Tag: Hugo Award

Why Sun Tzu remains relevant today

Oh, dear. They just don’t know us at all.

The long-term question about which way the Hugos will be going a few years down the road I think is easy to predict: Worldcon con-goers are patient. As I said over on File770.com, Worldcon fandom is already comfortable with building a new house every year, so Mr. Beale twirling his moustache and threatening to burn down the house is a small gain for megalomania but nothing that fandom cannot outlast, because we have the patience and endurance, and I doubt that a bunch of flighty MRAs (for example) have much at all, nor do the various Puppies have anything like the unity of purpose that is often asserted.

Perhaps someone needs to point these poor deluded creatures to The Debate That Shall Not Be Named. Or even the relatively innocuous Dissecting the Skeptics. It’s rather sweet, really, that they think that we’re simply going to go away after the exceedingly disrespectful way they have treated us.

Literary journalism

I think this must represent a new low where the coverage of books is involved. Lana Jordan busts Jane Carnall of the Guardian, who openly admits that she hasn’t read the very books that she “reviewed” and gave one-star ratings on Amazon.

Tom Knighton goes into more detail on this: “When we talk about why we despise CHORFs so much, it’s because of
crap like this.  Carnall isn’t trying to just keep Sad Puppies nominees
from getting awards — which has its own brand of pathetic — instead,
she’s actively working to destroy people’s livelihoods.  Keeping a Hugo
out of their hands isn’t enough for her.  No, she wants to destroy their
careers.  Why?  *GASP* Because they disagree with her!!! We now see the face of evil, and believe it or not, it’s not Vox Day.  Shocking, I know.”

This is what we are dealing with. No compromise, no retreat, no apologies, no mercy. They started this cultural war. We will finish it.

A Thing to Remember

John Scalzi tried to call back one of his posts yesterday:

A Thing to Remember When Dealing With Sad Puppies
April 22, 2015 Uncategorized John Scalzi
[On second thought, this was not well-argued and I’m withdrawing it until I can more fairly and accurately make the point I want to make. Will update when I do. In the meantime, note to self: Don’t write screeds when operating under lack of sleep — JS]

Unfortunately for him, the Internet always remembers….

A Thing to Remember When Dealing With Sad Puppies
April 22, 2015 Uncategorized John Scalzi

I notice that some of those identifying with the Sad Puppies, and particularly Messrs. Torgersen and Correia, are out there puffing about, as if they are leading the charge against the horrible SJWs who control the Hugos, thinking of themselves out loud in a haigographically overblown manner as if they are already blocking out in their heads the inevitable Ken Burns 10-hour documentary of their heroic exploits. But in fact:

1. Nearly everything that was on the Sad Puppy slate that made it onto the Hugo ballot was also on the Rabid Puppy slate, promulgated by Vox Day.

2. Conversely, very little that was on the Sad Puppy slate that was not also on the Rabid Puppy slate made it onto the Hugo ballot.

3. Several things that were on the Rabid Puppy slate but not on the Sad Puppy slate made it onto the Hugo ballot.

Therefore, it’s Vox Day and not either Mr. Torgersen or Mr. Correia who was the true slatemaker here. Their roles are, at best, as supporting footmen in Mr. Day’s self-interested crusade (and at worst, as noted before, his useful idiots).

So when any of the Sad Puppies start barking about how they’re leading some sort of romantic charge against whomever, for whatever reason, or start blathering as if they are somehow responsible for anything with the Hugos this year, it’s entirely fair to point out that in fact, their slate largely failed, when the elements of their slate were not also supported by a self-interested bigot, an association with whom they are now desperately trying to flee.

They aren’t in control of any of this; they never were. They aren’t in a position to issue manifestos or self-congratulatory paeans to their moral rectitude because (among many other things) they didn’t get the job done; that was done by the aforementioned self-interested bigot. This isn’t their parade. The Sad Puppies can run in front of the parade with pom-poms and sparkly batons and made a lot of showy hand movements, but doesn’t mean that they’re leading it. The parade has already turned in a different direction, and they’re out there by themselves.

Which may be the saddest thing about the Sad Puppies: Apparently they don’t know that they are also-rans, the supporting act, and reduced to taking credit for someone else’s achievement, if “achievement” is the word to use here. The only way they can legitimately claim credit for (or have credibility discussing) any of this is to admit they’ve been working hand in glove with Mr. Day all along, which is something they are now loath to do. Otherwise, it’s all empty, pointless grandstanding, and ignorable as such.

Just a thing to remember when a Sad Puppy puffs himself up in a blog post or comment thread near you. You’re looking at a failure, trying very hard to convince himself — and you — otherwise.

I don’t know why Scalzi felt the need to backtrack, it’s no sillier than his usual blathering. I suppose his portrayal of me as an evil, self-interested mastermind manipulating the poor little innocent Baen authors tends to fly in the face of me being a ignorant jackass dipshit assbag shitbug or a chaos-loving madman who seeks only to destroy the One True Fandom. But regardless, if anyone wishes to flee an association with me, let him do so without criticism.

(It is interesting to observe the repeated accusations of self-interest in light of how he has been successfully engaging in this sort of “personal award pimpage” for nearly a decade now.)

In any event, I stand with the Dread Ilk. I stand with the Rabid Puppies. I stand with the Evil Legion of Evil. And I stand with #GamerGate. We don’t reject anyone out of hand for simply existing or disagreeing with us. We don’t demand that people think exactly the way we do, we don’t expect them to march in lockstep with us, nor do we police their thoughts, speech, beliefs, or works. And we don’t need anyone. If you don’t like where things are going or how they are being done, you’re free to leave at anytime.

I supported the Sad Puppies goals, even though I believed that their failure to grasp the true nature of science fiction’s SJWs meant their well-intentioned attempts to reach out to the science fiction left and find common ground were likely to meet with eventual failure. But I have been wrong before, and so I saw no harm in the attempt. I did not use them. I did not need them.

I won’t abandon the Sad Puppies. I will support Sad Puppies 4 and Kate the Impaler. I won’t disavow them when I disagree with them in the future, just as I did not when I disagreed with them in the past. I will not criticize Brad Torgersen or Larry Correia even if they repent of their sins against the One True Fandom and are baptized in the urine of Teresa Nielsen Hayden before duly reciting the Litany of Hate against Vox Day. I do not, however, consider it likely that either of them will ever cower in the face of the SJWs rage, let alone submit and kneel before them.

Brad and Larry are not “desperately trying to flee” anything. They are not cowards. They have done nothing more than point out the entirely obvious. They are not me. I am not them. They are no more responsible for my words and beliefs and actions than I am responsible for theirs. They are good and decent men. I am not. But Sad or Rabid, none of us are fools who are so stupid as to fall for the transparent blandishments of a petty SJW like Johnny Con. There is no guilt by association.

Divide et impera is neither a new concept nor an unfamiliar one to any of us. And as for the constant barrage of emotional manipulations and posteriorpains and feelbads and feelsads to which we have been subjected, I am certain that our vile faceless minions speak for all of us in this regard.

Kicking Puppies makes Vivian sad

I wonder how many SJWs have the wits to grasp what that picture indicates? In any event, there are two more SJW responses worth noting this week, including another heartfelt soliloquy from David Gerrold as well as an absolutely revelatory response by John Scalzi.

David Gerrold first writes an open letter to Brad Torgersen:

You have hurt the Sasquan committee. These are people who have spent years planning, campaigning, bidding, working, preparing, and anticipating the best convention they can imagine. You don’t know what goes on behind the scenes of a convention, how many moving parts there are, how many people have to rise to the occasion. There’s programming, guest relations, membership registration, con suite, green room, sound and video, tech of all kinds, finances, insurance, security, special needs, cat-herding, and more. Everyone who takes on one of those jobs does so out of a love of the field — and everyone who was looking forward to a party is now hurting because there’s a turd in the punch bowl — and you are perceived as the guy who dropped it there. You and Larry Correia.

And you have hurt all the fans who will be attending, all the fans who wil be following events online. Instead of the convention being about a celebration of our common interests in SF, it is now about you and Larry Correia and a few others associated with you. You have pulled the convention off purpose and you have hurt the fans who wanted to have a good old-fashioned happy Worldcon. There have been many of those.

You have hurt your colleagues in the field. There are people who have declined to be award presenters. Others have asked to have their works removed from the ballot. You have hurt the integrity of the awards.

And then promptly deletes Brad’s response to his open letter:

And once again, Brad Togersen misses the point. I’ve deleted his msgs. I’m done with you, Brad. At long last, have you no decency? Have you no shame?

Do they still wonder why we laugh at their disingenuous calls for “honest dialogue” and “debate”? I thought Brad’s response was considerably longer than it needed to be. “We don’t care” would have sufficed. Although I suppose it is amusing to see that Gerrold still doesn’t realize that what he thought was a punch bowl has been a toilet for a decade.

Speaking of deletions, Johnny Con first made fun of sexually abused children in the process of attacking Larry Correia, then belatedly deleted his post.

[On second thought, this was not well-argued and I’m withdrawing it until I can more fairly and accurately make the point I want to make. Will update when I do. In the meantime, note to self: Don’t write screeds when operating under lack of sleep — JS]

But not before I happened to notice this interesting big of psychological projection: “Day is a perfectly lucid person. He’s a fine con man, in other words, and Correia and Torgersen fell for his con.“

The choice of words is revealing. It was nearly a year ago when I wrote about SF’s biggest con artist: “Sure you’re smiling, Johnny. That’s why you stopped reporting your
annual numbers in 2013. That’s why you shut down your Quantcast reports.
That’s why you don’t post a traffic meter anywhere on your site. That’s
why you threatened to quit SFWA…. I can’t speak for anyone else, but I find your constant
snake oil salesmanship genuinely amusing. You’re the Bernie Madoff of
science fiction and you’ve got the Participation Hugo to prove it.”

To say nothing of two more Hugo nominations than Arthur C. Clarke, and seven more than Iain Banks and Terry Pratchett combined. As it happens, thanks to the Dread Ilk and the Puppies, I am rapidly approaching the 2 million monthly pageviews that Johnny Con falsely told Lightspeed Magazine he had back in 2010, when he actually had 305,000. The difference is that if I say I have two million monthly pageviews, you can be 100 percent certain that I do. I do not lie on the Internet. It is very, very stupid to lie on the Internet. Johnny also let Larry Correia have it for Larry’s refusal to let little
Johnny be friends with him despite Johnny’s repeated overtures.

Also, can we please now stop pretending that this whole Puppy nonsense began for any other reason than that once upon a time, Larry Correia thought he was going to win an award and was super pissed he didn’t, and decided that the reason he didn’t had to be a terrible, awful conspiracy against people just like him (a conservative! Writing “fun” fiction!), as opposed to, oh, the voters deciding they just plain liked something and someone else better? Can we stop pretending that a fellow who practically begs people to nominate his work three years running, hiding the begging behind an oh-so-thin veil of “let’s stick it to the SJWs!” doesn’t desperately crave the external validation that he thinks the award will bring? Can we stop pretending that this is anything other than a grown up child stomping his feet, screaming look at me, look at me, loooook at meeeeee? Because, come on, folks. We’re well past the point of genteel here. Let’s call it for what it is.

(And yes, I know, Correia declined his nomination for the Hugo this year. Let’s talk about that for a minute, shall we. It takes a very special sort of fellow to allow himself to be on a slate to get nominated, marshal people to nominate him for the award as part of a slate, and then decline — and write a big ol’ puffed-up piece about why he was declining, social justice warriors, blows against the empire, blah blah blah, yadda yadda. Yes, nice he declined the nomination and let someone else on the ballot. But it’s a little like wanting credit for rescuing a baby squirrel when you knocked the baby squirrel out of the tree to begin with.)

To be clear, the Puppy nonsense now isn’t just about Correia really really really wanting validation in the form of a rocketship; Day’s stealing the Puppy movement right out from under Correia and Torgerson has changed things up quite a bit, and it’s certainly true at this point that this little campaign is about a bunch of people trying to shit in the punchbowl so no one else can have any punch. But at the beginning, it was Correia hurt and angry that someone else got an award he thought was his, and deciding that it was stolen from him, rather than being something that was never his to begin with. And I’m sorry for him that it didn’t go his way. But actual grown human beings deal with disappointment in ways other than Correia has.

Correia can bluster about this all he likes; he’s a lovely online bully, and certainly he wishes to project that he’s a Tough Guy Saying Tough Things, Toughly™. But, eh. If he was actually who he wishes he could project himself as, the Sad Puppy thing would have never happened. And, ironically, he would be better positioned to win the awards he craved, because he wouldn’t be seen as a petulant whiner about such things. As it is, all we can do for him now is let him show us on the cartoon face pain chart how much Worldcon hurt him, and offer him soothing hugs until all his pain goes away.

See, if only Larry had only treated Johnny Con more nicely, then he would have won the award that he so badly craves. Why won’t he be friends, why?

When rabbits rabbit

I’m not sure which is more amusing, this guy’s complete failure to even begin to grasp what neo-fascism is, the fact that the SJWs are pretending to take his ranting babble seriously, his claim that “If You Gave a Dinosaur a Cookie, My Love” is better than anything on the 2015 shortlist, or the severeness of the butthurt radiating from his crimson posterior:

Fuck you, Theodore Beale.

Fuck you for trying to break a thing I loved. Fuck you for doing it to serve your stupid, lame fascist ideology. More to the point, fuck you for your stupid, lame fascist ideology. Your beliefs are horrible. You’re horrible. You’re a nasty, cruel little bully, and I do not like you.

Fuck you for making me feel that way. Fuck you for the way you’ve brought this thing that I love, this celebration of great science fiction, to a point where it is full of the sort of mean and hateful desires that seem to animate you. Fuck you for dragging us all down to your sorry level. Fuck you for being so odious that we have to go there.

And fuck you for making me want you to hate me. Fuck you for all of your beliefs that amount to nothing short of hatred for the things I love. For the people I love. For the art and beautiful things that are why I get out of bed in the morning. Fuck you for living your life for the sole purpose of destroying things that I love, and for making me wish that I could destroy something of yours in retaliation. Fuck you for making me write this, in the sincere and passionate hope that it will make you feel even a moment’s unpleasantness.

And fuck you for the very real possibility that a work nominated purely because you used your noxious little voice to rally your loathsome, asshole supporters to support it might win a Hugo Award. Fuck you because it’s actually possible that you will break the Hugos successfully and demonstrate that you’re oh so much stronger than a bunch of fans who were previously just happily attending a convention and voting for stuff they loved in awards. In short, fuck you.

Other than that, how was the play, Mrs. Lincoln? I am afraid that the only thing this extended rabbiting managed to elicit from me was a wry smile. As for my “loathsome asshole supporters”, every article like this creates more of them because the true face of the SJW cannot be forgotten once it is revealed. And the lesson, as always, is this: SJWs always lie.

I particularly enjoyed the punchline: “I will not attempt to construct some absolute explanation of Theodore
Beale’s beliefs. Instead, I will construct a caricature of them.”

You don’t say….

Black Gate withdraws

Or rather, they have asked to not be considered for the Hugo award for which they will be on the ballot. While I disagree with John’s decision, I respect his right to make it.  I find it ironic, however, that people are responding to a large group of people dictating the ballot by unilaterally dictating to people for whom they will not vote.

 I also find it telling that a threat to support No Award next year is supposedly worse than a vow to do it this year. I am curious. Would they consider it better if I accepted what passes for their reasoning and announced that Rabid Puppies will join the No Award movement this year? Because that is certainly an option. (Settle down, you bloodthirsty bastards, I said no more than the obvious. It is an option.)

 The goal is to improve the Awards, not destroy them. But if the SJWs would rather destroy them than relinquish their control, well, that will tell the world exactly what sort of totalitarians they are. That’s two birds for the price of one. We’ve already got them on the record stating that our views are invalid and should be suppressed by force; seeing them demolish the awards without our assistance will communicate that more effectively than we can do ourselves.

Critique by identity

I find it amusing how invariably McCarthyite the SJWs playing critic reveal themselves to be:

Over and over again, we see the mechanism by which power re-asserts itself when challenged. With a gymnastic leap, those on the defensive become the underdogs, cruelly repressed by the BBC, feminists, people from Islington, some nebulous “elite” or the suggestion that sometimes a female character in a videogame might wear a decently supportive bra.

The debate demands onlookers accept one of two contradictory premises, so there is little room for nuance and the argument never runs out of fuel. Is Farage a truth-teller or a race-baiter? Was Thornberry a metropolitan snob, or was the England flag itself a type of dogwhistle? Are the Hugo awards in thrall to a politically correct cabal, or simply making an effort to remedy an ingrained injustice? Whether it’s videogames, science fiction or Westminster politics, the underlying struggle for victim status is the same. And once you notice, it’s downright eerie to hear the same arguments – about “out-of-touch elites” who don’t connect with the tastes of “real people” – coming from the leader of Ukip and a guy who wrote a book called Summa Elvetica: A Casuistry of the Elvish Controversy.

There is no single answer and, at least in the case of the Hugo awards, it is not in the extremists’ interests to find one. Vox Day has built a small internet army on his manufactured grievance, and he won’t let it go lightly. If SFF fans vote to give “no award” in the categories where Rabid Puppies candidates dominate, he has threatened to ensure that the awards are never given again. It is a supremely self-interested move. Politicising the Hugos to such a degree certainly doesn’t help the nominees themselves, because authors on his slate risk being informally blacklisted by the rest of the community. Who wants to read a fantasy story endorsed by a bigot?

This is mildly amusing, considering how it is usually asserted that I am stupid. Now I am suddenly an overly erudite elitist? Okay, actually, that’s considerably closer to the truth, but then, as an avowed anti-equalitarian, I don’t pretend to be anything but an elitist.

The important difference: unlike most elitists, I have no desire to dictate or control the behavior of the non-elite. I simply refuse to let either the elite or the non-elite claim the right to dictate or control my behavior or my beliefs.

The last question is the most interesting. We might, of course, turn it around, as it rather usefully clarifies what James May keeps pointing out to everyone. Who wants to read a fantasy story endorsed by a Communist? Who wants to read a story endorsed by a feminist? Who wants to read a fantasy story endorsed by a Negro? Who wants to read a fantasy story endorsed by a woman?

Once the idea of judging a work on its own merits, rather than on the basis of who creates or endorses it, is rejected, then there is no reason to not judge works on the very racist, sexist, and ideological grounds that the SJWs claim to bitterly oppose. They are openly demolishing the very foundations upon which their incoherent ideology rests.

The Hugo situation doesn’t “prove progressives right”. Quite to the contrary, it has clearly shown their ideology to be not only hopelessly hypocritical, but intrinsically self-contradictory too. And if the article didn’t prove it, the comments certainly do.

“They stand for intolerance, prejudice, fear & loathing and must be rejected with scorn, derision and at times, force. Their opinion and views are not equal nor are they valid so therefore they do not deserve to be given any air time or publicity.”

Very well. We can certainly treat them likewise.

John C. Wright: The Hugo-nominated works

John C. Wright burst onto the science fiction scene in 2002 with his astonishing The Golden Age.
Published by Tor Books, Amazon.com declared it to be “the most
ambitious and impressive science fiction novel since China Miéville’s Perdido Street Station. Amazingly, it is John C. Wright’s debut novel.”
Publishers Weekly wrote: “It’s already clear, however, that Wright may be this fledgling century’s most important new SF talent.”
In 2014, Castalia House began publishing collections
of Mr. Wright’s short fiction, much of which was hitherto unpublished,
including Awake in the Night Land, City Beyond Time: Tales of the Fall of Metachronopolis, The Book of Feasts & Seasons, One Bright Star to Guide Them, and Transhuman and Subhuman: Essays on Science Fiction and Awful Truth.
A record-setting five of those works were nominated
for the 2015 Hugo Awards in three categories. A sixth work was also
nominated for Best Novelette, but was subsequently ruled ineligible by
Sasquan. All four of the Hugo-nominated short fiction works, as well
as an essay from Transhuman, are included in this special release, which is available for free from Castalia House in both Epub and Mobi (Kindle) formats and will also be available in the Hugo packet.

The refutation of Freud

In case you weren’t convinced that psychology is a pseudoscience, this should do the trick:

Let me be perfectly clear: Larry Correia and Brad Torgersen (who really seems to more or less have tagged along on Larry’s coattails) are not in the same league as Theodore Beale. Larry and Brad are frightened, well fed little puppies sitting on top of a large pile of meaty bones and snarling because there are one or two they can’t have, and feeling justified in their fear because some skinny kittens have managed to slip away with a few of the bones and gnaw on them in peace.

Theodore Beale, on the other hand, is Cerberus sitting on top of the bone pile breathing fire and wreaking mayhem for the joy and the attention of upsetting everyone, puppies and kitties alike. I’ve been searching for ten years now and have not found a single redeeming characteristic in Beale. He’s a vile person with vile opinions, and he’s an absolutely atrocious writer. If it weren’t for the fact that he was raised with money and privilege, he would almost certainly be serving twenty to life somewhere, because he either acted on or got caught acting on his beliefs. He is someone outside the scope of psychotherapy. If you were to ask him, he would tell you there is nothing wrong with him, he’s just fine the way he is – and that is why he is outside the scope of therapy.

He doesn’t need to be saved, society needs to be protected from him – and then maybe someone (not me) can work on saving him. And I speak as someone who works with violent people, entitled people, people who abuse, on a regular basis. If he were free to act on his impulses with impunity, people would suffer. I can only be grateful he’s not particularly impulsive.

Right now, it serves Theodore Beale very well to borrow the Sad Puppy meme and create his own offshoot, the Rabid Puppies. He is getting attention and hate, and he thrives on that. It’s what he lives for. For now, while they serve his purposes, he is keeping the Sad Puppies protected from his fire – until they no longer serve his purposes.

And I suspect Correia and Torgersen know it. They are very careful to walk the line between distancing themselves from him and not distancing themselves too much. They have only recently acknowledged that it wasn’t the Sad Puppy slate that swept the Hugo nominations this year, it was the Rabid Puppy slate. They haven’t admitted (at least publicly) that it was Beale’s invitation of Gamergaters – people who are perfectly willing to commit illegal acts including doxxing and making rape and murder threats (and in at least one case, an attempt) – to exclude specifically women, and specifically minority women, from their own particular fandom (video games).

And yet (Correia and Torgersen claim) it is not about sexism. It is not about racism. It is about fighting against ideological purity. To borrow a meme, it is about ethics in gamer journalism.

Here’s the final, worst piece of all of this. By now, the Sad Puppies have realized what they have unleashed. They realize (at least privately) that they overreacted, that they were the bad actors against an opponent that only existed in their heads – but they can never publicly admit it, not without having the hell hound they unleashed turn on them. If they distance themselves from Beale too much, they risk being slapped by the same forces that they opened the door to theHugosfor. They might be subject to doxxing and threats and actions. They will have Beale’s venom spewed over them.

Yeah, somehow I doubt Larry and Brad are shaking in their boots that I am going to attack them. I know the SJWs would love it if I would do so. But that’s not going to happen. I didn’t fall for the divide-and-conquer tactics when they tried to get me to disavow Roosh and Roissy, and I’m not about to fall for it now.

You don’t need to be best friends to be allies. You only need to be shooting in the same direction. The weakness of the moderates, and the reason they are so reliably ineffective, is that they would much rather shoot at their allies than at their enemies.

The amusing thing is the way the “psychotherapist” tries to turn a very real enemy into something that is supposedly existing only in our heads… even as that enemy has been shrieking in full-throated outrage against us for the last two week. And then, she turns around and blames everything on #GamerGate, when there are only two confirmed #GamerGaters in Rabid Puppies, myself and Daddy Warpig.

The lesson, as always, is this: SJWs always lie.

Let them shriek. It won’t be the last time. Cerberus has a LOT more bones to crack.

Of Lew and Hugo

Allan Davis informs libertarians about the Hugo Awards:

Larry Correia, Brad Torgerson, Vox Day, and all of the other “Puppies” supporters set out to demonstrate that the Hugo process was politicized and broken.  They said that if authors were nominated who didn’t “fit the mold,” who weren’t approved by the ruling faction, they would be blacklisted, ostracized, insulted, and deliberately voted dead last, regardless of what they had written or how well it was done.  Their predictions have come true, and they have proven their point admirably.

Libertarians, and especially science fiction fans with libertarian leanings, should pay particular attention to the Puppies campaigns.  Like last year’s Gamersgate controversy, the Puppies drew a line in the sand–a stopping point in the ongoing culture war between individualists and statists, between the people who believe in freedom of expression and the mindless drones who believe in political correctness.

Brad Torgerson makes the point perfectly: 

    Folks, until or unless political correctness is given the boot, this kind of stuff isn’t going to stop. It won’t be just me getting the torch. It will be you too. You other authors, and you other fans. Political correctness has a bottomless stomach, and is red in tooth and claw. Even if you try to appease the beast, it will eat you eventually anyway.

The rage of the Left is considerable, but it is to be expected. And celebrated, because they are only smiling when the Right is going down to its customary Noble Defeat.

They will point-and-shriek, they will bluff and bully, and they will play divide-and-conquer. They’ve been trying to isolate me, a Sigma, for ten years now. (Oh no, a briar patch!) Now they’re back at it again, little realizing that giving me more freedom of movement is not exactly something I regard as a problem. We are so far ahead of them in the OODA loop that it will likely astonish you once the next stages become apparent.

The most important thing to keep in mind is this: if they’re not shrieking, we’re not winning. And speaking of Brad, he has an excellent post up highlighting what both Larry and I have already said. He is not me. He is not responsible for me. He does not answer for me. And I can only smile to see the cowards of the other side desperately trying to get them to take me on because they are afraid to do it themselves.

The Sad Puppies are not Rabid. We are. And of course, as this comment shows, the other side has very good reason to be afraid:

After seeing last nights events I really started losing heart. I feel a little better today, but it’s just too much pain to deal with over the last month to really put any effort into looking far enough ahead to the possibility of light somewhere, someday. It was bad enough when it was Damien Walter, the HuffPo and Daily Kos spreading the disinformation, lies and character assassination, but when Davidson, Willis, GRRM, and others that are supposed to be some of the TOP PROFESSIONALS OF THEIR FIELD do it I have a hard time seeing the hope. All I can see right now is that Vox wins, no matter what. His slate of nominees win: he wins. The SJWs get enough votes together to burn it down this year with No Award and Vox wins. Worse, if that happens, Vox gets enough followers together next year, and possibly decades afterwards and No Award takes all the categories going forward.

Imagine that. A professional game designer, an elite wargamer who specializes in one of the most complex wargames ever developed, a student and editor of two of the finest strategic minds on the planet, might be able to construct a Xanatos Gambit? You don’t say.

Let them lie. Let them disinform. Let them assassinate my character for, what is it now, the 7,436th time?  After all, are we not reliably informed that what is dead may never die, but rises again, harder and stronger. And again. And again.

It will take a long time, but trust me, if you thought this exploit was even remotely amusing, you’re going to love what is coming down the pike in the 2017 timeframe. There are some pieces that still need to come together – the execution is always in the details – but if it works as designed, it will be beyond epic.

And if you’re not part of the Rabid Puppy pack yet, join Sasquan before July. Whether Jim Butcher or John Wright or Noah Ward walks off with the plastic rockets, you’ll want to say that you were there for Rabid Puppy 2015: the Ravening.