Tag: SJW

How do they know?

Ptbarnium points out that the SJWs in science fiction are demonstrating one of the reasons Sad Puppies 3 is so badly needed:

Every single second of the controversy so far has taken place before the ballot has been announced. It might sound plain but it seems that they have all missed it. Everytime TNH wrings her aquatic hands pathetically, every time Jason Sanford stamps his feet childishly, every time Cora Buhlhert blares her senseless foghorn, the undecided ask one question: “How do you know?”

They have done more damage to their own cause than SP3 ever could simply because of their inability to restrain their wounded egos & frustrated self entitlement for four days. No matter how this all shakes out, no matter who wins, the cat is out of the bag now. To the CHORFs, wrapped in their delusions, they have done nothing wrong.

To anyone neutral, anyone without a dog in the fight, they have proven beyond all of our expectations that the motive force driving Sad Puppies is true. Anyone who asks the question “How do they know?” will see the immediate and obvious conclusion that eludes these morons, insulated by their self-righteous anger.

They know because many of the people who ‘should’ have been given the nod haven’t. Is there any other convincing reason why people un-nominated for any award seem to know the entire final slate? You could excuse knowing one or two finalists in a given category but the entire list? The only ways to have their level or knowledge at this stage are (a) Worldcon leaking or (b) interval communication based on information from the people on their own slates that were ‘supposed’ to get through. I know which one my money is on.

This is exactly right. The usual suspects, who revolve in orbit around Tor Books in general and Tor senior editor Patrick Nielsen Hayden in particular, are accustomed to quietly arranging things to their liking behind the scene. They talk to one another on a regular basis and arrange things like this outcome in 2008.

43 Best Fan Writer John Scalzi
41 Best Novel The Last Colony John Scalzi
40 Best Novel Halting State Charles Stross

That’s quite the coincidence, considering that Larry, Brad, and I were accused of bloc voting in 2014 with the following outcome.

184 Best Novel Warbound Larry Correia
111 Best Novella The Chaplain’s Legacy Brad Torgersen
092 Best Novelette The Exchange Officers Brad Torgersen
069 Best Novelette Opera Vita Aeterna Vox Day

What looks more like a bloc vote to you? Oh, and speaking of 2014, let’s not forget this:

120 Best Novel Neptune’s Brood Charles Stross
127 Best Novella Equoid Charles Stross
118 Best Novelette Lady Astronaut of Mars Mary Kowal

Again, what looks more like a bloc vote to you? Are we seriously supposed to believe that a 115-vote variance is an invalid bloc vote, but 9-vote and 3-vote variances that are limited to SJW authors published by Tor are just a pair of freakish coincidences involving the same group of closely connected authors six years apart?

Regarding Best Novel: I’ve heard that three of the five finalists are SP-endorsed. (Which, see above, doesn’t in itself guarantee that any of them are unworthy of a Hugo.) I don’t know what any of those three books are. I do know the identity of the other two, and I don’t think anyone in this conversation will regard them as unworthy candidates. (Disclaimer: Neither of them are books Teresa or I worked on in any way.) – Patrick Nielsen Hayden, Senior Editor, Tor Books

Since we’re speaking of PNH, how about 2009, 2010, and 2012?

76 Best Novel Saturn’s Children Charles Stross
74 Best Editor Patrick Nielsen Hayden
54 Best Novel Zoe’s Tale John Scalzi (Even some in on the game couldn’t bring themselves to vote for that steaming little pile, but it still got enough votes to make the shortlist and keep the next two authors off: Iain M. Banks and Terry Pratchett.)

79 Best Novella The God Engines John Scalzi (indicates outside support)
56 Best Novella Palimpsest Charles Stross
52 Best Short Story Overtime Charles Stross
54 Best Editor Patrick Nielsen Hayden

49 Best Novel The Wise Man’s Fear by Patrick Rothfuss
48 Best Novel Fuzzy Nation by John Scalzi
44 Best Editor Patrick Nielsen Hayden
 
Three more amazing coincidences! How do they know? How do they know? Furthermore, Kevin Standlee, a Secret Master of Fandom and Worldcon insider, acknowledged at File 770 that these quiet little campaigns are known to have taken place in the past.

There clearly have been campaigns to get individual works on the ballot, some of them going beyond the technically legal.
– Kevin Standlee on April 2, 2015 at 9:41 am

He also added that nothing Sad Puppies has done is illegal or against the rules:

I agree with Vox that what’s been done (at least from the rumors
rumbling around) isn’t illegal. It’s not against the rules. It’s simply
exploiting a heretofore never-considered loophole in the rules that has
never come into play because fans are traditionally not very well
organized.
-Kevin Standlee on April 2, 2015 at 9:44 am

The SJWs are upset because we play openly by the rules better than they cheat behind closed doors. And the mere fact that they are so upset BEFORE THE NOMINATIONS ARE ANNOUNCED is sufficient to prove that they coordinated their whisper campaigns in the past and they are still coordinating them now. And the fact that so few people in latter-day science fiction can’t see the obvious shows how crabbed and limited their imaginations are:

SF fans have been historically so independent-minded and disorganized that the idea of actually filling a slate to try and deliberately stifle anything other than a particular group of five works in each category hadn’t really occurred to anyone I know of, and I’ve been following this since 1984. Sure, there have been deliberate campaigns (of varying degrees of ethical) to get individual works onto the ballot, but to try and monopolize all 85 spaces? Nah. Indeed, the idea would probably been laughable until fairly recently. You can’t generally get five fans to agree on where to go to dinner, let alone get 500 of them to agree on exactly the same slate of Hugo Award nominees.

This juxstaposition, however, is my favorite proof that the other side is utterly incapable of thinking past the end of their noses.

  1. “There’s only one way to deal with people like Day, who see
    themselves as above basic human decency, and that is to cut them out of
    the community like a tumour. Shun them, ignore them, no-platform the
    hell out of them. Our conventions, our fanzines, our anthologies, our
    community is not open to people whose racist arguments could have come
    straight from the mouths of slave-owners.” (April 19, 2014)
  2. “How do you bring the weight of community disapproval on someone who isn’t part of the community?” (March 30, 2015)

Well, who could possibly have seen THAT coming? Give a man a platform and he will speak his mind. Deny him a platform and he will build his own… and you will never silence him again. Rabbits always think that the only possible response to being shunned is to a) submit or b) vanish. The problem, of course, is that some of us aren’t rabbits.

Now a number of them are credibly threatening to No Award everything even before the announcements have been announced. And I’m wondering, do they really think we didn’t anticipate that too? Considering that they repeatedly assert that Brad Torgersen is lying about the purpose of Sad Puppies, hasn’t it ever occurred to them that perhaps the purpose he is concealing is different than the one they assume it must be?

It is a proper conundrum.

A name designer speaks out

Game designer American McGee dismisses SJWs and Literally Who 2:

I’m prepared for the SJW flamethrower…

Seriously, isn’t Anita saying this character is acceptable because she’s such a blank slate? I can’t help but think the “woman” in this game might as well be wearing a burka for all the identity she has. If this is “positive” and we (as game writer/designers) are meant to emulate this model… then I imagine the characters in our future games getting some really odd looks as they walk down the streets of virtual Los Angeles, sneak through the corridors of Space Station 009, or try to blend into any world that isn’t a magical fantasy world of pixel make-believe.

To me, real characters, positive characters, have flaws. They’re broken. They have an identity constructed of past events – good and bad. Like real people, they might make poor “life choices” which result in them being shallow minded, skin revealing, homicidal maniacs, who wear women’s lingerie under their space armor. Or, like the rest of us, they might be who they are, and wear what they wear, because society (the real world) hasn’t left them many other options. If we’re going to tell real stories, it’s best we do that with characters who closely resemble real people.

We are now advancing on two fronts, the game industry and the science fiction publishing industry. And we’re able to do so because more and more people are entering the ranks. If you know someone who plays games or reads SF/F, talk to them about #GamerGate and Sad Puppies. Let them know about it. Chances are, if they’re not an SJW, they’ll turn out to be as enthusiastic about it as you are.

A lot of science fiction readers abandoned all hope sometime between the late 90s and the middle 00s and lost interest in the genre. They didn’t know exactly why, all they knew is that they weren’t interested in reading the books about kickass werewolf lovers with crossbows or in being lectured about how evil the bigoted Biblethumpers who didn’t accept the quadsexual aliens with open arms and orifices were. So they stopped reading and started playing games instead.

But now games are under attack and there is nowhere else to run, so we have no choice but to fight back. And, lo and behold, it turns out that they are paper tigers, and their victory is no more inevitable or lasting than Hitler’s defeat of Russia.

I was acquainted with American from the time he was a level designer at id and it’s significant that he is speaking out because he is an old school, name-on-the-box game designer. I’ve said repeatedly that the designers and developers are with us, but only now are they beginning to realize that their livelihoods and their freedom to create is under attack. And more of them will be speaking out against the SJWs soon.

Speaking of SJWs and their inability to write characters, consider my original review of John Scalzi’s Old Man’s War, specifically, this part:

Characters: This is probably the weakest link of the book. While Scalzi makes some effort to provide motivations for his characters, only the protagonist and, ironically, a character who knows next to nothing of herself, come across in full-color. The crude bigot who gets his, the delightful gay man, the crusty drill sergeant, the overenthusiastic fool and the sexually uninhibited beautiful women are all oft-seen staples of SF fiction and they’re simply plugged in as required here.

Of course, I got this part dreadfully wrong: “OLD MAN’S WAR is both stylistically and thematically informed by
Heinlein, especially STARSHIP TROOPERS, but manages to be so without
being a thinly disguised ripoff.”

It’s a bit embarrassing, but how was I to know Scalzi had written what he openly admits was a straight-up color-by-numbers attempt to imitate Heinlein, then follow it up with even less-disguised ripoffs of Dick, Piper, and Star Trek? Anyhow, what I gave the benefit of the doubt and rounded up from a 6.5 to a 7 rating would, in retrospect, lose one star for Style and two stars for Creativity, and therefore wind up rated 5/10.

Of course, Scalzi is far from the only SJW in science fiction who has trouble with characters as a direct result of his ideological perspective:

I certainly don’t deny that I am making a value judgment about modern fantasy, what Bakker simply can’t seem to grasp is that I am expressing a literary judgment and not a moral one. The fact that one of the causes of the genre’s literary decline can quite logically be attributed to observable moral color-blindness on the part of many modern fantasy authors does not make the observation a moral judgment, anymore than attributing the decline to historical ignorance would make it a historical judgment.

This isn’t double-talk or moral cowardice. I am about as genuinely disinterested as it is possible to be and still be cognizant of the matter. I have read everything from Nietzsche and Stalin to Keynes and Onfray without it ruffling my feathers so I’m not inclined to be perturbed by mere fictitious monsters. If I was concerned that Joe or anyone else was “leading innocent souls to potential damnation” through nihilistic genre literature, my track record of publishing highly controversial opinions strongly suggests that I would not hesitate to say so. The fact is that I simply don’t believe the writers of modern fantasy matter all that much, in part due to the literary decline of the genre. As I stated before, they are a symptom of the greater societal decline, they are not a cause.

Meanwhile, an SJW named Bruce Baugh perfectly summarizes the core attitude of every SJW: “It occurs to me that the problems some of us feel about Hugo
nominating tie into something I’ve remarked on in other contexts: the
sense that we have to act like pundits, arbiters, or decision-making
authorities (judges, chief executives, etc.) when commenting on things.”

Everyone else’s opinion is merely an opinion. But their expressed opinion is that of a “decision-making authority”.

The racist SJWs of Making Light

It’s incredible, but now they’re trying to say I’m not a real Native American and Hispanics are just white people like everyone else. Because, after all, everyone knows that all Native Americans are good little Indians who stay on their intellectual reservations and only believe what the nice white liberals tell them what they can and cannot read, write, and think:

#942 ::: Alex R. ::: (view all by) ::: April 01, 2015, 10:32 AM:
Definitely spoiled white boys. Without ever having met one in person, it’s written all over their behavior. And paranoid too, in a particularly white and spoiled fashion. Please note that the word “boys” was chosen carefully. Boys self-nominate and involve their friends. Men (and women too) who want awards slog it out in the trenches and try to raise their game.

#948 ::: Matt ::: (view all by) ::: April 01, 2015, 11:01 AM:
I think the behavior you describe is pretty accurate, but I don’t think it’s a white boy thing as much as it is a rich, conservative boy thing. After all, the leader of sad puppies, Correia, isn’t a white guy (and I think that the lack of support by other other minorities in the field is part of his “persecuted for his political beliefs” narrative).

 #960 ::: Kelly Jennings ::: (view all by) ::: April 01, 2015, 12:03 PM:
Vox Day also claims to be a minority! An American Indian! Based on some genetic test he claims he took.

I mean, I’m sure no one would lie about something like that, for political reasons, or tactical reasons, or to bash liberals on his blog or twitter or whatever. Nah.

#961 ::: abi ::: (view all by) ::: April 01, 2015, 12:09 PM:
The footnote to my comment above notwithstanding, let’s tread lightly on the subject of whether any individual in this debate is or is not a member of any particular group.

Identity policing doesn’t tend to end well. Or start well. And the middle bits tend to stink, too.

There’s plenty to say that doesn’t go there.

#963 ::: Kelly Jennings ::: (view all by) ::: April 01, 2015, 12:12 PM:
Okay. Though VD’s use of that particular tactic has been a vexation to me, frankly. But okay.

#975 ::: Mike Scott ::: (view all by) ::: April 01, 2015, 01:23 PM:
Cat @950. If Correia’s ancestors come from Portugal, then he’s white. The Portuguese are white Europeans, the same as the rest of Europe. They doubtless have a bit more Arab and Berber than say the Swedish, but not enough to make any real difference. Remember, there’s no such race as “Hispanic”, which is mostly a mixture of white European and Native American in varying proportions.

It’s rather astonishing that these racist SJWs will openly assert that a genuine Native American simply cannot hold the opinions that I do. They may not like it, but I am a real Indian, complete with tribe, reservation, casino, and language. I even know a few words of the latter, although I am not one of the small number of people who speak it. And I can absolutely prove it.

They seem to think that minorities are pets who should be happy with whatever crumbs they deign to dole out to us. I say we take their thinning, greying scalps instead.

John C. Wright contemplates the meltdown

Tor and Castalia House author John C. Wright calmly contemplates the Toad of Tor’s public meltdown, in which she insults literally dozens of excellent and well-regarded science fiction authors and libels at least one notable Tor author:

If my accustomed Vulcan calm could be perturbed, no doubt it would be by the allegations Teresa Nielsen-Hayden, late of Tor Books, is leveling against myself and the other members of the Evil Legion of Evil Authors. But since I am imperturbable, I merely raise one eyebrow and wonder on what evidence, or one what chain of reasoning, she makes her outrageous allegations.

I am motivated, she says, not by what I have publicly, notoriously
and repeatedly stated my motives are, but by some unworthy form of spite
or resentment. I see. Any protestation to the contrary is dismissed as
an unconvincing lie. Accusing me, of all people, of dishonesty certainly
has the advantage of being a novel and unexpected accusation.

But on what is it based? No written word of mine can lead an honest
onlooker to draw this conclusion. Did she speak to me and deduce this?
She did not. Does she have my strange Vulcan power of the Mind Meld, that she can read the secret workings of my green-blooded heart? She does not.


Is it her claim that I am some interloper, some newcomer, who has
been reading science fiction since the days when the moonlanding was
still science fiction, been a Tor author since before the turn of the
millennium, nominated for a Nebula for one of my Tor novels, been
insulted by Harlan Ellison like an old hand, been to mass with Gene
Wolfe, and wrote the authorized sequel to AE van Vogt’s work, the author
whose first story in 1939, back when ANALOG was still ASTOUNDING,
heralded the Golden Age of Campbell? It seems she does.

Indeed, the fact that the estimable John C. Wright did not have so much as a single Hugo nomination for his excellent The Golden Age trilogy or his brilliant novellas collected in Awake in the Night Land is one of the most damning rebuttals to any anti-Sad Puppy complaints.

They put forward Scalzi and Swirsky. We put forward Wright and Butcher. And really, that’s all you need to know. Meanwhile, the Evil Legion of Evil’s International Lord of Hate, Larry Correia, also turns his baleful eye upon the Toad of Tor and points out that in her remarkably stupid meltdown, she has revealed something the SJWs have denied for years.

A few years ago I told the truth in public, and said that SMOF insiders usually knew who all the award nominees were going to be for the year, based upon how popular the authors were to the tiny insular cliques, and they usually knew this before the books came out or had been read by anyone. (hell, that even wound up in our Sad Puppies video!)

I was called a liar. There is no insider info like this! The Hugos are a sainted, pure process. They’re not predictable or manipulated by politics! There are no suggested slates or campaigns behind the scenes! How DARE you?!

Uh huh… So I did in public, in the open, with a bunch of outsiders, what they’ve been doing for years with insiders. Outrage ensues.

So here we are now, a few days away and Teresa is worried. Why? Because as an insider, the people she already knew were SUPPOSED to get Hugo nominations haven’t been contacted…

But if there wasn’t insider info and insider cliques, and most of the noms aren’t predestined forgone conclusions, how does she even know she’s supposed to be so worried and upset?

He also adds an inspiring personal note that everyone who has supported Sad Puppies or Rabid Puppies, even if only in spirit, needs to remember:

Wrath is all you people have.

Well, Teresa, no matter what we do,  no matter what the results, we know we’re going to feel your wrath. Luckily, I’ve demonstrated to the world that your wrath is impotent. For years, authors have lived in fear of angering these Social Justice mobs. They’ve moderated their speech, self censored their art, and walked on eggshells to avoid getting burned at the stake… That’s why I hate you people, and that’s why I’ve loved exposing you for the petty, petulant, and ultimately powerless little bullies that you are.

Your angry mobs only have as much power as the person you’re attacking is willing to grant them. I stood up to you last year, and all it did was bring your antics to the attention of more, good, decent, regular fans. 

The wrath of the enemy is not to be feared. They hate us for simply existing and living as free men. And that gives any man, any woman, with the courage to stand up to them complete carte blanche.

That’s not funny!

Satire isn’t satire if it’s the wrong satire:

31-year-old comic Trevor Noah was hired to replace Jon Stewart yesterday, and the backlash has already arrived with a vengeance. Noah has a large following in his native South Africa, and has toured extensively abroad, but he isn’t so well-known in the U.S. — to date, he has three Daily Show “correspondent” appearances under his belt — and it’s looking like some of his comedic sensibilities might not find such a warm audience Stateside.
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Noah is mixed-race, with a half-Jewish Xhosa mother and Swiss father, and much of his material centers on the issue of race. However, people have noticed that a slew of of Noah’s tweets — mostly posted in 2012 and prior — include unfunny, questionably offensive jokes about Jews and women.

Clearly Mr. Noah will require a remedial consciousness-raising session or two conducted by professional SJWs instructing him which topics and subjects are acceptable and which are not.

The Toad tries to walk one back

The Toad of Tor, Teresa Nielsen Hayden, belatedly realized she’d shown the true face of SJW gatekeeper privilege to the world because she’s desperately trying to walk back her words. But it’s much too late; we’ve already impaled her upon them. She even alarmed her fellow SJWs.

“I will admit to having been in kind of an unsettled state since
Teresa’s “this is the Worldcon award, and others can go do their own
thing” post. But then I may well not be the only one in that state, too.”

Compare and contrast this statement:

“The Hugos don’t belong to the set of all people who read the genre; they belong to the worldcon, and the people who attend and/or support it. The set of all people who read SF can start their own award.”
– Teresa Nielsen Hayden, March 29, 2015, 03:43 PM 

 With this one:

“I should have been clearer. Those of us who love SF and love fandom know in our hearts that the Hugo is ours. One of the most upsetting things about the Sad Puppy campaigns is that they’re saying the Hugo shouldn’t belong to all of us, it should just belong to them.”
– Teresa Nielsen Hayden, March 30, 2015, 10:15 PM

Like all SJWs, the Toad of Tor is a shameless liar. First, the Sad Puppies have NEVER said the Hugos should just belong to us. We haven’t said it, we haven’t implied it, and in fact, none of us have ever even thought it. It’s not even remotely credible to claim that a group of “outsiders”, of “thugs” and “reavers” and “nobodies” who aren’t “part of the community” have ever believed that something that has been under Tor’s control for 30 years just belongs to us. Teresa Nielsen Hayden is not only lying, she is insulting the intelligence of every single person who reads her words.

What we have said, what we continue to say, and what we will continue to prove, is that the Hugo Awards do NOT belong to the small group of SJWs led by Tor Books, who for the last 15 years have been handing awards to mediocre diversity lit written by SJWs and their pet minorities. In their eyes, it’s a good thing to be celebrated when minorities such as Saladin and Jeminsin are nominated for awards. It’s a bad thing to be decried when minorities such as Correia and Day are nominated for them.

The only people who have claimed ownership of the Hugos is Teresa Nielsen Hayden and the SJWs. They are already clamoring for rules changes before the nominations have even been announced. The Toad is one of those affiliated with Tor who have, somewhat successfully, turned the Hugos (and the Nebulas, for that matter), into the Best SJW-Endorsed Writers of the Year award. The Toad obviously knows how badly she screwed up because she’s resorting to a ridiculous technicality in order to rewrite the narrative and deny that she said what she quite clearly said:

“When I say the Hugos belong to the worldcon, I’m talking about the literal legal status of the award. But I also know that one of the biggest reasons the rocket is magic is because it spiritually belongs to all of us who love SF.”
– Teresa Nielsen Hayden, March 30, 2015, 10:15 PM

Sure you were. It “spiritually belongs” to everyone, so they can fuck off “and start their own award”. That makes sense. Sad Puppies 3 leader Brad Torgersen responds in his own inimitable fashion:

We. Matter. In fact, we have always mattered. Everyone who ever
came to love and cherish SF/F in ways not vetted and approved by you, by
TruFans, or by SMOFs.

And we’re not going away. Not this year. Not next year. Not the year after that.

We’re not here to destroy the field, nor the Hugos.

We’re here to keep you from greedily clutching the award to your chest, while the field sinks beneath the waves.

That is precisely what Sad Puppies is about. As for Rabid Puppies, we don’t want to destroy the field or the Hugos either. We want to destroy the SJWs. We want to crush them into dust. And we will.

If you’re not already marching with the Evil Legion of Evil under one Puppy banner or another, I encourage you to join us. We can always use the reinforcements, and as other Sad and Rabid Puppies can testify, it is invigorating to crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and hear the croaking lamentations of their women.

As Brad said, we’re not going away next year. And with Kate the Impaler holding the black standard, we’re not going to be inclined to show any mercy to the liars and the con artists. Nor, I suspect, will GamerGate.

I want the Justice Department to declare them a criminal organization and hit them with felony charges. It would not be an excessive response to their actions.
– Teresa Nielsen Hayden, March 30, 2015, 11:25 PM

UPDATE: And here Larry and I were repeatedly accused of gaming the Hugos last year. I told them I didn’t, that I had nothing to do with it, but they didn’t believe me. If Jason Sanford is correct, perhaps they will now admit the accusation was false.

Engagement is impossible

The other day, I visited Mike Glyer’s File 770 in response to his post that Sad Puppies 4 has been announced, with the infamous Kate the Impaler taking up the black flag from Brad Torgersen.

Kate the Impaler, of the Evil Legion of Evil, will be picking up the banner for Sad Puppies 4 and running with it. I even promised not to impale anyone with it (it’s such a pretty flag, and getting blood and… stuff… all over it would make those poor sad puppies even more sad. Even the Evil Legion of Evil has standards, you know. We’re completely against letting Sad Puppies stay sad. We want them to be happy).

There won’t be much action from Sad Puppies 4 for quite some time, but rest assured I will be lurking in the shadows looking for worthy candidates for the campaign to End Puppy-Related Sadness. When the time is right, announcements will be made and campaigning will begin in earnest. In the meantime, I shall rub my hands together and practice my evil cackle.

This is good news, of course, for those of you who were unable to join the Legion in the Sad Puppies 3 campaign. In any event, I explained that a number of the commenters had some fairly basic misconceptions about Sad Puppies in the following manner.

With all due respect, Mr. Fitch, I suggest that a popular movement led by a woman named “Kate the Impaler” is not overly concerned with an appearance of dignity. In fact, her appellation tends to suggest what the members of the movement believe can be done with those historical concerns about professional dignity.

As for the notion of being scorned, well, that’s the benefit of having been roundly scorned before. It renders one immune. They had one bullet. It’s been fired. And it is worth noting that Sad Puppies are simply following the advice of Mr. John Scalzi.

“Change the Hugos by nominating, voting and participating, or (much more slowly and far less reliably) actively making your case to the people who are nominating, voting and participating. As a pro tip, explicitly or implicitly disparaging their intelligence, taste or standing to make choices when you try to do that is unlikely to persuade them to decide anything other than that you’re probably an asshole.”
– John Scalzi, April 5, 2013

After answering a number of questions, correcting still more misconceptions, ignoring numerous passive-aggressive shots at me, and deflecting Andrew Marston’s usual nonsense, that led to this comment from one Martin Wisse:

Vox Day loves to play the victim, loves to fall back on his 1/8 Cherokee princess ancestory when called on his racism and it’s never, ever his fault that people are mean to him, despite his long and sordid history of being a racist, sexist gobshite.

He doesn’t care about science fiction, not even to the extent a Correira or Torgedsen still care about it, he just cares about sticking it to the liberals in his head.

What the Sad Puppies are doing is just your bog standard wingnut culture war, fighting an imagined persecution of their “art” when the truth is that their work is at best mediocre and worse, not nearly as popular of that of their perceived enemies. It burns them up inside to have Redshirts winning the Hugo and optioned for a tv show.

On top of that, James May posted a Twitter stream at Brad Torgersen’s site by some of the very people who were “engaging” with me at File 770. As you can see, they don’t appear to have been doing so in good faith:

Cora Buhlert ?@CoraBuhlert 3h3 hours ago @PrinceJvstin @shaunduke @SFReviewsnet Are we talking about VD vomitting all over File770?

Paul Weimer ?@PrinceJvstin 3h3 hours ago @CoraBuhlert @shaunduke @SFReviewsnet yes, and how I’m crazy for trying to engage with him.

Cora Buhlert ?@CoraBuhlert 3h3 hours ago @PrinceJvstin @shaunduke @SFReviewsnet I tried to engage with these people, too, at first, but I really think they’re beyond engaging.

shaunduke ?@shaunduke 2h2 hours ago @CoraBuhlert @PrinceJvstin @SFReviewsnet It would be nice if one could reasonably expect an actual engagement, but you can’t, really.

Paul Weimer ?@PrinceJvstin 2h2 hours ago @shaunduke @CoraBuhlert @SFReviewsnet I’ve tried. Lord knows I have tried

shaunduke ‏@shaunduke 3h3 hours ago @PrinceJvstin @SFReviewsnet
After all, calling him out for being racist and sexist is just fact. He
is both of those things.”

Setting aside the observable absurdity of calling someone racist then openly mocking his Native American heritage, what is important is for us to understand that there is no point in even trying to engage with these SJWs because they quite clearly believe that we are beyond engagement.

Well and good. That is a feature, not a bug, as far as I am concerned. There is no reason to bother trying to convince them otherwise, as we shall simply cease to engage with them. When the SJWs whine and complain and cry and beg for mercy, they will hear nothing from us. From now on, let the only engagement we give them be the bottoms of our boots treading upon their fat, tear-stained, and screaming faces.

You can smell the SJW fear already. And however acrid and reminiscent of Cheetohs it may be, the scent is sweet indeed:

If there is proof on the Gator thing (and it is certainly wretchedly plausible, since Beale threw in with them early in one of his desperate bids for fanboys) I will be angry, and a little frightened, since coming to the attention of that particular group has proved very unsafe.

At the same time–and this is the part that frustrates me–a vote from someone who wants to watch the world burn is just as good as a vote from someone who read and agonized and voted for books they loved, and the judges can’t distinguish because then we careen down the slippery slope–and the extra maddening bit is that there doesn’t seem to be anything to DO about it!

How do you bring the weight of community disapproval on someone who isn’t part of the community? 

They had one bullet. Or rather, they thought they did. It turned out to be a blank. What’s amusing is that last year they were busy victory-dancing and babbling about how upset the Sad Puppies were about our failure to win any awards. I said, entirely truthfully, that I didn’t give a damn about awards. I never have. Perhaps now they are starting to understand that I do not lie.

And I didn’t throw in with GamerGate. GamerGate is MY community. It has been for my entire life. GamerGate is my brothers and my sisters. And while I’m not the smallest billy goat in #GamerGate, I’ve certainly got some big brothers who are much bigger and badder than me.

Her precious….

You may recall that the Toad of Tor said this yesterday:

1. I have less power than I feel I should have.
2. I feel those people over there have power I don’t have.
3. They must have stolen mine!

A clear case of psychological projection, one would have to conclude. Especially after reading her subsequent statement today:

“The Hugos don’t belong to the set of all people who read
the genre; they belong to the worldcon, and the people who attend
and/or support it. The set of all people who read SF can start
their own award.”
– Teresa Nielsen Hayden, March 29,
2015, 03:43 PM

That’s coming right from the Toad’s mouth. And yet, here is what Sasquan itself has to say about the Hugo Awards.

Worldcons are the site of the Hugo Awards, the premier awards in the science fiction field, recognizing the greatest books and stories, related works, film, television, podcasts, and fan works.

So, we’re supposed to believe that the premier awards that recognize the greatest books and stories in science fiction don’t belong to the set of all science fiction readers?  Then what makes them “the premier awards”? Why are they even supposed to be relevant, if they mean nothing to anyone who isn’t one of the small number of people who attend “the worldcon”?

The Toad of Tor croaks

This ludicrously dishonest croaking from the Toad amused me. It demonstrates how completely, how utterly, how absolutely, the SJWs in science fiction have no conception whatsoever of the zeitgeist. Teresa Nielsen Hayden, who may or may not have already been fired from Tor, croaked:

A sense of injured privilege is what PUAs, Gamergaters, and Sad Puppies have in common. Their fury at SJWs comes from a sequence of assumptions that’s very common in individuals and groups that are smarting from a sense of wounded self-importance:

1. I have less power than I feel I should have.
2. I feel those people over there have power I don’t have.
3. They must have stolen mine!

And poof, there’s their evil enemy, made to order.

Gamergaters think gaming belongs to them, and should answer solely to their preferences. PUAs hate women who selfishly consult their own feelings and preferences, then turn them down. Torgersen wants awards to go to the people and works he thinks should win, rather than the ones the voters would naturally vote for.

In the long run, this is doomed. What the Sad Puppies are doing will not make disinclined readers love their work or respect them as authors — readers really are stubborn that way — but they might conceivably do a lot of damage along the way.

She might as easily have written “ribbit, ribbit, ribbit” for all that it has any relationship to reality except for her statement about Brad.  Let’s identify and count the errors just from the quoted section:

  1. Pick-Up Artists do not have a sense of injured privilege. They have a sense of mastery. Because they are sexually successful men who have sex with large quantities of women much more attractive than the Toad of Tor ever was. They don’t hate women who turn them down; the abundance mentality teaches precisely the opposite. She has literally NO IDEA what she’s talking about here. Or she’s simply lying.
  2. GamerGaters do not have a sense of injured privilege. They don’t think gaming belongs to them. They have a sense of being betrayed by the gaming media, which they no longer can trust to honestly review games, and a correct sense of being attacked by people for developing the games they want to develop and playing the games they want to play. The entire core message of GamerGate is simple: fuck off and leave us alone to play what we want to play, not what you think we should be permitted to play. Again, the Toad is saying things that are demonstrably false.
  3. Yes, Torgersen wants awards to go to the people and works he thinks should win. So does the Toad of Tor. Notice the deceit here about what the voters would “naturally vote for”. What is this “natural vote” and how does the Toad somehow know what it is? Isn’t that what the actual vote is meant to determine?
  4. What is doomed in the long run? Long after the Toad of Tor is dead and forgotten, pick-up artists will be picking up women, game developers will be developing games, and gamers will be playing them. As for Sad Puppies, here is a prediction: Sad Puppies will outlast Patrick Nielsen Hayden’s career at Tor Books.
  5. It’s true that Sad Puppies will not make disinclined readers love anyone’s work or respect anyone as authors. Now, I can’t speak for any other supporter of Sad Puppies, but as for me, the Toad is ludicrously mistaken if she genuinely believes I give even the smallest fraction of a damn. And Sad Puppies don’t have less power than they think they should have or that anyone stole their nonexistent power. This sounds a lot like psychological projection coming from someone who was until recently associated with Tor Books, the winner of the Locus Award for best SF publisher 20 years in a row and a sizable chunk of all the major science fiction awards given out over the last two decades.
  6. Our contempt for SJWs is because they are obnoxious individuals like the Toad of Tor who believe they have the right to tell other people what to write, what to read, what to develop, what to play, and for what it is natural to vote on the basis of their pinkshirted ideology. We stand for freedom. They stand for them being in control. And we do not accept it.

SJWs are the people of the lie. They are Aristotle’s people who are intellectually limited to the rhetorical level. We all know that no amount of new information will change the Toad’s mind. We all know that the Toad will not address any of this honestly. She will not recant her observably false claims. She’ll simply tell more lies about what other people really think and produce more incoherent rhetoric. And that is why she merits nothing but the utmost contempt. As disgusting as the Toad of Tor may be on the outside, she’s even worse on the inside.

All you need to know who is right and who is wrong in this is to note who is able to directly quote the other side, and who almost invariably has to resort to writing complete fiction about the other side’s thoughts and motivations. I don’t give a damn why the Toad thinks what she thinks. I don’t give a damn what her motivations might be. All I need to know, all anyone needs to know, is what her words are in order to reach an accurate conclusion and dismiss her accordingly.

If you do feel like a safari through the SJW fever swamp, I would encourage you not to leave any comments there. You cannot engage in rational discourse with the intrinsically irrational and Making Light is not a place where you are going to find anyone even remotely capable of dialectic. Treat it like the zoo it is, just drive through and marvel at the grotesquerie.

Punch harder

It’s amusing how many SJWs don’t understand how this “Internet” thing works. A woman whines about being criticized by Dalrock, among others.

A group of supposed “Christian” men bantered back and forth under a blog written with the sole intention of saying that women divorce so they can profit off of it by writing about it and I Laura Lifshitz, am one of the most evil women profiting off her dissolved marriage. Oh and by the way, the article is categorized under “ugly feminists.”

First, the comments focused on how terrible I was for writing about my divorce not only for The Huffington Post, but also for the New York Times because you know, the divorce must be my fault since I write about the experience, and I’m an evil Jewish feminist. And not only must the divorce be my fault but that I am a selfish mother who cares not for her own child and how she feels in the matter. In addition, let’s not forget to add that female writers writing about divorce are a bunch of leeches set to destroy our families all in the name of money.

Because, you know, I’m just filthy rich. It’s too bad my student loan lender doesn’t realize this.

Then, the commenters started to focus on my last name: Lifshitz.

“Ha, Ha, Ha! Is it even a real name?” joked one commenter.

Then the other commenters joined in to bash my last name, these anti-Semitic, vile, and immature babies (I mean men).

Now why would anyone be moved to criticize a woman who calls them “anti-Semitic, vile, and immature babies”? What is the bright line that separates a woman calling men “vile and immature babies” and a man calling women “rancid cunts”? And for crying out loud, look at her name. “Is it a real name” is about the mildest possible sport anyone could make of it. As for people getting personal about Ms Lipshits, it’s not hard to see why they might feel justified in doing so:

There is this one dude at the gym who is very buff. He’s not my bag of treats, but apparently he feels that any woman who looks in his direction must be interested. He has this stone face grimace. I see him at least three times a week. Smile you grouchy fuck! I am not interested in you, but I just hate looking at such a crabby face.

Any woman who writes like this has made herself entirely fair game for any verbal abuse anyone wants to pour out upon her. Like the McRapeys and McRacists of the world, she wants to be able to dish out abuse without being subjecting to it in return. Women like this are in shock that men on the Internet aren’t treating them the way that men in their daily life do, and that they can’t get away with talking about others in public the way they do in private.

The thing is, if you’re going to be a public figure and express your opinion on the Internet, you are going to upset a subset of the people who encounter it. A subset of that subset are going to respond by attacking you using nothing but rhetoric. I’ve had people calling me nearly every name in the book on the Internet since 2001. So what? It clearly hasn’t harmed me in the slightest. I quite like that it also gives me complete carte blanche to call everyone else anything I please since it seems to bother most of them considerably more than it bothers me.

The first rule of dealing with SJWs is Andrew Breitbart’s: always punch back twice as hard. The second rule is this: keep punching. Women are particularly susceptible to attacks on their appearance and their sexual behavior, so those are the most effective subjects to target with rhetoric. Once it is clear that they’re not engaging in honest dialectic or rational discourse, your best bet is to either ignore them or nuke them rhetorically.

The third rule is this: quote them and quote them ruthlessly.
Patrick Nielsen Hayden is a self-admitted racist. John Scalzi is a
self-admitted rapist. NK Jemisin is a self-admitted savage… and proud
of it.

The SJWs have to choose. Either they can engage in rational discourse or they can accept being called sluts and savages and racists and evil, ugly feminists on a regular basis. What is not on the table is one-way communication where they attack and lecture us and we humbly accept it in dutiful silence.

There are some things I cannot understand — like internet trolls and
people who hate chocolate — but there is one thing that I do know is
that I will never stop writing. I don’t care if they come to my house
and call me the ugliest cunt on the planet. I will never stop writing my
story.

Oh, I don’t think there was every any chance that Ms Lipshits was going to stop talking about herself. But she can be assured that as long as she subjects the public to her story, the public is going to talk back.