101 thoughts on “Cry Havoc and Let Slip the Puppies of War 4/19”

1. “No, that’s a business opportunity.”

   Regardless, it’s discriminatory and depending on the state or federal laws illegal.

   “– Owner says he will not only not serve me, but will serve NO PIZZA until I am out of the restaurant.”

   Not really. Everyone who voted on the slate could’ve voted without a Slate. The Hugos were not denying anyone the right to vote for whomever they chose to as individuals. As many other writers have already gone over both in recent and in the past many others, both popular and literature, left wing and right wing, have won the awards. Nothing was ever stopping anyone from voting on who they wanted to. So you’re comparison that you’re not getting served isn’t really analogous at all.

2. “Actions have consequences.” hahaha. Just being white and male in SJW eyes is an “action.” There’s only eleventy kabillion quotes to that effect. Let me tell you what there are no consequences for: making up stuff and ignoring other stuff. Were this whole shebang based on rules of evidence, it would be thrown out of court before it even went to trial, and SJWs would lose.

3. “Why?”

   Because a black driver running out of gas in the desert shouldn’t be refused service at the only station for miles on the basis of race.

   Because Jewish parents looking for an emergency asthma inhaler for their child after midnight shouldn’t be refused at the only 24-hour pharmacy on the basis of religion.

   People whose businesses serve the public should be required not to discriminate on the basis of race, ethnicity, gender, religion or sexual orientation.

4. I am calling for a new form of cosplay. Go dressed as authors. I think people should dress up as Larry, Brad, and Vox, go to a con and then complain about how everyone is mean to us. Vox in particular would be interesting. Quote him verbatim and complain that you are not open to his world view. Brad and Larry can then equivocate about Vox’s racism and state ‘we are not Vox Day’. Then they can dude bro each other and send twitter messages back and forth. Larry can start crying and show his sensitive side and then Brad can give him a big man hug to show that they have feelings also.

   Would also be fun if some people go dressed as some of the “SJW’s” and argue with them. Then they can jello wrestle to see who wins the Sad Puppy wars.

5. @Alexander: Buying a pizza isn’t a contract. In a contract – or even in a non-contract pizza-buying scenario – the parties aren’t necessarily on equal footing and don’t necessarily have equal rights. I don’t agree that reacting to disruptive actions and dire threats is discrimination. Also, where’d I say I was okay with (actual) discrimination? Also it’s not clear who you even mean by buyer/seller. So I feel like you’re putting words into my mouth, pushing talking points, and just not making much sense with the vague statements.

   Anyway, as I ALREADY mentioned, the pizza analogy went off the rails. But I do find it absurd to trot out the old reactionary talking point and claiming that me deciding not to buy something is the same as someone refusing to sell it to me. Hah! False analogies for $10, please.

6. “Larry can start crying and show his sensitive side and then Brad can give him a big man hug to show that they have feelings also.”

   At that point the John C. Wright cosplayer should forcibly pry them apart and begin emergency conversion therapy to straighten them out.

7. LOL @Guest….

8. There’s a reason they keep score in sports. We’re not keeping score – or even using rules. So anything’s anything. Just get on here and say anything. There’s no context, no compared to what. Nothing really. All that is is friction and incitement that never ends. There’s no shared language, just huffiness and puffiness.

9. @Kendall: Strictly speaking, a menu saying “One Pizza: $5” is an offer, the statement “I’ll have a pizza” is an acceptance, and an offer plus an acceptance constitute a contract.

   However, the same legal system that defines this transaction as a contract has also established a whole bunch of rules for when similar verbal exchanges don’t create legally binding contracts, which is why practicing lawyers have to actually take classes called “Contracts” and “Torts” instead of relying on the objective wisdom handed down through the Internet. And that legal system has established anti-discrimination laws, which apply to some businesses and some protected classes, but not others.

   (Why some but not others? Because the legislators who passed those laws considered some kinds of discrimination, but not others, to have sufficiently bad social effects that it’s worth bringing the heavy hand of the state to intervene. Left-handed people don’t seem to face systematic discrimination in employment; therefore, the laws prohibiting discrimination in employment do not mention lefties as a protected class. This is only surprising if you imagine that just as libertarians want government to regulate as little as possible, liberals want government to regulate as much as possible.)

10. @rcade: Underneath the facade… John Wright is likely a sensitive guy. I think his wife just lets him think he is her dyad. We all know that women have all the power in relationships. Like any other married guy he just does what she tells him to. She likely picks out his close because she doesn’t like his taste.

    Another thing we can do to show our love is that if we see Larry, John, or Brad at a con show our love for them. Go up to them and go ‘I just want to say I LOVE YOU MAN!” Ask them if you can give him a brow hug and hug it out like they do in Entourage. When Larry Correia comes in starting “LC!, LC!, LC!”. Give them flowers. Give them chocolates. Hell how about a big bag of doritos? Maybe a teddygram? Go in his twitter feed and send him “I love you” to Larry, Brad, and John. Post on their blog how much you appreciate at them.

    “Have you lost weight? ” You look good dude. That P90X routine is working out for you. Soon you will be the ultimate minority a fan who is actually physically fit. We will need to create a special section for the attractive people like yourselves so you don’t get harassed.

    Ask them if they will be your “daddy”. (BDSM is supposedly real big in genre world). Serenade them with Love songs. Hell remake the Ray Bradbury song and dedicate it to Larry, Brad, and John. Post on their forums “These assholes better leave you alone they are holding up Monster Hunter 9 it might be a week late.

    How about a White House petition “I love Larry Correia Day!” They just need some love people. Show them the love.

    I am leaving Teddy Beale out of this. Since they have completely separated themselves from him. Deep down they know he is a racist scumbag, but sometimes you have to ally with Stalin. We understand. Since these SJW Nazis are all over them. Show the LOVE people.

11. Rcade, at no point have any of the real world examples involved monopolistic emergency services.
    You are quite literally pulling scenarios out of your ass that have not and will not happen.

    And to think the puppies are accused of hyperbole.

12. If you read enough SJW rhetoric, it’s easy to establish what they consider ground rules for things like internet sexual harassment by named figures, gender hatred, race and gender promotion of literature, segregation, racial bigotry and supremacy.

    Playing Devil’s Advocate and judging SJWs by their own rules on a community-wide institutional basis reveals the worst of the above comes from SJWs themselves. It’s not even a close call.

    If you were to bring in an outside neutral party and parse quotes using one single set of rules, SJWs would be knocked out in the first round. Worse, if every commenter using playground insults instead of facts presented in a contextual manner were to be forced to bet their own money on the outcome, not a single one would play.

    I would.

    If there is a Big Lie at the bottom of all this, I have just described it. This is the reason the worst SJWs will not debate in an unmoderated neutral space. It’s pretty tough to fisk your own quotes, or that of your colleagues you go to bat for time and again using the same faux academic language about privilege theory, the non-Western “non-binary,” the Anglophone “hegemony” or “settler colonialism.”

13. @James May: How many hours a day do you spend in these fights on the web? If you are so interested in the Hugos go to the Con.and bring your friends. If you are so worried about the “SJW” harassers wear a body cam. Contact the con officials in advance and tell them that you are hoping to have fun and would like to make sure the harassment policy is enforced. You don’t want to go Worldcon. You just want to be a jackass and belittle people.

14. Alexander, massively upthread, seemed to me to be implying that Puppy Slate Candidates represent the majority of those who voted in the nominating phase of the election. They weren’t. By concentrating their voting strength, they managed to massively multiply their numbers to where they were able to outvote the other 80% in a first-five-past-the-post election. (But then again, FPTP is about the only election system that a lot of people understand, so this mistake isn’t surprising.)

    In case people still don’t understand what the affect that a vote-concentrating curated “party” slate has, imagine two people. One is me, weighing about 300 pounds. The other is a small woman weighing about 100 pounds. Put us on opposite sides of a teeter-totter and naturally we’d be stuck with me on the low end. I could probably pick her up off the ground (with some effort) but there’s little chance she could budge me.

    Now, let’s imagine that for some reason we decided to measure what happens if we stood on each other. I get a large board and wear my usual flat shoes, put the board over her as she lay flat on the ground, and I carefully step onto the board, keeping my weight spread. She’s uncomfortable, but unlikely to be injured.

    Now we trade places. I don’t get a board. She puts on spiky high heels and steps up onto my stomach with one foot. Now we call for the ambulance because her weight, concentrated onto a single spot, has gone right through my skin and punctured my stomach, seriously injuring me, possibly fatally unless they can get me to a trauma center quickly. But she only weighs a third my weight. That is what a slate being followed by an aggrieved, angry minority of possibly as much as 15% of the eligible electorate can do if it puts all of its weight on a single spot.

    -=-=-

    To be fair, the nominating phase has virtually never had a majority-support nominee (conspiracy theories about “sekrit slates” notwithstanding); however, the lack of widespread outrage among the members at each year’s shortlist (not the same as scattered individuals complaining about the taste of the voters) can in my opinion be taken as the majority’s consent that the finalists deserved to be on the ballot. Whether the members of WSFS will attempt to rejigger the nominating process in such a way that allows the members to express an opinion as to whether the finalists deserved to be on the shortlist other than by voting them below No Award, I cannot say, and only time will tell, but I think that the outrage we’re seeing this year suggests that if you put the individual finalists, one by one, before the voting members of this year’s Worldcon, and asked, “Do you think this nominee deserves to be a finalist for the Hugo Award,” you’d find a lot more “No” votes than if you’d asked the same question in previous years.

15. Jo Walton, at least, seems to understand the seriousness of this situation.

16. It also appears that Gerrold is also correct in the length of time fueds can be nursed – by VD’s own admission, in this thread, this latest broo-haha is not due to some concern about “literary quality” or “political correctness” or “secret cabals ruining “Olde-Tyme-SF.”

    It’s about his trying to get even for some slight he thinks he endured 10 years ago.

17. I’ve never thought of a dictionary as a jackass or a thing which belittles people. However it is useful in understanding mysterious phrases like “internet harassment.”

18. Alexander, massively upthread, seemed to me to be implying that Puppy Slate Candidates represent the majority of those who voted in the nominating phase of the election. They weren’t.

    Of course they weren’t. There were 2,000 ballots cast thereabouts, of which somewhere between 200-300 of them were for puppy books. It’s very obvious that 10% < 50% + 1. I can has math.

    But I don't see what I wrote that would give you the impression you took. If you care to point it out, I will be happy to discuss.

19. “You are quite literally pulling scenarios out of your ass that have not and will not happen.”

    Worst stuff like that happened all over the south in the 1960s and earlier. Here in Florida a hotel owner poured muriatic acid in his pool because black people were swimming in it:

    http://rarehistoricalphotos.com/motel-manager-pouring-acid-water-black-people-swam-pool-1964/

    Your belief that kind of thing wouldn’t happen now if discrimination was allowed is interesting. Some businesses are currently proclaiming their right to discriminate and Americans are throwing hundreds of thousands of dollars at them in support.

20. @ Kevin Standee

    I think that the outrage we’re seeing this year suggests that if you put the individual finalists, one by one, before the voting members of this year’s Worldcon, and asked, “Do you think this nominee deserves to be a finalist for the Hugo Award,” you’d find a lot more “No” votes than if you’d asked the same question in previous years.

    Sir, this is a feature, not a bug.

    In previous years, less than a half a thousand people cast nominating ballots. Those ballots had a degree of repetition such that fewer than two unique novels were recommended by every four nominating ballots, and less than twenty had the support of more than 5% of those casting ballots. Less than twenty! Out of the thousands of novels published in 2005, the nominating voters mange to bring forth less than 250 options to the table.

    This year, there 587 novels that were suggested by *someone* as Hugo-worthy. This is a step in the right direction.

    That there is more disagreement is a good thing – it indicates a broader section of the SFF fandom and field is being represented. I would have thought that a group which billed itself as the WorldCon and The World Science Fiction Society would have intended to encompass as much of Fandom as possible.

21. … Again, the idea that burning people with acid is acceptable, or synonymous, with freedom of association is absurd. Of course that should be prosecuted. I’d say the same if a pizza parlor started serving cyanide-spiked slices…

    I think safe spaces are stupid, but if people want to keep me out of a room because I’m a white man, that’s not quite in the same ballpark as trying to castrate me for entering.

    Cripes!

22. @ keranih –

    There was not any social media hysteria;
    – the TX veterinarian was canned when a newspaper asked them for comment on the posting by their employee;
    – the financial house themselves canned the employee when one of the senior people saw it – most of the public wouldn’t have known about it except that the former employee brought suit (and lost) for wrongful termination;
    – the law students engaged in months-long cyber-and-real world harassment over a period of months, even after they were warned by their law schools, even bragging that they would get these cushy jobs no matter what they did.

    And there is well-established case law and precedent supporting an enterprise’s ability to protect their “brand” or public image, as long as that decision is not based on a sharply-circumcised range of protected factors, such as age, skin color, gender, etc.

23. Now that VD has come out and said: ” RP is the belates result of the Making Light attack on me in March 2005.”

    And we have Mr. Kratman’s “So long as you don’t insult my integrity, you don’t need to fear physical harm from me” — (obvious correlation being if you do, then you do need to fear.)

    And we have Mr. Wright’s “We’ll put down our swords when you stop libelling us, but we won’t change anything we’re *doing* that caused you to label us the way you did.”

    Looked at in that frame, we do see something about, at least, the Rabid Puppies*.

    This is all about disproportionate responses to attacks. I mean come on, Mr. Beale, what on earth could a blog have done to you that you feel “I get to pick the candidates for the Hugos, and if you don’t give one of them the Hugos, I’ll destroy the category” is a proportionate response? What makes your feelings worth a Hugo, over everyone else’s?

    The parallel to the others is, I hope, clear.

    This is the classic picture of someone who had privileges, and is losing them, throwing a tantrum.

    (Oh, and do save me the “You don’t know what I want” mystery shtick; it’s a beautifully easy way to conceal sour grapes and play Texas Sharpshooter Fallacy)

    If a child throws a tantrum, they get sent to time-out , or otherwise disciplined. If an adult does, and other adults go “Why on earth do I want to deal with that person?”, they’re perfectly well allowed to. Some people manage to be complete jerks and still get their works published — I’m sure we could all come up with examples, if we wanted to. Some people don’t have the talent to pull that off, or choose to waste their talent on cliche. No one has a right to be published.

    *Some people have speculated on the Sad Puppies being the same way, to a lesser extent — a bad reaction to not winning. They are less in evidence here, and I would not want to speak to them on the basis of that lesser evidence.

24. Wrong Steven. Taking the Hugos down – if necessary – is down payment on the results. It is not proportionate – taking the Hugos from those who have stolen them is a mere first step. Vox Day has not even yet begun to portion out the reckoning. The Rabid Puppies are a small and measured response.

    A test, if you will. A test that should be easily passed, by rewarding the excellent nominees with a worthy finalist.

    A test that many seem hidebound and determined to fail.

    Or, in the words of GRRM: “You are proving them right!”

25. from xdpaul:

    “Wrong Steven. Taking the Hugos down – if necessary – is down payment on the results. It is not proportionate – taking the Hugos from those who have stolen them is a mere first step. Vox Day has not even yet begun to portion out the reckoning. The Rabid Puppies are a small and measured response.”

    I recommend all science fiction writers avoid keeping naked pictures of themselves in online accounts. Teddy is coming for your weiners. He is going to put them all over the internet. We all know the kind of demand that exists for naked pictures of SFF writers. Those fine specimen of manhood.

    I am tempted to drop a subpoena on file770 to get this guys IP address. traceroute to ISP. Then another subpoena to the ISP to find out who this is. Thats all it takes… I wonder what his employer would think of comments like this. I think they would be concerned about his fetish for seeing aging SFF writers naked. If I was to make a wager he has a blown up picture of John Scalzi in a dress over his bed.

    Sorry Mike… wouldn’t actually do that too you, but if anyone wants it. Its not very expensive.

    Note: Separating the SP from the total crazies. Not meant for Brad, Larry, and John’s apostles. They are just assholes. They are not threatening anyone. If anyone in SP reads this, dude wtf ? How could you even associate with a nut like this. Ban them from your sites. You really want naked pictures of SFF writers all over the web? Imagine all the hours of therapy people will need from seeing that.

26. “Vox Day has not even yet begun to portion out the reckoning.”

    MWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

27. @xdpaul:

    “Taking the Hugos down – if necessary – is down payment on the results. It is not proportionate – taking the Hugos from those who have stolen them is a mere first step.”

    Perhaps you should try and read what I wrote: I was calling Mr. Beale out on the fact that if RP started because of an attack on him, on a blog, his reaction is entirely disproportionate.

    And funny — the WSFS, who *does* own the Hugos, doesn’t appear to think they had been “stolen” — only you and those who think like you do. You don’t own them.

    “by rewarding the excellent nominees with a worthy finalist.”

    Well, that would be helped if all the categories had excellent nominees. I *still* have yet to read anything by Mr. Wright, say (and I’m trying) that qualified as anything above “filler”.

    If the RPs want a war, as it appears they do, they will probably get one. However, they (and every one else watching) should at least admit that the RPs are the aggressor, not the defender. You wanted a war, and so, through persistence, you may get one. That does not make your war inevitable, moral, or just.

28. I want to know how VD et all figure they are a majority?

    In the USA you have left leaning president, which does imply that the majority of americans are left leaning.

    On top of that the Hugo is an international event, I have not seen anyone in the Swedish online forums for SF/F actually support the slate. And the european mainstream right seem to be quite to left of the american right. We do have the extreme right, but then we are talking about Neo nazi fringe parties.

    It doesn’t seem like any of the puppies are aware that american citizens do not outnumber those who live in a democratic countries in the developed world that aren’t the USA.

29. David: “In the USA you have left leaning president, which does imply that the majority of americans are left leaning.”

    I have faith you would have found some different way to make the identical argument even when Bush was President.

30. Mike Glyer, SF/F fans are generally pretty sharp in my experience. I don’t think being manipulative is going to help your argument…

31. David: Nor does arguing two-legged syllogisms help yours.

32. Kenneth “That there is more disagreement is a good thing – it indicates a broader section of the SFF fandom and field is being represented. I would have thought that a group which billed itself as the WorldCon and The World Science Fiction Society would have intended to encompass as much of Fandom as possible.

    You are assuming that all SF&F novels are of equal quality. That is not true. There are lots of clinkers published every year. Surgeon’s Law may not be exactly accurate, but it’s close. Out of 1000 novels published in a year, maybe 100 of them are worth talking about.

33. VD — “[..] we are so indifferent to your pointing and shrieking.”

    You fibber! You’re not indifferent to the hullabulloo you’re causing, you love it! It doesn’t matter what happens at the Hugo ceremony this year, you got what you want already: all this fuss leading up to it, and the promise of more fuss afterwards, whatever happens.

34. I read exactly what you wrote Steven. You clearly did not understand what I wrote, nor what Vox wrote, either. One thing that has been reliable in this entire affair is that one side understands the other extremely well, while the other founders in confusion.

35. @xdpaul: Let me in on a little hint for communication — assuming that’s what you’re actually trying to do here, rather than simply go “neenerneener” or drive up this worthy website’s hit counts/network bills:

    If you think someone doesn’t understand what you’re saying, perhaps you should try, as I did, to *explain* it, rather than go “You don’t understand me. I understand you, but you don’t understand me.”

    Because the only evidence I have that you understand a thing I’ve written is that you claim to — you’ve not *demonstrated* any of it; your first response wasn’t even responsive to what I wrote.

    So: If you want people to understand you, try explaining. If you don’t, why are you even bothering to write?

36. “one side understands the other extremely well, while the other founders in confusion.”

    Something I’m sure people on any one of the many sides of this can say.

37. David: What does the massive shift in Congress represent then regarding the politics of the populace? In particular, Congress being a much closer fit to actual popular representation than the electoral college system?

    What about the general tendency of the electorate to vote conservatively with regards to actual policy? I mean, California is considered one of the most left-wing states in the union, but how did Prop 8 go again? And the ruling was explicitly stated by the populace in 30 other states. 31 Republican governors(including Massachusetts) and what is it… a record number of state legislators?

    Perhaps, perhaps, it’s best to say that American politics is quite a twisty beast, and very few conclusions ought be drawn from any particular snapshot of election results. But, if you’d like to debate the issue, I am happy to oblige.

38. Huh. Lot of homophobic and gender-based insults in this thread, and I can’t help but notice that none of them are coming from the alleged right-wing haters.

39. “that none of them are coming from the alleged right-wing haters”

    Well those of us right-wing haters are obviously more polite, and most of us aren’t even alleged we’re open about our dislike of the extreme right wingers!

40. So: If you want people to understand you, try explaining. If you don’t, why are you even bothering to write?

    I have my purposes, and your binary question covers none of them. I write not for the raving minority, but the quiet observer who has not yet made up his mind, the one who has been troubled about the measurable decline in SF, but does not know who can be trusted.

    Yet.

41. ” I write not for the raving minority, but the quiet observer who has not yet made up his mind”

    That’s funny; so do I, much of the time. Especialyl when I wander into places like JCW’s column (or, briefly, his blog).

    And one of the things I, at least, work at there is explaining myself. Of course, if you don’t want to, you’re free to remain as obscure and obscurantist as you’d like to be; you are merely helping my argument.

    So; if you don’t want to explain, don’t. I’m sure the lurkers reading will see clearly what you…um. Aren’t saying.

42. “right-wing haters” – LOL, haters who are right wing, or people who hate right-wing folks? Y’all need a new phrase (though I think I see who’s saying what), but anyway, thanks for the evening chuckle. 😀

43. xdpaul has to be Teddy Beale. The writing style is the same. Its the exact same person. This is Teddy Beale.

    Quote from xdpaul. This is classic Teddy Beale. Its obvious. Can you imagine this guy on a date? He is the perennial ‘first date kind of guy’ cause he doesn’t get a second date.

    Quote (this is Teddy).

    “I have my purposes, and your binary question covers none of them. I write not for the raving minority, but the quiet observer who has not yet made up his mind, the one who has been troubled about the measurable decline in SF, but does not know who can be trusted.”

    James May: Out of curiosity, do you cringe and go ‘oh shit’ every time you see a post from xdpaul and think ‘goddam it I wish this asshole would shut up, I am trying to make my point about SJWs and he is making those of us with common sense look bad’. Or worse. Damn. I know he isn’t from your group. but damn. That guy has to go. Its Teddy Beale. It has to be.

44. Steven, you and I are not the same. What you do on other blogs is irrelevant to what I do here.

45. “Steven, you and I are not the same. What you do on other blogs is irrelevant to what I do here.”

    And the Captain Obvious award goes to xdpaul!

    If you want to waver between the obvious and the obscurantist, feel free.

46. “So you’re doing this because somebody hurt your widdle feelings a decade ago? I’m sorry, I thought it was about a secret cabal fixing the Hugo Awards?”

    No. The attacks on me by that small and not-secret cabal caused me to start looking into them. It caused me to discover they are serial liars who regularly inflate themselves to look more successful and important than they actually are. And it showed me several points of vulnerability which we are presently addressing.

    We are not the cancer in SF. That’s not even possible. SP is the surgery. RP is the radiation. One hopes chemo is not required.

47. ‘SP is the surgery. RP is the radiation. One hopes chemo is not required.’

    Or you’re the demented serial killer who speaks in surgical metaphors. One or the other.

48. Alexander; You are quite possibly right, I have my doubts, but I doubt it really matters. America is still far from the only country that have fans invested in the Hugos.

49. “It caused me to discover they are serial liars who regularly inflate themselves to look more successful and important than they actually are.”

    Projection.

50. So they’re inadequates who make themselves seem important and that means it’s vital for you to do something?

    uh huh. As somebody else said. Projection.

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