So, another Hugo award has passed – a singularly apt choice of phrasing in the light of the unfortunate visuals afforded by the now notorious asterisk and the more-than-a-little-phallic rocket award (sooner or later some lout will make a gif of the rocket going into the middle of the asterisk and… well… Let’s not go there. There isn’t enough brain bleach).
Before I say anything else, congratulations to the winners. Congratulations also to those who were denied an honorable win by the slate-voted No-Award crybabies, and to everyone else who was nominated. Regardless of whether they were nominated by wrongfans or TruFen, every single item on the ballot was there because there were people who thought it was one of the best pieces in its class that year.
It’s a shame this year’s hosts showed all the restraint of a Nazi rally along with the morals of a Soviet show trial and the taste and discernment of a cat in heat. And I’m not talking about the votes.
We’ll start with that asterisk.
I’m sure nobody else noticed the startling resemblance to a certain anatomical outlet, and of course, the Hugo rocket’s suggestive shape has been noticed by many people. Put those together and you get a pretty damn accurate depiction of what the pre-award “show” did to their precious awards, not to mention the unfortunates deemed to be tainted by classical communist and Nazi guilt-by-association.
The entire response from the We Are TruFen clique is… well… imagine a group of Mean Girls from your high school or middle school years. The nastiest, bitchiest ones, only with a fraction of the candlepower, and picture them as ardent devotees of whatever flavor of dictatorial socialism it is. You get the picture.
The thing is, is it Nazi, or is it Communist? There are elements of both. Take this quote from Hitler:
“It is thus necessary that the individual should finally come to realize that his own ego is of no importance in comparison with the existence of the nation, that the position of the individual is conditioned solely by the interests of the nation as a whole.”
and replace “nation” with “Fandom”.
They certainly took note of Goebbels on propaganda techniques:
“The most brilliant propagandist technique will yield no success unless one fundamental principle is borne in mind constantly – it must confine itself to a few points and repeat them over and over.”
And I’m sure this observation of Hitler’s would not be at all strange to them:
“We are socialists, we are enemies of today’s capitalistic economic system for the exploitation of the economically weak, with its unfair salaries, with its unseemly evaluation of a human being according to wealth and property instead of responsibility and performance, and we are determined to destroy this system under all conditions.”
(And they say the Nazis were right wing (sarcasm off))
I was going to mine the Intertubes for Nazi quotes that the Puppy-Kickers could have said if they’d been about Puppies or white men rather than Jews, but alas, even in translation Hitler and Goebbels are so much more articulate the comparison would be utterly unfair to the Puppy-Kickers (and remember, these are writers and editors – but the Nazis beat them on all fronts when it comes to articulating points of view. I suppose I should be relieved: pointing and shrieking tends to be rather less than effective as a means of converting the undecided).
Oh, and for those who are wondering? The reason I didn’t use quotes from Mao, Lenin, or Stalin was that an awful lot of Puppy-Kickers would be flattered to be compared to such luminaries of the world’s most lethal ideology.
So, let’s call them for what they are. Nasty, petty, bullying socialists who would fit in just as well with the Nazis as they would with their equally murderous Communist cousins. They even have a racial agenda, and while they’d deny it, they’re so US-centric it’s hilarious (as well as sad).
And what’s even sadder is this pathetic collection of power-hungry little Hitlers have destroyed what was once a genuinely respected award. Whether it can be resurrected by the Campaign to End Puppy-Related Sadness or not, I consider the cause to be worthy.
Mad Genius Club 
259 responses to “Yet another Post-Hugo Post”
C4 with a cone made from copper foil
It says something perhaps alarming about me that despite never being in the military it took me about 2 seconds to recognize this.
I wonder how long it will take before the File770’s comment section is filled with a multitude of misquotes and intentional misunderstandings?
Don’t you know? Quoting Nazis means that you’re a Nazi. [Sarcastic Grin]
Oh, but of course. Especially when said quotes make your side look bad.
Glyer didn’t waste any time when he got back. He’s already been stirring the pot. I entertained myself this morning by reading the usual misinterpretations, and the bleating about what Vox will do next.
Their concern over Vox might make it easier for us to work, play, and get SP4 off the ground without quite as much noise as Brad had to deal with.
He’s gotta get his 46th nomination
46? Considering how ossified the nominations are without the Puppies, is there any reason why anyone younger than 40 should be interested in the Hugos?
It still has some recognition, plus its downfall is to detriment of good authors who won.
I had to bite my tongue when an author at a con was saying it was a prestigious award for the field. But he was also hawking someone whose response to people that thought differently than him to commit suicide
Don’t get me wrong. I’m not yet gone full arsonist on the awards, but I am thinking over why the awards should matter to the greater science fiction and fandom community. They only really mattered this year because of the political fight. To make them matter to people outside of the in-group, we have to nominate things that matter to those outside of the in-group. In a world where manga gets more shelf space than comics, where’s the manga nominations for graphic novel? Where’s the games, video, card, and pen and paper RPGs?
I’d say that in the bigger picture that a YouTuber like HelloGreedo or a site like Red Letter Media are more important to SFF these days than File770, Black Gate, or even Tor.com.
I can definitely agree. One should be able to nominate a video game for dramatic performance, although not sure if actually allowed. I think game story should actually have its own category since it is a story award vs best of sci fi
Agreed. First we have to take over the WSFS…
Given that Writing Excuses (a podcast) and Feminist Frequency (a video) were pushed for Related Works, there’s leeway in that category. I look forward to advocating for an RPG rulebook, an art of Star Wars book, a Magic: the Gathering expansion, Total Biscuit’s “WTF is…?” video series and Hearthstone for Related Works.
As for Dramatic Presentations, the Witcher 3 and Afterlife Empire…
Actually, I look forward to giving the rules committee migraines.
As long as have artistic merit. No offense to puppies but not a huge fan of Wisdom from my Internet as Hugo nom…same as Hate Mail Graded.
Which is why the Puppy lists were never slates despite the word being used. The lists always came with “read them, and nominate if you think they deserve it
During the feuds early in the year, someone claimed that video games qualified for the Dramatic Presentation categories.
Myself, Kung Fury and Vox Day’s two Hitler/Hugo videos for Dramatic Presentation.
Graphic? Naruto. It ended this last year, but I’m pretty sure the final volume comes out in English this year. 1) I think it is a strong story 2) which might offend SJW tastes 3) has many fans and 4) might pull a demographic in that might not be interested otherwise.
If games don’t, they should. And a new demographic is a good thing.
They’ve fought – and hard – to keep games from “defiling” their prestigious awards. Which is dumb – games are where a LOT of people get their first genre experience these days, and some of htem have damn good storylines
Games have physic that don’t randomly shut off to act as a conceit, at least without explanation.
Plus some anime could probably fit in both dramatic categories. Be something different than picking from game of Machiavelli or Dr stuckup
Oh, absolutely. There are some brilliant anime and manga out there
I will be starting a #HaloforHugo or maybe #Halo4Hugo campaign. There is so much Halo material out there, and a lot of it is really good, denying games is borderline retarded.
Well it was. Once. Thirty years or so ago.
Well, of course. He has to keep his trolls happy or they’ll eat him. (Glyer, that is)
Yeah. The problem is after he does one of his roundups, the puppy sites he’s targeted get unwelcome visitors.
I still get a couple or three hits from F770 each day from someone hitting a comment where someone slagged my alternate Hugo nomination proposal, in very, very nonspecific terms. But the champion still is one reference I posted on MZW’s Facebook wall.
I tend to get a few, that’s for sure.
Angus said:
“Yeah. The problem is after he does one of his roundups, the puppy sites he’s targeted get unwelcome visitors.”
Angus, can you give us any examples?
Point and make duck noises.
*quack*
I need to learn how to do the Donald Duck impression from my Husband. He’s amazing at it. Record it… Post a link to the youtube track every time they say something stupid.
Do you think our nazis are too stupid to realize they are nazis, or is it just denial? There is a definite disconnect, they aren’t just pretending.
If you manage to have an actual conversation with one, what you get is, “Nuh-unh, I’m a social democrat.”
Of course they don’t realize. See, they’ve fallen for the image of the Hollywood Nazi which is quite different from the real thing. Or they don’t give a shit because they’re right and anyone who disagrees with them (or forgets to dot the right i) must be evil.
It helps to remember that many of the worst Nazis believed they were doing the right thing. Same as the worst Communists did/do. There were enough of those alongside your garden variety megalomaniacs to be truly scary because someone who believes they’re absolutely right and disagreement is evil has no “um, maybe that’s a bad idea” switch.
Sorry, I missed your reply.
And then the killing starts. I’m not looking forward to it.
c4c
I paid my fees for the next year. There are some romance writers that I feel are Hugo worthy that I intend to nominate.
Vox Day’s “SJW’s Always Lie” is out yesterday. That might be worth a nomination in “related works”. SJW heads should explode over that..
Angus, Angus, Angus . . . that’s mean-spirited, un-PC, and utterly inspired genius! I’ll second the nomination in a heartbeat!
(Goes off rubbing hands together, chuckling evilly . . . )
😀
If it’s good enough to warrant nomination, go right ahead.
Its got to be really good looking at the SJW reaction to it in Amazon’s reviews.
I intend to buy it, read it, and mull it over so that I can legitimately nominate it when it’s time.
I already bought it. Will start reading tonight.
equally murderous Communist cousins.
I’d change that to “
equallyeven more murderous Communist cousins.It kind of depends: when you look at the per-year numbers the Nazis were on par with the Communists. The Commies had/have a lot more time to rack up that body count.
I just go off total body count, not per capita…… 🙂
I think if you go off deaths/capita/year the Khmer Rouge win. 2-3 million dead out of ~7-8 million total i.e 1/3rd of the population
Who wrote about SWATing the various puppies? That would do well in “Best Fan Writer” or “Best Related Work.”
Declan Finn’s series is what you’re thinking of.
David Gerrold* declared it the Year of the Asterisk, so I have awarded him one. Linked.
Damn. I’m overtired. I read that as “David Gerrold IS an asterisk”
Just call him Flat Cats.
He’s an ASSterisk.
I’m pretty sure Vile770 will somehow work to justify the Hitler quote. Kind of like this guy: http://historyandpolitics77.blogspot.com/2011/03/we-are-socialists-debunked.html
He wasn’t really socialist. He just said it to get support. Mmmmkay? And you’re RACIST for thinking otherwise.
I’m sure. Of course, there are many, many others that say much the same thing.
And on RACISS!!!!, well, when you’re like me and rejoice in being half the worst person in the world (Sarah is the other half), being called racist is pretty small beans.
Because he let people pretend companies still free…just like China. No less totalitarian just nominally more picky as to who they slaughtered
Pretty much. Why socialize the industry when you’ve already socialized the people?
I was in the green room with the nominees as a guest and attended the ceremony live. Not sure how many watched, but I can provide a few more details here.
The “asterisk joke” they told to the audience, they also told to the nominees in the green room. There was almost dead silence – they knew the implications. The auditorium thought it was the Best Joke Ever. Except the one where Connie Willis suggested someone should be killed to deliver a Hugo posthumously to the “other side,” and who should that be?
They gave more time to the guy who produced the asterisk than they did to anybody who got no awarded. Yes, they brought him on stage and gave him a couple minutes to explain how he produced them with robots and lasers, because Science Fiction Convention.
The Hugo base is different each year. It is designed by somebody in the convention who hosts the ceremony that year, and usually ties in somehow with the location (for example, a maple leaf when it was Toronto, I think). They brought up the person who won the base-design contest this year to honor him, and he said, literally, “the base doesn’t mean anything”. That almost seems prophetic now.
I’m not sure if there will be a Hugo base design contest this year, but there are certainly a lot of creative people here who could start with the asterisk as a template and work up from there…
Especially if you invert the rocket and add a tube…
had him explain it because its soooo revolutionary… not like its been used in manufacturing for over a decade and you have been able top buy the stuff to do it at home for over five years…
usually ties in somehow with the location
I’m not particularly fond of Spokane, but even I wouldn’t call it the asterisk of Washington.
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Kate, good on you young lady.
I was reflecting on this whole sad business over the past few days since that obscenity of an awards ceremony. It is my considered opinion that the Hugos died that night and Sad Puppies 4 will at best be its wake. That said you, Amanda, and Sarah have my full support in any effort you may see fit to attempt.
Given your nickname I made the remark that I was looking for hardwood posts to carve into stakes for you. Someone responded with the question “ash or ironwood.” I replied “ash, ironwood is a booger to carve.” At that point the light came on in my pea brain. It’s sort of dim, but still flickers on occasion. So I present to you a motto: We see your puny asterisk and raise you this field of ash to risk pointy stakes. Booyah!
If someone has the tools, make the cross section of the stakes an asterisk.
For that ribbed sensation…
Provided it was done right, asterisk-stakes would be a nice touch. You couldn’t make the grooves too deep or your stake might snap in two the first time it needs to take the weight of one of the heftier luminaries.
Nahh. What we need is some GMO bamboo where the INSIDE is asterisk-like. Bamboo grows at feet/day speed when the sprouting urge is upon them
Because, equating your opponents with Nazis…no, Puppies would *never* do such a thing!
It’s not Godwin’s law if the comparison is legitimate, Mr Brandt.
Your assertion is mere petty distraction unless you can provide evidence that Puppy Kickers did not do any of the following:
1. Favor certain racial groups over others.
2. Treat one racial group as the root cause of all evil
3. Assume that membership of the “evil” group tainted anyone that came in contact with it.
There are other Nazi tactics and attitudes I could call out, but I’ll be generous and leave it at those three.
More to the point, here’s the “diversity” the Puppy Kickers “saved.”
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CNTWjknUYAAfear.png:large
Well, they did better than last year, they managed to give awards to TWO Asian men instead of one.
Puppy influence kept Aliette de Bodard, Amal El-Mohtar, Usman Malik, Kai Ashante Wilson, Xia Jia, Yoon Ha Lee, Alaya Dawn Johnson, Carmen Maria Machado, and Ken Liu off the ballot.
Anti-puppy reactions ran Aliette de Bodard off the ballot. She was one of ours.
Correction, that was Annie Bellet. I was wrong and my previous comments should be ignored.
I love that image.
Don’t let the surname fool you.
I don’t know who these “Puppy Kickers” you mention are. But my understanding is over the weekend, awards were given to three Asian guys, 22 or so white people, and a couple of guys who might or might not be Hispanic. I really don’t know what you’re carrying on about.
Incorrect.
The Campbell (NotAHugoAward) went to Wes Chu (Asian).
Because the Rabid Puppies voted largely in lockstep, the best novel award went to Ken Liu’s translation of Cixin Liu’s book.
Everyone else? White as Casper’s… rear.
So, the only Hugo to go to a non-white was because of… Vox Day. God loves Him some irony.
It’s appropriate, Vox claims to be an Asian supremicist.
So, basically, it is okay to unapologetically call a group Nazis (a group that includes Jews like me) without needing to prove the assertion that prominent leaders of the group advocate and carry out ACTUAL GENOCIDE (which is what actual Nazis DID, including to my grandmother’s five brothers…unlike Neo-Nazis, who merely look back at such times with fond nostalgia…and do things like applaud an ACTUAL MASSACRE in the name of anti-communism, or advocate the eugenic superiority of the white race on the grounds of fake genetics, or the “kinder-kirche-kuche” view on the role of women, with applause of actual attempted murder of a girl who disagreed).
Good God, no life was harmed or threatened in this whole essentially trivial kerfluffle. The worst that happened was that FEELINGS were hurt. I appreciate that stings, but calling your opponents in the argument genocidal mass murderers is an overreaction that is insanely over the top.
Actually quite a few people were threatened. Ask any of the Puppies what their emails were like after the nominations were announced.
And then there were the numerous public “warnings” of “You’ll never work in this genre again.”
And those were the polite ones.
“Actually quite a few people were threatened. Ask any of the Puppies what their emails were like after the nominations were announced.”
I’ve heard the same from several non-Puppies over the course of this mess. You’re saying it was only the Puppies? PROVE non-Puppies didn’t get threatening e-mail. (Sorry. I don’t actually expect you to prove a negative.) By ‘threatening’, I meant a serious and realistic imminent danger to life. I’m not aware of that happening to EITHER side in this mess.
The Nazis were still Nazi long before they started the wholesale massacres – the defining feature in their early years was scapegoating Jews for everything that was wrong with Germany at the time.
People who claim that drawing attention to Nazi tactics and Nazi-esque attitudes is verboten are laying the groundwork for a repetition of the horrors of that era: and make no mistake every person commenting here would be wearing a black triangle for as long as they survived.
You seem to have forgotten that genocidal mass murderers don’t start as genocidal mass murderers. They start as people who sound more or less reasonable and have a nice, plausible-seeming scapegoat for all your ills.
That’s why it’s important to highlight people acting like Nazis when they do it.
The Nazis were still Nazi long before they started the wholesale massacres – the defining feature in their early years was scapegoating Jews for everything that was wrong with Germany at the time.
I guess that they first started scapegoating communists for everything that was wrong in Germany at the time and progressed to Jews later on (many notable communists were Jews, of course). Not that it really matters for your analogy — even though the Puppies’ constant rambles against left-wing attitudes provide some irony in all this.
For even more irony, your Nazi analogy can also be easily turned around and applied to the Puppy side — from the start, Brad Torgersen and friends were scapegoating Hugo winners, voters and nominees for practically everything that was wrong with science fiction genre at the time. Their screeds about Nutty Nuggets, feminists, Tor Books, political correctness, John Scalzi and “If You Were A Dinosaur, My Love” were as reasonable as those of the early NSDAP.
Oh, tut, tut. Either you failed to read, or you read in a completely different universe than this one. There is a difference between “these vile, despicable Puppies have no place in our club even though we say it’s open” and “this small group of people who claim to be the One True Fandom does not want anyone who doesn’t worship them, and this is hurting everyone in fandom.”
If you can’t see a difference, or see that this is the underlying message, you must have a very simple view of life.
As for your specific accusations, not one involves denying the right of a group of people to have their opinion (much less exist) the way your side has tried to do to us.
Oh, so, if I understand you correctly, you condemn Irene Gallo in her calling Sad Puppies neo Nazis, including Peter Grant, who fought against Apartheid and actual Neo Nazis.
Is that right?
Of course it’s okay! Irene Gallo is Awewome, as Mr. Chu was pleased to inform us. So the standard is set. Kate seems a bit picky in that she limits it to those who use Nazi tactics, but she needn’t bother.
So, unless you’re prepared to join the Tor boycott or disavow Chu, pipe down.
But since I am the sort of precise word-pedant who uses Nazi narrowly, I could quote you unmercifully: Say it with me everyone: jaynsand called Irene Gallo insanely over the top. Ms Gallo is an over-reacting lunatic, according to jaynesand.
Should I? And if not M. Jaynsand, why not?
For what it’s worth, I made a point not to frame Godwin’s Law in terms of whether the comparison is “legitimate” or not. I’ve written and spoken a lot about what my thinking was–notably here and here . I think the temptation to attribute (for example) genocidal impulses to those with whom one disagrees is, sadly, quite common, but I have never purported to prejudge whether it is “legitimate” or not in any given instance. Regardless of whether it’s “legitimate,” the temptation to escalate to Nazi comparisons sometimes seems omnipresent. I have a personal opinion about whether it makes historical sense to make Nazi comparisons in the context of a quarrel among sf fans about the Hugo Awards, but I’m not the arbiter of Godwin’s Law or anything else, so I won’t risk a distraction by volunteering that opinion here.
The problem with Godwin’s Law – and this is my opinion – is that it gets used disingenuously to shut down genuine comparison.
I’m not attributing genocidal intent – I’m saying that it’s damned easy to escalate from “group X is evil and has no right to exist in our society” (which is, ultimately, the message of the Puppy-Kicker rhetoric) to “group X is evil and has no right to exist”.
Of course, being Australian born and raised, I tend to call a spade a “fucking digging stick”, so “crass and blunt” is my natural culture.
Yes, it truly would be terrible if someone in the genre called some other group in fandom Nazis.
Just to be clear, so there isn’t any ambiguity like when Irene Gallo used the word “respectively,” is Kate saying every one of the 3,500 human beings who voted “No Award” in the Novella category? I mean, in the unlikely event she should ever apologize, I’d hate for people to assume she overreached and ignore her apology and demand her head.
In small words, in the hope you will understand this.
I am describing the behavior of a relatively small number of people – the people who launched a concerted smear campaign composed of vile lies and rather more mundane lies (like the “ooo, slate bad” despite the years upon years of Locus slates and the clear slate voting this time around from the same people) – as being Nazi and/or Communist.
More than that, I am not employed by any publisher. I am not speaking in a thread promoting my employer’s works. I am also Australian by birth and upbringing, and I will call it as I see it. I see ugly parallels, and they run closer to Nazi-esque ideology than they do to Communist (not that there’s really all that much difference between the two).
If you are incapable of seeing the parallels between the way that small clique is demonizing anyone who dares to have a work of theirs be liked by Puppy supporters (as if anyone can control who likes their work) and the way the Nazis demonized Jews (and quite a few other groups), then I have nothing further to say to you.
To make the statement “as being Nazi and/or Communist” is to evince a profound ignorance of both. At best, it’s an oxymoron.
Only an ignoramus would fail to compare the national socialist party with the international socialist party. Or imagine that the latter was significantly different because its police state targeted both Jewish and non-Jewish intellectuals and capitalists. Equal opportunity genocide, is that it?
And anyone who’d seen the reaction of a bevy of pearl-clutching WASPs to a (gasp! Ick!) handful of Jews invading their country club would be tempted to compare the world con 1-per centers to other classic bigots. Except the WASPs were more honest in their exclusion of the Other.
Sure. Sure. Your filibuster must mean that you are uncredibly (sic) keerect. Right.
The base was probably just something that happened. Those coasters however had malice aforethought. These pieces of dung intentionally insulted ALL the nominees. We need a list of names responsible so that they and all their works can be shunned as unfit to associate with civilized people.
I’m quite sure they’ll all happily name themselves and civilized people will be able to make their own decisions rather easily.
My own opinion of the Asterisks? Dick move. Putting on a big cheery grin and describing them as if the recipients should be happy about the present they’re getting, like a smallpox-infused blanket? Even dicker move.
F*** the Hugos (see what I did there?)
But for your reading pleasure, you BETTER have KU, and look at this review: https://www.amazon.com/review/RLUHYU23T1S9L/ref=pe_1098610_137716200_cm_rv_eml_rv0_rv
They’ve already been rather thoroughly f***ed over. I’m trying to save the poor things.
IF the Hugos are alive and well in 2040, it will be due to the work Larry initiated with SP1. That’s a BIG if, though.
And, in case it didn’t trickle through, my gift-from-God, happily-ever-after trophy wife Vanessa, the elegant, foxy, praying black grandmother of Woodstock, GA, is absolutely on board.
However, she DOES want sexy shape-shifters to be nominated at some point.
She likes sexy shape-shifter books.
Sarah and Amanda need to write more books with sexy shape-shifters, obviously.
Well, Pat, I’m certainly not the writer Amanda or Sarah is. But four weeks from now one of mine goes up with two uber cute Korean gals. Korean gals when they aren’t in their other shape. Might keep your wife and you slightly entertained until Amanda and Sarah get more shapeshifter stories out.
Be sure to give us a link. I’m highly in favor of uber-cute Korean gals, regardless of what they turn into.
(Now I need to re-read “The Devil Wives of Li Fong”.)
As I noted before – the entire performance in Spokane really looked and felt like a Leni Riefenstahl production. Except that Leni did it better (in artistic terms).
That is possibly the saddest thing about this whole deal.
Over on Brad’s site right now, there are a lot of File 770 folk trying to justify their actions or claim we’re misinterpreting their agenda.
What a waste of time………….
“Paul Weimer @PrinceJvstin · 12h12 hours ago
So Kate Paulk, who will run Sad Puppies 4, liberally uses Nazi and Communist descriptors for Hugo fandom: (link to this post)”
And I wondered what the line of attack was going to be.
If I hadn’t given them a line of my choosing, they’d have picked something. This has the added benefit of a certain amount of truth being painful.
If the goosestep fits, and if the goosestepping morons prefer burning down nominations to reading books….
Fortunately, there were those people who booed, and those people who left early, as well as those who were honest voters and ambushed by the ceremonial hatred ritual. So not everyone there was a brownnoser eager to attend a fannish Nuremberg rally and public denunciation of underpeople. This gives me hope.
The frightening thing is that the Puppy Kickers managed to find so many gleeful haters who were happy to waste votes, and that nobody who won made a protest speech against having their Hugo night wasted on cheap ridicule. The lockstep glee and the fear of falling out of step are apparently working.
@suburban
I have tried my damndest to see reason, to speak rationally to puppies. Chris (hi Chris), who pointed out on twitter my tweet about my ‘line of attack’, has talked to me on twitter. Sometimes even with civility. Right?
But c’mon. The cognitive dissonance of calling for Irene Gallo’s head for her “extreme right wing to neo-nazi” facebook comment in describing sad and rabid puppies on the one hand…and then for Kate to just go full metal Godwin and Communism? (I don’t think there is an equivalent to Godwin for Communism, there should be). The irony is rich.
It’s a damned award for science fiction, not a culture war.
And really, how the hell am I, who tries to build every bridge I can, supposed to deal with this? Brad accuses me of wanting to put people in Boxcars, and now according to the creator of SP4 I’m a Nazi and a Communist.
Or, as you so succinctly put it: I am the goosestepping moron.
This reinforces the self-harm thoughts I expressed in the thread with Brad. If I am a Nazi and a communist, I’m an existential evil. Wouldn’t my death be a good thing? Don’t you want me to die?
But, no. The heck with that. I’m just done with trying. You and the rest of the Puppies help midwive dark and disturbing ideas from the worst part of my mind to the forethought of my thoughts. I don’t like suicidal me one whit. And trying to engage with you all, and reading what you have to say, and trying my damnest to be fair seems to only causes me harm.
Those things you’re building, that tend to collapse when somebody’s half-way across—they don’t really qualify as bridges, y’know.
If you were an honest voter, and not engaging in gleeful hate or treating people as unpersons, then obviously you were not acting like a Nazi or a Communist. You have nothing to be ashamed of, and no reason to hurt yourself.
On the other hand, if you happen to have done anything you are ashamed of, then obviously the next step is to apologize and/or make amends. Not to hurt yourself!
There is no situation in which hurting yourself will help anyone, or improve the situation for yourself. Thoughts of self-harm are just your brain playing tricks on you, trying to impose absolutism on fluid happenings and feelings.
There are some very helpful books out there about getting rid of “Automatic Negative Thoughts” (the acronym is ANTs, heh). It’s also very helpful to go outside and get some sunshine and fresh air, and to do happy things.
Paul,I am truly sorry that the correspondence you’ve read has brought you to the point of feeling self-destructive. If I may, I’d like to share a bit of my experience, strength, and hope.
1. Feeling bad doesn’t mean doing bad. Feelings are REAL, there is no denying that. They do not, however, control us, and they are not the sum of our being.
2. People care about you, and desire your good. No matter how bad you are feeling, you must not forget that there is nothing that self-destruction will make better; the people who care for you will be left with a problem that cannot be solved.
3. Make a promise, to someone who is highly significant to you, that you will not kill yourself. That will remove a source of pain for them, and will give you something to cling to in the worst times.
4. Establish, immediately, a relationship with a healthcare provider you trust. Follow their instructions.
5. Insanity means that you believe in things that are not real. A belief that suicide provides a better solution than every other solution is, by definition, insane. Choose to ACT as if you are sane, even if you do not FEEL sane.
6. If you must, remove all instruments of suicide from your environment. This is not a complete/total solution, but if you are given to impulsive behavior, it will help.
7. If you are an alcoholic or an addict, go to a meeting. If you are not, then contact local mental health services for a self-help meetings in your area. If all else fails, go to an AA meeting even if you are not an alcoholic, and don’t talk, but listen.
I hope you read this and take it in the spirit in which is offered. I’m not pronouncing superiority over you; I’m just a beggar, showing others where I have found bread.
What both Banshee and Pat said. In addition, you should eliminate as many triggers as possible (and I’m using that word in the therapy context, ie the proper way) and if that means taking time off from reading/posting on the internet then do that!
I suspect the war will still be raging when you get back.
Paul?
I’ve read many of your comments about the Puppies on File 770. I haven’t seen any bridge building comments.
If you intended things that way, maybe you should think about what you say and how it comes across.
No disrespect meant or anything, but most of what I’ve seen is thought policing. We don’t need no thought policing.
It might be a thought to take up Pat’s suggestion.
Paul,
Your suicide will not do any good. Suicide eliminates many of the benefits caused by the execution of bad people. If you are that evil, you should go to the police and tell them where and how you disposed of the bodies.
For a communist who is not a murderer, death is not necessarily the most beneficial option. Many of the most zealous anti-communists are converts from communism. If you suspect your advocacy for leftist causes is evil, you may be on the road to a conversion experience.
If you smoke weed, stop. If you do meth or coke, stop. If you inject heroin, stop.
The extreme right wing to neo-nazi comment is accurate. Neo-Nazis are on the left, and we have puppies that fit that description. My problem with Gallo is that she claimed a book by her company was terrible, when at worst it was mediocre.
Alright, Paul, I’m going to be harsher than some of the others here. I’ve stared down many a very dark demon. I’ve been at that edge. And no I’m not going to go into detail. You’d shatter. You have demonstraited you are very thin skinned. If THIS pushes you that far over the edge (if you’re not faking it just to guilt trip people, which I am not yet willing to dismiss as a possibility) you need to withdraw from the internet until you have found professional help. Not the people on the internet you have done your best to deride and malign. Actual professional help. Both for your depression and to get over yourself.
I have yet to see a single post from you that genuinely has been willing to build bridges. EVERY post has been about how WE must give up something and NONE of it has been about what your side will actually give up in return. You want to build a bridge that means meeting the other side half way. You won’t. Deal with the consequences and get off your high horse it’s dead. Go directly to a mental professional and start dealing with your issues rather than running from them. You’re not going to find what you need here, whatever you think you want.
I am genuinely sorry to hear that. But I do have to ask: do you complain this much when your side drops the Godwin Bomb? Because they have done it regularly since this began.
You are right about one thing, the Hugo should just be an award.
Perhaps you need to take a break from this.
Not to mention, it isn’t Godwin when you’re pointing out actual, verifiable similarities.
And yes, the Hugo SHOULD be just an award. Larry Correia was called a liar when he pointed out how far from that the Hugos had strayed. Hee was libeled and slandered when he demonstrated how far from that the Hugos had strayed.
You and the rest of the Puppies help midwive dark and disturbing ideas from the worst part of my mind to the forethought of my thoughts. I don’t like suicidal me one whit. And trying to engage with you all, and reading what you have to say, and trying my damnest to be fair seems to only causes me harm.
Paul,
This is the second time I’ve seen you talk about this.
If you want to hurt yourself, please get help. If you’re not sure what to do, click on my name and go to my website and use the contact page and I will figure out how to get you the help you need.
However, stop putting your mental illness on us. I will not be held hostage by your demons. Saying that we “midwife dark and disturbing ideas” is just that, saying that if you hurt yourself, its our fault. No, it’s not. If you aren’t mentally strong enough for this, then leaving all of this behind is the only sane and rational course. At least until you’re well enough to continue. Your failure to do so puts continued “dark and disturbing ideas” on you, not us.
Seriously, you need help. Get it. If you are, then you need to talk to them about this, and I promise they’ll advise you to separate from this crap.
Either way, I’m getting a little tired of you trying to put the things that happen in your head onto us.
My coat is brown, but not my nose.
Wait, they object to being called Communists now? When so many of the loudest noises seem to think Stalin was uncomfortably right-wing? Wonders will never cease.
I remember reading in Brad Torgersen’s blog a few months back that stealing the keys to Enterprise is fine and the people who were angry over it shouldn’t be such crybabies. There’s some irony in all these upset reactions now that the Enterprise keys were stolen back.
Popular awards are given to things that are most popular among the voters, and No Award seems to be a fan-favorite when the other options are forced on people by scientologists, Puppies et cetera.
I’d agree with you except for the underhanded smear campaign that was run from the time the nominations were announced until now.
Running to your willing allies in the media and crying racist Nazis are taking over the Hugos quick help! certainly helped drum up the brave No Award voters.
That’s one thing Brad wasn’t really prepared for, being blindsided like that. Well, two can play that game.
I have no allies in the media and I don’t think Brad Torgersen is a racist Nazi. I guess that most No Award voters are like this, too (even though I didn’t actually even put all Puppy works below No Award so maybe I get a cookie now?).
I suspect most of the no award voters are typical low information voters who, having been told by people they trusted (silly them) that the Puppy works were Evil!Bad!Wrongfun!, did what they thought was the right thing.
Normal honest people who have mostly dealt with other normal honest people are very easy for dishonest people like the Puppy-Kickers to manipulate.
I suspect, on the contrary, that they felt that hijacking the ballot through slate-voting tactics was despicable and that No Award was the appropriate response. What each individual’s reasoning was, we’ll never know.
Either way, they did what they thought was the right thing to do and they broke no rules while doing it. (Exactly the same justification was used by Puppies after the nomination result outrage, so I don’t think there’s much moral high ground for you there.)
I would have given out the same number of No Awards, but in slightly different categories — an actual award for long form editor and no award for novelette. In my opinion, that’s the appropriate thing to do if the ballot is filled with candidates that just aren’t good enough (or any good).
Apart from the remarkable consistency in the numbers (but we’re the ones accused of voting by slate), I’m not objecting to the votes. I’m objecting to the insulting, marginalizing, othering presentation that effectively said anyone who doesn’t agree with the “Hugo fans” (as opposed to science fiction and fantasy fans, which is a much larger group and way more diverse in opinion) has no right to exist within the culture of fandom.
Give me sufficient evidence that was not what that presentation did (and remember, Toni Weisskopf and numerous others walked out before the results were announced. And Toni WAS a long-term fan. Since I don’t know here personally, I don’t know if she still is.
I’m objecting to the insulting, marginalizing, othering presentation that effectively said anyone who doesn’t agree with the “Hugo fans” (as opposed to science fiction and fantasy fans, which is a much larger group and way more diverse in opinion) has no right to exist within the culture of fandom.
Well, what I think the result effectively says is that the Hugo fandom isn’t going to play with anybody who tries forcing their candidates on the ballot through slate shenanigans like the Puppies did. I haven’t seen anybody present the opinion that fans who think that Jim Butcher or Toni Weisskopf or Kate Paulk should win a Hugo are not welcome to the fandom.
Please just drop the slate nonsense that takes away other fans’ chances to have an equal say.
I don’t think the result says anything of the sort. It says that the Puppy-Kicker faction ran a vicious smear campaign to paint the creators of all Puppy-favored works as evil (hint: Entertainment Weekly’s smear piece that had to have a damning retraction posted within an hour of going live) and a lot of people believed it.
Apparently you don’t follow Making Light. I don’t have the screencap myself, but TNH said outright that we Puppies are not welcome in fandom and that we are not “real” fans. I’m sure someone else here can point you to the links.
Oh, and “slate shenanigans”? What precisely is bad about “these are the works you like most. Read them and if you think they deserve it, you can nominate them”? The use of the word “slate”?
Fine. I’m not planning to use that word in Sad Puppies 4.
I have yet to meet the first SFF fan who gets their fandom news via EW. What the paper’s reporter chooses to report is no anti-Puppy’s fault. You seem to think that some nasty SJW cabal hammered out press releases to smear all Puppies but I wonder why not a single one of them has been discovered.
This year’s Hugo ballot was hijacked by Rabid Puppies, who beat the Sads in the instances where the nominees weren’t identical. Their instructions were to nominate the slate as it was, so it very clearly was not a recommendations list.
The Sad Puppy effort, too, was called a slate and designed as a thing one could nominate as is, even though Torgersen did explicitly encourage people to read first. How many really did, nobody knows. At least somebody, I guess, because there’s some variance in nomination numbers.
Most of the other publications reporting the story, especially after the first wave went out in EW and The Guardian, quoted directly from the EW article. Even the retracted parts. This fact, however, is not nearly as sexy as accusing Puppies of believing in mysterious cabals.
This fact, however, is not nearly as sexy as accusing Puppies of believing in mysterious cabals.
What do you make of this unsexy fact, then? “People disagreeing with Puppies are not nice” (suggested many times in this thread) or “journalists are lazy”?
There’s a mathematical fallacy here that I forget the name of, where you are assuming that items on both ballots were voted on as heavily by the RP’s as the items that were unique to the RP list.
It’s a weird sort of self-contradictory argument, trying to discount the power of the SP campaign, while in the next argument you accuse them of rigging the results.
I speak ‘disingenuous’ folks, I’ll translate:
“Any work you think worthy of a Hugo nomination is a slate.”
“Any compilation of said work(s) is a slate.”
“Putting such a compilation together in one place is a slate.”
“A ‘slate’ is anything we say it is, thus the annual Locus list of books worthy of a Hugo is not a slate, but anything else is. A list of recommended votes on who to give the award to is not a slate.”
“Remember, there is room for everyone in fandom… except you. Welcome! Here is your honorary asterisk.”
“Groups of fans sitting in a newsgroup making up Hugo nomination lists? Totally not a slate.”
(yes, i know that was almost 20 years ago. No, that doesn’t matter.)
Of course they will have to wait their turn especially Toni I mean PNH needs at least 5 more Long Form editor Hugo’s and the other Tor editors need a couple more. SC.
It’s a ridiculous category altogether and could be obliterated with no more rockets for Nielsen Hayden, Weisskopf or anybody else, if you ask me. “Best publishing house”, for example, would be something that voters can really have a reasonable opinion about. And maybe “best pro magazine” and “best anthology” instead of “best editor: short form”.
Sorry can’t happen PNH spent years getting the Long Form Editor split from the short form editor. It seems the magazine editors won the Best Professional Editor 95% of the time.
I’m sorry if it doesn’t fit your narrative, but that’s exactly what the PNH-loving Puppy-kicker canine-haters in File770 have been discussing for a couple of days now.
Out of curiosity, when did the new category appear, and since then, how many of the awards went to PNH or TNH? (Yes, I’m being lazy instead of looking it up myself).
This was the 9th year and PNH’s won 3 times, two other Tor editors have won once each and they’ve had 18 nominations in the first 8 years.
No wonder he’s so angry all the time.
(For some reason, I had the number 8 in mind, not sure where that came from).
Ah yes. You used the power imbalance to spread the propaganda meme that Wrongfans (raciss! Sexis! Nazis!) had used BadThink (the magic slate) to assault and rob (hijack) the Trufans (Hugo)
In every possible venue, both political, and supposedly non-, on blogs, social media and print publications, while simultaneously running personal attack and defamation campaigns on anyone you could target as a leader.
You’re still doing it, or trying to, here.
Didn’t you notice Kate’s quote of Goebbels’ exact same tactics? I think she may be on to you. I certainly am.
If you have proof of a concerted propaganda campaign being run by anybody, let’s hear it. Where are the supposed anti-Puppy press releases that Kate and others were raving about in Superversive SF podcast with their whiskers on fire, for example?
What I think I see is just a lot of people disliking the slates that a mean-spirited minority with persecution complex uses to force their candidates on the ballot.
Poor little kitten…
io9.com, entertainment weekly, etc etc.
Too bad you ‘ignored’ them.
Sadly, a bunch of news outlets reporting what happens (and doing it badly, in some cases) is not a concerted propaganda campaign.
When they start writing identical phrases in close time to each other, then you know they’re writing from press releases. Which requires corporate access to the press release pipeline.
It’s kinda like the sudden coincidence of “Gamers are dead” articles.
Once is happenstance, twice is coincidence, three times is enemy action.
When they pop up with the same propaganda. In almost exactly the same words over and over again. Yes, it is. It’s actually a very classic smear campaign, quite a clumsy one too. Intro to psyops student (or a modestly author who does anything with politics) would be ashamed of it on the level of “Americans Go Home! Bart Simpson is sleeping with your wives!”. Not that it wasn’t effective on some levels (the No Awards) ineffective on others (the increasing number of people going ‘you morons pissed me off now I’m joining the puppies’.) Please discard the disingenuous posturing.
You’re absolutely certain there are press releases (surely put out by Tor, Nielsen Hayden and your other sinister opponents) because of some “identical phrases” in news articles, but no-one has seen any releases and no-one can find them?
Honestly, guys, that’s some tin foil hat territory.
Occam’s razor tells me that in case there are some “identical phrases” (of which you provided no proof), it’s has more to do with reporters using previous articles as their sources than Puppy-kicker cabals doing shady stuff.
Not just identical phrases, identical errors, and errors that are identical to the smears the AP’s have been making. Especially when these outlets have been ignoring the Hugos forever until this point.
Make sure you can get your no award slate voters to agree on a slate for nominations next time. See you in 2016.
The thing is, the people who REALLY have asterisks attached to their Hugos are the ones you CHORF’s spared your NoAwarding (Since they’re the ones who actually HAVE Hugos from 2015).
Wesley Chu now has to wonder if he REALLY was the best new author this year for his silly forced coming out story, or if he was chosen not for his ability, but because you guys wanted to trot out a gay Asian as proof of your diversity chops. He will always have that asterisk of doubt over his head. I wonder how long he will keep writing.
//Wesley Chu now has to wonder if he REALLY was the best new author this year for his silly forced coming out story//
Are you thinking of John Chu who wrote The Water that Falls on You from Nowehere? Wesley Chu is a different author.
Umm, I’m not absolutely sure what you are referring to with “silly forced coming out story”. Maybe last year’s Hugo-winning short story “The Water That Falls On You From Nowhere” which was written by John Chu, not Wesley Chu? Wesley Chu is the Campbell-award winner this year, author of the Tao trilogy of action novels. I have no idea if either of the two Chus is “a gay Asian” and I can’t say I care.
In any case, I do hope they both keep on writing.
Don’t you understand that all Asians with their silly names look alike? How are fine upstanding Americans supposed to tell the difference between one Chu or two Chuchus? Two Wongs don’t make a white.
Oh, and she brought a friend. I hope she warned you that you’re going to get chewed on if you troll. If you decide to have good conversation, then you’ll likely be fine here, but you haven’t exactly started well.
Throw no stones unless you’ve never flipped a name of an author for a similarly named one. You throw too many stones as it is.
Given how many times I’ve seen John C. Wright get the wrong surname attached in the past few months (Jim, Joe, etc.), our puppy-kicking friends live in some glass houses with very thin walls.
I stand corrected. But his Hugo STILL carries an Asterisk.
Well, yes. For example I don’t know if Andy Weir was eligible but he was apparently bumped from the Campbell nominations by the Puppy slates. Given the massive popularity of The Martian he would have been a likely winner (assuming he was eligible etc – fuzzy issues and I’m not an expert on the eligibility criteria for the Campbell). So there is a sense of an ‘asterisk’ on Wesley Chu’s win. Some of the Puppy picks for this category would possibly have still made it (Kary English) but it is fair to say that without the Puppy nominations, Chu would have been facing a different set of nominees and hence would not necessarily have won.
If rightly or wrongly, voters do not have faith in the nomination process it impacts on ALL candidates (OK I know you get that because you’ve made positive suggestions for reforming the nomination process but it is still worth saying).
I still think Chu’s win was well earned (and great speech!) but yes, like everything this year there is a footnote indicated by an asterisk which says “nomination process dominated by a group called ‘Rabid Puppies’ and to a lesser extent a group called ‘Sad Puppies’”
Or the asterisk stands for the group who voted for the No Award slate in lock-step, without having even read the works.
Could do I suppose. Unfortunately I have no idea who those people were. I read all the works and reviewed several and my voting pattern was pretty much the same as what would look like ‘No Award slate in lock-step’. Do you have any figures for the number of people who didn’t read the works?
There are plenty of places where the numbers have been analyzed, I’m not doing the heavy lifting for you. That was the game played during SP3. If you are genuinely interested, go hunt on Vox Day’s Blog, Larry Correia’s Blog, Brad Torgersen’s Blog, or John C Wright’s Blog.
I was at the con. I talked to upwards of 20-25 normal fans (neither puppies nor anti-puppies) who were perfectly nice and voted no award and said they didn’t read the works, because they read slates were the evilist evil ever. When asked about the slate Locus puts out every year, blank stare. By the numbers, there were about 2500 of these folks, some think it is higher than that.
I have looked at the numbers myself as well as read the blogs you mentioned and Chaos Horizon’s. I don’t know of anybody who has managed to distinguish between people who voted No Award without reading the works and people who voted No Award who had read the works. The 2500 number you mentioned is derived from the people who voted No Award in Best Editor Long Form – rather than a specific works category. You apparently know of 20 to 25 people who voted No Award without reading the works – that is about 1% of the 2500 figure you gave. On the other hand you can see how I voted in the works categories and see that I read, reviewed, ranked and in some cases parodied works on the two Puppy slates and yet my vote looks very much the same as the ‘lock-step’ vote. So the question remains – how do you tell the difference between people voted without reading and people who voted the same way and did read?
My best guess would be around 1700 for No Award +Read as this is the 1st preference vote for No Award in Best Novelette. The people who possibly only voted No Award for Puppy nominations may have voted for “The Day the World Turned Upside Down” purely because it was not a Puppy nomination – of course even that is hard to tell as I’m sure many people liked it (I didn’t and voted No Award in that category). There was a few hundred people who may have voted No Award in everything regardless. I wouldn’t have much confidence with these numbers though as really it is nigh on impossible to distinguish between people who vote No Award because they didn’t like ‘slates’, people who voted No Award because of politics or Vox-hate and people who voted No Award because the Puppy nominations were just not that great.
I concur with camestrosfelapton and wish to elaborate on chaoshorizon’s analysis. I independently duplicated chaoshorizon’s analysis. We corresponded back and forth (very civilly) on a few minor statistics issues.
The 2,500 hard votes against any puppy nominee is pretty conclusive if you let the data speak for itself.
I think it is a plausible figure. With more data I think we’d be able to see some clearer sub-groupings in the No Awarders. Either way it a lot of fans. Anyone wanting to persuade a majority of fans to vote some other way is going to have to find a way of persuading some of those people to vote differently. [or get more voters from somewhere else without creating an even bigger backlash]
You got corn dogs, or what?
I’m sorry. I’m right out of corn dogs but there may be some sad puppies here abouts.
Based on the counts it looks like there was a solid core of ~500 that voted the Noah Ward slate on all choices (except Novel/Movie) no matter what.
There was clearly another category that voted Noah Ward on most/all of the professional categories. If you exclude Novelette, that’s clearly ~2500. If you include Novelette then it’s 1700. Either way its more than the total votes cast in the Hugo for most (all?) of the preceding years this century.
That is actually pathetic. Not the Noah Ward this year so much as the fact that it highlights precisely what we puppies had been saying – the Hugo as “fan” award wasn’t even close to representative of all fans. A decade or so ago the total votes were a tenth of what they are now. Thanks to the puppy campaigns we’ve moved from a small clique to a village voting. Maybe next year we’ll get a market town’s worth and some time after that – hopefully – we get to an actual city a.k.a a non-trivial fraction of SF readers.
I’d like to know where the 1700 or so Noah Ward voters were in the last few years? (Unless of course they were VoX Day’s minions 🙂 )I know where the puppy supporters were – they mostly didn’t know they could vote. And when they came in to vote they completely failed to vote a slate of any description, but nominated stuff they liked and voted stuff they liked and as a result spread their vote around.
Where all the ‘new’ voters have come from is an interesting question. Some would be people who may have voted as attending members in the past at a WorldCon held locally to them (particularly UK or Australian supporting members). Others? Hard to know. I suspect that many Puppy and non-Puppy were exactly as you say – people with an interest in the Hugos but didn’t know they could vote. If increased awareness of that and increased membership was a key objective of the Sad Puppy campaign then it can rightly claim success in that regard.
However, what has not occurred is the Puppy vote approaching anything close to a majority of voters. Maybe 20% of voters were Sad or Rabid voters, another 20%+ various kinds of neutrals or people like GRRM who objected to the Puppy slate but did not want to No Award.
Replying to myself because the nesting is getting deep.
Yes, of course, the easy disqualification – my evidence is anecdotal. I commend you for at least looking thru the numbers.
Twenty plus people makes it a bit better than anecdotal if it was a random sample of people at Sasquan. A bigger issue is whether supporting members would have the same voting habits as people at the con. I’ve no idea about that! Maybe supporting members were more overtly interested in the Hugo voting or maybe they were more likely to be people just trying to be mean to the Puppies (or both). Nigh on impossible to tease apart intersecting categories. Factor in as well that some people may have read part of the works or didn’t read the works but did read multiple reviews…
Weir was disqualified because the work had been previously published in 2011.
The Martian was disqualified for Best Novel but I don’t think Andy Weir was disqualified from the Campbell (different rules and eligibility criteria)
I think that, according to Campbell rules, it would depend on whether the sales of the self-published version are considered “nominal” or not. It sold 35,000 in a couple of months (although for a very little price), which feels way more than that to me, but I’m not sure who would have made the final decision.
I guess we will never know 😐
Well, given the actual nomination data that was released, the strength of the puppies of either sort was vastly overstated compared to the power of the No Award Arsonists, who make all other accusations of block voting pale by comparison.
Gotta wonder who managed to assemble THAT voting block. And I wonder if any of them feel regret now that they’ve seen what they’ve wrought.
I’m not sure what you think the mystery is. People voted against the slates. It didn’t require any assembly.
25-3500 NoAward arsonists. THAT many people voting in lock-step, more than have EVER voted for the Hugos by several times over. That size of a unified front forming spontaneously doesn’t raise the slightest degree of suspicion? Even the Puppies only managed <400 noms for best novel, and nearly half of them had defected by the time you got to the lowest puppy novel.
That many people objecting to what had occurred? Nope. Looks a bit small to me.
That many people objecting to the NEO-NAZIS who had come to MURDER the HUGOs!!!! Sure. I’m shocked it wasn’t more.
Requires Hate torpedoed whole communities with these tactics, and would still bhe on-going if the privileged wife of the SWFA pres hadn’t done a spot of honest reporting.
Still unfair.
Again, I think your point may have got lost somewhere.
BS. And the lady at the Sunday business meeting who said she helped organize the No Award was lying? And the sites set up with No Puppies examples of how to vote were just my imagination? And the free associate memberships giving out didn’t really happen.
No, she wasn’t lying and you can add to the list all the many, many people on the web explaining their objections to the Puppy slates. All the people reviewing the slated works (as I did). The people who published their voting strategy on their blogs (as I did). The people who published how they were going to vote and why (as I did).
Lots of people objected to the Puppy slates and did so for multiple reason and where not remotely quiet about it. And then lost of people voted against those slates.
It was all done out in the open and it didn’t require much organisation.
Remember – the only information you really needed to know how to against the Puppy slates was to look at Vox’s blog and see what the Rabid Puppy slate was. Other sites (such as Diedre Saorise Moen’s – which gave a breakdown within days of the nominations) helped but mainly because lots of people don’t like to give Vox traffic. Even without such a list it was trivially easy to go and check what not to vote for if you were in anyway losing track of all that you had read.
Not everybody ‘won’ in that sense either. Philip Sandifer notably argued that ALL categories and ALL candidates (Puppy nominated or not) should be voted No Award. It is hard to tell but a few hundred people may have voted that way.
Now there is a flip side to that. What was the pro-Puppy campaign like? What was done to encourage people to not vote No Award?
1. Lots of political invective – that is what I’d call a ‘get out your vote’ strategy rather than a persuade others strategy. i.e. a lot of what was written on the Puppy side was aimed at getting people who might be generally sympathetic to the cause to vote. Smart move if you and your opposition are equally matched in numbers. The downside is that it can have the opposite effect – it encourages people who inherently disagree with you to vote against you.
2. Not much in the way of positive reviews. There were exceptions SuperversiveSF had a series of in-depth reviews of John C Wright’s Best Related Work nomination. Other than that? Very thin.
3. Not much in the way of positive vision. Lots was said about what you were objecting to and less was said in terms of what you wanted. This site was an exception and Kate Paulk in particular tried to map out some sort of aesthetic criteria – but even that was thin. Yes, credit to Lamplighter and Superversives in general for advocating a kind of philosophical aesthetic but the connection between that and the actual nominations was thin.
4. Some really bad choices. Zombie Nation? Really? Why didn’t the Puppies nominate Fables! It is 1. very good 2. often annoys people on the left by its implied political stance on issues such as Israel and 3. Bill Willingham gets a lot of heat from what you would call ‘SJWs’.
5. Speaking of which Wisdom from My Internet and Williamson in general. Yes, I get people find his humor funny but in a massive campaign to try and get people not to vote against you, having a guy who jokes about mass shootings within days of them occurring on your slate – not smart.
6. The Vox in the Room. I’m sure you get that he is effectively a recruiting sergeant for the left? Again, no great mystery why lots of people on the centre or on the left will come along and be happy to spend $40 voting against his choices – that those choices were largely the Sad Puppies choices FIRST is another matter. Yes, he says it was his aim along for No Award to win but we* don’t care what is going on in his head, we care about his actual actions. [by ‘we’ I mean socialist juvenile wonks like myself]
Spot on. Brad Torgersen and the various “puppies” had no idea how to run a sucessful propaganda campaign.
Nor did they have friendly connections in the leftist-dominated press.
And they frequently allowed themselves to be distracted by disengenuous wankers like kittytroll here.
Vox Day was the acid test of virtue, alas: only lefties sell out a valid piece of art because the artist is a jerk. The SP campaign could only disavow VD if they were willing to chuck the guiding principle of the campaign to end puppy-related sadness. WE don’t have ideological purity tests.
Of course he was lefty recruitment bait. The guy “punches up” every day and twice on Sundays. You barely have to lie about him at all, and everyone gets to enjoy the glow of an approved mass-hate. No niggling qualms about a guy who bucked his own church to approve “gay marriage” or has a black wife: too good to pass up.
So given all that why are some people acting astonished that the vote did not go the Puppies way? I know you didn’t do it intentionally but effectively Brad T et al ran a campaign that could have been designed to encourage people left-of-center to vote in the Hugos. How would that bring an end to puppy-related sadness? You don’t seem less sad and you seem even more hung up on ideological purity than before.
There you go again: False statement as bait, faked “concession of a point.”
Lie, misdirect, distract.
This has been a fun thread to play with. Thanks for the education. It’s a bit of a steep learning curve in lefty-warfare, but I’ll get there.
Wow. The Big Lie technique in action. (or “refuge in audacity” as the tvtropes people put it). Did someone say Hitler references were uncalled-for, ’cause I gotta disagree.
Andy Weir was only “bumped” because trufen assured us he was ineligible. Some of us nominated him anyway.
Since “puppies” everywhere love Weir type SF, if can we track the disinformation campaign to its source?
You maybe confusing the author with his book. Andy Weir isn’t his book and his book isn’t him. I hope that helps.
Silly me. I keep forgetting you folk are trolls, play-pretending at honest discourse. Pull the other one: you know what I meant.
No, I’m really am not sure what you meant at all. I think you are confusing the issue around the eligibility of The Martian with the question of the eligibility of Andy Weir for the Campbell. As far as the Campbell goes it does appear as if he would have received a nomination if it hadn’t been for the puppy nominees – which were a bit of a mixed bag (e.g. English was a creditable nominee).
Having stolen the keys to the Enterprise do they now have to go back in time in a Klingon ship and save the whales? I’d vote for them saving the whales.
Wouldn’t it be funny if the REASON the whales were gone is BECAUSE some meddlers from the future stole one?
I think that calls for a short story! Crew of a Sea-shepherd like boat discover that whales are actually being kidnapped by transhumans from the future for whom ‘owns 21st century whale’ is a lucky charm that wards of evil space monsters. TOO THE TYPEWRITER!
Lacks sufficient Irony. Cause of the Whales disappearance is an Environmental group in the future seeking to re-introduce whales, who all dissappeared one year in the past. For all their talk of sustainibly bringing forward whales from different eras, lazy thinking and a lack of funding caused them to do all their harvesting on the same day in history. The day the whales disappeared.
The trick is to tell the plot in a mystery, say as a Time Agent trying to undo the damage without creating a paradox.
Ok – you do that version and I’ll do one with an anarcho-communist sea shepherd style crew fighting transhumans from the future. I bet mine has more vegans in it.
And how would the presence, or absence of Vegans matter to the plot? Unless you’re talking about aliens from Vega.
My hidden paymasters and overlords insist that I include a message in my fiction – my secret instructions are to include MORE VEGANS!!!! [maniacal laugh] yes…master…I…obey….
Well, if the Vegetarian aliens ate too many of them, it would be entirely relevant.
Good point.
OK – I’ve finished my homework. Story now available. It got sort of sad and weird. No proper vegan references – sorry.
You have shamed me into starting mine.
🙂 I think we are all in this for the stories in the end
I do like the start I’ve gotten.
Arsen checked his jumper. He had maybe two hours in this time before he had to get back. Plenty of time, if he was lucky. At least he was in the right place. The new jumpers were vastly superior to the old models, the ones that could strand a Time Agent ten miles and ten years from his target. These days it was almost too easy.
Almost. The time travel wasn’t the issue, it was the assignments. Too often the reason there were gaps in the historical record is that there were no records to begin with. You can’t go back and rescue information that had never been compiled. Paper records that had never been scanned, computer files that were abandoned on obsolete media, they were all lost to time. But this time Arsen had a lead. It was a slim chance, but it could clear one of the most intractable cases the agency had.
Ok, I’m hooked!
(Just so you know, I AM still working on this. I just have to reign myself in before it turns into “By his Bootstraps”.)
🙂
Let’s get LE Modesitt on the ballot. He deserves it, I wish to hell he wasn’t Tor published but he is pretty awesome.
The fiction awards are for a WORK, not for a person. So if LE Modesitt has had a novel, or shorter work, come out in the relevant year that is really great – then people who think so should nominate it. *
But just going “X deserves a Hugo” without looking to see if this is actually a great piece of work by X has already done a disservice to some nominees.
* I read a lot of his books myself but I’m not sure anything lately has blown me away. In Hugo terms he suffers a bit from producing consistently good series rather than individual works of brilliance. I will be interested to see what comes out of the deliberations re Best Series. I can think of other consistently good writers of series who fly under the Hugo radar for similar reasons – e.g. S.M. Stirling, whose books definitely have what Jo Walton calls “IWantToReadItosity”
I’m not sure who you think this “We Are Trufen clique” is, unless you mean the 11,000 members of Sasquan, or the nearly 6,000 of them who voted in the Hugo Award election.
Actually, that doesn’t seem like a “clique” any more than “the voters in the US who voted for Obama” is one. Rather, that appears to be a *significant* majority of the actual electorate: the fans who decide who and what gets to win a Hugo.
It was those fans who decided by their vote that either a) (except for “Dramatic Presentation, Long Form”) not a single one of the works or people put forth by the Puppies who coordinated their votes during the nomination process was actually, in their opinion, “Hugo-worthy,” or b) they just did not approve of the Puppies’ tactic of coordinating their vote for a slate of items, and how that coordination put such unworthy (in their opinion) works on the final ballot to the exclusion of more worthy (again, in their opinion) works.
But again, I remind you, those fans, those Worldcon members, made up a *significant* majority of voters, not a clique.
In actuality, it appears more like it’s the Puppies who are the “clique” here. And that clique, and it’s tactics, were resoundingly put down by the voters.
Oh dear. Math isn’t your strong suit, is it? It’s quite obvious when looking at the numbers for the nominations and the final ballots that the Puppy supporters voted for the works they liked, where the uninformed blindly followed the Puppy-Kickers down the No Award black hole.
And by “obvious” I mean that absent blatant dishonesty counting the votes (which has NEVER been suggested) the only way the votes could have gone the way they did is a whole lot of people swallowing the Puppy-Kicker propaganda wholesale or being bought.
Since I still have a tiny shred of optimism left, I prefer to believe the former.
Sorry but maths doesn’t help you there. The categories in which No Award did best were also the categories which had the most Puppy Nominees. Consequently it is not odd to find that the Sad Puppy voters had a variety of choices and hence voted more variably (the Rabid voters less so). The necessary flip-side of that is that those categories were less likely to have works on them that people who didn’t share the same taste as the Puppies would like.
Imagine it was a ballot for ice-cream and year after year strawberry never even gets nominated (despite once being the no 1 choice). These days it is all salted-juniper-whip, or caramel-honey-orange-ripple-flavor. You get together with some pro-strawberry people and make sure that this year most of the nominated flavors are strawberry or variations on strawberry. …but people vote en-masse for ‘none of the above’. How do you tell which of those votes are people who didn’t like how you arranged the nominations and how many are people who just really don’t like strawberry ice-cream?
[Sorry: in my second sentence I forgot to add ‘with the exception of Best Dramatic Work Long’]
You got it backwards. For years they’ve only been getting strawberry. This year they had a choice of a lot of different flavors.
They couldn’t deal with that, they only wanted strawberry on the menu, and nothing but.
Well there seemed to be an awful of John C Wright flavored ice-cream particularly in the Novella Sundae. I can handle one scoop but three is a bit rich for me.
Why was Wright flavored a concern and McGuire flavored (a few years back) not? Both had five noms in the same year.
Are you asking why Wright’s three nominations this year in Best Novella from a campaign claiming that it had added more variety to the ballot was more of an issue for me than McGuire/Grant getting two nominations for Novellette in 2013 after no specific campaign claiming that it had increased the variety of stuff on the ballot. I don’t know, I guess I just think 60% of a category being works by just one person is a bigger issue than 40%. I’ll concede that it might be an idiosyncratic preference of mine.
No. We’re asking you to quit spreading one of the JCW hate memes. Go goal-post move someplace else.
JCW fans want the JCW stories they love to win awards. You want to stop them from nominating eligible JCW stories because WrongFans having Wrongfun. You failed.
But you can punish them with No Award to spite their presumption.
Alternately, you’re just bone-ignorant.
I thought it was Sad Puppies rather than JCW Puppies. The purpose of Sad Puppies included getting people on the ballot that had been ignored by past Hugo nominations. Necessarily every spot taken up by JCW was a spot that could have been taken up by somebody else. Now if you are saying that the field of conservative writers is so small that the only way to fill the available slots was with John C Wright, then I can see the sense of it but that would be an odd claim to make.
c4c
I’ve been with Sad Puppies since Larry first called for volunteers to join him in the cause, but the tone of this post is causing me to have some serious concerns. First, we can’t be the group demanding respect and civility, and holding the other side accountable for ad hominem and baseless attacks if we do the same damn thing. Irene Gallo flat out meant to imply we were all racists, homophobes, neo-Nazis, etc. I don’t give a damn what she or anyone else tries to say, she meant that nuance as surely as if she’d written it explicitly. And that was flat out, undeniably wrong. I wrote her, Tor.Com, and Tom Dougherty to that effect electronically and on paper.
This post is equally wrong.
Yes, the Old Guard, the CHORFS, the Puppy Kickers, whatever we want to call them acted exactly as they accused us of doing when they voted in bloc for No Award. Their “slate” was very short, but it was a slate nonetheless. Yes, the audience was rude, hateful even in cheering for No Award. Yes, David Gerrold’s Asterix-holes were uncalled for and petty. Yes, their tone has been full of rudeness, hatefulness, and has been unfounded in anything remotely resembling truth.
But to call them Nazis? Or even to make the comparison? I had relatives who lived through the horrors of Eastern Europe before and during WW II. These people may be polarized and they may be intolerant, but they are far from the monsters that tore Europe apart, inflamed the world, and viciously exterminated millions of people because of their ethnicity.
Rule of thumb: if you have to appeal to Hitler to make your argument, you’re probably doing it wrong.
In this case, we have a legitimate point, and a legitimate argument. We should make it, and make it civilly. It’s called “the moral high road” for a reason. If we cede the moral high ground, and become that which we oppose, then what the hell is Sad Puppies all about?
Let me get this straight: you think that because I’m blunt enough to say that people who act like the Nazis did before they came to power are acting like Nazis I’ve lost the moral high ground?
I disagree. By denying that something can be reminiscent of Nazi tactics and ideology until the massacres start, one enables their rise. Let them refute the claims. If they have not tried to silence, slander, or libel opponents those opponents will say so.
Look, I’m fully behind the embiggening. It’s a great plan. Tens of thousands of new fans equals a bigger overlap between Fandom and the fan base that actually buys books, ergo, more gravitas for the Hugo and a shot in the arm for the whole deal. I’m on board. But I’m simply not able to grok your connection of the TruFen with proto-Nazis. I think it’s a false equivalency both ethically and historically. And honestly, in my opinion only, we cheapen our argument when we embrace the tactics of the group we are opposing. I’d rather see us be up front and direct, but leave aside the hyperbole and ad hominem attacks that have so colored their rhetoric.
Steve, I’ll grant that this is an emotional topic on all fronts, and that yes, I was hitting pretty hard.
I don’t accept the ad-hominem charge, because what I’m looking at is the parallels: The people scapegoating Puppy supports and ascribing all manner of faults to that group to the extent that any behavior, even the behavior the scapegoat group is accused of is justified are doing exactly what the early Brownshirts did at the behest of the NSDAP leadership so they could win enough support to take wider power.
It’s ugly, yes. It’s also instructive. If the behavior stops (and it’s not all TruFen, either. Many of those I suspect have been hoodwinked by the nasty little clique led by the NH Torlings and will be metaphorically stabbed in the back as soon as they cease to be useful to said clique), so will my comparison because it will cease to be valid.
Sadly, I don’t think it would be a good idea to hold my breath. Smurf just is not my color.
Yes. Because last year we were so uncivil, and that’s why they maligned us in every major press. Hey, haven’t I seen your handle at Vile 770? Your concern trolling is not my concern.
I assure you, you’ve never seen my handle at File 770. To my knowledge I don’t have an account there. In actuality, if you’ve seen my posts at all you’ve seen me defending against the actions the trufans took, writing letters to the Guardian, etc. about the libelous accusations made, etc. And I further assure you that I’m not attempting to troll anyone or anything. I simply don’t think calling anyone a Nazi is productive. It’s an ethical stance based on personal history and family connections, plus a bit of an understanding of history.
Want to call them assholes for the way they handled the awards ceremony? I’m on board. Want to call them on the carpet about denying recognition to some outstanding authors and in particular editors? Sign me up. Want someone who agrees they put their pride and isolationism ahead of the ideals they falsely claim to believe in and deliberately voted against women who should have won (again, especially Toni)? Dude, where do I send a check.
But comparing them to Nazis I can’t get behind…it’s the way they play the game, and I don’t care to stoop to that level.
I’m sorry. You’re right. It was from FB. Sigh. I don’t know Steve. The thing is it might all go full circle, you know. After all Bernie Sanders is fond of saying he’s a socialist but nationalist, and my field I GUARANTEE is 90% for him.
Kate might have got heated, but she wasn’t precisely wrong in the way they acted either. Oh, not the Nazis from the ovens, no, but the early brownshirts?
And I have nothing to stand on. I told Mary Three Names Mao would approve of her…
The ovens didn’t happen until they had enough power to do it. Quite simply anyone who abuses ANY level of power has the potential to go that way – and likely will without checks on their power. The rhetoric makes that much more than clear – which is why I made the comparisons I did. (Also, when you get down to the nitty gritty, there is precious little difference between Nazism and Communism – but the Puppy-Kickers are of the opinion the Communists were great and the only reason it’s failed is it was never done right, so using Communism as a comparison would have been less than illustrative).
Also consider one Irene Gallo.
Sarah (and Kate) – I meant no disrespect to either of you, and continue to hold you in the highest of regards. I understand that emotions are hot. This is personal for you, in a way that it can’t be for me. These people don’t know me as an individual and this industry is my entertainment, not my livelihood. It’s natural I think that I would see things from a slightly different point of view, perhaps more dispassionate. A wise friend and coach of mine once told me two things: 1) harness your passion, so it doesn’t ride you; and 2) don’t do anything that might end up on the front page of the Saturday Evening Post. Admittedly, we were conducting weapons-testing at the time, so the circumstances were vastly different. 🙂
No, Kate was not precisely wrong about the way they acted. They became what they claimed to oppose. They set their principles on the back burner to political expediency. The valued conformism more than inclusiveness, and in a field intended to expand our conception of humanity and the universe around us, they closed their minds. They became exactly what we said they always were…and that’s being extremely generous and assuming they weren’t always that very thing. Kate is right on the money there. I just don’t want US to become THEM, or to repeat their mistake.
You, Kate, and Amanda have a tremendous challenge ahead of you. Wrong has been done to you and to all of us in the Sad Puppies movement, but for you it is extremely personal and at a really high volume. I’m sorry for that, and if there’s a way to lighten that burden over the next year, you should lean on the rest of us who are your fans and fellow rebel barbarians…many hands makes light work. In the meantime, from time to time we have to be free to discuss amongst ourselves, trusting we share common goals and vision, without attacking each other. “Thou shalt not speak ill of a fellow Puppy,” to paraphrase Reagan. 🙂
P.S. – regarding Ms. Gallow. Her conduct was reprehensible, which resulted in a few diatribes on mutual friends’ blogs/walls about her use of the same tactic. I’m no fan of the Rabids, and while I don’t know Vox, I’m having trouble believing we’d get along, but he didn’t deserve to be called a neo-Nazi either, and the Sad Puppies (and yours truly!) didn’t either. Sadly, I don’t have enough juice in the publishing industry to really do anything, and she’s pretty well shielded by PNH/TNH. Now if I had a spare gazillion dollars to buy TOR….different story.
Let’s not forget I am not American born. Australian dialect tends to be decidedly more blunt, to say the least. Describing someone’s observed actions as Nazi and pointing out the similarities? Not a problem. It’s a warning sign, and you try to deprive them of enough followers to go big by making the parallels.
I’m not changing my cultural modes of expression to suit American prudishness beyond what’s required by basic courtesy.
Something something… making accommodation for the cultural norms of foreigners…. but darned if I can remember what last week’s mandatory diversity training said exactly…. ^_^
Why am I seeing so many names on this blog that I’ve not noticed before? Reminds me of a punchline from a Peanuts strip, which I will modify slightly, substituting for the word ‘cats’:
HEY!! WHO LET ALL THESE * IN HERE?
I think its called “poor winning”. We’re here minding our own business, discussing the beginning of SP4 and some related stuff, and the trolls drop in hoping to disrupt things.
I could see it if they thought they’d lost. But they really don’t believe that Vox manipulated them into blowing up the awards.
Once again, I must ask:
HEY! WHO LET ALL THESE * IN HERE?
( wish somebody would close the door…or send ’em out for a corn dog…hmm, there’s an idea!)
Hey, all you *, the entry fee for making a comment on this post is corn dogs all around. That’s corn DOGS, mind you.
“I am, in all modesty, a blood-thirsty little Hitler. One of the finest little-Hitlers little-Hitlering today.”
Well, either that or we appreciate different things in fiction.
I look forward to your list. I’ll try to read as much of it as possible, and will happily vote for any puppy-approved picks that I enjoy that make the ballot without the advantage of a slate.
George RR Martin has tried to pour oil on the waters.
He stated he was very disappointed with the cheers, jeers for the no awards. He also thought that people who no awarded the editor slates were doing damage to the Hugos and fans in general. He also stated that he tried to find Teri, Mike Resnik and others and personally express his regrets for what happened at the awards ceremony.
The only fault I personally see in George RR Martin is that he did not stand up after the first set of nastiness at a no award and ask others to stop. But George via his writing seems to be very enthralled with WorldCon in general.
I don’t really like Martin’s books. I also thought Larry bested him in their back-and-forth. But I thought that George acted with a lot of class at WorldCon and it would be nice if the puppies recognized that publically.
As long as nobody sets fire to the oil, I’m fine with that. None of this mess would have happened if there hadn’t been such a concerted effort from that one small clique to not merely exclude other voices but to invalidate their very existence.
I have a suggestion for Sad Puppies 4.
Either recommend 3 per category or 8 per category.
I think that a lot of the trufans were very upset that entire categories were locked via the sad/rabid puppy nominees. Some of the nominees lacked clear quality. Not a lot, but a few were not very good. It is understandable if the trufans got irritated when entire categories got blocked.
I’m a first time Hugo voter. Did not nominate anyone. Until SP3 I did not know the public could vote on a Hugo for $40. I read all of the nominations. I did not “no award” any entire category. I did “no award” some nominees that I did not care for. I also did not vote in some of the “fan” and “podcast” categories. I think that SP theme is hilarious.
I share the concerns that Larry and others have about the quality of recent Hugo winners. In the last 10 years a “Hugo” on a novel has been a sign of “don’t buy me.” I doubt that Starship Troopers would get nominated today. I think that bias in the Hugo nomination process is very clear. If Jim Baen does not win a Hugo – no editor in the last 20 years should win won. Terri never being nominated prior to Sad Puppies is another sign of bias.
But I don’t think that the Sad Puppies primary beef cannot fit into the Hugo Process. I also think that having a lot more people nominate and vote will help even in the medium run.
Also – Kate I hope you get your diabetes under control. I have it (genetics, not weight) and it is an irritating disease that you have to adapt your life to forever. I hope that drugs short of insulin will work for you. Apologies if I mistook that you have diabetes.
We did two per category last year. There was a No Award campaign last year as well.
I do have diabetes, alas, and getting it under control is a big focus right now. Thank you for your kind thoughts on that front.
I disagree that Puppies should change their tactics. Every year the level of Puppy participation has increased and has done so at a greater rate than that of SJWs or “trufen”.
If any SJWs or “trufen” give Kate advice on what to do next year, that advice won’t be geared to help Kate and the Puppies (no matter the amount of sugar they pour on it), but to protect the establishment.
My advice is to own the word slate. Get in their face with it and promote a slate. Actually give them what they accused us of this last year, an actual honest to goodness slate.
They’re going to tar the Puppies with it anyway, might as well take the brush and stick it in their eye.
Funny, I believe some people might have read the works and no awarded individual works, when no award gets the sweeps it did it was obvious slate voting and 90% of the people claiming that they didn’t do that are liars trying to put a good face on boorish behavior. Now we know Heinlein is anathema to SJWs because he did all the good things before they came along so he must be discredited so they can claim they did the good things. One of the things Heinlein is noted for saying is “Anyone who cannot cope with mathematics is not fully human. At best, he is a tolerable subhuman who has learned to wear his shoes, bathe, and not make messes in the house.”
SJWs and apparently CHORFs can’t do math either
You know,one avenue of investigation that hasn’t been checked is downloads of the eBooks. Since each voting member had a code for accessing the downloads, surely there must be logs….
It is late at night for me, but I got to write this one. (Actually at the time posting it has already become a morning.)
I have some suggestions for 2016’s Hugos, at least for the:
“BEST DRAMATIC PRESENTATION, SHORT FORM” Category.
Suggestion 1)
Kung Fury
First Aired: May 28, 2015
Duration: 31:02
“Kung Fury is an over-the-top 80’s action comedy that was crowd funded through Kickstarter. It features Kung Fury, a Kung Fu renegade cop who travels back in time to kill his Nemesis, Hitler. The film features nazis, dinosaurs, vikings and cheesy one-liners.”
You can watch it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bS5P_LAqiVg
Reasons to consider:
– It is very easy to view. (Free)
– Although there will be people who will not find it humorous, but the chances are that they will.
– It has over 20,000,000 views.
– It is also about defeating Nazis. (Albeit ones that speak Swedish.)
– It might become the most historically accurate depiction of Nazis our opposing ‘Party of No’ has ever seen. (And no, it still is not accurate…)
Suggestion 2)
Tales of Alethrion – “The First Hero”
First Aired: April 22, 2015
Duration: 22:37
“The Tales of Alethrion proloque “The First Hero” is about Alethrion, whom the land is named after, and a lovely backpacker girl called Amerath. They are the original creators of the map which we see later in The Reward, carried by Vito and Wilhelm. It is the first tale that takes place long before many of the other episodes in the series which we hope to get funded through Kickstarter.”
You can watch it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DUlg8Y_mLfA
Reasons to consider:
– It is very easy to view. (Free)
– It has over 330,000 views.
– A deep thoughtful work without a single eligible line of dialogue.
– One the more dominant themes in the story is greed, and how it can break love. So in a way it relates to the Worldcon experience of late. Where the greed for rockets has become more important than the love towards the field itself.
Suggestion 3)
Gravity Falls
Episode: Northwest Mansion Mystery Noir
First Aired: February 16, 2015
Duration: 22~ Minutes
“Pacifica enlists Dipper’s help to rid the Northwest Mansion of a ghost before he wreaks havoc on her fancy party.”
Review: http://www.avclub.com/tvclub/gravity-falls-northwest-mansion-mystery-215347
Reasons to consider:
– The episode focuses on keeping the ‘wrong’ people out from a very fancy annual celebration.
– It is also about deciding what is right and what is wrong.
– And finding common ground with the people you dislike for good reasons.
Suggestion 4)
Steven Universe
Episodes: The Return/Jail Break (Aired Together)
First Aired: March 12, 2015
Duration: 24~ Minutes
” A new threat arrives in Beach City.”/” Steven and the Crystal Gems attempt to escape Jasper’s and Peridot’s clutches. ”
Review: http://www.avclub.com/tvclub/steven-universe-returnjail-break-216313
Reasons to consider:
– Although this series could be described with the word progressive, it still cannot be summed up as just that.
– This series has a strong cast of fleshed out characters with their individual strengths and weaknesses and possibly one the more intriguing settings in ‘Science Fiction’ slowly revealed through the experiences of the titular main character.
– As for the episode itself, it has this particular scene in the latter half that plays out as both battle and a very catchy song about not giving up even when facing intimidating opposition.
– Additionally it has a very devout following that is know for writing faux customer reviews based on nothing but the events of one the episodes. Just saying…
Anyhow, so those are my four suggestions for the fourth slate. I have to admit that these suggestions were partially inspired by the 2015’s award ceremony. My reaction to seeing those petulant children, twice or thrice my own age, cheer and jeer. So as a response, I thought of suggestion the above ‘childish’ works of Fandom.
Actually, I could get behind this. Have you mentioned this to Vox?
Well, that’s one minute and two seconds of my life I’ll never get back….
“You seem to have forgotten that genocidal mass murderers don’t start as genocidal mass murderers. They start as people who sound more or less reasonable and have a nice, plausible-seeming scapegoat for all your ills.”
I have not forgotten. I know their founding documents scapegoat Jews, communists and socialists, and the mixing of the Aryan race with inferior strains as diseases on the nation that must be abolished lest the body politic be doomed (severe limitation of the role of women to mother only was also mentioned). And I know they put them into practice initially by paramilitary fighting against their political opponents and the Jews, with the establishment of concentration camps (initially mainly for Communist/Socialist political opponents, only later for Jews en masse), separation of Jews from society by law when they took power, and only actually BEGAN the genocide after the war started. But I think the end product of conquest in the name of Aryan supremacy and racial purging of the inferior is all pretty clearly outlined in their “articulate” blueprint for the future given in their founding documents.
“That’s why it’s important to highlight people acting like Nazis when they do it.”
I completely agree. So when I see someone expressing views of white racial superiority:
http://www.johndbrown.com/what-vox-day-believes/
– expressing approval of the murder of the children of left-wing sympathizers:
http://www.donotlink.com/framed?680602
– saying that women should be disenfranchised and uneducated beyond puberty, and expressing approval of the attempted murder of a girl who disagreed,
http://www.donotlink.com/framed?6695
http://www.donotlink.com/framed?6696
as well as anti-Semitism –
http://voxday.blogspot.com/2005/01/merits-of-anti-semitism.html
http://voxday.blogspot.com/2015/03/time-to-go.html
– when I see them checking off every box on that list, I think it’s okay to point them out as apparent neo-Nazis – a sterling example of the sort of thing society should try to avoid emulating.
While neo-Nazi is not as bad a thing as an actual Nazi, it is still a vile label that should be backed by actual cited proof, and NOT applied to anyone who does not have the characteristics of such (for the record, I don’t believe any Sad Puppy leader is a neo-Nazi). As calling someone an actual “Nazi” or a “Hitler” is an order of magnitude worse, the burden of proof on the accuser is higher. To shriek at someone, “You are a Hitler and a Nazi! Prove you aren’t!” WITHOUT providing any proof for YOUR assertion is beyond offensive, as well as illogical. To avoid being called on it by saying, “I didn’t mean the generally accepted definition of a Nazi! I meant my OWN personal definition of a Nazi! Prove you’re not THAT!” doesn’t help.
Where are the corn dogs?
Hmmm, totally anonymized by a blank WordPress blog, trots out an obviously cut-and-pasted anti-Vox screed. (Hint, if you read the links, even the “Do not link”-ed ones, they don’t actually say what is claimed.) Yeah, here’s somebody we need to take VERY seriously.
One little problem with your concept of fandom as being a monolith under the domination of the Social Justice Warriors (SJW’s) is that Laura J. Mixon won the Hugo largely because of her take down of the arch-SJW Requires Hate. If the evil cabal that you see dominating fandom really has the kind of power that you say it has, then Best Fan Writer would have been No Awarded. How then do you explain Mixon’s victory?
Nice try, but SJWs turning on their own hardly makes the case you’re claiming it does. If the report on Ms Sriduangkaew which was so lauded had been of the form, “RH’s arguments are logically incoherent and based on insane racial bias,” you might have had a point. But the actual report took the form, “In addition to attacking appropriate targets, RH has a side hobby of attacking people from disadvantaged groups.”
I applaid your perspective. Clearly the most analogous situation to the “right” people not winning a book award is the mass murder of millions of human beings.
I appreciated it as well LK. I cross posted it at George RR Martin’s not a blog where there was discussions about how sads where not as rabid and more rational and maybe there was common ground. It illustrates what the ground looks like, yes?
What it illustrates is that any attempt to find common ground will be sabotaged by tale-bearers quoting things out of context.
Oh – I think they got the context. It is difficult to miss.
And I think this duplicitous assterisk is outta here.
Socialists, whether of the Leninist or Stalinist or Maoist or Hitlerist varieties, were not about mass murder; they were about subsuming the individual into the groups, and mass murder came along as a necessary consequence. When, as with fandom, the group rules only social interactions not political life, this same collectivist urge is likely to stop short of murder, is likely to stick to shunning and career-killing; but the comparison remains valid.