On Saturday they announced the finalists for the Hugo Awards. As you are aware by now, Sad Puppies suggested candidates absolutely dominated. I tried to mostly avoid the internet this weekend because it was a holiday better spent with family than hate mail.

This blog post is directed at the newcomers, the fence sitters, the undecided, and the unlucky SMOFs who’ve been caught in the crossfire. There is no need to address my detractors, because they have already repeatedly demonstrated that they’ll just ignore what I actually say and do, and fabricate their own wild and crazy narrative about what I secretly meant to say.

This is going to be get long, but there are a lot of things being tossed around that I need to respond to.

For those of you just joining us, Sad Puppies 3 was a campaign to get talented, worthy, deserving authors who would normally never have a chance nominated for the supposedly prestigious Hugo awards.

I started this campaign a few years ago because I believed that the awards were politically biased, and dominated by a few insider cliques. Authors who didn’t belong to these groups or failed to appease them politically were shunned. When I said this in public, I was called a liar, and told that the Hugos represented all of fandom and that the awards were strictly about quality. I said that if authors with “unapproved” politics were to get nominations, the quality of the work would be irrelevant, and the insider cliques would do everything in their power to sabotage that person. Again, I was called a liar, so I set out to prove my point.

This blog post has details and links to most of the background, history, and fallout from last time: https://monsterhunternation.com/2014/04/24/an-explanation-about-the-hugo-awards-controversy/

Basically, I did what the other side had been doing for years, only in public and with the wrong kind of fans, and everything unfolded just like I predicted it would. Especially vehement was the contingent of fandom that I took to calling Social Justice Warriors.  This may offend the No Labels crowd, but oh well, it is what it is. The name has stuck in our culture.

Having proven my point far better than I’d ever hoped, I was going to walk away, but Brad Torgersen is a very idealistic author and fan, and he was inspired to continue the program for another year. All of his explanations are available at this link: https://monsterhunternation.com/2015/01/21/sad-puppies-3-only-a-few-days-to-register-to-vote/

Sad Puppies 1 consisted of me and a handful of blog posts. Sad Puppies 2, more people joined in, we had some fun with it (check the link, we’ve got badly drawn cartoons, videos, and a spokesmanatee), and we made a dent. A handful of nominations damned near caused the apocalypse. Then Sad Puppies 3 was wildly successful beyond all of our expectations.

Now I want to address some of the many concerns I’ve seen voiced over the last few days. I will try to be as honest and direct as possible.

-SP says that they’re fighting back against biased politics by having biased politics.

Yes and no. SP1 was very politically biased because it was just me. SP2 did have a preponderance of nominees on the right side of the political spectrum, again, because that slate was basically my suggested list of stuff that I personally enjoyed. However, ultimately that didn’t matter because the liberals we got noms for were just as attacked and vilified as the rest of us.

SP3 is actually extremely politically diverse. That’s because this time our slate of suggestions was put together by a bigger group of authors and fans, and since Brad was running the show and trying to be all about getting recognition for quality, deserving authors, their personal beliefs were of no concern. Don’t take my word for it. Go through our list of nominees for yourself. You’ll find that we have liberals, conservatives, moderates, and question marks who’ve kept their politics to themselves.

What these authors have in common is that they are good, entertaining, and wouldn’t normally have a snowball’s chance in hell of getting a nomination because they aren’t inclined to kiss the right butts. If you look at our best novel nominees, none of them are conservatives.  I was the only one on there who could possibly be described as right wing, and I refused my nomination.

For the record, Brad Torgersen is a moderate. By Utah standards he is a flaming liberal.

As you go through the other categories, you’ll find that we put up many authors and editors who are my polar political opposites, and I’d guess that a majority of them are actually moderate to left on the spectrum.

That’s because Sad Puppies suggestions was about the quality of the work. Not the author’s politics. Anybody who says the SP nominees are a bunch of right wingers is either misinformed, willfully ignorant, or a liar.

-Sad Puppies wants to destroy the Hugos

Not at all. The Hugos were already broken. My people are just the inevitable backlash that happens in any system when the pendulum swings too far in one direction.

For years people have paid lip service to bringing new people into the Hugos. Whenever people complained about the biased, cliquish state of the awards, they were dismissed and told that if they wanted to change things, they should get more people involved in the process.

Okay. Done. Next?

Note, a lot of the anger this week is about how my people are wrongfan having wrongfun, and thus are bad and should be dismissed, blocked somehow, or excluded. That kind of talk only proves my original point that started this all, and really, it is that sort of asinine, outlandish accusations that caused more of the previously apathetic fans to shell out their $40 to get involved too.

I fully admit, and am on record about starting this out of spite. However, it has grown far beyond just one man’s opinions. Brad is fighting to make the awards relevant to more of fandom.

–Okay, many of us agree the Hugos were broken, but Sad Puppies isn’t the way to fix it

That is a valid opinion, and I’ve seen it pop up a lot over the last few days. I really want to address this, because I can’t stress enough that if that’s what you believe, we’re not your enemy.

For years authors have complained about the biased state of the Hugos, the politicking, and the games you needed to play in order to be considered. Most of the grumbling was in private, behind closed doors, and there wasn’t a green room at any con in the country where you couldn’t find authors complaining about the sorry state of things.

But nobody did anything.

Then some cliques started manipulating this small, easily manipulated system. When 40 or 80 nominations was all it took to sway the most prestigious award in the industry, a few whisper campaigns and calling in favors was all it took to secure a spot. Again, many honest WorldCon fans were offended by this behavior.

But nobody did anything.

As time went on, it got increasingly absurd and political. Some once beloved and award winning authors were shunned for their politics, never to be seen at the Hugos again. Editors and companies related to those shunned authors discovered that they too were shunned by relation, regardless of their politics. Campaigns became more public, with “award pimpage” becoming the norm. And the long time SMOFs who took pride in this award were offended.

But nobody did anything.

To my half of fandom, we’d pretty much written the awards off. They’d become a joke. Award winning became a synonym for boring and preachy. The insider cliques just declared that my part of fandom was stupid and didn’t matter anyway, while those who honestly cherished the awards didn’t like seeing their Hugo lose its luster in the eyes of the masses.

But still nobody did anything, and it got worse and worse.

Then several years ago some upstart, minor jackass hack pulp writer (who’d owned a machinegun store and did gun rights lobbying for the Republican party so couldn’t exactly hide his politics) managed to squeak in a Campbell nomination. I got to see how the sausage was made up close and I was stunned by how asinine the process really was.

So I did something.

Now I’m the bad guy. I’m cool with that. Eventually somebody was going to have to do it.

Here’s the thing. This massive upheaval wouldn’t have ever happened if the moderates had done something years ago, but they didn’t. I can’t really say I blame them though. If they took a stand against the perpetually outraged crowd, they risked their career and their reputation. We’re talking about the same angry, entitled twitter mobs that ran off a famous comedian because he might tell a fat joke in the future. Those mobs are quick to outrage, slow to reason, and will turn on their allies, because attacking is what they are programmed to do. And the moderates—those who will admit it—are terrified of ending up on the wrong end of a witch hunt.

Now it is okay to rail against my people for doing what the other side has done in the past, because we’re not going to sabotage anyone’s career or slander you. We actually believe in the concept of free speech and free expression.

We’re getting condemned for bringing politics into the awards, but we all know politics have been in the awards for a long time. We just did it openly.

I never expected us to sweep the awards. Frankly, I was shocked by the results. I didn’t realize just how many regular fans had been turned off for so long.

Now the moderates are telling us we did it wrong, or telling us what we should have done better, but the thing is at least we did something. There’s not exactly an instruction manual for this sort of thing you know.

-All the Sad Puppies people are lying. It isn’t about getting good books recognized, it is about TOPIC X.

Now this is a really hard one to argue against, because X is whatever they want it to be, and it changes constantly. I’ve seen how we’re all angry white straight males (which is why we’ve got like a dozen women in there, the person taking it over is female, I don’t care about anybody’s race, and I have no idea who our nominees have sex with). Yesterday X was about how my fans are motivated by homophobia. The day before X was racism. I’m sure tomorrow we’ll hate the disabled. Who knows? I can’t keep up.

That is all nonsense, but they keep on making new crap up, and the gullible keep swallowing the narrative and regurgitating it all over the internet.

Here is an interesting one for you moderates, SMOFs, and fence sitters to ponder on. Why is it that our own words and actions aren’t to be believed, but anything the other side says about us, no matter how outlandish, is to be accepted?

Over the years I’ve done Sad Puppies, do you know how many fannish blogs, fanzines, and podcasts interviewed me, the guy who started the campaign, about the goals of Sad Puppies?

None.

I can’t think of single one. You’d think with the most controversial thing to happen to the Hugos in forever, somebody would actually want to sit down and interview us and get our side of the story, but nada, zip. Sure, lots of people wrote about it, but it was pretty obvious these fannish journalists didn’t read what I actually wrote, and instead they critiqued Straw Larry, or they quoted other bloggers quoting Straw Larry.

Finally, last month Brad and I were finally asked to do a podcast interview. They tried to be unbiased. They asked us hard questions.

It was fantastic.  http://www.adventuresinscifipublishing.com/2015/03/aisfp-289-larry-correia-brad-r-torgersen-sad-puppies/

So I’ve been a little less than patient with some fannish journalists. It has been really interesting to see a few of them who originally hated my guts, watch the foot stompy outrage crowd doing exactly what I said they would, and having those journalists realize that maybe I was telling the truth after all.

On this note, I’d like to extend an olive branch to Mike Glyer at File 770. We’ve gone around a few times, but I’ve got to hand it to him. Recently he’s been fully quoting my side and letting our arguments stand without interpretation. Well done, sir.

-Sad Puppies is mean

We’ve been getting a lot of moderates and SMOF friends reaching out, concerned, because the straw versions of us are very hateful, and it is so very sad that there are sides in fandom, and they are fighting.

That’s nice. Now let me flip this back around. Where were you guys when my people were being libeled, slandered, attacked, and insulted? Did you reach out to the perpetually outraged crowd and urge them to be nice and tell them there shouldn’t be any fighting in fandom, or do you just do that to the side you know won’t sic an angry mob on you?

Do you know the biggest single reason SP3 got more fans involved than SP2? My guess is that it was after the other side moved the goal posts, and danced in the streets about our “humiliating defeat”, and called all those outsiders first time voters stupid homophobic racist sexists and other super gracious acts, and Hugo award winning former SFWA presidents take to Twitter to have all caps rants about how my people are motivated by hate and racism, you shouldn’t be shocked when my people are increasingly motivated.

Just think, if you guys urging peace, love, and harmony now would have reigned in the attack dogs years ago, Sad Puppies would never have existed.

–Sad Puppies BLOCK VOTING is different because it was designed to lock out all other contenders

Nope. And here is a very simple way to tell that simply isn’t true.

Based upon our past performance, how in the world could we know we’d get this much more turn out?

Also, if you look at the suggested slate posts, you’ll note that in some categories we had 5, because we had 5 works that we really liked, and there are 5 slots. In other categories we had less because we didn’t think of 5 in time. We ran with what we thought of. It wasn’t exactly a nefarious master plan.

The year before we’d only gotten half of our novels on. In SP2, I put up 2 works for best novel. Mine (which made it) and Sarah Hoyt’s A Few Good Men (which sadly didn’t make it). Why wouldn’t we put up more this time?

(Funny note on A Few Good Men, as morons were saying Sad Puppies 2 was motivated by homophobia, trying to kick gays out of fiction, the protagonist and hero of that one is a gay man, but I voted for it because it was a fantastic book)

Now the moderates are telling us that if we’d suggested fewer/more works, then magically this would all be okay and they wouldn’t be so angry at us. Oh bullshit. Come on. We all know that whatever we do, whether there is one nomination or a hundred, the perpetually outraged would still be outraged.

I do love however how everybody who was completely silent while the SJW mob was running rampant and unopposed, are now full of all sorts of condemnation against my people, and full of helpful strategic advice about what we should do next time. So, when we were in a position of weakness, they maligned us. Now that we’re in a position of strength, they malign us, but your advice is to go back to a position of weakness…

Yes, that is super helpful. Thanks a lot.

Here’s the thing, this isn’t just me and a couple of my friends having fun with this anymore. It is bigger than that. There are a bunch of us involved now. For next year, we’ll take a look at how this shakes out and proceed from there. Kate Paulk is in charge next year and will be organizing what we do.

We don’t want to replace one kingmaker with another. We don’t want to replace one dominate clique with another. I don’t want the Nielsen Hayden’s throne of skulls. It doesn’t look very comfy to sit in.

Let me reiterate. We don’t want to exclude anybody. We want to include everybody.  We’ll look at what happens and adjust fire from there. We are willing to listen to suggestions, debate, and talk with you, because we truly don’t want to destroy the awards or lord over them like some petty tyrants. But getting screamed at, insulted, and lectured at is just going to annoy us, so you can skip that part.

-The Hugos belong to a select few

My, how the tune has changed in just a few years. I loved when Teresa Nielsen Hayden proclaimed that, because when I said the same thing several years ago, I was a lair.

Think about this carefully moderates and SMOFs, the Hugos are either:

1. The most prestigious award in genre fiction that represents the best of all of fandom
2. An award for the favorites for one small group of people at one small convention.

You can’t have both.

-Sad Puppies insults SMOFs

Now this gets tricky, because we get into the definitions of words that have insider meanings.

SMOF means Secret Masters of Fandom. It can be used in a few different ways. To people whose social lives revolve around conventions, it means the people who run stuff there. The word started as a joke.

To many of my people, SMOF was seen as a pejorative, used for the snooty, snobbish types who liked to tell those fans that they aren’t real fans, or that they are the wrong kinds of fans, or that they were having wrongfun.

However, many good, decent, honorable people self-identify as SMOFs. I count many of these people as friends, and many of them are cheering Sad Puppies on.

This is why Brad Torgersen, being diplomatic, made up the word CHORF to describe the snoots. https://bradrtorgersen.wordpress.com/2015/03/31/chorf-its-a-word-now/ which I must admit, made me laugh.

We’ve got nothing against fans. We’re fans too.

-Larry Correia is a big mean jerk

No denying that.  As Sarah Hoyt said the other day, nobody raised in a Portuguese household has ever been accused of subtlety. I’m loud, opinionated, and bombastic. Part of that is because I didn’t get to Live Life on the Easiest Difficulty Setting, and where I come from if you look like food you will be eaten.

So yes, I can be rude, impatient, and I’m quick to anger. It is a character flaw. I never claimed to be perfect, but I’m the one who showed up.

I used to be more patient. For those of you who are authors, artists, or creators, I want you to think back to the meanest, most vile, fundamentally dishonest, cruel thing anyone has ever said about you or your work. How did that make you feel? Now I want you to imagine getting that twenty times a day for your entire career. How long do you think your thin veneer of civility would last?

The SJWs are bullies. They can’t tolerate anybody being outspoken against their ideas. So when you are the nail that sticks up, they will try to hammer you down. They will spread lies about you, hoping that everyone else will shun you. This gets tiresome after a few years, especially when they start to make up “scare quotes” from you in international newspapers.

I’ve had a bunch of honestly concerned people tell me recently that they think I’m being too mean, or that I’m so used to responding to malicious attackers that I sometimes lump in innocent bystanders in with those malicious attackers (a moderate friend referred to it as my “shotgun approach” which is a good comparison).

You get attacked enough and eventually your ability to differentiate targets starts to suffer. For those caught up in that, I apologize.

To those who still willfully want to attack me, come get some. 🙂

–Vox Day! VOX DAAAAaaaay!

Vox Day wasn’t on the Sad Puppies suggest slate. Sorry. Can’t blame that one on us.

Well, I suppose you can, in that I demonstrated how small this most prestigious award actually is last year. Vox Day’s alternate Rabid Puppies slate was him going directly to his fan base. Looking at the numbers, and he on his own was about as successful as I was last year for SP2.

Now here is an interesting thought for you moderates out there who despise Vox Day. Above I talked about the angry reaction to SP2… Honestly, last year Fandom (capital F) insulted hundreds of outsider fans’ taste and intelligence, called them names, and basically treated them like trash (while the majority kept their mouths shut at best, or gave tacit approval at worst) and now you’re shocked when Vox Day has appealed directly to those people you mocked to vote in a manner that especially pisses you off?

Well, duh.

-Sad Puppies invited in Breitbart.

That’s cool. The SJWs brought in the Guardian, Io9, and Tor.com, so now we’re even.

Actually Breitbart approached me and asked for an interview. Last year the SP2 controversy got a small mention in the USA Today. The guys who talked to me from Breitbart have been doing reports on SJW crusaders across many industries, and this is news, so this isn’t exactly shocking.

–GamerGate is behind Sad Puppies!

Okay, now this one is just stupid. It comes from Teresa Nielsen Hayden, head of the SMOFfen SS.

Because many SJWs check under their bed for the Gamergate boogieman before going to sleep, obviously GamerGate is responsible for the Sad Puppies sweep. Apparently she discovered that one of my longtime fans, Daddy Warpig, is a GamerGate blogger, and has tweeted about SP3, and she exposed this shocking revelation!

Wow… Yeah, good work there, Sherlock. You could have just saved time and asked me, since I also favorited those and retweeted them. I’ve also been on his podcast. But if you want to really damn me, let me save you some detective work. I’m also friends with actor Adam Baldwin, the guy who coined the word GamerGate. I’ve also blogged about GamerGate, but more in relation to Sarkesian calling for a boycott of my home state because she didn’t understand our constitution or laws wouldn’t allow for violating our citizen’s civil rights because of fake threats against her. https://monsterhunternation.com/2014/10/21/fisking-the-deseret-news-anti-ccw-article/

But GamerGate isn’t behind Sad Puppies.

1. SP predates GG by a couple of years.
2. SP is tiny compared to GG, and the vast majority of GG paid no attention to SP,
3. Until the Breitbart article came out, but if you loot at the dates of the article https://monsterhunternation.com/2015/02/05/breitbart-reports-on-sad-puppies/ it came out too late for any new people to register in time to nominate for Sasquan.
4. We do share some common members, but enemy of my enemy is my friend, and both movements can’t stand Social Justice bullies telling people they are having wrongfun.
5. There were like 2,000 total nominations. If it had been a GamerGate plot there would have been 20,000 nominations, and they would spammed it across the internet and had a great laugh about it.

Oh, quick note moderates and SMOFs, if you don’t want GamerGate to get involved in the Hugos, don’t blame me. Tell your Social Justice idiots to shut up on Twitter!  TNH is the one invoking and provoking them, not me.

Brianna Wu—who is despised by hundreds of thousands of gamers as an opportunistic vulture—took to Twitter after the nominations were announced, blaming GamerGate for ruining the Hugos, and then she tweeted about how the awards were precious and sacred to her because her husband has 4 Hugos.  That is like waving the red cape in front of the bull.

-We’re going to vote No Award against every single thing suggested by the Sad Puppies slate!

Yes, voting based on politics with no consideration for the quality of the actual work will sure show Larry Correia what’s up.

The fact that the CHORFs were already demanding rule changes, No Awarding everybody, and blocking the wrong kind of fans before the nominations were even announced should be pretty telling. Funny. That is exactly what I said they would do years ago. The insider clique cares far more about maintaining their insular little kingdom than they do about the awards.

Here’s the thing, if you No Award everybody on the slate with no consideration to the authors or their work, you’ll just be proving me right.

And seriously, you’re telling me Jim Butcher, the god father of an entire genre, isn’t worthy? Marko Kloos indy published sci-fi book has sold literally over ten times as many copies as last year’s winner Ancillary Justice, and people love it, but it isn’t worthy? You’re telling me that Kevin J. Anderson, industry pro, 23 million books in print, three decades of working in fandom and helping other authors, isn’t worthy?

Bullshit. And none of those authors share my politics.

Toni Weisskopf has spent her entire life in fandom. She grew up at cons and lived in Rocket City. She had relatives on the Manhattan Project and ate dinner at Warner Von Braun’s house. I don’t know how many hundreds of conventions Toni has gone to, as everything from volunteer to GoH. She’s edited hundreds of authors, took over and successfully run a publishing house, and it is telling that she was ignored until Sad Puppies came along. She’s not worthy?

Edmund Schubert has been running Intergalactic Medicine Show for years, producing tons of great short fiction, and you’re telling me he’s unworthy? Why? His boss (who he disagrees with) doesn’t like gay marriage? Jim Minz started as David Hartwell’s assistant at Tor, and is beloved by everybody in publishing and has spent his whole life in fandom, and he’s unworthy?

All of these short fiction authors, some of whom have been writing for places like Analog for decades, they’re unworthy? Campbell nominees who are brand new, producing all sorts of great work, and you’ll shit all over their prospective careers and No Award their future because Brad recommend them?

They’re unworthy because of association, but you didn’t say a damned thing when the SJWs tried to give a Campbell to Requires Hate?

That is hypocrisy.

We want people to read the works and judge them for themselves. We were accused of trying to get people to nominate without reading, but we put that one to bed when we Book Bombed all the short fiction in the weeks leading up to the nomination’s, selling thousands and thousands of stories, and bumping all of our nominees up to the tops of their Amazon categories sales rankings, and making the SP nominated works the most widely read things on the ballot in years.

But yeah, No Award a bunch of obviously worthy creators over politics and brag about it on the internet in advance. If I truly wanted to destroy the Hugos credibility to all but one tiny, insular little group of fans, that’s exactly what I’d do.

Well, the whole world is watching now. What are you going to tell them the award is really about?

 

EDIT: To add, read this article for Entertainment Weekly http://www.ew.com/article/2015/04/06/hugo-award-nominations-fall-victim-misogynistic-and-racist-voting?hootPostID=221657cca998c926458486c3f53fbe17

So, SMOFs and Moderates, read that article. Hell, just read the headline… If you’ve paid any attention or have even an iota of honesty in your soul you know that article in a national publication is total bullshit.

Now do you understand why it is so very tempting for my side to just say to hell with it and hoist the black flag?

EDIT 2, they’ve already changed the article because the EW lawyers freaked out. That should tell you something. I’ve got the original cached.

Since they changed it, here is the original. See moderates? This is what happens when you cross the Social Justice crowd. The truth become irrelevant and they spread whatever they can about you to get you shunned and destroyed.

Hugo Award nominations fall victim to misogynistic, racist voting campaign
BY ISABELLA BIEDENHARN • @ISABELLA324

The Hugo Awards have fallen victim to a campaign in which misogynist groups lobbied to nominate only white males for the science fiction book awards. These groups, Sad Puppies and Rabid Puppies (both of which are affiliated with last year’s GamerGate scandal), urged sci-fi fans to become members of the Hugo Awards’ voting body, World Science Fiction Convention, in order to cast votes against female writers and writers of color. Membership only costs $40, and allows members to vote for the 2016 nominations as well as the 2015 nominations, which were just released.
Sad Puppies broadcast their selection on Feb. 1, writing: “If you agree with our slate below—and we suspect you might—this is YOUR chance to make sure YOUR voice is heard.” Brad Torgerson, who runs Sad Puppies along with Larry Correia, complains that the Hugo Awards have lately skewed toward “literary” works, as opposed to “entertainment.”
Torgerson also writes that he disagrees with Hugos being awarded for affirmative action-like purposes, as many women and writers of color went home with awards in 2014: ”Likewise, we’ve seen the Hugo voting skew ideological, as Worldcon and fandom alike have tended to use the Hugos as an affirmative action award: giving Hugos because a writer or artist is (insert underrepresented minority or victim group here) or because a given work features (insert underrepresented minority or victim group here) characters.”
The other lobbying group, Rabid Puppies, is run by Theodore Beale (who goes by the name Vox Day). As The Telegraph reports, “Members of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America have called for Beale’s exclusion from the group after he has writtenagainst women’s suffrage and posted racist views towards black writer NK Jemisin.”
Fortunately, some sane voters allowed well-deserving writers to pull through. Ann Leckie’s Ancillary Sword and Listen was nominated for Dramatic Presentation, and Annie Bellet’s Goodnight Stars was nominated, despite having a non-white, female protagonist.
Plenty of members of the science fiction community have voiced their disgust with both sects of “Puppies.” Writer Philip Sandifer wrote on his blog Sunday, “The Hugo Awards have just been successfully hijacked by neofascists.” Sandifer’s post, which is worth reading in full, addresses what this disaster means for the sci-fi world:
To be frank, it means that traditional sci-fi/fantasy fandom does not have any legitimacy right now. Period. A community that can be this effectively controlled by someone who thinks black people are subhuman and who has called for acid attacks on feminists is not one whose awards have any sort of cultural validity. That sort of thing doesn’t happen to functional communities. And the fact that it has just happened to the oldest and most venerable award in the sci-fi/fantasy community makes it unambiguously clear that traditional sci-fi/fantasy fandom is not fit for purpose.
As writer Joe Abercrombie put it:
The Hugo Awards winners will be announced on Aug. 22 in Washington.

##
And this is how she addressed me after being called on these obvious blatant lies on Twitter.

isabella biedenharn ‏@isabella324 1h1 hour ago
@monsterhunter45 Hi Larry, we’re happy to update to include your side. Please send me your comment when you have time
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The Hugo nominees have been announced. As you’ve probably already heard Sad Puppies suggested candidates showed up everywhere. We got nominations for dozens of talented, deserving people who would normally have been ignored or shunned.

I just want to make a comment about why I’m personally not on the list. I was contacted by the administrators on 3/20/15 and informed that Monster Hunter Nemesis was a finalist for best novel. I emailed them back the same day and turned it down. Whoever was next in line was then moved up to be a finalist in my place.

I refused the nomination for one simple reason. The Sad Puppies campaign isn’t about any one person. I felt that ultimately my presence would be a distraction from the overall mission.

The reason I refused my nomination is that as long as the guy who started Sad Puppies stayed in, the more our opposition would try to dismiss the whole campaign as being all about my ego, or some selfish personal desire to get award recognition. Nope. I really meant it when I said I don’t care about winning anything for myself. I hope this proves that once and for all.

To the fans who voted for me, I’m sorry for dropping out. But I want you to understand that I consider making the award represent more of fandom to be a far more important prize than another rocket ship lapel pin (I actually never even got the one from last year). Now I’m going to support the rest of our slate and read all of the nominated works to judge them fairly, and I’d ask for you to do the same.

This is just one little battle in an ongoing culture war between artistic free expression and puritanical bullies who think they represent *real* fandom. In the long term I want writers to be free to write whatever they want without fear of social justice witch hunts, I want creators to not have to worry about silencing themselves to appease the perpetually outraged, and I want fans to enjoy themselves without having some entitled snob lecture them about how they are having fun wrong. I want our shrinking genre to grow. I think if we can get back to where “award nominated” isn’t a synonym for “preachy crap” to the most fans, we’ll do it.

That’s what I want. Strategically, we get there faster without them trying to spin it as all about me.

Again, Monster Hunter Nation, I apologize if this offends any of you who voted for my novel. I just feel this is the best thing we can do to combat Puppy Related Sadness.

Now, if you’ll excuse the brief post, today is actually a religious holiday for me, and I’d much rather be hanging out with my awesome family than surfing the internet to see what vile things they’re saying about me and my friends.

I wish the best of luck to all of the nominees.

So the Powder Blue Care Bear of the Evil Legion of Evil has finally been pushed too far, and out comes the flame thrower.

https://bradrtorgersen.wordpress.com/2015/03/30/former-tor-editor-still-longs-to-gatekeep-the-field/

Good stuff. Brad explains everything really well, it his moderate, reasonable manner. Now, for my hatey hatemongers I need to clarify a few things. Some of the things Queen Teresa Neilsen Hayden is STILL saying in that thread from yesterday need to be addressed… Well, laughed at. Because they’re stupid. http://nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/archives/016177.html

Seriously, when it comes to demonstrating what I’ve been talking about for years, that link is like the gift that keeps on giving.  Here is what Teresa Nielsen Hayden has to say:

When I say the Hugos belong to the worldcon, I’m talking about the literal legal status of the award. 

Sure you were! We all totally believe that.

I do love how when we actually quote them, that’s not what they meant, but then they fabricate bogus scare quotes for me, then that’s totally what I really meant. Man, that Straw Larry is such a jerk, I’d hate me too. 

But I also know that one of the biggest reasons the rocket is magic is because it spiritually belongs to all of us who love SF.

Just not you guys. You’re the wrong kind of fans. They’ve got 700+ posts over there now making that perfectly clear.

Here’s the thing, Teresa. You don’t speak for all of fandom. You don’t own them. You don’t even speak for all of the TrueFans or SMOF or whatever you want to call them. There are plenty of longtime SMOFs who are just as sick of your preening, entitled nonsense as my people are, and though they may find my actions upsetting or barbaric, or personally think I’m a jerk, at least everything I’ve done has been in the open… Plus, they are safe to criticize my side without fear of retribution or career sabotage. Can’t say the same thing about your side.

I’ve been thinking about the aspects of the Sad Puppy campaigns that bother me most. So far there are three.

Only three? Wow. I’d better check my privilege. I’m used to bothering these people in dozens of ways. 

Up first, the perpetual evil that is Mad Mike Williamson. 

First, there’s the Best Related Work category. That’s where the reference works wind up. Good reference books are labors of love, especially that last 10% of quality that takes 50% of the total labor. People who create reference books get one shot at the Hugo.

Oh really? Don’t worry. We’ll take a look at the history of this illustrious award in a moment.

Did you see Amazon’s sample text from Wisdom from My Internet by Michael Z. Williamson? Apparently it’s on the Hugo ballot in the Best Related Work category. Williamson didn’t know to keep his gob shut until the official announcement. @booksmugglers picked up and tweeted the story, and Kevin Maroney reported on it here.

I talked to Mike Williamson about this. It was a simple mistake. The email either wasn’t clear about keeping quiet until the 4th or he missed that part.  When Mike was informed of his error, he then deleted the posts, and apologized to the administrators, who said no harm done, and they apologized for not making the email clearer. 

Except Insider SMOF Queen knows that this is an unforgivable sin. 

That is a thoroughly bad book, including its frontmatter and interior design,

Says the editor, judging a book by its cover. 

and it’s not a related work. It’s just a nonfiction book published in the appropriate year by a Sad-Puppy-approved author, so they tossed it onto their stupid slate. I expect there are other SP titles in that category, so more than one book that would have been a nominee for Best Related Work has been displaced.

Uh huh… Let’s take a look at prior years in this illustrious, super prestigious category, that only consistently represents the best in sci-fi/fantasy, and not various insider cliques.   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hugo_Award_for_Best_Related_Work  

2009’s winner was sci fi author John Scalzi’s Your Hate Mail Will Be Graded: A Decade of Whatever, where the beloved Social Justice Warrior and SFWA president John Scalzi collected funny internet posts into a book. However, Teresa says that when evil libertarian sci fi author Mike Williamson collected funny internet posts into a book, that was SUPER BAD and SHOULD NOT COUNT. 

But wait, what other illustrious things have been on there? A cursory glance through the various nominees shows that Teresa is being disingenuous again. This isn’t just the category for scholarly reference works. Maybe it used to be, but now it is a grab bag of everything. 

In the last few years that category has had nominations for things like: 

Chicks Dig Timelords, A Celebration of Doctor Who by the Women Who Love It. (which won 2011, beating scholarly works about Robert Heinlein, and Resnick and Malzburg’s collection of writings on the business of sci-fi)

Chicks Dig Comics, A Celebration of Comics by the Women Who Love Them 

Chicks Unravel Time, Women Journey Through Every Season of Doctor Who. 

(That lost to Writing Excuses that year.  Good, Writing Excuses deserved it. I voted for it, plugged it, and the one year it won, was by a small margin so probably wouldn’t have made it without Sad Puppies voters. You are welcome, Mary)

Last year had Queers Dig Timelords, A Celebration of Doctor Who by the LGBTQ Fans Who Love It, but it lost to a feminist paper of dubious historical accuracy. 

But Mike Williamson’s bit of fan wankery will RUIN THE DIGNITY OF THE AWARDS FOREVER!  

Good thing the rest of our proposed slate consisted of scholarly related works. I’m sure Teresa will have no problem if any of those get on. 

Second: the nominees on the Sad Puppy slate who got onto the ballot. Indications are that a fair number of them, maybe a majority, are respectable members of the SF community who, for one reason or another, are approved of by the SPs while not being ideologically Sad Puppies themselves.

Yes, a majority of them are *respectable* members of the SF community (whatever that is supposed to mean), and they are *approved* by the Sad Puppies because they produced quality work that would normally be ignored or actively shunned or sabotaged by insider assholes. 

And to clarify, we’re not actually Sad Puppies. We’re doing this FOR the puppies, because the leading cause of Puppy Related Sadness is stupid preachy social justice message fic getting awards while good stuff is ignored. We are a coalition of fans and manatees taking a courageous stand against the scourge of PRS. 

You are welcome, America. 

The question isn’t why they are approved by us, but why they never have or never would be approved by you elitist pricks?

This means they’ve dreamed of winning the Hugo, just like all our other writers and artists and editors.

But because they failed to kiss your ring or sufficient Social Justice ass, they never had a snowball’s chance in hell until my people came along. 

They might not have had any real expectation of winding up on the ballot this year, but that doesn’t mean they didn’t wish for it with all the pure luminous desire of Ralphie wishing for a Red Ryder BB gun.

Naw… Most of them aren’t that naive. Old authors know that now they don’t have a shot unless they do something to suck up to one of the insider cliques, and new authors only have a chance if they happened to personally appeal to one of the insider cliques. 

And one of the most noxious things about this process was watching authors silence themselves or tweak their art to be more appealing to these assholes. 

They’ve been put in a horrible position. I mean, I’ve wanted a Hugo since I was in middle school, but I dreamed of being given one by SF community, not Larry Correia.

It wasn’t me that put them in this position. It was your ilk. I’m just part of the inevitable backlash that enters any system that has become stagnant and corrupted. 

I think at least two of those nominees turned down the nomination. I hope they someday get a real one.

Yep. Out of the fifty something people we put on our slate, we failed to speak with every one of them beforehand. I truly feel bad for them, because I’ve seen what happens to unsuspecting innocent authors when they end up the target of a social justice witch hunt. 

The reason we have to talk to the people we put on our slate first is because they need to be aware that SJWs are going to rip them apart, slander them, libel them, attack them, and try to damage their careers, all because they threaten the status quo. (Teresa conveniently left that part out) 

I’m actually impressed it was that few who dropped off. 

Note, she hopes they someday get a *real* nomination. Because you guys, the hundreds of you that shelled out your money to buy a membership? You don’t count. You’re not *real* fans. And your opinions are wrong and bad.  

Third: the ballot itself. This grows out of wondering why so many Sad Puppies are suddenly out and about on forums they don’t normally frequent, belatedly spreading this new and not very believable line about how the whole Sad Puppy thing is motivated by love, rather than spite and resentment. They sure haven’t felt the need to spread this line before now. Neither have they put a lot of effort into hiding the spite and resentment.

So much bullshit crammed into one paragraph. 

1. Forums we don’t normally frequent? Not really. My people show up all over. Only your kind normally just block or “disemvowel” them. 

2. Belatedly? We’ve been saying the same thing the whole time. You assholes have just chosen to ignore what we actually say and make up bullshit in “scare quotes” for us instead. 

3. Brad showed up on your blog because you had a gang of assholes lying about his character. How DARE he defend himself. How RUDE! 

4. To be clear, Brad Torgersen has always been motivated by love. I’m the one motivated by spite. Get it right. 

5. We’ve consistently spread this line the whole time. The fact you had your head shoved up your ass isn’t my fault. But I can understand the confusion. You guys lie so much that it must be hard to keep track of which narrative you’re using about us now. 

6. Again, I’m the spiteful one. I don’t like liars and career sabotaging bullies. I suppose it is because I didn’t get to Live Life On The Easiest Difficulty Setting.

So why are they doing it now?

Because we were responding to you?  So why are you doing it now? 

When you’re nominated for a Hugo, you’re contacted ahead of time by the Hugo administrators, who check to make sure you’ll accept nomination. If they’re going to have to add the next-highest nominee in a category, they want to do it before the general public sees the ballot, so that no one knows who’s the lowest-ranked nominee.

If the SPs got all or most of their slate onto the ballot, and those people had their nominations confirmed by the Hugo administrators, and they were comparing notes behind the scenes, they’d be uniquely able to reconstruct most or all of the final ballot.

Heh heh heh… 

This part is really fascinating and revealing. Let me break it down for you. 

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

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

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

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

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

Whoops. 
So.

I think they’ve succeeded in f*cking up the ballot beyond all expectation, and they know the SF community is going to explode when we see it.

By SF community, she means her people. By fucking it up, she means the wrong kind of fans got involved. But regardless, her people are going to explode, because that’s what they do. They’ll rant and rave, and go into hysterical fits, and they’ll libel and slander innocent people, and make up wild accusations… You know, the usual.

But here’s the thing, Teresa. Check your privilege. Your friends aren’t entitled to win everything. Fans are fans, people’s votes are equal. Sad Puppies is about being inclusive. We want more people involved. Look at your entire thread here. It is all about being exclusive, and having the most prestigious award in sci-fi just be a little club award for you and your buddies on the approved list. 

Look at Brad Torgersen’s first comment in this thread. I couldn’t figure out what he was on about when he first posted it. Now I think it’s one big steaming pile of special pleading from start to finish, all of it intended to deflect fannish wrath when the ballot’s announced.

Naw, Brad really is a nice guy who wants sci-fi to be a big tent. He truly wants the Hugos to be a shining light on a hill. I think at times he still believes that he can reach out to elitists and sway them. He’s idealistic like that.

On the other hand, I know that internet arguing is a spectator sport. I do this to give ammo to my side and convince the undecided. I know I will never sway the perpetually outraged. I don’t even want a Hugo. I’m only involved in this now because I believe the social justice stranglehold on free speech is killing our genre. 

However, neither Brad nor I are under any delusion that anything we do will “deflect fannish wrath”.  

Whether we get one nomination or a hundred, it won’t matter. These are the same people who unleash their “fannish wrath” against anybody who steps out of line, or anybody who disagrees with them, or anybody who uses forbidden words, or anybody who tells a story they don’t like, or even their own people who say that maybe they shouldn’t be so quick to outrage.

Wrath is all you people have.

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

Your angry mobs only have as much power as the person you’re attacking is willing to grant them. I stood up to you last year, and all it did was bring your antics to the attention of more, good, decent, regular fans. It isn’t your award. It is everyone who cares enough to get involved. And every time your side forms an angry Twitter mob, or runs an article in the Guardian full of easily disprovable lies, or attacks some comedian for jokes he hasn’t told yet, or lectures people that they’re having fun wrong, then more regular fans get pissed off and shell out their $40 to get involved, because they don’t like your entitled smugness either. 

I don’t like it, but it does fit all the known data. Wouldn’t it be nice if I turn out to be wrong?

You have no idea… 

##

EDIT, Read this too. It is great:             http://accordingtohoyt.com/2015/03/31/the-scarlet-letters/

Sarah Hoyt addressed the bit where they’re all mad at Brad for missing a few authors and not informing them that they were going to be on our slate.

Somehow, us failing to warn these people that SJWs are going to rip them apart for the crime of bad people liking their work, is somehow a bigger crime than the SJWs ripping them apart.

 

If you want to get a great glimpse into the minds of the people who hate the Sad Puppies campaign, read these comments.

http://nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/archives/016177.html

Once you get done, you’ll see the exact sort of people who inspired me to start Sad Puppies.

It is a fantastic glimpse into their mindset. It isn’t about the quality of the work, it is about protecting the clique. The nominations won’t even be announced until the 4th, and they’re already flipping out. There are so many lies, distortions, misconceptions, and half truths in that comment thread it would take a novel worth of writing to fisk it.

When you see nonsense posts with all the vowels removed, that’s what SJW bloggers do to people who disagree with them.

My favorite parts are where they whine about needing to change the rules to protect their clique or how the Hugo admin should be pressured to throw out questionable (i.e. things that disagree with them) votes. You know, the exact sort of behavior I predicted years ago when I started this campaign. Well, shaming, slander, and shunning only motivated my people more last time, so they’ve got to try something.

But this is the best comment of all because if finally displays the ugly truth. If you don’t know, Teresa Nielsen Hayden was an editor at Tor and a Queen Bee among SJWs. Her husband Patrick Nielsen Hayden is also a Tor editor, and has garnered a ton of nominations.

#499 ::: Teresa Nielsen Hayden ::: (view all by) ::: March 29, 2015, 03:43 PM:
Why are people talking about what would happen if everyone who reads SF voted in the Hugos? IMO, it’s not a relevant question. The Hugos don’t belong to the set of all people who read the genre; they belong to the worldcon, and the people who attend and/or support it. The set of all people who read SF can start their own award.

Wow… Wrap your brain around that.

Funny. I seem to recall one of the things that inspired me to start the Sad Puppies campaign went something like this:

Correia: The Hugos are just a popularity contest for one tiny, insular, politically biased group of people.
SMOFs: NO! The Hugos are a prestigious award that represents the best of all fandom.
Correia: Nope. Here, let me prove it.

Fast forward a few years of us getting increasing numbers of outsiders involved and authors who don’t sit at the cool kid’s table nominated, and it is sure nice to see Teresa Nielsen Hayden finally agreeing with me in public.

But it is too late now, Teresa. The Sad Puppies voters got involved with WorldCon, paid their dues, and bought memberships so they could participate. The problem is that they’re the *wrong* kind of fans. You guys should have just been honest to begin with and none of this would have ever happened.

One last thing, I find it funny that they are casting all of these aspersions against the Hugo admins because they are holding firm and obeying the rules of their convention. I’ve seen where they are trying to pin this on me and saying that I’m trying to ruin the dignity of the Hugos. On the contrary, there had been allegations against that admins were suppressing votes for a long time, and I put those to bed. One of the goals of Sad Puppies 1 and 2 was to audit the system (I was an auditor before I became a writer). I kept track of Sad Puppies nominees and voters across the categories, and then compared the final numbers when they were released. After two years of doing that I was able to say that I saw zero indication of dishonesty or fraud, and that the Hugo admins had been perfectly honest in their dealings.

But somehow that has turned into me attacking their integrity.  Nope. I did the opposite. I demonstrated that they were obeying all their rules. Now, I’m the bad guy because the SJWs are screaming at the admin to break their rules because people they don’t like obeyed the rules.

Man, it must be really hard for SJWs to say anything without lying. 🙂

Sad Puppies 3 standard bearer Brad Torgersen addressed all of their recent nonsense in more depth. He explains it rather well here: https://bradrtorgersen.wordpress.com/2015/03/29/nail-house/

What the SJWs don’t realize is that the more they expose their bias and hate, the more regular fans become motivated to get involved. Kate “The Impaler” Paulk will be taking over for Brad and taking the helm for Sad Puppies 4.