The latest Sad Puppies related stuff

You might have noticed that I’ve not posted much about this topic lately. My original points, that there is political bias in the system, which would result in slander and sabotage, has been pretty well proven. I don’t have much else to add.

Recently a Tor editor said something false and asinine. This is kind of a tradition, but for a bunch of fans this was the final straw. People got really mad (it turns out regular fans don’t like being called neo-nazis) and this time the comments came to the attention of Tor management.

I’ve personally stayed out of this one. I’m used to being lied about by these people. However, it turns out regular fans aren’t. Go figure. 🙂

As far as I’m concerned, this is between Tor and its customers. A bunch of folks have come out to condemn Tom Doherty as a misogynist for trying to protect his company, and more #standwithGallo to double down on her comments about how everybody who disagrees with them politically is a racist, sexist, homophobe. That’s awesome. You guys do far more to prove my original contention than anything I could have ever done on my own.

Here are some articles that I really enjoyed about the topic.

The first is from an author which goes into her personal history to explain why the Tor editor’s comments offended so many people.  I found this one pretty powerful.

https://www.affsdiary.com/shadow/2015/06/10/nazi-is-not-a-term-you-throw-around-lightly/

 

The next is from another author who has traded fire with actual neo-nazis, and I don’t mean argued on the internet fire, I mean literal bullets. In South Africa, Peter put his life on the line to stand up against real actual evil, lost friends, and is still picking shrapnel out of his body.

http://bayourenaissanceman.blogspot.com.au/2015/06/an-open-letter-to-tom-doherty-of-tor.html

 

I recommend both of those to put this latest business in perspective.

On a related note, this one was sent to me yesterday. It is a pretty good summary from somebody who wasn’t involved. http://www.contrapositivediary.com/?p=3432

 

People keep asking me to fisk the latest dumb attack articles, but it is all the same regurgitated nonsense. The Gawker one in particular was just asinine. But I’ve said what I need to say for now, and in the meantime these books aren’t going to write themselves.

Book Signing in Albuquerque, New Mexico, July 11th
Recommend book stores in Albuquerque

161 thoughts on “The latest Sad Puppies related stuff”

  1. I thought that Mr. Doherty’s response was fairly mild and completely typical, all things considered. I’m rather shocked that there are people condemning him and claiming that it was misogynist, hateful, etc.
    The people supporting Gallo, who really did make a mistake by associating her views with her company’s views, are really out there. Unless of course they think by being so reactionary will keep Gallo from losing her job.

    Gallo made a mistake, and she has to realize it and should be doing what she can to minimize the uproar. Unless of course she doesn’t see that she did anything wrong at all, in which case I suspect she’s going to get in trouble again, and that won’t go well for her.

    1. I suspect some of them are angry because he had the temerity to point out that Sad Puppies are neither racist, sexist, or homophobic.

  2. I was asked to fisk that one too. My reply was that Gawker fisks wind up being repetitive, because the site is less original than Clamps.

    1. BTW, Clamps has been VERY active at Brad’s under the names “the Chevalier de Graz” and “Pyotr” and “Pieter de Graz”. Brad nuked most of his comments, but was kind enough to leave up Clamps’ artwork. 🙂

    2. Yeah, I was asked too.

      I declined as well for similar reasons. I mean, it’s Gawker. There’s better fish to fry.

  3. The best recruitment tool for SP is the anti-puppies.

    At this point I don’t think there really is all that much more to be said.

    The night of the Hugos is going to be interesting…

    1. Jeff, it was a good unbiased article. Thank you.

      Heads up. You’ve got an infamous troll in your comments. Alauda is known around these parts as Clamps. He’s literally insane. And he’s a creepy weirdo stalker. That’s not an exaggeration.

        1. Alauda, CLAMP, and many many other online alias. Also know as Andrew Marston, whose hobbies seems to be writing extremely bad prose and stalking Asian women.

          1. He also posts his art, which isn’t too good. Though he accidentally lessened the effect by posting some of Drow’s art since he thinks her art is horrible and it isn’t. 🙂

          2. He was volcanically hoist on his own petard when he demanded objective feedback on both his and my pieces.

          3. Oh, please where can I find the link to that particular story? I have been waiting patiently to see what the artwork of ‘the greatest swordswoman in all of allundalllanaescu’ would be like. I mean it’s got to be his Mary-Sue anyway.

          4. Saying that Andrew P. Marston’s art “isn’t too good”is like saying that Pluto “isn’t too hot.”

      1. I moderate all comments from unknowns, especially angry, hateful, or creepy ones. Sarah Hoyt warned me about him. I ban haters without hesitation or regret.

    2. You’re right about the “anti-Puppies” vs “SJW.” The first seem mostly opposed to the slates, the latter are Third Wave feminists.

        1. … Have to say, Clampsy is too much of a coward. He’ll go after me, my friends, threaten my children and harass my husband, but he won’t go after someone who has the ability to REALLY investigate him.

          But I can daydream.

          1. Wrong way round. We’re honored to live in the same world that your father lived in. He actually made this world a better place.

      1. I ran across this article
        http://aresgutierrez.blogspot.com.au/2008/04/journalists-live-colourful-lives.html

        The comments have a remark from my father’s best friend’s daughter, and one from myself.

        Mind, my dad was also subject to the strangest criticisms. I ran across a forum once where there were complaints that my father went around in second hand suits, being made by his detractors at the Department of Foreign Affairs.

        This was true. One of the military attachés from the Embassy in Paris was going home, and didn’t want to bring home his winter weight suits. He offered them to my Dad, who was happy to accept them. They were just a touch too big, but only very slightly so – they just needed to be tightened around his waist, and when your jacket is buttoned closed, you don’t notice at all. Dad didn’t care – he happily wore them because that meant he didn’t have to spend so much on winter weight suits as he’d been planning to, and could buy more books. I remember him bringing them back to our apartment in Rue de Charonne and being delighted with the gift. He took us out scouring Paris for books that weekend, one of our favorite activities.

        The criticism was, ‘it’s an embarrassment’ that he was going around in second hand suits, and the implication was that he was ‘too poor’ to afford suits, that such a high-ranked official ‘should have had more pride’.

        Dad had lots of pride. He was proud to accept the suits which were a gift from someone he considered a friend while he worked there, from someone who clearly knew him well enough that the attaché knew my father would not be insulted in being offered the suits. Dad in fact said that the man had good taste in suits, and if I am not mistaken, the suits were tailored. It would have been a crying shame to have the suits simply thrown away.

        I remember showing the article to my Dad, who laughed about it, and shared it to his subordinates, who… may have been less than amused at the ridiculous potshots being taken at ‘Amba Tony.’ I couldn’t find the site after a while.

        The other complaint was that he didn’t have a PhD or a doctorate, just a pre-med degree. Yep, Dad was a pre-med student. He didn’t take up journalism, he didn’t take up political science. Everything he knew about history, science and the rest was completely and entirely self taught. He was so ridiculously well read that he became fast friends with Senator Blas Ople, who Dad said was even MORE well read than he – and described Senator Ople’s car, which had books in the trunk and books in the back seat, so he would sit in front next to the driver and bodyguard. (That bodyguard got curious and started reading the books too, and on being caught, thought he’d be fired, and his boss was instead DELIGHTED that he was reading!)

        It was Blas Ople who defended Dad against that complaint, by retorting that they were free to have a knowledge off with my Dad vs any of the PhDs and Doctors of, and Professors. (Nobody took him up on that.)

    1. I read your post, it was excellent. I forwarded it to my friends as a great read on the subject.

    2. I posted a link on Facebook. It was a marvelous article, and the photo of your father in the field of flowers was spectacular.

      1. Thank you so much.

        I vaguely remembered having a class photo of myself when I was a tot in East Berlin. I am the ONLY person there who isn’t of European descent. We all wore Jungpioniere scarves. I couldn’t find it though. If I ever do, I’ll post it.

  4. Oh, and according to Scalzi, Sad Puppies feel “entitled”. Also, according one of the anti-Puppies (too lazy to look his name up) said: “They want things to stay the same. They don’t want change.”

    Yeah, Sad Puppies wants the status quo. That’s why we nominated the same bunch of people who always get on the ballot, right?

    And for the morons at the 770 Club who might be cherry-picking comments, that was sarcasm.

    1. The fools are still using terms like “change” as if it is always positive. In this scenario it’s like we kept having a steak dinner every year and they said “I’m tired of steak”. So now, year after year we have been eating crap sandwiches and they keep trying to tell us how much better they are than steak.

    2. I was just realizing this… I DO feel entitled. What I feel entitled TO is my own sovereignty. Particularly in the moral sphere, I refuse to give up my own judgement to others. I refuse to knuckle under and conform, no matter what the laudable cause.

      And I’ll agree with a lot of their “laudable cause”. But I see no way that what they DO is promoting inclusion or diversity or equality. It *certainly* does not promote “live-and-let-live.” And since I feel utterly entitled to My Own Judgement… here I stand.

  5. The past two months have been stunning. The SJWs have managed to actually increase their agitation over the past two months rather then let it simmer down. They don’t know when or how to shut up and now their hypocrisy has been put on full display. It would be “dirty pool” for Ms. Gallo to fired while they gleefully and enthusiastically cheer every time one of their opponents has their livelihood destroyed. If I cared enough, I would go mine these people’s cyber foot prints to see what they had to say about Memories pizza a few months ago. Odds are they all were gleeful that the business had to shut down and disappointed that a kick starter campaign raised money for them.

    When Hugo night rolls around the results will be pretty interesting no matter which way the chips fall. If No Award dominates the award there will be a schism in the SJW ranks between those who see it as the ruination of their award and those who see it as justification for their outrage. If the puppies slate dominates, the amount of butt-hurt over the next 5 months will be hilarious. Twitter’s servers might actually melt down from all of the rage tweets.

    1. The last 3 three years have been stunning. We have repeatedly aired our grievances which have instead been ignored as confirmation we are racists, misogynists and homophobes. You cannot talk to these people – they are an odd coalition that ranges from fanatically naive and racist to people with genuine mental health issues. We have tried to talk and they have banned and deleted from the beginning and dug their heels in even more now.

      You have two choices which are much alike: you can boycott Tor and continue to disrupt the Hugos in the hopes you can bring enough pressure to bear to boot this stinking ideology out. Or you can walk away and still boycott Tor. The difference is in circulating a petition authors sign stating they will never accept a Hugo nomination. That in itself would delegitimize the Hugos to the point they would have even less credibility than they do now, and probably never regain it.

      I have long since had enough of these people. The more I factually document their behaviors the more they lie, ignore it or chalk it up to my madness. But I’m just sane enough to remember the impact Ray Bradbury’s 3 anti-Jim Crow stories had on me and stand up to something that was real. These shits act like they’re being hosed by Jim Crow cops and no one’s doing jack shit to them. They’re just fucking idiots and I’m tired of trying to figure out why. Virtually 100% of their arguments have been repeatedly exposed as hot air and yet they cling to them as tightly as ever. Hit them in the pocketbook, ignore the Nebulas, ignore the Hugos. Continue to expose their routine insanity which has now gone to transblack. I am tired of listening to this race and gender bullshit. You’d think that was the real genre.

  6. What I find unbelievable is that some of the Tor folk have doubled down on stupid. Moshe Feder – consulting editor at Tor – publicly identifies himself as such, then says, any comments on his FB wall are his alone and don’t reflect Tor. That’s what I mean by doubling down on stupid – because he then goes on to state that Vox is in fact a neo-nazi and that Irene Gallo was correct in all particulars of her statement. You would think, with even a modicum of reading comprehension, as editors should require – that he wouldn’t say that. Instead – we all read her statement wrong. I read all this almost 4 hours ago – I’m still shaking my head at the utter level of idiocy achieved.

    1. He figure he’s high enough on Tor food chain, and is the editor for two of their highest profile authors (Brandon Sanderson and Dan Welles) that he’s untouchable.

      1. If he is that high up on the food chain, then Tor will go on escalating until they drive SP to announce a boycott of them. At which point I predict that Tor’s parent publisher will see the need to clean house at Tor, and if we’re lucky that will include the Nielsen-Haydens.

        1. I doub that the puppies and the anti-puppies combined represent enough people to affect Tor much by a boycott. From the glowing reviews that John C. Wright, Scalzi, and others have given, Gallo’s designs help move product.

          1. Well… They did. Now I
            wonder, is it possible for her to be professional and provide an excellent cover for an unrepentant neo nazi racist homophobe?

          2. reposting a comment I made at TL Knighton’s:

            I don’t call for her sacking. A competent HR makes that decision and the sales department will look at that hard and start paying attention to sales.

            I stated in my blogpost that I felt bad for Tom Doherty, since the people working the brand he clearly loves have no love for his house, and are willing to behave badly on behalf of their ideology, and no longer have the capacity in at least keeping it out of their promotional posts and discussions which are representative of the company AND the work that they personally do, and no longer bother to keep informed.

            That is why there is that difference between Brendan Eich, and Irene Gallo.

            Eich did a small, private donation. He should not have been fired. His beliefs did not interfere with his work atmosphere until it was dragged to light for a witch hunt. As far as I can tell, it doesn’t affect his hiring practices, or discriminate against gays – but he was punished and dragged across the coals for it.

            Gallo made her remarks – as you already addressed. Others have noted that her facebook seems to be used primarily as a promotional venue. So while she may have been doing so privately, or on her own time, that the FB page is used that way means that it is still seen by the public as part of the Tor brand name as well as being one of the interactive aspects of the company’s face. While in of itself is a good thing – fans like this sort of stuff-, this means she should have been more circumspect in her words. This is especially true as she works to promote the works of others in their primary medium: books.

            Thus she should not, in professional ethics publicly express the sentiment that the authors you publish are ‘reprihensible.’ This brings into question whether or not the work of those authors, which her company publishes, was given the proper attention a book should be given, whether her clearly personal opinions got in the way of presenting the product in the best possible way as she should work on all such projects, or was it given just ‘good enough’ treatment? It is her professionalism now in question because she has shown she cannot separate her personal opinions from those to be displayed in the workplace.

            John C. Wright had every praise for her work until she lashed out. Understandably, given that, her ability to work with him now is visibly compromised, and reasonably I expect that she should not work with his books, nor that of Kevin J. Anderson’s. Other authors who are either conservative, right-wing, or have different opinions -I am taking Mr. Doherty at his word – may now worry that they must self-censor personal opinions in order to receive the attention their books deserve in order to get them out into the market.

            If she had been able to display Eich’s professionalism, expressed such sentiments on her own non-work-related blog or FB, then I could have said ‘That’s her personal opinion, and doesn’t display it in the workplace.’

            Brendan Eich lost his position because of the backlash of his own personal beliefs, despite it clearly not affecting his professional conduct. The same people who would have cheered this are defending Gallo by saying what should have been applied to him: “that is her PERSONAL opinion, on her PRIVATE FB.” Where then, that consideration for Eich and his donation to a conservative charity?

            It is clear that it is not consistency in ethics nor professionalism that matters, but which ‘side’ is picked – ‘progessive’ …versus ‘not progressive.’

            If, as anti-Sad Puppies (ASPs, because that’s easier to type) have been claiming ‘there’s been no hostility towards non-leftist authors, then certainly this outburst made during an advertisement post for Tor will create that atmosphere that prompted Larry Correia to bring about Sad Puppies 1 and 2.

            They are proving his point again and again – and he already turned down his Hugo nomination, and if I remember correctly, has refused all future nominations henceforth.

          3. Back in the 90s and early oughts, I ran editorial for the largest book publisher in Arizona. As best I can tell, we had revenues about what Tor has now. (Arizona is not exactly Manhattan, and halleluiah for that!) We had a code of conduct for employees that emphasized professionalism. I made certain things very clear: Alienate our authors, distributors, or major suppliers, and your job is over. I won’t call for Gallo’s dismissal. I will say, however, that in most publishing organizations (or most companies generally) she would already be gone.

          4. I’m of two minds (or six) about this. My natural instinct which predates this white privilege nonsense is to leave people alone and let them say what they want. The first problem there is the SJW habit of forcing people out of places and thereby setting the precedent themselves. The far worse problem is I never in a thousand years expected a hate speech movement to arise in SFF. I just never saw that coming and I frankly don’t know what to do about it. It’s hard to marginalize supremacists by leaving them in possession of the field. That is its own dangerous precedent, but puts us all in a fight we’d probably rather not fight. After all, this is SFF, not Mississippi Burning plus the girls.

          5. I just googled “Tor cover art.” None of it is actually repellent (anyone remember the Signet covers of the 1970s?), but I don’t find any of it particularly attractive.

            If Tor wanted to maintain the style, any new hire should be able to continue it without difficulty.

        2. I already dropped the stuff I was tracking on my own purchase list, and that included one author of whom I have bought every novel he’s produced.

          There are books I’ll miss, that I’d like to read. But i make enough that I’ll only read what I’m willing to buy, and right now I’m not willing to buy from Tor.

          1. Thankfully, there is still a very active used book market. Most mid sized cities have at least one used book store. With patience those books you now choose to forego will turn up, not only at a discount, but purchased with the knowledge that none of the sale price will ever go to the publisher. Or the author for that matter, but if you feel so inclined there are always other ways to reward a writer directly.

          2. My own city has about 1/4 the used bookstores it did ten years ago….

            Hell, if Tor turns around it’ll be easy enough to buy the books later new.

          3. Aside from being an endangered species, usedbook stores are a regional thing. I don’t know about east of the Mississippi or the rest of the world, but — in the Mountain West and Great Plains, every wide spot in the road has a usedbook store, and by the time a town achieves a stoplight there are two or three. Contrast this with California, where usedbook stores are far and few between (fewer in all of Los Angeles than in just half of either Wyoming or Montana, which have a fraction of the population).

            I say this as one who used to plan cross-country routes around stops at usedbook stores. 🙂

            Whether the lack in CA is the greater variety in entertainment or the lower literacy level, I leave as an exercise for the reader.

          4. Books are the same price all across the US, but the average wage isn’t. Comparatively, I have to pay more than twice as much as a Californian for the same book.

          5. In Los Angeles and NYC, in my experience, used book stores are a sign of cultural vigor and economic ill-health. They don’t generate a lot of revenue compared to a chain store, and so they locate and thrive in areas where rents are cheap and accommodation, um, “atmospheric”. As the commercial vigor of a city improves, property values increase, rents go up, leases are not renewed, and your used book stores get driven into the economic fringe neighborhoods or out of business.

    2.         Did you notice how condescending his post was?  Gallo is a “visual artist”, and thus “writes spontaneously.”  She’s not actually an adult that might be responsible for her words.  If you substitute ‘woman’ for “visual artist,” the contempt Feder holds Gallo in would be clear to all.

              But even worse is the way he insults people’s intelligence.  Does he think we can’t read?  The notorious post started out “Making Sad Puppies sadder…Proud to have a tiny part in this,” followed by a link to a Tor page announcing the publication of a book, THE GEEK FEMINIST REVOLUTION.

              The first comment on Gallo’s post was a question about who the Sad Puppies were, from a Canadian illustrator who seems to write English as a Second Language.  Gallo promptly replied with the toxic nonsense:

              “There are two extreme right-wing to neo-nazi groups, called the Sad Puppies and the Rabid Puppies respectively, that are calling for the end of social justice in science fiction and fantasy.  They are unrepentantly racist, sexist and homophobic.  A noisy few but they’ve been able to gather some Gamergate folks around them and elect a slate of bad-to-reprehensible works on this year’s Hugo ballot.”

              So, Gallo went out of her way to insult the ‘Sad Puppies’, expanded on it, was insulting when people called her on it on her Facebook page.  How does Feder describe this?  She was posting “an explanation about the Hugo controversy” making an “off-the-cuff statement,” and it was “just one person’s opinion,” which we should ignore.

              To prove how idiotic he was, Feder deleted the statement from his Facebook page, but not till Vox Day and Mike Glyer had copied and posted it.  Feder’s entire statement, for the record:

              “As far as I can tell, Irene didn’t start her personal blog page intending to malign any Puppies, either Sad or Rabid.  Rather, she responded in a spontaneous, unpremeditated way to a request for an explanation about the Hugo controversy, in the process accurately describing Theodore Beale as a neo-Nazi.  Since her answer to the query was so brief, the Sad Puppies were mentioned in close proximity to that description, which understandably left them very uncomfortable.  (Eric Flint’s analysis concluding that this was all a deliberate subtle ploy on Irene’s part to use guilt by association against them gives her too much credit.  Like many visual artists, she is a spontaneous writer and not a calculating one.)

              “Irene has never been known for her diplomacy — I say that as someone who’s knocked heads with her more than once on work-related matters — but I think the reaction to her off-the-cuff statement is more extreme and over-the-top than the statement itself.  After all, in the end, it was just one person’s opinion, readily ignorable by those who differ with it.  (In fact, it went unnoticed for _weeks_ until someone decided to weaponize it.)  It’s _trivial_ compared to Brad and Larry’s premeditated, organized effort to violate a social compact of 60 years standing. If you want to express outrage, that’s where it should properly be applied.”

              So, calling people “unrepentantly racist, sexist and homophobic,” falsely claiming we’re “calling for the end of social justice in science fiction and fantasy,” and saying we nominate “bad-to-reprehensible works” is nothing to get excited about.  What people should be outraged at is doing openly what Tor used to do secretly.  Where does Tor get these clowns?

      1. It is not one person’s opinion. We have had anyone not on board with this privilege/gender/race stuff called woman-hating, homophobic racists from across the spectrum of SFF’s institutions for more than 3 years now. How many comments do you think have been deleted at Tor alone just for saying “I don’t hate women, gays or PoC”? Video gaming too.

        “I’ve always been uncomfortable with the way Feminist Frequency picks on the white… cisgendered, heterosexual establishment because any push-back can be easily dismissed as racism, sexism, or some sort of phobia.” – Liana Kerzner, Gamergate journalist

        SJWs are as on the same ideological page as a Southern Baptist convention and they are dug in like ticks across SFF.

    1. Hey, Michaelbrent, I thought your name sounded familiar; I read “Darkbound” a couple of months ago – nicely chilling, just the perfect thing to read before tucking in for the night – and “Twisted” is waiting in the “to-read” file on the ol’ Kindle as I type this.

      To allude to something you wrote in your piece: One of the toughest things about the whole Sad Puppies imbroglio for me – and to be clear, I’m a Sad Puppy supporter who’s feeling a tad rabid these days, after some of the hate being slung around – is that I find myself hugely disappointed in authors I formerly respected, even to the point of now feeling revulsion towards them.

      As a reader and fan I have no problems with authors who disagree with me or even criticize me for holding a differing viewpoint. I do, however, draw the line at open contempt…and contempt is what I’m seeing from a bunch of people on the other side of Puppygate. And I’m just not going to waste my hard-earned dollars and scarce time reading people who think I’m somehow an untermensch for not sharing their elitist, straitjacketed worldview.

      True diversity is more than skin deep, after all. Whatever happened to that “content of your character” stuff?

      I’m not quite to the point of completely boycotting Tor – several of my favorite authors do write for them, including Brandon Sanderson, John C. Wright and David Weber (the “Safehold” series) – but I will say that I’m now pretty skeptical of some of their up-and-coming talent, considering that people like Irene Gallo, Moshe Feder, the Nielsen-Haydens, and Liz Bourke were doing the vetting.

  7. I’m another author who’s had it with being called a neo-Nazi. No more Tor books for me — not until Gallo issues a real apology.

    (Further thoughts about it on my site which is my name .com if anyone’s interested)

  8. Gallo’s screed and those of her defenders are fascinating from a psychiatric POV. Consider how they invented a strawman and then continue to hurl invective at it with frothingly maniacal intensity. One can discern, upon objective reflection, that this is what George Orwell was trying to describe with the “Two Minute Hate.”
    The Psychiatric medical community will need to come to grips with this problem. Progressivism will hopefully be categorized quite soon as what it truly is – a profound mental disorder. Once this is done, treatments and therapies can then be developed. The need is clearly urgent – these people need help.

    1. It’s a real form of mental illness:

      “A mental disorder whose symptoms include lashing out in aggressively verbal or violent ways has recently been found to be nearly twice as common as previously thought. The research has sparked debate within the psychological community about the diagnosing of a mental illness whose symptoms overlap with normal, if undesirable, human behaviors, as well with as symptoms of other disorders.

      “Intermittent explosive disorder (IED), which is characterized by flying off the handle and overreacting to stress, was first recognized by the American Psychiatric Association in 1980. Now, as the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), which is the book psychologists use when making diagnoses, is undergoing evaluation and revision, some are calling for new criteria to be used in identifying IED and other related disorders. “

      1. That depends on what you mean by “real.”. There is no such thing as a scientific, or even a precise, definition of neurosis, and IED is pretty clearly BS, part of psychology’s trend toward making all of us patients.

        Their problem is not neurosis, but unrepented guilt. Rage is a refuge for the conscience-haunted, because violent passions momentarily mute the conscience. Psychologists do not understand this because their theories, still ultimately rooted in Freud, are fundamentally wrong.

    2. I think it isn’t (for the most part) psychiatric, but tactical. Note that she was replying to somebody who’d never heard of the puppies before. To people like Gallo, the important thing is to create the idea that we’re untouchable to those who are new to the issue or on the fence. Of course, it’s a tactic that’s likely going to backfire for them.

  9. Off topic but I keep getting “Error establishing a database connection” when I try and visit monsterhunternation.com

    1. Happens periodically to me too. Refresh/retry and it seems to go through for me. But it wasn’t happening before the update/redesign.

  10. Possibly the most repellent comment about the Gallo controversy, from reviewer and supreme dick James Nicoll: “Tom Doherty certainly has a talent for licking jackboot.”

    I would say Nicoll is a fellow Canadian, but I assure you, I have no fellowship with this man.

      1. I’ve likewise recognized some names from r.a.sf.w… and thought to myself, “Hmm, I don’t remember this person being malicious and insane-sounding back then. I wonder what happened?”

        I wonder what did happen. People change, I guess.

  11. “My original point…has been pretty well proven. I don’t have much else to add.”

    Their slanders are like memetic Von Neumann machines.

  12. I’ve had two thoughts on this mess:

    1) This strikes me as a moment of unintended revelation for Gallo. If you’ll forgive a slight digression, back in 2001, there was a assistant of some sort working in the British equivalent of the DoT, and on the afternoon of September 11, she sent a memo saying, “This is now a good time to get out anything we want to bury.” There was an uproar, and she apologized, but while she could apologize for what she said, she couldn’t apologize for the fact that she was the sort of person who could watch the deaths of thousands and think not, “This is a horrendous human tragedy” but “Great. We can put out the news about construction delays in Liverpool, and no one will even notice after this.”

    Similarly, Gallo can apologize for her words and for anyone she hurt, but whether she does or not, she’s revealed herself as the sort of person who says and thinks these things about fans like us. The mask has slipped off, and I don’t think she can go back to pretending to be a neutral professional.

    2) Reading the comments on Doherty’s apology makes me realize just how deep the divide in SF is right now. It is, honestly, a bit like Gamer Gate: there are those who see a problem and those who are so convinced that the problem doesn’t exist that they’re willing to ascribe just about any other negative motive (RACIST SEXIST HOMOPHOBE CISNORMATIVE GENDER FASCIST) rather than accept the first group’s own words about what they’re doing.

    I’m trying to put myself in the place of the other side here, but I just can’t seem to do it. I’m also not sure how, or even if the community can be repaired when the divide is this deep.

    1. The 9-11 comment could be the equivalent of gallows humor, or another way that people deal with horror. If it were me my first thought would be the human horror, my second might well be some gambit of denying that horror. (In truth, my second thought was… “Why did so many Americans not realize that bad stuff can happen to them?” On account of the paralyzing shock people were in, not due to the scope of the horror, but due to their reality unraveling. So, horror denial on my part was fascination over the revelation of how many people were ignorant of the reality of the world.)

      In any case I think my point is that people get in HUGE trouble for saying stupid things by accident. They tell a bad joke or go ahead and say what’s in their head instead of not… (and a few decades ago the only people who’d hear it would be those in the same room.)

      I really don’t think that Gallo spoke by accident.

      1. “The 9-11 comment could be the equivalent of gallows humor, or another way that people deal with horror.”

        Believe me, it wasn’t. Just pure, opportunistic cynicism.

    2. “I’m also not sure how, or even if the community can be repaired when the divide is this deep.”

      What community? If Irene Gallo is what’s swimming around just under the surface, and if there’s one thing Sad Puppies 1, 2 and 3 have proved its that she is representative of what’s swimming out there, then there is no community. More like a mobile lynching looking for a place to happen.

      Armor up, check your six.

  13. The first time I went to the county library, I was 12. I used my new card proudly to check out Doctor Dollittle. The next trip I found … Lewis Padget and his wonderful robot which had been designed to open beer cans.

    That was almost sixty years ago an I have literally hundreds of books in my library and I still check out a half-dozen books a week from the library. Because I can’t afford to BUY everything I want to read, I send purchase requests to my library and they buy them for me. and I get to read them first when they arrive.

    I’m “A Reader”, and now that I’m retired I’m able to indulge my favorite sport at will. Sitting here on my sofa, I can lean over and grab four Monster Nation books off my bookshelf. Scalzi, Heinlein, Drake, Stirling, Weber, Flint, Moon, Bujold, and more. I have hundreds of books in only the SF category … okay, I’m an addict.

    So, when I read this disturbing news about authors and publishers and editors and everyone else involved in the current kerfuffle, I’m annoyed.

    I’m still going to read everything I can. Y’all work out your differences however YOU can.

    But when you guys start spending more time picking at each other than you do writing, printing and publishing books, I hope you remember that wonderful line by Ratso Rizzo in Midnight Cowboy:

    “Hey! I’m Walkin’ Here!”

    (NOT pointed at Mr. C. I’m just saying …)

  14. Shadowdancer, I just finished reading your post. Your father sounds like a hell of a man, I would have been honored to meet him.

    And yes, it’s almost infuriating to be libeled as a nazi by the likes of Irene Gallo and Moshe Feder (and the rest of the bitchy little Torlings). That said, I’m reminded of P.J. O’Rourke’s comment that Nazi comparisons didn’t bother him at all, for the simple reason that no one has *ever* had a sexual fantasy of being tied up and ravished by someone dressed as a liberal…

    1. Yes you can. That is what FIRING is for. If they don’t fire, they are accepting being associated with what was said. They, anti-puppies, say it enough, but it bears repeating, Words have power.

  15. The support for Irene Gallo on the anti-puppy side of the fence is inexcusable, but it makes sense when you realize that Vox Day has become something of a shibboleth to them. In order to prove your ideological purity, you have to denounce him as vehemently as you can, and everyone is trying to outdo each other. Those who do not denounce Vox Day as loudly or as enthusiastically as everyone else are clearly The Enemy. It’s very 1984. Thus, all the anti-puppies are rallying around Irene Gallo, because even though her neo-nazi comments were farcically unprofessional and slanderously inappropriate, she passed the shibboleth and proved herself to be ideologically pure.

    1. Yup. This has happened to me twice in as many days, once on my blog and once on Facebook. Vox-as-shibboleth is a very good insight. Thanks!

  16. “Hahahahaha! Intersectional gender feminism! Are you paranoid from privilege? What kind of misogynist cisheteronormative racist would make that up!”

    That’s called “flushing pheasants.”

    Milo just debated a women scientist on Sky News about a Nobel scientist who was forced to resign his position because he said female science students cry when criticized. After the debate she Tweeted “Absolutely reeling from the misogynistic backlash my @SkyNews debate has received. Hadn’t quite realized the extent of #everydaysexism.”

    Once again, Scalzi’s Squirrel Theory where throwing rocks at squirrels proves squirrels are angry is confirmed… cuz science and misogyny. Say what you want about stereotypes where women cry or go nuts when a ladybug lands on their arm – that is not woman-hatred or anything like it. Neither is opposing gender feminist critiques of men.

    Meanwhile, a woman who is not a Nobel scientist who characterizes men who laugh at feminist diversity initiatives in SFF as white supremacists is still working. Her #JeSuisGallo defenders wonder why people can get away with attacking a woman like this, thereby confirming there is no female supremacist movement in SFF and that one Sansa Stark equals 200 men.

    This is the same mentality which thought the best way to make fun of my 100% accurate statement at Flint’s that the go-to radical feminism in SFF was created by lesbians and is “lesbian-centric” was to draw attention to a site run by a lesbian and a transgender called “Manfeels Park” which reproduced my comment verbatim in comic panels. Although superficially similar to Scalzi’s Squirrel Theory, it’s not. That’s called “flushing pheasants.” The difference is in opposing an ideology centered on an identity rather than opposing the entire demography of the identity itself, which is what Scalzi and his pheasants do. That’s the difference between opposing the KKK and all white people. One is called “right” and the other “wrong,” something SJWs have yet to figure out. Even stupider is people who publicly ask us to research “intersectionality” and then call us woman-hating racists when we do. “What intersectionality?”

    The new president of the SFWA doesn’t write lesbian SF either, so let’s just get that rumor out of the way right now.
    There is no movement dominating SFF’s awards based on gay feminist ideology about the supremacy of girls. I deny that completely. Who ever said that? Not me. I’m sure the fact Irene Gallo thought Kameron Hurley’s new anti-male book about Geek Feminism would anger Sad Puppies is just a coincidence.

  17. Larry, I noticed that you recently truncated your posts in the RSS feed and I wondered if you had a reason for doing that. I have been reading your blog for a long time via Google Reader and now The Old Reader and not being able to read the post from my reader is kind of a pain, especially since your site is blocked from my work computer (as are many useful sites). With my reader, I was still able to read your posts during my breaks. I typically visited your site on a occasion to look through post archives and such.

    Just curious about it. You’re obviously free to manage it how you want, but if you didn’t truncate the RSS feed intentionally, putting it back to full posts would be really great!

    Thank you and keep up the good work. 🙂

  18. I’ve noticed several anti-Puppies, including Jim C Hines claiming that Sad Puppies was “designed to lock out female nominees”. Now, putting aside for a moment that SP3 DID nominate several women (in fact, almost all the ones we nominated ended up on the ballot) the burden of proof is on the accuser. Can any anti-Puppies who might be reading these comments *please* point out where we locked out female nominees? Just because we didn’t pick the women you would have isn’t proof of anything but differing tastes.

    1. Hines is still selling the 1 in 5 rape stats which means at colleges across America one woman is raped every minute. Borrowing the views of insanely hateful gender feminists gets you just that: insanity from pathological liars. Hines shot his credibility a long time ago.

    2. Someone remind me, just who ran off a female Sad Puppies nominee this year? Wasn’t the people who nominated her. Hines is talking out of his rear.

      1. That was TOTALLY not because they expected bad behavior from the Guardians of the Hugo or from their “friends”. Nope. Not a bit of it.

        I mean… they could have decided to go with “Wow, I can’t believe that those ideological purists and retrogrades accidentally nominated you! Way to go, girl! You have my vote!”

        But NO ONE backed out because they felt they’d be targeted for abuse. No. One.

  19. Thanks for the links Larry. Good luck with the writing. Sorry that people still seem to confuse you with Vox Day. Hope that the Hugos go to the novels people who read SF/F think are the best in the field.

  20. “Crimestop means the faculty of stopping short, as though by instinct, at the threshold of any dangerous thought. It includes the power of not grasping analogies, of failing to perceive logical errors, of misunderstanding the simplest arguments if they are inimical to Ingsoc, and of being bored or repelled by any train of thought which is capable of leading in a heretical direction. Crimestop, in short, means protective stupidity.” – from George Orwell’s 1984.

    Does that sound familiar? Pay particular attention to the “not grasping analogies,” one of the things I’ve noticed highlights SJW thinking, if you can call not being able to make the simplest of comparisons thinking. The core of the SFF community is in deep trouble. It is in no way capable of writing an SF novel in any higher literary sense, a thing that used to be common. It is even less capable of holding up a thing like our Constitution let alone creating one.

    This feud is simple to break down:

    “All hate groups have beliefs or practices that attack or malign an entire class of people, typically for their immutable characteristics.” – Southern Poverty Law Center.

    One side believes in that, the other drums up endless excuses and ideological mitigations so the straight white man always stays firmly in the cross-hairs and the opposite are kept out of any act of immorality. This intersectionalist movement doesn’t care what Gallo said, it care she’s a woman, and that comes with diplomatic immunity. Solve that and the feud ends. In other words the feud ends when racist gender feminism is delegitimized and kicked out. Liberals and conservatives can live with one another easily. You cannot live with this witch hunt which hides within liberalism; your “politics” were decided on the day you were born, and they are the wrong “politics.”

  21. The thing that gets me when browsing through the anti-puppy comments is the drive they seem to have to prove the puppy submissions as objectively bad.

    Not that they just don’t like them, or their taste is different, but that the submissions are so bad that they must have come from a 5th grader who failed English and has a terminal case of Bulwer-Lytton syndrome.

    They don’t get into a lot of detail, but it is like a article of faith that all the submissions are bad and they are only out there to injure the brains of any poor fool stupid enough to lay their eyes on the runes of evil.

    It would be funny if it weren’t so sad.

    1. I won’t lie, all of this has made me hang up my writing pen, possibly for good. Not sure I want to be a part of a SFF community that displays this kind of behavior. I read G.K. Masterson’s response, and agree with it. But I am, personally, so heartbroken, and not a little pissed off, over all of this that I am no longer certain I want any part of the professional end of the universe. Especially not when the ‘professionals’ refuse to act professional.

      1. I was encouraged by a friend to join a SFF storywriting magazine, but I held back and read the stories. The stories they published indicated that they accepted certain types of narratives, and that made me unsure if I wanted to try submitting stories to them, being openly conservative, amongst other things.

        I chose to go Indie; but really, I was prepared to write and put my stories up on the Internet for free because I just wanted to write.

        Then I started reading about how indie authors were doing so well elsewhere. The creator of Log Horizon originally posted the stories up for free on his site. So did the creator of Sword Art Online. I read about a Chinese man who is a multimillionaire by publishing his stories – I guess in a pay to view fashion, because the article I read described that the stories were viewed on readers’ smartphones. I won’t even go into the whole thing about Comiket.

        Don’t give up. You’d lose too much of yourself, I think. That’s why I refused to give up.

        1. Yeah. Internet sales seem to be working pretty well in a lot of the Asian markets. Some places one might a lower cost of living playing a part, but some of the Japanese guys, like the guy who did Mahouka, suggest otherwise. I gather the guy who did Moonlight Sculptor is going to do esales of the translation through Amazon.

          I think we all can build a comparable English language market with enough hard work and love.

        2. Some people have made webnovels work in the west.

          Web comics are generally more successful. But check out wildbow and his Worm/Pact/Twig stuff it’s really good stuff and he makes good money just though paypal donations. Everything he writes is up for free on his site.

          But yes Asian markets they have gone a lot more indie friendly as of late. Korea has Naver which promotes a bunch of different works and pays in ad revenue I believe. Japan’s light novels just ruthlessly pick from popular webnovels and throw an editor at them then serialize that and if it’s popular enough boom anime and you make the big bucks.

      2. I will tell you that I was very close to doing the same. If I hadn’t found this group, and others like them, I may well have. When I saw how authors that I used to look up to were acting, it hard to imagine being included among them.

        Now? I’m writing with a purpose. I no longer want to be a part of them. I don’t have to be, because SFF isn’t theirs.

        1. Yeah, this group? They’re really good at giving people hope. Some of my friends encouraged me to join, because I was so deep into depression after my son’s stillbirth in 2013, they rarely saw me online anymore. I lurked, then joined in, and the majority of the folks here didn’t know about my loss.

          Baen’s fantasy story contest encouraged me to write my first all-original story, and while I didn’t win, I got the guts to self-publish it from the folks here.

          When I lost Brandon to SIDS a couple of months ago, they’ve been instrumental in keeping me from sliding into despair. My house owes everyone here their gratitude.

          Sarah’s, Larry’s, Brad’s and MGC are awesome places on the net.

      3. Sanguinius, buddy, don’t quit five feet from the finish line. This is the best time in the history of the universe to be a writer!

        The Torlings’ enormities are a reaction against the revolution currently underway in genre publishing.

        For centuries, writers had to bend the knee to patrons, publishers, and gatekeepers. For the last 100 years we had to work our fingers to the bone for take-it-or-leave-it contracts that ceded most of our rights and most of the profits from exploiting those rights–forever. The big NYC publishers lorded their power over us like we were serfs on their manor.

        It’s becoming a cliché to follow that up with “but now indie is storming the walls, torches and pitchforks held high, to throw down the gates and free the peasants.” But you know what? It’s true. You have my full personal assurance–and, judging by her comment, Shadowdancer’s, too. You think we’re the only ones?

        Larry started out self-published, and a house that actually cares about its authors and readers found him from there.

        You can let the gatekeepers’ rampant anti-professionalism break your heart. Or you can rejoice in it as a sign that their imprimatur has lost all legitimacy.

        If you’re a writer, you write. You don’t need anyone’s permission, and the only people whose validation should matter is your readers’.

        Welcome to the future.

      4. Sanguinius35: There is more than one community. You’re already part of a sort of “shadow fandom” that has everything the other guys do except cons and awards. (And those may happen eventually.)

        As for quitting, well, friends don’t let friends stop writing. Persevere. Or you’ll hear from us!

        1. not that I’ve been able to attend, but I get the feeling that LibertyCon is significantly different in outlook than most of the other cons. Unfortunately since I run a fireworks show on July 4, taking the time in June for something like that just isn’t in the cards for a while.

  22. I thought the post at Shadowdancer Studios by R.K Modena was fantastic. Thanks for pointing me there. I’d have replied on her page but neither WordPress or Diary comments appear to be working for me. I get an endless loop to log-in.

    1. I’ve copied your comment over to Aff and let him know. He says the forums should work fine.

      edit: I’ve checked the post at Shadowdancer Studios and there’s been at least one comment left there.

    1. (Click) All right, (Click)I confess. (Click) I’m a bot (Click). I was(Click) created (Click) and stole the (Click) purloined OPM internet addresses (Click)just to practice cyberwar on (Click) defenseless social (Click) justice warriors (Click) and Tor employees. (Click) In fact as you (Click) read this(Click) I am busy (Click) sending all Tor’s confidential employee (Click) information to (Click) Nigerian financial-minister scammers (Click) Alex Jones mailing lists (Click) and Chinese mail order (Click) bride websites. (Click) Thank you for the loan of your bandwith and social media (Click) links.

  23. There is a view held by some that because they live in New York City, they are the rulers and elite of all in their field. I have ran into this on occasion in mine, though happily in engineering the bigger question is always “Did it work?”

    I have worked in several multinational companies. Statements like we have been seeing the last week are pretty rare. The one time I did see them, while working for a huge company, it was a prelude to an attempted coup to unseat an executive. It didn’t work.

    I honestly feel sorry for Mr Doherty. He is in a rough spot, but if he doesn’t take action soon, he will be removed. When your nominal employees go out of their way to attack your PR statements in public, you have a major issue. Either you are not in control of the enterprise and they are are making a move to discredit you, or you need to have a “Come to Jesus” meeting.

  24. “Rachel Dolezal ‏@racheldolezaI 15h15 hours ago @martinbutts @benshapiro YOU GUYS WORDS HAVE NO EFFECT ON ME. IM BLACK AND PROUD”

    “Rachel Dolezal ‏@racheldolezaI 16h16 hours ago BLACK WOMEN LIKE ME GET HARASSED ALL THE TIME”

    “Rachel Dolezal ‏@racheldolezaI 17h17 hours ago I AM BLACK”

    The entire intersectionalist movement is so insane I couldn’t tell whether this was a prank, but it’s not. SFF authors Tobias Buckell and the half-Irish Saladin Ahmed have been selling this lark for years in order to ingratiate themselves with the intersectional SF movement and advance their “street cred.” Neither looks remotely black or Arab. So if you don’t know unless you’re told, what’s the diff? Why even bring it up? Am I to accept on faith a movement so obsessed with race didn’t allow Ahmed to parlay his “race” into a Hugo and Nebula nomination? Especially with every review of his book mentioning Arab/Muslim? SJWs never shut up about race and diversity and affirmative action initiatives and then when you show them their own words they call you a racist because you can’t imagine the very meritocracy these people spit on in quote after quote.

    “Kameron Hurley @KameronHurley · 3h 3 hours ago “Slowly but surely, the world is noticing that ‘meritocracy’ in arts & entertainment is as fictitious as Westeros”

    “Saladin Ahmed ‏@saladinahmed 20 Mar 2014 Behold, the saddest creature in all of Whitesupremecia: The person of color who earnestly believes this is all a meritocracy.”

    “Tobias Buckell… —a Caribbean born mixed race individual” – from “The Diverse Editors List,” Strange Horizons

    Welcome to the world of Orwellian sentences and thought:

    “Saladin Ahmed ‏@saladinahmed Jun 11 That sound you hear is the collective cringing of us white-lookin’ actual people of color. #RachelDolezal”

    Am I surprised Ahmed Tweets with Requires Hate?

    This entire movement is one giant con game of shit, racism and lying. Why are we surprised people like Irene Gallo who’ve bought into the mental illogic of a supremacist movement think everyone else is a supremacist? Consider my comment nail No. 4987 in the literature that was once SF. Intersectionalism is bizarre, hateful, obsessive, narcissistic and just plain fuckery.

    “Each side continues to dissect the other side’s declarations only to demonstrate how wrong the other side really is.” – David Gerrold

    Great. Let’s agree on a definition of hate speech. You start. I’ve already done it eleventy kabillion times. I defy you to. I’ve asked – SJWs won’t – end of story. You have a stacked deck and are pretending you’re above it all. Stop being above it all. Create a rule; I don’t care what – something for everyone. Poof! This goes away overnight. Can you not understand that simple truth? The problem is not terms like “CHORF” or “SJW,” the problem is the rancid ethic and sexist hate speech. Just own up to that. It’s a flood on your side and a dribble on ours, the side you insist is the reason for SJW hate speech. It’s a revolving door of pure bullshit that goes nowhere but which always has straight white men fucked and no one else but where quotes exchange places. Start showing some quotes that go beyond two guys or start writing a definition of hate speech. SJWs have been getting away with this double-sided coin for too long.

      1. Are you kidding? The web is going nuts. One reason is because the craziest gender feminists pushing this men saying “I’m a woman if I say so” are having to backtrack like crazy because the entire basis of their ideology is being attacked. Great. I’m black if I say so. Men saying they are women closed down the 40 yr. old lesbian MichFest music festival with ideological attacks on lesbian radical feminism. In other words Frankenstein was attacked by his monster. Eventually something similar will happen in SFF. Older feminists were just ousted from WisCon over stuff like this.

        It just shows how nuts this entire ideology is. It also once again highlights the interest SJWs had in promoting a mediocre novel like Ancillary Justice into the stratosphere. It’s the same thing Anita Sarkeesian and her goofy co-writer Jonathan McIntosh are pushing in video gaming with their equally goofy poststructuralist “performance” and “agency” French Theory: if you don’t see it – BOOM! – it goes away. No more “toxic masculinity,” no more damsels in distress. A just and equal world of peace and love emerges.

        “Jonathan McIntosh ‏@radicalbytes Jun 11 People love to pretend ‘fantasy’ and ‘reality’ are separate, distinct, unrelated. Nothing could be further from the truth. They’re entwined.”

        1. It’s big because of Bruce Jenner. Who is only interesting because of the Kardashians. Lord help me I have no idea why THEY are interesting.

          1. They are transinteresting who feel they were born interesting in the wrong boring bodies and have appropriated the experiences of people who are actually interesting.

    1. I thought about joining the intersectionalist movement. Unfortunately, when I considered with which cultures I have the greatest experience and understanding, I would have had to self-identify as a bottle of Shiner Bock…

  25. Meanwhile in the File 770 comments, “JJ” just accused Sarah Hoyt of not understanding America because she’s an immigrant.

    Progressive!

    1. Did you mean “transimmigrant”? And File 770 needs to learn some of us prefer the term “transpuppy” and our pronouns are “thou” and “meesa.”

  26. “I finally watched John Wick today. Now there is a man who knows how to take a stand against Puppy Related Sadness.” (From Larry on Twitter… which I don’t do… just wanted to say…)

    OMG, I think I hurt myself. And it’s just a matter of pure luck that I didn’t spray Dr. Pepper out my NOSE.

  27. Your priorities seem to be in order. The other side is emoting, not reasoning, which is why they’ve repeatedly embarassed themselves, and you cannot reason someone out of that which they’ve emoted into.

    “Media coverage of the two groups initially suggested that they were organized simply to promote white men, which was not correct.”

    Someday a more civilized people of the future will look back on this strange little incident and ask why promoting white men qua white men would have been objectionable even if true.

  28. On tonight’s podcast, I ask white SJW SFF authors how many PoC live within 5 miles of them, with hilarious results, hot denials, claims of “gotcha” interviews and red faces all around.

    1. Honest answer: “as few as possible!”
      What they will say: “I moved here for the great schools and the attractive lifestyle. It is purely a coincidence that no PoC live nearby. But I love diversity! There are several great ethnic restaurants just up the street!”

        1. Impressive, I did not think SJW’s actually talked to each other, but rather just repeated the random things they heard other SJW’s say. Your SJW call must be very impressive? Were you using the classic “Help! Help! I am being oppressed!” or a newer one?

          1. Can’t tell whether this is self-deprecation or someone else using the same name for mockery, but I suspect the latter.

  29. Gawker’s got its own problems right now, with its sex-tape lawsuit finally going to trial. Could be a self-correcting problem.

  30. Been a while since we had any comic relief from The Guardian’s Village Idiot:

    “Damien Walter ‏@damiengwalter · 12h12 hours ago
    Same is true of all the Sad Puppies. Crap writers who’ve formed a confederacy of dunces to get their crap writing noticed.”

    Puppies have novels. How’s yours coming, Damo?

    1. He’s waiting for his government grant to come through. Gosh darn that David Cameron to heck anyway.

      1. Okay, now I’m picturing Phil, the Prince of Insufficient Light from the Dilbert comics, visiting 10 Downing Street…

    2. I’m not surprised Walter made noises about all of old SFF and Larry being racist. I saw him mention a book which was a harsh critique of specific female and male feminists by name. He called it a book about “women” and implied the writer was a bigot. He ignored an actual reality and made up a book out of his head. From there he went on to say the community shouldn’t have to deal with such people. What do you do with a mind like that? He thinks he speaks some daffy “truth to power” but in fact all his analysis of the social arena are hollow and empty and often point in the opposite direction of reality. That means a place like The Guardian gets its $25 worth. The reason you see Milo climbing Twitter by the hundreds and Walter – the erstwhile Milo – sitting stagnant is Milo’s satire is spot on; Walter’s rings false and other than a few mentally ill and naive SJWs, no one’s attracted to that.

  31. “Correia’s original point has not been proven at all. Just the reverse.

    “What has been proven is that if you act like an asshole, people will treat you like an asshole. You can’t barge into the chess club, knock over all the boards, scatter the pieces, and expect to be given trophies and welcomed.” – GRRM

    Really? Tell that to N. K. (“racist as fuck”) Jemisin and her 4 Nebula nominations.

    I’m trying to imagine me going into rap culture, calling them a bunch of racists and winning Spirit Awards.

    Aliette de Bodard becomes five-time nominated, two-time winner of the Nebula Award and two-time nominee for the Hugo Award for being a gushing oil well of comments like “SFF is, alas, dominated by white westerners.”

    I guess George didn’t notice the guy who rhetorically asked if Game of Thrones is too white concluded that in “a culture rich in racist stereotypes and xenophobic fear-mongering,” expecting George “to remain entirely unstained by this is expecting a person to live underwater without getting wet.” Ahmed ends up with a Hugo and Nebula nod. Poor George, he’s still as stupid as Lovecraft who couldn’t help writing his ode to n-words cuz 1912.

    1. His tone has changed. Maybe people complained he was too reasonable last time. There’s not much difference between Martin’s latest statement and your average rant by Luhrs or Hurley.

      1. You have to remember, he didn’t get the overwhelming moral win he assumed he’d get by taking on us unwashed. So since he was unsuccessful at putting the churls in their places, he now has to hurl a bit more invective at them.

    2. I wonder if Martin has figured out that that’s how we think of most of the ASPs.
      Meantime, our situation is more like: We showed up, got called names, responded.

  32. “Cora Buhlert ‏@CoraBuhlert · 3h3 hours ago  Free Hanseatic City of Bremen, Germany
    @eilatan @SpacefaringK For such a fan-focussed publisher, Baen authors are surprisingly dismissive of mere fans, particular Wrongfans TM.”

    Oh, Frau Butthurt, the Sad Puppies call THEMSELVES “wrongfans”. 😀

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