Pixel Scroll 1/1 Let Scrolled Acquaintance Be Forgot…

rhinowaiting(1) HORNING IN. Another rhino run starring Jim Mowatt — “New Year Parkrun Rhino Running at Temple Newsam House”

We set off past the glorious Elizabethan mansion and out through the formal gardens. Down the long hill, left at the motorway and curl back along the edge of the woods until we are once again struggling up the hill toward the house. Twice around we go and the second time we are curved around the hill a little until we burst out into the finish funnel. I queue to be scanned behind the girl in the orange tee shirt. I’d finished before her at Woodhouse Moor but she was really pleased to finish in front of me here at Temple Newsam. “I couldn’t be beaten by a rhino twice in one day” she said.

 

(2) CARRIE FISHER. James H. Burns writes: “Considering that I was never particularly a fan of Carrie Fisher as an actress, I am finding myself becoming quite a fan of her mind!” Burns had just read “Carrie Fisher shuts down the ageist haters as only Carrie Fisher can” on Salon.

She soon followed up with a more direct command, saying, “Please stop debating about whether OR not aged well. unfortunately it hurts all 3 of my feelings. My BODY hasn’t aged as well as I have. Blow us.” It’s been favorited over 35 thousand times — and still going.

(3) FIRST AMENDMENT. Has he been listening to Fisher, too? George Lucas definitely spoke freely on the Charlie Rose show broadcast on December 25:

At one point he said that filmmakers in the Soviet Union had more freedom than their counterparts in Hollywood, who, he maintained, “have to adhere to a very narrow line of commercialism.”

Mr. Lucas appeared particularly unhappy with the direction the “Star Wars” franchise has taken since he sold the rights to it, along with Lucasfilm, his company, to Disney for $4 billion. He compared the sale to a breakup and a divorce.

“These are my kids. All the Star Wars films,” he said. “I love them, I created them, I’m very intimately involved in them.”

He added, trailing off with a laugh: “And I sold them to the white slavers that take these things and. …”

(4) BABYLON 5.1. Blastr’s headline runs a little ahead of the facts – “Straczynski bringing sci-fi classic Babylon 5 back to life with movie reboot in 2016” – in that he hasn’t finished a script and he doesn’t have a commitment from a studio to produce the movie.

Thanks to some shrewd negotiating, Straczynski actually owns the film rights to the franchise — so he isn’t beholden to getting a particular studio to sign on. But he is apparently hoping Warner Bros. (the studio that produced the original series) might be interested once the script is complete. You know, assuming it’s good.

If Warner Bros. doesn’t bite, Straczynski apparently aims to finance the film through his own Studio JMS, though that might be a tall order to bankroll an $80-100 million sci-fi epic. But considering the franchise’s name cachet with genre fans — not to mention the fact that studios are mining just about any brand they can get their hands on these days — you’d think someone would be interested in co-producing.

(5) MARSHAL BURNS. Ken Burns the documentarian was this year’s Rose Parade Grand Marshal, prompting an exchange between John King Tarpinian and Phil Nichols:

[Tarpinian] The documentarian is this year’s Rose Parade grand marshal.  They keep taking about his “moving” stills as having been groundbreaking, calling it Ken Burns effect. Now his documentaries are very well done and quite enjoyable however when I saw the first one this moving-still effect reminded me of Icarus Montgolfier Wright.  I’m thinking Ray Bradbury and George Clayton Johnson’s contribution to this effect was a bit earlier.

[Nichols] Good point, jkt! In fact, the technique had been used prior to ICARUS, most famously in a Canadian documentary called CITY OF GOLD (1957). In the UK, it has only recently become known as the Ken Burns effect. We have our own Ken (Ken Morse) who did similar work for the BBC for decades. We used to call it “movement in stills”, until the American influence became irresistible.

(6) STAR WARS SPOILERS. Beware spoilers in Alex Ross’ fine discussion of “Listening to Star Wars” at The New Yorker.

Williams’s wider influence on musical culture can’t be quantified, but it’s surely vast. The brilliant young composer Andrew Norman took up writing music after watching “Star Wars” on video, as William Robin notes in a Times profile. The conductor David Robertson, a disciple of Pierre Boulez and an unabashed Williams fan, told me that some current London Symphony players first became interested in their instruments after encountering “Star Wars.” Robertson, who regularly stages all-Williams concerts with the St. Louis Symphony, observed that professional musicians enjoy playing the scores because they are full of the kinds of intricacies and motivic connections that enliven the classic repertory. “He’s a man singularly fluent in the language of music,” Robertson said. “He’s very unassuming, very humble, but when he talks about music he can be the most interesting professor you’ve ever heard. He’s a deep listener, and that explains his ability to respond to film so acutely.”

(7) 40% PUPPY CONTENT. Brandon Kempner at Chaos Horizon takes his first cut at predicting the 2016 Best Novel Hugo. Pups get 2 spots out of the top 5.

The difficulty in predicting the 2016 Hugo lies in how little information we have: how big will the Rabid Puppies vote be? How will the Sad Puppies 4 operate? How much will the rest of the Hugo vote increase? Will other Hugo voters change their voting habits to stop a Puppy sweep? Will specific authors turn down endorsements and/or nominations?

(8) RETURN TO SENDER. Kate Paulk, in “Offer? What Offer?” at Sad Puppies 4, dismisses Steve Davidson’s reconciliation post for failing to treat with “the management.”

I’ve heard through the Internet (all right, Facebook) that someone who fancies himself a big shot in the field has “offered” to stop claiming Sad Puppies 4 is all things evil in return for a few “reasonable concessions” on our part.

Since the person in question hasn’t bothered to make this offer to me, Sarah Hoyt, or Amanda Green, Sad Puppy supporters can reasonably assume that the so-called offer is not actually genuine.

(9) KNOW JOHN, NO PEACE. John C. Wright deconstructed George R.R. Martin’s reconciliation post in “Peace on Mars, Good Will Toward Puppies” .

…Mr. Martin wills the ends without willing the means. He wishes for a cessation of enmity but does not identify who caused it and why, nor does he offer any apology or concession. Perhaps he is merely wishing for the status quo ante. Perhaps he regards his role in the matter as an entirely innocent one.

Be that as it may, honor demands a courteous response to a courteous overture….

The second group is a parasite on the first. Its sole purpose rests on expropriating the glory and reputation the award in times past painfully and honestly earned in the public esteem, and expending this stored capital profligately on unworthy objects to give them an outward momentary appearance of worth.

For example, the parasites seek to elevate REDSHIRTS to the stature of DUNE by an outward show of praise without the book being as praiseworthy. However, according to the inevitable rules governing such counterfeits, as soon as the public opinion grows aware of the inflation and adjusts its estimates accordingly, the parasites fail, and the original host fails with them.

In this case, failure means the Hugo Award no longer represents to anyone an honest judgment of worth. The boast ‘Hugo Award Winning!’ becomes a leper’s bell rather than a badge of honor, and any undeceived science fiction readers flee it. REDSHIRTS is not elevated to the stature of DUNE, but DUNE sinks.

Perhaps Mr. Martin can see a means whereby the host and the parasite that forever seeks to destroy the host can coexist in peace. I, for one, cannot….

(10) AN INTERVIEW WITH URASIS DRAGON. But once Wright had a look at Steve Davidson’s reaction to Martin, he discovered a new comradely admiration for GRRM, as expressed in “Constant Discord from Imaginary Dragons”.

Good grief. Observe that by kicking up this smokescreen of false reconciliation, Mr. Davidson actually makes it more difficult for any parties wishing for true reconciliation (I believe George RR Martin is one such) to accomplish the task…..

For the sake of any undecided readers toying with the notion that the puppykickers have some sort of valid argument or same vestigial desire for peace, allow me to address Mr. Davidson’s four points in order.

Point One: Please note that in the same column he says ” Anyone can become a member and all members enjoy the same rights and privileges as any other member.”

So, when we Sad Puppies did exactly this, Mr. Davidson uses this as an example of us “scamming the system” and advises us, as a condition of reconciliation, that we stop.

Logically, since we cannot cease to do what was never done to begin with, the condition cannot be met. As if one offered peace to a confirmed bachelor on the condition he stop beating his wife.

And Mr. Davidson also uses this to contradict our (accurate) accusation that a small group of inside elite writers and editors over the last fifteen years has been manipulating and dominating the awards secretively, that is, scamming the system.

(11) AMAZING NEGOTIATIONS. Meanwhile, Fandom’s self-appointed Ambassador Plenipotentiary Steve Davidson is experimenting with a unilateral cease-fire, which he calls a “Self-Inflicted Puppy Moratorium”.

I’ve finally whittled my suggestions down to two:  1.  leave the current SPIV recommendation list as a pure recommendation list.  (It’s almost not a slate – all that needs doing is to drop the associated political rhetoric and the curation down to a “final list” and it will BE a recommendation list) and 2. disassociate SP from RP in a publicly demonstrable way.

I’ll note in passing that BOTH of these suggestions are things that the Sad Puppies are claiming to want to do – or to have already done.  It would, therefore, seem to be an easy set of requests to comply with.

As quid pro quo, I offered the following:  I would consult and participate in their recommendation list(s) (participate in order to ‘prove’ that I was doing so); I would give serious consideration to any proposal(s) they might make at WSFS business meetings (they’ve called for a Hugo for tie-ins, among other things);  I will honor their votes and nominations as being valid participation in the Hugos (in other words, won’t assume it’s all politics and market grab on their part); will continue to keep Amazing as an open source (that it has always been – the ONLY people I’ve ever received a “never coming here again” are those who complain the site is biased against them, which, if they stuck around instead of running for the hills….)

AND – I promised a unilateral moratorium on puppy-related posts for two weeks (starting yesterday) while I awaited their response.

(12) NEW YEAR’S FIREWORKS DISPLAY. Scott Lynch, who for reasons explained in the post felt unable to do so immediately after Sasquan, rang in the New Year with a defense of Patrick Nielsen Hayden against John C. Wright’s characterizations.

…This was especially frustrating in the wake of the 2015 World Science Fiction Convention, after which the ponderously self-important blowhard John C. Wright publicly accused veteran editor and lifelong fan Patrick Nielsen Hayden of both assaulting Wright’s wife and masterminding the long-term “corruption” of the Hugo Awards, to which the SF/F field largely replied: “Meh.” Now, some of that is certainly due to Wright’s tireless self-marginalization and frothing bigotry, but regardless, I think Patrick deserved better of his friends and colleagues. He deserved to have someone stand up and state plainly what he could not– that John C. Wright talks a big game about truth and courage, but that he is demonstrably full of shit.

I wanted to be that person. I prepared a lengthy post to that effect. And then anxiety did its usual crushing, grinding thing, and days became weeks, which became months. It is now the new year, Hugo chat has started up in earnest, and Wright is once again plying his mealy-mouthed combination of false civility and vicious nonsense on the subject. I have decided to weigh in with a reminder that the narrative Wright wants to push is an absolute full-blown fabrication….

(13) YEAR IN REVIEW. Like on that game show, Lou Antonelli delivers the answer in the form of a question: ”2015? The Year in Review?” at This Way to Texas.

And then, what I would have thought would be be a great thing, being nominated for the Hugo award twice, turned out to be the worst thing that ever happened in my life. But it helped me realize that, in the end, I really only write for myself and friends, and in literature – as in other things in life – trying to please other people is the fast track to misery.

[Thanks to Stephen Burridge, Morris Keesan, Nila Thompson, John King Tarpinian, Zenu, and Bruce Arthurs for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Matthew Johnson.]

Update 01/02/2016: Corrected item (8) after readers pointed out Paulk was commenting about Steve Davidson’s reconciliation post, not George R.R. Martin’s.

328 thoughts on “Pixel Scroll 1/1 Let Scrolled Acquaintance Be Forgot…

  1. So many good responses. Well done filers. As has often been said: The worst thing to happen for most puppy leaders* is for one to read their actual words… And sometimes their spouses corrections (as @Anna Feruglio Dal Dan points out above).

    *I’ve decided to make it clear who I’m talking about – the leaders of the movement as I really don’t know much about the majority of followers

  2. libeling me, of all people, as a bigot

    Sometimes comedy just…happens.

    As he has repeatedly pointed out, it is not that Mr. Wright is a bigot, rather it is his interpretation of his god’s will that he must behave in a bigoted manner.

    Sarcasm aside, I’m pretty sure that’s his justification as to why his homophobia, misogyny, and general hatefulness (anyone who supports eg. abortion rights is anti-Christian and a tool of the Devil) is not bigoted or hateful.

    ETA not sure how he justifies the outright lying, though. I have noticed that true believers of various types often think lying for a good cause is justified.

    Apologies for the speaking for others thing, but since Wright himself is apparently unwilling to indulge in an honest explanation, and is a public figure who repeatedly makes ridiculous statements and expects people to gulp them down whole, I don’t see any problem trying to figure out WTF his motives may be.

  3. So yes, there’s a case to be made that inasmuch as EPH requires clean data, it’s harder on the admins, but it’s a weak case, as cleaning the data is something they should be doing anyway, with or without EPH.

    What you have to do anyway is check all the data to see whether multiple nominations relate to the same work. If, once that has been done, a work turns out to have just three votes (which, as I understand it, the majority of nominees will), you don’t have to physically clean it. With EPH you do, since every vote for anything may be relevant to the final outcome.

  4. JCW wrote: both describing me in potty mouth language and libeling me, of all people, as a bigot, and claiming my civility is somehow false, and that my account of Mr. Hayden’s rudeness toward my wife is a fabrication.

    1. You are a bigot.
    2. Your civility is false.
    3. Your account is a fabrication.

    The things that have been said about you are true, and have been shown to be true with supporting evidence multiple times. You are a liar, and everyone knows it. You have zero credibility on any subject. Perhaps if you stopped being a bigoted lying sack of crap, people might start to take you seriously again in a decade or two. It is doubtful, but it might happen.

  5. Zenu said:
    If you want wider participation in book discussions here, the admin will have to do something about how comments are moderated. By the time a comment actually gets posted, the discussion has often moved on.

    Most of the participants here do not get their comments moderated. The triggers for moderation include:
    – it’s your first post (happened to me)
    – it’s the first post with that email address (happened to me when I changed emails)
    – your comment has too many links (not sure what the threshold number is)
    – your comment contains filtered words (spam: names of certain pharmaceuticals, or hatespeech (see also Godwin’s Law) are examples)
    – certain persons have their comments automatically moderated if their posting history has a tendency to be “problematic” as determined by OGH Mike Glyer.

    There might be other criteria, but in general, comments here are not moderated.

  6. Mr. Wright, I advise you to focus less on the mote in your fellow’s eye and more on the beam in thine own.

  7. After reading all the high-quality responses to Mr. Wright, I have only one thing add:

    Someone in this day and age when talking to adults thinks it’s appropriate to use the phrase “potty mouth language”? Really?

  8. @Laura Resnick: “The question of whether PNH is in SFWA is wandering into the usual Puppy rabbit-warren of illogical conflation, since SFWA has nothing whatsoever to do with the Hugos or the Puppy controversy.”

    I wouldn’t say SFWA has nothing to do with the controversy. I still believe that the Bulletin flap contributed tremendously to SP2 (and, hence, SP3+) gaining vital traction. If not for that kerfuffle, I think SP2 would’ve died on the vine.

    That the SFWA/Worldcon conflation is illogical is, unfortunately, irrelevant. The heart of the matter is the sense that old/classic/conservative writers are being marginalized by new/upstart/liberal voices. Seen in that light, the “mobilize to take it back” mentality makes complete emotional sense.

  9. Hi Soon Le –

    Mine have been moderated for a long time. I only post here occasionally. The one above 1:01 was moderated. Not sure about this one. I guess we will see.

  10. Andrew M:

    What you have to do anyway is check all the data to see whether multiple nominations relate to the same work. If, once that has been done, a work turns out to have just three votes (which, as I understand it, the majority of nominees will), you don’t have to physically clean it. With EPH you do, since every vote for anything may be relevant to the final outcome.

    I don’t see any practical difference there. EPH requires the same level of checking/cleaning/normalising as the current method: You must do enough checking to recognize that a nomination for “Saga 1, by Brian Vaughan” and another nomination for “Vaughan/Staples: Saga volume one” is the same work. For all practical purposes this means you must go through every ballot, and annotate them with some kind of “normalized” title.

    EPH does not require that everything is cleaned up to the standard used on the final ballot (“Saga, Volume One, written by Brian K. Vaughan, illustrated by Fiona Staples (Image Comics)”). The counting works equally well with a “temporary” normalization.

    The main difference I see is that if you spot an error in the normalization after counting, then currently you can just add the numbers together and have a new list. With EPH it’s necessary to run the count again. That makes it more important to do a good job the first time. But assuming the nomination ballots are entered into a database, (which they are, since (virtually) everyone nominates online) and you have a program to tabulate nomination from this database, rerunning the count is not a big deal.

  11. @The Young Pretender

    Mr. Wright, I advise you to focus less on the mote in your fellow’s eye and more on the beam in thine own.

    Psst. You misspelled “lumber warehouse.”

  12. So now JCW is calling HIS OWN WIFE a liar, when she corrected his account of the incident THAT SHE WAS IN, and he didn’t change his story one whit. Yeah, that’s some real chivalry. True gentlemen always ignore their wife’s plain-speaking about things that involved them. Pah.

    Who are these people the Haydens he keeps going on about? I don’t know anyone by that name. There’s “Hadens” in Scalzi’s “Lock In”, but that can’t be it. I hope there aren’t multiples of the guy who played Anakin in The Movies We Ignore.

    Thankfully, I do not believe that the creator of the universe is as small, petty, and hateful a being as the one JCW worships. It’s definitely not the one in my Bibles. I don’t recognize the being JCW’s describing — particularly not his version of Rabbi Yeshua ben Yosef, who was such a radical SJW that the legal authorities (both secular and religious) decided that he had to die painfully and publicly.

  13. Pingback: The Stormbunnies and Crybullies | John C. Wright's Journal

  14. :: godstalk ::

    ETA: Also a response has been crafted, see the ping back ! I think SP4 should be retitled “in search of clicks and hits” 🙂

  15. It is 1:35am here. I have cooked langue du chats, knitted a tam with the Seal of Rassilon, watched Citizen Kane and I need to be at work tomorrow at 8:00. Life is both too good and TOO SHORT to read JCW’s hundred-words-where-one-would-do blog posts.

  16. The JCW trackback (archive link) above is crazy awesome. Not only does he not know who Scott Lynch is (srsly, does the man not know *anyone*? Or how to use Google?), but there is this passage which, truly is a work of beauty and an utter, utter lack of any self-awareness:

    In other words, he deliberately scammed and cheated the system, and he personally robbed me personally of my due, thanks to his dishonestly cast vote…

    There’s also some associated blatherations about Blood Libels, something called a Blood Oath, which is how PNH has declared a fatwa (in the limited Western context) upon him???? The man is just the gift that keeps on giving.

  17. (6) STAR WARS SPOILERS

    Thank you so much for that. I wish I had the understanding and vocabulary to understand more of it.

  18. JCW continues to prove that not only is he a dishonest lying bigot, he is also innumerate. He was never “due” any awards, and his continual claim that he was just shows how shockingly ignorant he is of how Hugo voting works. Not that shocking ignorance is surprising coming from that bloviating sack of crap.

  19. I just watched Star Wars the Force Awakens with my Dad this afternoon, nearly 40 years after watching Star Wars with him in the theater as a child. It was wonderful to experience this movie with my Dad in a theatre once again.

    The music was really beautiful and evocative throughout the movie. I hope the score is recognized come award season.

  20. How was Wright possibly “due” an award when, had No Award not won, his works still came in behind the writings of Arlan Andrews, Tom K, Kary English, Steven Diamond, Steve Rzasa, and Lou Antonelli? Seriously? And it’s not like that list is wall-to-wall SJWs; those were all Puppy picks.

    Entitled, much?

  21. Shao Ping on January 3, 2016 at 5:54 pm said:
    @Snowcrash: Amusingly enough, John C. Wright and Scott Lynch have point/counterpoint articles in Star Wars on Trial: The Force Awakens Edition

    This continues his pattern of denying he knows people he probably does know.

    Headdesk.

    I have that book. It’s rather fun.

    I think I should have another look at it, now that I know more about some of the authors.

  22. Shambles on January 3, 2016 at 5:51 pm said:
    I just watched Star Wars the Force Awakens with my Dad this afternoon, nearly 40 years after watching Star Wars with him in the theater as a child. It was wonderful to experience this movie with my Dad in a theatre once again.

    The music was really beautiful and evocative throughout the movie. I hope the score is recognized come award season.

    Isn’t it brilliant? I don’t normally buy movie soundtracks, but this one feels like something really special.

  23. @Cally: When I walk through the passes in the Hugo voting details, I infer that Wright’s logic is that:

    1. If you completely ignore all preferences expressed by the No Award voters, including their below-the-line choices, he would’ve won novella* and maybe a couple of others.
    2. You should completely ignore all preferences expressed by the No Award voters because, well hey, parasites amirite?

    ———————————
    *Very briefly using novella as an example, One Bright Star to Guide Them was ahead of everything except No Award on Pass 1. The reason Flow eventually took second place is that it was the top choice of those No Awarders who expressed a secondary preference. If you don’t count those people, then One Bright Star maintains its lead through to the end.

    I haven’t checked the other categories to the same level of detail, but I wouldn’t be surprised if Best Related Work came out similarly. I stress that if you think this is a massively entitled and self-serving way to count votes you will have to find someone who disagrees with you to argue with. I am only the reporter here. 🙂

  24. The Sad Puppies can exist without the Puppy Kickers, because we are content to read and write science fiction without feeling the need to condemn the works for failing a political purity test

    This was my favorite part of JCWs silly ramble, it actually made me laugh out loud. I guess that makes me a lolbully.

  25. I missed a category. Add Burnside and Roberts to the list of people that Wright’s works came in below.

  26. I haven’t checked the other categories to the same level of detail, but I wouldn’t be surprised if Best Related Work came out similarly.

    No, the Hot Equations was in second on the first pass. JCW’s offering came in fourth, behind “No Award”, Hot Equations, and Why Science Is Never Settled. JCW was never close to coming in second in that category.

  27. @Bloodstone75

    I was about say be charitable, but then I read Wright’s latest and… oh my.

    I really think the only problem with Lynch’s remark about medications and therapy is that you have to want to be in rational touch with the world for those to be an option. He’s just… somewhere.

  28. Aaron: cool. Thanks. And now that I check, he was nowhere close on novelette either. Even if you decide both the Olde Heuvelt and No Award votes shouldn’t count, Triple Sun still takes it. So presumably it’s just the novella award JCW thinks the “parasites” robbed him of. God I hope so.

    Meanwhile, in the Not Only Is the World Stranger Than We Know, It’s Stranger Than We Can Know department, I see that 23 people who voted No Award for Best Related Work picked, as their second choice:

    Wisdom From My Internet. That’s…an interesting sequence of preferences.

  29. It is fun to have seen how Wright has backtracked. From PNH assaulting his wife to speaking to her in a medium loud voice. Quite a difference.

  30. Jim Henley on January 3, 2016 at 6:52 pm said:

    Aaron: cool. Thanks. And now that I check, he was nowhere close on novelette either. Even if you decide both the Olde Heuvelt and No Award votes shouldn’t count, Triple Sun still takes it. So presumably it’s just the novella award JCW thinks the “parasites” robbed him of. God I hope so.

    Meanwhile, in the Not Only Is the World Stranger Than We Know, It’s Stranger Than We Can Know department, I see that 23 people who voted No Award for Best Related Work picked, as their second choice:

    Wisdom From My Internet. That’s…an interesting sequence of preferences.

    16 people voted No Award 1 and then JCWs Pale Realms of Shade 2 i.e. the JCW Novella that wasn’t even popular with people who voted for more than one JCW novella. I put it down to a small but significant anti-Chaos Horizon vote.

  31. From JCW pingback post

    But I am a forgiving man, jovial and magnanimous. I make the following peace offer: Go your way. Cease to interfere with me and my livelihood, do your work, cease to libel me and meddle with my affairs, withhold your tongue from venom and your works from wickedness, and we shall all get along famously.

    Have we seen any sign of JCW being forgiving? These peace offers by puppy leaders are… Full of too much insults and false equivalencies for me to take them seriously. Especially when libel is frequently claimed when someone quotes his own words.

    If you post something on the Internet people are going to talk about it unless you are an obscure nobody. If you don’t want people meddling in your affairs then keep your affairs private. It’s a simple concept. Freedom of speech =/= freedom of consequences.

  32. So presumably it’s just the novella award JCW thinks the “parasites” robbed him of.

    Is that the one where he’d have won three times if not for those meddling kids?

  33. @Kurt Busiek:

    Is that the one where he’d have won three times if not for those meddling kids?

    Indeed. And presumably GRRM should’ve given him the three extra Alfies too. For was John C. Wright not deprived of three novella Hugos by Puppy-nominated works?

  34. Have we seen any sign of JCW being forgiving?

    He is, in all modesty, a skilled forgiver, one of the most jovial and magnanimous forgiving today.

  35. @JJ: “Then there was the claim from one Puppy that the Pups represent the “center” of fandom.”

    ARGH! This irritates me to no end, whether done by Puppies or a certain news channel. The U.S. far right is not the U.S. center. The fandom right wing is not the center either.

    Also: Wait, you didn’t order your SJW-mandated 600 copies of Scalzi’s last book? Foul! Someone will be by to repo your SJW card ASAP, Comrade JJ. 😉

    @paulcarp: LOL at your Brady Bunch/Kate P filk! I’m bad at guessing what filks are based on (I prefer it stated up front), but I got this one. 🙂

    @Fred Kiesche: Heh, awesome quote from Damon Knight, thanks. I feel like I’m in a time warp again. 😉

    @Andrew M: IMHO EPH reduces slate effectiveness by making the resulting short list more reflective of the nominators’ wishes. It’s not a slate-bullet (that’s not practical), but I do feel it’s pretty brilliant.

    @Tasha Turner & @Various: That quote is all kinds of special snowflake, so thanks to you & others for taking one for the team. I didn’t want to go read his post! I’m mildly curious who’s interfering with his livelihood – I think he’s doing that?! – but not curious enough to click through, bleah.

    ETA: @Wildcat: LOL. 🙂

  36. @Jim Henley

    I think I understand that sequence of preferences. I’d say it means: “No Award should win, but if it doesn’t, I want to protest by putting my weight behind the most absurd result possible.” I didn’t do that, but it doesn’t surprise me that a few people might have.

  37. John C. Wright is the jovaliest, most modest, magnanimous, skilled forgiver I have ever known.

    Also, I ate the plums.

  38. I regret my click-through to Mr Lamplighter’s rewrite of ‘crusaders for Sodom’ and beating one ‘with a tyre iron’ as being a sensible, Christian way to behave. Ever since he accused my spouse of libel, I have assumed he made a terrible attorney. Now I can add terrible philosopher to the list.

  39. I do wish I had called him Mr John C Nielsen Hayden in my previous comment, so that no one would infer that I was attacking his partner.

  40. paulcarp: I do wish I had called him Mr John C Nielsen Hayden in my previous comment, so that no one would infer that I was attacking his partner.

    What he does to the Nielsen Haydens is incredibly rude, disrespectful, and UnChristian. I don’t think it behooves any of us, regardless of our beliefs, to imitate him in that.

    I can certainly understand why Lamplighter uses her maiden name, though. I wouldn’t want my work to be professionally associated with his misogynist, homophobic, hateful, over-embroidered screeds, either.

  41. JJ – I have no doubt you are correct. It was my unlikely hope that being called anything other than your professional name, your chosen name, and your legal name would seem foolish. I just chose a poor way of saying it.

  42. John C. Wright…

    He cannot bring himself to insult me in a courteous or clever fashion.

    …seems to be one of those who believes that, in order to be courteous and civil, it is sufficient to refrain from raising one’s voice or using “potty mouth” vocabulary.

    How else to explain his complaint above? As though it were possible to insult someone in a courteous fashion?

  43. Nicole J. LeBoeuf-Little on January 3, 2016 at 10:50 pm said:
    John C. Wright…

    He cannot bring himself to insult me in a courteous or clever fashion.

    …seems to be one of those who believes that, in order to be courteous and civil, it is sufficient to refrain from raising one’s voice or using “potty mouth” vocabulary.

    How else to explain his complaint above? As though it were possible to insult someone in a courteous fashion?

    I tried!

  44. This continues his pattern of denying he knows people he probably does know.

    And the cock crowed a third time. And then a fourth. And a fifth. Eventually the cock gave up, went home, gargled hot honey and lemon and wrapped his neck in a scarf. ‘Does this guy know anyone?’ he clucked, and went to bed.

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