Pixel Scroll 11/1 Rank Election

(1) If you are fan who drinks, the newly reopened Clifton’s Cafeteria would like to tempt you with these two science fictional libations –

drinks at Cliftons

(2) “Another Word: Chinese Science Fiction and Chinese Reality” by Liu Cixin, translated by Ken Liu, in Clarkesworld, talks about the themes of other Chinese writers after these introductory comments about the domestic reception for his own work.

China is a society undergoing rapid development and transformation, where crises are present along with hopes, and opportunities coexist with challenges. This is a reality reflected in the science fiction produced there.

Chinese readers often interpret science fiction in unexpected ways. Take my Three Body series as an example. The alien-invasion story takes as its premise a “worst-case” scenario for relationships among members of the cosmic society of civilizations, which is called the “Dark Forest” state. In this state, different starfaring civilizations have no choice but to attempt to annihilate each other at the first opportunity.

After publication, the novels became surprisingly popular among those working in China’s Internet industry. They saw the “Dark Forest” state portrayed in the novels as an accurate reflection of the state of brutal competition among China’s Internet companies….

Authors (myself included) are often befuddled by such interpretations.

(3) From “’Star Wars’: Their First Time” in the New York Times.

Ridley Scott: I had done a film called “The Duellists” and was in Los Angeles to shoot at Paramount, and I honestly think Paramount had forgotten. I remember saying, I’m Ridley Scott, and they said who? So David Puttnam, one of the greatest producers I’ve ever worked with and the most fun, said, “Screw them, let’s go see [“Star Wars”] at the Chinese [theater].” It was the first week. I’ve never known audience participation like it, absolutely rocking. I felt my “Duellist” was this big [holds thumb and forefinger an inch apart], and George had done that [stretches arms out wide]. I was so inspired I wanted to shoot myself. My biggest compliment can be [to get] green with envy and really bad-tempered. That damn George, son of a bitch. I’m very competitive.

(4) Andrew Porter was interviewed, complete with photo, for “Longtime Brooklynites Reflect on a Changing Brooklyn” on Brownstoner.com:

Now you can put a face to me and my non SFnal opinions about recent changes in Brooklyn Heights, where I’ve lived for 47 years.

I’m sure you’ll also appreciate the comments, one of which accuses me of hating Brits!

(Daveinbedstuy accuses – “Andrew Porter sounds cranky; as he usually does on BHB. I wonder what he has against ‘Brits.’ And bringing up ‘granite countertops’ Really????????”)

(5) Jim C. Hines on Facebook:

I HAVE WRITTEN THE FIRST 22 WORDS OF MY NANOWRIMO NOVEL!

The NaNo word counter says at this rate, I’ll finish by January 20, 2022.

I suppose I should probably keep writing, eh?

(6) “Fantastic Worlds: Science and Fiction, 1780-1910” is on exhibit through February 26, 2017 in the newly renovated Smithsonian Libraries Exhibition Gallery of the National Museum of American History.

Travel with us to the surface of the moon, the center of the earth, and the depths of the ocean – to the fantastic worlds of fiction inspired by 19th century discovery and invention.

New frontiers of science were emerging. We took to the air, charted remote corners of the earth, and harnessed the power of steam and electricity. We began unlocking the secrets of the natural world. The growing literate middle class gave science a new and avid public audience. Writers explored the farther reaches of the new scientific landscape to craft hoaxes, satires and fictional tales.

Fantastic Worlds: Science and Fiction, 1780-1910 is accompanied by an online exhibit.

(7) Francis Hamit, a novelist and film producer who is a graduate of the Iowa Writers Workshop, has published A Perfect Spy, a memoir about his first two years at the University of Iowa when he was a dual major in Drama and Business. While he narrates the ongoing dramatic social changes that were transforming society and the university in 1965 and 1966, he also covers the impact of the sexual revolution, the sudden rise of a drug culture, and the beginnings of the anti-war movement at the University of Iowa, from a first-person perspective.

“I saw the first draft card burnt,” Hamit says; “And I would see the last anti-war riot there several years later. I was also very disturbed by the rise of all kinds of drug use in and around Iowa City. Unlike almost everyone else I knew, I did not think this ‘cool’. I saw people ruining thier lives by refusing to tell the police who’d sold them the drugs: facing years in prison. I offered to help them find the dealers if they would leave my friends alone. How I did this is narrated in A Perfect Spy, which is a 118-page excerpt from my forthcoming book Out of Step: A Memoir of the Vietnam War Years.

“I was already in place,” Hamit added; “A perfect spy who made no pretenses of approving of recreational drugs. I didn’t do anything with them, but simply watched and listened so I could collect some useful intelligence for the police. At the same time, I became involved with some very interesting women who were part of the Sexual Revolution. That was part of a larger social revolt. None of what happened then can be viewed in isolation, so I’ve just tried to be as truthful as possible while changing a lot of the names of the people to prevent embarrassment.”

A Perfect Spy will be available exclusively at first from November 12, 2015 on Amazon Kindle for $5.00 and can be pre-ordered now. A print edition will be available in March, 2016 with a suggested retail price of $12.00 from most bookstores.

(8) “The artist who visited ‘Dune’ and ‘the most important science fiction art ever created’” – a gallery of Schoenherr at Dangerous Minds.

Frank Herbert said John Schoenherr was “the only man who has ever visited Dune.” Schoenherr (1935-2010) was the artist responsible for visualising and illustrating Herbert’s Dune—firstly in the pages of Analog magazine, then in the fully illustrated edition of the classic science fiction tale. But Herbert didn’t stop there, he later added:

I can envision no more perfect visual representation of my Dune world than John Schoenherr’s careful and accurate illustrations.

High praise indeed, but truly deserved, for as Jeff Love pointed out in Omni Reboot, Schoenherr’s illustrations are “the most important science fiction art ever created.”

(9) Jason Sanford posted a collection of tweets under the heading “The fossilization of science fiction and fantasy literature”. Here are some excerpts.

https://twitter.com/jasonsanford/status/660782118356783104

https://twitter.com/jasonsanford/status/660783781654233088

https://twitter.com/jasonsanford/status/660789856075948034

Although I have friends that do exactly what Sanford complains about, he doesn’t hang with them, read their fanzines, or (I’d wager) even know their names, so I’m kind of curious whose comments sparked off this rant.

Personally, I’m prone to recommend Connie Willis or Lois McMaster Bujold if I’m trying to interest someone in sf – though both have been around over 25 years and aren’t spring chickens anymore either.

People recommend what they know and esteem. It’s perfectly fine to argue whether recommendations will win fans to the genre, but it seems petty to act as if pushing “classic” choices is a war crime.

(10) John Scalzi was more or less content with Sanford’s line of thought, and responded with “No, the Kids Aren’t Reading the Classics and Why Would They”.

Writer Jason Sanford kicked a small hornet’s nest earlier today when he discussed “the fossilization of science fiction,” as he called it, and noted that today’s kids who are getting into science fiction are doing it without “Asimov, Clarke, Heinlein and Tolkien.” This is apparently causing a moderate bit of angina in some quarters.

I think Sanford is almost entirely correct (the small quibble being that I suspect Tolkien is still common currency, thanks to recent films and video games), nor does this personally come as any particular shock. I wrote last year about the fact my daughter was notably resistant to Heinlein’s charms, not to mention the charms of other writers who I enjoyed when I was her age… thirty years ago. She has her own set of writers she loves and follows, as she should. As do all the kids her age who read.

The surprise to me is not that today’s kids have their own set of favorite authors, in genre and out of it; the surprise to me is honestly that anyone else is surprised by this.

(11) “The kids” who don’t read the classics are one case, would-be sf writers are another, explains Fynbospress in “Slogging forward, looking back” at Mad Genius Club.

Kris Rusch has also noted how many young writers she’s run into who are completely ignorant of the many, many female authors who’ve been in science fiction and fantasy since the start. Among other reasons, many of their works have gone out of print, and the new writers coming in may not have read the old magazines, or picked up the older, dated-artwork books at the used bookstores. So they really, truly, may not know that their groundbreaking new take has been done to death thirty years before they came on the scene, or that they’re trying to reinvent a wheel that has not only been invented, it’s evolved to all-wheel drive with traction control.

(12) I can’t say that Vivienne Raper is going where no one has gone before in responding to the latest Wired article about the Hugos — “Five reasons why the ‘Battle for Pop Culture’s Soul’ isn’t about ‘white men’”.

[First three of five points.]

There are many reasons why I might be “angered” by previous Hugo winners.  And none of them are anything to do with ‘the increasingly multicultural makeup’ of the awards:

ONE

Science fiction’s most prestigious award‘ for Best Novel was decided in 2014 by fewer than 4,000 voters.

TWO

The Best Short Story for 2014 got onto the ballot with fewer than 43 nominations.

THREE

Popular blogger John Scalzi has won more Hugo Awards (inc. best fan writer) than Isaac Asimov – author of I, Robot – or Arthur C. Clarke. He also has 90K+ Twitter followers.

(13) Jeb Kinnison at Substrate Wars is more analytical and lands more punches in “The Death of ‘Wired’: Hugo Awards Edition”. Here are his closing paragraphs.

The various flavors of Puppies differ, but one thing they’re not is anti-diverse — there are women, people of various colors, gays (like me), religious, atheists, and on and on. The one thing they have in common is that they oppose elevating political correctness above quality of writing, originality, and story in science fiction. Many of the award winners in recent years have been lesser works elevated only because they satisfied a group of progressives who want their science fiction to reflect their desired future of group identity and victim-based politics. For them, it is part of their battle to tear down bad old patriarchy, to bury the old and bring themselves to the forefront of culture (and incidentally make a living being activists in fiction.) These people are often called “Social Justice Warriors” – they shore up their own fragile identities by thinking of themselves as noble warriors for social justice. Amy Wallace places herself with them by portraying the issues as a battle between racist, sexist white men and everyone else.

She then goes on to give some space to Larry Correia, Brad Torgerson, and Vox Day (Ted Beale). While her reporting about them is reasonably truthful, they report that she promised to interview Sarah Hoyt (who ruins the narrative as a female Puppy) but did not do so, and left out material from other interviews that did not support her slant. Tsk!

The piece is very long, but written from a position of assumed moral superiority and elite groupthink, a long fall from classic Wired‘s iconoclastic reporting. It’s sad when a quality brand goes downhill — as a longtime subscriber, I’ve noticed the magazine has grown thinner in the last year as ad revenues declined and competition from upstarts like Fast Company ate into their market. Now they are me-tooing major controversies for clicks. Once you see this dishonesty in reporting, you should never view such sources as reliable again.

(14) Sometimes I suspect AI stands for “artificial ignorance.”

If the programmer of this tweet-generating robot was literate, they could easily discover that the words Portugal and Portuguese are not even mentioned in this U.S. Census definition of “Hispanic or Latino.”

(15) “The Original Star Wars Trilogy Gets An Awesome Force Awakens-Style Trailer” via Geek Tyrant.

I’d warn that there are too many spoilers, except you’ve already seen the original trilogy how many times?

[Thanks to Andrew Porter, Mark-kitteh, Will R., JJ, Trey Palmer, Francis Hamit, and John King Tarpinian for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Jack Lint.]

594 thoughts on “Pixel Scroll 11/1 Rank Election

  1. @Brian Z:

    Would you agree that the three greatest books of 2014 were

    Nope. No matter what three titles you put in there, because I don’t believe there is an objective “three greatest” anything of any time. Opinions are subjective and fallible.

    You must think I’m not being sincere

    Ayup.

  2. @Susana Thank you. I have a soft spot for slow, patient works, and particularly for writers and directors with the discipline to hold the payoff for the right moment. Leckie had that, it turned out–I just didn’t think it communicated that to me early enough. Pacing-wise, though, I thought it was part of the charm of the books, that you have to focus and listen and look carefully. It fits Breq’s character.

    And I agree, I’m not at all interested in the lowest common denominator. Amazon salesrank kind of does that one automatically.

  3. Aaron, what is it with all these strawmen? Nobody said every voter must read every book – that’s nonsensical. And I said I tried to seek out novels that get hundreds of glowing reviews in the first few months of publication with the presumption that was all part of a day’s work for a serious nominator, not that I caught them all.

    I’ve given you two meanings of best: 1) most enjoyable and 2) of the highest standard or level that something can reach. If you mean #1, that’s fine. The Howeys, Butchers and Correias are doing pretty well in that department too. If you mean #2, like I do, what was stunning about the novel’s intricate politics, did it give you any especially compelling or unique insight into human society? What was so great about the epic scope to outstrip all others? Best is a superlative and all you’ve said so far is I read it and boy do I feel super.

  4. Aaron, what is it with all these strawmen? Nobody said every voter must read every book – that’s nonsensical.

    You know, not every comment is in response to something you said. You might want to think about that for a bit.

    I’ve given you two meanings of best: 1) most enjoyable and 2) of the highest standard or level that something can reach.

    Define the difference. Also explain why something that meets #1 shouldn’t be considered the best book of the year, but something that meets #2 should, and vice-versa.

    You’re still behaving like a text adventure game, expecting only a single response and getting befuddled when anyone offers a different one. You don’t seem to understand that evaluating books is not some sort of quantifiable process where you can check off a dozen boxes and say “this one is the best”.

  5. You’re welcome to define it as #1, in which case, Aaron, meet Goodreads Choice, and get ready to start tearing your hair out because you just can’t choose which of these best books that all your friends are really reading are your favorites!

    If you’d like to participate in a conversation about what rises to the highest standard, you’ll need to say both what you thought was good and how it was better than the other things that are good in a similar way.

  6. Brian Z: The highest standard of what, exactly? Word choice? Punctuation? Characterization? Pacing? Scientific accuracy? Psychological accuracy? Tone? Evocation of smells? Description of landscapes? Depiction of emotions? Making the hair on the back of your neck stand up? Incluing? Amusing infodumps? Deftness? Lyrical depiction of the Very Large? The Tiny?
    You keeps sounding like that textbook in Dead Poet’s Society. Is that what you want to sound like?

  7. Will R. on November 5, 2015 at 6:10 am said:
    And I’ll just say thanks to everyone. Part of this is just wishing I’d found The Peripheral early enough to have actually argued for it when it mattered.

    I can empathize with the sense of frustration. It happens to me most years. If I had read “The Peripheral” in time for nomination season, it likely would have been on my nominating ballot, but then I’d have to drop one of my original five, but which one?

    OTOH, I hadn’t heard about “The Goblin Emperor” and when I read it in the Hugo Packet, was blown away. I’ve since bought multiple copies to give away. So that’s an example (for me) where the Hugo nominating community brought a superlative work to wider attention. It got my top spot in the final vote.

  8. If you’d like to participate in a conversation about what rises to the highest standard

    Define what you mean by “rises to the highest standard”.

    In any event, why would anyone want to participate in a conversation with a dishonest dullard like you?

  9. Aaron: Feel free not to feed the troll, but please stop namecalling and abusing the troll.

  10. Cally: Why? I never said there is no subjectivity involved. Subjectivity makes it interesting – as Mamatas said a while back and I instantly agreed. Conversely, do you think “Best” should be “this made me feel good and I can’t articulate why”? Wouldn’t you think the awards have a better chance of success if people think seriously about and – god forbid – talk about what “Best” means to them specifically? If not, what’s to prevent another Dark Between the Stars?

    Aaron: good luck with Goodreads Choice then – enjoy the new Hugh Howey! Feel free to come back and mention what was superlative though, if you think of anything. And if you can’t hold yourself to a higher standard than those Puppies, you might think about apologizing for all the nasty things you’ve said about how they are unable talk about why their stuff is supposed to be so good.

    Mike: how gallant, thanks.

  11. If not, what’s to prevent another Dark Between the Stars?

    EPH

    Sorry. straight line, poor self control and alla that. I’ll see myself out.

  12. Snowcrash, haven’t seen you in ages!

    How would that prevent another Dark Between the Stars? With EPH if one of these factions tried to manipulate the ballot by voting in lockstep they’d get between 2 and 4 works in each category, and if a second group tried it in opposition to the first they might take up all the slots. What’s the point of choosing between one or two items that you think arrived on the ballot through a non-tainted process? Nobody’s ever explained how that is a satisfactory outcome.

    By the way, weren’t they supposed to be subjecting EPH to more rigorous testing? Before we know it it’s going to be summer again.

  13. @Soon Lee: Or as it ROT13’s into:

    Cu’atyhv ztyj’asnu Pguhyuh E’ylru jtnu’anty sugnta!

    Sorry, just skipped over a ton of stuff in the 11/4 thread that was ROT13’d. . . . Hopefully I didn’t just summon someth—

  14. Brian Z: And of course, working against the theory of a demographic shift away from preference for harder SF are the thousand-odd people interested in voting for a bunch of Analog stories a hostile political agenda

    There, Fixed That For You.

  15. Will R.: I’m trying to understand how my tastes are so out of step with something that in the past always seemed to match up pretty well for me. I don’t think it’s puppy stuff…because I don’t care at all for most of what seems to matter for them (and the two books I’ve mentioned specifically, Peripheral and Annihilation, weren’t hugely affected by the puppies).

    That’s not true. Subtract around 200 nominators who have never nominated before, but did so this year to support a hostile political agenda, and you have a cutoff of around 73 nominations. How many books on the Longlist fell between 88 (Annihilation) and 73? We’ll never know. The Peripheral might well have been in that spread.

    The other thing you might have to accept is that maybe your taste is now more divergent from the aggregate Hugo nominators’ taste than it has been in the past. That’s life.

    As others have said, pretty much everyone here can point to years where the Hugo Shortlist and Winner made them say “WTF???” (for me, 2010 certainly fits that bill — at least 3 of those books had no business being on the ballot, never mind winning, and 2012’s Among Others? Really???)

    Dude, whining that the Hugos are broken because The Peripheral didn’t make the Longlist, even though you yourself hadn’t read it in time to nominate it — that just makes you look really petulant and childish.

    None of us gets everything our way on the Hugo ballot every year. That’s just the way aggregate opinion of the group who is invested enough to nominate works.

    I really don’t understand why you and Brian Z. think you are more special than the rest of us, and should expect to demand that what you like appears on the Hugo ballot.

  16. a hostile political agenda

    “Flow” by Arlan Andrews and “The Triple Sun: A Golden Age Tale” by Rajnar Vajra were neo-fascist? “The Journeyman: In the Stone House” by Michael F. Flynn and “Championship B’tok” by Edward M. Lerner were misogynist?

    I didn’t think they were the best stories of the year, but if the only metric under consideration is “enjoyed very much” then I am absolutely confident that those were things Analog readers certainly did “enjoy very much.” What am I missing?

  17. Brian Z: “Flow” by Arlan Andrews and “The Triple Sun: A Golden Age Tale” by Rajnar Vajra were neo-fascist? “The Journeyman: In the Stone House” by Michael F. Flynn and “Championship B’tok” by Edward M. Lerner were misogynist?

    I’m sorry, but who are you quoting there? Because you’re not quoting me, and I’ll thank you to not put my words in front of your comment as if you are quoting me.

  18. Oh sorry, maybe should I have said: There. Fixed. That. For. You.

    Or feel free to explain the hostile political agenda inherent in liking “Flow” by Arlan Andrews.

  19. Brian Z: feel free to explain the hostile political agenda inherent in liking “Flow” by Arlan Andrews.

    The hostile political agenda inherent in the Puppy Slate, and all the hostile rhetoric from Puppies in the last 8 months, is blindingly obvious. Or did you snooze and miss that?

  20. JJ, point taken. A Trufan with your impeccable credentials would never resort to such cheap rhetoric.

  21. Brian Z: A Trufan with your impeccable credentials would never resort to such cheap rhetoric.

    I’ve no doubt you will be quite happy to invent those credentials for me, just as you invent everything else, since I’ve never claimed to be a “Trufan” or to have “impeccable credentials”.

    As far as the credentials I do claim, I did have two Siamese cats, but one of them recently died in my arms. Now I have a Siamese cat and a black Tribble with claws.

  22. Brian Z: And here I thought

    Based on the vast preponderance of evidence provided by you over the last 6 months, I find that highly unlikely.

  23. JJ wrote: Subtract around 200 nominators who have never nominated before, but did so this year to support a hostile political agenda, and you have a cutoff of around 73 nominations. How many books on the Longlist fell between 88 (Annihilation) and 73? We’ll never know. The Peripheral might well have been in that spread.

    Brian Z wrote: Or feel free to explain the hostile political agenda inherent in liking “Flow” by Arlan Andrews.

    Look at that. JJ says that things were nominated to support a hostile political agenda, and you claim that that means that the hostile political agenda is inherent in liking those things. Creative reading, there, and not at all what JJ said.
    Not so. Nobody thinks Guardians of the Galaxy agrees with Beale, or that Beale’s agenda is “inherent in liking” the movie. Are hostile political agendas unable to use stalking horses on your planet?

  24. So what you are saying is, the readers of the largest science fiction magazine have no right to vote for what makes them feel good, but you do? BTW I recommend you don’t mention the orbital and sub-orbital socks with them, as the discussion might get complicated.

  25. “Flow” by Arlan Andrews and “The Triple Sun: A Golden Age Tale” by Rajnar Vajra were neo-fascist?

    Flow may not have been neo-fascist (although I think one could make a case for that), but it was definitely high on the climate change denial scale.

    “The Journeyman: In the Stone House” by Michael F. Flynn and “Championship B’tok” by Edward M. Lerner were misogynist?

    Your question makes me wonder if you even read In the Stone House.

  26. Aaron! If there were any field of human endeavor where it would be a good idea to explore the full range of possible or potential issues surrounding climate change, I’d say it was probably science fiction.

    I didn’t vote for the Flynn story. If you expand thoughtfully on your critique I’ll respond.

  27. I think we just went from “you shouldn’t vote for entertaining works” to “of course the Puppies have the right to vote for entertaining works” in record time! (All paraphrased.)

    So, everyone, Brian Z just started arguing against himself: DRINK!

  28. Did my comment say anything about my own opinions on nomination approaches? No! But recognising that would have meant Brian Z would have had to address his own trollish behaviour instead of a poor attempt at deflection.

    I really miss the days Brian Z was more subtle about this.

  29. Even though I have Stylish running and Aan’s plonk script (plus additions) installed, Brian Z’s comments still show through enough that I sometimes get a sense of what they’re about. At this point, even that much is enough to make me want to respond “FAAAAAARRRRRRRRTTTTTT.” Sorry, guess I’ve been hanging out with a bad crowd on Twitter.

  30. Continuing in my thankless efforts to try to be reasonable with Aaron, I gave the Flynn story a little more thought.

    Over the summer I just found it boring. An affable but classless barbarian and his pal, captured by a beautiful young princess – give me a break. And the lame toilet humor. What are we, twelve? Since then my own thinking has evolved (and I’ve started reading Analog again) and I’m more forgiving of authors who choose to directly engage the pulp tradition. Due to the structure and trajectory of the story, I was also inclined to assume the main character who exhibited those cliched attitudes grows and matures over the course of the series. But OK. Is Aaron right and I am wrong? Maybe someone who has read more of the Journeyman stories knows.

  31. @Brian Z

    The File770 regulars are – from what I can tell – like-minded people gossiping among themselves. It’s something like a loud group in a bar; you can hear what they’re saying, but it would be bad etiquette to sit at their table, uninvited, and join in the conversation. Unless I’m getting something wrong and you’re the group’s “honourary cumudgeon”, you’re wasting your time here. If you’re not just trolling for the lulz and are bothered (?) by the lack of recognition for/existence of hard SF, email me 🙂 I’ll hopefully need some help with something exciting in the near future. Nothing to do with the Hugos.

  32. Vivienne, I’m glad to hear you are looking ahead to new projects. I used to be mostly a lurker but still, this seems more like a noisy clique coming and monopolizing your table, and if you step out to make a call or have a cigarette, someone has taken your chair. Your perspective might be different because you came into the conversation later, when ideological policing had already taken its toll. You are right, though, probably not worth the trouble.

  33. “The lack of recognition for/existence of hard SF.”

    Heh. Here? And I thought the discussion I saw elsewhere agonizing about how the new Supergirl has pierced ears was funny. I’ll have to remember that one when the next cycle of raves for The Martian comes around. Only reason I haven’t read that one yet is that I want to/promised to see the movie first. (Long story, summer promise, lack of opportunity to hit theaters. I may have to wait for the Blu-ray release.)

    Meanwhile, back to the milSF series I’m reading at present. Not exactly The Hard Stuff, but it’s tasty popcorn and handles interstellar empires pretty well. (No, not the Black Jack books. The other series. No, the other other series.) I’d be tempted to recommend it to the Puppies, but as a notorious F770er, my positive review would probably just scare ’em off. They’d probably faint at the thought of a woman not named Harrington in charge of a fleet, anyway…

  34. You are sitting peacefully at your neighbourhood bar. You don’t talk to anyone. You don’t speak. But that is fine, because other people are the same. More or less everyone are sitting looking at the old television set, sipping their beer.

    But then.

    Something interesting happen on the TV. And people start to talk to each other about it. And it annoys you, because the others don’t share your opinion. Even worse, the bartender and owner has the same opinion as them.

    So you grow angry. And enter the conversation. First you say that eveyone else are wrong. They don’t think so. And you say it again. And again. And again. People get tired of you, so you start to become aggressive towards them, insulting them saying that you would prefer others there. So people stop talking to you. A lot of people just turn away when you say something and move to other tables.

    So you got even angrier. How dare they talk to each other when they don’t share your opinion. And they seem to have fun together, starting quizzez, meet privately, have contest. So you get even more aggressive, mixed with periods where you try to bring back the old mood by sitting alone, sipping a beer and trying to shut everyone else.

    It was so much better when no one spoke to each other, you think. Because then everyone seemed to be alone. Now it is only you.

  35. Hampus, you should lay a dollar on the bar, drink up, and throw your glass into the fireplace. It will make you feel better.

  36. Look! Up in the sky!

    Is it a bird?
    Is it a plane?

    No! It’s The Point, zooming effortlessly over trolls’ heads!

    (Probably wearing earrings, too.)

  37. Generally speaking, Filers are very welcoming – if you don’t come in aggressively spouting Puppy myths or similar, unhappy approaches. Many of us were new here quite recently. Vivienne, you yourself were treated very kindly when you could be drawn into discussing things sensibly instead of engaging in – I think you called it a “social experiment”, the go-to excuse of anyone wishing to be forgiven for past bad behaviour.

    Brian Z, however, is a troll. He will happily argue against his own points if it allows him to also argue with someone else, as if none of us are capable of scrolling up to check what he said earlier. He will happily excuse any and all Puppy actions, while acting shocked, shocked! and horrified at the most minor of actions of others. He will twist everything and anything people say into something entirely unrecognisable, again, as if none of us were capable of scrolling up and reading the comment ourselves. He has proved this over and over again during the last few months. He had more than enough patience and effort from a number of commenters here who wanted to believe that he was participating in good faith but just wasn’t communicating effectively. He used up the patience and goodwill he was freely offered. If you wish to engage in a project with someone who has proved themselves neither trustworthy nor reliable, feel free.

  38. It’s also been a very long time since Brian Z. has filked. I find myself wondering if someone else is running the Brian Z. construct, someone with less poesy in his soul. I miss the filk.

  39. @Lydy Nickerson

    Yup, the filk softened the annoying trollish aspects.

    Of course, it also proved that he was perfectly capable of communicating effectively and must just be trolling the rest of the time, but at least there was some entertainment value.

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