No, Tor.com, GenCon Isn’t Racist. A Fisking.

I read this article before arriving in Indianapolis, so I was able to ponder on it a bit as I observed the gleeful masses at GenCon enjoying themselves and having a fantastic time proudly flying their geek flags high. Little did those poor gamers realize that they were actually engaging in racist-cismale-patriarchal-micro-aggressions and invisible privilege. Luckily for us Tor.com has once again swooped in to suck the fun out of everything.

http://www.tor.com/blogs/2014/08/gamings-race-problem-gen-con-and-beyond

As usual, the original article is in italics and my comments are in bold. Before I get going, let me just skip ahead a bit and say that the author of this article says he wanted to have a conversation on race in gaming. Okay. Here you go. Be careful what you wish for.

First off, so you know my preexisting biases, here is my opinion on GenCon: https://monsterhunternation.com/2014/08/18/gencon-2014-report/ In short, it is friggin’ awesome.

Gaming’s Race Problem: GenCon and Beyond

A.A. GEORGE

 

Tomorrow I will be attending GenCon, the biggest table-top gaming convention in the United States. Held in Indianapolis, Indiana, it is four fun-filled days in celebration of the art and hobby of role-playing. There is something for everyone there: games, films, seminars, workshops, dancing, music, and parties. It’s an annual event where people from all over the world come to let their hair down and their inner geek out. As a lifelong gamer, I am excited to go to GenCon.

This is standard operating procedure with Tor.com articles, start out with an intro about how something everyone enjoys is great fun before they helpfully explain how it is actually horrible, and thus you should feel bad. They even did the same thing explaining how Guardians of the Galaxy hates women, minorities, and gay people. http://www.tor.com/blogs/2014/08/guardians-of-the-galaxy-we-need-to-talk

As an ethnic minority, I am apprehensive about going to GenCon.

Seriously?

For all that GenCon offers, it lacks in minority gamers.

Huh? Not particularly, but we’ll get back to that.

Last year was my first GenCon, and as I explored the convention, I saw almost no one who looked like me.

Why? Are you physically fit?

By far, the most visible minorities at GenCon were the hired convention hall facilities staff who were setting up, serving, and cleaning up garbage for the predominantly white convention-goers.

Think about that for a moment… George is upset that the employees of the Indianapolis convention center, an establishment which is located in the downtown area of a major American city is staffed by locals who are demographically different than the masses of attendees from all over America who have the disposable income to travel across the country just to engage in their hobbies.

His problem isn’t with GenCon, it is with Econ 101, geography, and social studies.  

 It was a surreal experience and it felt like I had stepped into an ugly part of a bygone era, one in which whites were waited upon by minority servants.

I’m guessing George hasn’t ever eaten at any fast food restaurants in any urban area anywhere in America. Why yes, I did notice that there were African-Americans working there, but according to the 2010 census the whole city of Indianapolis is 28% black, and if I’m getting my geography right http://zipatlas.com/us/in/indianapolis/zip-code-comparison/percentage-black-population.htm , the neighborhoods around the convention center are up to 74% black.

Strangely enough, the employees are of a similar ethnic makeup when I’m at an event in Atlanta, NYC, or DC, yet when I walk around the SLC ComicCon in a city that is only 2.7% black and 22% Latino, the local employees cooking my burgers look different. LA and San Diego conventions have more Latinos working there. Gasp! You mean the local employees are people who live where the con is?

This bit would be like hosting a WorldCon in Bejing, flying there, and then getting upset that the employees of the convention center are Chinese, and how it hearkens back to the days when westerners had Chinese immigrants doing their laundry.

All that is besides the fact that these are just regular people with jobs, and if you treat them like “servants” the security will remove you from the building. If you somehow mistake people being employed by a convention center as the equivalent of house slaves in the antebellum south you may want to reexamine your notions of how things like jobs work.

Gaming has a race problem. For all its creativity and imagination, for all its acceptance of those who find it hard to be themselves in mainstream society, gaming has made little room for people of color.

I’m calling bullshit on this one. After reading this ridiculous article I was curious, and paid more attention than I normally do to what the people around me looked like over the last few days. Since I’m not a Social Justice Warrior I usually just judge individuals based on the content of their character, but this is for Tor.com, so I was on the lookout.

What did I find? All sorts of people too busy having fun to give a shit what color the person standing next to them was.  Having traveled all over most of America, I saw a group of people that looked basically like America, only these were all united in their love of gaming and having a great time.

Wild ass guess, as if I’m back in the corporate world preparing a mandatory EEOC report blacks are statistically under-represented. Asians were probably over represented. On the Latinos it is hard to tell, because as we learned from NPR last week, it is hard to pick us out when we don’t wear sombreros for easy identification. https://monsterhunternation.com/2014/08/07/fisking-npr-about-latinos-in-the-movies/  

Having read this on the way in, and not having paid attention last year, George made it sound lily white. It isn’t. Not even close. There were also lots of people of indeterminate ethnicity, folks like Owen who’d check the Other box, and women… Holy moly. GenCon has lots of female attendees. Maybe I’m biased because I was on the writing track for most of it and maybe aspiring writers are disproportionate, but I’d guess 70/30 male to female ratio, and considering the social stereotypes about gamers being dorky or uncool, that strikes me as pretty damned good. 

I couldn’t tell you about the gay or transgender percentages because I didn’t think it was polite to ask.  “Hey dude, yeah, I think X-Com is awesome too. Were you always a dude? Uh huh.” Checks box.

“The problem is that white people see racism as conscious hate, when racism is bigger than that…

Racism is an insidious cultural disease. It is so insidious that it doesn’t care if you are a white person who likes black people; it’s still going to find a way to infect how you deal with people who don’t look like you. Yes, racism looks like hate, but hate is just one manifestation. Privilege is another. Access is another. Ignorance is another. Apathy is
another. And so on.”

–Scott Woods, author and poet.

And so on… So basically what this quote says is that everything is insidious racism somehow.

Yay. So from this premise, everybody is racist all the time, even unconsciously. Fantastic.  

To those of us who actually have to function as grown-ups in society, the dictionary definition of Racism is:

noun

1.

a belief or doctrine that inherent differences among the various human races cultural or individual achievement, usually involving the idea that one’s own race is superior and has the right to rule others.

2.

a policy, system of government, etc., based upon or fostering such a doctrine; discrimination.

3.

hatred or intolerance of another race or other races.

Did I see any of that at GenCon? Nope. Zip. Zero. Everybody seemed cool.

Did I see unconscious micro-aggressions and invisible privilege?  Beats the hell out of me. I’m not a mind reading Social Justice Warrior, constantly perched like a falcon, ready to swoop in to right wrongs.

I am the first in my family to be born in the United States. The child of immigrants, I struggled between cultures.

I get that. I truly do. I grew up in a Portuguese culture in a really poor dairy farming town, where the men were manly men, problems were solved with fists and the problems that couldn’t be solved with fists were dulled with beer, reading books was a waste of time that could better be spent milking cows, and D&D was for worshipping the devil.

I was the only non-white kid in the neighborhood and one of only a half-dozen minorities in my high-school.

In my school, half of us could speak English. Half of those could read.

 I was an outsider.

Try being an outspoken republican at WorldCon sometime.

I found refuge in Dungeons & Dragons in my freshman year. I could escape who I was in those heroic characters and epic stories. I could be someone I was not. I could be strong. I could be fierce.

I could be white.

Whoop de fricking doo. I could be a half-orc.

As an awkward teen, like other awkward teens, I wanted to be accepted. But acceptance meant something different to me, as perhaps it does to other minority teens.

You ever notice that SJWs are always perpetually reminiscing about the wrongs they suffered in high school? Yes, you are a special snowflake, unique among all the snowflakes. How could the average gamer nerd attendee of GenCon possibly understand what it was like to be an AWKWARD TEENAGER?!

Acceptance meant being white.

The broad acceptance that white people enjoy is the unspoken—but clearly visible—rule of our society, reinforced through a thousand structures and symbols. It pervades everything around us, reminding everyone that white people are the center of the story, no matter what story is being told.

Or it could be that all of RPG gaming originated when Dave Arneson and Gary Gygax added a narrative to a war game, and war gaming was historically an upper middle class activity, so most of the original gamers were educated white males who came from that social strata. And at the time the only huge thing in fantasy was LoTR and the early game creators drew upon Tolkien’s works to establish worlds that were based on a northern European setting. Most of the first and second generation gamers worked with what they were familiar with, and being descended from western culture, there was a whole lot more western culture source material to take inspiration from. Since our hobby is a relatively recent development in American culture, it has taken a while for it to evolve from its granddaddy progenitor.

Naw… Can’t be that. It must be racism. Because obvious.

As a kid who desperately wanted to belong and fit in, white was the color of god.

Literally. Because he is very shiny.

Most games—the genres, the artwork, the characters, the stories—were Eurocentric and white. It was easy, perhaps even expected, to be white when playing a character. I was always Eric, or Gunthar, or Francois; I was never a person of color.

That just shows a massive lack of imagination on your part. My first childhood character was grey-green (and my strength was 18/00 because I cheated at character creation, but that was the perk of being the only kid at the table smart enough to figure out 2nd edition rules. THAC0!)

My name was never my name.

Trust me on this one. My parents didn’t call me Bahutarg. We named the dog Bahutarg. 

(And no, that isn’t the Indiana Jones reference, I literally had a Queensland Healer I named after a PC.)

And no one thought it was strange that I played people so different from myself.

The beauty of gaming is that you can be things different than yourself if you want. I suppose you could be yourself… If you’re BORING. 

It has been a long and complex road to finding myself, and comfort in my own skin and ethnic identity.

My all-time favorite character I’ve ever played for a long campaign was a samurai named Makoto. For those of you who read this blog you know I wrote up a novel worth of character journals, and I’m fairly certain I’m not Japanese.

In my current IKRPG campaign I’m playing an investigator that is a rip off of Luther, and yes, I look like Idris Elba. This week at GenCon I played Amiri the female barbarian pregen in a Pathfinder game (and killed a gelatinous cube with a shovel), and the next night I played a berserker as if I was Danny Trejo. I named him Asahino de Vagos (that’s Murder Hobo to you pasty faced gringos), I had the Lady of the Lake tattooed on my chest, and I only spoke in lines from Machete*. When we faced the boss I greeted him with Hola Motherfucker and stabbed him in the face.

How’s that for finding yourself?

* I’ll admit, when we entered the Forest of Doom, and I said “We didn’t cross the border, the border crossed us” that was a bit of a stretch.

The first step was simply realizing that white wasn’t the only color of value. It came in drops: a character in a movie or a book that was of my ethnicity, who I could empathize with and imagine myself as. These characters, when they appeared, gave me my own heroes, heroes that were like me.

Good for you. And the average suburban white bread kid isn’t a Halfling rouge. Play whatever makes you happy.

Gaming never afforded me those options.

Yes. It. Did.  I’m 39 and even in ye olde tymes before the internet in the land of staunch Catholic “D&D and heavy metal lead to Satanism” I got my grubby little hands on sourcebooks with all sorts of different world settings. I don’t know how old this writer is, but in my teenage years Forgotten Realms had books like Dragonwall, Parched Sea, and Feathered Dragon. (and holy shit, I can’t believe I remember that!)

Not to mention settings like Dark Sun, where you could play a Mule, but who cares what race you are there, because you’re ALL GOING TO DIE.

I had to force them, going against the pressure to conform. The pressure was so intense that the first time I played a character of my own ethnicity was actually online.

In online gaming, nobody knows who anybody is, unless they say they’re a 16 year old girl then they are either an undercover cop or Melvin the Troll. This was especially true in the days before voi
ce chat, so unless this blogger is really young, he is the only person who knew what race he was. If the only person who knows what you are is you, and you’re still hung up about it, you’ve got a problem, and it isn’t what 50,000 ambivalent strangers in Indiana think.

 Eventually, I did become confident enough to bring non-white characters to the table, but I still sometimes faced puzzled looks, and questions about ‘whether I was trying to make a statement’ when all I wanted was to simply be me.

It is possible that George’s game group was just made up of morons, which does happen, but considering this guy is so intellectually dishonest that he has no problem ascribing racist motives to complete strangers because of the psychological hang ups he picked up as a kid, I’m guessing the puzzled looks from his game group were probably due to “oh, what the fuck are you spun up about now, George?” more than invisible privilege or whatever it is we’re supposed to be outraged about this week. 

I don’t think there are official surveys and statistics on the gaming subculture, but perhaps this study on the top 100 domestic grossing films in science-fiction and fantasy is an indication of similar trends in gaming: There are only eight protagonists of color in the top 100 science-fiction and fantasy films. Six are played by Will Smith and one is a cartoon character (Aladdin). None of these protagonists are women of color.

Yeah, already went through why that particular survey was utter crap in the link above talking about NPR. If you don’t want to click on that link, in short, as a retired auditor the stats were laughable, but I’d encourage you to read it, because poking out the obvious holes in it was pretty funny. 

Things are changing in the world of gaming, but too slowly.

That’s an extremely presumptive and broad statement. Just like the definition of racism above where everything under the sun is racist, even if you’re doing things right you’re not doing them right enough. No matter what, the perpetual outrage seekers have to find something to be outraged about. 

The designers are mostly white, especially lead designers and executives.

You know who becomes a game designer? Somebody who designs games. Nobody is stopping anybody of any ethnic makeup from designing games and selling them. The market of ideas is truly colorblind.

Executives are the ones who actually make money at it.

Equally, the key officers of most conventions are almost entirely white.

In my experience people who work at conventions are the ones who VOLUNTEER and actually SHOW UP. If you do a good job at this over a period of time and the other volunteers and committee members know you and trust you, then that’s when you become one of those “key officers”.  That actually showing up for a few years, learning stuff, and working could be seen as discriminatory to the perpetually stupid I suppose, but just think of it as gaining XP before leveling up.

Nobody is stopping anybody from volunteering. I’m sure your local concom would absolutely love volunteers regardless of what they look like.

Usually, they are well-meaning people who do not realize how their roles and decisions impact the larger gaming community and its lack of diversity.

So, voluntary positions and positions that are filled by people who choose to go into those fields don’t have enough people who chose not to go into them… Okay then. Well, obviously somebody has to do something!

GenCon is emblematic of this problem.

I still don’t think George has established what the problem is (outside of his personal guilt and hang ups) but we’ll run with it.

Of the twenty-seven Guests of Honor (in various categories), only two are people of color.

Hold on a second… I didn’t keep my program book, but I’m betting he didn’t count me in there and I was a GoH and am legally a Person of Color (holy shit, how I fucking hate that term. It is just Colored People backwards). But of course, I didn’t wear my sombrero like NPR wanted so I wasn’t “easily identifiable”.

This is really kind of silly when you think about it. He was just complaining that there weren’t enough minority attendees… Where does George think the guests come from? This isn’t a chicken and the egg thing. Most of the guests are there because they are now interesting for some reason, but most of us started out as just regular gamers, and he was just complaining that there weren’t enough regular gamers who were minorities. Adding more minority guests isn’t going to cause minority gamers to randomly spawn into the convention.

The judges of the prestigious ENnie Awards for role-playing, hosted at GenCon, have been almost exclusively white since its inception.

The question here is how do you become a judge? I’m guessing it is related to the above bit about who becomes game designers or guests.

The same is true for the nominees and winners of the Diana Jones Awards. There may be more efforts to include people of color in gaming artwork,

Efforts? Rather than condemning and shaming people, you should be giving props and kudos to some game companies for going above and beyond what you’ve asked for. I think Pathfinder is actually the biggest selling RPG out there, and Google search what their iconic characters look like: https://www.google.com/search?q=pathfinder+iconic+characters&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=3VfzU-HZDOjMigKe_YDYAw&sqi=2&ved=0CDUQsAQ&biw=1366&bih=624

Quit awesome-shaming us, George.

but where are the real life people of color on the grand stage of gaming?

Yeah. Where are they? Rather than knee jerk assuming it is an unconscious racist plot, let’s think about where gaming and gamers came from and extrapolate out from there.

D&D started in 1974, one year before I was born. In the grand scheme of things it hasn’t been around very long. Most of the early designers were imaginative types who read high literacy things like LoTR for fun and came from backgrounds with the disposable income and free time that enabled time consuming things like war gaming. In the 1970s and 80s, what group had the most of that stuff? Suburban whites.

The designers of now were mostly the people who grew up reading and playing the stuff from that first group. And when they grew up, gaming was an unpopular dorky activity that wasn’t’ seen as cool. You know that whole stereotype of playing in the garage. Yep. Who could get away with being “uncool” in the 80s? Suburban white kids mostly, that’s who. “Uncool” in poor, rough areas was a good way to collect an ass beating. Where I lived in the 1980s I didn’t exactly brag that I liked to roll dice so my imaginary elf could sword fight an imaginary dragon. Hell, reading books was considered sissy behavior.

But I’m sure in the projects of west Baltimore or the Brick Yard of north Birmingham back then gaming was looked upon as a perfectly acceptable pastime by your peer group… Uh huh… I’m guessing this is why most of the black and Latino gamers I know around my age are the ones who grew up in the suburbs… Or after thinking on it for a minute, they were introduced to
it in that bastion of all hatey-hate-mongery that Social Justice Warriors despise so much known as the US Military. The military is lousy with gamers, and the military is real diversity, not that namby-pamby college gender studies skin-deep diversity. Gaming is a fantastic Morale Activity when you’re stuck in the middle of nowhere, and even if it was dorky and uncool at home, playing with your buddies when you’re otherwise stuck and bored off your ass makes a great gateway drug.  

It isn’t a race thing, it is a poverty and accessibility thing. Sadly poverty and accessibility go hand in hand with race in this country. George is taking a big, complex bundle of problems made up of economics, education, and social issues and dumping in the lap of people who have nothing to do with it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African-American_middle_class

Don’t blame the gamers. Blame LBJ for his legacy of failed Great Society social programs.

Let’s face it. Gaming is really a luxury activity. You want to increase the number of gamers in any community, increase their disposable income, increase their free time, increase their literacy rates and the numbers that read for fun… Oh, but wait… George was offended earlier by the people from inner city Indianapolis simply having jobs. Never mind.

I grew up poor. My dad can barely read, but my mom liked it, romances mostly. My dad tolerated me reading westerns, because those were “tough” and our little local library, tiny as it was, was free, but it had a lot of Louis L’amour. Then one day a friend of my mom’s gave her a box of used books, and among them was the Sword of Shannara. That was my gateway drug to fantasy. Then my uncle found a used red box sourcebook for me. Then my race/sex/socioeconomic status all became irrelevant, because I could punch monsters in the face. 

You want to get kids into this stuff, present them with the opportunity to create fun stories. No amount of bitching at the kids who did get the opportunities is going to right the social wrongs of the past. Guilt doesn’t create gamers. Fun creates gamers.

Furthermore, GenCon is disturbingly tolerant of deeply offensive material. Shoshana Kessock wrote about her experiences with Nazi cosplay and paraphernalia at Gencon shortly after returning from GenCon 2013, and I had similar encounters.

Just speed reading this one because of time, and I must be missing the “disturbingly tolerant” part… So out of 50,000 people there was a guy in a Nazi outfit, but it was out on the streets of the city, totally devoid of context so no idea what he was doing, or if he was playing the bad guy for some production, or who knows what, but fine, whatever, there’s a Nazi. And then some little fly by night place bought a booth that had some Nazi crap in it…

 Yeah, just not seeing this as an epidemic of racism to indict the other 50,000 people, and I really hate Nazis. My grandmother’s family is from Poland and her maiden name was Byreika. I don’t think I have any relatives left there. I’m all about shooting Nazis in the face. I had an incident earlier this year where I had to physically leave a place because there was a guy there with a swastika tattooed on his face and it was taking too much of my self-control not to draw my Benchmade and cut it off.

It would be impossible to imagine minority players running around GenCon in t-shirts that read ‘Kill the white man!’, yet the convention welcomes and profits from images of racial hatred.

I think Kill the White Man is the name of the blog of a Nebula award winning writer, but hey, go for it. Normal people will sneer and avoid you, just like they do the moron with the swastika tattooed on his face.

Welcomes? Bullshit. Out of the tens of thousands of people there, somebody did something you don’t like, and you have absolutely no idea what the management did about it, if they even knew. Profits? You mean out of the hundreds of booths and millions of products, somebody brought in something obnoxious and you make it sound like a chemical company profiting off the production of Zyklon B.

GenCon has weakly worded policies to prevent these horrific violations, but it has failed to enforce its own rules.

No examples of this systematic racist failure. Just throw the allegation out there and insult GenCon. Classy.

These are symbols, important symbols. If the color of all the leadership, of all the roles of power and recognition, the entire structure is white, and if this same leadership is tolerant of hate-speech, it gives a clear unspoken signal to the non-white community: You can join us here, but only if you leave your history, your people, and your emotions at the door.

Speaking of symbols, get off your cross. There is no “clear unspoken signal” to be extrapolated out of all that straw. Nobody other than your fevered imagination told you to abandon your history, your people, or your emotions, George.

You want to know why real instances of racism are often overlooked? Because the public is the villagers and you SJWs are the boy who cried wolf. When every unconscious action or event is somehow racist, after a while we tune you out. Real racists disappear into the tall grass of micro-aggressions and invisible privilege.

I’ve been told time and again by gamers, “I don’t see race” as if they were doing me a kindness. This is not enlightenment or progressiveness. It is ignorance. If you do not see race, you do not see me. You do not see my identity, my ethnicity, my history, my people. What you are telling me, when you say “I do not see race,” is that you see everything as the normal default of society: white. In the absence of race and ethnicity, it is only the majority that remains. I am erased.

I may be guilty of uttering the words “I don’t see race” at some point but perhaps I could better rephrase it to say “I don’t give a flying fuck about your race, because I care far more about your individual actions, personality, beliefs, choices, philosophy, and culture, and in this particular case we share the same culture of Gamer. And race is an artificially limiting concept primary used by statist control freaks to keep everyone in easily managed stereotype boxes. When I notice your race it is probably the same way I’d notice if somebody was tall, short, fat, thin, bald, beautiful or ugly. Now shut the fuck up about micro aggressions because you are harshing my mellow and roll the fucking dice.”

How about that? Better?

 More often than not, people are actually pretty cool, and what somebody perceives as “subconscious racist unease” is actually some well-meaning white person terrified that they might accidentally give offense and be burned at the stake by Social Justice Warriors. You want that to go away, quit screaming at these people about their white guilt and they’ll quit walking on egg shells around you.  

Is it any wonder, then, that so many people of color in the community try and submerge their own ethnic identity? They do not wish to stand out or to be recognized. In most societies it is dangerous to be an “other,” and in a subculture as white-dominated as gaming, things feel especially unwelcoming.

Luckily for you, you’re talking about the Indianapolis Convention Center in 2014, not the Selma Bridge in 1965, so it seems kind of silly that you’re worried about being The Other while complain
ing about a place where people are walking around in Furry animal costumes. Furries! Unwelcome, my ass.

Stand out? Hell, when I grow out my Duck Dynasty beard I can pass for the twin brother of one of the terrorists we just let out of Gitmo. I’m 6’5” and when I was young I could bench 365 and looked it. I was genuinely scary looking enough to make normal people uncomfortable when I walked into the room. Spare me your bleating about being profiled. That is simply human beings paying attention to their surroundings, which has been genetically coded into the very foundations of our grey matter.  https://monsterhunternation.com/2013/07/22/on-profiling-and-stand-your-ground/

Too many conversations on race and gaming die before they even start.

Is that because it isn’t actually a conversation, but rather you giving them a lecture? I’ll be glad to talk race issues all day with you, but for some odd reason that often seems to go something like this:

Social Justice Warrior: Let’s begin. You’re racist.

Normal Person: What? Wait. No I’m not.

SJW: Well denying it just proves it.

NP: No, really, I’ve never done anything racist at all.

SJW: Invisible privilege, subconscious micro-aggressions, cismale gendernormative fascism!

NP: What the fuck?

SJW: Racist.

Here is a prediction. By me writing this fisk, the resulting “conversation” will have a handful of people who disagree with me actually argue their stance with logic and opinions, (and I truly love those) but the vast majority of dissent will be from SJWs who skimmed until offended, and then either attack me as a racist, or dismiss me because of privilege. Why yes, I have had a few conversations about race. How can you tell?

I have seen more energy, debate, and engagement by gamers on the minutiae of rules and trivia than I have on the weighty topics of race and gaming.

No shit? People who love a hobby, when gathered for that hobby, prefer to talk about that hobby rather than your personal cause? I’ve seen the exact same thing with sci-fi/fantasy fans fleeing in droves because they’re tired of getting preached at. It is funny how somebody trying to enjoy themselves doesn’t like to be repeatedly slapped in the face and insulted. They must be racists.

Gamers will spend endless days and millions of words fighting over the pros and cons of the Wacky Wand of Welding, but when a person of color brings up issues of race and diversity in the community, too many gamers roll their eyes and say, “Oh not again. Why do they have to be so politically correct? Can’t they just have fun?!”

I can only assume you brought it up in as ham fisted a manner as you did here, and started out with “Hey guys, I got baggage and shame issues from my childhood. Why are you all racists?” so I can’t imagine why they’d have that reaction to you.  

Despite the apathy and dismissal, I know that there are people who want to work with the minority community to change these realities. I know there are allies and advocates who want to make gaming a different place, one that’s open in new ways to minorities and their communities.

And here we are at the end, after insinuating gamers are all racists, game companies are racists, and GenCon management loves Nazis, George gets to the useful part about actually getting more people from different backgrounds into our hobby. Way to go, buddy.

If you’re one of those people, here’s where you can start:

  • Listen. The Gaming as Other series is a great place to start. There are a handful of panels at Cons on the topic and I’ll be sitting on two of them at GenCon: “Why is Inclusivity Such a Scary Word?” and “Gaming As Other.” Keep engaging, listening and supporting. We notice your support and it gives us the strength to keep going.

If con panels give you the “strength to keep going” then you really need to seize control of your life, man.

  • Hire more people of color and give them agency, visibility, power, responsibility, and credit in a wide variety of meaningful and important areas in your organization.

How about companies hire the best person for the job based upon their skill, knowledge, abilities, and talents so that they can provide the best possible product to their customers?

Do not simply hire a token minority.

I’ve personally seen how this is a double edged sword of Social Justice. When they say “token minority” that often means a minority that disagrees with them or fails to fit in the proper box. They’re all about diversity as long as it is skin deep and in perfect lockstep with what they think.

Do not use people of color as a form of marketing.

Another double edged sword of Social Justice. So you’ve got an RPG. Let’s say you put some non-white looking characters on the art. You could easily be praised for this, or you could somehow anger them and be attacked for “tokenism” or “cultural appropriation”. Flip a coin. Either way, I’m sure Tor.com will run an article about how you’re racist.

  • Reach out to minority groups and invite them personally to conventions. Your neighbors, your co-workers, the people at your church, all of them.

Holy crap yes. In this entire thing I finally found something I agree whole heartedly agree with!

However George left something off. After you invite them MAKE IT FUN. Sadly, SJWs can even suck the fun out of Guardians of the Galaxy, so it is up to us people who aren’t total psychopaths to invite more people, because if a regular person goes with a SJW then the whole con is going to be Diversity Panels, until the guest escapes out a window.

  • Offer and play games that are actively and intentionally more inclusive.

Inclusive sounds great, but notice that he never mentioned enjoyment, entertainment, or fun. That’s because SJWs have their sense of fun surgically removed because it might interfere from their listening carefully to make sure the GM doesn’t perform any invisible micro-aggressions. Curious, I did a Ctrl F. It turns out George only used the word Fun twice. Once in describing how GenCon currently is and another in an insulting manner, in the bit about how DARE gamers rather want to have fun rather than discuss how they’re unconsciously racist.

This is the same uphill argument I’ve been making about sci-fi/fantasy fiction. Our SJWs flip out about needing more diversity in our readers, and their solution to that is being preachy, oversensitive, humorless, and obnoxious to the majority demographic. It is hard to entertain when you’re motivated by guilt and shame. I say make it fun for everybody and they flip out and call me a racist. Meanwhile my fan base makes their diversity panels look like a Klan rally.  Go figure.

Oh, by the way. While wandering around the con in search of Social Justice and checking to see what color everybody was, the most diverse group of fans I saw the entire time was the line for my book signing. Suck it, WisCon and your racially segregated “safe zones”.

There is a lot we can do together as a community. Gamers have always prided themselves on being accepting of those outside the mainstream.

Furries, dude… Furries. 

People of color want to be accepted too.

And nobody isn’t. So quit insulting us.</ strong>

You want an example of acceptance among gamers? One of the guys I traveled with told me this story. He and another of my friends were standing in line for some GenCon activity Saturday night. He asked another dude in the booth for something, and that guy flirtatiously responded “Only if I can get your phone number.”

Now this guy is straight, and he’s being hit on by a gay man, and said gay man is also a really tall, muscular black man. Did this white gamer from North Dakota flip out? Nope. He was a little surprised, there was an awkward silence, but then he said his girlfriend wouldn’t like that much.

Now, through the lens of the Social Justice Warrior this case would be super confusing. Was my friend a victim of sexual harassment because he was uncomfortable (Cosplay does not equal Consent!), or was he homophobic for turning down the advance, or was he racist? Shit. I don’t know. This stuff is super confusing. There are so many aggressions and counter aggressions that I’m sure Tor.com could write a whole series of blog posts condemning everybody.

Meanwhile, back at GenCon on Planet Earth, all of these individuals had a laugh, and went on with their lives.  

GenCon is the flagship of gaming, and thus is a golden opportunity to start this process. Let’s start to have a conversation about the structures that led to the low number of minorities as Guests of Honor and ENnies judges.

Notice, no suggestions as to who. Just a vague “you need more. Make it so”. 

When my RPG didn’t make it as a finalist, it wasn’t because there weren’t enough Latino judges, it was because I’m competing against super creative products like Numenera or Deadlands. What difference does the ethnicity of the judges make?

Let’s push GenCon to make changes to those structures so that people of color have a seat at the table for those important decisions.

The world is run by those who show up, and nobody is stopping anybody from showing up. If you’ve got some suggestions for qualified judges, I’m sure GenCon would be happy to listen. But I’m going to go out on a limb and guess if George didn’t have that straw grasping example of racism it would be something else.

 For many of us, gaming is not simply a hobby, but a home. Let’s make it both inclusive and diverse.

I know when I want to be inclusive I start by insinuating that 50,000 complete strangers are racists.

I think George owes GenCon and its attendees an apology.

####

EDIT: FOUR YEARS LATER (that’s got to be some kind of record for a blog edit!) a couple days ago some woman I’d never heard of threw a giant temper tantrum online about how I was a dangerous, sexist, racist, hatemonger, who had “personally hurt her loved ones”, a social justice lynch mob formed, and Origins caved and disinvited me from being their guest of honor.  

https://monsterhunternation.com/2018/05/15/statement-concerning-my-being-disinvited-as-the-guest-of-honor-for-origins-game-fair/

Since then I learned the following facts:
A. The angry harpy is the fiance of the poor victimized guy who wrote this article about all those meany mean face racist gamers whose hatemongery haunts him so.

B. Which is kind of funny, since apparently the guy who wrote this is the son of a man so rich that there is a Wikipedia page about how rich he is, and when you type his name into Google, autofilll completes it with “net worth”.

No. I shit you not.  His dad is like a billionaire. Which puts this fisking into a whole new perspective.  He was so picked on! Such angst! How dare I disagree with his illogical angsty screed from my position of privilege!  (snort). Daddy probably had to buy him a new Ferrari to cheer him up.

Sure, while I moved away from my parents when I was 16, and the cows I was raising to pay for college contracted tetanus and I had to kill them myself, this dude was going to the same private school as Peter Dinklage! But I’m the one with “privilege”.

Man, privilege is awesome. It’s like magic! A self made man who grew up dirt poor working knee deep in blood and shit, with an illiterate father and an alcoholic mother, telling a billionaire’s heir that he was being an emotional little bitch, shouldn’t mean much. But all my warm beige privilege made it SO MUCH WORSE. 

C.  My “vicious personal attacks against her loved ones” consist of this blog post (which shows that SJWs can really hold a grudge!).

D. When asked for evidence of my vicious personal attacks against her loved one, the angry social justice chick wouldn’t link to this fisk, because it was “too hurtful” and dredged up too many bad memories. Okay then. Personally I wouldn’t want to link to it because it makes him look like a giant crybaby weenie who insulted 50,000 complete strangers because he was still butt hurt about people being mean to him when he was a teenager.  And how dare people be rude to him, especially since, you know, his daddy was super rich and stuff.

His dad actually sounds like a badass, financial wizard, self made man, who made giant piles of money, and then became a philanthropist. Too bad his daughter in law to be is an easily offended twit. I hope dad made sure his boy got a prenup.

Another thing that makes this especially ironic, the guy who wrote this is Indian (I didn’t know what he was when I wrote this, except he sure was self-conscious about it), and as they’re accusing me of all sorts of racism and trying to keep writing white and such bullshit, I’m the author of a successful epic fantasy series which if it were to be made into a movie, every single character would need to be played by an INDIAN actor.

Seriously, as I was writing Son of the Black Sword, in my head I pictured Ashok Vadal as looking like Akshay Kumar. Ranveer Singh is Jagdish. 

Which means the girlfriend of the guy whining about his culture not being represented in fantasy, got an author who writes about his culture in fantasy booted out of a convention because of his imaginary racism.

And by racism it means I disagreed with a liberal once.  Because at no point could any of these assholes find any actual quotes from my thousands of political posts, blog posts, con appearances, interviews, panels, short stories or books that demonstrate I’m racist. But that’s because I’m not, they’re just assholes.

Seriously, you disagree with a social justice warrior and they reflexively scream racism the same way a squid squirts ink.

So next time you try to get me kicked out of an event (and we all know you will because that’s how bullies operate) don’t forget to accuse me of “cultural appropriation.”  

So in a way, this old fisking got me kicked out of a convention… Which means that if I could go back in time four years, and do it all over again… I’d still write it. Only knowing what I know now, this time I would be far meaner and far more insulting. 

Ice Bucket Challenge for ALS
GenCon 2014 Report

539 thoughts on “No, Tor.com, GenCon Isn’t Racist. A Fisking.”

  1. My first serious Skyrim character was a Redguard, and unlike my Oblivion character I didn’t make him look Italian.* This guy is just an insecure self-reject. I’m about as Nordic in appearance that someone could be and I had no problem identifying with my clearly non-white character.

    *I had an excuse for that. The vanilla textures for Redguards was horrible, and I wanted to see if it could be done. My attempt at a black Nord didn’t work out as well.

    1. I also check the Other box in the Race section and my current Skyrim character is an orc named Mickey Rourke that’s basically just being Mickey Rourke on a giant drug fueled bender. I believe I last logged out with him dressed up as Batman running around punching wildlife in the face.

      I wonder what the SJWs would find racist/micro-aggressive/gendernormative about that character (other than the fact he’s actually punching small animals in the face).

      1. So… you have Mickey Rourke running through the forest, picking up the field mice and bopping them in the head?

      2. Holy crap, I just realized I know the host of Honey Badger. She used to be in my writer’s group. Small world.

    2. I also check the Other box in the Race section and my current Skyrim character is an orc named Mickey Rourke that’s basically just being Mickey Rourke on a giant drug fueled bender. I believe I last logged out with him dressed up as Batman running around punching wildlife in the face.

      I wonder what the SJWs would find racist/micro-aggressive/gendernormative about that character (other than the fact he’s actually punching small animals in the face).

      1. Probably. Exactly that kind of behavior is why I, as a person of Russian/Germanic descent, do not play human characters of another ethnicity in modern settings. (Fantasy settings where there’s a well-defined culture for them that I can also read up on in a matter of hours is a-ok.)

        Part of it is SJW-avoidance; part of it is I really don’t think I can internalize everything I’d need to to play a character of another culture really well and I’m kind of a perfectionist. :C But I have seen other players get attacked for playing a “person of color” when they aren’t, and I want none of that.

  2. Interestingly, I didn’t see anything in George’s screed about the “Gaymer” panels and events at GenCon.

    1. That’s exactly what I was thinking. He imagines people don’t like him because of his color when it’s really his downer personality. He’s a living, breathing parody.

      1. Sounds like a woman I had to deal with once upon a time. She was convinced that no one liked her because she was fat.

        About the sixth time she’d pissed me off that day, I pointedly told her that no one at the SCA even cared she was fat (she was hardly alone, after all), but that she was an obnoxious harpy.

        Sounds like George has found something about himself beyond his control that he can blame his lack of popularity on, rather than the fact that he’s just an asshole.

      2. George strikes me as prejudiced against himself. Someone who isn’t comfortable in his own skin.

        It reminds me of a story I heard from a psychotherapist, about a gay guy afraid to come out to his mother. Eventually, said gay asked himself, ‘What do I care about what Mom thinks about gays? Whatever it is, it won’t change me.’

        What’s really telling is George saying that if someone doesn’t “see race”, they don’t see him. If you see George, he doesn’t want you to treat him the same way as you would a white dude. Betcha if you do treat him differently because he’s not white, he won’t like that either.

        Boy needs to grow up and be a man.

  3. I’ll just add that Dungeons & Dragons—THE game in the epicenter of GenCon—has never been more inclusive of all types of people. There’ve been numerous articles about that. The recently released Player’s Handbook (5th Edition) does not display a white male as the default image on the page for humans (p. 29). And that’s totally cool. Humans are diverse.

    As are gamers. More now than ever. One of the most fun (if sadly short-lived) D&D campaigns I ran was with these guys: http://tinyurl.com/mu9olyv And we had a blast, and everyone liked everyone.

    1. Jeff, clearly you’re sexist because your group is all male, and most of you have beards which women can’t grow and–

      Nope, I can’t even keep that up for two lines. I fail as a SJW.

      1. Hah. True indeed. Well, in my OTHER campaign (2 years and running), there’s actually a 50/50 division of men and women. I think I’m mostly “safe” then. 🙂

  4. Good post Larry 🙂 People like George just suck the fun out of things. I had to recently drop a long time friend who constantly played the victim card.

  5. Haha! West Baltimore shout-out! I’m a walking, talking example of how you can’t stuff people into little, labeled boxes and expect everyone to take you seriously.

  6. Are these the same guys who think that the incidence of male players playing female characters is an indication of “exploring gender roles” and, thus, evidence of “ending default binary gender” (as opposed to “if I’m going to spend all day staring at a butt, it’s going to be an attractive butt”)?

    Nope, no cognitive dissonance here at all.

    1. Now for me personally, when I picked the female barbarian for that night’s game it was because she had the best damage output. 🙂

      That said, I did enjoy playing a barbarian. I left a headless squirrel in the donations box at the church, because that’s a great donation. Later, the GM described some huckster salesmen in the background, so I did a willpower check and then blew all my gold on snake oil and necklaces made of dried frogs. Later I was talked out of performing brain surgery on myself, but only because we were in a dungeon so the light wasn’t good.

      Yes. I’m going to go out on a limb and guess that I’m funner to play a game with than this guy.

      1. Am not and have not ever been a gamer (‘rents bought into the whole D&D is Satanic bulls*** hook, line, and sucker), so I’d have no clue what I’d be doing, but I would give major body parts to be able to game with you, Larry! I’d probably die from not being able to breathe because I’d be laughing so hard, but it’d be worth it!

  7. Some of my most memorable characters from gaming are the ones I had while deployed. Nothing like being in the middle of a fight and the sirens go off for a mortar attack, we just picked up the map and our dice and went to the shelter and continued our adventure.

  8. Politics is like plumbing: a nasty necessity of human existence, because humans produce a lot of shit.

    Normal people deal with plumbing when they have to (a couple of hours after a meal, a broken pipe), and people who get paid to do it (plumbers) need to deal with shit all day. It’s their job. But mentally healthy civilians don’t.

    Only a mental defective obsesses over feces and the disposal thereof. What would you think of a person who talks about feces during every single meal, talks about the quality of Captain America’s bowel movements after seeing “Winter Soldier”, and complains that Monster Hunter International doesn’t show the characters eating enough fiber to ensure regular and healthy dumps? Mental defective, right?

    People who obsess over politics, and inject it into everything, are just as defective.

    Normal, healthy, well adjusted people deal with politics when necessary — stay educated and vote, for Christ’s sake — but the rest of the time they lead a healthy life. People paid to deal with it (newsmen, pundits, politicians) deal with politics because it’s their job.

    But these politically obsessed assholes — like those infesting Tor.com — need to get a new goddamn hobby. Because injecting politics into everything is just as disgusting and tedious as telling complete strangers what your last poo looked like.

    “Hey, asshole,” I say to people like that. “Keep your shit to yourself.”

    1. > Only a mental defective obsesses over feces and the disposal thereof.

      and water resource engineers. 🙂

      1. I’m pretty sure they fall under the “paid to do it” exemption. (And, before anybody asks, Larry falls under the “only when necessary” exemption, but is veering dangerously close to pundit status. 😉 )

      2. How do we know a civil engineer designed the human body?

        Because only a civil engineer would route a toxic waste disposal pipeline through a recreational area.

  9. When a half-orc moved into my neighborhood, I was the first one to tell him hello. Sure, he ate my dog shortly thereafter, but at least I tried.

  10. It’s nice Tor.com has a group of Stormfront-like supremacist bloggers because inclusion and diversity.

    1. To be fair, they do have some good bloggers too. Jeff LaSala posted an excellent review of the Grimnoir Chronicles.

      1. I didn’t mean that’s what Tor.com is. They have a large roll call of bloggers and most of them are probably fairly neutral. My meaning is that if you have a web site with 99 pages of peace and love and page 100 says “I hate n-words” that tends to cancel the entire affair out. There is no shortage of insulting remarks and negative profilings about men, whites and heterosexuals at Tor.com. In contrast, there are zero negative profilings and insulting remarks about gays, Arabs, PoC in general and women. That latter is how it should be. The former horse’s ass needs to catch up to the latter’s example.

      2. Tor.com is maddening because sandwiched between SJW crapola are some good articles. I really like their Under the Dome reviews. But it could certainly use some more diversity, of the intellectual kind.

  11. TL;DR version:

    Racist A.A. George goes to a convention, sees “too many” whites enjoying themselves, decides to vent his unpleasant racial fixation while pretending to be some sort of victim. The End.

  12. Acceptance meant being white.

    Oh, lordy. Really? That’s what he has in his head.

    That has got to be the most openly racist statement I’ve heard all week. Not a statement about racism, but an expression of his racism.

    I mean. Boggle.

    1. Don’t boggle. That is not an isolated expression but the “norm” intersectionalists are constantly whining about against which they feel all things are unfairly measured. They call it “hegemony” and it is the centerpiece of radical feminist thought. They mean Anglophone, white, male, Western and straight.

      When Aliette de Bodard writes “Apparently only white people have the gravitas to be mythical and represent ‘everyman'” that’s a drumbeat that never ends with these folks.

    2. Yeah, I grew up in a city the was majority Hispanic and then spent the first 10 years of my career in various Asian cities. Oh, and for 2 years my department of 10 only had two men. Never once did I ever feel, oh no, I’m the only white and/or man in the room. But then I like to judge people on their attitudes and actions, not there skin tone or reproductive plumbing.

  13. You could be a half-orc? Not that much of a stretch from the quarter ogre you are in real life.

    On race: I had been reading Samuel Delany for 20 years before I found out he was black. It was a lot later that I found out he was gay. Do I care? Not really, I like his writing.

      1. Even if I liked his writing, I wouldn’t support someone who endorsed child molestation. Ditto for MZB, who apparently tortured her children into having sex with her. I’ll never read anything else of hers or touch anything that will put a cent into her freak partner’s bank account.

        1. And there are many people who won’t ever read any of Orson Scott Card’s books because of his homophobia and because he’s a Mormon (I prefer the word Moron to describe members of that cult, but that’s just me.)

      2. “Delany is one sick fucker.”

        Which is too bad. I liked Delany and MZB’s work, but I will not spend another dime on them ( until they are dead and their heirs get the money ).

        1. From her Wikipedia entry:
          Child sex abuse allegations

          In 2014, Bradley was accused of sexual abuse by her daughter, Moira Greyland, who claims that she was molested from the age of 3 to 12. Greyland also claimed that she was not the only victim and that she was one of the people who reported her father, Walter H. Breen, for child molestation.[15][16][17] In response to these allegations the author Janni Lee Simner, who has continued to write works in Bradley’s Darkover series, announced on June 13, 2014 that she would be donating advances from her two Darkover books, her Darkover royalties, and at the request of her husband Larry Hammer payment for his sale to Bradley’s magazine to the American anti-sexual assault organization Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network.[18] On July 2, 2014 Victor Gollancz Ltd, the publisher of Bradley’s digital backlist, announced that it will donate all income from the sales of Bradley’s e-books to the charity Save the Children.[19]

    1. I tried to read his books 20 years ago, and they stunk so I stopped. Now that I know he’s a black pervert, I am not really all that inspired to give them another try.

  14. By writing this piece George has created the awkward situation where, if someone at GenCon sits next to him, says “hey, how you doing? my name is Bob, and you are?” and within 5 minutes George is lecturing Bob on gaming, race, and diversity. And Bob thinks “what a jerk, I’m getting away from this guy” and George concludes “racism”.

  15. The only racist I see here is the whining pussy from Tard.com who expects white people to fix his problems for him.

    Also, Maurice Broaddus was there, but I don’t know if he’s properly considered black since he’s also British.

    And of course, as an immigrant, I don’t count because of my skin color…which is darker than Larry’s.

    1. Yep. We compared. Mike has at least got some sun this summer. I’ve been chained to a desk the whole time.

      And I’ve only met Maurice a couple of times now, but he strikes me as a really nice guy, and I loved the pitch for Knights of Breton Court, so I’m going to download it.

  16. I’m a person of colour too. My colour is pink, shading to beet red if I go out in the sun too long.

    Love the way the SJW dude makes RAAAAACISM!!! into a disease, only to be healed by… well really there’s no cure.

    “Racism is an insidious cultural disease. It is so insidious that it doesn’t care if you are a white person who likes black people; it’s still going to find a way to infect how you deal with people who don’t look like you.”

    Clearly the only solution for Mr. AA George is to kill anyone who doesn’t look like him, or at least stuff them all out of sight in camps someplace. Maybe get some work out of them too.

    I can seeeeee you, Mr. George.

  17. “Start with…” You know, I only have so much time available. If I’m reading something game related, chances are it’s going to be errata, tips, how to min max a character, how to take advantage of a tricky rule, etc. Stuff that makes it fun. I’m not going to go out of my way to bore myself to death.

  18. Excellent fisk, Larry! One of your best.

    I really don’t understand why someone like this AA George person doesn’t just design a game that works for his special desires? I mean, that’s what creative people do, right? And I’ve always found gamers to be creative.

    It seems, after all the talky-talk, he’s really just found an angle in a community where he can’t compete on the traditional level (creativity) but he wants some status anyway so he’ll do whatever he has to do to get it. And I feel confident in criticizing his creativity because his bogus accusations aren’t even that imaginative. Mediocrity is hard to hide.

  19. I think it’s fair to disagree with A.A. George all you want. I certainly don’t agree much of anything in that post. But I’m a Tor.com blogger myself (and a hardcore gamer/sci-fi nerd):

    Tor.com isn’t an organized cabal spewing discord and discontent trying to bring down the white man or even subvert the dominant paradigm. It’s just a sci-fi/fantasy community site that yeah, happens to have a large percentage of folks who lean a decidedly different direction politically from the folks who follow Larry’s blog. No need to generalize or slander the whole site. Don’t do to Tor.com what George is doing to GenCon. 🙂

    Not everyone who writes for it is on the same page. There’s no Kool-Aid that’s been passed around. At least, I haven’t been asked to take a sip!

    I guess I’ll just keep trying to say it meekly. 🙂

    1. Yes. For the record, Jeff is awesome.

      So yeah, when I talk about Tor.com it is context of the articles like this, the Guardians, and the ending binary gender stuff. The blog does write other things.

    2. Good point, Jeff. I think Larry was just pointing out that it was another Tor post. Not speaking for him, of course, that was just how I read it when I saw it. I can see how it might be misconstrued, however.

      BTW, I freely admit I don’t read Tor’s articles too often unless someone has passed one on to me. So I was wondering- and speaking of diversity- does Tor ever post articles from other points of view? I only say this because the perception from us SF/F uber geek fans is that if you’re not a lefty/ SJW type, you’re not welcome. If that’s not the case, it’d be great to read some articles or posts by folks of a differing opinion than AA George et al.

    3. > Not everyone who writes for it is on the same page.

      This may be accurate, Larry said the same thing just up the page (and again while the web was kicking my ass trying to get this to post). But…

      I started reading Tor.com at the very beginning, when you had the 5 free ebooks giveaway to launch the blog. I even participated in discussions. (Username Aperios. Look me up.)

      I left when the unnecessary and sneering insertion of politics into geek culture articles got to be too much to deal with. “I always laugh at Conservatives when they” blah blah blah. Yes, blog regular, we get it. You despise Conservatives. Can we go back to steampunk stuff now?

      The blog — the official face of the company — was basically saying on behalf of the company “Anyone who’s Conservative can piss right off because we despise you and don’t want your money”. That may not be the message they intended to send, but it is the message they sent. (Tor might want to consider that.)

      The experience influenced me greatly:

      1 — A policy of “No politics, ever.” at my own blog.

      2 — My coining the phrase Political Tourette’s (http://tinyurl.com/mcd6bmk).

      3 — Devising the plumbing/politics analogy, above.

      4 — A vow that, should lightning strike me, giving me superpowers of narration and exposition, thus allowing me to become a world dominating best-selling novelist, I will never work with Tor.

      In other words, the bloggers on tor.com might not be politically monolithic, but they are the primary example, in my mind, of people more concerned with political bullshit (and sneering at perceived lessers) than the ostensible subject of the blog. And I thought that half-a-decade before I’d ever heard of Larry.

      1. “… I will never work with Tor.”

        That’s a perfectly rational response when an organization clearly signals that conservatives aren’t welcome at its table. I wouldn’t describe Tor Books that way just yet. They do have a long relationship with John C. Wright and just agreed to publish the rest of his COUNT TO ESCAHTON series.

      2. The king at Tor Books is Orson Scott Card. He is persona non grata at Tor.com. That’s because they’re two different things.

    4. Mr. Lasala, I think you mistake our intent. We are pointing out the difference between the presence of an actual institutional expression of a shared ideology and the complete absence of one. George (and others at Tor) consistently assert a mere straight white male demographic not only equals an ideology but a white supremacist one hostile to gays, women and PoC. According to George GenCon is in essence some kind of analogue to a hostile supremacist entity hostile to women, PoC and gays.

      The problem there is in making a case for that. You can’t put 10 straight white guys in a room and say “The Hegemony,” but that is exactly what these PC intersectionalists do. What is the National Hockey League – the KKK? If so, why isn’t the NBA? It’s just nuts – all of it. Meanwhile they have a racially segregated room and dinner at intersectionalism central: Wiscon. Does GenCon have that? Why does George write as if the opposite is the case? Can George actually think? What is Tor thinking flogging this BS?

      In contrast to the invisible racist Hegemony, Tor bloggers Liz Bourke, Alex Dally McFarlane, Niall Alexander, Madeline Ashby, Elizabeth Bear, the Nielsen-Haydens’, Arachne Jericho, Brit Mandelo, Kate Nepveu, Ay-Leen the Peacemaker, and Genevieve Valentine share a recognizable ideology with an actual self-described name with a shared vocabulary that is demonstrably hostile to whites, men and heterosexuals. I haven’t counted but that must run into at least several hundred posts.

      There is no opposite number to that at Tor since “neutral” is not an ideology. Nor is there an opposite number to that anywhere in the SFF community and there never has been.

      And I have not included people like Fabio Fernandes and Amal el-Mohtar because they don’t blog there that much. The point is even one bigot is too many, not “Hurray they don’t have all that many bigots! Look at this pie-chart! Only 16% of our posts defame white people!” And what does any this racial and sexual defamation have to do with SFF?

      I am talking about facts, quotes and actual people, not groups with no faces or names, like the hapless unconscious racists of GenCon, if not half the goddam world.

      Find me one Tor blogger who’s written something like “Homo peeeoooople” in frustrated exasperated insult and then I’ll show you one that has written “Cis peeeoooople.” After that I have a few hundred more with zero on the other side. I don’t write this stuff cuz I make it up but because I can read. I can also read who’s not doing this.

  20. And no one thought it was strange that I played people so different from myself.

    I’m currently playing a half-orc neutral good cleric. I may be neutral good, but that’s where the similarities end. That’s true of most people…because it’s a game where you play elves, dwarves, and a whole bunch of other crap that doesn’t freaking exist!!!!!

    Of course, this is from a man who complains about how few non-whites game, yet offers no meaningful way to combat that. I mean, I’ve invited plenty of non-whites to play. Had a couple who were avid gamers who said yes. The rest? No thanks. Clearly, the problem isn’t that they’re not invited. It’s because – be prepared to be shocked – they weren’t interested. Holy crap! George’s cause du jour is irrelevant because his preferred socioeconomic groups don’t give a damn.

    It’s the same way with science fiction. I’ve caught hell because I dared to suggest that maybe the reason why don’t have more non-white science fiction writers is because we don’t have so many non-white readers. Now, no facts were given as to how this was untrue, but I was a bastard for suggesting it.

    Yet, no calls for more diversity in rap music. Funny how that works.

    1. It’s not like that non-white authors haven’t existed for a long time. They have.

      Samuel Delany, black
      Mack Reynolds, black.

      I can’t remember the author’s name, but years ago, I bought the first two books of a series by a Korean author.

      I’ve walked by fantasy offerings by a Japanese author. Not because the author was non-white, but because I only had enough jingle in my pocket to buy one novel, and there were three that were worth buying that evening.

      I personally was introduced to Mack Reynolds’ writing in Analog SF in 1967. It was the late 70’s before I knew he was black. He was one of my favorite authors {and still is} until I didn’t see his name anymore on the store shelves.

      1. Thank you Mr. Williamson

        I guess he could be black like I’m Nez Perce {at least four generations back}.

        Or I could have had the wrong information for the last twenty + years.

        Oh well, something about the fumes coming of the grinder where the blade meets the belt probably affects the memory. My memory certainly isn’t what it used to be.

      2. Man, I am really late to the party here but just wanted to respond and sa,y “OUTSTANDING points here!”.

        You can take political correctness today and spin any person, statement or activity into being “bigoted” without even making an effort.

        I’m just waiting for, “Why are there no real-life ethnic character classes in D&D?” and “Shouldn’t character genders be determined at creation by random dice throws to prevent gender bias?” posts to pop-up somewhere.

        Nice, well thought out replies.

      1. Speaking of which, Asians make up a *huge* chunk of the video game RPG community. And much of the genre – both in on-line games and off-line games – appeared first in Asia.

        1. Yeah, but as noted if we’re not doing the toeing of the SJW line and since Asians notoriously refuse to fit in the boxes they want us to climb into, we don’t ‘count’ as ‘not-white’ to them. Probably because of all the Achievements that keep getting racked up and the whole ‘we’re too busy studying / nerding out to computers / insert random Asian stereotype here’ aren’t exactly things to cry about. Except possibly the one about Asians having small …equipment. That’s one I really couldn’t verify, being a girl.

          Although, there was that time some friends brought along a live action H-movie to snark at during one of our gaming group parties, and yes, the guy in question did have a very tiny one. The surprised actress had to be given props, us girls said, to be able to pretend it was the biggest thing she’d ever seen, and someone else speculated that it was why the guy wore a mask AND shades. A thumb chopped in half was bigger, and her taking hold of the thing in question with two fingers threatened to have it disappear entirely. I’d like to think though that he was one of those poor sods who aren’t in the average or norm.

      2. Shadowdancer Duskstar / Cutelildrow wrote:
        “I was gonna say “Would importing them count?’ but then I remembered that Asians ‘don’t count’ as ‘non-white’ to the SJWs, so never mind… /chuckle”

        Well, we have it on good authority (the racial determination “experts” of the late apartheid regime in South Africa) that Asians are “honorary whites”, so no, roping in them slant-eyed folk won’t help.

      3. Yeah, but as noted if we’re not doing the toeing of the SJW line and since Asians notoriously refuse to fit in the boxes they want us to climb into, we don’t ‘count’ as ‘not-white’ to them. Probably because of all the Achievements that keep getting racked up and the whole ‘we’re too busy studying / nerding out to computers / insert random Asian stereotype here’ aren’t exactly things to cry about.
        ———————–

        That, and the whole “affirmative action will screw the Asians over” thing, which tends to make them less than eager partners to some of the racial shenanigans that our would-be betters get up to.

        😛

        1. Took me FOREVER to find the comment in my email so I could hit the reply button.

          That, and the whole “affirmative action will screw the Asians over” thing, which tends to make them less than eager partners to some of the racial shenanigans that our would-be betters get up to.

          Just to prove that not all Asians are en-bloc smart critters (because human beings aren’t those convenient widgets that the SJWs would like us to be), there are some who do get scammed into the whole racial shenanigans. And the ones who get sucked into the modern radfem crap, not classic feminism.

  21. Surest mark of a racist is someone who sees race and skin tones first and foremost. He’s going to a gaming convention and his biggest worry isn’t about whether he’ll get to talk to some of his favorite game designers, it isn’t about whether he’ll get to see all the booths and cool stuff, it’s about whether he’ll see others that share a skin tone with him.

    I know that makes perfect sense, I mean my first worry about open D&D sessions isn’t about whether the players are cool and the DM is prepared, it’s all about whether my skin will stand out from the group.

    1. To be fair, being a very visible minority can be uncomfortable.

      However, if he goes ten blocks north from the convention center, he’d have found I was the only white person in the restaurant.

      1. I get this. But who needs to make the changes in attitude- the person who is uncomfortable, or everyone else?

        Put this another way- if no one in the room cares what color skin I have except myself, who is it that actually has the problem here?

      2. Yes, but you can’t change the whole room. When I open my mouth, I’m an audible minority and this leads to stuff like trying to avoid talking to strangers on the phone because it’s uncomfortable. BUT I know it’s stupid and also that it’s my problem. I’m not going to demand everyone speak with a fake Portuguese accent! (Though think of the fun!)

      3. Sounds to me like the same rule applied there as the last time I attended a game convention in Baltimore, i.e., don’t leave the convention center. =D

      4. Funny story. Back when I went off to college in the south, I needed a hair cut (as you do when you don’t want to look like a rain forest is growing from your head). Being completely new to the area, I did what any sensible person would do and went for a walk down main street looking for a barber shop. When I finally found one, I walked inside and sat down, and very quickly realized I was in “the wrong place”. Not a single person in the building was my race. None of the example hair styles and pictures were my race, or my hair. As soon as I walked in, everyone stopped for a moment and stared (like they do in those old westerns when the sheriff walks into the bar). And for a very brief moment, I was extremely uncomfortable.

        Then I realized I was being stupid, settled into a chair to await my turn and everyone went back to what they were doing. When my turn came around, I spoke with the very cordial barber, explained what I wanted and received one of the best haircuts of my life. I then paid the man the usual price, gave the most generous tip I could afford as a broke college student and went on my way, with a fantastic hair cut. Yeah, being a visible minority can absolutely be very uncomfortable, but as adults, unless someone is actively making you uncomfortable, you get over yourself and realize you’re dealing with another human being. Nothing anyone did had any reason to make me uncomfortable, not even the stopping for a moment as I really did look quite out of place in the shop given my hair style and the styles they generally catered to. Sometimes, being uncomfortable is just a personal problem.

      5. Thats a good story TM. I had a friend who needed a haircut and we went into what was clearly a barbershop whites didn’t use. My buddy’s attitude was like “They cut hair, don’t they?”

        You could tell the guys inside were amused and surprised we came in like “are you guys lost?” but didn’t say anything nor treat us bad.

        Doesn’t matter if you’re in a crowd of 300,000 Muslims, 200,000 Brazilians or 50,000 white Americans. Some cultural differences aside, at the end of the day they all have five fingers and if you treat a man like a man he’ll treat you like one.

        I’ve been in illegal after hours clubs with a full bar where I was the only white guy. Sure there were a couple jerks who acted like I shouldn’t be there but my friends stood up for me. Again, some slight cultural differences aside, it was a room full of people. Had a good time. Went back many times. Not many bars where you can sit at a table and openly have a smoke-smoke. It was funny, like speakeasy, and in a quiet residential neighborhood. You had to give a password and from the outside, with all the soundproofing and blackout, you couldn’t hear or see a thing, even though they had a band.

      6. The really funny thing is that if snowflake was to travel to a country full of people that looked like him, color wise, he’d find that he fits in less than a convention full of gamers.

      7. OTOH, I’ve had my custom refused at a barber’s because I was white and “we only cut black people hair” (I had been served there before, but the shop had changed ownership since I had been through that neck of the woods last) and, many yeas before that, also been refused because “I don’t cut long hair” (dude, I’m asking for a buzz cut- you shouldn’t have a challenge here).

        My attitude in both cases was “Fine, then you don’t need my money.” No marches, no protest signs.

  22. I was an outsider.

    *Try being an outspoken republican at WorldCon sometime.

    //chuckle//

    ——

    As a kid who desperately wanted to belong and fit in, white was the color of god.

    *Literally. Because he is very shiny.

    //lost it here//

    1. I’ve never seen God, and I think that if I did the least of my astonishment would be whatever skin color he felt like manifesting.

      1. I have a friend being published by Tor next year and his stuff rocks. And he is fairly conservative (just doesn’t broadcast it since he is not established yet).

      2. They need to abandon the Dark side and come on over to the light. I’m sure Larry can provide an introduction to Toni over at Baen.

    1. Tor.com is not Tor books but a web site associate. It may be a subtle difference but it definitely is a difference.

      1. I tried to get through that series, but when John Smith becomes, Zhahn Zmy’thee, it just became too much work. Oh well. There are lots of other good authors.

      2. WEBER!!!! (said in Jerry Seinfeld’s ‘Newman!’ voice)

        Ok, there’s a few things they’ve got, I’ll give them that. I’m still glad that more of JCW’s stuff is getting released on Castalia House. :-p

      3. I have to agree with Murgy on this one. I love the Honor Harrington series although Weber can get a bit long winded in techno babble even there, so I figured Safehold would be awesome. I have read the first three and the fourth will be unfinished because it just got to be too damn much work.

    2. As stated by others, Tor (aka Tor Forge) and Tor.com are separate entities that exist under the same umbrella. Tor Forge puts out plenty of great books. Tor.com is a “publisher agnostic” SFF fan community site that has put forth its own short stories and now has an imprint of its own. But it’s still a separate thing.

  23. I was last at GenCon in 2001, but I distinctly remember that I went to a panel on running a convention. The guy giving the panel was the guy who ran GenCon. He was black. Somehow I doubt he would agree with Georgie about anything. He also made a potentially boring topic into one of the most interesting panels I’ve ever been to at a Con.

    Good fisk Larry

    1. Hey, 2001 was the last time I went to GenCon too! We may have met. Unlikely, sure, but stranger things have happened.

  24. I’m a first generation immigrant from a Latin Country. As in, I wasn’t born here. The only time I feel out of place in SF is when people start talking about how I SHOULD feel out of place.
    My “lost it moment” was the idea of walking around a con with a clip board. “were you always a dude?” or “Do you like girls or guys?” I started giggling because with our people instead of offense, I’d likely get a couple of clumsy passes. I’m still having sporadic giggle fits over the idea.
    G-d bless science fiction. Except for the SJWs, we’re nice people trying to forget the h*ll that was high school 😉 And some of us have left it way behind.

  25. 1) “Rogue”, not “rouge”. Unless that was a “people of color” thing, I can’t tell, WASP, you know.
    2) I got started on D&D in, um, ’78, and there were black (we could still say that then) gamers in Detroit then. Women, too. Not a demographically representative percentage of either, but if Eastern Michigan University had tried to make us recruit certain percentages of racial and ethnic and sexual groups, we’d’ve moved off campus.

  26. When I first read the article last week my response was “when I was an active Gannett the only color we cared about was the color of your new dice.” Or in Larry’s case, the color of the gallons of paint he bought for the steamer trunk full of models he bought.
    Our idea of racism was “Oh, you’re a half-elf, how original.
    Thanks Larry, you summed up the gaming culture perfectly. We’re inclusive off anyone who wants to show up and game. What a shock this guy doesn’t feel accepted when his character is a Paladin with the sub class SJW.

      1. Does that mean you’re a redheaded half-elf/half-mermaid? Sorry, I’ve never played D&D yet, although this comment section is piquing my interest.

        1. No, I as just filling in the stereotype from when I was gaming in the ’80’s (Well before the movie). Nobody played Female Dwarves or Halflings. But if you did run across someone with a female character, she’d be a beautiful elf maiden, named Ariel.

      2. Ahh Ariel… so beautiful, and all looked exactly alike. delicate features, long flowing hair, magnificent bosom. Only difference was what color contacts they wore and what color hair dye they were on.
        Sometimes i miss my youth 🙂

  27. When I first read the article last week my response was “when I was an active Gamer the only color we cared about was the color of your new dice.” Or in Larry’s case, the color of the gallons of paint he bought for the steamer trunk full of models he bought.
    Our idea of racism was “Oh, you’re a half-elf, how original.
    Thanks Larry, you summed up the gaming culture perfectly. We’re inclusive off anyone who wants to show up and game. What a shock this guy doesn’t feel accepted when his character is a Paladin with the sub class SJW.

  28. One of my favorite RPG settings is Shadowrun, and in the core source book (not sure if it’s in the newest version, but it was in the older ones), there was a comment about racism (since, there’s a group called the Humanis Policlub who is all about eliminating the dwarves, trolls, etc.), and it went something along the lines of “who cares about that really brown guy sitting next to you on the subway when that THING across the car has hands the size of your face?”

    I always find it weird when people who play RPGs complain about ‘racism’ when it comes to skin color and not when it comes to ‘those stupid orcs, can they be any more moronic’ or ‘man those elves are so twee. Won’t someone stop them shagging all the trees? Think of the trees, man!’

    Not that I even see much of that in the games I play in. My current gaming group’s party has two minotaurs and a catfolk along with some humans, and when they encounter other people of various races (in the elf-human-dwarf definition) or of various ethnicities, the general reaction is “Oh, they’re evil? Kill!” or “Oh, they’re good? OK, I guess I’ll talk to them.” They’re more about ‘Can I kill it for XP’ than they are about social issues.

    This whole article is just a WTF from start to finish. I get the impression the guy is taking the ‘I’m being picked on as a teen’ and attributing it to ‘I’m not white’ instead of to ‘I’m an awkward teen and I’m a geek to boot in a time where geeks aren’t socially accepted’. I don’t know a geek in my age group that wasn’t picked on in high school, regardless of skin color or male/female status.

    1. I was on a forum for writers of fantasy novels. By and large a good bunch, but there was quite a bit of confusion when a guy wandered in with a question about interracial couples… and was highly offended when no one took him seriously. He had a black and white romance thread in the story. And everyone was going ‘are they at war or something? and do the elves care?’ because we’d been expecting an elf and a dwarf… an orc and a dragon. You know… that sort of thing.

      1. The guy we both know who is most hostile to the concept of elves self-identifies as radical leftist.

      2. Shadowdancer, I don’t even know whether or not skin color is a racial distinction among Elves. Just because we use it as such is no reason to assume that they do — they might either have no racial distinctions or (more likely) set up racial distinctions along some other lines. (Magic auras? Ear length? Body type?)

      3. People still write novels with elves and dwarves and orcs and dragons? Haven’t they become passe?

        1. This book has no elves, no dwarves, no orcs, and no dragons. However my urban fantasy series has 3/4 of those and has done pretty good. 🙂

          1. Hey, yeah, what’s up with that? Are you a Dwarfophobe? Hater of Little People? Tallvanist?!

            And just look at his depiction of Gnomes! Gnomes are a diverse and ancient people, who’ve suffered centuries of abuse and oppression by humans and other Tall peoples, but they get shown and little more than ignorant thugs and lawn ornaments!

            We need to get some Social Justice Warriors in here to condemn “Mr” Correia’s obvious heightist bigotry and make him check his vertical privilege!

    2. “I always find it weird when people who play RPGs complain about ‘racism’ when it comes to skin color and not when it comes to ‘those stupid orcs, can they be any more moronic’”

      Don’t worry, people bitch about orcs being racist standins all the time.

    3. There’s a great scene in one of Joel Rosenberg’s “Guardians of the Flame” books where they try to explain racism based on skin color to a guy from a world with elves, dwarves, etc.

    1. I suppose that’s true. It failed America, but it sure helped out the DNC for generations to keep a voting block in easily managed boxes.

  29. Back in community college in San Diego, I was told that I was racist by someone I’d never met before. When I pressed her on what I’d ever done to deserve that title, I was told that it wasn’t me, it was my race (FYI – I have a lot of different ingredients in the mix, but I look white and answer that on forms when needed). I confirmed that I really heard that – “So, you’re saying I’m racist based only on my race?” She confirmed it. There was a somewhat uncomfortable silence before she stormed off.
    ““The problem is that white people see racism as conscious hate, when racism is bigger than that…
    Racism is an insidious cultural disease. It is so insidious that it doesn’t care if you are a white person who likes black people; it’s still going to find a way to infect how you deal with people who don’t look like you. Yes, racism looks like hate, but hate is just one manifestation. Privilege is another. Access is another. Ignorance is another. Apathy is another. And so on.”
    –Scott Woods, author and poet.”
    “I’ve been told time and again by gamers, “I don’t see race” as if they were doing me a kindness. This is not enlightenment or progressiveness. It is ignorance. If you do not see race, you do not see me. You do not see my identity, my ethnicity, my history, my people. What you are telling me, when you say “I do not see race,” is that you see everything as the normal default of society: white. In the absence of race and ethnicity, it is only the majority that remains. I am erased.”
    Know what I’m sick and tired of? I’m tired of being discriminated against by people who are prejudiced against me because I’m white. Never mind that my friends are a broad spectrum of races, sexual preferences, etc. That doesn’t matter to a lot of SJWs because I’m evil because I’m white.
    And when I do point out that I don’t care about races and several people stand up for me, they pull the card of “If you don’t see race, you don’t see me” or some such load of compost.
    I don’t associate with people like this not because I’m racist or white or male or anything else like that. It’s because they’re boring and annoying.
    Thanks for another good read, Larry 🙂

  30. Grew up in a northern Mill Town (mostly Eyetalian immigrant). Was the only kid who read fantasy in grade school. So yes, there were beatings (I also weighed 105 lbs in high school). As a result, I became one of the best runners in the state and competed in Sport Judo in College (in the lower weight classes). When I got to college and found out about D&D, I didn’t care what group you were. The group I played with had a gay, a lesbian, and a black guy (along with a couple wimmen-folk). Nobody gave a rat’s hiney what the color was as long as you were a geek.

    But I’m sure I was a closet racist. Because white (although I’m probably darker than the ILOH).

  31. As a Native American (Pawnee) I am personally affronted by your usage of the word “rouge”. Beyond the pale there Correia.

    Seriously though, I found the original article by George to be a call. A call for attention and maybe a few hugs. Don’t let what you look like define you, what you do ultimately defines you.

  32. Ummm… slight correction. “Asahino de Vagos” isn’t “murder hobo” but rather “hobo murderer” as in “one who murders hobos”. I’m much better with Spanish, but I think “murder hobo” would be more along the lines of “vago assassino”. Though I’m sure Mrs. Hoyt could correct me if I’m wrong.

  33. There’s a story I’ve heard about Mike Pondsmith. Or more accurately not about him, but…

    Mike Pondsmith is the owner of R. Talsorian Games, and the list of games that he’s created includes Mekton and Cyberpunk. Quite a while ago, someone who enjoyed his games noted that he was going to be giving a presentation at a con. So the fan went to the presentation. Everything was going swimmingly with the presentation until the fan asked a rather unusual question – “Isn’t Mike Pondsmith black?” He is, and the presenter, who promptly fled, was not.

    :p

  34. Google up the pictures of the Tor company party for an example of where more ethnic diversity would be of use. I’ve seen more melanin in pictures of Klan rallies. Mote. Beam. Think globally, act locally!

    Of course, that would just be a first step toward getting some diversity of thought around that place.

  35. As a Native American (Pawnee) I am personally affronted by your usage of the word “rouge”. Beyond the pale there Correia.

    Seriously though, I found the original article by George to be a call. A call for attention and maybe a few hugs. Don’t let what you look like define you, what you do ultimately defines you.

  36. Wow, Larry’s posts inspire can-of-worms-style conversations! I don’t even know what to reply to anymore! Hah.

    In brief: I pretty much agree with Larry’s full argument here—namely, gamers game and fun, and I think most people are open-minded about who they game WITH, and anyone else. And while I sympathize with what A.A. George is talking about, I think he’s gravely overstating the problem. Is that easy for a white person to say? Yes, maybe it is. Maybe I really have no idea what it’s like. But then I also grew up as one of the very few people playing D&D at all, so I was already a bit ostracized. Roleplaying games are more popular than ever, but they’re not mainstream yet. We’re all still somewhat marginalized….until we hang out with other people who do what we do. Then we all get along nicely. What’s the problem?

    Encounter racism at the gaming table? You chose the wrong table, ugh. I know. Just keep looking, the non-racist tables are plentiful.

    A.A. George’s concerns about feeling left out or uncatered-to or prejudiced against? Well, maybe, but it’s not a gaming concern. It’s a people thing. Stop hanging out with the wrong people, would be my answer to that—I guarantee there are a lot of the RIGHT people to be found.

    So while I agree with Larry 100%, I don’t have the same level of disgust that I think he and many others have for what’s being perceived as an agenda-bearing consortium of judges. Yes, some of you are right, there’s a prevailing ideology on Tor.com that has more time to write on the site than others, so their voice is loudest.

    I’ve interacted with a few of them, and corresponded with the manager of the site, and I can even get in the elevator of my building and go meet them face to face if I want; they’re generally nice people. The POV the site presents seems narrow, to be sure. I’m just telling you it’s not all the same, and they let me yap away from time to time, too.

    Me, I just like writing about stuff I like on Tor.com. I’ve only just begun, and I can only write when I have the time to do it. So far my posts have included D&D, the Grimnoir Chronicles, the Welcome to Night Vale podcast, and defending Peter Jackson’s Middle-earth films. I realize that half of my posts have been as an apologist for something or someone because I guess, at the end of the day, I prefer that people explore the things they appreciate rather than try to tear down others’ enjoyment. One of the reasons I wanted to write about the Grimnoir books was because I felt—if I were to generalize—that many Tor.com readers would probably overlook Larry’s books. I wanted to get around his political reputation and just give them a better look at the actual content. A good writer is just a good writer, period.

    I’m sorry for A.A. George, sorry he really sees things the way he does. But I also think you guys might be a bit harsh on him as a person. I went and found a couple of Youtube videos he’s in, some panels he’s talked on. Seems nice enough. I bet he’s a cool guy—and he IS a gamer, right?—even if he sees the world through an unfortunately tarnished lens that I can’t wholly accept. I bet if a group of us were all hanging out, this sort of talk in an actual conversation would be far more productive and we’d be civil—and he’d be enlightened. Hah, but I guess that’s the Internet for you. No one can be expected to look the guy up and sees what he’s really about or where he’s coming from. At face value we have only his blog post words and they cast an unjust light on the gaming community at large via GenCon. It’s still on him to be saying it that way.

    Forgive my long-windedness, I’m just a bit weary of the us-verses-them paradigm that’s common just about everywhere. (Part of the very complain I think a lot of you have of Tor.com.) It’s probably harsher on the Internet than it REALLY is. I bet most of you, were you to find yourself in a real scenario, where A.A. George is walking around looking for a group to play with, would be quick to encourage him to pull up a chair.

    But yes, the long-suffering posts on Tor.com (and other sites) will keep coming up implying that racism and patriarchies are ALSO heavy agendas. Humans like to demonize or dehumanize people they disagree with or wish to disregard.

    And I’ll keep wishing we could all just get along. 🙂

    1. I already knew radically politicized people aren’t going to come at me with fangs and knives and that David Duke pets his dog and loves his children.

      Get a dictionary and let yourself fully buy into a race and sex-neutral definition of “bigotry” and you’ll see there is no he-said, she-said. This is a matter of facts and quotes, not two sides of a story. In the entire history of genre SFF dating from 1912 to 1970 – in other words the era of racist and sexist horror – there are not as many SFF writers who shared a supremacist ideology as in just this year’s Hugo and Nebula winners.

      Let that sink in and stop with the “WE” need to get along. I don’t defame Arabs, Jews, gays, PoC, women or children or cats, nor is there an institution or shared ideology within SF today which does so. Simply taking 4 guys and lumping them all together as a right-wing reactionary bloc and multiplying them into an army doesn’t quite cut it.

      Definitions please, one we can all share, followed by quotes. That’s how law and principle works, as opposed to identity.

      Thank you.

      1. Hey, FB, no offense here, I know you’re pissed, but this is Jeff La Sala- the Tor.com guy who wrote that positive review of Larry’s book “Warbound” when everyone else was loudly chest-thumping and making oaths to never-ever read it because Larry is a [fill in strawman blank here]. Here’s the link: https://monsterhunternation.com/2014/07/15/tor-com-posts-a-really-positive-review-of-warbound/

        I just think that telling him to “get a dictionary” might be a tad… well, harsh?

        It’s possible he doesn’t know how long we’ve been dealing with the Scalizis and Damiens of the literary world attempting to censor and label us, so he’s reading the comment section here from an outsider’s context. For us- we’re frustrated with trying to play nice, day in and day out- all while being called racists/ sexist/ label-of-the-day-ists, when, in fact, all we want to do is read good SF/F.

        This is one of my favorite lines from his comment above: “One of the reasons I wanted to write about the Grimnoir books was because I felt—if I were to generalize—that many Tor.com readers would probably overlook Larry’s books. I wanted to get around his political reputation and just give them a better look at the actual content. A good writer is just a good writer, period.”

        I think that’s awesome. Seriously.

        After all, wasn’t that the whole point of Sad Puppies? To get past politics and just support good work?

      2. I know who he is. He’s saying this is a he-said, she-said and I’m saying adopt a race and sex-neutral definition of the word “bigot” and then start laying out quotes on each side that match. He’ll find the ratio of what would be considered racist, sexist and supremacist remarks within SFF’s institutions is 100 to 1 against the PC and Tor is one of the most blatant offenders. If I took some of the things Tor’s bloggers said about whites and changed them to black or gay they’d ban me in a heartbeat. In other words Tor.com agrees with me – they’re just too stupid to perceive it.

        So yeah – dictionary. This is not a he-said, she-said.

      3. I’m sorry, FB, I’m just not seeing where he said it’s a “he said vs she said” argument. The closest I could find was here at the end where he said “Forgive my long-windedness, I’m just a bit weary of the us-verses-them paradigm that’s common just about everywhere. (Part of the very complain I think a lot of you have of Tor.com.) It’s probably harsher on the Internet than it REALLY is. I bet most of you, were you to find yourself in a real scenario, where A.A. George is walking around looking for a group to play with, would be quick to encourage him to pull up a chair.

        But yes, the long-suffering posts on Tor.com (and other sites) will keep coming up implying that racism and patriarchies are ALSO heavy agendas. Humans like to demonize or dehumanize people they disagree with or wish to disregard.”

        And he’s right. I think most of us here ARE good people who would probably have no problem at all inviting A.A. George to our gaming table. Like Larry said, we’d roll our eyes as soon as he started talking about how he’s been a victim all of his life, but outright ostracize him? Nope. That’s the stuff that the SJW’s have been doing and we’ve been fighting against.

        That’s a good thing- right?

      4. Below Mr. Lasala writes about “two camps getting further entrenched.” That more than implies both sides are being equally unreasonable.

        I’m sorry, but in what world is me not liking a thing like the KKK or neo-Nazi racial supremacy being “entrenched?” In what world is me tired of being defamed for my ethnicity, sex and sexual expression being “entrenched?”

        What is the implication – that I need to adjust my principles until being defamed as a straight white man seems okay? Does a Jew need to draw closer to an anti-Semite’s position in the name of “let’s all get along?”

        Sorry – uh-uh.

        Let me remind everybody of what it is I’m talking about:

        Hugo and Nebula Award nominee Saladin Ahmed: “The law is made by rich, selfish, shitty people – mostly white, mostly men – with cockroaches for hearts. Fuck their ‘rule of law.'”

        SFF author and president of the SFWA Steven Gould: “Hard as it to believe, somewhere right now, a white, straight male is explaining to a woman or POC what they =really= meant.”

        WisCon organizer K. Tempest Bradford talking about a WisCon segregated event: “I do remember the No White People hour, hehe”

        SFF blogger and reviewer Natalie Luhrs: “I fucking hate those DirectTV ads with women and children on wires looking for reassurance from white men.”

        *

        SFF author Ann Somerville referrring to this article: “i see the butthurt white man brigade are out in force in the comments but it’s still a great post”

        Reply by SFF blogger and author Cora Buhlert: “It’s also many of the same butthurt white men who show up in the comments of every post on the subject.”

        *

        SFF editor and Publisher’s Weekly review editor Rose Fox: “I’d say most white men should come with TWs (trigger warnings) for unthinking privileged arrogance, but that’s like saying books need TWs for ‘contains words’.”

        Nebula and Hugo nominated author Aliette de Bodard: “SFF is, alas, dominated by white westerners,”

        SFF author and Nebula Awards panelist Sunil Patel: “Not a single white man won an award tonight. OPPRESSION.”

        Hugo-winning and Nebula-nominated SFF author Mary Robinette Kowal: “At @SFWA’s #NebulaAwards, only one award went to a white male and that wasn’t one of the ones voted on by the membership. #diversityinSFF”

        WisCon SF Convention organizer and panelist Jaymee Goh: “Seems lately every week is white stupidity week. And they complain about a month in a year!”

        *

        SFF author and Nebula nominee Kate Elliott: “Just read another call from a white man about the need for ‘nuance’ rather than shrill ranting.”

        Reply from SFF fan and blogger Jenny Thurman: “as if they’d know ‘nuance’ if they tripped on it”

        SFF author and Nebula nominee Kate Elliott: “nuance is when we are complaining about what they don’t want us to complain about.”

        I don’t want to get along with those people. They can go eff themselves.

      5. *I don’t want to get along with those people. They can go eff themselves.

        Ok, that’s fine, and that’s your choice. I agree that their demonizing our side makes reasonable discourse fairly impossible. I don’t think Jeff here is one of those folks, though, so I think we can probably put the pitchforks away for the moment. 😉

        As far as the idiots who spout that nonsense- well I personally prefer ridicule like Larry’s fisks to flames or whatever, it might just be me, but I think it’s more effective that way.

        I work in an industry where I have to keep my political/ religious affiliations a secret or else I’d never work again. Personally, I love the fact that Larry speaks out because he says things that I can’t. (though I would dearly love to)

        There HAVE been times, however, when I’ve been able to talk to people who have noticed my quiet or otherwise figured out that I wasn’t as rabidly left wing as everyone I’ve worked with. I’m fortunate that, so far, these folks are willing to keep my secret and I’ve actually had some pretty civil debates with them. The discussions are usually pretty short, but it gives me an opportunity to show the hard-core democrats that a libertarian leaning sort-of republican isn’t the super scary she-beast that their friends would have them believe.

      6. Hey Book, do me a favor – stop suggesting I’m lining up Mr. LaSala next to the rest of the racist idiots at Tor; I’m not. I was discussing a completely different angle – that of the idea this is just two sides not communicating. I never said Mr. LaScala is one of those folks and I don’t think he is. I have no pitchforks for Mr. LaSala. He’s nothing like Daffy MacFarlane or Bourke. Is that clear enough?

        And the fisk vs. flames thing is semantic gibberish. I don’t do anything different. I list quotes and tell them to eff off and why.

      7. Never said you were equating them. You’ve not exactly been friendly, however. And since I happen to LIKE Jeff’s article as well as being all nice and friendly like to the newbies in the comment section, I thought I’d speak up. If you’ll note, I’ve been trying to do it as kindly as possible to both of you. I take it I shouldn’t have bothered?

        1. Book (and Mr. LaSala) , just an FYI. If is an exercise in futility arguing with FailBurton on any topic. Eventually you will get to the point where you’ve seen enough of his rants to predict them. He’s as irascible about art. I haven’t been around to see all his push button topics, but don’t raise your blood pressure unnecessarily.

      8. What are you, his familiar? I think Mr. LaSala can speak for himself and we need no go-between. And I don’t need you grading my friendliness.

      9. FailBurton: >> Below Mr. Lasala writes about “two camps getting further entrenched.” That more than implies both sides are being equally unreasonable. <> What are you, his familiar? I think Mr. LaSala can speak for himself and we need no go-between. And I don’t need you grading my friendliness. <<

        Let's just leave this as is. No reason to argue here. It's just boxing shadows.

        Also, we're doing this talking on Larry Correia's blog. This isn't some middle-of-nowhere message board. I think we're here because his original post is full of relevance and calls out a lot of rubbish, and we agree.

      10. Well… fair enough. I’m actually happy you’re at Tor and hope for good things.

        But this is actually the perfect place to argue these points given the post. I just won’t make it seem like you’re part of the problem if that’s what you wish. I never thought you were.

        We don’t feel like we’re boxing at shadows, as the very post above attests. Imagine you’re an SFF writer and dream of a career and maybe some recognition and an award someday. Then imagine an editor at the largest publisher of SFF in the world Tweets things like “Didn’t need the user icon to know you’re white and male” when you have a political disagreement with them. Where’s your career at? An entire future can disappear.

        Now, I can understand and accept political bias. We can’t have everything in the world nor a perfect world. But when a culture is repeatedly writing racially profiling stuff like that, which is basically like saying “Sambo” and “fried chicken” to a black person, that goes beyond the pale.

        But much worse, when that’s coming from a culture that never shuts up about how they’re against things like racial profiling while they merciless profile me, that’s just plain nuts.

        A.A. George is asserting GenCon is an unconscious micro-aggressive KKK complete with so many Nazi symbols one can’t swing a cat without knocking over a Himmler cosplay. In fact George’s assertion is as much a fantasy as The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, and with much the same tone.

        The result and aftermath of the Hugos was the same as the Nebulas. “Women dominate Nebula Best Novel list, and the short fiction categories have several PoCs. Science fiction isn’t just reactionary jerkoffs!” – Saladin Ahmed

        Now, given Ahmed’s non-stop anti-white Tweets, which for some reason he gets an Orwellian doublethink pass on because besides being anti-white he’s an anti-racist, what that translates into in terms I’ll put in a way everyone can understand is that Jews who are sick of anti-Semitic remarks are “reactionary jerkoffs.”

        In such a culture, a white male writer can consider their career subverted just by waking up in the morning. Isaac Asimov had to deal with anti-Jewish quotas in college and others anti-Catholic. We have that again in core SFF. There is absolutely no doubt of it. Ironically, Asimov himself is now portrayed by PC bloggers like Foz Meadows – another Hugo nominee for her anti-straight white male work – as one of “three straight, white Anglophone men” who benefitted from Jim Crow and anti-homosexuality laws.

        The Guardian has some dope who, along with scores of others in the SFF community, is repeatedly writing racially defamatory innuendoes about the “overwhelmingly white, male perspective that dominated the genre,” and if you disagree it’s “the bigotry of conservative readers.” Again, never in a thousand years would the PC assert a mere demographic amounts to a de facto bigoted supremacy when it comes to women, gays and non-whites even when they’re sitting in frickin’ segregated “safer-spaces” at WisCon. But they commonly use such tactics, and without facts, when it comes to the straight white male, the evil demon of all human history.

        Essentially 3 Hugos were won for a single blog post by Kameron Hurley asserting white males have erased women warriors from history. In order to illustrate her point, she used paintings rather than images from the 165 year history of photography. That is the Orwellian nuttery of the PC in a nutshell: awards for a defamatory sexist post based on myths.

      11. Wyrdbard has hurt fee-fees over the Monster Truck Iron Man Italics and Filter Forge School of Visual Design.

    2. “We could all get along”…

      Tell that to the tor podcast folks who think sf&f will be better when the right wingers are gone…

      Or to the mods/contributors (bourke, butler, Gallo, Nielsen Hayden) who took turns lying about, misrepresenting, and insulting Col Kratman, and when he responded they edited/removed his posts and banned him…

      Or to TNH who used to treat threads as her personal fiefdom, removing/disenvowling posts that dare question her opinions…

      I have been going to tordotcom since before it was tordotcom, but i dont go so much lately since they have made it clear through one sided, heavy handed, and at times dishonest moderation, that I and my kind are not welcome.

    3. Jeff- you have the attitude that, if we’re honest, we all should have. The politics don’t matter- is their writing good? Yes? Then shut up and read. I think that was Correia’s whole point to the Sad Puppies campaign.

      So I like that you think George has some good characteristics. Maybe he does. It’s a shame that he blasted everyone at a con as racist- I found that to be pretty harsh… and more than a little offensive. I think that it would be great if we could have a civil discussion about this in person.

      It would be great if we could all get along. The internet will always do it’s thing, the best we can do is try to keep up some good humor about it. 🙂

      1. I appreciate that. Yeah, I don’t like taking blame for something I’ve never been a part of. I’ve been privileged enough to have introduced lots of people to D&D—men, women, and kids of all different cultures—and I feel like I’m at least some small part of the solution.

        But being a solution means there’s a problem, and I think the problem has been dwindling on its own for years. Things are looking up. I don’t understand why it’s so enticing to be offended. Then the people who are “being offended” at in turn get offended. That’s a lot of what’s going on here. Silly.

      2. I know. It sucks, and I can’t speak for other people, but I *think* people are mistaking you for a troll. That sounds really harsh, but let me explain- We get a lot of people who “concern troll” us around here. In other words, in a really super “polite” way, they tell us how backwards and racist we are and if only we’d be a little less backwards and racist, everyone would like us!

        Which is kind of why a lot folks have given up on playing nice. That’s a shame, because I think that keeping up good sense of humor is the best way to combat that sort of nonsense.

        Anyway. You’re doing awesome work- seriously. That article you wrote about LC’s Warbound meant a lot to us. In the end, we’re all huge fans of his work and we love geeking out with other literature nerds about books we like.

      3. Oooh! I’ve never been mistaken for a troll before (“concern” or otherwise). Fun!

        Truth is, yeah, I guess I would love everyone to calm down, because zero gets done and absolutely no one gets swayed one way or another otherwise. Wouldn’t it be amazing if some of what Larry says in his fisks actually penetrated a bleeding-heart, easily-offended commenter and gave them pause? Or if even just one thing in the one of the more liberal Tor.com posts was worth conceding? Rather than two camps getting further entrenched and angry about it. It would be a start.

        I suppose that’s why judges have gavels. Without order in the court, there can be no discourse, much less judgement. But I’m not a gavel, jjst a guy with the foolish pipe dream of trying to see the good in people and thinking they would speak differently—and even like each other—face to face.

        Damn, I can’t stop with the metaphors today—or the em dashes. Out of control.

        And no worries. I have thick skin. I have to be this way, as I write stuff and put it out there, too. I’ve had the honor of shaking my head at a low-star review on Amazon for reasons I had no control over anyway. I appreciate your defense, but it’s all good.

        And you’re right, it’s best if we at least maintain humor amid the melee.

        On a related note, this is now what I imagine a “concern troll” looks like, being run off by the locals (in this case, King Arthur—because D&D is awesome):

        http://tinyurl.com/ljhpbfu

      4. Jeff: “I don’t like taking blame for something I’ve never been a part of.”

        An eminently sensible position.

        Jeff: “Then the people who are “being offended” at in turn get offended. That’s a lot of what’s going on here.”

        Maybe. But it doesn’t necessarily matter. Here’s why:

        You join a gaming club. There’s a dozen tables every Thursday night, each playing a different RPG.

        You’re an AD&D 2e fan, but sit in on Cyberpunk 2.0.2.0. Five minutes later, one of the players says, out of the blue, “AD&D 2e fans are idiots. You know what I hate most about them? Feats. Feats, feats, feats. Shut the hell up about your stupid feats, assholes.” It’s clear he’s pretty angry.

        And you think “2e doesn’t even *have* feats. That was D&D 3e.”

        A half hour later someone else says: “No, we need to attack. These are corporate mercenaries. They’re as evil and stupid and inbred as 2e fans. We need to kill ’em all.” This guy isn’t angry, just contemptuous.

        “That’s an odd interjection,” you think. And it goes on like that all night long. Almost everyone in the game, sooner or later, gets in a dig about 2e and its fans. Even the DM. No one objects to this, or even seems to think it’s all a bit rude or unmannerly.

        It doesn’t matter if you’d get offended, annoyed, or hurt. What matters is there’s 12 different tables, so why would any 2e fan play at this one? Better to avoid the whole situation, and actually have fun with people there to have fun.

        That’s my attitude towards Tor.com.

      5. Daddy Warpig, I love your analogy. Sounds like that might be spot on, too. Certainly the misinformation and demonizations in some of those Tor.com posts are rampant. BUT…to extend your analogy, I regard Tor.com as the gaming store that hosts the aforementioned Thursday night game club.

        Given the ridiculous rhetoric they’re spewing about 2E, I simply opt out of their games and instead browse the rest of the store for good books or cool game swag. Maybe pick up some minis. Meanwhile, I’ll listen from a distance to their games from time to time, see if things ever change, or if there’s ever a moment of calm where I can try to rejoin again…and maybe, just maybe, explain to one of them that 2E doesn’t have feats. 🙂

      6. Jeff- HA! Love the graphic. Hey- have you had a chance to read MHI yet? I’m no savant so unfortunately I can’t recall if you mentioned having read it.

        Just wondering if you knew who Melvin was. 😀

        And I appreciate that you can hold your own here. I didn’t want you to feel like you were being run off because that would suck. Some of us are really pissed and are beyond being able to compromise on issues. And I get that- I really do. I’m not there, personally, but I understand the frustration. Because in the end- hell yea I would hope that some lefties would read one of Larry’s fisks and begin to change their minds! Some of my closest friends and (and a few family members) had a change of heart after similar circumstances. It doesn’t happen often- and sometimes it takes a LOT of patience on my part- but it does happen. 😉

        BTW- the one star reviews on Amazon? OMG, one of my biggest pet-peaves. I’m not an author, but how the bloody hell am I supposed to tell whether or not I’ll like a book if the review is “MALEMAN LEFT BOOK ON FROON DORSTEP SO SOGGY CANT READ ONE STAR”?

      7. Book: Yes to MHI. In my defense to not having read all of them yet, this is my son: http://tinyurl.com/khwyd8f

        Hey, listen, I’m all for getting pissed and for righteous indignation, I just think it needs to be productive. Which I feel Larry’s posts are, but some people only get riled up and angry and it ends there.

        Trust me, I’ve read plenty of stuff on Tor.com I absolutely do not agree with—and some is exasperating. But I am generally not so vocal about it so as not to draw a target on my chest when I’m hoping to write more on their myself.

      8. And I hear ya about drawing target on your chest. I just mentioned to someone else in a comment above that I work in an industry that is heavily left wing- and loudly so. I have to stay in the closet or I will never work again.

        Which is why I love Larry’s fisks (and Sarah Hoyt’s articles- she also rocks) -they both say things that I can’t. Ever.

        Well, not until I make a bazillion dollars like Correia here and have the weight behind my name. But until then, I get to quietly read this stuff and smile.

      9. i’m a little late to this conversation but here is my 2 cents worth.
        to use an analog… the people on the left, with includes the people of tor.com (not all, but the ones under discussion) refer to members of the tea party as rasist. no evidence just their shooting. they refer to members of the republicain party as the same … hate women hate black hate gay hate jew hate hate hate. and repeat this over and over and over… this is from the party of jim crow… that has re-writen history so that now they are the ones that marched with the rev. dr. MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR.
        and they are believed
        now we come to a same sample of writers/blogers at tor.com that are very loadly being anti-white… anticonservatist … anti-anyone that does not drink their kool-aide.
        the conclusion that i might reach is that ALL the writers/blogers are anti anti anti.
        i know that conclusion is wrong, but when i talk to people about the tea party, rep. dem. ect… almost all the people i have spoken to think that tea party=racist rep=haters dem are good and wonderful who are not trying to take you civil rights away from you. their conclusion is also wrong.
        the points i am trying to make is because of the small portion of writers/bloggers are causing ALL of tor.com to be viewed as people who believe in putting everyone in their own little box, so they can control you better. and this is splashing on tor books. (i follow authors, not publishers … but some of the comments made in this blog alone means not everyone does.
        the other point trying to be made is i am damn tied of some race-baiter who does not even know me , calling me a racist. while making racist comments.

        please forgive the spelling… i am not a writer i am a reader

    4. “But I also think you guys might be a bit harsh on him as a person.”

      Really. Someone who doesn’t know any of us decides that we’re all bigots and he doesn’t have the balls to back it up with any evidence other than his case of chronic soreass. And he posts it on a blog that is maintained by a publisher.

      If anything, I think we’re being far too nice. I respect you trying to play Devil’s Advocate but I’ve gotten past the point where I feel the need to respect someone who dismisses me out of hand because of his own bigotry and expects me to lap up the abuse like a good little dog.

    5. Thing is, Jeff, George doesn’t say he’s being discriminated against by racists. If you’re white and don’t give a damn that he isn’t, you’re a racist. If you’re white and like him BECAUSE he’s not white, you’re a racist. If you’re white, you’re a racist.

      He’s not comfortable around whites, but somehow that’s our fault. Me, I say that’s his problem.

  37. I wonder what Saladin Ahmed thinks of this. He’s a gamer and writer and his “Throne of the Crescent Moon” is heavily D&D influenced. I wonder what experiences have been.

    1. It doesn’t matter what his experiences were. He’s an intersectionalist. I couldn’t even pull all the anti-white quotes from that guy’s Twitter feed without an assistant.

  38. “Furthermore, GenCon is disturbingly tolerant of deeply offensive material. Shoshana Kessock wrote about her experiences with Nazi cosplay and paraphernalia at Gencon shortly after returning from GenCon 2013, and I had similar encounters.

    Just speed reading this one because of time, and I must be missing the “disturbingly tolerant” part… So out of 50,000 people there was a guy in a Nazi outfit, but it was out on the streets of the city, totally devoid of context so no idea what he was doing, or if he was playing the bad guy for some production, or who knows what, but fine, whatever, there’s a Nazi. And then some little fly by night place bought a booth that had some Nazi crap in it… ”

    Um, I may be mistaken, but wasn’t 2013 the year “Iron Sky,” a movie about Moon Nazis invading the Earth, released? And the guy dressed up all Nazi-like might be promoting it?

    1. A cosplayer from GenCon posted on my FB feed that he thinks he knows who that was last year, and he was playing a Hydra agent in conjunction with a Captain America.

  39. I’ll admit to some racism… I’m a white dude, but when I want to think up a really badass character to play, he’s almost always black. It’s entirely a visual thing — there’s something about Peter Mensah that just screams “badass.”

    1. Heh. When I do character-create on an MMORPG I tend toward dark skin tones because it’s fun and different (and pretty) not to be my RL nordic self.

      I don’t play male characters, but I’m not all that interested in “just like me”…. who would be?

      1. Back when I played Everquest, the very first character that I created was an Erudite. Which meant that he was black.

        I’m not.

        Did I care? No.

        The original Guild Wars had two expansions that included character creation (and a third that didn’t). Both of the expansions (Factions and Nightfall) featured new races and cultures as opposed to the vaguely fantasy European race and culture of the game’s original release (Prophecies). New characters that started in the expansions were from the local races. And that didn’t just mean recolored characters, or differently shaped eyes. You always had the option in Prophecies to create a very dark skinned character. But Nightfall, which was set in an Africa-type setting (including variants on both African and non-Islamic Arab cultures) went the additional step and created new facial structures for characters starting on the Nightfall continent. Factions did something similar, but for Asians.

      1. The first episode of the Japanese anime series “Sword Art Online” (and presumably the light novels that the series is based off of) has an hilarious scene toward the end of the first episode where all of the players in a VR MMORPG suddenly find their characters being “remapped” to look like the players in real life. The protagonist and a friend of his get fairly boring remaps. But a male and female couple shown a few times throughout the episode go through the more expected changes – he suddenly puts on a lot of weight, while she becomes a guy.

        😛

      2. The anime Log Horizon deals with that a bit differently. One of the dedicated role playing character in that show never voice talked in the game prior to the show start, but seek out the main character because he has a appearance changing potion (limited time available item). The character was a girl in real life playing a male character, and you’re kind of stucked with the character you created once the show started. Out of gratitude of fixing this situation she pledge her undying loyalty to the main character (she’s role playing a ninja, so the role playing aspect still works).

      3. I haven’t seen Log Horizon, but I understand things work slightly differently in that “game”. In Sword Art Online (like .Hack), the players are playing a game with a VR interface. So they essentially see and interact with the game world in largely the same way that they would interact with the real world (which is the point of VR). And the reason why they’re stuck in the game is because they’re unable to log out.

        My understanding of Log Horizon is that the game in that series was pretty much the same as a modern-day MMORPG, i.e. a player sitting at a computer using a keyboard and mouse to interact with the world while viewing it all through a monitor. And then suddenly all of the players found themselves within the game world, in the bodies of their characters.

      4. Best way to explain the difference between two shows is this: Sword Arts Online uses some MMPORG trapping to tell a fantasy story (with a Marty Sue). Characters there uses VR gear and are stucked.

        Log Horizon (8 novels published thus far) still haven’t explained what’s happening yet, but the characters there are playing keyboard & mouse MMPORG and are now in their online avatar, which presents a genuine problem for those characters that doesn’t want to get stucked in their current gender.

        Sword Arts Online has a much bigger budget and it’s mostly better animated. Log Horizon is broadcasted on NHK (Japanese public broadcast network) but I like it better.

      5. Now that I think about it, the main character of .Hack//Sign was a female player stuck in the game as a male character. But she was suffering from amnesia at the time and couldn’t remember anything outside of the game world, so it didn’t affect her at all.

  40. Here’s the PC think tank in action: “Retweeted by Cora Buhlert Ann Aguirre @MsAnnAguirre · 21h Reverse racism is not a thing, geniuses. People of color don’t have the institutional power to systemically oppress whites.”

    Neither do whites since there is this thing called “law” now.” This is why the PC so abuse words like “institution” and “systemic.” If they couldn’t distort them and engage in what then becomes nothing more than weird hypotheticals they’d have to write SFF or something.

    Even as a hypothetical, is she talking about ratios, cuz I’m pretty sure the East India Company effed an entire sub-continent being about 1% of the population, if even that.

    And these are the people who call us “stupid.”

    Final Score: Me right, radfem morons zero.

    1. Ah, so they’ve redefined racism, so they can’t possibly be guilty of it. That explains a great deal.

      1. They redefined “racism” sometime in the ’80s or ’90s, I think, around the time when the kids of the people who grew up in the Great Society started growing up and weren’t all that great.

    2. She’s right about one thing: “Reverse racism is not a thing”. It’s just racism, plain and simple, no matter what the skin tone of the person spouting it.

  41. First response: *Of course* AD&D is racist. All those damn drow cluttering up the place…

    Second response: M.A.R. Barker could not be reached for comment.

    1. Dave, You got there before i did. M.A.R. Barker’s Empire of the Petal Throne was one of the earliest Game settings.

      1. Tekumel rocks- totally nonderivative, totally original, totally coherent. I’ve also had the pleasure of reading several of Barker’s novels set in the Tekumel universe and they are at a very high standard.

        One wonders how A.A. George thinks a dude named “Muhammad Abd-al-Rahman” would be treated at GenCon…

      1. And not just really, really, really dark brown (although they’re presented that way in some of the art work). Drow as originally created and depicted in the artwork were jet black.

      2. Yeah, drow always have solid black skin; older paintings that went with gray or purple only did so because the artist had a difficult time making black look real.

        We had drow in our booth at GenCon a couple years ago: http://tinyurl.com/o37el4y

  42. What is it about someone talking about the things that make them sad that personally offends us? Why do we feel the need to refute what they say when they bare their soul? We’re not being attacked. All we’re being asked to do is to accept their feelings. We can’t even do that. The only reason for us to respond that way is: if what we’re hearing is true, then we must be doing something wrong—and it’s easier to ignore them and tear their argument apart than it is to consider that possibility.

    1. Let’s see…

      “What is it about someone talking about the things that make them sad that personally offends us?” – the part where he calls everybody racists.

      “Why do we feel the need to refute what they say when they bare their soul?” – Because racist is a vile insult, and in polite society you don’t let slander stand unchallenged.

      “We’re not being attacked.” – You must have missed that part where GenCon promotes racism.

      “All we’re being asked to do is to accept their feelings. ” – Feelings don’t equal facts.

      “The only reason for us to respond that way is: if what we’re hearing is true, then we must be doing something wrong” – That sounds suspiciously like my example conversation above. Deny it? Well, that just proves it harder!

      “and it’s easier to ignore them and tear their argument apart than it is to consider that possibility.” – My personal philosophy is that when somebody says something incredibly stupid, you should mock it relentlessly, point by point, demonstrating why it is stupid to the viewing audience. If people did this more often then we’d have less racists and moon landing deniers. Tip toeing around lies and foolishness does nobody any favors in the long run.

    2. The only reason for us to respond that way is: if what we’re hearing is true, then we must be doing something wrong

      And here we have the attempted Kafkatrap. If we say nothing, it must be because what they said is true. But if we respond in rebuttal, then it must be because….

      Or maybe we respond because it’s false, it’s offensive, it’s highly insulting, and people need to hear the truth.

      1. Good old Kafkatrapping. The day after a mass shooting, if the NRA doesn’t make a statement they are “damned by their guilty silence” and if they do make a statement they are “cruel and insensitive in this time of suffering”.

        How about I just try to go through life telling the truth?

    3. We’re not being attacked. All we’re being asked to do is to accept their feelings.

      Their feelings that whites, males and heterosexuals are inherently inferior and evil for their whiteness, maleness and heterosexuality? Why should we accept this, any more than non-whites, females and homosexuals should have to accept other peoples’ feelings that they are inherently inferior and evil for their non-whiteness, femaleness and homosexuality?

  43. On another note, and this is a serious point, I wonder (as a white male) if the reason so many SJWs recall the discomfort of their teen years (besides any actual instances of racism) as being race-related simply because it’s an obvious difference from your peers if you’re a minority? I imagine most people I know were uncomfortable during those years, particularly people who got into sci-fi/fantasy stuff. I certainly wasn’t uncomfortable because people were racist towards me, I was uncomfortable because I was a bit of a late bloomer who wasn’t good at sports, the smart kid in my graduating class of ~40 in a small farming town in Iowa, mostly participated in music and academic activities, and physically shown up by my younger brothers who were star athletes in multiple sports. Maybe I would feel like the system was against me because of my skin color if I was a racial minority, but I can’t blame it on that in my case.

  44. My GenCon slots:

    Thursday I worked the booth, Thursday night I did dinner with friends and went to the Nerd Burlesque. Room was dark. Clearly fully of Seething White Privilege and Sexism because we were there for a comedy routine where performers took off their clothes and showed pasties.

    Friday AM I ran a demo for two people, one Korean, one American.
    Friday afternoon, I played Pathfinder, my table was a Latino, an Australian, a guy who was probably Jewish, and two white guys including me.
    Friday evening I played the Special in a pickup table that had 1 Chinese-American, two African-Americans, a Jewish guy, and two white guys.
    Saturday morning, I playtested a bunch of board games. Huge array of people in the room.
    Saturday afternoon, I played at a 7 person table with an African American woman, an African-American man, an Asian man, and a couple from Australia.
    Saturday evening, I played Bonekeep 3 with a group of people who were from Jersey, New York City, Upstate New York, Connecticut and Ohio. Both the New Jersey and New York City guys were Italian descent and swarthier than the Latino guy from Friday afternoon.

    Sunday I worked the booth, and played a pick-up game with a Moslem guy and two very cute redheaded cosplayers.

    Yep. Seething White Privilege and Oppression.

      1. And Muslims are all magically non-white, including most especially the Arabs (who are genetically very close to the Jews) and the Iranians and Pakistanis (who are descended from fair-skinned West Asians).

  45. Gee, I’m white and had a crummy time in High School. I was a pudgy dweeb and did not have a date in the entire four years. (On the positive side I did not have acne and at 16 could walk into virtually any bar in Idaho outside of a college town and not be asked for i.d.) Oh, did not discover D&D till my oldest child introduced me to it, but did avidly play the old Avalon Hill game TACTICS II, for hours on end And my old man was the garbage collector, so please imagine all thee white privilege I had…

  46. Long-time reader, first time poster. Just wanted to say that I sympathize with Mr. George’s dilemma. I too haven’t played a character of my own race in a long while.

    In our current two campaigns, I’m playing Daniel, a Japanese-American playboy, and Shiori, a Rokugani (essentially Japanese) courtier.

    In our previous campaign, I played Rani, a revolutionary from the south part of India.

    The campaign before that I played Arianne, a French Cajun woman who’s sort of my race…oh, but she has a couple of slaves among her ancestors, which I believe makes her Black by SJW one-drop standards.

    I have to go back five campaigns before I find a character I played who is as lily-white as I am.

    My point being, (a) no one except Mr. George believes there is some sort of “you must play white guys” rule, and (b) if your goal is to play characters exactly like you, your’re doing it wrong.

    Also, to his “my name was never my name” point, it’s usually kind of creepy when people name their RPG characters after themselves…

  47. As a guy who started gaming in the late 80’s and early 90’s, I can say that there was no one who wanted to be a black character.

    Except for everyone who read any of R. A. Salvatore’s Diz’zt Do’Urden books. And those have only sold like 100 million copies or something.

  48. I’m 5’1″, so I refuse to play halflings or gnomes or dwarves. I spend enough time being short IRL!

    I’m also a minority, but not a readily visible one. But I never thought people were assholes to me because of my handicap. I figured they were just assholes. (And, if I’m honest, I’ll admit I sometimes deserved to be bitchslapped…)

    I recently read Marie Corelli’s The Sorrows of Satan. She has a line about how self-pity is the greatest enervator of moral force there is. And she’s right. If you’re focused on feeling sorry for yourself, you won’t accomplish good for others.

  49. “I know when I want to be inclusive I start by insinuating that 50,000 complete strangers are racists.”

    As usual, Larry sums it up perfectly.

  50. Endless self-loathing. What absolute nonsense in his comments. I’m not a ‘gamer’….I’m far too sophisticated for such childish things ( and besides no one plays any game with me because I’m a compulsive cheater ) BUT this guy should get off the pity train. I need a mind enema after absorbing his crap…..

  51. ” I’m not a mind reading Social Justice Warrior, constantly perched like a falcon, ready to swoop in to right wrongs.”

    That’s not what SJW’s do, they swoop in and bitch about the wrongs, but don’t actually DO anything about them. To quote The Tick “I don’t want to stop crime, I want to fight it!”

    This is why George is full of “This is a problem” without showing exactly why it’s a problem, and full of “They have to fix it” without showing what that fix would look like. And if they try to fix it, he’ll be able to go on about how they did it the wrong way, without saying how it’s wrong or how it could be better.

    This is why as a class they’ve redefined terms like Racism in such a Damned if you do, damned if you don’t way that they can attack anything as Racist, so they have more to squawk about. You should be aware of his race, his history, etc. But don’t treat him differently, except you should, or something. He really doesn’t make it clear what exactly he wants to see happen.

    If racism is redefined as something you don’t even know you’re doing, and something you can’t change, if it’s “Institutional” and Baked in to every one of us, you know what? You SJW’s have just painted yourselves into a corner. You’ve told us it CAN’T be fixed. So excuse us if we don’t go around trying to implement your vague or contradictory solutions, if you bother to suggest any.

    Seriously, ask a gamer if he’ll play a game he can’t win. (Well,they might if it’s Fun, but this one isn’t.) People are finally wising up and they don’t want to play the Left’s game any more.

  52. “More often than not, people are actually pretty cool, and what somebody perceives as “subconscious racist unease” is actually some well-meaning white person terrified that they might accidentally give offense and be burned at the stake by Social Justice Warriors. You want that to go away, quit screaming at these people about their white guilt and they’ll quit walking on egg shells around you.”

    This… so much this.

  53. I don’t think this guy is a gamer at all. I think he was one of those kids who really wanted to be the “big man” of a group but was too pussy of an individual to try to alpha male, so he projected his insecurities onto a gaming group, who eventually shunned him because all he wanted to bleat about was just how racist they all were.

    On a side note, did everyone else notice just how lily white the Hugo Award winners were? C’mon, Tor.com, get on that Social Justice wagon!

    1. “That’s racist” is our nonsense non-sequiteur answer to things like my telling housemate he’s not allowed to do REAL cooking in my kitchen because his idea of properly cooked is ‘charcoaled.’ Or ‘yeah, don’t electrocute yourself again!” “No I won’t that’s racist!”

      The way the SJWs have used it make it perfectly valid now ;P

  54. A Modest Proposal: As Larry said about Latinos, “as we learned from NPR last week, it is hard to pick us out when we don’t wear sombreros for easy identification.” ID badges might be a thing NPR can get behind. It could be extended to gay or transgender folks. Perhaps they could wear little rainbow emblems. And little yellow stars of David for the Jews…

    Like the fellow on the left in this photo:

    http://firstlightforum.files.wordpress.com/2009/02/nazi-a-jew-with-star-of-david.gif

  55. “The broad acceptance that white people enjoy is the unspoken—but clearly visible—rule of our society, reinforced through a thousand structures and symbols. It pervades everything around us, reminding everyone that white people are the center of the story, no matter what story is being told.”

    Oh no! They’re on to us!

    1. “It pervades everything around us, reminding everyone that white people are the center of the story, no matter what story is being told.”

      Has he never seen “Mulan”? Or “Alladin”?

      Or anything from Bollywood?

  56. Hire more people of color and give them agency, visibility, power, responsibility, and credit in a wide variety of meaningful and important areas in your organization. – emphasis mine

    I’m just going to leave this here, Mr. Correia’s already made the larger point.

  57. Let’s see, I’m one of those evil white guys who control gaming. I started, unsurprisingly enough, IN 1974 at Fort Hood, with the original books. Gawd I wish I knew what happened to them. It was mostly white guys playing, and usually white guys who weren’t interested in chasing skirts and getting polluted out of our minds every night. I played with groups at Fort Hood, then in Germany (two tours there). We even had a “dungeon” in Erlangen when I was there; under,of all places, the NCO Club. On a few nights, we took swords out on the parade field outside and had sword fights, which brought the interest of the MPs, who just shrugged it off as those crazy gamers. At Fort Bliss, I played D&D with some of the same guys and ended up with a few others of color (one was an evil minded black guy who killed off characters constantly with his devious mind). Again, it was educational level and interest more than anything else that decided who played the game and who didn’t. Today, I’m 66, haven’t played in years, met my wife while playing D&D at the rec center on post. Retired as an E-7, retired as a high school social studies teacher who allowed kids to play Magic and D&D in his room during lunch. I have two bi-racial grandkids and would love to just go up to the moron who wrote that Tor piece and tell him/her to suck it up buttercup and stop whining. What a moron.

      1. Schweinfurt was my first duty station, and ironically the first place I was exposed to D&D (and other cool entertainment like fantasy novels, anime, and B movies). Like Larry said, the military is very diverse. My first gaming group had three white guys (one was from Poland), two black guys, and two “others” (they were not wearing sombreros so I could not tell where they came from besides “New Jersey” and “Idaho”). We did not have any females in that group because we were all combat arms, and I do not know if any were gay or transgender (this was back in 99 so it was still pretty much “don’t ask, don’t tell”). The only thing that really stands out about those memories is that we were having a lot of fun, not the race/culture/religious differences.

    1. If you don’t mind, when did you play at the Rec Center at Bliss? Played a lot Starfleet Battles there as a HS student in the early 80s. Last time I was there in 2012 Rita was still running AA Stamp although it had more Warhammer stuff than RPGs.

  58. The more you talk about being mis-identified , the more I think we need to crowdsource you an MHI sombrero. Man, now that I see that in my head, I want one, too.

      1. That would make for an amusing con costume. A big sombrero with the MHI smiley-demon and “Team Chupacabra” embroidered on the rim, and twin bandoleers of ammo worn Pancho Villa style! Maybe add long mustachios for extra points:-).

  59. People who wave their hands and pontificate about how a situation is awful and something must be done to rectify it piss me off. Its the year two thousand and fourteen. Their are computers and Internets and stuff.

    If you think there aren’t enough games that offer non-Caucasian characters and games that use non-northern European source material, create them.

    I’m looking at the Games page on Kickstarter. According to it they have had $265 million pledged towards game startups and 3907 successfully funded games projects.

    Be the change or shut the hell up.

  60. How many people here disagree with me that A.A. George’s Tor.com post constitutes hate-speech?

    Given that intersectionalists consider a vulgar slang term and use of the word “lady” to be “misogyny,” it seems radical feminism’s own benchmarks makes George’s post easily fit the definition of hate-speech.

    All that aside, it certainly fits mine.

    1. Oh I agree, it’s hate speech. I just don’t think Jeff was responsible for A.A. George’s words- particularly since Jeff seems to be a nice guy who happens to be a fan of MHI and the Grimnoir chronicles, and who has already stated that he doesn’t agree with George’s calling people racist.

      He sees his part in this fight as to be a reasonable guy who likes books and to encourage the Tor crowd to give Larry’s books a chance. That’s not an unreasonable position. It’s not even a bad idea. I mean, you might not be able to do that, and that’s fine. But I think we need folks like Jeff who are willing to be the mediators of this world.

      1. Never said you did. I was just clarifying my position. You did ask for opinions, yes?

        I know! I’ll make it more clear! Yes. I think A.A. George said some mighty stupid things. S/He lumped a group of people together and determined that because his skin color was different than most people in the room, than surely most people in the room were racist. This is at best, ignorant thinking and at worst completely delusional. S/he’s a naughty, naughty person of indeterminate gender and I hearby denounce her. him. herm?

        Whatever.

  61. “even in ye olde tymes before the internet in the land of staunch Catholic ‘D&D and heavy metal lead to Satanism'”

    I’m not trying to say that this isn’t what Larry experienced, but “staunch Catholic” does not equal “D&D is evil” and never has. Honestly, I’ve met more protestants who believe that than Catholics and I run in a pretty conservative and traditionalist leaning bunch.

    See, I got introduced to D&D at an ultra-conservative Catholic college that was populated by 50% homeschooled kids and a huge number of traditionalists. Not exactly the most stereotypically “inclusive” or “tolerant” sort of people. The only thing we ever got in trouble for– D&D related anyway– was for making too much noise in the library.

    “I don’t see race”

    Oh, gosh! I’ve got to be a totally awful person! See, one year instead of skipping the Halloween dance, I went and then promptly got bored and left with a handful of friends to play Munchkin. I only just now realized that we had a white female, a white male, a hispanic, and an “other.” If I’d realized it at the time, I could have gone looking for an asian to join us so we’d be properly diverse! 😉

    Additionally, the weekly D&D game we ran had two hispanics and was 50% female.

    1. I don’t know if staunch is the right word. Superstitious and suspicious are probably better words. My people went to church at Christmas and Easter. 🙂

      1. Yeah, “Easter Bunnies” or “culturally catholic” people aren’t what I think of with the word “staunch.” In fact, some Catholics would be rather grudging to call them Catholic… (because if you don’t follow the tenets of a religion why call yourself one of them?) Myself I tend to assume that those kind don’t care enough about religion to get wacky notions like that. But then again, badly catechized people rather frequently get drawn into superstitions. It’s a real shame to be smothered by them. Gives the rest of us a bad name.

        (I wonder why the heck it changed my named to “FinlayFinlay.” That looks stupid.)

  62. And here I thought being a SF/F fan made people more inclusive and less caring about race. “Race” means something totally different in SF/F terms, and all humans are the same race. (Which is why I usually use the term ‘ethnicity’ instead. Heck, I might even be more likely to use ‘breed’, since I also grew up around dogs, so the word’s natural to my way of thinking.)

  63. ” I really hate Nazis. My grandmother’s family is from Poland and her maiden name was Byreika. I don’t think I have any relatives left there. I’m all about shooting Nazis in the face.”

    Dang it, Larry, you’re confusing the poor people who think you’re a fascist.

    Keep it up. 🙂

  64. Nothing serves to tug the heartstrings of one of the Evil Horde as the whinnings of an AA racist who can’t believe that NOBODY. CARES. ANYMORE.HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHe doesn’t seem to understand that all those race cards have been played and found wanting.

  65. Thank you for this article. I have been going to Gen Con for many years and I have always found it a very positive and accepting environment, including for women and families. There were even people wearing rainbow coloured ribbons on their badges that said Gaymer. I was at Gen Con 2014 and saw many people of different races, genders etc. Also, if you looked in the program book there was an article on CJ Jones who was a Gen Con staff member up until his death this year. He was also a founding member of Wizards of the Coast, an avid gamer…and yeah, a person of colour.

  66. The very fact that you see a fun summer movie based on a pre-existing comic book as just a fun summer movie based on a pre-existing comic proves that you are evil!

    And how dare a convention of gamers rather spend time enjoying games rather than contemplating that they are all automatically and innately evil!

    It’s a good thing we have SJWs around to tell us what’s right and what’s badickyawful! Otherwise we might have to judge things and think for ourselves! Horrors!

    *********************************************************

    But seriously, thanks for reminding me of why I gave up on Tor.com long ago.

  67. “I had to force them, going against the pressure to conform. The pressure was so intense that the first time I played a character of my own ethnicity was actually online.”

    Ohhh..I’m INSPIRED. I think I’ll go create me a new character in the MMORPG I’m playing. A vaguely asian female with a bubblegum pink…or maybe purple, afro.

  68. As someone who has wanted to go to GenCon or Origins since 1977 when I got into gaming I have two words for this multiple time attendee whose only action is to shit on something a lot of us would love to do that he has done:

    “Fuck you.”

    Sorry, I mean “don’t go”.

    Okay, four words: “Don’t go and fuck you while you’re at it”.

    Guess that’s nine.

    Now, George, here’s another thing I’d like to say given what you’ve written. Remember, George you wrote this:

    Racism is an insidious cultural disease. It is so insidious that it doesn’t care if you are a white person who likes black people; it’s still going to find a way to infect how you deal with people who don’t look like you. Yes, racism looks like hate, but hate is just one manifestation. Privilege is another. Access is another. Ignorance is another. Apathy is another. And so on.

    Well, being a white male devil I always have privilege and access so I can never not be racist. I would have preferred apathy as my hat trick but after giving up on what little interest in SciFi fandom due to SJW and having had to put up with a month of BS about the new edition of D&D because SJWs had to attack a liberal pornstar who contributed to it whose RPG work I actually enjoy and, *gasp* spend money on I’m sick of crybaby minorities who probably haven’t faced real, in your face, will I still have a job or get home without getting beaten racism trying to trash a hobby I’ve been in since before they were born. I got my copies of Kingmaker (an inherently racist game as it’s about white people killing white people instead of black people) and Starship Troopers (racist because it’s based on a novel where a white guy had the nerve to write a non-white guy main character) in summer of 1976 at a Hallmark store (no, really, that’s how racist Avalon Hill was because in the 70s that was a common place to get their games), my copies of SPI’s Star Force and World War 3, and Dr. Holmes’s Dungeons & Dragons edit in 1977 (the later with my Christmas money).

    You talk about rejecting people’s identity? You just shit all over mine boy and you can fuck off. I don’t know what your race is son, but since I’ll always abuse it why not just go all out. People like you will insure I do the time so why not reverse the old Beretta theme song. Just to make the world what you want it to be, not what you claim to want it to be but the thing you really want it to be so you can whine about how hard it is to be in the top 10% of humans alive today by living in the US, I will actively hate your race from now on. I don’t even know what it is but I’ll hate it just to make you happy.

    I’m sure I know and even admire people who are unfortunate enough to share your race but just to make you happy I’ll hate your race.

    Now shut the fuck up and if you don’t like GenCon give me your tickets (I can demand you do that, white privilege and all) so I can finally go and you won’t have to suffer through all that racism.

    Or, maybe, you could just grow the fuck up.

  69. Well just posted a link to Larry’s fisk at this article at tor.com post #58 to be precise, anyone wanna start an over/under pool that it gets pulled?

    1. Too late: #58 is gone, along with #59 and #60. The mods have also been deleting numerous other responses, and openly altering other responses to eliminate all references to the deleted posts.

      I think you’d call that “nuking the thread from orbit to make sure.”

      And Jeff LaSala – who seems to be a really decent person – wonders why some of us are skeptical of Tor.com as a whole? That’s why I hardly bother to comment over there, save for the Wheel of Time re-read and Ruthanna Emrys’ new Lovecraft re-reads.

      1. The deletions may be heavy-handed, I really don’t know exactly what’s been deleted. But I’m not surprised—maybe for a different reason. If we were to transplant all the comments here onto the Tor.com blog post, there’d be tons of deletions simply because of all the swearing and outright name-calling, to put it mildly. Moderators do have a job to do, and minimizing what essentially looks like a flame war (even if the topic at hand is a genuine one) is part of it. I get that.

        Yes, A.A. George’s statements can be read as offensive and insulting, but they’re not so direct. So it gets a pass. If people just post “eff you, A.A. George,” then yeah, deleted.

        1. George said he wanted a conversation. You can’t ask to have a conversation on a topic, and then block everybody who disagrees with you. That’s not a conversation. That’s a lecture. Take out the surly, angry types calling names if you really feel the need (but honestly, if you’re passionate about a topic, why should that disqualify you?), but at least leave the people polite enough to engage in honest debate.

          Nope. On the SJW blogs comments routinely get “massaged” or disemvolwled, or have half the words replaced with fluffy kitten, or wtf the latest thing is.

          Meanwhile, here at the ultra evil bastion of hatey-hate-mongery that is the Monster Hunter Nation, where I do actually believe in free speech and debate, I usually only delete spam. (seriously, out of the tens of thousands of comments on here, I’ve blocked like 20 IPs, 16 of which belong to two different crazy people). If anyone on the other side doesn’t believe me, feel free to debate here. If you actually debate you’ll get arguments back. If you show up talking shit and checklist, you’ll be mocked ruthlessly, but not deleted and I’d never manipulate someone’s words.

          You can see why my side gets a little bit jaded at these “conversations”.

          1. There was an interesting graphic over on FaceBook not too long ago. Generic “stock photo” of a gun overlaid with the following text:

            “How do you tell the difference between a pro-gun forum and an anti-gun forum?”
            “The Pro-gun forums don’t feel the need to delete dissenting opinions.”

      2. Jeff, I understand where you’re coming from and even agree to a certain extent.

        The problem here is that A.A. George is basically inviting – started! – a flame war by an unjust and demonstratably false accusation of racism against an entire community…and to judge from the remaining fragments of the resulting discussion thread, even reasonable responses are being deleted and altered wholesale by the thread mods because they might be insulting to George’s feelings.

        I can understand wanting civil discourse. However, as usual, it seems that “civil discourse” is only applied to one side, and then only capriciously. Indeed, I suspect that the fairness issue, is one reason why the proprietor of this particular blog just lets commenters flame away…

        1. Yep. I’ve had posters say all sorts of things on here that I disagree with. They might even have hurt my feelings if I had any.

      3. George goes way beyond micro-agressions Hugo winner John Chu recently blogged about after Readercon. We’re dealing with massive hypocrites at the Tor site when it comes to moderating comments.

      4. Larry, you also implemented the absolutely NO edit function which causes some issue whenever I want to go back to correct misspelling and other mistake. But it also preserved the evidence that people will want to delete afterward. I just wish you add the wordpress widget for edit (I’m sick of trying to figure out how to do blockquote again).

        1. I left out the ability to edit on purpose. When I do get a complete lunatic wandering in I like to preserve them in all of their glory. The other side often makes my arguments for me far more eloquently than I can. 🙂

      5. I get the jaded part, Larry. i do.

        And you make a good point. But I also just don’t expect moderation standards to be the same on a publisher’s blog vs. an author’s personal blog. They can’t afford to be as insensitive as you, nor do I expect them to have as thick a skin. 😉

        I even think anger is fine…but fine, be angry about your counter argument, not just angry without a point. A basic “@%$ you” post, for example, deserves to be deleted on such a blog. Leave out the profanity and counter the main post with dissenting, righteously indignant counterpoint…that’s totally cool and shouldn’t be deleted. More people need to make a case for themselves without sprinkling it with profanity or what sounds like hate-speech. The very thing we’re trying to say the original blog post was kind of like, you know?

        I am, of course, talking only about comments on Tor.com, not your blog post, which is allowed to be as profane as you want to it to be. It’s yours.

        1. True that. I wish they’d hire you as a moderator… Hell, never mind. I used to moderate a giant gun forum. I wouldn’t wish that on anyone! 🙂

      6. Whenever the Left “wants to have a conversation”, what they really mean is Special Task Force Unicorn. 😉

      7. So far my comment has remained undeleted. I’ll let you know if that changes. (And no, I don’t think most of the moderators know who I am; I’ve only corresponded with one of them directly. Even then, it wouldn’t be a free pass to say whatever I want.)

      8. Jeff LaSala, on August 20, 2014 at 3:24 pm said: “The deletions may be heavy-handed, I really don’t know exactly what’s been deleted.”

        My post was simply “https://monsterhunternation.com/2014/08/19/no-tor-com-gencon-isnt-racist-a-fisking/” just a cut and paste of this article’s address in plain text not even hyperlinked so no one could use it without really meaning to. But of course the gate keepers seem to have decreed that the proles not be allowed to even know of the existence of dissent.

    2. Incidentally, I just left this comment over there, quoting one of Tor’s moderators, at post #65:

      [quote]So let me get this straight: It’s OK for Tor bloggers to “attack and belittle” entire groups of people with a broad rhetorical brush, and to use “prejudicial and phobic” language to describe them – as did the author of this particular essay – but any attempt to respond to such unjust attacks, or defend oneself against them, are subject to “moderation.” Including the wholesale deletion and altering of comments.

      OK then. Glad we’ve got that straightened out.

      *rolls eyes in disgust* [/quote]

      Incidentally, even though my post came in at #65, there’s currently only 51 actual comments at this time. And many of those were edited after the fact by the moderators, as the moderators themselves admit in attachments to the edited posts.

      1. …And that didn’t take long: It’s already gone. The last “official” post is now #63. Wonder what #64 did to deserve deletion? Oh wait: He also questioned George’s premise, to include his personal attacks.

        Tor.com: We can call you whatever names we want, and you just need to shut up and take it. Or we’ll delete you.

      2. And here’s Tor mod Katharine at post #67, explaining why she arbitrarily deleted me and a bunch of other people:

        “@64-@66 Once again: comments that do not adhere to our moderation policy will be removed immediately. We welcome discussion and disagreement, but not at the cost of civility and attacks on bloggers or other commenters. Inflammatory rhetoric, hateful language, and trolling of any kind is not acceptable.”

        That comment thread is full of little messages like that, some of them added to existing posts.

        Shorter Katharine: “We’ll call you whatever names we want, and you just need to shut up and take it. Or we’ll delete you.”

      3. In so many words, Tor.com believes their own post should be deleted. Too bad they’re too dumb to figure out what hateful language actually means.

      4. They should just kill the comments, call the article an essay, and be done with it. So much for having open dialogue. Censoring and trying to mold conversation into a specific message only creates dissent and fuels resentment.

      5. Woelf Dietrich wrote:
        “They should just kill the comments, call the article an essay, and be done with it. So much for having open dialogue. Censoring and trying to mold conversation into a specific message only creates dissent and fuels resentment.”

        Allowing comments facilitates the process of identifying those who do and don’t agree with you. Allies and enemies in the war to stamp out freedom of thought.

  70. The paragraph about ‘I don’t see race’ stuck in my mind until I was gobsmacked by a realization: at least for Mr. George, the debate has moved beyond equality. There is an implicit acknowledgment that equal treatment has been so common for so long in gaming, it is time to move onto the next thing. I do not wish to trivialize his concerns, but I think an article like this is actually a good sign for gaming, since larger issues certainly exist elsewhere. But, really, with one camp looking for equality, and the other camp looking for some extra accommodation, the actual distance separating the two camps of this debate is so small relative to the debates of 50 years ago, that it is a shame that they shout at each other.

    This section seems to me to be one of the cruxes of the issue in the perspectives between the two camps:

    ‘If you do not see race, you do not see me. You do not see my identity, my ethnicity, my history, my people. What you are telling me, when you say “I do not see race,” is that you see everything as the normal default of society: white.’

    It is a subtle difference, but when it comes to identity, history, and people, I not believe that the ‘default’ is white, rather I believe it to be undifferentiated American. I fall in that default. ‘My people’ includes Martin Luther King Jr. as much as it includes George Washington. ‘My history’ includes the rebuilding of Washington after the British burned it in 1814, even though, with two Canadian grandparents, it is far more likely that my ancestors were the ones striking the match than the ones rebuilding the city. ‘My identity’ is American, engineer, nerd, and a whole bunch of other things, but most certainly not Canadian, Irish, or German.

    I am totally okay if Mr. George doesn’t see himself this way, it is understandable if he wants a closer connection to his homeland and, if, given that the history of the US is mostly full of people that are not his race, he looks elsewhere for his ‘history.’ However, his attitude is not universal among immigrants. Outside of the immigrant enclaves in the US, I’m not even sure if it is the attitude among a majority of second generation immigrants. Take even the most basic cultural artifact: language and ask first generation immigrants how their children are doing. My experience is that about half the time you get ‘oh, they are studying Spanish because it is the easiest language to learn for English speakers’ and a quarter of the time you get ‘they know a bit, but speak it with a thick American accent!’

    Beyond that, one of things that makes America special (though not quite unique) is that people have the choice (not a requirement) to castoff their homeland and to be treated just like any other American. So, how do I respect Mr. George’s decision to include his homeland in his identity, but also respect many of my friend’s decisions to exclude their homeland in their identity? Imagine greeting Mr. Correia or Mr. George for the first time: it is impossible to know whether ‘seeing race’ is likely to cause offense (in the case of the former) or is the expectation (in the case of the latter).

    1. Iridium wrote:
      “the actual distance separating the two camps of this debate is so small relative to the debates of 50 years ago,”

      Uh, what was the debate in 1964? And who was debating? And what were they debating? Were there people in fandom saying that blacks were inferior, and should be discriminated against? Or what?

      Oh, eighty to ninety years ago, someone whose name I don’t recall formed the first known sf fan group. In Harlem, NY, where he lived. IIRC, all the other members were white, and they commuted up there to hang with him and talk science fiction. (Source, Sam Moskowitz, THE IMMORTAL STORM).

      All the evidence I’ve ever seen said that sf&f fans never gave a crap about race, until the anti-white bigots invaded recently. So please, expand on what you’re talking about, because I’m completely in the dark here.

      1. Saintonge235, thank you for calling me out on this, because upon re-reading, I realize that I hadn’t written that in a way that reflected my thoughts:

        When I had written that line I was thinking about the debates during the Civil Rights Movement with stuff like the Brown vs. Board of Education and Montgomery Bus Boycotts. Debates over whether America can and should integrate. Significant debates that riled up both sides because they were about a significant shift in the lives and the culture of those areas where the debates were held.

        Looking back on that line, I regret it. First, it was a false comparison because one was an overarching political debate, whereas this is a debate specific to fandom. Second, it wasn’t fair to compare the Civil Rights Movement to Mr. George’s piece, since his piece wasn’t calling for boycotts, sit-ins, etc.

        Saintonge235, thank you for the history lesson. It confirms what I always suspected: when people love something that is ignored by most of society, they’ll find ways to get together despite ethnic, cultural, or political differences.

  71. It would seem to me that the point of the story is “I wish that there were more gamers that looked like me, because playing and socializing with people of other races makes me uncomfortable”.

    That’s racist.

    1. It sure is. The newest theme of the PC is the “white savior. Basically they’re sick of white men being the hero in movies. Try saying you’re sick of seeing a black guy score the winning bucket in an NBA game and watch the crying start. There is no end to the stupidity of the racist anti-racists who are playing their con game on some truly naive useful idiots.

    2. Actually, it mostly makes him human. Homer Sapiens seems hardwired to be uncomfortable around people who aren’t like those he knew as a child. “Stranger” = “Enemy” = “Legitimate prey.”

      But while it’s a common human problem, it’s George’s problem, not Gencon’s. I’d probably feel uncomfortable there too, because I’m not a gamer, but that would be my problem.

    1. I seriously want to roll through the Waterdeep’s Undermountain dungeon with Deputy Travis Junior in my party.

      1. Was he the cop who was letting the idiot rattle on and seemed to be a gamer himself? Before the ‘Boots of escaping’ scene? He made me giggle.

        I was wondering too, if those horns were glued to the ‘god of evil’ ‘s chin, or more permanently put there…

      2. Shadowdancer Duskstar / Cutelildrow, on August 21, 2014 at 9:58 pm said: “Was he the cop who was letting the idiot rattle on and seemed to be a gamer himself? Before the ‘Boots of escaping’ scene? He made me giggle.”

        Yup that was him.

    2. that was funny, right up till she maced him… causing be to spew on to the keyboard. bad girl
      or to quote steve martin that was wrong, funny but wrong

  72. people of color

    I flatly refuse to use this made-up bit of silliness, and have driven more than one SJW into a screaming meltdown trying in vain to make me. It frustrates them to tears.

    Sweet, sweet nectar.

    1. They get all bent out of shape when someone who is obviously smart, and obviously not evil engages in crimespeak.

      Your refusal to voluntarily report to Room 101 confuses them.

  73. As an awkward teen, like other awkward teens, I wanted to be accepted. But acceptance meant something different to me, as perhaps it does to other minority teens.

    You ever notice that SJWs are always perpetually reminiscing about the wrongs they suffered in high school?

    The first thing the awkward teenagers do when they have a scintilla of popularity is use their power to exclude the unpopular kids.

    Thus the SFWA ban / Hugo voting situations.

  74. Um, was it racist to table-top play “The Aryan Nation meets Godzilla” where the head of the A.N. was gamed by a Taiwanese guy and Godzilla’s buddies (Japanese and Americans) were led by a black dude who happened to be an engineering student? The Game Master was having a weird semester that spring. And before anyone wonders, Godzilla won and celebrated by leveling Tokyo and Hartzfield Airport. (OK, so we were all having a strange semester.)

  75. Thank international Lord of Hate for addressing this article! I am a frequent reader of the TOR blog, partially for the free book giveaways(what can I say, I am cheap and their free!), and also for the occasionally good article or review. When I tried to get through this article I only made it about half way before I couldn’t stand the whiny BS that was in it. It was honestly refreshing to read your take and give what feels like a more honest picture of the gaming community and GenCon. Thanks. I was wondering if you would take a look at this new article about the World fantasy award on Tor.com. It just seem like something that you could easily point out some of the follies in the article as well as the fact that Leah Schlenbach, ignores the questions that they put in the beginning of the article and goes with the idea that the SFF audience and community are made up of the social justice warrior community. I know this has been a long post, but do you know of any other SFF blogs out there that are more about SFF then the politics in SFF, besides yours which I am thankful for? Thanks again for standing up for those who are not able or willing to stand up the social justice warriors.

      1. I brought that petition up on another thread in the last day or so. I understand their concerns, but the first problem is that, if we agree Lovecraft is a racist and a supremacist, the person organizing the petition is just as bad. Daniel Jose Older is the guy who’s been leading the charge against what he sees as the “white savior” motif in films and SFF. He doesn’t like films where whites can be seen to be helping blacks. He didn’t like 12 Years a Slave and wrote that narratives should be changed even if they’re historically inaccurate. His post on that is at Salon.com.

        Older is also the co-editor of the SFF racial revenge anthology We See a Different Frontier. The white-friendly blurb for that is:

        “This anthology of speculative fiction stories on the themes of colonialism and cultural imperialism focuses on the viewpoints of the colonized. Sixteen authors share their experiences of being the silent voices in history and on the wrong side of the final frontier; their fantasies of a reality in which straight, cis, able-bodied, rich, anglophone, white males don’t get to tell us how they won every war; their revenge against the alien oppressor settling their ‘new world’.”

        The co-editor was Rose Fox, who, when asked about reading SFF by white men, publicly lamented in regard to her job at Publisher’s Weekly “Alas, my job doesn’t let me refuse.”

        Why are we surprised they want to shoehorn in a black feminist who didn’t write weird fiction? I’m surprised they didn’t ask for bell hooks. These are the last people I’d listen to in matters of race.

      2. How do they square the “white savior motif” with “Starship Troopers?

        Don’t tell me — they’ve only seen the film.

    1. @ Fail Burton. Thanks for the information. I wasn’t aware of Older and his views. My frustration with this article was that Leah Schlenbach, seems to ignore her questions about who are the fans of SFF and what is the community is made of and just reaffirms the idea that a good SFF fan is someone who leans to the left and wants to “change” things for the “good” of others. I am honestly getting fed up with this view, and it bugs me that I am now seeing it more and more. I was naïve to this before and only recently realized how bad this has become. When did an author’s politics become more important than their ability to write a quality story? It seems like an ok story becomes great if it focuses on some political and controversial theme, as long as that theme is favorable to the left, while a well written story that is fun and entertaining is not of any worth? When did Science Fiction and Fantasy all of a sudden have to be Literature to be good, instead of just plain literature? Again does anyone know of any good blogs out there that are not a biased or pod casts that are about the fun and enjoyment of SFF and not so worried or effected about the politics of the people and authors in the genre?

      1. I listened to a podcast at Baen. I don’t precisely remember who was on it but I think Barry Malzberg and Sarah Hoyt were among them. This particular one was about stuff like Edgar Rice Burroughs and it was all about the fun, literature and artistry. There wasn’t even a whiff of politics if I recall correctly. They were very enthusiastic and seemed to have a lot of fun.

      2. @Fail Burton. Thanks. I will have to give Baen a shot. I usually listen to the SF signal and the functional nerds. Both are really good, but the SF signal tends to have some more left leaning people on there on a frequent basis which can become really tiring, but I will definitely have to check out Baen.

  76. Larry,
    Please do me a huge favor. Buy the most ridiculous sombrero you can find. I’m talking Mexican Hat Dance as done by Liberace, ridiculous. Then demand to be on every single “diversity” and “minority” panel at every Con you attend. Then burn these people to their faces.

    I would pay good money to see video of you telling people to “shut the hell up and roll the dice already, damn it.”

  77. In Pathfinder I prefer to play Elves (which can be golden skinned or Ebony) and like Dragonborn in DnD, which, if it doesn’t make me racists, at least makes me a Specieist (if that’s a word). I guess I just hate humans, and it has nothing to do with the fact that those two races have some cool abilities. My answer to the PC crap about micro-aggression and hidden privilege is a simple ‘Because Fuck You’. I don’t have time for them, and they can go push their BS on someone else. And yeah, the military is truly a study in diversity.

    1. “the military is truly a study in diversity.”

      It’s worse than that in the eyes of the SJW crowd. It’s an environment where everyone is treated equally without it being reinforced by seminars!

      1. Bah, they have seminars. Mostly though a TI gets up in front of you all at church the first Sunday of basic training (would YOU stay in the barracks instead of go to church, huh?) and says… “I don’t want to hear about color, you see that uniform you’ve got on? From this moment onward you are all Green.” (Or woodland camo… or…)

        But I’m reminded of a humongous to-do that they had for the Navajo Code Talkers that was broadcast on television… The President spoke (I don’t remember which one) and several politicians spoke and they’re all on about Native Americans and on about these Navajo men… and then the top ranked enlisted Marine spoke. A black man. And suddenly those men were Marines… Marines representing a long tradition that every single Marine belonged to and could only hope to emulate.

        The shift may have been minute, but it was stark.

  78. I do not understand this guy (of course, my favorite races to play in my bastardized version of D&D are the monstrous races; do mind flayers even have genders?) I have serious conversations with my gamers all the time. WHEN WE ARE NOT GAMING. Who the hell wants to talk serious issues when you’re playing a game? If I was at Gen Con and this guy came up to me, I would be furious that he was wasting my time with anything political. If Larry came up to me at Gen Con and started to talk politics, I would probably be upset, even though I agree with him on most things, because I would be there to sit at panels and game as much as possible before having to leave what would be for me a once in a lifetime event (I live far away and don’t have much money for things like that).

    1. Hell, the biggest, most successfully political thing I’ve ever written in my life was An Opinion on Gun Control, which was written in response to questions raised by Paul Genesse and Rob Wells, two democrats who I gamed with. Gamers will talk all sorts of deep stuff AFTER the game because most of us are polite enough not to bore or annoy the shit out of everyone around us.

  79. Back in the ;90s there was a reader who sent a letter to Dragon Magazine asking why there weren’t any African settings for the game. The closest they had was Al-Qadim, which was Arabic. There was also Dragonwall (Mongolian), Maztica (Central American), and Kara-Tur (Asian). (So non-inclusive.) But instead of complaining about white privilege he started writing articles describing an African setting himself. A few others did the same for Native American and Hindu cultures, I think. Much more productive then telling his story about his highschool feelings of inadequacy and demanding that the game designers do something about it.

    1. Ah back in the day when TSR would actually take a stand. If you read the old Maztica (pseudo Aztec) boxed set the author poses the question if a culture engages in regular massive human sacrifice even if they believe that it is necessary to ensure their idea of the cosmos’ continuation? His was answer “YES” see if that would get printed today by a major publisher.

  80. The core fallacy of Mr. George’s article, the one which everything else depends on, is the idea that any group will normally be a statistically balanced microcosm of the society it is a part of. Thus when George encounters a group of people who are whiter on average than the country, he finds this abnormal.

    In fact, real social groups are usually different than the larger society. People of different backgrounds have different histories, and that shapes their interests.

    1. AA George also seems to have a problem with white people, like being white is some sort of sin. His main point is that there is a problem and that problem is that there are are too many white people and I’m like whaaaaat did he say?

      Maybe the guy doesn’t realize how his writing comes across but it is very offensive.

    2. “The world is full of examples of radical departures from numerical homogeneity in representation that clearly have nothing at all to do with discrimination: Jews around the world are over-represented among those admitted into universities relative to their numbers in the general population even in countries that have official policies of discriminating against Jews. Asian Americans are also over-represented among U.S. college students but not because these colleges discriminate against non-Asians. American blacks are not prominent in sports because of anti-white discrimination.

      “The fallaciousness of the idea that discrimination is proven by deviation from numerical homogeneity in representation cannot be over-emphasized. It crops up in almost every debate about ethnic or gender discrimination. When feminists, media commentators, and even many academics wish to prove that discrimination exists, their proof usually consists of presenting numbers that show departure from homogeneity. Such figures are selected when they serve the agenda of the commentator or advocate.” – Steven Plaut

      1. Hell yeah.

        I would also like to ask Mr. George if he ever returned to his “homeland”? It is well documented that the Chinese and Japanese (two highest populations in his race) are extremely intolerant of other races.

      2. No, no, no. According to the SJWs, only white males have power, so only white males can be racist. And providing counterexamples that say otherwise just proves how racist you are. /sarc

  81. “More often than not, people are actually pretty cool, and what somebody perceives as “subconscious racist unease” is actually some well-meaning white person terrified that they might accidentally give offense and be burned at the stake by Social Justice Warriors.”

    OMG, thank you for saying this because yes, so much yes. Because nothing you do is ever ok with these people. You don’t mention race, you are ignoring their culture and history, which makes you a racist. You do mention race, you are committing some sort of microaggression, which makes you a racist. Basically the game is rigged, so why should white people bother to play it?

  82. “ethnic minority, minority, white convention-goers, whites, minority, race problem, people of color, white people, racism, hate, racism, Racism, white person, black people, racism, hate, hate, privilege, non-white, minorities, white, minority, white, white people, white people, white people, white, Eurocentric, white, white, person of color, skin, ethnic identity, white, ethnicity, ethnicity, non-white, protagonists of color, women of color, white, white, diversity, people of color, white, people of color, people of color, Nazi, minority, white man, color, white, hate-speech, non-white, race, race, identity, my people, race, white, race, ethnicity, majority, people of color, ethnic identity, other, white-dominated, race, race, person of color, race, diversity, minorities, minority, inclusivity, other, people of color, token minority, minority groups, people of color, minorities, people of color, inclusive, diverse.”

    That, in a nutshell, is the bizarre obsession through which radical intersectional feminism looks at SFF. Apply it to the Hugos and Nebulas or even the entire history of SFF, and you understand what they were happy about and why; it’s not literature or art or even SFF.

    Places like Tor.com and the SFWA have done their part to mainstream this insanity into the SFF community. In some goofy world, racially profiling a few tens of thousands of completely innocent people at GenCon is anti-oppression anti-racist work.

    Disagreement with this racial defamation gets you deleted, banned, your career submarined, gets you called a “bigot,” a “reactionary,” and a “racist.” That’s just for disagreement. Just imagine if you wrote a blog post with the identities reversed.

    And that’s the sickness at the heart of all this. By intersectionalism’s own PC standards, that A.A. George post should be unpublished. And I’m supposed to engage these insane and ignorant people? What possible language could I use to break through skulls that thick?

  83. So after simply linking to Larry’s dissection resulted in the post being deleted by Katherine the mod (must be the evil hate speech and insults hurled at inane positions) I posted this:
    @ Katherine, the author posts an article espousing how all us white gamers claiming to not be racist for never discriminating against those of other races are racists and we don’t even know it and others insulting such a ludicrous idea such as myself and Larry Correia are violating the moderation rules!?!?

    I’m sorry but there are few harsher insults you can hurl in civilized society than to accuse another of being a racist. All of the baloney of accusing white gamers who never did a damn thing but welcome him into this hobby of being racists for not crafting their games or playing games to meet his personal demographic requirements is insulting. He isn’t claiming we are wearing hood and burning crosses but he is accusing us of racism because he chose to feel uncomfortable.

    No, you do not get to offer one of the vilest labels in modern society on a mass of well meaning people who have never done anything to you without being challenged for such nonsense. As a blogger on Tor though and sharing the “proper” worldview prevalent here though that insult can be hurled and any responding with a fraction of said insult are squashed. Since I can’t link it without upsetting the thought police please google Larry Correia and Monster Hunter Nation for his beautiful and unvarnished dissection of this article.

    1. Given that almost no one knows Tor.com is not the face official face of Tor Books, I wonder how long Macmillan will put up with this. Tor is a business. Does Tor mean to tell me all those people Tor.com is ticking off and deleting are not potential customers, or is Tor letting us know they only sell to non-racists? As far as I can tell, a racist would then be anyone who’s white who doesn’t agree they are a racist on some level. Not exactly a successful business model and it sure has nothing to do with SFF. The truth is Tor.com is coddling the sick fantasies of racist and sexist bigots who hide behind “social justice.”

      If you’re dumb enough to think A.A. George is an anti-racist you’re dumb enough to believe just about anything. I wonder if Tor.com realizes how many people would moderate them right out of existence if they could? Normally one would never think of a web site about fantastic literature like that.

      This vapid and supercilious BMcGovern at Tor.com should be made to realize she her crew of stupid are the only institutions within SFF facilitating “hateful, prejudiced, or phobic language.”

      1. I think Macmillan will put up with Tor.com indefinitely. It keeps the crazies off their backs, and lets them got on with business.

        It will only change if people like us boycott Tor books. Personally, I probably won’t boycott them, I can’t be bothered, I don’t want to punish authors for the behavior of Tor.com, and I allow my desire to read various authors to override the politics of Tor.com bloggers. I think most of us will do the same.

        Besides, letting them expose themselves as the idiots they are is useful.

      2. Sad to say, but A.A. George is absolutely “anti-racist” because “anti-racist” means nothing else and other than “anti-white.” Any protests to the contrary were and are nothing more than deceptive packaging to get people to willingly swallow the ethno-masochistic contents and embrace their own demographic annihilation. (The same thing applies to the words “diverse” and “diversity.”)

        Overall, I’d say they’ve been stunningly successful. Based on current demographic trends, is there even one single country slated to still have a white majority by, say, the year 2100? And does anyone who’s paying attention really think that those white minorities (in what used to be their homelands) will be treated any better than the Boers are now?

  84. It’s hard to express how depressing it is that we’ve gone from ” “they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character”, to “If you do not see race, you do not see me”.

    1. The essence of racism is two propositions:

      1) Members of different races differ fundamentally.

      2) People who aren’t members of my race are inferior and deserve to be oppressed.

      George accepts proposition one.

      1. Rob Crawford wrote:
        “The concept that all whites are racist heavily implies #2.”

        I’m not so sure. George seems to feel that white people really are inherently superior, while resenting the fact that he isn’t white. Note that it apparently never even occurs to him that he and other non-white gamers might reach out to other non-whites and tell them about this cool hobby they should check out. No, the relative dearth of non-whites is something the white people should repair.

        Only whitey can prevent overwhiteness! Only whitey can empower non-whites.

        There’s an old cartoon, possibly by James Thurber, where a psychiatrist is saying to the guy on the couch: “The problem is, you really are inferior.” I suspect George’s problem is that in his heart, he believes his skin color or whatever really makes him inferior. Which I find both tragic and hilarious.

  85. Yea I can’t link to this post it says its, ” Note: Comment edited by moderator. Links to articles that attack and belittle our bloggers and use prejudiced and phobic language to mock our readers is the right of anyone who wants to respond in such a way, but we will not allow links to content that we consider to be abusive. For more information, please consult our moderation policy.
    Leah B

    1. Apparently, Leah is either oblivious to the fact she just described AA’s little screed to a T, or is a raging hypocrite. Or possibly both.

      Irony is a harsh mistress.

    2. ”Note: Comment edited by moderator. Links to articles that attack and belittle our bloggers and use prejudiced and phobic language to mock our readers is the right of anyone who wants to respond in such a way, but we will not allow links to content that we consi’
      Translated into English: ‘We can’t control what you post, so we’ll call it your right to post it, then we’ll delete it. If we ever get the legal power to do so, we WILL suppress your speech.”

  86. Oh Larry, that’s Gold:

    Last year was my first GenCon, and as I explored the convention, I saw almost no one who looked like me.

    Why? Are you physically fit?

  87. I read Mr. George’s article about GenCon 2014, then I found this one, by a table top gamer named NaShantá Fletcher. According the link, she had an out and out blast. Apparently, not so much as a micro-aggression in sight from where she was sitting, unless having to wait in lines a bit to get to certain vendors counts as such?

    Hmmm…must be her obviously Norwegian ancestry coming into play, though, right?

    1. I read her article and all I came away with is that she and her husband really, really enjoyed the experience. In fact, she made it sound so much fun I wish I had been there and not sitting here in NZ. I’m yet to attend any of these awesome-sounding conventions.

      I suspect Mr George is more of a racist than he would like to admit. At the very least he is a bigot.

  88. See, I don’t think the insulting helps. “Vapid,” “supercilious,” whatever. If I were a moderator over at Tor.com, by this point I’d probably start removing some of the posts, too. OVER THERE, I mean, not here. Yeah, I’d be more selective than they are. But come on, it starts to turn into a flame war otherwise and that’s doing no one any good.

    McGovern has a job to do, way outside of just moderating comments; give her a little bit of credit. She’s actually a pretty cool person, despite her own personal beliefs (which I don’t know well). I can’t say I know the other moderators.

    If one did follow a link from Tor.com directly to here only to see—amid the many very viable counter-arguments—a sea of direct* and profane insults against the site’s moderators and bloggers, filled lots of conjecture and “I bet he also ______” sort of talk….it’s too much.

    (Not at all addressing you, FB. I just mean in general.)

    *I say direct because again, the insults go both ways. Here, it’s blatant. There, it’s broader and not as obvious until you really read into what the blogger is implying. And guys, you’re ALLOWED to be as insulting as you want here. Really. But don’t get offended that they’re not linking right over to this talk. I doubt I would want to either, if these are the voices of the counterpoints.

    I’m in full agreement that A.A. George’s stance is extremely biased. I actually don’t think he means to be racist himself or intentionally insulting—I’ve been watching some of the Youtube videos he’s speaking in**—but it’s still altogether misguided.

    **Watching the videos A.A. George is in, listening to the other like-minded people, compels me to think that his intentions are good but that he does indeed struggle with his own identity. Hence, that post. I think there’re a lot of contradictions.

    Okay, I need to return to normal life. It’s not worth getting worked up—which this does for me because it’s frustrating to watch a lot of blindly-aimed slings and arrows. This is a Venn diagram where there’s a sliver of an area where everyone’s actually on the same page but no one can see it through all the wrath.

    Anyway, plenty of disagreeing comments have already been made on George’s post, including mine.

    1. We thank you for your participation. But when we can predictably calculate how long non-party line post gets deleted from Tor.com, we can only draw conclusion that they do not want dissention, just confirmation of existing viewpoint.

    2. Pointing out this culture considers a vulgar slang term as interchangeable with “rape culture” and the word “lady” (see Resnick/Malzberg) a sign of misogyny and then posting their own far worse quotes is not aiming blindly but laying out evidence and logic and making a case. There is a double standard. It is a racist double standard. People who support that deserve to be aptly called vapid and supercilious. A dozen roses won’t put across the message, neither will diplomacy.

    3. **Watching the videos A.A. George is in, listening to the other like-minded people, compels me to think that his intentions are good..”

      And those pave which road again?

  89. The whining craven niflungar says the following: “I’ve been told time and again by gamers, “I don’t see race” as if they were doing me a kindness. This is not enlightenment or progressiveness. It is ignorance. If you do not see race, you do not see me. You do not see my identity, my ethnicity, my history, my people. What you are telling me, when you say “I do not see race,” is that you see everything as the normal default of society: white. In the absence of race and ethnicity, it is only the majority that remains. I am erased.”

    As a matter of logic, there are only two possible positions: one is to judge men by their race, and to treat all men of a given race as superior or inferior, elect or reprobate, based solely on their bloodline, to the exclusions of their merits, qualifications, qualities and characteristics. This is a gross injustice.

    The other is to treat men according to their individual merits, qualifications, qualities and characteristics, condemning what is bad in them and praising what is good, regardless of bloodline, since the goodness or badness of men does not rest in their bloodline, or in their genes, but in their souls, which have no color, being spiritual hence invisible. This is simple justice.

    Hence, whining craven niflungar is demanding to be treated according to his race and bloodline, not according to his individual merit. He is demanding injustice.

    One assumes he wishes the injustice to be biased in his favor and not against him, but there is no telling. Perhaps he is a masochist. Perhaps he wishes to claim the high moral status of being oppressed even though, by his own testimony, no one oppressed him and several people went out of their way to confirm that they judged no man by his race, which is just as Martin Luther King wanted.

    Apparently he has so strong a nostalgic longing for places and times when men were oppressed by racist laws and customs, that he feels the need to pretend that Gen Con is such a place, even though it quite obviously is not.

    This person-of-color, or, to be precise, this person who wishes he were nothing but a color, tells us in his testimony that it is his own uncertainty, lack of pride, cowardice, and hysteria which makes him dislike himself. And he blames those of us who uphold Martin Luther King’s dream for his own hysterical maladjustment.

    He just assassinated Martin Luther King all over again.

    (N.B.: the first critter I ever played in any role playing game was a Vulcan named Satrick, and the second was a Ent named Forevergreen. One was green-blooded and the other was bark-skinned. Next, in a Superhero game I played the child of Vision and Wanda Maximoff called The Humanoid, who was a android magician mutant cyborg whose color scheme was a bright red.

    (So far, none of them were Caucasians; none were even from the same kingdom as humans.

    (Next, I played the Ghost of Zorro, who is Spanish, a race I believe most sane people would call Caucasian, but which Leftists insist on calling Colored. Next I played a man of Tekumel from MAR Barker’s EMPIRE OF THE PETAL THRONE, a servant of the Doomed Prince of the Blue Room, named Vthanid son of Vathek, who I always assumed from the book art were Aztecs in look and feel, but they are inhabitants of a planet in a cosmos which has no stars it its skies.

    (The next game I played in was a superhero game, and I played Nightshade from the television version of the FLASH. Who, by the way, was much cooler than Barry Allen. Take a look: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vAhNkRFgTTc

    (And, guess what race he is under that mask?)

    1. Hence, whining craven niflungar is demanding to be treated according to his race and bloodline, not according to his individual merit.

      Perhaps we’re to conclude that he feels he has no individual merit? Sometimes, being judged by your skin is far preferable to being judge by the fact that you have done nothing worthwhile.

      Of course, this is a man who uses a quote that essentially claims that all white people are racist, no matter what they have done, and there’s nothing we can do about it. So, my question to him is, “OK, so if I’m a racist no matter what, why should I ever care if you think I’m a racist?”

      I was born and raised in the Deep South. Still here, actually. My city is one of the places MLK marched, and he actually failed here. In fact, some people argue that his failure in Albany, GA lead to his success elsewhere because he learned from his mistakes, but that’s neither here nor there (just a piece of trivia and I can’t help myself about sharing trivia).

      I’ve seen racism from both sides. Despite being white, I’m the minority in my city. With 70 percent black, it’s impossible to tell me that I can’t be the victim of racism here in my community. Impossible. Yet, it wasn’t always that way, and once upon a time, the racism toward those blacks was pretty bad.

      What happened? We had to face it. Like it or not, the Deep South was the pooch who did his business on the carpet. We got our noses rubbed in it, and a smack that told us to knock it of. And we try. Every day, we try.

      However, Mr. George here thinks that we’re racist no matter what. 40 years of my life so far, and the vast majority have been spent trying to be the best person I could be. I’ve hired a lot of people, and yep. Most have been black. Not because they were black, but because they were qualified. That’s all I cared about. Yet, based on what Mr. George shared, I’m left to assume that I’m racist because I hired them, but had I not hired them, I would have been racist because I didn’t hire a black person. Honestly, I’m confused. Kafkatrapping may be real, but it’s still bullshit.

      So, instead, I’ll soldier on through, being who I am, writing the best stories I can. Of course, since I added a scene in response to Scalzi being pissed about being called a pussy, I may have to put in a scene for Mr. George in my next book. 🙂

      1. Notice particularly what Mr George gives as his paramount evidence for the racism of gaming: He says he wanted to be white, because that color gave him power.

        Power is the Leftist god. They see the world through goggles that color everything one color, and that color is power. Marx defined all economics as a power struggle, and feminists define all the subtle riddles of the mating dance as a power struggle.

        Mr George may or may not be literally neurotic — but even if he is as sane as Gilbert Gosseyn, his beliefs are clearly neurotic. The neurosis is a false to facts association. By his own admission, he has associated ‘power’ with feelings of worth and self-worth, and has associated ‘white skin’ with ‘power.’

        I happen to have white skin. Actually, it is somewhat mushroom colored and hairy and sags. So there is no power to white skinnedness, despite what the inner witchdoctor of the Cargo Cult Racist called Mr George tells him. The Europeans conquered the world due to an economic and scientific revolution triggered by a worldview that included the belief in a rational God who made a rational universe. Christianity is the power.

        Christendom then made the medieval epic, the Song of Roland, and preserved the pagan epics, Beowulf and so on, on which Professor Tolkien (hence Gary Gygax) based the generic Medieval-flavored adventurelands in whose soil all roleplaying gaming grew and flourished.

        If he wants power, the power of heaven, let Mr George drop to his knees in prayer.

      2. mr wright, sir . it is my understanding that you are a lawyer,retired if true i have a question for you.
        did or did not aa george defame the chacter of the 50,000 people who attended gencon.
        did or did not tor.com do the same by not only publishing his article, but not allowing any dissenting comments on their blog?
        if this is true could he/tor.com be sued?
        i did not attend so i would not be affected either way. but this goes to your comments about power. sometimes fire must be fought with fire. and to mix my metaphors … the law is a very big stick.
        my regards sirs
        (note-crappy speller)

      3. I don’t think there is a Leftist god at work here. Of all the Democratic congressmen in America, how many would’ve written such a post? The god here is identity. However I do believe it is appropriate to mention G. Gosseyn. In the PC world thoughts arrange themselves and racism becomes anti-racism and back to racism using identical ideas, depending only on the race and gender of those involved; six becomes nine and back again. Balls become strikes and balls again depending on the pitcher and batter – literally.

        A true dedication to intersectionalist radical feminist ideology and semantics is the opposite of Van Vogt’s idea in his novel; one uses cant and custom to repetitively repeat contradictory statements until they no longer are so. It’s like a shaman chanting a thing as true until it does become true. Reality is thrown aside.

        Just one of many examples I could cite is the PC addiction to colonialism/postcolonialism. In PC thought, that is a white’s only affair, though it is a race-neutral event. In the Tor.com podcast, Elliott and Jemisin openly derided white epic fantasy authors for laying 21st century and 1950s sensibilities over medieval Europe. The two clearly saw themselves as indulging in an outside-the-box ideology that acts to open one’s eyes and shear away bias, and we the brutally stupid who cannot grasp what they can grasp.

        Yet Jemisin and Elliott partake of an ideology that uses late 20th/early 21st century U.S. anti-oppression narratives, e.g. anti-racism, to wipe out the colonialism of the Arabs against Spain and the postcolonialism that has taken place since then. Because Arabs and Spanish are the wrong intersectional colors, the entire event goes into an Orwellian memory hole.

        Although the PC have entire SFF anti-colonial/postcolonial anthologies, by default that never includes Mughal India, the Ottoman Balkans or Arab Spain. That’s because the PC have Jim Crowed medieval history using American provincial cultural markers that have nothing to do with history. Those events have literally disappeared from history within PC ideology. In intersectionalism, colonialism is only redcoats and American frontiersmen.

        That’s why the PC and A.A. George’s article are as literally out of touch with the reality of an event. A lot of white people are at GenCon ergo racism ergo an event when in fact the whole thing is ginned up out of nothing, out of identity.

        I would love to debate Elliott and Jemisin in a public forum where they couldn’t delete me or squirm away. It wouldn’t be pretty. They are Gloria Goinsseyn.

    2. I have to admit. Whenever I see a post from John C Wright, I get that morale boosting feeling of relief. Kind of like hearing a battery of 155s sending outbound mail, or seeing that airstrike go in. Good to know I’m not all alone in the fight, and the big guns are on my side.

      Thanks john.

    3. “I don’t see race” as if they were doing me a kindness. This is not enlightenment or progressiveness. It is ignorance. If you do not see race, you do not see me. You do not see my identity, my ethnicity, my history, my people. What you are telling me, when you say “I do not see race,”

      I seem to remember sentiments like that from an earlier time, i can’t exactly place it. Somewhere in central Europe in the 1930s I think.

      1. You know, if they’d had Fisking back then, somebody could have relentlessly mocked the shit out of Mein Kampf when it came out and saved everyone a whole lot of bother.

        Heh… That makes me think of the poster earlier, Oooooh why can’t you just accept he FEELs that way and RESPECT his FEEEELS?!? Well, helpful poster, because thinking people owe it to society to relentless insult the shit out of really stupid ideas before they catch on.

        1. If the advertising revenue is how he funds his operations, that wold be cool. But really, for me, it’s all about the Mausers.

          On the other hand, he let it be taken from him all too easily.

  90. As an ethnic minority myself, I had zero problem walking around Gen Con and Indianapolis in general. And I don’t bother counting ethnicities when I go about town no matter where I’m at because only measure I think is worth worrying about is whether I’m accepted someplace or not. Believe me, any problems I had regarding “acceptance” was more about the games I understood and didn’t and ones I liked and didn’t than anything else.

  91. I’m sure that the owners of the last two gaming stores I regularly frequented (the black husband in a multi-racial couple for one, a gay couple for the other) would be surprised that they were so discriminated against. Hell, the former traveled with me to and from GenCon 2013.

    Even the con staff that do things like handle money, traditionally, are locally paid TEMPS, as the use of true volunteers by the con got more and more marginalized over the decades out of fears of litigation to where most volunteers end up doing door guard duty.

    That’s before you get to the Convention Center staff, which are the SAME PEOPLE regardless if it’s a GenCon weekend, the Democratic National Convention, or a national conference of the NAACP or GLAAD. Those people probably aren’t temps, given their need to know what they are doing in their jobs – they are, however, probably part-time, as most industry and organization conventions don’t include a Thursday (many don’t even have a SUNDAY), let alone Wednesday registration.

    And, I wonder if George actually got around to all the hotels (where most of the actual role-playing games are played, anymore) and saw all the non-white, non-black, workers there, that of course work in those hotels the other 51 weeks of the year.

    Even the events I regularly participate in, BOARD GAMES of all things, the regulars in the tournaments I play fill all possible census categories, and the players that I look forward to playing with the most (as they clobber me senseless at Empire Builder – a game any SJW would automatically assume to be as white as the driven snow) are all non-white.

  92. This is a tug of war between the idea of using principle or identity as a moral ethos.

    We do not talk the same language and cannot communicate. Using identity to determine right and wrong means not only using race and sex to determine such matters, but taking out millions in one fell swoop.

    Using principle is based on what a single individual does. It is the basis of all law and our Constitution.

    Tor.com allows defamatory posts that take out heterosexuals, men, and whites on a regular basis. There is no opposing view there. There is no fair play in the way the moderators operate. You can get away with far more in the comments section if you’re PC than if not. That is a fact easily documented and which I’ve seen in play dozens of times. Everyone who goes there knows this.

    Tor.com has a heavy presence of intersectional bigots and supremacists who differ from neo-Nazis and the KKK only in identity, not in principle. A.A. George’s post is a mirror image of what one might find at a white supremacist web site. I don’t care if A.A. George pets his cat and I don’t care if David Duke pets his cat or hugs his kids.

    The moderators are well aware of the dissatisfaction of the other side and why they’re dissatisfied and they have proven over and over again they don’t care. They simply think they’re right and that straight white men comprise a racist patriarchal hegemony and there’s and end to it.

    I don’t care if the moderators are nice people who pet their cat. They are mainstreaming hate speech and from within an institution with influence and credibility. Multiply that across the SFF community and America itself and it’s no surprise we have Trayvon Martin and Ferguson. I hold the PC responsible for these racist witchhunts and inflammatory rhetoric which, as in the typical case of GenCon, are based on zero evidence. The sole evidence is a demographic plus skin equals racism. The PC are creating tension where none should exist, and letting the very weird obsessions of radical feminism push SFF out of SFF and make the entire community an analogue to NOW, GLAAD and the NAACP.

    Eff that and eff everyone who supports it.

  93. So, there I was, looking at the Tor.com policies and I decided I should add my two cents. I posted this:

    Post number 82 (deleted)

    I’m afraid I have to respectfully request that this post be removed due to its lack of adherence to your policies:
    1. Treat everyone with respect.
    2. Not use language that is prejudiced or phobic (including but not limited to comments on race, sex, sexuality, nationality, ethnicity, religion, class, etc.). Note: this also applies to web links—links to pages which contain hateful, prejudiced, or phobic language or content which otherwise violates the policies outlined on this page will be unpublished.
    “The problem is that white people…“ – A.A. George
    Any statement judging a race as a whole is racist.
    Racism defined:
    1: a belief that race is the primary determinant of human traits and capacities and that racial differences produce an inherent superiority of a particular race
    2: racial prejudice or discrimination
    This entire post is based upon a racially prejudiced presupposition that “white people” are racist. I find it both lacking in respect for me as an individual (1) and prejudicial against anyone with a skin tone light enough to describe them as white (2)which can be people from many ethnic backgrounds due to our global intermingling. It violates two of your policies and I would like for it to be removed as soon as possible.

    and it was responded to:

    84. Theo16
    Thursday August 21, 2014 09:52am EDT
    Hard to argue with GIB there. But the whole tone of the article suggests that the guiding editorial hand doesn’t see that there’s any debate to be had on the subject. There is an attempt to use personal experience and anecdote to support the theory that gamers are too homogenous and therefore unwelcoming to others, but it’s based on a belief in certain “truths” about race which are actually matters of opinion.

    Then when I respectfully asked why my post was deleted, I got this from their posting site:

    You are not allowed to post.

    For simply pointing out that their own bloggers do not follow their own guidelines I have been banned from posting, even though others agree with me. And here I thought that I spent two decades in the U.S. Army to allow freedom of speech in America. Apparently that only applies if you agree with the right people.

    1. Please don’t confuse getting banned from a private forum for a free speech violation.

      You have a right to free speech, on public property, or on private property that you are not trespassed from. They trespassed you.

      They have a right ( and maybe a duty ) to be dumbfucks.

      1. Please don’t confuse getting banned from a private forum for a free speech violation.

        While this is true, there’s a meme (hate that term for “a graphic to which some bit of text ostensibly making a point has been added” but it seems to be the term) I’ve seen that one difference between pro-gun boards and anti-gun boards is that the pro-gun boards don’t feel the need to delete/ban differing opinions.

        The topic in that meme was “guns” but, really, it’s applies all across the right/left divide.

    2. Leftwingers believe all people should have freedom of speech. But your speech shows that you aren’t a person, you’re a disease, so your speech can and should be suppressed.

      Understand it now?

    3. I think the unwritten rule in a lot of forums is “Thou shalt not mention Moderation nor refer to any posts that have been moderated.” They like to believe they have an invisible hand, and calling them on it is to bring down their wrath.

      The corollary to this is, any comment that starts “I bet you’ll delete this but…” is answered “You win. *delete*”

  94. If you want to know the true meaning of “supercilious,” listen to this Tor.com podcast featuring N.K. Jemisin and Kate Elliot. They go after “straight white guys,” read the minds of millions of them and the results are surprisingly not good. Elliott and Jemisin are not racist, they see their own bias, white men don’t, end of story. Somehow that’s all anti-racist. I urge you all to listen to this bit of racial profiling about how bad racial profiling is. To say they’re daffy examples of confirmation bias is an understatement.

    “There’s some inherent white supremacy… just, throughout American society,” says Jemisin.

    Jemisin claims “they don’t have a problem with, y’know, an entire race of people being depicted as a single personality basically.”

    Hahahaha. No. “They” sure as hell don’t but “they” sure as hell just did. And “they” have names: Elliott and Jemisin. Their “they” are straight white men” – no names required. I just love that kind of Orwellian stuff while they claim to know what’s going on in the minds of 230 million white Americans with as much facility as they would never do so for 40 million black Americans. There’s no principle in the minds of people like that, just a compass that always points true white.

    http://www.tor.com/blogs/2014/08/rocket-talk-episode-23-kate-elliott-and-nk-jemisin

    After listening to that, and imagining it as a post, one doesn’t have to be a genius to figure out why Tor so heavily moderates their posts. Anyone could tear apart the racism and sexism in that anti-racist anti-sexist podcast in two seconds.

    Oh, those white men. When will they ever learn.

  95. At the last convention I was at, I am pretty sure I was one of the most liberal people there (Larry Correia was there as a guest, BTW). I’m not a SJW or a conservative hater or an idiot – I’m just a former libertarian/conservative who is now a little left of center.

    I spent most of the con playing board games (sorry, Larry – I hadn’t read your books yet or I would have mingled around more – good stuff). I’m not saying this in support of the Tor.com author’s point, but one of the guys I was playing with was a pretty obnoxious, no social skills, racist (he was also a hard-core conservative, but I won’t hold that against him except for his intolerance of other views and assumption that everyone thought the same). I just ignored most of what he said and turned the conversation to other topics (usually the game at hand).

    My point (if I have one) being: you can play games with other people even if you don’t agree with them and wouldn’t associate with them in other socials contexts. We had a great time playing games, not a great time discussing politics.

  96. So I just checked the comment thread to George’s post over at Tor.com this morning.

    Out of 90 responses, only 68 survived the selective editing of the mods. Many of the “surviving” posts were either openly edited by the moderators, or were themselves snarky asides posted by the mods about how dissenters supposedly didn’t meet Tor.com’s arbitrary standards of conduct. At least one of those was a direct, barely-veiled shot at this very blog.

    Whatever they want over at Tor.com, it sure the heck isn’t “debate.” Indeed, in the case of some of the mods over there, if it weren’t for double standards they wouldn’t have any at all.

    1. Meanwhile, here we have 4 times as many comments and I’ve edited zero. Of the ones who’ve disagreed with me I’ve left them up, refuted a few, and would welcome more.

      So much for wanting a “conversation”.

      1. How can I disagree with the assertion that GenCon isn’t racist?

        Hmm, there are enough RPG rules that give mechanical advantages to races.

        I do love to do bizarre things with the rules, and am not always around people who care for it.

        So, either GenCon does not encourage such, and it is hard to find cooperative sorts, or more likely, I could have found many people who really enjoy that stuff. I didn’t attend, so it is easy to fill out the rest of the grievance mad libs.

      2. To Leftards, “Have a conversation” generally translates out to “shut up and take it while I tell you how horrible you are”.

  97. I forgot to mention Jemisin claims the reason people are always recommending and reading epic fantasy like Brandon Sanderson, Joe Abercrombie, Rothfuss, Ericson, etc. is because it’s “comfort food fiction” because they’re people raised on “media” that “embraces white male power fantasies… in which, y’know the white guys do everything” and “of course you’re going to want that in your fantasy fiction too.”

    “The names that get mentioned are themselves white guys, they are white guys writing white guy power fantasy and, and, that is what a lot of readers are really just kinda… that’s really just all they want.”

    Jemisin claims she’s miffed white writers depict non-whites as a “uniform culture” while she acts as if whites grew up as clones.

    Elliot says it’s true for SF too and she agrees with calling it “comfort reading.” Elliot hilariously mentions “…good vs. evil with the white and the black hats, to use a term that has, ah, perhaps, some racial coding…”

    Jemisin admits that Ann Leckie’s Ancillary Justice has been “stripped of the male power fantasy… which is what that story managed to do successfully.”

    She continues that “we think of white supremacists as the people that… put on hoods…”

    I agree. All this nonsense they are nice people and pet their cats isn’t the issue. A supremacist is a supremacist. Too bad Elliott and Jemisin can’t imagine non-whites, women or gays can be supremacists. The notion they’re not human like that is mind-bogglingly stupid.

    1. For that matter, have either of those two actually read anything by Brandon Sanderson? White male power fantasy? In what universe?
      In the Mistborn trilogy, the most powerful character for most of the series–is–le gasp–a female.

      1. Oh, in the Wheel of Time, which Sanderson finished, the might overseas Empire that is introduced in the second volume turns out to have a black family as its ruling dynasty. And since the Empire was founded by a white family, that means that they got the throne through intrigue and outcompeting whatever dynasty had it before them. The peoples of that Empire come in all races, btw.

        Said Empire looks to be in a good position to conquer the area where the novel takes place, the Westlands, whose inhabitants are very white. Even the barbarians on the Borderland are white.

        Note that this is all part of the world Robert Jordan set up.  Note also that the series draws on Arabic, Hindu, and Chinese mythology, religion, and philosophy for its background.

        Concerning sex, note that Jordan set things up so that the central problem of the series ultimately turns out to be something that can only be solved by a team of men and women.

        But Jemisin and Elliot are correct that this is “comfort reading.” ALL fiction read for enjoyment is “comfort reading.”

      2. They are straight out saying it’s white comfort reading, not just comfort reading. And no they don’t have to read the books. Merely being white is a where-there’s-smoke-there’s-fire routine the PC never stop using with Golden Age “racist” SF they’ve obviously never read.

      3. But…but…you’re not supposed to comfortable while reading. You’re supposed to be Confronted With Serious Issues of the Day.
        Never mind the fact that we already have to deal with this stuff in public, we’re apparently supposed to deal with it every waking moment as well.
        For that matter, if these people had their way, we’d be dealing with this stuff in our dreams.

  98. Moderator comment at Tor.com: “Note: Comment edited by moderator. As mentioned earlier in the thread, links to articles that attack and belittle our bloggers and use prejudiced and phobic language to mock our readers is the right of anyone who wants to respond in such a way, but we will not allow links to content that we consider to be abusive. If you want to take part in the discussion on this site, do not be rude, dismissive, or insulting.”

    Prejudiced and phobic? Really? I guess that’s why they took away the link, so that people couldn’t see for themselves.

    1. Prejudiced and phobic? You mean like their original article?

      But to be fair, I was rude, dismissive, and insulting, but I tend to rudely dismiss and insult people who engage in vile slander against thousands of innocent people. 🙂

    2. I agree. Constantly stereotyping me as a sexist racist gets the white finger pointed back at them ☜ plus a white unhappy face ☹ a black cloud ☁ a skull and crossbones ☠ and a scissors to cut their own evil hearts out. ✄

  99. Let’s be clear– “Social Justice Warriors” are killjoys who want to prevent fun, thought, words, ideas, and just getting along. They are the penultimate racists who pretend that only white males are racist. Everybody is racist to some extent– but especially SJWs.

  100. Larry, with regards to the whole sombrero thing, my wife and I have been arguing for a week or two now. Do you have an order of precedence for ethnic headgear to tell us which hat goes on top of the pile? Or am I going to have to mount horns and feathers on a tam and wear that for my easy identification as a Scotch-Irish guy with Viking and Cherokee and and Apache blood? And since I grew up as lower-class redneck (I swear, My Name is Earl could have been a documentary about the town I grew up in), should I mount a couple of beer can holders on top of all that for easy socioeconomic class identification? And what would people of British descent wear?

    1. Last I checked, English descendants can have Viking helmets (sans horns-they just look silly), Centurion guard helmets, Civil War (theirs) lobster pots, Arthurian helms, with a Henry VIII Cap of Maintence, and a trench softcap, depending on when your ancestors fled there for freedom. A tam o’shanter might fit in there, along with a newsboy cap, or a tweed walking cap. Mind you, a pickelhaube would be useful to mount most of the softercaps, as long as you covered it with a top hat. 🙂

      1. I can already tell I’m going to need some neck bracing in order to appease the SJW’s on this. We’re all going to end up looking like Harrison Bergeron.

    2. People of British descent would obviously wear those big black furry hats that guards at Buckingham Palace wear.

      Scottish people could wear those plaid beret-looking things if they want — but they MUST be plaid, or no one will understand they’re Scottish.

      Welsh people are indistinct from other Brits as far as the SJWs care and have to pick between the above two choices.

      1. Since I’m English, Irish, Scotch, Welsh, and German, I guess I’d have to wear one of those furry hats, but with horns on the sides and a green plaid tam o’shanter balanced on the top. And a ‘Hello, My Name is:’ tag with all the vowels removed from my name pinned to the front. That ought to cover it.

    3. CombatMissionary I think you could combine the feathered headress and horned helmet, kind of like that one in that photo of Sitting Bull. Then on top of that wear a tam-0-shanter with a front and back bill (like a deerstalker cap) with a firearm/alcohol/tractor manufaturer logo patch on the front.

  101. I’ve met and spoken with Ajit personally. He is a sanctimonious ass who hid the fact that he was a gamer for years in fear of his professional associates and family finding out. The reason he has become active in the game community recently is that he believes he can ride the gender and race movement to a minor degree of fame and recognition.

    The guy is an asshole using race as a shield, and as a gay black man, it really pisses me off that he is attacking one of the few communities that has always invited me in. Didn’t matter that I liked guys when my Dwarven war-hammer smashed the hell out of skeletons.

    How about you fight legislation and police actions that hold our community back instead of attacking people who, for the most part, already have social anxiety.

  102. “We live in a culture that controls people through a grim hierarchy. Anyone who’s ever been bullied in school knows exactly what it looks like, and how it seeks to keep us in our places; the folks at the top work to establish dominance and power. They are the ones who succeed, because the game is rigged in their favor. When you add onto that hierarchy the place of women in it, where it was only about fifty years ago when women couldn’t buy a house or get a credit card without their husband’s permission, it makes sense for women to make alliances with men who are bullies. Men who are bullies can protect women from other men who target them.”

    The three themes of intersectionalist thought: paranoia, defamation and supremacy. That’s how you win a Hugo nowadays, that’s how you can get a post at Tor.com.

    The thing I love about that paragraph is how it absolves women of making bad choices. If they choose a women-beater it was a right choice. If they choose a good guy that’s right too. In true radical feminist supremacist style women are right when they’re right and right when they’re wrong. Men are just always wrong, especially white men.

    You’d think the author of that piece was Winston Smith angry at his chocorat, because the PC live in a world where the chocorat goes up from 30 grams to 25, and GenCon is as spiritless as Alabama circa 1875. The more we go forward the angrier the PC get.

  103. So D&D is racist ‘cuz this schlub didn’t have the imagination to play characters who weren’t white? I had a character who was a half-elf named Timur (as in Timur-i-Lang) and had claws like Wolverine (the last bit was because the DM had an X-Men obsession). If pasty-white me could come up with a Turco-Mongol half-elf, I don’t see what’s stopping anybody else from pretending to be whatever they want.

    1. That reminds me…

      The old “Expert Dungeons and Dragons” box (the old blue box with a Larry Elmore cover) was set in and around a place called “The Grand Duchy of Karameikos”. TSR eventually released products that covered many of the surrounding nations. Some of the things found in the surrounding nations included…

      – Mongol knock-offs
      – Spanish elves
      – A country for PCs who wanted to play monsters

      There was probably more. But the products were released more than two decades ago, so my memory is somewhat rusty.

      1. Junior, There were 15 separate Gazateers and a boxed set covering Thyatis and Alphatia. Plus additional world expansions covering different areas. Glantri included a organization the Canine Protection League for Werewolves. It had some inspired stuff.

  104. Let me see if I understand this.

    At the convention, a group of people assembled in one place of their own free will to play boardgames. There are no land mines around the entrances or exits. There is no razorwire tanglefoot across the parking lots. So far as I am aware there were no incidents of violence at the con, but I have not looked deeply into the matter.

    And our esteemed friend from Tor is bitching because the crowd is too white for his tastes? Doesn’t want to be around the honkies? Whitey makes him nervous? Is that his problem?

    There are doors all over the convention centers with “EXIT” on them in big electrically illuminated red letters, suggesting a solution of which he could have availed himself, if he was really that upset.

    And I say this as someone who’s been to a few cons and found con culture and certain behaviors I’ve seen on display to be… well, let’s just say that if I attend a con, I do so to visit a friend who might have a booth set up in the hucksters’ room. Perhaps I’m jaded. But I don’t have a dog in this fight.

    It is perhaps mean-spirited of me, I know, but I must ask myself whether he’d rather have spent the weekend in Detroit. Or Ferguson, Missouri.

    1. “At the convention, a group of people assembled in one place of their own free will to play boardgames. There are no land mines around the entrances or exits. There is no razorwire tanglefoot across the parking lots”

      Well there was our Merc 2000 LARP event, but those were all simulated and not at gencon.

  105. Funny, I’m white, straight, married male, and have muddled from lower-middle to middle-middle class my entire life. But my RPG characters have been of every race, color, and both genders. Heck, I used to have girls online gawk when I told them I was a guy playing a female character, because I played her like a person and not a sex object (though I kept her feminine, it was demure). They didn’t know I was a guy until I said.

    To me, making an RPG character is interactive storytelling. And the character I make is one I believe I’d like to tell a story with in that world. That’s all. If PnP, I’ll fashion that within the boundaries of the party at the table. If online, then I learn about the world, and then when I’ve decided what interests me, I’ll make a ‘canon’ character to RP.

    But yeah, racist. Because white. Again.

    YAWWWWWN.

  106. This one cracked me up… I am down 30 pounds this year. Did a round of p90x. I see even a conservative like Larry would discriminate against me at a con.

    “Last year was my first GenCon, and as I explored the convention, I saw almost no one who looked like me.”

    Why? Are you physically fit?

  107. Unrelated, but I AM a (half) Japanese, named Makoto. For the pittance it’s worth, I was not offended xD

    On a related note, when I wish to punch people for the absolute nonsense they spew (if people can be racist without an act of will to consciously treat a man as less than a man on account of his genetic history, then what about white babies who benefit from that fictitious “white privilege”? Are they evil, or is racism not evil? Either is abominable) I must simply remind myself that anyone who believes this lives in a political hell, an illusionary world of torture; and thus out to be pitied and treated with gentle caution. They are probably in real pain, though self-inflicted.

  108. For people so eager to write reams of rhetoric about their theories and knowing they will not be censored here, the fact the PC won’t show up and debate is telling. It’s not like we’re talking about something so esoteric there is no definition for it. We are essentially talking about the same things as law defines.

    What the PC will do is sit on Twitter and their own blogs and talk about how stupid we all are. We are not discussing things that cannot be fixed. This could be fixed in the same way the PC community blackmails conventions into having sexual harassments statements on their websites and even meticulously oversee the exact wording.

    It’s clear the reason we’re having a tussle with Tor.com is because they are willfully violating their own definitions of things like “phobic.”

    All that’s needed is for that same PC community that has harassment definitions to create a definition for the following words that will apply to all: “supremacy,” “racial bigotry,” “sexual bigotry,” “hate speech.”

    Bam! Job done, controversy over. No more wrangling over the word “lady.”

    And here’s one of the most important things: I don’t even care who creates those definitions or what they are as long as they apply to all.

    But here’s the problem for the PC: A.A. George’s post, the movie review of GotG and the Elliot/Jemisin podcast would probably have to come down – just for starters. And if they didn’t, others would have to go up. Posts like the comments Tor.com won’t tolerate. The idea Tor.com is only deleting and banning rudeness is a lie. There are a number of regular commenters there who have never been banned who routinely attack non-PC commenters with vulgar insults who are then themselves banned for reacting. Mere disagreement is enough to get banned at Tor.com and other PC blogs. I’ve even been pre-banned at certain blogs for my comments at The Guardian the Guardian itself didn’t delete.

    The truth is the PC will never accept my proposal. For them to do so would cut too many of their bloggers off at the knees and, not being actual writers, they’d sink out of sight because you only know them because they have mini-careers defaming white straight men. Even writers have carved careers out of my straight white back. Scalzi’s famous “white privilege” post would have to come down, Jim Hines’ meat and potatoes posts would have to stop. The SFWA would have to purge certain posts from their own site. The last two Guest of Honor speeches by N.K. Jemisin and Jim Hines at the Continuum SF convention in Australia would be disallowed, as would most GoH speeches at WisCon. Certain anthologies and kickstarters championed by the PC would not be able to be promoted because of their bigotry. I could go on and on.

    We should be challenging institutions within SF to clean house and put up definitions on their sites that all can benefit from, especially the SFWA. The more they refuse to do so the more they will be seen as the straight up liars, racists, sexists and supremacists I suspect many of them are. The truth is the PC cannot talk about “diversity” without defaming white people, and that’s why their “diversity” is a sham and a cover to attack others, as is their so-called “social justice.”

    Will we end up with the end of SFF’s anti-white, anti-male, anti-heterosexual, anti-Western rants, or at least equal time?

    Keep dreaming. That is precisely why those people are not here. Because they are liars with nothing under the hood and who would lose any debate on the subject. And there’s the great irony and truth: the largest benefactors of hate-speech within SFF are the PC themselves.

  109. I found refuge in Dungeons & Dragons in my freshman year. I could escape who I was in those heroic characters and epic stories. I could be someone I was not. I could be strong. I could be fierce.

    I could be white.

    Wait, so he thinks that only white people can be strong and fierce?

    Also, no version of D&D which I’ve ever played or heard of has rules for the race (in Earth terms) of the characters. So what version was he playing?

    Was it one of the ones where he gets to learn real spells but has to kill himself when his character dies?

    1. “Wait, so he thinks that only white people can be strong and fierce?”

      Well then that whole memory of the Shaka Zulu mini-series must be a lead dust residue fueled hallucination from handling to much ammunition.

      (Hey look at that spell check flags “Shaka” as a misspelling, must be racism!)

  110. It says something that the article has only 69 comments showing, but the numbers of the comments go up to 91. But this is good, in a way. When the other side feels compelled to do something heavy-handed that makes them look bad, it helps us.

    1. Let’s look at the evidence of who really wants a conversation.

      The left side deletes any disagreeable comments. The right leaves all comments, regardless of how disagreeable. The right go over to participate in the left’s discussion, but get deleted. Most of the left don’t bother to post on the right. The right quotes the left and uses their actual words and arguments against them. The left makes up new words and crazy arguments and puts them in the right’s mouth, and then argues against those instead.

      Yep. Never seen that before!

  111. “Cora Buhlert ‏@CoraBuhlert 13h @maureenkspeller It seems LC is heavily invested in GenCon and can’t abide no criticism of it. Which makes me wonder about the con.”

    Welcome to KafkatrapCon. Not liking A.A. George’s post makes people wonder if you’re a racist wanting to cover stuff up. By that standard black folks being angry at being called the n-word proves they may in fact be n-words.

    These folks are out to lunch. I’ve been reading the after-action reports of the Hugos as it were and they can’t figure out why we are frustrated an indifferently written novel like Ancillary Justice swept awards. It’s lot of Orwellian bleating about associating with bigots but which would take out most of the Hugo field if the PC actually respected a definition of the word “bigot,” not to mention themselves for associating with them. It’s the same upside-down targeted use of words Tor.com uses and ignores like a weather vane.

    For all the PC triumphal spotting of bad writing when it comes to Vox Day, somehow they can’t see that if it is writing that panders to intersectional non-white gay feminism like Ancillary Justice.

    Read the opening passages of this Ann Leckie short story at Tor.com from last June for a taste of flat writer’s workshop prose. Compare it to the opening passages to just about any Poul Anderson Flandry of Terra story to understand what’s missing – sheer artistry.

    http://www.tor.com/stories/2014/06/nights-slow-poison-ann-leckie

    Affirmative Actioning someone into the winner’s circle is a good way to kill art not to mention the inadvisability of championing literature that is pointedly admitted by it’s main supporters to have “stripped” away “white male power fantasies.”

    What would we call a literature meant to strip away black fantasies which are stereotypes we’ve concocted out of our own heads? We’ve have words for that but if words can change at will…?

    1. Dear Cora. The only things I’m heavily invested in are truth over lies, logic over feelings, and ammunition.
      Sincerely Larry F. Correia, ILOH
      PS. Fuck off.

      🙂

  112. Tor.com deleted comment #92 and themselves used #93 to close comments and didn’t use an editor but “Management Services,” which I think also runs grape juice machines in Bolivia.

    Thus ends another thrilling episode of As Orwell Turns (In His Grave).

      1. Even funnier. The moderator EDITED some of the comments, because they linked back to sites which got her panties in a wad.

      2. Going back to wondering why I should patronize Tor, ever. Their moderators are trying to be good little web Stalinists. Should make their bosses the Nielsen Haydens very happy.

      3. Apparently, Tor and tor.com are not completely the same thing. However, my feeling is if you’re a business and you franchise your name out to a bunch of ignorant, bigoted hypocrites like the tor.com tools, you deserve a bit of blowback. Maybe more than ‘a bit.’

  113. The best multi-author SF anthologies I ever read were The Hugo Winner Vols. 1-4 and the 3 vol. SF Hall of Fame anthology. Those came about through WorldCon and the SFWA. That’s all done with.

    It’s all done with because the PC are saying we enjoyed those old stories because at best we put the enjoyment of racialist white fantasy trips ahead of art and at worst we were and are straight up racists. The quality of the work in those anthologies speaks for itself. In short, the PC are liars. The PC have no proof of such a thing. I didn’t put up the reply to Buhlert’s Orwellian Tweet about LC:

    “maureen k speller ‏@maureenkspeller 15h @CoraBuhlert I know very little about it but the original (A.A. George Tor.com) article seemed to raise familiar issues in a reasonable way.”

    By “issues” what they always mean is too many white people in one place. Take any single racialist moron like A.A. George, have them walk into a space with a lot of white folks and it’s instant KKK. That’s the “issues” the self-described anti-racist PC have and they never shut up about it.

    In fact the PC are the ones putting radically politicized versions of gay, non-white and women’s identity trips ahead of art and those results also speak for themselves. One need only peruse the past 15 years of WisCon’s Tiptree Awards to see the future of core SFF and also how awful and forgotten are the identity fiction and authors those Tiptree winners represent. One need only look at this year’s Nebula and Hugo flops.

    Generally speaking, the PC of today are artistic and financial flops.

    This is from Brian Aldiss in his history of SF, “Trillion Year Spree” (1986)

    “… a few facts and figures. From 1986.
    Both Foundation’s Edge (1982) and Robots of Dawn (1983) by Isaac Asimov sold over a million copies in the USA alone during 1984.
    Frank Herbert’s Dune series have all had massive printings. In the USA, Dune (1965) is in its 33rd printing with its second publisher with 2,420,892 copies;
    Dune Messiah (1969) in its 47th printing with 2,655,110 copies;
    Children of Dune (1976) in its 23rd printing with 2,445,164 copies;
    God Emperor of Dune (1981) in a 5th printing with 926,000 copies.
    Arthur C. Clarke’s 2010: Odyssey Two (1982) sold more than 2 million copies in the States in 1984 alone.
    Robert A. Heinlein’s The Cat Who Walks Through Walls: A Comedy of Manners (1985) attracted a $1 million advance for the USA alone – an estimated $2 million worldwide. Previous works have had huge printings. Time Enough for Love (1973), for instance, is in a 19th printing with 1,254,100 copies. Friday (1982) had a first US printing of 708,000 copies. (Figures courtesy of Locus.)”

    Say bye-bye to that and don’t ask twice who destroyed that when these morons come out with their sarcastically titled “Women Destroy Science Fiction” Kickstarters. They are not “women” but PC radical feminists and yes they are the ones who destroyed the above. And Ann Leckie’s boosters are boasting of 30,000 copies sold in one year and Scalzi might get double that in a year. Yeah, that’s destroyed all right and it’s not my racism that did it. And keep in mind America has 75 million more people than in 1986 so reduce Scalzi and Leckie by another 25%.

    1. “maureen k speller ‏@maureenkspeller 15h @CoraBuhlert I know very little about it…”

      Well at least we agree about something.

      Of course knowing very little or nothing about any given subject has never been a disqualifier for someone from the left to engage in endless wailing and gnashing of teeth.

    2. Robert Heinlein and Herbert are outliers; the ones who turn up in the book department at Costco.

      We still have outliers like that J.K. Rowling and Suzanne Collins.

      As Niven wrote in N-Space “Science fiction writers didn’t get rich. Robert Heinlein excepted. Kurt Vonnegut excluded”. Million dollar advances have never been the norm.

      There are also more titles being published now than there were when Heinlein and Asimov walked the Earth, and all of the indies.

  114. So has Tor ever begged for forgiveness because they raked in cash based on being purveyors of that ultimate white man’s fantasy the Conan novels? which they printed well into our oh so enlightened 21st century.

    1. I love Jemisin and Elliott. What they’re really talking about with fantasy is as old as Sinbad of Basrah and Odysseus of Ithaca, but in their minds it’s white. What these anti-racists are as much as saying is there is some intrinsic difference between how black and white people think. An odd idea for anti-racists to propagate. The odd stupidity of these people is they cannot figure out those white Americans addicted to their “comfort” whiteness have done more than any country in the world to enable the explosion of the non-Western “foreign films” industry. The PC see what they want to see, because they are morons addicted to race. They can’t understand the virtually all black March Madness is 100 times as popular as the all-white college hockey and baseball playoffs or that Lebron James and Michael Jordan are 1 and 2 all-time most popular male athletes. They just ignore that stuff cuz it doesn’t fit.

      1. What they’re really talking about with fantasy is as old as Sinbad of Basrah and Odysseus of Ithaca, but in their minds it’s white. What these anti-racists are as much as saying is there is some intrinsic difference between how black and white people think. An odd idea for anti-racists to propagate.

        Not only that, but they have in their minds allocated all the fun tropes to “whiteness,” leaving “people of color” stories as boring whining. This hasn’t been done to them by some evil racist outsiders, this has been chosen by the self-proclaimed spokesmen of the “people of color” themselves.

      2. Extreme radical intersectional feminism is practically designed for people with resentful sociopathic mental health issues. The idea they see themselves as removing bias so everyone can live in happiness when the ideology has such a visceral small-minded hatred of men, heterosexuality and ethnic Europeans is too funny to contemplate. And that’s not including the spiritual and moral supremacy they claim as built-in to being a gay, non-white woman or non-Western. The worst PC literally write entire anthologies that are racial/sexual revenge fantasies that make “whiteness” a second-class citizen in history. Catherine Valente says she got the idea for her Hugo-nominated “Six Gun Snow White” as a play on “white,” as in racially. These people are frickin’ obsessed with this stuff.

      3. And what kind of ideology never questions the fact its every argument always unerringly finds whites, men and heterosexuals on the wrong end of those arguments? The PC are daffy.

  115. I read the whole thing, very entertaining. Do you know what I took away from it?

    First, we are all so racist for just enjoying ourselves instead of wallowing in a world of self-flagellation? Everyone needs to immediately stop their enjoyment of live and CONFORM.

    Second, I found where you pulled the name of one of your characters in your first book.

    Third, I had a good chuckle at the image of you removing the swastika tat. Ooops, I must be a racist for not welcoming and understanding diversity?

    I caught you using a double-negative, how’s that for perception? “nobody ins’t”, awkward.

    And finally, I love reading you eviscerating SJW’s.

    “My grandmother’s family is from Poland and her maiden name was Byreika. I don’t think I have any relatives left there. I’m all about shooting Nazis in the face. I had an incident earlier this year where I had to physically leave a place because there was a guy there with a swastika tattooed on his face and it was taking too much of my self-control not to draw my Benchmade and cut it off.”

  116. Interesting how one (thorough, but still only one) post on the subject leads the “Everyone but me is a stupid evil bigot, because they JUST ARE” to start formulating conspiracy theories.

    “He didn’t like being bashed without reason? HMMM, he MUST be UP TO SOMETHING!”

  117. After decades of listening to SJWs and their predecessors complain, I no longer care about their issues and I get really irritated at their whinging. My guilt-o-meter is burned out and the unceasing complaints are driving me further away from their causes.

    Being a victim used to be a very powerful position in our society, but it has been so horribly overused that it is losing its power.

  118. It won’t do any good but this is the email i am sending to the webmaster at tor.com

    P.S. Thank you guys for pointing out that they are not afflieated with tor books.

    webmaster@tor.com
    Blog post
    I just wanted to say I was deeply offended by the racist blog post that broke your own rules, http://www.tor.com/blogs/2014/08/gamings-race-problem-gen-con-and-beyond .

    I enjoyed your website before this… but I do not think I can continue to visit such a racist website.

  119. Here’s more humor from Tor.com. While they review-censored Vox’s nominated story, they are reviewing work by the person behind the most vulgar and overtly racist and sexist blog in the history of the SFF community – Requires Only That You Hate. ROTYH makes Vox and N.K. Jemisin look like rank amateurs.

    ROTYH bullied Catherine Valente online into abandoning her Japanese handle even though she’d lived in Japan.

    What’s interesting is that as this author’s profile has climbed in the PC community, the blog (still up) has apparently been abandoned for months and certain posts scrubbed.

    It’s doubtful Tor.com knows the identity of the person, and I doubt they’d care anyway given the anti-white, anti-heterosexual, anti-male posts they allow. In fact that person was nominated for an award at WorldCon and would probably get a second if their identity were known. The PC dismissed ROTYH’s death threats and racism as “performance rage” and an author, also Hugo-nominated this year, has since scrubbed that defense of ROTYH from their own blog.

    It all makes for yet another charming contrast in upside-down racist anti-racist world. I wonder what Valente thinks of sharing WorldCon honors with ROTYH, or if she is even aware of it?

  120. Jolly Blackburn of Knights of the Dinner Table fame just posted this on his Facebook feed:

    “This year, reaching more than 14% year-over-year growth with a weekend turnstile attendance of 184,699 and unique attendance of 56,614. This number surpasses 2013’s previous record of 49,530 unique attendees. Since 2009, Gen Con’s annual attendance has more than doubled.”

    Oh my God, that’s a lot of racists!!! :-p

  121. Ironic comments are built-in to intersectionalism.

    “Tor.com @tordotcom · Aug 22 This Benjanun Sriduangkaew book is flying under the radar at the moment. Find out more about it: http://www.tor.com/blogs/2014/08/book-review-scale-brite-benjanun-sriduangkaew …”

    “Retweeted by Tor.com Aidan Moher @adribbleofink · Aug 21 Aspiring Writers: @john_chu’s Hugo Award-winning short story was rejected 14 times before he sold it to @tordotcom.”

    “Tor.com @tordotcom · Aug 20 This week on Rocket Talk, @KateElliottSFF and @nkjemisin talk about being aware of bias while writing. Listen here: http://www.tor.com/blogs/2014/08/rocket-talk-episode-23-kate-elliott-and-nk-jemisin …”

    1. Another funny part in that podcast is that Elliott actually grinds her teeth in frustration cuz the whitey menz have women that look like Hollywood startlets in their epic fantasy or something and that’s not real.

      But having gay non-white Amazon women lopping off heads with swords is real cuz history and I got the paintings to prove it, Your Honor.

      Does that mean dragons get eye exams and either crap all over Middle Earth or wear diapers or have indoor plumbing? These are crucial questions in world-building.

      Are Orcs unionized, like Teamsters? Is their leadership by seniority or are they Leninists? What is their economic system? Do Orcs eat for free or do they just forage eating humans like feminist soldiers ate humans during Sherman’s march to the sea? Do Orcs have jobs when they’re not fighting? Is there an Orc laundry? Is that free? Are Orcs Commies?

      Are elves supremacist racists who left cuz of human illegal immigration? Do elves have house and fire insurance? How much do dwarves charge for borrowing money? Do elves have banks or something like professional baseball? They seem pretty boring when you think about it. I’m not surprised they were dying out. Who doesn’t like baseball? I’ll tell you – Commies. Commie elves.

  122. I feel sorry for George.
    If for no other reason than that, he’s going to shit a screaming worm when he finds out what PLANET I come from.
    😀

  123. Tor.com is the gift that never stops giving as this excerpt from a review by Tor’s priestess of lady-worship Liz Bourke shows:

    “Johansen sets her story in a colonised world, but one which the narrative holds to have been empty before the settlers came. In a fictional world where whiteness is the default—so the narrative informs us—it’s impossible not to see this worldbuilding choice as a reflection of uninterrogated imperialist assumptions about race and history. Johansen’s fantasy world is a white, straight, cisgender one…”

    Bourke ends her review by mentioning “Being in the auditorium for Hugo night was a lot like being part of an enormous and welcoming group hug.”

    She fails to mention it was also an unwelcoming and bigoted kick in the hind end to “white, straight, cisgender” men by radical feminism.

    I’m not sure what 770 meant by being the smartest guy in the room but if both Bourke and George agree that using “blackness” in the way they use “whiteness” is racist then they are essentially agreeing with me, however “unintended.” People who want to stand off in the distance and pretend this is all a he-said, she-said might want to start listing the racist quotes from 50 people on the non-PC side of this or admit their so-called neutrality is uninformed to the point of sheer ignorance rather than being an enlightened viewpoint that stands above the fray. I don’t buy the idea that every court case ends in a tie and neither does reality nor court documents. If you have a case, do your research and make it, cuz “posturing” is not an academic footnote or sourcing. Deletion and non-deletion of comments can be sourced and documented. And we have this thing called a dictionary and my “white, straight, cisgender” face is not next to the word “bigotry.

    Also, there are no racially segregated “safer-spaces” in my world. Pointing that out is not “posturing” but a plain fact that gives a pointed insight into the very different mind-set of the two sides.

  124. You must instantly take a selfie of you in a sombrero. You would look maahvelous, dahlink!

    Fair Winds and Following Seas,

    Cap’n Jan

  125. Being a good guy, I scrolled down for the right post to hang this on.

    http://dotclue.org/archives/004452.html

    He quotes from the latest D&D Rule book: (Not sure if quote or blockquote work here)

    You can play a male or female character without gaining any special benefits or hindrances. Think about how your character does or does not conform to the broader culture’s expectations of sex, gender, and sexual behavior. For example, a male drow cleric defies the traditional gender divisions of drow society, which could be a reason for your character to leave that society and come to the surface.

    You don’t need to be confined to binary notions of sex and gender. The elf god Corellon Larethian is often seen as androgynous or hermaphroditic, for example, and some elves in the multiverse are made in Corellon’s image. You could also play a female character who presents herself as a man, a man who feels trapped in a female body, or a bearded female dwarf who hates being mistaken for a male. Likewise, your character’s sexual orientation is for you to decide.

    1. Considering how ‘huge’ the bisexual elf in Dragon Age was (bad pun, sorry) in draw – and sadly yes, a lot of women played the game specifically for the sex part of the story, from the rave reviews I remember glimpsing – it’s funny that the people complaining about the characters in p&p gaming can’t think “Oh, I’ll just make my own character who breaks the status quo!”

      But the thing is, in role playing that’s not a radically new thing. Anti-heroes, characters who thwart the norm make for interesting play as much as the ones who wear every single stereotype and trope like armor yet manage to be interesting in the hands of a skilled player and an equally skilled GM/Storyteller. Drizzt became popular because he bucked the game stereotype yet invited at the same time, people to explore the Underdark. (Hallistra was to me, less interesting than Phaerun, as a character in the later series.) Instead the whiny worms realize that what the