists on the planet. One of the things we discussed in the May Brainstorm was directly related to this: the importance of NOT blithely trusting the experts for the highly intelligent. TL;DR: if you have a 135+ IQ and an expert is pinging your sense of wrongness, trust your instincts, put on the brakes, and dig into what he’s advising before proceeding no matter what the subject. Most of the time that happens, the expert is either unaware of better options, has got something wrong, or is misapplying a standard protocol. My philosophy with experts is this: respect, but verify.
And I always enjoy this idiotic midwit heuristic:
Christ what an insecure little shit. One of the things I’ve learned in life is that those who pound their chest and boast about what a badass they are and the havoc they’ll dispense if you cross them, aren’t and effectively can’t. They’re laughable. I have no idea what personal demon haunts him, but he’s definitely overcompensating for some perceived inadequacy. What a silly little shit.
Meanwhile, half the media organizations from the UK to New Zealand are writing furious stories about the ongoing havoc in the science fiction field. And all that havoc was triggered by a single blog post. Imagine what could happen if I actually put any thought or effort into it.
And all these Popehat dramatics stem from one tweet and one post that revealed nothing new about anyone. It’s nothing more than rabbits hopping about in alarm and attempting to DISQUALIFY for fear that members of their warren will defect and join the big bad wolf pack.
There are more reports of ISIS atrocities in Syria:
Islamic State militants have executed at least 400 mostly women and children in Syria’s ancient city of Palmyra. Eye-witnesses have reported the streets are strewn with bodies – the latest victims of the Islamic State’s unrelenting savagery – on the same day photographs of captured Syrian soldiers have emerged.
It follows the killing of nearly 300 pro-government troops two days after they captured the city, now symbolised by a black ISIS flag flying above an ancient citadel.
However, keep in mind that false reports of atrocities have been used to whip up support for war for centuries. That doesn’t mean the reports are inaccurate, particularly in the electronic age when it’s easier to document events, but it’s important not to rush to judgment.
In my opinion, there is no reason to even contemplate military intervention in the Islamic world as long as Muslims reside in the West. This is the third great wave of Islamic expansion of a form that long predates the Westphalian system of nation-states and any policy that is based on Westphalian or post-Westphalian principles is bound to fail. Remember, a significant percentage of Muslims in the West openly sympathize with ISIS, and perhaps more importantly, it was Western governments that made the Caliphate possible:
A declassified secret US government document obtained by the conservative public interest law firm Judicial Watch, shows that Western governments deliberately allied with al-Qaeda and other Islamist extremist groups to topple Syrian dictator Bashir al-Assad. The document reveals that in coordination with the Gulf states and Turkey, the West intentionally sponsored violent Islamist groups to destabilize Assad, and that these “supporting powers” desired the emergence of a “Salafist Principality” in Syria to “isolate the Syrian regime.”
Yet another strike against the principle of foreign intervention. The devil you don’t know is often considerably worse than the one you are trying to cast out.
This is the current Brainstorm schedule. Italic indicates a closed event available only to Brainstorm members.
UPCOMING EVENTS:
Roosh V, 10 June, 6 PM EDT 500 275 seats left. Reserve seat.
Brainstorm June, 24 June, 7:30 PM EDT Members only.
PAST EVENTS:
Martin van Creveld, 31 May, 2 PM EDT
Brainstorm May (Crohn’s, Dark Energy, Hugos)
Members should mention what topics they are interested in discussing this month either here or on the chat channel, I’ll pick three and then select two panelists after the topics are settled. Save the astrophysics for July, as that will be the main topic, Stickwick will be one of the panelists again and she wants some time to prepare for it.
Also, most of you are probably unaware that I taught a 12-week course on game development and the history of games in Zurich last year at a Swiss technical institute. Although it was well received and I was asked to repeat it, the regular travel was a bit too brutal and with the promised fast train from Milano still more than a year away, I declined.
However, I plan to revive the course in September with the sponsorship of the institute, albeit online via the webinar software we’re using for Brainstorm. It’s going to be a 10-lesson course for $150, and Annual members will be allowed to attend free if it’s of interest to them. In addition to the core material, the course will feature 30-minute interview/Q&As with various industry figures, including veteran designers, programmers, artists, magazine editors, and even a studio head.
This is how I am voting in the Best Novel category. Of course, I merely offer this information regarding my individual ballot for no particular reason at all, and the fact that I have done so should not be confused in any way, shape, or form with a slate or a bloc vote, much less a direct order by the Supreme Dark Lord of the Evil Legion of Evil to his 367 Vile Faceless Minions or anyone else.
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As for Ancillary Sword, the fact that Ancillary Justice won last year was an indictment of the Hugos, the Nebulas and every other science fiction award it won. The fact that Ancillary Justice is the most-awarded novel in science fiction history will be seen as a complete joke within a decade, and within 15 years it will be as little read as the now-forgotten Nebula-winner The Quantum Rose (Amazon Rank:
#2,563,748 in Books) is now. And the first book was better than the sequel. Therefore I am leaving it off the ballot.
Other categories will follow over the next few weeks, in the off-chance that anyone happens to be interested in my opinion.
Roosh@rooshv
Surprise: one of my committed haters @Popehat is mentally ill, served time in an institution. I wish him the bestPopehat @Popehat
@rooshv “committed haters” is actually pretty clever.Popehat @Popehat
.@rooshv Ken isn’t the Popehat blogger who hates you. Patrick is the one who hates you, you scrofulous little Ben-wa ball.Vox Day @voxday
.@Popehat @rooshv Is this “Patrick” an actual person or one of the 16 Personalities of Popehat?
I find it rather astonishing that anyone would be so naive as to imagine, in this day and Information Age, to think that it is a good idea to simultaneously a) be mentally ill and b) play attack dog on the Internet. If being medicated or otherwise under treatment for mental illness meant that one was to be regarded as off limits, it would be impossible to respond to an estimated one-in-five people and four-in-five SJWs. So that’s a complete non-starter.
Now, I don’t wish disease of any kind on anyone. I never have and never will. I would very much like for everyone, even those who most hate me, to be healthy, happy, and well. But if you have a mental illness and you are foolish enough to attack me, then you can be certain that I will exploit your weakness to whatever extent I happen to find useful or amusing. Why? Because you gave up any claim to my sympathy or civility of your own free will when you decided to attack me or mine without provocation.
My advice to Ken White is threefold:
My code of behavior is very simple and straightforward. Leave me alone and I will leave you alone. Start something and I will do my level best to finish it to my satisfaction, no matter how long it takes. So, once you’ve made it personal, don’t whine about how cruelly I take advantage of your feelings of worthlessness or complain about how viciously I exploit your sense of being a failure. All you had to do was leave me alone. And if you can’t manage something as simple as that, well, then perhaps you really are a stupid and worthless individual doomed to inevitable failure in life.
If you are weak, then for the love of God and anything else in which you happen to believe, do not attack the strong!
One thing I think might be useful to keep in mind that the genuinely stable and self-confident individual has as much trouble understanding the perspective of the unstable and insecure person as the latter does the former. When I read Ken’s post about his breakdown and his struggles, my overwhelming impression was sheer bewilderment. He might as well have written it in Chinese for all that I related to it. And what’s more, in writing this post, I begin to understand just how evil and pernicious the behavior of the SJWs who constantly try to spin the false narrative of my incessant failure really is: I now understand that being mentally unstable themselves, they are intentionally attempting to provoke me into a psychological tailspin.
That is foolish for two reasons. First, I’m not susceptible to it. It will never, ever work on me because the effect is precisely the opposite of the one intended. In fact, it’s exactly what my track coach at university used to do in order to motivate my sprinters group on speed day. (NB: in the track world, sprinters are well known for being the most self-confident of athletes. As it is said, sprinters are born, not made, and you either have it or you don’t.) Second, and more important, their use of the tactic tells me precisely who is going to be most vulnerable to it.
And the Dark Lord laughed….
It’s as if they have to constantly spin false narratives or they’ll stop breathing”
At least Mr. Beale isn’t claiming I’m calling for false reviews anymore, though he still hasn’t retracted that statement.
I am absolutely claiming that Glenn Hauman has called and is still calling for false reviews of certain works to be posted on Amazon. He has publicly, and disingenuously, called for them twice now. Ten negative reviews, at least five of them confirmed by the reviewer to be false, have now been posted, some by his known associates. Mr. Hauman is either lying or woefully mistaken when he says I am not claiming that he’s calling for false reviews anymore.
This is standard SJW behavior. They say something in a passive-aggressive, plausibly deniable manner that they expect others to interpret in a certain way and act accordingly. This is why they are always talking about “dog whistles”; that is how they communicate amongst themselves.
Then, when criticized for the very consequences they intended, they deny having done what they did, reject all responsibility for the consequences of their words, and insist that everyone accept the false narrative of the disconnect between their call to action and the subsequent actions.
Hauman points out that he said people should read the various Puppy works before the reviewers “put them down”, but some of the reviewers didn’t, by their own admission, read them, nor did Hauman give a damn whether they did or not. His objective was for the Puppy works to receive negative reviews, which they subsequently received. Mission accomplished. The pretense the SJW attempts to maintain is usually a childishly transparent one, and it both confuses and alarms them when one simply ignores the verbal fog of nominal “plausibility” with which they try to preemptively defend themselves and focuses on the intention and the effect.
As, one notes, the justice system likewise does. No drug dealer has ever escaped conviction because he said “melons and cantaloupes” in the place of marijuana and cocaine when wire-tapped. What he said may be true, but it is irrelevant. His intentions are best judged by the response to the words, and not the words themselves.
The reason we know it is disingenuousness and dishonesty and not an inability to connect cause-and-effect is that SJWs are not similarly inclined to respect genuine deniability whenever they are accusing someone of one of the many isms they wield as weapons to DISQUALIFY. In fact, SJWs regularly claim the ability to read minds and discern intentions even when there are no actual consequences to observe.
Don’t ever take an SJW’s spun narrative at face value. That’s exactly what they expect you to do; that’s exactly what they need you to do. Punch through it and expose them. You can be sure that the narrative will be false because SJWs always lie.
Speaking of which, these two false narratives are excellent examples:
Stevie on May 22, 2015 at 7:24 pm said:
One thing you will discover is that the canine conspirators are now in total disarray, because the Sads didn’t realise that they would be Shanghaid by the Rabids. Equally, the Rabids are in total disarray because Beale really thought he was going to be treated as an entrepreneurial mastermind by the WSJ and therefore was completely blindsided when the WSJ laughed at him. In other words, all they’ve got left is to be as destructive as possible, and do their best to make everyone else miserable.Chris Hensley on May 22, 2015 at 7:37 pm said:
“Equally, the Rabids are in total disarray because Beale really thought he was going to be treated as an entrepreneurial mastermind by the WSJ and therefore was completely blindsided when the WSJ laughed at him.”All the while Vox Day is screaming “Why are you running? We have them right where we want them!”
Are you in total disarray, Rabid Puppies? As for the idea that I was “completely blindsided” by Michael Rappoport’s article in the Wall Street Journal, this is exactly what I wrote to the Evil Legion of Evil about it two weeks before it ran: “Wall Street Journal piece coming soon, possibly tomorrow. Strangely enough, they didn’t even ask me if I hate black lesbians or kick kittens. It will probably be moderately against us, in my opinion. He wasn’t
hostile, but he played “devil’s advocate”, in his own words, several
times.”
I was, of course, under absolutely no illusions that the piece would have anything to do with entrepreneurship or my being a mastermind of any kind for the obvious reason that I actually talked to the reporter for about ten minutes. Not only were his questions mildly accusatory in nature, but the fact that he was also talking with two people who had nothing to do with the story, George Martin and John Scalzi, was sufficient to tell me which way he was going to spin it. As in fact, turned out to be the case. But the tone of the article was considerably less poisonous than the Entertainment Weekly, Guardian, and Popular Science stories that were planted by the Torlings. Which was nice, and I also noticed that the comments on the WSJ web site ran about 10-1 in our favor.
As for the clueless wonders at File 770 who don’t understand how the Torlings plant stories in the mainstream media, they should look at who publishes the authors of some of those “journo things”.