Chicken with the Dark Lord

Brad Torgersen, the leader of Sad Puppies 3, observes the obvious:

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….

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.

That pretty much sums it up nicely. What do you say, Dread Ilk? What do you say, Rabid Puppies? Are we dogs or are we wolves?

We don’t whine. We don’t cry. We don’t complain. We howl.

And the rabbits tremble.

Objectively superior

At File 770, David W. raises the point about the need for Sad Puppies to make the case that the works they have nominated are meritorious beyond the fact that many of them have sold rather well.

Hugo awards aren’t intended to recognize the skiffy equivalent of
Kraft Mac & Cheese dinners. They’re intended to recognize works
that are distinctive, not derivative, in the genre, and frankly we’re
lucky if 10% of what’s written rises above the level of mediocrity. So the SP’s need to base their claim for Hugo recognition on
something other than sales, such as, “what’s amazing and wonderful about
this story” and “what new and interesting thing has someone done with
science fiction lately”. Not “my story outsold yours, neener, neener,
neener”.

Actually, we can do considerably better than appeal to subjective superlatives too. We can objectively prove the superiority of both the Sad Puppies and Rabid Puppies recommendations, as well as the 2015 shortlist, to the previous five Best Novel classes.

What year looks more like one representative of a true Best Novel class to you? While the averages are set, the winner in 2015 could actually be as high as Jim Butcher’s 4.8-rated Skin Game, but the lowest ranking book nominated this year, Ann Leckie’s Ancillary Sword, is still rated higher than any recent winner except for her own Ancillary Justice. In short fiction, consider the Amazon ratings and number of reviews for two of the Novella nominees in comparison with last year’s winners of the Novella and Novelette categories.

4.6 (63) One Bright Star to Guide Them (2015 finalist)
4.3 (121) Big Boys Don’t Cry (2015 finalist)
4.4 (48) Lady Astronaut of Mars (2014 winner)
4.3 (152) Equoid (2014 winner)

The Sad Puppy nominees are objectively superior as rated by Amazon. They are, in fact, superior across the board in comparison with recent years. We are raising the bar, not lowering it.

At the Castalia House blog, Daniel has done some more research in this regard going back to 1986.

Best Novel 2016

Ben Bernanke isn’t talking to us in the title of his new account of the 2008 financial crisisnovel, he’s talking to the gentlemen paying his speaker’s fees.

“When the economic well-being of their nation demanded a strong and creative response, my colleagues at the Federal Reserve, policymakers and staff alike, mustered the moral courage to do what was necessary, often in the face of bitter criticism and condemnation. I am grateful to all of them.”

As with all Fedspeak, you have to translate it into English. What he so bravely did was bail out the owners of the large banks at the cost of the US economy. The USA will now never exit the debt-prison into which Helicopter Ben locked it without a catastrophic meltdown.

I think we’re going to need to get a ruling from MidAmeriCon if The Courage to Act will be eligible for Best Novel next year. It certainly contains more fiction than the average fantasy novel.

George Martin admits Hugo campaigns

He is to be commended for not following the SJW lead in attempting to deny the undeniable, which is to say the long and easily verified history of organized Hugo campaigning:

 In the ongoing discussion of Puppygate, numerous people have cited one instance, wherein a stack of identical nominating ballots arrived with the same postmark, paid for by consecutive money orders. Those were disallowed. In 1987, members of the Church of Scientology campaigned successfully to place L. Ron Hubbard’s BLACK GENESIS on the Best Novel ballot. That was not disallowed — the Scientologists had done nothing illegal, after all, all they’d done is buy supporting memberships to a convention that they had no intention of attending, for the sole purpose of nominating LRH for a Hugo (hmmm, why does that tactic sound familiar?) — but their campaign created a huge backlash. Hubbard’s name was booed lustily at the Hugo ceremony in Brighton, and his book finished last in the final balloting, behind No Award. (The winner that year was Orson Scott Card, with SPEAKER FOR THE DEAD, for those who are counting).

Of course, there were also recommended reading lists. That wasn’t campaigning, not strictly, but certain lists could have huge influence on the final ballot. The annual LOCUS Recommended Reading List, compiled by Charles Brown and his staff and reviewers, was the most influential. If your book or story made that list… well, it did not guarantee you a place on the ballot, but it sure improved your chances. NESFA (the New England fan club) had an annual list as well, and LASFS might have done the same, not sure. And of course the Nebulas, which came before the Hugos, carried a lot of weight too. Win a Nebula, and the chances were good that you’d be a Hugo nominee as well. Again, no guarantee, some years the shortlists diverged sharply… but more often than not, there was a lot of overlap.

So there were always these factors in play. Cliques, I can hear the Sad Puppies saying. Yeah, maybe. Thing is, they were COMPETING cliques. The NESFA list and the Nebula list were not the same, and the LOCUS list… the LOCUS list was always very long. Five spots on the Hugo ballot, and LOCUS would recommend twenty books, or thirty… sometimes more, when they started putting SF and fantasy in separate categories.

Bottom line, lots of people influenced the Hugos (or tried to), but no one ever successfully controlled the Hugos.

That became even more true when we entered the age of the internet. Suddenly blogs and bulletin boards and listservs were everywhere, and there were DOZENS of people drawing up recommended reading lists and suggesting books and writers and stories. Sweet chaos. It was glorious. So many people talking about books, arguing about books, reading books.

That was also when the practice of writers blogging about their own eligible books and stories took root. “Say, the Hugo nominations are coming up, and I had a few things out last year. Hey, check them out.” Some people were deeply offended by this practice. (Some still are. Check out the blogs of Peter Watts and Adam Roberts on the subject, for instance). Others, especially newer writers and those hungry for attention, seized on it at once as a way of getting their name out there. Publishers and editors began to encourage it. Publicity and advertising budgets being what they were (non-existent in many cases), new writers and midlist writers soon realized that if they did not publicize their books, no one would.

And once it really got rolling, there was no stopping it. “Everyone else is doing it,” you heard writers say. “I have to do it, in self-defense.” They were not wrong. Sometimes the difference between making the Hugo ballot and falling short is a single vote. The writer who refused to self-promote and then fell a few votes short… ouch.

[And yes, I have done all this myself. Mentioned my own work, drawn up recommended reading lists, blogged passionately about people I thought deserved a nomination. I am not condemning the practice, just reporting on it. It always made me feel awkward, but like many of my friends, I knew that if I refrained and then missed the ballot by a few votes, I would be kicking myself. I’d sooner see the practice die out. But until it does, you have to play the game.]

Of course, not everyone was equally good at self-promotion. Certain subfandoms were better organized than others (the DOCTOR WHO fans, for instance). Certain writers were more skilled at social media than others, and built up huge personal followings on Twitter and Facebook, or through their blogs… numbers that soon translated to multiple Hugo nominations.

And that was pretty much where we stood, until the Sad Puppies came along…. The Sad Puppies did not invent Hugo campaigning, by any means. But they escalated it, just as that magazine/publisher partnership did way back when. They turned it up to eleven. Their slate was more effective that anyone could ever have dreamed, so effective that they drowned out pretty much all the other voices. They ran the best organized, most focused, and most effective awards campaign in the history of our genre, and showed everyone else how it’s done.

It’s fascinating to see SJWs like John Scalzi twittering that Sad Puppies are on the wrong side of Mr. Martin when he just cut the legs out from under most of the opposition’s arguments. Observe what Mr. Martin has admitted, contra the SJWs, and particularly the Making Light clique.

  1.  Whisper campaigns and bloc votes are real and have existed for decades. I’ve talked to a number of old school authors and the story is the same in every case. People have bought multiple memberships for their families, for their extended families, and voted them as a bloc. Publishers used to send free copies of the books they were specifically pushing for Best Novel to all the convention voters. Authors agreed to trade votes with each other in an arrangement known as “logrolling”.
  2. We did not invent Hugo campaigning. Neither did John Scalzi. But just as he created Award Pimpage and used his blog to get him a Fan Writer Hugo, then, in a tactic imitated by Jim Hines and Kameron Hurley, used it as a pivot for his successful Best Novel campaign. Now he has 9 Hugo nominations and 3 Hugo Awards, which means that he has more nominations than Jerry Pournelle and Arthur C. Clarke, and 3 more Hugo Awards than Ray Bradbury, A.E. van Vogt, Lester del Rey; Gregory Benford, Norman Spinrad, Terry Pratchett and Iain M. Banks combined. The difference is that Scalzi’s Award Pimpage campaigns benefited only himself. Sad Puppies has helped bring attention to the work of a broad spectrum of hitherto unrecognized, but meritorious authors.
  3. Teresa Nielsen Hayden and everyone else who has claimed that there were no previous campaigns is lying.
  4. Mr. Martin correctly decries the No Award tactic as the nuclear option, because “too many innocents would be hurt, and the Hugos would be destroyed”. He is correct. Those who are advocating it as a way to teach Sad Puppies a lesson are completely failing to understand the situation.
  5. There are those who think No Award will send a message that this kind of campaigning is not wanted at the Hugos. Sure, it will send a very clear message to Sad Puppies. And that message will be: unleash the Rabid Puppies. 
  6. We don’t feel we’re victims. We’re not complaining that we’ve been overlooked for decades. We’re not whining or crying about anything. But we were told by a certain clique that we had to kowtow to them because failing to do so would be “a career-limiting move.” Now we are making sure that no one will ever have to kowtow to them, or cower before them, again.
  7. I published science fiction books for years without ever campaigning for them, listing their eligibility, or pimping them for awards, despite having the public platforms of a nationally syndicated column and a popular blog. And I’m not inclined to listen to criticism from anyone who ever did. 
  8. The two Puppies campaigns have resulted in the highest average Amazon rating in the Best Novel category going back to 1986. In 2015, the average is 4.46 stars. The 2010-2014 pre-Puppy average is 3.9 stars. Sad Puppies is objectively improving the quality of the nominated works and expanding the overall nominee pool.

UPDATE: Mr. Martin added this:

That business about one clique (those dreaded SJWs, I am sure) dominating the nominations for the last ten years strikes me as pure Puppy poop. Where’s the evidence of that?

Someone needs to send him this quote from Charles “Three more Hugo nominations than Asimov or Heinlein” Stross at Making Light back in 2005:

For the purposes of assessing the impact
of your words, it doesn’t matter whether they’re supported by the
evidence or not — we’re talking perceptions here.

The people who live and work and pitch their tents in this
field have long memories. You’ll have to share the same field with them
for a long time — decades, maybe — if you want to be in it at all. And
you’ve just offended 75% of them? This is Not Clever.

You may not need them now, but you have no idea
what your circumstances will look like in ten years’ time. Twenty years.
Thirty. Five minutes hence. (Etcetera.) Pissing people off for no good reason is counter-productive. In a corporate environment it’s sometimes termed a career-limiting move. I think you just made a career-limiting move.

Keep in mind this was in response to a nationally syndicated op/ed column I had written for Universal Press Syndicate. And I was supposed to be concerned that I had limited my career by offending the Nielsen Hayden clique even though I didn’t know who they were.

    Sun Tzu and the SJWs

    In the podcast interview last night, I made a comment about how SJWs have been able to apply one element of Sun Tzu’s strategic recommendations to great success throughout the culture. And, when I thought a bit more about it, I realized there is also a second element that their deceitful nature allows them to successfully implement reliably without even being aware of it.

    The first is this:

    It has been said aforetime that he who
    knows both sides has nothing to fear in a
    hundred fights; he who is ignorant of the
    enemy, and fixes his eyes only on his
    own side, conquers, and the next time is
    defeated; he who not only is ignorant of
    the enemy, but also of his own resources,
    is invariably defeated.

    The second is this:

    War is a thing of pretence: therefore,
    when capable of action, we pretend disability;
    when near to the enemy, we
    pretend to be far; when far away, we
    pretend to be near. Allure the enemy by giving him a small
    advantage. Confuse and capture him. If
    there be defects, give an appearance of
    perfection, and awe the enemy. Pretend
    to be strong, and so cause the enemy to
    avoid you. Make him angry, and confuse
    his plans. Pretend to be inferior, and
    cause him to despise you. If he have superabundance of strength, tire him out;
    if united, make divisions in his camp.
    Attack weak points, and appear in unexpected
    places.

    Remember, SJWs ALWAYS LIE. Deceit is not second nature to them, it is their first and most reliable instinct. They will lie when they do not have to. They will lie when there is no reason to. They will lie when their lies are easily detected. They will lie when their lies are bound to be exposed. They will lie and and dissemble and exaggerate and spin with such shameless abandon that the average individual will find it almost impossible to believe they are doing so.

    And because war is a thing of pretence, their deceitful nature makes them very successful in conflict as long as their enemy does not realize how deceitful they are, anticipate their inevitable pretenses, and take advantage of them.

    Sun Tzu says: “victory is to the side that excels
    in the foregoing matters.” That means that if you do not anticipate SJW deceit, if you are not proactively prepared to penetrate, expose, and defend against their lies, you will lose to them.

    But defeat is not inevitable, it’s not even likely, given the first element. Due to their deceitful and self-deceptive natures, SJWs neither know themselves nor their enemy. I’ll have a post later today demonstrating this: their descriptions of me and my motivations are risibly far off the mark. Because they are emotional and for the most part limited to the rhetorical level, no amount of information is capable of changing their minds, so SJW failure tends to reinforce itself rather than be corrected. (That’s why they always double-down right up until they give up.)

    This ignorant self-delusion is significantly to our advantage. The problem conservatives have is that while they know themselves, they fix their eyes only on their own side and remain ignorant of the enemy. Thus the conservative “conquers, and the next time is defeated”. The conservative knows himself and mistakenly assumes that his enemy is just like him.

    Because they know neither themselves nor us, the SJWs will be “invariably defeated” so long as we identify them and see them for what they are: liars and self-deceivers. We have the ability to win every conflict with them, and yet we will inevitably lose everywhere we refuse to see them for what they are or refuse to take the field.

    And, by the by, this is why reading books like A HISTORY OF STRATEGY is so often useful. One simply never knows how the intellectual seeds planted by the author will sprout in one’s mind.

    UPDATE: Case in point:

    神乃木荘龍 ‏@SoryuKaminogi
    .@voxday You’re abysmally stupid and yet somehow disturbingly malign. Like a crocodile or a cancerous hangnail. 

    Notice how their rhetoric is incoherent. They have to cling to the idea that their enemy is stupid – to do otherwise would risk harming their fragile self-esteem – but somehow this “abysmally stupid” opponent is a dangerous risk. This can only be explained by attributing the danger to evil that goes well beyond the pedestrian variety, and reaches the level of disturbing malignity.

    So, they choose to believe in a very stupid, very malignant enemy rather than an intelligent opposition. Needless to say, this violates the first principle mentioned above, which is to know your enemy. They simply don’t know themselves well enough to permit them to do that.

    Downloadable Content

    UPDATE: The Downloadable Content podcast is here if you would like to listen to it and were unable to do so live:

    LIVE WEDNESDAY 9PM EST: Tune in at 9PM EST for our special guest, Vox Day! We’re going to be discussing #SadPuppies, #RabidPuppies, Entertainment Weekly, gaming, SJWs/CHORFs and more!  Vox Day, Larry Correia, and Brad R. Torgersen had tremendous success with their Rabid Puppies and Sad Puppies nomination slates and swept the Hugo awards with their recommendations.  We’re looking forward to hearing Day’s unique perspective on the sci-fi/fantasy community’s battle for creative and intellectual freedom!

    I spoke with both vox.com and the American Spectator today, so it’s good to see that some media outlets are more responsible than Entertainment Weekly and Slate, which responded to the astonishing Sad Puppies revolution by running to John Scalzi, of all people. In fairness to Mr. Scalzi, what he said was, for once, entirely true.

    As Will Shetterly points out on his blog, people have been manipulating the Hugo nomination processes for decades. (Shetterly recalls watching Orson Scott Card glad-handing his way through various gatherings, penning glowing reviews of fellow sci-fi travelers for his column, and otherwise using his superior resources to mount an effective awards campaign.) And it’s true that, in the past, authors and fans often ignited individual crusades around books they wrote or liked. Writer John Scalzi in particular was famous for opening the threads on his blog to sci-fi and fantasy scribes who wanted to remind the community that their work was Hugo-eligible. But, Scalzi told me on the phone, explicitly anointing and championing a full group of titles, while not illegal, violates convention. It is unprecedented.

    Anyhow, tune into 405 Media if you’re interested. Today was hilarious, though, due to this epic clash of SJW vs Sad Puppy. It was like watch a kitten fight a riding lawnmower.

    John Scalzi ‏@scalzi
    I wish Larry Corriea had the balls to admit the reason he started the Sad Puppies campaign was that he just wanted a Hugo so fucking bad.

    Larry Correia ‏@monsterhunter45
    I turned down my Hugo nomination and you still didn’t make the ballot. @scalzi

    The caged bird’s stolen song

    I think the obvious lesson here is that we need to turn more responsibility for the arts over to government employees:

    The United States Postal Service is set to honor Maya Angelou today in a dedication ceremony for a new postage stamp depicting the legendary author, poet and singer. But there’s one problem: The quotation that accompanies Angelou’s picture on the stamp was apparently not originally written by her.

    The text on the new “forever” stamp reads: “A bird doesn’t sing because it has an answer, it sings because it has a song.” It appears to be a reference to Angelou’s best-known book, her 1969 memoir “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings.”

    But the Washington Post reported yesterday that the quotation can also be found in “A Cup of Sun,” a 1967 poetry collection by children’s author Joan Walsh Anglund. A Postal Service spokesman told the newspaper that the line, which has been widely attributed to Angelou by people including President Obama, was approved for use on the stamp by Angelou’s family.

    In a follow-up story, the Post talked to Anglund, who said the words on the stamp were hers. The newspaper notes that “Only the pronouns and punctuation are changed, from ‘he’ in Anglund’s original to ‘it’ on the stamp.”

    Sometimes, it is painful to realize that for decades, we have been losing to these incompetents. How is it even possible? But, you see, when you don’t show up and play, even the most incompetent opponent will defeat you.

    To pretend and to shoot

    It’s time to take away the police excuse of “feeling threatened” for shooting someone or cutting them any slack when they kill someone. It should take a genius to know that basing law upon feelings is not the best idea, and it is becoming increasingly clear that the so-called “good cops” are perfectly willing to cover for the supposedly few “bad apples”:

    Patrolman Michael Slager, 33, opened fire on father-of-four Walter Scott, 50, in North Charleston, South Carolina, on Saturday morning after reportedly stopping him over a broken tail light.

    Slager was arrested, jailed and charged with murder yesterday afternoon after the incendiary footage emerged. An outraged representative of Scott’s family said: ‘This was a cop who felt like he could get away with just shooting anybody that many times in the back.’

    The killing comes at a time of mounting unrest over police use of force – particularly against black men – after violent protests erupted over the killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson last summer.  Slager had previously defended his actions as being in line with procedure, saying he ‘felt threatened’ by the Coast Guard veteran.

    The officer claimed Scott ran away after being pulled over at which point he tried to Taser him. But he claimed Scott managed to wrest the stun gun away, prompting him to draw his pistol. At no point in the video, which does not show the initial contact between the men, does Scott appear to be armed.

    In the footage, Scott gets a few yards away before Slager opens fire – seven shots in quick succession followed by an eighth, with three of them missing. Scott collapses face-down on a patch of grass. Slager then walks over, shouts at him to put his hands behind his back, then handcuffs him.

    Footage then appears to show Slager jogging back to the point where the Taser fell to the ground, bringing it over to Scott’s body around 30 feet away and dropping it next to him.

    According to police reports, officers performed CPR on the victim. But video shows that Scott remained face down on the floor for several minutes without being given any medical attention. It is only after two-and-a-half minutes that Slager is seen placing his hand on Scott’s neck in an apparent attempt to check his pulse.

    The police are not, contra their all-too-common assumptions, above the law. And if they are not held accountable by the justice system, it is entirely predictable that they will be brought to rough justice by vigilantes and family members seeking revenge. It is stupid and short-sighted for police officers to think they can continue to get away with dirty business as usual; the ever-present eyes of the Panopticon are watching them just like everyone else.

    Remember the idea that with great power comes great responsibility? That means that those given badges and guns by the state or local government must be held MORE accountable than the average untrained citizen. Not less.

    The Toad of Toar bears false witness

    Or rather, The Toad of (formerly) Tor, TNH, calls out Sad Puppies. It doesn’t go well for her:

    tnielsenhayden @tnielsenhayden 7 Apr 2015
    Larry Correia is a lying liar who lies. So is Brad Torgesen. So’s Vox Day. You either believe facts matter, or you don’t. #sadpuppies

    Obscurica @Obscurica
    There’s no way to get Vox Day DQ’d based on conduct unbecoming, is there?

    University Watch @UniversityWatc1
    @tnielsenhayden You are the vicious slandering liar, Teresa. YOU caused ALL of this. Your time is OVER. #GamerGate #hugoawards #SadPuppies

    Hong Hu Shi @Hong_Hu_Shi
    @tnielsenhayden Incessant croaking. You’re a playground crybaby upset that someone else gets a turn at the public swings you’ve been hogging

    Mike Q @MikeQ42
    Bold claims. Since facts matter, would you happen to have any substantiation for those accusations?

    Dude @OUtoast
    It will be funny when the lawyers find out she was involved with the @EW smear #SadPuppies

    Dr Steven @Riddle1965
    That’s Hugo award winning writing #sadpuppies

    University Watch @UniversityWatc1
    @OUtoast @tnielsenhayden @EW Yeah, about time she paid for all the damage she has done to innocent people.

    Dude @OUtoast
    Writing approved by @torbooks #SadPuppies

    Peter Ingemi @DaTechGuyblog
    By your standard Entertainment Weekly is appparently a liar as well for retracting their piece & charges #sadpupies @tnielsenhayden

    LT @ThropeLycan
    Well said, @UniversityWatc1 ! @tnielsenhayden is just flailing around her anger that #sadpuppies has exposed her back room politiking

    Popehat @Popehat
    .@tnielsenhayden But are they lying liars who lie when telling lies about their lying lies about being lying liars who lie about their lies?

    Bavarian Creampuff @BavCreampuff
    @Popehat @tnielsenhayden Too many lies!

    neontaster @neontaster
    .@tnielsenhayden Nanotechnology has enabled me to create the galaxy’s smallest violin and I’m playing it for you right now. #SadPuppies

    JamesSteve2K @SteveKJames
    @neontaster @tnielsenhayden he’s pretty good on that strat-nano.

    tarsolya @tarsolya
    @tnielsenhayden Nothing beside remains.Round the decay of that colossal wreck,boundless and bare, the lone and level sands stretch far away.

    Terez @Terez27
    @tnielsenhayden I am just catching up on this drama. I see you made Breitbart. Congrats?

    STFU Total 9Volt @9voltmonster
    .@tnielsenhayden What was the benefit of politicization of the Hugo awards? What was the benefit of forced politicization of sci fi fandom?

    Eyanosa @vouteralex
    .@tnielsenhayden So you claim. Maybe some evidence is in order when calling someone a liar in a public forum.

    AliRadicali @AliRadicali
    You do realise the Hugos are for GOOD fiction right, @tnielsenhayden ? Not kindergarten level slander.

    W. Ian Blanton @wraithe
    @Popehat @tnielsenhayden based on what I’ve read of the SP/Vox Day crowd, they’re not a pony I’d want to be supporting.

    Popehat @Popehat
    @wraithe @tnielsenhayden YOU LIE!

    Rolling Stone Ethics @codemonkey1972
    @tnielsenhayden You’re a thoroughly disgusting creature, Theresa.

    W. Ian Blanton @wraithe
    @Popehat @tnielsenhayden Mind you, I read a story (not nom.) by one of their nominees, wasn’t even Yugo award quality, much less Hugo award.

    Popehat @Popehat
    @wraithe @tnielsenhayden “Chicks Dig Time Lords” won a Hugo.

    W. Ian Blanton @wraithe
    @Popehat @tnielsenhayden indeed I do! But which lie is the illusion, and which one is real??? HaHAAAhahaHA

    Rolling Stone Ethics @codemonkey1972
    Is there a term for someone who slanders so their husband’s employer can gain monetary advantage? Oh, right. “@tnielsenhayden.” Thanks.

    J. Tuttle @jasonfixit 8h8 hours ago
    @tnielsenhayden Wow. Troll much?

    W. Ian Blanton @wraithe
    @Popehat or were they LIES?!?

    Joseph Capdepon II @BeardedTexan
    @tnielsenhayden The only liars are you and yours. You want war? You’ve got it. #sadpuppies4 #hugoawards

    Pooch Nasty @DasPooch77
    @tnielsenhayden Lady, EVERYONE can see the authors on the #SadPuppies list. Claiming racism/sexism is the blatant lie, @EW had to correct.

    vernon rene daley @DaleyRene
    @tnielsenhayden Do you have a link to a post identifying Correia’s lies? Thx @monsterhunter45 #SadPuppies

    synonymous_dreams @synonymous_drea 5h5 hours ago
    I believe facts matter; have you got any facts that either one of those people lied about?

    Matthew Lawliss @MistahOso
    @tnielsenhayden then where is your evidence? because i’ve got mine. also Feelings aren’t facts unlike what your professors teach you.

    Casey North @northofdoom
    i call your bluff: link to proof, show your work.

    Rolling Stone Ethics @codemonkey1972
    Yes. I’m not a leftist, so I don’t accuse ppl of lying without getting the facts first.

    Casey North @northofdoom
    i call your bluff, link to proof, show your work #sadpuppies

    synonymous_dreams @synonymous_drea
    So, Larry and Brad are both liars? What did they lie about?

    Rolling Stone Ethics @codemonkey1972
    Um… I think you have it backwards. Read again.

    synonymous_dreams @synonymous_drea
    haha, twitter’s reply fuckage; I was asking @tnielsenhayden for clarification, not you 😛

    AliRadicali @AliRadicali
    The proof is the accusation itself. Any more scrutiny = victim blaming.

    John Cobalt @JohnCobalt
    Are we back in kindergarden now? You are a disgrace.

    Casey North @northofdoom
    @tnielsenhayden says desperately: “must…control…narrative…deploy…flying…strawpeople!” Can i has hugo now plz? #sadpuppies

    Protest Manager @ProtestManager
    If you want us to believe your “fact” @tnielsenhayden first you have to give us some. Did Brad lie about his wife? #SadPuppies

    Protest Manager @ProtestManager
    Oh, and @tnielsenhayden why did EW issue such a correction if it’s Larry and Brad who are the liars? #SadPuppies

    Jorge Tanaka @Grimrin 5h5 hours ago
    @tnielsenhayden Is the liar you called a racist? Who’s lying?

    Jacques Cuze @JacquesCuze
    My reading says otherwise @tnielsenhayden @monsterhunter45’s read of the situation fits Occam’s Razor and experience #sadpuppies #SJWssuck

    Woelf Dietrich @Woelf20
    @tnielsenhayden Given that you’re so free with your accusations, I trust you have evidence? Or will you fall back on opinion?

    Lars W Schmidt and n @LarsWSchmidt 1h1 hour ago
    Your post is on the level of a bum pulling on his dick on a subway between stations. We’re all ashamed on your behalf. @tnielsenhayden

    Vox Day @voxday
    .@tnielsenhayden The only one lying is you, Toad of (formerly) Tor. Larry, Brad, and I all speak the truth. Ruthlessly.

    So, what facts supposedly matter? The only thing she’s mentioned so far is on Charles Stross’s site, claiming that I am too expelled from SFWA:

    Vox Day is lying. He was kicked out of SFWA with all due legalities observed. It was a meticulous and labor-intensive process. Not only is he clearly expelled, he’s really most sincerely expelled.

    However:

    1. SFWA has never informed me that I was expelled.
    2. SFWA has never announced that I was expelled.
    3. SFWA never held a vote of the full membership to expel me as required by Massachusetts state law for all non-profits incorporated there.

    It is true that the SFWA Board voted to expel me. The Board voted and duly informed me of the result of the vote. But that vote was only the first step in the expulsion process as per the state law and the SFWA bylaws that were relevant at the time in August 2013, which was quite clearly prior to SFWA’s 2014 reincorporation in California. There is no need to take my word for it. Read it for yourself.

    Title XXII, Chapter 180, Section 18: No member of such corporation shall be expelled by vote of less than a majority of all the members thereof, nor by vote of less than three quarters of the members present and voting upon such expulsion. 

    Someone else is quite clearly lying, however. Charles Stross said:

    Castalia House is basically a Vox Day-managed trojan horse for trashing the Hugos and I didn’t see anything published by them that didn’t have the smell of Bad Crazy hanging over it; I’m open to being corrected, but I don’t think it’s likely.

    Speaking of crazy… just how obsessed with the Hugo Awards does Mr. 15 Hugo Nominations think we are? How does publishing homeschool curricula and non-fiction by leading experts make any sense if that’s the raison d’etre for Castalia House? If he thinks Sarah Salviander and William S. Lind and Martin van Creveld are Bad Crazy, he is utterly and absolutely delusional.

    I am sensing a considerable amount of psychological projection here.