Continued from yesterday:

Fisking the Guardian's Village Idiot: Part 1

As I was writing up that last fisk, some sane people were commenting on the Guardian article. Because Damien’s responses were so idiotic, this Fisk turned into a two parter, with this section being more of an explanation of my personal philosophies for dealing with morons and bullies. In the comments it was pointed out that pretty much everything Damien said related to me was a lie and Damien smells funny (okay, I added that last part). Here is what Damien had to say in his defense:

I think Correia did two things. The first was appeal for votes on the basis of a perceived liberal bias in the genre.

So he can read… Duh.

That was the basis of his campaign, a protest vote against liberal influence. That was divisive and did a lot to spark the backlash he’s still feeling.

Demonstrating that bias exists in a biased system: DIVISIVE.

Attacking, libeling, and sabotaging authors of diverse opinions to intimidate them into never speaking up against a rigid, homogenous groupthink… NOT DIVISIVE.

Got it!

Man, it must have really sucked for him the way their insane reaction validated everything I said. It would have been much nicer for everybody if I would have just kept my mouth shut like right wingers are supposed to, then they could continue slandering people in peace. How very divisive of me.

Secondly, and this is going to be much more damaging for him longterm, he allowed himself to become very closely associated to Vox Day in the process. Ultimately people do judge others by their associations, and both Larry Correia and John C Wright have made very public declarations of support for Day, that I fear both will deeply regret in the long run.

One of the tactics I’ve seen them take is conflating my views with those of Vox Day. It doesn’t matter that I’ve disagreed with the man, and I’ve debated with him several times, but they sure love linking me to Vox. See, unlike me, they can actually find a couple of comments from him that they can manage to spin up some outrage over, and everybody knows righteous indignation gives libprogs super powers.

You have an issue with something Vox said, take it up with him. I did, and I found the guy to be a capable debater, and many of the insinuations about him floating around the internet were grossly exaggerated. (says the man who the Guardian has insinuated hates women and wants to keep fiction the exclusive domain of a group he doesn’t technically belong to, so I simply can’t imagine the internet exaggerating somebody’s beliefs.)

The woman Vox insulted with the infamous half-savage comment also has a long history of inflammatory racial statements, and had been throwing insults at Vox for years, but somehow she always gets a pass in these discussions about “divisiveness” (remember what I said earlier about the Ctrl H search and replace to put Jew instead of White Man in their tweets? She’s totally the best). I don’t think she likes me much either, because she gave a speech a little while ago and condemned Mr. Free Speech At All Costs… I think that’s supposed to be me, but personally I took that as a compliment, because you know, that part where I actually believe in free speech and stuff.

So I recommend a short story by somebody who made a statement they found racist? DIVISIVE! And Damien will condemn me in his newspaper. Meanwhile, an approved author writes tons of negative things about an ethnic group that it is cool to hate? Totally not divisive, and Damien will plug her in his newspaper. Now me personally, I think the concept of race is increasingly irrelevant bullshit, and I judge all humans as individuals, but I’m the International Lord of Hate.

Public declaration of support? By that Damien means I failed to join his lynch mob? Sadly I couldn’t find my jack boots in time.

I enjoyed Vox’s story and I put it on my slate, that doesn’t make me his spokesman. The guy is capable of defending his own beliefs. My only public declarations of support have been in favor of free speech. That honest to God belief in free speech is one of the reasons my slate could include the author Damien’s SJW contingent hates more than any other. As a happy bonus, getting their Public Enemy Number One on the ballot caused so much SJW wailing and gnashing of teeth that it helped me accomplish my goal of exposing their bias. Anything that makes statists that rage-sputtery is fun for me.

Here’s the thing, I’m a whole lot more worried about censorship minded, career sabotaging, bullies becoming the final arbiters of acceptable than I am the writings of a contrarian who likes to get into arguments. Free speech especially includes the speech of people you disagree with. The answer to speech you don’t like is more speech, debate and argument and convincing the undecided, not purges, blacklisting, and smear campaigns designed to keep everyone in line. If somebody says something stupid, demonstrate why it is stupid.

For example, I’d never wish for Damien to quit writing for the Guardian, because his blathering is comedy gold.

Today it is acceptable to destroy somebody who said something you don’t like, or you can fire somebody from a job for giving money to a political campaign you don’t like, or you can run off an award show host because of what he might say in the future, or you can disinvite a fan guest of honor because of an anonymous accusation, or you can slander an editor putting together an anthology about diversity because his politics are “troubling” (even if it turns out he’d lived in the 3^rd world much of his life). So what is going to be acceptable tomorrow?

If not now, when does it become okay to finally stand up to the perpetually outraged crowd and tell them no? To spineless weasels like Damien, the answer is never, because he’s a quisling.

Quests for purity always inevitably lead to purges, and we’ve already seen the beginnings of that with them turning against people on their ideological side who’ve grown weary of the constant outrage, so those people get a bunch of outrage until they are shamed, forced to apologize, and fall back in line. The nail that sticks up must be hammered down. If no nails are currently sticking up, they’ll pick one at random for sins real or imagined and start hammering that one instead.

My side jokingly call this the SJW Outrage of the Week, but sadly that isn’t really an exaggeration anymore. About once a week they fly off the handle and begin screeching about somebody, because they’re all about diversity, as long as everybody totally agrees with them.

I drew my line a long time ago. I honestly believe in free speech. Whether it is Vox or Jemsin, Matt Damon or Gary Sinise, Phil Robertson or Rupaul, their work and ideas should stand or fall on their own merits, and not some ideological narrative. Don’t like it? Too damned bad, because luckily in this country we still have the ability to say so.

I can’t speak for John Wright, and wouldn’t dare to anyway because he’s far more eloquent than I could ever be, but I’m going to go out on a limb and guess that he feels the same way I do about the dangers of writers being silenced. Let’s check: http://www.scifiwright.com/2014/06/the-evil-league-of-evil-is-given-pious-advice/

BOOM! Damn, Damien, how does it feel to get pimp slapped? John C. Wright just made you his bitch!

You know who else doesn’t like thought police? Several really famous big name writers who’ve contacted me to thank me for what I’ve done (one huge author in particular blew my mind). They’re even moderate or fairly liberal, however they’re sick of the self-righteous bullies and their endless outrage too. Only they can’t say anything in public, because they know if they do the SJWs would come for them next.

If they disagree they might get accused of homophobia in the Guardian or something…

EDIT! More of Damien’s hypocrisy was pointed out to me today. For a dude attacking me for being “closely associated” with somebody who said something controversial, he certainly has no problem in the very same article quoting an author who has publically supported NAMBLA. For those of you who don’t know, that’s the North American Man Boy Love Association, which is an organization for freaking PEDOPHILES… https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nambla Look under the Associated Individuals section for Samuel Delany’s quotes about this organization. Now, if we’re looking for something offensive to “closely associate” with, I’m having a hard time thinking of anything lower than child molesters.

I’m quite serious about my suggestion by the way. I think if Correia wrote publicly to support the new diversity in the genre, and apologised for any perception he was campaigning against it, that might help him a lot.

Apologize for the perception? Apologize for being seen as an enemy of progress? That sounds suspiciously like the apologies Stalin used to have people sign right before he shipped them off to the gulag, so in response, Beria, er, I mean Damien, here are a few of my thoughts about what it really means when a libprog demands an apology.

Rule number one. Never apologize for something that shouldn’t be apologized for. Check out all the various firings, purges, boycotts, and cancellations. Apologizing for causing their outrage is you taking responsibility for their ignorance and inability to control their own emotions. Apologizing to the perpetually outraged means they own you. You have declared yourself guilty and vulnerable to their threats. It is like negotiating with terrorists. Give into their demands and you’re just encouraging them to blow something else up.

If I was the type of mushy headed fool that would issue an apology, it wouldn’t matter anyway, because as we’ve already seen my actual words and actions mean nothing compared to the agreed upon narrative, and that narrative is that I’m guilty of pretty much every vile thing they can think of. Luckily for me, I’m successful enough that these people aren’t particularly threatening, so I scrape them off my shoe and continue writing books.

Normal people only apologize for things that should be apologized for, like for example: “I’m sorry the Social Justice Warrior contingent of sci-fi is made up of a bunch of perpetually outraged adult children.” Suckers feel the need to apologize for their entire sex, their ancestors, and the melanin content of their skin.

This seems bug nuts to regular people, but just remember that when you’re dealing with a group of SJWs who see everything through a prism of shame, jealously, and guilt, they expect incomprehensible stuff like this.

I named my wireless router Privilege Whale.

So after some consideration of whether I should sign the witch hunters’ confession or not, I’m going to have to go with my final answer of, fuck off, Damien. Or bugger off, scamper? Hell, whatever it is the sane people of Britain would tell Damien to do.

Remember, we won’t know who missed out on shortlist places until after the awards. At that point Correia et al could find the response to them gets much, much worse even than when the story broke”

Wait… It is going to get even worse? So are more of you guys going to make up crazy outlandish shit about me on the internet? Because you know, that never gets old.

Is that supposed to be a threat, Damien? Because you are very bad at it. A proper threat is something like, “Keep talking shit about me, and maybe I’ll decide to do a Sad Puppies 3, only this time I’ll actually put in some effort.”

Here is another awesome Damien comment, after somebody asked him if he actually bothered to read the books of the authors he criticized:

Which writers do you mean? My piece doesn’t really criticise anyone? So who do you mean?”

Nobody could possibly be that obtuse. But to be fair, I wouldn’t say criticize, so much as much as insinuate racism and misogyny in a completely chicken shit fashion, but hey, whatever. His column must have been about the OTHER conservative author who came up with and promoted a successful internet campaign that got a whole bunch of Hugo nominations, that caused allegations of ballot stuffing and outraged all the Social Justice Warriors… Holy shit. Does that mean there’s MORE OF US?!

Seriously, Guardian, I really hope you’re not actually paying this loser because you’re wasting your pounds or euros or WTF ever it is you use for money now. Honestly, you could hire a random hobo and get better columns written (from my extensive watching of Top Gear I believe you blokes call them tramps).

Thus far Damien has been an amusing annoyance, but then a fan had to go and send this to me. This comment was posted on Twitter, long after he’d posted his article, and he was catching flack for just making shit up. This was the first time Damien actually made me angry.

1. Damien Walter‏@damiengwalterMay 30

Can anyone help identify times Larry Correia has “responded poorly” to diversity in genre? http://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2014/may/30/science-fiction-real-life-war-worlds#comment-36357742 … Seriously.

So of all Damien’s stupid shit thus far, why did that actually get an emotional response out of me? Basically, it is because I can’t believe anybody SUCKS THAT MUCH AT THEIR JOB.

I mean really, Damien, you’ve written about me repeatedly now, making up all sorts of crap while the actual evidence pointed to the contrary, and after being called on it you have to CROWD SOURCE YOUR WITCH HUNT? Holy shit, Damien, you are shockingly unsuited for this. Aren’t journalists supposed to do research first? I know that journalism is the clown college of writing, but damn that is pathetic… On second thought, I retract that comment, because clowns provide a useful service, and I can’t imagine anybody ever inviting Damien Walter to a birthday party.

So—not being racist/misogynist/homophobic—I was curious to see what damning evidence his legion of fan would come up with to condemn me. They’ve got thousands of political posts to choose from… Somebody didn’t like that I’d been a CCW instructor, and how I’d said that I’d taught hundreds of women to shoot rapists, yet these women hadn’t all LITERALLY shot hundreds of rapists, ergo I was a failure and a liar…

Holy shit.

My response to that, have you ever gone fishing? Did you catch all the fish?

They then went on to explain how my teaching self-defense to women proved I thought women were weak, and that my efforts did nothing to stop date rape, or rape within marriage, and thus showed I didn’t understand the issue. Wow. You know, I’ve got fire extinguishers around the house, but they are pretty useless against thousand acre forest fires, so I’m obviously pro-arson, and should throw all my fire extinguishers away.

Then there was a related spin off thread where various white suburbanite progs explained how I’m really a WHITE Hispanic, and as an added bonus, libertarian Sarah Hoyt is a fascist. You really can’t make this stuff up.

So because Damien’s readers sucked at finding any actual evidence of hatemongery from my thousands of political posts, I put out a call for my readership to help him find something damning for his next inevitable column about me. As usual, the Monster Hunter Nation was super helpful:

1. Larry Correia grows an awesome murder hobo beard. Beards are scary.
2. Larry Correia accused Damien of having a witch hunt, which is insensitive to witches.
3. Larry Correia is a pretty good miniature painter. Hitler was also a painter.

Judging by the journalistic integrity of Damien’s previous columns, I’m sure he’ll be able to put together another article or two with that.

One funny note about my super helpful fans over the last few days, Damien or his readers dismissed some of my defenders on Twitter because they were “Straight White Males”… Turns out on some of these guys they were wrong on race or orientation, but Damien’s is the inclusive side, because obviously all minorities’ beliefs are color coded for liberal convenience.

Here is another Damien gem from the comments:

I have no clear idea what you mean by shunning or writing people out of the genre.

Let’s see, that’s got to be a lie, because he can’t be that stupid, especially as he’s participated in the shunning.

I assume you’re bringing in baggage from other discussions.

He says as he brings in every unrelated bigoted thing that has ever happened in the history of fiction and lays it at my feet.

We have a genre growing ever more diverse, and a small clique of reactionaries behaving very poorly in response to that.

He makes my campaign about something else, and then assigns his opponents absurd opinions they don’t actually hold.

And doing immense damage to their own careers in the process.

Says the doofus who supposedly has a government grant to write a novel, to the guy with more paying work than he knows what to do with.

Sad for everyone involved.

Not really. I’m rather enjoying this. The more the Damiens of the world lie and fret, the more it proves my point.

But that’s it for his idiocy today. Now I want to delve into his accusations that my exposing left wing bias was really some sort of white male war against diversity all along. Anybody who has actually read any of my books knows that is a really stupid hypothesis.

While I was getting slandered by Damien for things I never said about how writers shouldn’t write diverse characters, I had a bestselling novel out where the big heroic pivotal sacrifice moment of the story was performed by a bisexual. However, I gave that character that particular trait because it made the character more interesting, and not for the correct reason of checking off mandatory SJW boxes, which is apparently bad.

This is the same book where I got into racial segregation in the 1930s, and had a black character become a folk hero a couple scenes after he wasn’t allowed to eat in the same room as the white characters. Oh, yeah, that’s one of the two books where I got into democrat icon FDR’s propensity for throwing diverse people into concentration camps. Shoot. I forgot. Your side declared that I’m a white guy who only writes white men with busty blonde women throwing themselves on white penises.

By the way, that’s from the 2^nd book of the trilogy, with the 3^rd book being the controversial nomination. This is kind of funny since the hero of the series is a teenage girl, and I’ve got characters who are Chinese, Japanese, Indian, African, Pacific Islander, Filipino, British, French, Russian, the world’s surliest German, and Americans ranging from rich white Ivy Leaguer to poor Irish roughneck to southern black, all in a story where I delve into the racism, segregation, and eugenics of the 1930s. The most powerful man in the world is Japanese, and the smartest was Indian. J. Edgar Hoover was one of the antagonists. I hit everything from Wounded Knee to the Bonus Army.

Hell, if you guys didn’t know I was one of those ultra-evil libertarians who want the government to leave everybody alone equally, somebody might accidently like this book. But I wouldn’t know, since even with all the controversy most of the SJW “reviews” I’ve seen have consisted of skimming the back cover blurb before launching into accusations about how I want to drag homosexuals to death behind my pickup truck.

But that’s just me personally, looking at Damien’s primary argument from the big picture view, Sad Puppies being some sort of anti-diversity campaign is even stupider. It requires the belief that true diversity is only skin deep. It means true diversity is always agreeing with the every absurd complaint of the perpetually outraged. It requires the belief that to truly represent the diversity of the entire planet, you’ve got to be in lockstep with a bunch of left wing pseudo-intellectual crybabies from the first world.

Anybody with a few functioning brain cells to rub together knows that’s crap. Those morons aren’t even the majority in the west, let alone Bangladesh or Budapest.

While he was condemning the history of genre fiction, I want you to think about the absurd hubris in this statement of Damien’s:

We live in a world of seven billion human beings, whose culture has not been reflected or rewarded in ‘the mainstream’. Science fiction – from cult novels that reach a few thousand readers, to blockbuster movies and video games that dominate contemporary culture – has the potential to talk across every remaining boundary in our modern world. That makes it, in my opinion, potentially the most important cultural form of the 21st century. To claim that potential, it cannot afford to give way to the petulant protests of boys who do not like to share their toys

At least I have toys to share.

Who the fuck do you think you are, Damien, deciding what is suitable for the whole world? You’re a pathetic little worm of no accomplishment who makes his living critiquing people who actually create things. Where do you get off determining what are acceptable thoughts to represent all of humanity?

Check your privilege, motherfucker.

You got it backwards. A novelist’s job is to tell a story, not reflect or reward or whatever pretentious nonsense you’re spewing. Get off your high horse. We answer to them. We create work, and then the readers are going to decide what reflects them, not some unctuous little shit stain like you, and the reward is when those individuals decide they like the author enough to pay them. They’re seven billion individuals, you tool, not color coded stereotypes for you to speak for. Of them, a couple billion would stone you to death on principle, and most of the rest would wonder why you are such a worthless sack of crap.

The novelist’s job is to tell a story. Your job is to be a useless leech. Now get back to work. All those lies aren’t going to manufacture themselves.

 

Damian Walter is that dude over at the Guardian who made shit up about me before. That time he put words in my mouth, said that I warned writers not to write about gay characters if they want to remain commercial, and he even put it in quotes as if it was my actual words. That isn’t even close to what I said, or what I’ve actually done, and doesn’t match up with my real life actions, writing, or even the philosophies of other authors I’ve promoted, but hey, whatever.

Here is the last one: https://monsterhunternation.com/2014/04/15/larry-f-correia-international-lord-of-hate/

Note, this is going to be two part Fisk, with today being the article, and tomorrow I’m going to go through Damien’s comments where he threatened me with some nebulous harm if I don’t apologize for and confess some sins, and then he went on Twitter to ask his followers to find bad things I’ve done (normally journalists do research before writing about something).

So here is Part1. As usual Damian gets damn near everything wrong, so let’s go through and take a look at what passes for journalism at the Guardian. This is going to be long, but Damien has a real gift for shoving two or three lies, half-truths, or distortions into nearly every line. Hmm… I heard Jay Carney’s job is open.

As usual, the moron is in italics and my comments are in bold.

Here is the current article: http://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2014/may/30/science-fiction-real-life-war-worlds but it is all reprinted below for your enjoyment. Note that Damian’s article is absolutely filled with links, let’s see… a dozen of them in fact, but not a single one of those links are to the actual words of the people he is maligning… Curious.

Science fiction’s real-life war of the worlds

For many years, a very particular and very narrow set of authors has dominated SF. But battle for a broader fictional universe is under way.

When is a giant lizard not a giant lizard? When it’s a metaphor for the might of the military-industrial complex. Audiences turning up for the latest cinematic incarnation of Godzilla have expressed some disappointment that much of the battling kaiju action was kept off screen.

Keep in mind, his last article about what evil homophobic hatemongers conservative writers are started out by explaining the reason male gamers played female characters in video games was so they could explore gender roles… as opposed to it being nicer to stare a girl’s butt for 200 hours of Skyrim. But nope, exploring gender boundaries.

Because when I think of socially conscious, non-binary enlightenment, I think of the LOL WUT tits or GTFO denizens of Xbox Live. So keep in mind, Damien isn’t very smart and does a lot of grasping at straws.

In its place director Gareth Edwards makes the smart decision to tinker with the kaleidoscopic political meanings that surround the giant lizard. What Edwards chooses to place front and centre are the twin legacies the second world war foisted on modern society – nuclear weapons and the United States military in all its glory. By the end of the movie we’re left in no doubt that, whatever risks they pose, we need the monstrous forces mankind can control to defend us from the monstrous forces – be they real or imagined – we cannot. Audiences want sci-fi to entertain us, but even blockbuster movies come loaded with political messages.

Okay, heavy handed straw grasping intro out of the way, I wonder how many people bought tickets to see Godzilla for the political messages versus how many went to watch giant monsters smash stuff? But hey, let’s roll with it. I think Damian’s point is that political messages in sci-fi exist… Yep. As much as they try to rewrite my old posts to be that message fic shouldn’t exist at all, on the contrary, I said it did, but that if you wanted to be successful, you needed to put the story first, and once you’ve provided your readers with enjoyment, then you can slip in your message… Message first can turn off readers. And as much as they try to change the narrative, my words (which they never actually link to) are right there.

Or in this case, the giant lizard came first, message second. Damn, Damien, even your intros get the slander wrong. I really hope you’re just an unpaid intern or something and the Guardian isn’t actually giving you money for this shit.

In recent months the community of science fiction readers and writers has been embroiled in an escalating war of words over the genre’s political soul, catalysed by the nominations for this year’s Hugo awards.

By escalating, he means some people on my side actually got involved for once and quit letting his side set the narrative unopposed. It was so much nicer when my side just immediately shut up out of fear of backlash, career sabotage, and threats of character assassination.

Allegations of bloc-voting arose

Yes, allegations of block voting, which means I asked my fans to vote. A quick search found about thirty other authors, fanzines, bloggers, and even publishing houses that did the same thing I did. Only I had the audacity of having the wrong kind of fans (and more of them!). Damien knows this, but he’s simply obfuscating the issue to get in some more snide insinuations.

He’s leaving out the allegations against me of fraud, misogyny, racism, homophobia, wife beating, and threatening puppy murder… No. I’m not making any of those up, but when dealing with Social Justice Warriors you will quickly discover that they will say anything to sabotage their ideological opponents. Proving that was sort of the whole point of my nefarious campaign. They certainly rose to the occasion.

as a slate of little-known writers appeared among the nominees,

That’s right. Little known writers. Since I’m the unnamed guy who put together this evil voting plot and is up for best novel, let’s take a look at how little known I am.

My 11^th novel comes out this summer (Don’t worry, I’ve got 13 more under contract). I’m a New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and bunch of other lists bestseller, and the most accurate bestseller list of all is Nielsen Bookscan where I’ve been as high as #5 and stayed on for 20 straight weeks. On any given day I’m usually in the top 50 fantasy authors on Amazon and that’s without anything new out (highest I’ve been is #3 after Martin and Gaiman). I’m published in 7 languages. I do even better in audiobook, where I’m one of the bestselling and best reviewed authors on all of Audible, and I’ve been nominated for 3 Audies and won 2 of them. (those are pro juried, so sadly no allegations of ballot stuffing there).

According to the Guardian’s own stats about how much authors actually get paid, I’m way above the cutoff for the top 1%. But to be fair to Damien’s inability to actually know stuff, I’ve only been professionally published since 2009. The fact that I’ve only been doing this for 5 years kind of sucks for my detractors, since so many of them have been doing this far longer yet are much less successful. That has to gnaw at them.

But little-known. Got it!

after a concerted campaign by a small group of writers to get the books on the ballot.

By concentrated campaign, he means a couple of blog posts, a poorly drawn cartoon, and a video of sad puppies. No, I kid you not. My spokesman was Wendell the Manatee. Unlike Damian, I’ll actually post links to the topic, here is where I go into it in detail: https://monsterhunternation.com/2014/04/24/an-explanation-about-the-hugo-awards-controversy/ The whole thing and the reasons for it were out there in the open the entire time I was doing it.

A startling conspiracy theory was at the heart of the campaign. It alleged that a powerful clique of liberal writers and editors had taken control of science fiction, and worse, were politicising a genre that should exist purely for entertainment. They were filling the genre with heavy-handed “message fiction” and excluding conservatively minded writers. So conservatively-minded fans should vote for those writers to redress the imbalance.

That’s sort of related to what I said, as rewritten by somebody with a paint huffing addiction… I do like how Damien stated it all super nefarious like that though. But strangely he didn’t link to the posts where I talked about the demonstrated bias against non-leftists, or the posts about how the heavy handed message fic was driving away readers and causing the market to shrink? I’m sensing a trend. I wonder why Damien never seems to link to what his opponents actually say, when it is so much easier to make up really dumb straw man versions instead?

I wouldn’t call any of this startling though. I pointed out that the awards were biased, and if any openly conservative author got on the awards ballot they would be attacked and sabotaged. I was called a liar. So I got some conservative authors on the ballot and they did exactly what I said they would. (they were even shriller than expected, and major professionals jumped into the witch hunt, so for that, I sincerely thank them for being so predictable).

Point proven. Hilarity ensued.

Of course there is a certain irony in forming a political clique and launching an overt pol1itical campaign to de-politicise sci-fi– although registering the irony requires more self-awareness than these authors can seem to muster.

I like how he restates my publicly proclaimed goals to be something they weren’t so he can say I’m dumb for not achieving them.

The goal was exposing people like you, Damien, and you can try to say I failed, but poor, depressed little British man, my campaign consisting of manatees, big eyed puppies, and cartoon moose rocked your little world so badly that you’ve repeatedly talked about it in your national newspaper column now. So, I’m very aware of the irony, and it is so very delicious.

This dastardly clique was my fans. If your crowd hadn’t been such obnoxious, pretentious, bossy assholes on Facebook, Twitter, and blog comments, constantly bitching at us, explaining how conservatives and libertarians can’t ever be *real* writers, and calling anybody who disagreed with you racist/misogynist/homophobic without any actual evidence continually for the last five years, then getting a bunch of fans to pony up $40 to vote wouldn’t have been so darned easy.

And that irony is only made stronger when 2014 has proved to be a pivotal year in liberating science fiction from its own innate political biases.

Yes. The publishing industry—which is mostly based in Manhattan—is politically biased. For once we agree!

For decades, science fiction’s major awards were given, year after year, to white male authors.

That’s fantastic… Except when Damien says decades, he’s not talking about any of the recent ones. There have been blog posts (written by reasonable moderate types who really don’t like me or my campaign either) pointing out that women have won about a third to half of the awards over the last forty years, so once again, Damien is just a liar.

Women writers have asserted a growing presence in the genre, leading this year lead to a strong presence in all of the genre’s major awards.

Great. Despite the narrative about me to the contrary, I like female authors. I support female authors. I support authors from any group you can think of as long as they tell a good story and they’re not complete douchebags, so I guess you could say that I just support authors in general. I’m all in favor of anybody from any group being able to write what they want, more power to them.

So if we want true equality among writers how about we give awards based on quality rather than what box the author checks on an EEOC form?

Oh, but wait. I forgot. I like to judge people by the content of their character rather than the color of their skin. That’s racist now. I also like to judge a book based upon whether I like it or not, rather than ranking the nominees based upon the acceptability of their political outlooks or which ones best assuage my warm-beige guilt.

(speaking of irony, when the announcements were made and I immediately started getting character assassinated for being a hater of women, homosexuals, sunshine, and goodness with zero evidence, the book of the week I was promoting on this blog was written by a non-white immigrant woman and had a gay hero, but hey, narrative).

Women and non-white writers swept the board at the Nebula awards, winning every major category.

Normally, if there is a bunch of gloating and back slapping about how one particular group was totally shut out of something, we’d consider that bigotry. However I tend to forget that to a libprog diversity is literally only skin deep, while diversity of thought is evil and must be crushed. The same people crowing about this year’s diversity were happy to attack nominees last year for their religious beliefs, because that’s the wrong kind of diversity. They routinely attack non-whites and women if they aren’t of the correct political persuasion.

Speaking of gloating, Twitter after the Nebulas was interesting. If you take the tweets of the Social Justice Warrior crowd, Ctrl H, find and replace White Male with Jew, they totally sound like snippets of Heinrich Himmler speeches. It is hilarious until the nausea sets in.

High profile crowd-funded publishing projects such as Women Destroy Science Fiction are proving the commercial potential of a more diverse genre.

Not to bash this particular anthology, because I know nothing about it, but this super example of commercial potential raised $53,136. Good for them. But to illustrate just how profoundly disconnected Damien is from reality, keeping in mind that I’m a “little-known” author, my Kickstarter for a role playing game based upon one of my series raised $80,681, and my Kickstarter for merchandise related to my novels raised $101,396.

So I wouldn’t recommend taking business advice about commercial viability from a lying euro-weenie-socialist who has probably never held a real job. Now fetch my latte, Damien!

It is fair to say that SF is coming to terms with its historic gender and racial biases.

From a genre that really came to be in the 1930s to the 1950s there may have been bigotry? This is my shocked face. Well, good thing you guys are ready to attack people now for the sins of those that came before, because they share similar plumbing, DNA, or sexual orientation.

But not without some resistance from reactionaries within the genre.

They really need a boogieman, don’t they? Isn’t it interesting about how my campaign to demonstrate that there was bias and sabotage in the awards system, is immediately changed by the biased to be all pro-racism in order to sabotage it?

As Samuel Delany noted, at a time when he numbered among the very few black writers in the field, prejudice within science fiction would “likely remain a slight force – until, say, black writers start to number 13, 15, 20% of the total.” Author NK Jemisin employed Delany’s quote in her own Guest of Honour speech at WisCon. Her incendiary argument to fight against bigotry comes at a the time when she and other writers of colour including Aliette de Bodard, Sofia Samatar and Nalo Hopkinson command a higher profile in the genre than ever before. And the resistance Delany predicted has come true.

Does that mean that since I’m the only non-white author up for best novel, I have your vote, Damien?

It is no coincidence that, just as it outgrows its limiting cultural biases, science fiction should also face protests from some members of the predominantly white male audience who believed it to be their rightful domain.

That doesn’t even make sense. So, I’m not a white guy, but I hatched this elaborate plot to keep sci-fi white… even though us right wingers are capitalists who want to sell books to everybody. Sure, I’m super excited for my Chinese translations to come out this year, but that must be because of the billion white men who live there.

Since Damien brought up irony, here’s some for you. My audience is diverse. That’s what happens when you are popular and actually sell books. Look at the picture of the Diversity panel at the Nebulas. It is a bunch of old white people fretting about their white guilt. It is so white and old it looks like a Klan rally compared to my average book signing. My fans are the rainbow fucking coalition compared to that picture.

You know an organization that is actually diverse? The US military, #1 book in Baghdad and Baghram, baby.

But as we’ve already repeatedly seen demonstrated, it doesn’t matter that my fans are all over the board, young and old, straight and gay, all sorts of different ethnic and cultural backgrounds, and even some liberals (though by that I mean they’re actual well intentioned liberals, as opposed to the wannabe fascist control freaks who’ve taken over the term), but my fans don’t count, because they’re the wrong kind of fan. They are united in that they’d rather enjoy books than get snidely insulted by people like Damien for racist attitudes of their grandparents might have held.

What the conservative authors protesting the Hugo awards perceive as a liberal clique is simply science fiction outgrowing them, and their narrow conception of the genre’s worth.

That makes pretty much no sense whatsoever since over recent years sci-fi readership has been shrinking. It hasn’t been outgrowing anything other than Damien’s dignity.

Why has our market been shrinking? Well, it can’t be because people don’t like sci-fi and fantasy, because they love throwing lots of money at it in movies, TV, and games.

The opinion that I’ve long held, and which helped inspire my dastardly campaign of evil to begin with, was that sci-fi readers were leaving our genre because they were getting tired of being preached at with liberal cause of the day message fiction. They were bored with dying polar bears, murderous bigoted Christians, lectures about the dangers of capitalism, and thinly veiled Dick Cheneys as bad guys. You can really only slap half of the country upside the head and tell them their beliefs are stupid and backwards so many times before they quit buying your stuff. (but keep in mind, the left are supposed to be the inclusive ones).

How did I come to this belief? Because the people who’d been quitting told me so. I kept getting messages from readers with some variation of “I’d quit reading SFF because I was bored/tired/annoyed etc. but your stuff is fun!” over and over and over and then they’d provide me with large royalty checks. This got me to thinking that there might be something to this crazy idea of putting reader enjoyment ahead of placating the perpetually outraged Damiens of the world, where everything including Godzilla and Tomb Raider had to be boiled down to cisgender patriarchal neocolonial military-industrial privilege.

Of course, if those authors really wanted to de-politicise science fiction, they could easily help to do so – by admitting the genre’s historic bias and applauding its growth.

I don’t think anybody has ever said that bias hasn’t happened somewhere at some point, so thanks for that piece of straw. As for applauding its growth that’s the point, you moron. It isn’t growing. You guys are shrinking it. You might think you’re all about diversity and inclusiveness, but you’re not. You’re the opposite. You’ve drawn battle lines and then done everything possible to damage the careers of anybody who believes differently than you.

De-politicize? I was never in this to sway people like you, Damien. That’s impossible. We can’t de-politicize genre fiction any more than we can get leftists to stop banning university commencement speakers, boycotting businesses, or getting people fired for having differing opinions. Censorship and intimidation are simply in the nature of all statist bullies.

My mission was to convince the undecided. My side aren’t the ones trying to silence anyone, and all of the observers have watched your side try to stomp me (and fail miserably). Of course, your side will immediately cite somebody disagreeing (or failing to cheerlead sufficiently) with one of their ludicrous ideas as silencing, which will require them to retreat to their convention mandated racially segregated safe zones with a case of the vapors.

But in reality it isn’t the right trying to shut anybody up. Quite the contrary, Damien, we want you guys to keep talking so the world can see what censorship happy little fascists you are.

My successful campaign was met with a concentrated effort that would have made most normal authors apologize, run away, and hide (that’s what usually happens, but the fact that there isn’t anything you people can actually do to intimidate some of us must drive you nuts).

And by doing everything within their power to welcome new authors from diverse backgrounds, instead of agitating for protest votes to push them out.

And by diverse backgrounds, you mean as long as they are in complete political lockstep with your side?

The real prize for science fiction is not diversity for diversity’s sake

(although I happen to believe that would be prize enough).

A nugget of truth? Now we’re getting somewhere.

Since you’ve never actually created a single piece of fiction anybody has ever wanted to purchase, you are perfectly happy for sci-fi/fantasy to crash and burn, because then you can self-righteously brag about how at least it was mostly straight white males who died in the fire.

We live in a world of seven billion human beings, whose culture has not been reflected or rewarded in ‘the mainstream’. Science fiction

Wait… You mean the ENGLISH LANGUAGE award and books haven’t fully reflected genre fiction from the entire rest of the world? How dastardly.

– from cult novels that reach a few thousand readers,

I wouldn’t know what that is like.

to blockbuster movies and video games that dominate contemporary culture – has the potential to talk across every remaining boundary in our modern world. That makes it, in my opinion, potentially the most important cultural form of the 21st century. To claim that potential, it cannot afford to give way to the petulant protests of boys who do not like to share their toys

What a bunch of pretentious dribble from a sad little man who has never created anything of worth in his life.

So tune in tomorrow as I go through Damien’s pathetic threats, his complete lack of research skills, how my teaching women to carry guns is actually misogyny, and his pathetic attempt to channel Stalin.

Continued at:

Fisking the Guardian's Village Idiot, Part 2

 

So I got slandered in the Guardian last Friday. I would have responded sooner, but I don’t normally blog on weekends, and yesterday was the highly successful Book Bombing of John C. Wright’s latest book. We got him into the 200s overall, #2 on three different bestseller list, onto the Movers and Shakers list, and the top of Hot New Releases. Side note, it is kind of funny how I’m not a *real* writer, yet I somehow manage to routinely manipulate the sales rankings of the world’s biggest online book seller once a month for my friends. Go figure.

Anyways, my name showed up as the poster child for hate mongery and villainy in the Guardian (a liberal tabloid that passes for a major newspaper in Britain). I’ve been in a lot of American news things but this was a first for me, so on Friday afternoon I had to discuss with my fans on Facebook what I should put on my new business cards. We finally decided on Larry F. Correia, International Lord of Hate. Almost went with The Hatemaster because of the 70’s super villain vibe, but that looks too much like The Hamster when you’re reading fast.

So here is the article written by Damian Walter. It turns out that Tom Kratman knew him back when Asimov’s had a forum, and remembered him as a shrill little libprog, and that if Damian was at the Guardian a village somewhere in England was missing their idiot.

Somebody else told me that Damian is an “aspiring” author, and that he’d recently been given a grant by the British government to write a novel. I have no idea if this is true, and don’t care enough to look it up, but man, if it is… your government actually pays people to write novels? BWA HA HA HAW! Holy shit. As an actual novelist, that’s funny. And I thought my government was stupid.

Unlike Damian, I’m not a huge pussy, so I will include the link to the thing that I’m about to insult. http://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/apr/11/science-fiction-needs-to-reflect-queer-fluid-gender-identity

As usual, the article is in italics, my comments are in bold.

Science Fiction Needs to Reflect that the Future is Queer

You’re probably thinking, oh, not this shit again. Don’t worry. I’m not going to fisk the whole thing. I’m skipping the first few paragraphs. It is just more of the usual whiny ass demands for more message fic catering to Special Topic of the Day X. Tomorrow the X will be different, but the lectures will be exactly the same.

Though you should read it for tidbits like how male gamers play female characters in video games because they are curious about gender roles… Uh huh… And not because if you’re going to be staring at your character’s ass in Skyrim for 200 hours, it might as well be an attractive ass. The new Tomb Raider spent millions of dollars to perfect 3D boob jiggle for the next generation consoles because male gamers really want to hear Laura Croft’s feelings about the dangers of cismale patriarchy.

All of the other dumb shit he threw out there has been taken apart by other authors already:

Dave goes through why gender roles actually exist for things beyond hurting Damian’s delicate lilac scented feelings: http://madgeniusclub.com/2014/04/14/cow-manure-and-truth/ (and this one is especially good, because as he talks about punching cows. That back breaking, filthy, dangerous job is how I grew up. No wonder every other job in my life has seemed easy in comparison. I must have “privilege”)

Sarah explains how Damian having to cut his hair isn’t the worst thing to ever happen, while trying to steal my title of International Lord of Hate: http://accordingtohoyt.com/2014/04/13/i-need-a-secret-lair-and-minions-and-piranhas/

And while the libprogs are tring to poison the awards well against other conservative writers, Amanda explains the modern literati libprog’s concept of fairness: http://madgeniusclub.com/2014/04/15/so-much-for-fairness/

I just want to focus on the part where he comes after me.

When author and historian Alex Dally Macfarlane made a call earlier this year for a vision of post-binary gender in SF, her intelligent argument was met with predictably intractable ignorance from conservative sci-fi fans.

First off, it wasn’t intelligent at all. It was a petulant demand for authors to end the default of binary gender in their fiction, and how she never wanted to see the default of binary gender again. Please, go ahead and read it. Don’t take my word for it.

For writers and fans like Larry Correia, whose virulent attack on MacFarlane

Interesting… Notice how Damian doesn’t ever link to what I actually said and never uses any actual quotes from me. Here is my “virulent attack”. If you’ve not read it yet, read it for yourself and decide if it matches anything Damian goes on to accuse me of: https://monsterhunternation.com/2014/01/28/ending-binary-gender-in-fiction-or-how-to-murder-your-writing-career/

was excellently dissected by Jim C Hines, sex is a biological imperative and the idea of gender as a social construct is a damn liberal lie!

If Jim’s pathetic slap fight attempt at taking me down strikes you as “excellently dissected” I’d hate to live in your sad little Everybody Gets a Trophy world. It was more of an attempted playground hair pulling, so then I responded by metaphorically knocking his fucking teeth in. Here is an actual dissection of excellence, where I take Jim Hines out and kick him around like a soccer ball. https://monsterhunternation.com/2014/01/29/5687/

Unlike Damian, I don’t need to put words in people’s mouths. Libprogs want conservatives to be silent. Conservatives want libprogs to keep talking so the world can see just how full of shit they are. The links are all there. Judge for yourself.

There are so many distortions that I can’t even take this line by line, I’ve been forced to responding to fragments.

But Correia boils it down to a much simpler argument.

Not even close. None of what he goes on to say is even close to my argument, which was story first, message fic WAY later.

However accurate a queer future might be,

Uh… Wow… No. I never made that argument either. First, “however accurate a queer future might be” – Nope. Whatever sexuality floats your boat, it is no skin off my nose, but only about 2% of the population is gay, so I definitely don’t think it is accurate that we are going to have a queer future, or that mankind is going to ever end the default of binary gender.

That’s just wishful thinking on Damian’s part. Even if Earth went full Sparta in the future, most of us would still think that Damian is a pussy. As for the future, western nations have become more forgiving of homosexuality, true, but once again, while a libprog is quick to lecture us all on white privilege, their usual soft racism overlooks the rest of the world, where cultures that despise and persecute homosexuals are common. I would assume that those cultures have a future too. Demographically those cultures are making babies and growing while the permissive euro-socialists have quit having kids. Yes, I’m sure in the future the Space Caliphate is just going to love it some gay folks.

SF authors must continue to pander to the bigotry of conservative readers if they want to be “commercial”.

So that was my argument? Hmm… Interesting. Since Damon couldn’t be bothered to link to my actual article or use any quotes from me except for the ones he made up, let’s take a look at some of the things that I really said in the article:

“Now, before we continue I need to establish something about my personal writing philosophy. Science Fiction is SPECULATIVE FICTION. That means we can make up all sorts of crazy stuff and we can twist existing reality to do interesting new things in order to tell the story we want to tell. I’m not against having a story where there are sexes other than male and female or neuters or schmes or hirs or WTF ever or that they flip back and forth or shit… robot sex. Hell, I don’t know. Write whatever tells your story.

But the important thing there is STORY. Not the cause of the day. STORY.

Because readers buy STORIES they enjoy and when readers buy our stuff, authors GET PAID.”

Hmm… Write whatever tells your story… That sure sounds like me telling people to not write about gay people to satisfy conservative bigotry. Let’s see what other vile hate speech I spewed in those articles he was too chicken shit to link:

“Robert Heinlein had stories where technology allowed switching sex. Great. That’s actually a pretty normal sci-fi trope where in the future, there’s some tech that allows people to change shape/sex, whatever, and we’ve got grandmasters of sci-fi who have pulled off humans evolving into psychic space dolphins or beings of pure energy. If that fits into the story you want to tell and you want to explore that, awesome for you. I’ve read plenty of stories where that was part of that universe. If your space whales that live inside the sun have three sexes, awesome (that one was my novella push on Sad Puppies 1).”

Yeah. Wow. There I go again… Could it be that it is the libprog Social Justice Warriors who are bossing people around and trying to push conformist group think, and that they suffer from projection issues? Naw… That’s impossible. Let’s keep going, surely this simple idea that I boiled it all down to can be found in there somewhere!

You want a truth bomb? Readers hate being preached at. Period. Even when you agree with the message, if it is ham fisted and shoved in your face, it turns you off. Message fic for message fic’s sake makes for tedious reading. Yet, as this stuff has become more and more prevalent, sci-fi has become increasingly dull, and readership has shrank.

Nope. That can’t be it either. I warn writers not to bore the shit out of their audience for commercial reasons, but where’s the part where I tell writers not to write about gay folks?

Which is of course nonsense.

Yes, you fucking twatwaffle, it would be nonsense because you made it all up. When you can’t actually debate somebody libprogs go for Make Shit Up. And once you’ve hit that check box, they can go for Dismiss. For my new readers, here is a handy checklist for when you are arguing with morons like Damian. https://monsterhunternation.com/2013/09/20/the-internet-arguing-checklist/

Ironically, as this little ass clown was putting words in my mouth about how writers shouldn’t write about gay folks in order to assuage our homophobic red state audience, my book of the week was Sarah Hoyt’s novel with a gay narrator. My last Book Bomb was for a Michael Z. Williamson novel where the main character was a bisexual. You know why? Because the stories were entertaining and they were enjoyable books from talented authors.

The science fiction novels of Iain M Banks were bestsellers many times over, in part because the future they explored was openly queer.

In part? In fucking PART? By that logic Tolkien is a bestseller because some people really like books with trees in them.

Citizens of Banks’ future society the Culture have the ability to change their sex at will, and frequently shift between sexes and gender roles. Kim Stanley Robinson’s 2312 became both a bestseller and multiple award winner with a vision of the future that included fluid non-binary gender.

I like how he throws these out there like he’s proving me wrong or something… I suppose if I was the imaginary straw man he’d constructed I’d be all sorts of outraged or something.

And Nicola Griffith’s historical epic Hild, nominated for this year’s Nebula awards by members of the SFWA, is built around a bisexual protagonist.

Anybody who wants to be a writer really needs to separate “award winning” and “best selling” in their mind. They are not synonyms. Sometimes a book will be both. Usually they are not, and prestigious awards don’t pay shit. To most readers “award winning” is more of a synonym for “boring and preachy” because they’ve learned the hard way that over recent years awards are more likely to go to whatever preaches about Special Topic X than what is actually the enjoyable. This is a leading cause of Puppy Related Sadness.

And if members of the SFWA like it? Whoop. SFWA doesn’t represent the book buying public that actually pays the bills. The SJW crowd of SFWA will love whatever preaches about Special Topic of the Day X, and then they’ll write blog posts about how it was too bad more left handed transsexual Eskimos haven’t won awards, then they’ll lead a lynch mob against one of their fellow libprogs for slightly deviating from proper goodthink. SFWA is useless and their Social Justice contingent is tedious.

Now I want to raise a question, why is the Guardian brining me up now? If you look at the dates, I pissed off the left half of the internet clear back in January. That’s like ten million years in internet time. Since then the Social Justice Warrior crowd has moved on and been outraged by Jonathan Ross for possibly telling fat jokes in the future, then they got outraged at Neil Gaiman for his being surprised at how easily they get outraged, then they got outraged at Robert Silverburg and a couple dozen other prominent writers for saying that they didn’t want a soviet style editorial board to prosecute thought crime, then they got outraged at liberal Patrick Rothfuss for saying maybe they shouldn’t be so easily outraged all the time, then they got outraged at liberal Wil Wheaton for agreeing with Rothfuss, and I think I’m forgetting some other outrages in there too.

So there’s been plenty of outrage since their outrage over me saying that their message fic is annoying. (if only I could figure out a way to harness the friction energy of liberal hand wringing, I’d have a source of limitless free energy… then I’d then sell the patent for this device to Big Oil for a zillion dollars, because I’m a greedy capitalist 1%er)

So why now, months later, does a British newspaper feel the need to mention me and make up some shit that I never said? Hmmm… What could possibly be going on in, oh… let’s say, London… Could they have been counting up Hugo nominations maybe? Naw… Surely this is just a coincidence.

Well, Damian, as a libprog it is never too early for you to start poisoning the well. Though if you’re going to make it as a journalist maybe you shouldn’t be so ham fisted in your timing. You might inadvertently reveal that somebody leaked information to you early or something.

Personally I look forward to the next few months of nonstop character assassination about me by the Social Justice Warriors. It will be just like when I was nominated for the Campbell. If I can generate enough infamy in Britain, maybe I will be invited to go on Top Gear to drive the reasonably priced car. Then Jeremy Clarkson and I can go over to Piers Morgan’s house and toilet paper his trees.

 

EDIT: John C. Wright has chimed in, and holy moly, Damien gets whooped on. 🙂 http://www.scifiwright.com/2014/04/a-marvel-from-a-d-801702/