Pixel Scroll 2/24/16 Happy Jack Wasn’t Tall But He Was A Scroll

(1) PAID REVIEW WORTH IT? Jeb Kinnison evaluates Kirkus Reviews’ reception of sf.

So I was leery of spending my publisher’s money to get a Kirkus review done. The review was glowing, but without the coveted star that tends to get notice from other reviewers and purchasing agents. I was interested in how they had treated other genre books, so I did a quick survey.

It appears that in the past, Kirkus assigned reviewers who were less than sympathetic to the book’s genre and intended audience. This review [of GHOST by John Ringo] made me laugh: …

But other than that, how was the play, Mrs. Lincoln? This is Ringo. His books aren’t likely to be accidentally purchased by people like the reviewer, so the review is useless for deciding which violent testosterone-infused male fantasy adventure book to buy for people who enjoy that sort of thing.

One of the best writers of science fiction and fantasy, Lois McMasters Bujold, never got a starred review from Kirkus. Here’s the summary of their review of middle Miles Vorkosigan in Mirror Dance: “A well-conceived series, solidly plotted and organized, though heavy going in places and, finally, lacking that spark of genuine originality that would blazon it as truly special.” Kind of missing the point, no?

(2) DOCTOR WHO PUN OPPORTUNITY. We ought to be able to do something with a character who is married to River, and whose series will be hstreamed on Amazon Prime beginning in March.

Welp, it wasn’t the longest of national nightmares, but now it appears it is over. Last week, I wrote about how and where you could watch Doctor Who following its abrupt pulling from streaming services on February 1 of this year. But it wasn’t to last, it seems; Amazon announced today via their Twitter that Series 1-8 of the show will be back on their Prime streaming service beginning in March.

(3) WHEN DID YOU FIRST SUSPECT? I got a kick out of Sarah A. Hoyt’s “Ten Signs That You Might Be A Novel’s Character” at Mad Genius Club. Number 10 and the Bonus sign are especially funny.

1- Nothing is ever easy, nor simple.  Say you are walking across the street to get a gallon of milk.  A rare make of car will almost run you down.  The store that sells the milk will be out of milk. You’ll have to walk across the most dangerous area of town to get to the next store.

This means someone is making you terminally interesting….

(4) FROM REJECTION TO ANGRY ROBOT. Peter Tieryas details “My Experience Publishing With Angry Robot” at Fantasy-Faction.

My journey to being a writer almost never happened. With my new book, United States of Japan, coming out, I wanted to reflect on how I got here and what it’s been like working with the fantastic Angry Robot Books.

Perfect Edge

Back in 2009, almost seven years before I joined the robot army, I’d gotten so many short story rejections, I wondered if I was even meant to be a writer. While I’d had a series of short stories published when I was younger, there’d been a gap of about five years where I’d only gotten one piece accepted. I was devastated when I received that issue and found all sorts of typos and formatting errors in my story. What I thought would be a brief moment of victory had been ruined…..

As the decision to publish was made by the whole of Angry Robot and Watkins Media staff, I knew it wasn’t going to be easy. It took USJ about four months to get to “acquisitions” which is the meeting where they make their choice to “acquire” or not. I got an email from Phil the week of the acquisition meeting telling me when it was going to happen. I could not sleep the night before and kept on hitting refresh on my emails, awaiting final word. The notification came from Phil on March 5, 2015 with a simple subject line: “You’re in.” Even though it was late, I got up and started dancing in what might be better described as an awkward fumbling of my hips.

(5) HOLLYWOOD READIES SF/F MOVIES. News of three different sf/f film projects appears in Deadline’s story “Ava DuVernay Set To Direct Disney’s ‘A Wrinkle In Time’; Script By ‘Frozen’s Jennifer Lee”.

EXCLUSIVE: Selma director Ava DuVernay has just been set by Disney to direct A Wrinkle In Time, an adaptation of the 1963 Newbery Medal-winning Madeleine L’Engle fantasy classic novel that has a script by Oscar-winning Frozen writer and co-director Jennifer Lee. Deadline revealed February 8 that DuVernay had been offered this film and was also in the mix at DreamWorks for Intelligent Life, a sci-fi thriller scripted by Colin Trevorrow and his Jurassic World collaborator Derek Connolly. DuVernay now has the offer on that film and is in negotiations on a pic that has 12 Years A Slave Oscar winner Lupita Nyong’o attached to a fable about a UN worker in a department designed to represent mankind if there was ever contact with aliens, who falls for a mystery woman who turns out to be one. That film is produced by Frank Marshall, Trevorrow and Big Beach principals Peter Saraf and Marc Turtletaub.

(6) TRUST & SAFETY. Here’s Twitter’s announcement of the Trust & Safety Council in case you want more info, tweeted February 9. It lists all the members of the Council. (Somebody may have put that in a comment here already.)

As we develop products, policies, and programs, our Trust & Safety Council will help us tap into the expertise and input of organizations at the intersection of these issues more efficiently and quickly. In developing the Council, we are taking a global and inclusive approach so that we can hear a diversity of voices from organizations including:

  • Safety advocates, academics, and researchers focused on minors, media literacy, digital citizenship, and efforts around greater compassion and empathy on the Internet;
  • Grassroots advocacy organizations that rely on Twitter to build movements and momentum;
  • Community groups with an acute need to prevent abuse, harassment, and bullying, as well as mental health and suicide prevention.

We have more than 40 organizations and experts from 13 regions joining as inaugural members of the Council. We are thrilled to work with these organizations to ensure that we are enabling everyone, everywhere to express themselves with confidence on Twitter.

(7) AXANAR SUIT DEVELOPMENT. Inverse discusses why “Paramount Must Explain ‘Star Trek’ in Court or Lose Ownership”.

Enter the lawyers. Obviously, they can claim to own Star Trek because they acquired the series from Lucille Ball’s Desilu Productions in the late 1960s. Now they’ve been merged with CBS and that’s how we’re getting both a new TV series and a continuing film franchise. But the Axanar team has a card up its sleeve.

The Paramount lawsuit claims that this infringes upon “thousands of copyrights” and the Axanar team has asked the simple question: “Which ones?” Because Star Trek now exists over several different universes, time periods, and casts, it’s not so simple. The universe is so spread out, it is almost impossible to define what Star Trek actually is. To that end, the burden is on Paramount to explain what Star Trek is — in a legal sense.

(8) CLIFF AMOS OBIT. Louisville fan Cliff Amos passed away February 22 after a long battle with heart disease. Bob Roehm wrote a fine appreciation on Facebook:

Louisville fan Cliff Amos passed away February 22. Cliff was the founder of Louisville fandom, creating both the Falls of the Ohio Science Fiction Association (FoSFA) and RiverCon. I first met Cliff around 1970 while he was teaching a free university course in SF at the University of Louisville. We had both separately attended the St. Louis worldcon the year before, but had not met. Seeing an announcement of the Free U. meeting, I began attending the weekly gatherings. A year… or two later, the local fan club was organized and in 1975 Cliff chaired the first RiverCon (combined with DeepSouthCon that year). Cliff continued to head RiverCons for several years and was a regular at Midwestcon and Kubla Khan. He was given the Southern Fandon Confederation Rebel Award in 1979, and also chaired the second NASFiC, NorthAmeriCon, that year. His interests were certainly wide-ranging and eclectic (for example, he once appeared on Tom Snyder’s late night talk show as warlock Solomon Weir), and he will be missed by his many friends both within and without the science fiction community. There will no funeral service or visitation but a memorial wake is being arranged for the near future (probably this coming Sunday); details forthcoming.

(9) GAMBLE OBIT. Australian childrens’ book artist Kim Gamble passed away February 19 at the age of 63.

Tashi cover

The much-loved, award-winning artist is known for illustrating the best-selling Tashi books, written by mother and daughter authors Barbara and Anna Fienberg.

Gamble created the lively, elfin boy with the towering curl of hair and gypsy earrings, who looked nothing like the authors initially imagined, more than 20 years ago….

Anna Fienberg called Gamble’s imagination “a magic gift which he shared with the world”….

“Working with Kim was like learning a new way to see. It was perhaps the magical appearance of Tashi that inspired us to go deeper into the mythical land of dragons, witches, giants, ogres … the world lying beneath.”

…Gamble’s favourite book as a child was Moominsummer Madness, by Finnish writer Tove Jansson, and artists he admired included Marc Chagall and Odilon Redon.

When asked about the success of the Tashi series, Gamble said, “It’s very popular because he’s the smallest kid in the class and in every story he’s up against the odds … and he uses his head, he doesn’t fight to get out of the problem. I think kids really just enjoy how cleverness beats brawn.”

(10) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY BOYS

  • Born February 24, 1786 — Wilhelm Grimm, historian and, with his brother Jacob, compiler of Grimm’s Fairy Tales.
  • Born February 24, 1947 — Edward James Olmos

(11) MORE MARK OSHIRO COMMENTARY. Mark Oshiro updated his Facebook readers about the response to his complaint about sexual harassment at ConQuesT.

3) MidAmeriCon II was the first to make a public statement, which you can find on their Twitter account. I wasn’t expecting a response from them, so I appreciated a very direct message about their commitment to safety for this year’s WorldCon. I *am* going to be at WorldCon, even if some of the people who were responsible at ConQuesT are on staff/the board. WorldCon has become a tradition for me because it was my first introduction to this community, so I will be there and be on programming. Say hello if you like!

4) Chris Gerrib was the first to apologize to me, and I appreciated and accepted the apology. I respect that he did so without being asked to.

5) Yesterday, Kristina Hiner sent me an apology. I am keeping it private because I see no reason to publish it. It is a *very* good apology, and I accepted it, too. I am very thankful for her response, and more so than anyone else, she was the only person I really *wanted* an apology from. I have also informed her that at this point, I actually don’t need each of the complaints followed up on at this point. It seems redundant to me. Everyone knows about the post now, and I don’t need an apology from anyone else. I just wanted someone to inform these people that their behavior was unwelcoming, rude, or hostile. I’ve now done that, so I think the board and ConQuesT can devote time and energy to future conventions instead of last year’s.

Mikki Kendall used the discussion about Oshiro to launch her post “On Bad Cons & How You Kill An Event in Advance”.

I get invited to a lot of cons that have a diversity problem. I also get a lot of requests from cons that claim to want to create anti harassment policies. Aside from my feelings on an expectation that I donate hours of work to strangers for events I have no interest in attending, there’s the sad reality that many small cons are so entrenched on reinventing the wheel they’ve missed the window to do better. Younger fans, fans of color, disabled fans…they don’t have to keep going to cons that aren’t welcoming to be able to connect with other fans. They can go to the big commercial cons, to the smaller cons that do get it & to social media for their community needs. So no, they won’t keep giving cons with bad reps chance after chance. They won’t be patient with serial offenders or the places that enable them. Why should they donate that time & energy to some place that doesn’t want them, that thinks they deserve to be hazed, deserve to be mistreated in order to prove something to bigots?

Bluntly? Most small cons will age out of existence because of bad behavior, because of a focus on the past that prioritizes the social mores of the dead over the actual experiences of the living.

(12) THE LIGHT’S BACK ON. The Wertzone says Pacific Rim 2 re-greenlit for 2018”.

It was on, off and now back on again. Universal and Legendary Pictures are moving ahead with Pacific Rim 2, probably for a 2018 release date….

This has unfortunately meant that Guillermo Del Toro will be unable to return to direct, having already moved on to other projects. However, Del Toro will still co-write (with Jon Spaihts) and produce the movie. The new director is Steven S. DeKnight, the Buffy the Vampire Slayer veteran who went on to create Spartacus and is currently working on Netflix’s Daredevil. The film will be DeKnight’s directorial debut.

(13) THIS COULD RUIN ANDY WEIR’S SEQUEL. This video argues we can reach relativistic speeds using new technologies.

Imagine getting to Mars in just 3 days… or putting points beyond our solar system within our reach. New propulsion technologies could one day take us to these cosmic destinations making space travel truly interstellar! NASA 360 joins Professor Philip Lubin, University of California Santa Barbara, as he discusses his NASA Innovative Advanced Concept (NIAC) for energy propulsion for interstellar exploration.

 

(14) ADMIT IT, YOU DO. Motherboard asks, “Why Do We Feel So Bad When Boston Dynamics’ New Robot Falls Down?”

Even though all the things the engineers do to mess with the robot are done to showcase its ability to correct itself, recover from falls, and persevere in performing tasks, the human tendency to anthropomorphize non-sentient objects is so strong as to override our common-sense knowledge that Atlas is an object incapable of feeling. Engineers commonly kick robots to demonstrate their ability to recover, and it always feels a tiny bit cruel. It’s a strange quirk of the brain—though the tendency is stronger in some people than in others.

(15) A LONG TIME AGO IN DOG YEARS. Some Sad Puppies writing on Facebook are grieved that I have not excerpted Stephanie S.’ “Opening a Moderate Conversation on Fandom with ‘Standback’” atThe Right Geek.

Let’s talk first about what I like to call the “pre-history” of the Sad Puppies. For the past fifteen years (at least), the character of fandom has shifted in a way that many Puppies find very troubling — and by the way, for the vast majority of our number, this has nothing to do with race, gender, or sexuality. A significant number of us are women who accept the precepts of first wave feminism at the very least. A number of us are “people of color.” And a number of us are gay or, at minimum, amenable to leaving gay people alone to live their lives as they see fit. No — what has disturbed the Puppies is the increasingly strident tone that many fans have adopted in support of their favored cultural and political causes. In our perception, the vague “codes of conduct,” the “shit lists,” the pilings on, the endless internet flame-wars, and the non-falsifiable accusations of racism/sexism/homophobia/etc. have all created an environment that is extraordinarily hostile to points of view that don’t hew to a particular left-wing party line. The result? We’ve felt unwelcome and stomped on for what, to our mind, should be recognized as sincere and well-meant differences of opinion.

Over the same time frame, the Puppies have also become concerned about the artistic direction of our field. The “Human Wave” movement, the “Superversive” movement, and the more generalized complaints about “message fic” and “grey goo” that started gaining steam before last year’s Sad Puppies campaign are all flailing attempts by the Puppies to describe the flatness we’ve perceived in many recent award winners — particularly in the shorter fiction categories, where the stylistic sophistication and emotional catharsis beloved by creative writing professors and MFA programs the world over appear to be crowding out more accessible stories with identifiable plots and recognizably science-fictional ideas.

(16) EDIT AND GET CREDIT. Michael J. Martinez singles out for praise and award consideration five editors who worked on his fiction in 2015.

Yes, these are editors I’ve worked with. Each one of them has contributed both to the quality of my work as well as my ever-ongoing education as a writer. They are also lovely humans, which goes a very long way with me.

(17) ANY SUFFICIENTLY ADVANCED TECHNOLOGY. Radio Times found a very funny site: “Someone is pretending to be the IT guy at Hogwarts and it’s hilarious”.

Let’s be honest: magic is great and everything, but if Hogwarts didn’t have WiFi, we probably wouldn’t be so interested.

A Tumblr account called The Setup Wizard took this premise and ran with it. The blog is the fictionalised account of an American muggle named Jonathan Dart working as Hogwarts’ first IT guy. The somewhat grumpy character is constantly solving problems and handling the struggles of being a Muggle in a magic world.

How is it that the first person in this school I’ve successfully been able to explain network bandwidth to is the 500 year old partially decapitated ghost?

Today I taught a centaur how to use a hands free Bluetooth headset. Apparently he really felt the need to make phone calls while wielding a bow and arrow.

[Thanks to Will R., Michael J. Walsh, Reed Andrus, Andrew Porter, and John King Tarpinian for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Steve Davidson.]

892 thoughts on “Pixel Scroll 2/24/16 Happy Jack Wasn’t Tall But He Was A Scroll

  1. @Brian Z
    VD seemed pretty clear to me when I read the various posts I found based on the simple Google search I did. Taken as a whole.

    You frequently ask questions here before doing any research. I might be less offensively rude if you did a bit of research before asking questions. You seem to expect others to do your work for you. It may be easier for you to just ask but you’d learn more if you did your own research and get more respect.

  2. Nicole got at the exact heart of it for me: the fundamental worth and rights of each individual person shouldn’t be up for grabs, and I don’t want to talk with someone who wants to treat it as a possible outcome of a debate, rather than a necessary starting point.

    A couple weeks ago, one of my closest friends died suddenly. My friendship with him was actually my longest continuous one – since 1990, with no more ever than a few weeks out of touch. (I’ve known others longer, but with more stretches out of touch along the way.) He was an out gay man back in the ’80s, and we met on Portland area BBSes the year before the Oregon Citizens Alliance pushed their homophobic Proposition 9. (We and some other friends of the time were trolling Scott Lively long before he got the chance to commit crimes against humanity internationally.)

    Brian was a tremendously kind, gentle man, one with that marvelous genuine interest in others and what they liked, and a knack for asking the kinds of questions that put people at ease and let them open up while feeling safe. But there was a category of discussion he simply refused to take part in: any that involved others requiring him to prove to others that they ought to respect his rights as a legal and moral equal. He was never available as a specimen, only as a person. He didn’t ever criticize others willing to take up those arguments, but he just wasn’t going to ever do it himself.

    I think about my friend, who was a great blessing in the lives of all his friends, and via his work at FEMA an important participant in the work of helping people throughout the region respond to forest fires and other disasters. I think about men who delight in envisioning him suffering and dying for his orientation, who have never done one scrap of the good my friend did – literally saving lives as well as simply being a good citizen and neighbor – and who are sure they’re better than him because they’re not nasty homosexuals. And I think, I can’t debate his potential humanity either. Nor anyone else’s.

  3. As much as I respect the impulse to keep discussing things, at this point it’s kinda killing me how much time and energy people are expending on the two current trolls.

    I have the Stylish plonk script installed (with personal additions since it was originally published) and the last two pages of comments were pretty much nothing but dimmed out comments and people responding to them.

    Please, everybody, just ignore them and let’s get back to discussing science fiction and fantasy. Anybody read anything good recently? I’m partway through Superheroes Anonymous, based on recommendations here, and am enjoying it.

  4. I’ve added Superheroes Anonymous to my shopping list.

    On that matter, I read After The Golden Age a few days ago, another superhero book. Found it not thought through, irritating and with a main protagonist that seemed to be a total idiot.

    Not recommended.

  5. Please, everybody, just ignore them and let’s get back to discussing science fiction and fantasy. Anybody read anything good recently?

    This was discussed on the last two pages! 😀

  6. @Lexica: Don’t you mean three? Earlier Rail dismissed Stephan R. Donaldson. /s

    More seriously, I’m surprised at how much of Donaldson’s work has stuck with me. A read a fair amount of fantasy in middle and high school like Raymond Feist, David Eddings, or Terry Brooks that left no trace. But I often think of how Thomas Covenant defeated Lord Foul in White Gold Wielder.

    The second book of Mordant’s Need is the only one I read and for some reason I really love it because of that. I bought it on a lark at a used bookstore while on vacation and stepping into the middle of things, trying to figure what was going on, really worked for me.

    Finally, I’ve always meant to finish the Gap Cycle. I think I started it right before entering high school and felt it was an “adult” book. I had read books with sex before, but mostly Piers Anthony, and the violent books had been much more tame. It’s probably best I didn’t draw any conclusions about sex or adulthood from those books (there was an ugliness to them I thought at the time was mature), but because of the time I read them, I’ll always be if not fond, then appreciative of them.

    (that said, I understand there are many reasons–ranging from his treatment of rape to his vocabulary–that would make someone not like him)

  7. Book Reading:

    Razorhurst by Justine Larbalestier: An interesting book, based on real-life crime gang wars in 1930s Sydney, but not one that really did much for me. The nature of the way it was structured meant some repetition, which I found got old pretty fast. Also, the ghosts were for the most part, just really annoying. YMMV.

    The Last Witness by K.J. Parker (novella): I was more than halfway through, and thinking, okay, this is an interesting premise, but I’m not really “wow’ed” by the book — and then the author totally stuck the landing. So this is going on my Novella shortlist. People who like twisty, turny plots will likely enjoy it. Claire North fans almost certainly will find it engaging.

  8. I’m starting a reread of Gentleman Jole and the Red Queen tomorrow. It’s just for fun. I expect it to read like a different book now that I’m not expecting any zany adventure or explosions.

  9. @lurkertype: Argh, I can’t stick the flounce! 😉

    @Readers: I stayed up way too late reading Harrison Squared last night, and I believe there are Sequels Coming Eventually. To which I say, “Bring on the late nights!” Back to my on-again-off-again reading of Cold Iron, and probably “starting” Uprooted (I read the lengthy sample, but it’s been long enough I really should start over).

    @JJ: Re. The Last Witness – I mostly liked this a lot! It’s on my short list, for sure. I’m happy to see you liked it.

    @Bruce Baugh: Well said and very touching.

    @Lexica: Indeed, and I’m about ready to block Vivienne Raper at this point (she’s annoyed me in the past anyway, with her MFA-ier-than-thou attitude). New lows here, IMHO.

    ETA: @JJ: I think of Meredith whenever I post a U.S. book deal. :-/ I, too, hope she’s okay.

  10. Btw, I’m one of those who have never read Gene Wolfe. He, together with Jack Vance, are the black holes in my SF-knowledge. When the nomination period is over, Wolfe will be my first pick from Mount 770.

  11. @Lexica, Hampus:

    I was quite glad that I already had Supervillains Anonymous at hand when I finished Superheroes Anonymous. I also stand by my recommendation of the up-to-five-books-now “Action Figures” series, by Michael Bailey.

    On a bizarrely related note, the supers role-playing campaign I’m in reconvened this past weekend after a hiatus due to holidays and a bit of a membership shift due to clashing schedules. As it happens, the team is currently investigating the murder of a priest who had been performing gay weddings on the sly. He’d married two women earlier that day, and one’s brother was the prime suspect. We interrogated him in good faith at first, as we figured he’d “only” beaten the priest up but wasn’t the killer. After the second or third time we caught him lying to us, I ended up smashing his face into the table and calling out his protector (one of the two main supers in the city) for harboring him.

    Granted, my character’s vehement advocacy on LGBT issues might have something to do with the fact that he’s a shapeshifter who sees biological sex as just another variable and is so comfortable being either gender that his teammates have no idea what his “true” sex is. (The character’s superhero identity is male, so we usually use male pronouns just for convenience in abstract discussions like this, but that was really just luck of the draw. If they’d first encountered him as a woman, it’d be different. FWIW, I originally imagined the character as female, but even then I wasn’t sure if that’s how she was born. Not that it matters; I just developed the backstory as a character who was already on the run and never considered her original body important. It changes so often that it’s irrelevant.)

    In that one session, I portrayed Concerned Suburban Neighbor (F), Official Superhero Persona (M), and Former Victimized Prostitute (F) to further the investigation, with a brief detour to take Bigoted Brother’s form for forensic purposes. I can’t wait to see what the new team member – from a dimension where deception is a foreign concept – makes of that. He kept seeing me go into my room at HQ as one person and come out in a completely different form, which at one point led him to ask just how many people were sharing that room… 😉

  12. @Shao Ping: *raspberry*

    I was thinking of the drinking game that’s evolved around Donaldson’s prose. Maybe I should have included a “Drink!” along with the “Coruscate!”

  13. Rose felt an emotion as extreme as the dismay which had followed the rousing of the Time Worm; as paralyzing and uncontainable as the knowledge that she had doomed the Doctor and his companions. The scale of her distress seemed too great to be called despair. Heaved aside by the TARDIS’s deflagration, the Daleks sprawled against the slope of Muirwin Delenoth, the resting place of abhorrence, took up once more the inexorable chant:

    CORUSCATE… CORUSCATE…

    Stephen R. Donaldson, The Last Dalek

  14. There was a short story – I think I heard it on Podcastle – where words caused physical harm. Insults as weapons and breaking someone’s heart could put them in the hospital. Unfortunately, the Podcastle site is blocked at work so I can’t look up the title.

  15. I know some VERY honorable conservatives. From Texas, even! Not just run-of-the-mill Republicans, but “have actually gone to family BBQs with both former Presidents Bush”. They are the kindest, most generous people (in both time and money, to the community and their church) you could imagine. I owe them a deep moral debt that I can never repay, and they don’t even hint that I should.

    What they DON’T do is suggest that other political or religious points of view are invalid, that gay people ought to be beaten, that child murderers have ANY justification, that skin color determines IQ, or that women shouldn’t be allowed to vote. W, as governor, appointed the wife of this pair to a state commission, where she managed to both cut the budget and improve the efficiency.

    Those are the conservatives I stand with. Not Teddy.

  16. Well, surprising no one, I was too busy trying to be cute, and forgot to actually check the damnable box. (sigh) (eyeroll at self)

  17. Huh, I had an email announcing a new episode of Vivienne Is Concerned About Us, but it has been eaten by a grue. Snowcrash, I assume that was what you were referring to as well?

  18. Wow, that was some epic-level apologism, with a heaping side order of irrationality.

  19. @Mark – Yup. It was A Very Special Post, but now it’s gone, like tears…in the rain. Time to godstalk.

  20. Look, I really appreciate you taking the time to talk about the stories you like. It’s interesting to understand why you nominated or voted for particular things 🙂 I learned a lot and have a better understanding of the Hugo situation 🙂 Thanks again 🙂

    I’m never going to agree with you about VD because I don’t value tribalism above truth. You can find me a quote where he praised mass murder of children. You’ll find he didn’t. You can be downright disgusted by someone using a mass murderer to score political points about European immigration policy (which is what he *did* do), but that’s not the same thing.

    Likewise, it’s pretty rich to start moralising at me while Aaron is allowed almost free rein to spout off poisonous accusations that a fantasy author might act out and attack someone gay with a tire iron (or similar). That’s some serious s**t to leave lying on the table.

    Look, you can find people nasty and shitty. You can dislike people. You can criticise people for stuff they did. Once you start on character assassination and criticising people for stuff they didn’t say, but you felt they did, then – I’m sorry – but you’re not on the moral high ground any longer. And, if I’m discussing stories with you at the time, I’m not going to leave that uncontested.

    Thanks again for the chat about books – we have different tastes and I understand yours better 🙂

  21. Vivienne, how about you just stick to book conversations and cease chiming in with all this dishonesty? Because I’m really sick of it, and based on their reactions, I think a lot of other people are, too.

  22. Ahh. I see the previous post went out to look for emoji. Check with JJ, he’s got his own stash!

    Once you start on character assassination and criticising people for stuff they didn’t say, but you felt they did, then – I’m sorry – but you’re not on the moral high ground any longer.

    Hmm.

    Likewise, it’s pretty rich to start moralising at me while Aaron is allowed almost free rein to **stuff Aaron did not say, but that you felt he said**

    Hmmmmmm.

    @Vivienne, one of these days I may come to understand why I should be required to hold Day or Wright to a lower standard. Certainly one lower than what you hold for almost everyone else.

    But until that day comes, please try to control your peevishness over how no one here is buying your insistence that *some* people should be free of the consequences of their actions.

  23. @Vivienne

    You are at best soft-soaping the VD statements in question, and doing so repeatedly while also ignoring that some people made some cogent responses to you. I’m not going to start unpacking all that in this thread, not least because Mike appears to be exercising his right not to host certain things, so a suggestion: if the issue bothers you so much, commit it to your own blog. Maybe then people will come over and give you the argument you’re clearly spoiling for.

  24. Vivienne: Again, fuck off. Stay with your bigots and assholes. With the people that heroises childmurder. That thinks there are good reasons to throw acid in the face of small girls.

    “Moral high ground”. Yes, I believe almost anyone is on moral high ground with regards to abusive assholes like Beale. That you don’t says a lot of stuff about you and all of it is bad.

  25. Likewise, it’s pretty rich to start moralising at me while Aaron is allowed almost free rein to spout off poisonous accusations that a fantasy author might act out and attack someone gay with a tire iron (or similar).

    Yes, the poisonous accusations of reporting what the fantasy author in question said and considering the implications of his own words. It is such a poisonous accusation to point out that people who have an established pattern of spinning violent fantasies have been known to begin to act out upon them. Yes, that’s a horrible and terrible thing to point out.

    Do you even read the bullshit you write?

  26. I agree with everything said by those before me:
    @JJ
    @snowcrash
    @Will R
    @Mark
    @Hampus Eckerman – both statements
    @Aaron

    I suggest you think about why you want to spend time with so many people you hold in contemp and don’t feel are your intellectual or moral equals. Then go find a place which is a better fit. Please leave us alone.

  27. Vivienne Raper:

    You can find me a quote where he praised mass murder of children.

    Beale’s infamous statements about Breivik have been pointed out to you multiple times, in multiple threads. I am not going to link you to the exact words, because frankly they’re too disgusting for that and he doesn’t deserve the traffic, but if you are in doubt you can find them on google.

    If you have read it, and think it’s an acceptable thing to say, you’re an idiot. If you’re too lazy to check it out, yet choose to believe it wasn’t as bad as everyone says, you’re also an idiot. In either case, can you please take your idiocy somewhere else?

    (And if you really want to defend Beale’s statements, can you please do so? Because when you’ve been criticized for this in the past, you usually dodge the issue and say you don’t want to discuss politics. Only to repeat your defence of Beale a day or two later. That’s not an endearing behaviour.)

  28. *cleans up page*

    Thanks again to the filers who created the Stylish blocker (I’m sorry to say I’ve forgotten your names). But it’s a lovely option to have.

    Driveby: I just want to say I cannot be active at the moment, though am finally over the worst of the flu (igotaflushotdarnit). But for most of my life, when i’m sick and/or feeling bad, I can ignore a lot of it IF I have something good to read. And File 770 is one of my first go to places.

    Also: Gentleman Jole and Red Queen SO MUCH LOVE So much to say, SO HAPPY! Hope to talk more.

    Last ep of AGENT CARTER: SO MUCH LOVE! SO HAPPY! Hope to talk more later.

    *zips off to walk dogs and go in to campus for office hours*

  29. @Vivienne Raper, From The Deleted Screed: “There aren’t many political views that aren’t dehumanising to someone.”

    Um, citation needed (but not actually requested, as folks are mostly sick of this crud).

  30. I’d like to be clear that I’m not calling for VR to leave, quite simply because that’s exclusively Mike’s domain. I was calling for her to stick to her previous declaration that she was dropping that topic and instead take it to her own turf if she was so determined to continue it.
    I’ll be interested to see if she’s prepared to put that sort of thing front-and-centre on her own blog.

  31. Vivienne: from where I sit, you’ve been very clear you don’t agree with the views in question, which is part of why I hope you won’t leave.

  32. I do want Vivienne to leave if she is going to spend all that time on defending assholes, bigots, racists and homophobes.

  33. Seconding Hampus’s sentiments regarding somebody I’ve had plonked for ages.

Comments are closed.