aka Muttropolis.
Last roundup tomorrow, July 6.
Banner art changes tomorrow.
What the future holds for File 770 arrives tomorrow!
Meanwhile, roundup content today is provided by Lou Antonelli, Joseph Tomaras, Jonathan Crowe, Laura “Tegan” Gjovaag, Mark Ciocco, Lis Carey, Len Schiff, and Bonnie McDaniel. (Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editors of the day Will Reichard and Brad J. Book cover lifted from Will Reichard’s “Wishlist: Soviet Space Dogs”.)
Lou Antonelli on This Way to Texas
“Genrecide” – July 5
The dispute that arose when the Sad Puppy selections did so well in the Hugo nominations has probably created a permanent split of science fiction fans – not one created by the literature, but for social reasons.
Both sides have said such horrible things about each other that I doubt the rift will ever be healed. I wouldn’t be surprised if some semantic distinction arises later – such as the Sad Puppies’ type of fiction being called spec fic as opposed to science fiction.
Teresa Nielsen Hayden and her blog Making Light started the civil war when she realized her chums – the usual suspects – were not getting their Hugo nomination notice emails as usual. She blew up and started the vituperation a week before the actual announcement was made – proving the point, as Larry Corriea was pointed out, that there is an insider clique after all.
Mike Glyer, who’s been running his fan site File 770 since dirt was invented, unfortunately has kept the wildfires burning by collecting up Puppy posts and republishing them on his site. The comments threads there have become the clearing house for all Puppy Kicker resentment.
I don’t believe either side of completely right or completely wrong, but it really doesn’t matter anymore, because regardless of how or who started it, and how it ends, thanks to the internet too much has been said attacking too many people by so many people that there will probably be a long-term drop in readership and popular support.
Perhaps in the future people will say they read magic realism, or space opera, or dystopia, or alternate history – but as a result of the Puppy Wars, no one will actually want to admit they read “science fiction” because of all the negative connotations in the wake of the current unpleasantness.
Joseph Tomaras on A Skinseller’s Workshop
“I Lied: A Few More Words about the Hugos” – July 5
….As more people post their ballots and/or their critical response to the items on the ballot, I have been surprised at how critical judgment on Kary English’s “Totaled” has lined up. People who fault contemporary SF for leaving too little room for ambiguity have criticized it for unclear, unreliable narration in the early sections. (To which I respond: As if a recently revived brain-in-a-jar would be a reliable narrator.) People who have a habit of calling for “good stories” in the whiz-bang mode of military SF have praised the story for its emotional trajectory. It has scrambled the factional lines, and that, I think, suggests a few points in its favor. There is room for dispute over it, and is worth being revisited and debated on aesthetic grounds.
What I think is indisputable, unfortunately, is how thoroughly English herself stumbled over the politics of this year’s hyper-politicized Hugo. She went months after the announcement of the ballots before disavowing both the Sad and Rabid Puppies slates on which she had been placed: Long enough that most of the anti-canine wings of the Hugo electorate had already dismissed her as a fellow traveler, but not long enough to avoid the wrath of the Rabid Majordomo himself. I take this as an object lesson in how the center-right, quasi-depoliticized “common sense” that passes as “moderation” in the U.S. context can succeed, in a global context, only in pissing people off, whether in small matters (e.g. the Hugos) or in big ones (e.g. Guantánamo, drone bombings).
Jonathan Crowe
“Best Saga Proposal Revised” – July 5
So the proposal for a Best Saga Hugo Award (see previous entry) has since been revised: they’ve abandoned getting rid of Best Novelette, which was needlessly zero-sum, and have lowered the minimum word count. The proposal now says 300,000 words; the draft posted to File 770 at more or less the same time says 240,000. A series cannot win more than once, but it can certainly be nominated multiple times (so long as two new installments requalifies it) until it wins — I think of this as the “my favourite series better damn well win this time” provision.
I’m still not a fan: it’s going to be a popularity contest for very popular (if not always good) ongoing series. And any minimum word count is going to be exclusionary. A 240,000-word lower limit would have rendered ineligible the original Foundation trilogy — which won a one-off “Best All-Time Series” Hugo in 1966.
And as far as I can tell the amendment would still allow series to appear on the Best Novel ballot when the final installment is published, like The World of Time did last year.
Laura “Tegan” Gjovaag on Bloggity-Blog-Blog-Blog
“Hugo Blatherings” – July 5
Still, it means I’m going to be part of Worldcon for at least the next two and a half years. I’ll be voting in two more Hugos after this one. And I’ll be trying to actively look for things to nominate, as well. I’ll be checking out Renay’s Hugo Spreadsheet of Doom and the Hugo Nominees 2016 Wikia regularly once I’ve finished with this year’s packet to look for suggestions to read. I’ve already got a couple of things I plan to nominate, and a few more I haven’t finished reading yet but I think might make my list. I’ll post a few lists of possible nominations as I go, and once the deadline for nominations has passed, I might even post my actual nomination form.
The round-ups at File 770 have slowed down, mostly because there just isn’t that much to talk about the Hugos right now. Everyone is busy going through the packets or have finished voting and are just waiting for the convention. I fully expect another fake outrage to be manufactured soon, but I can’t guess what direction it will come from. I’ve been continuing to read David Gerrold on Facebook… he’s the guy that got me into this whole kerfuffle in the first place. I don’t think I would have cared as much if not for him.
Mark Ciocco on Kaedrin Weblog
“Hugo Awards: Novella” – July 5
The other shorter-than-a-novel-but-longer-than-a-short-story category, these tend to be longer reads, which is a shame because I didn’t particularly care for any of them. It’s also one of the weirder categories in that three of the five nominees are from the same author. Two of the stories are also significantly expanded versions of much shorter stories (which, given my complaints below, would probably have been much better for me). None of the nominees are particularly terrible, per say, I just failed to connect with them, and it makes me wish there was a little more variety here. I don’t want too dwell on this, so let’s just get to it:…
[Comments on all five nominees.]
For the first time this year, I’m actually thinking about deploying No Award on my ballot, if only to get past the ridiculous notion that one author wrote the three best novellas of the year or something. I mean, I guess such a thing is possible, but not with these three stories. That being said, Wright also wrote my clear favorite of the bunch, so I’m not slotting No Award very high.
Lis Carey on Lis Carey’s Library
This is a Best Dramatic Presentation, Long Form nominee for the 2015 Hugos. This is not a movie with any deep thoughts in its head. It’s pure, fun, over-the-top adventure, with colorful space battles and explosions…..
Bonnie McDaniel on Red Headed Femme
“The Hugo Project: Campbell Award” – July 5
(Note: This is the latest in an ongoing series of posts reviewing as many of the 2015 Hugo nominees as I can before the July 31 deadline, and explaining why I will or will not vote for them.)
The John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer advertises itself, famously, as “not-a-Hugo,” celebrating what the Worldcon community decides is the best new science fiction/fantasy writer of the year. Unfortunately, like so much of the rest of the ballot, this category has been tainted by the shenanigans of the Impacted Canines.
(Forgive me for sounding testy. Several weeks of slogging through godawfully bad stories not worth their weight in puppy piss will do that to you. I mean, if you’re going to behave lawfully-but-unethically and game the awards, can’t you at least nominate something halfway decent? Apparently not, as most of the ballot proves.)
Listed from worst to best….
[Comments on all five nominees.]
Check out @CoraBuhlert's guest column "SFR and the Hugo Awards" in the free @SciFiRomance Quarterly #7 http://t.co/2EEdJ3p2L4 #scifiromance
— ThGalaxyExpress (@ThGalaxyExpress) July 5, 2015
[Nothing to do with Sad Puppies, but an interesting article.]
The Sad Puppies Desaturation Fund To Promote Whiteness In Science Fiction Awards #BadCharitiesToDonateTo
— Len Schiff (@Golem_of_Queens) July 5, 2015
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Oh, and thanks Mike! Your comment section has made me poorer economically, but richer in reading. And that is the best praise I can give.
@gottacook: My guess is that Wright married a woman whose father was Jewish but whose mother was not. That would be “the daughter of a Jew” but not “a Jewish woman”.
Thanks, Mike, for including me in the next to last roundup. I am also looking forward to what File 770 will become.
Re Lou Antonelli’s comments about Teresa Nielsen Hayden’s supposed insider Hugo knowledge, that is pure bovine excrement. I was reading Making Light when the ballot was announced, and I remember her comments very well. She said (paraphrased) her suspicions about the soon to be released ballot were based on rumors and whispers, NOT inside information.
I’m sorry, Mr. Antonelli, but on this one you’re simply making shit up.
@Iphonome, MickyFinn, & JJ
Yeesh, that post had my eye twitching. I can’t help but feel passing it off as bizarre is being too kind. It reeked of a certain kind of self-absorbed arrogance that’s happy to let everyone else know how self-assured it is in its myopia while taking potshots at the faults it perceives in the tastes of others.
But I can’t in good conscience vote for something I have not read and enjoyed myself
Which totally explains why that all those dramatic presentations he didn’t bother to watch wound up beneath No Award…
The anti-Matthew McConaughey tangent was just utter pettiness, and I’m not even a fan.
I’m going to predict that File 770 becomes File 660, in an effort to soften its image among the Puppies by denying everyone any execution permissions.
That, or it shuts down to move to Long Island, reopening as Cowboy Glyer’s White Hart Tavern and Place. (But who’ll run the store across the street?)
File 666? It’s a good number for scum and villainy.
Vale the roundups – a source of much learning and laughter, and a beloved distraction from my own scribbling. 🙂 Thanks Mike!
Thank you. Mike, the roundups have been a hoot.
Mike, thanks for all your hard work! I’m mostly a lurker because I can’t keep up with all the wonderful comments, but I read File 770 every day.
I hope you will consider weekly or bi-weekly roundups until things heat up again.
Thanks to everyone for the money wonderful book and story recommendations.
Looking forward to seeing what next you have in store for us Mike – thanks again!
Joseph Tomaras: But I can’t in good conscience vote for something I have not read and enjoyed myself
XS: Which totally explains why that all those dramatic presentations he didn’t bother to watch wound up beneath No Award…
I think it’s his first year participating in the Hugos. He doesn’t understand that if you haven’t read some of the entries in a category, you just leave them off your ballot — you don’t put them after “No Award”. He also doesn’t understand that if you have no opinion on a category, you just leave it blank, rather than putting in “No Award”.
He says, “People who have a habit of calling for ‘good stories’ in the whiz-bang mode of military SF have praised the story for its emotional trajectory.” He clearly doesn’t understand that what he is saying is “People who never read this kind of story thought it was great; people who read this type of story a lot did not find it remarkable”.
I’m pretty sure I did not do the greatest job the first year I voted for the Hugos (for one thing, I was too kind, and did not use “No Award” where I should have).
Hopefully, he’ll have more of it figured out for next year.
@snowcrash “ObSMAC: Please don’t go. The drones need you. They look up to you”
Darn, I miss that game. I wish Beyond Earth was more like it.
Huge thanks to Mike for the roundups. While they regularly were rage-inducing comments under them are mostly fun conversations about everything and I do not regret wasting time daily to read =)
Hmm, now I want to dig up that CD and see if I can get the game installed.
Definitely going to miss the roundups!
Not a Book Recommendation
I spotted that JCW has his latest book out today. “Somewhither: A Tale of the Unwithering Realm” in which the Saudi School of Prose (Complusory Module: Choosing a Title 101) strikes again.
I found amusement in two things from his book cover reveal on his blog a couple of months ago. Firstly, here’s JCWs reply to “is it appropriate for an eleven year old boy”
And secondly, it takes JCW about 7 hours to notice (with a little help from his comment section) that his cover artist has misspelt the title. Twice.
@Hampus On Antonelli’s bizarre prediction- I think it makes sense if you assume that he is 100% following the puppy party line. This is a War For Fandom, there are more puppies than ‘everybody-elses’ but the Marxists control the media, and, most importantly, that the majority of fandom has actually heard about this whole kerfuffle.
I’m pretty sure he’s wrong on all of those assumptions. That’s why he and Hoyt are both so upset about people posting links to what they write and having neutral folks reading their blogs.
Even if that wasn’t true, and Antonelli is right about a split, I think we’ll be okay. The puppies have one first-rank author in Butcher (gimme a break, I like him) and a bunch of score of mid listers, while the everybody-elses have just about the rest of the field.
Hmm, edit doesn’t work on my phone. That was ‘a score of’, not ‘a bunch of scores’. 🙂
I also read “daughter of a RSP” as a woman who is not a RSP herself because RSPage is passed on matrilineally. It’s a distinction I would expect of anyone familiar with the religion, I’d make it myself.
Mark: And secondly, it takes JCW about 7 hours to notice (with a little help from his comment section) that his cover artist has misspelt the title. Twice.
Not only that, but he never substituted the correct cover image in that post. So if you do a Google Image search for “somewhither”, the only cover image that comes up is the one with the misspelling.
Wright’s wife, L. Jagi Lamplighter, is a member of The Church of Christ, Scientist, which is why he didn’t identify her as a Red Sea Pedestrian.
mk41: I also read “daughter of a RSP” as a woman who is not a RSP herself because RSPage is passed on matrilineally. It’s a distinction I would expect of anyone familiar with the religion, I’d make it myself.
Well, I am one of today’s Lucky 10,000. Having been raised Protestant in a small town with no Jewish people (hell, there was one Baptist family, and they went to church in another town and were considered an oddity), I did not know this.
David Goldfarb: Wright may have been aware, when he described his bride that way, that traditionally Jewish descent is via the mother – or he may have been aware that these days many Jews (in America) wouldn’t be so strict about whether it’s the mother or the father. For all I know, the wife doesn’t even regard herself as Jewish, or has converted to his faith. It’s the “daughter of” formulation that set off alarms for me.
(Not that such a phrase would always be inappropriate; “daughter of a Holocaust survivor,” for example, would be more specific and therefore would carry more weight.)
Mike, thank you for the roundups–they’ve been awesome, and were instrumental and my deciding to upgrade from supporting to attending and go to my first Worldcon.
It’ll be good to not have a reliable 45-minute distraction every day that I can use to procrastinate on writing. 🙂
Well…GOG has it for cheap, and they’ve tuned it to work on modern machines….
Have we even pinned down what the “Sad Puppies’ type of fiction” actually is? It’s not a callback to any of the classics, because I really can’t see Heinlein or Asimov writing something that sounds like a physics trajectory word problem with added adjectives: “The projectile, 2 pounds of technobabble-infused unobtainium, was launched from the ballistic cannon at an angle of 17 degrees…”
Dream on. The only lasting fallout from this whole fuss will be a revision in Hugo voting rules, which will go unnoticed by the majority of SF readers. Ten years from now, all the Puppies will be footnotes on a wiki page that nobody bothers to edit.
Sad Puppies short fiction is basically about God or features Christ figures (martyrs, saviors), and uses the supposed rigor of the SFnal settings to demonstrate that a belief in God is rational—and that are by Brad’s friends or colleagues.
The Puppies novels basically seem to be whatever Brad kinda remembered came out last year.
Puppies non-fiction is mostly incoherent nonsense or semi-rigorous appeals to the importance of rigor.
Jamoche at 12:50 am said: “Ten years from now, all the Puppies will be footnotes on a wiki page that nobody bothers to edit.”
But the fans will still be talking about it.
Jamoche: Ten years from now, all the Puppies will be footnotes on a wiki page that nobody bothers to edit.
Soon Lee: But the fans will still be talking about it.
Yeah, over drinks, with some snorting and eye-rolling, amongst discussion of stories about dick moves pulled in fandom over the years.
Farewell round ups. Finished voting – on my blog.
@snowcrash: ObSMAC: Please don’t go. The drones need you. They look up to you
Johan P : Hmm, now I want to dig up that CD and see if I can get the game installed.
I can’t be the only one for whom the opening sequence STILL sends goosebumps up the spine, can I?
See it for yourself:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=035cpHEowS4
The bit up to the point where the Unity zooms away from Earth gives you the firm impression that in this game, you’re playing for all the marbles. Very effective.
Snowcrash:
Tempting, tempting … on the other hand I’m getting a little to old to stay up all night playing one more turn.
***
Hampus:
He doesn’t say that people will stop saying “science fiction”, but that the rift in fandom might lead to a split in terminology, for example by people labeling the stuff puppies like something else. Implied in this is that the label science fiction will still be used for everything else than the puppy picks.
(He doesn’t specifiy who he thinks will drive this – theoretically it could be both non-puppies starting to say “that’s not real SF”, or puppies saying “since SF fans wouldn’t let us play with them, we’ll define ourselves as a separate genre.” Fear of the former fits the puppy persecution complex. The latter seems like something some of the more thin-skinned puppies might attempt. But I have difficulties seeing what the genre difference is supposed to be. It’s not like the puppies have ever managed to come up with a coherent aesthetic manifesto.)
ETA: I see I’m not alone in thinking that “the kind of stuff puppies like” is a rather unclear category.
Johan P: I see I’m not alone in thinking that “the kind of stuff puppies like” is a rather unclear category.
Yep, what they’ve said they like, and what they actually put on the slate, bear very little resemblance to each other. So it’s pretty hard to take any comment about what they supposedly like seriously.
Vox D doesn’t like romance elements, Hoyt does. Torgersen doesn’t like literary stuff, Wright does. Various don’t like “message fiction”, Wright and Cedar S do. It is and it isn’t about politics. It is and isn’t it about religion (religion seems to have come up a LOT recently though). Paulk has definite views on ‘transparency’ that clearly can’t apply to Wright.
It isn’t an artistic movement but it is a populist right-leaning coalition of disparate views. They only show unity in who they dislike and find it difficult to articulate with concrete examples what they dislike.
@Camestros Felapton,
I look at their actions. The only “concrete example” is this year’s Hugo ballot, to which the proper response is to change the nominating rules to minimise the impact of future attempts at slates & bloc-voting.
The rest of it is propaganda & attempted justifications. There have been strenuous attempts to (re)frame the narrative, but that only works if you don’t look at their arguments closely. It works if you get your information from only one source, which is why Mike’s work collecting opinions from disparate sources has been so important.
I think the “by Brad’s friends or colleagues” is the strongest explanatory variable. Sad Puppies was like a sort of local chamber of commerce ‘lets boost people’s businesses’ sort of affair. An attempt to make the Hugo’s like those ‘best business in category ___ 2015″ thing you see.
And “semi-rigorous” is being a bit generous 🙂
I’m not entirely sad about the roundups ending. The puppies have run out of interesting things to say and now all we really have is waiting for them to say something <french> outrageous </french> and <fx> twirl moustaches</fx> so that we’ll all swarm over and boost their ad revenue.
Regarding Antonelli’s predictions: I agree with Maximillian. The kertuffle has become public enough so that a reasonable portion of SF readers probably knows about it, but that probably varies; I’ve seen one newspaper story about it in Finland, which doesn’t really spell great cover.
Most of my friends (who all read SF) heard about it from me, and I only noticed it by accident, because I happened to become a member of Worldcon and noticed some strange patterns in nominations. Blogosphere tends to be an echo chamber, and there are plenty of readers outside who are fans express it by reading books, not blogs 😉 So I suspect even those who have heard about *Puppies will mostly shrug their shoulders and keep on reading what they’ve read this far, and continue calling it whatever they called it before.
… except for one thing: I know several people who take Hugos – and nominations – as recommendations. They will be disappointed this year, and if that’s a common trend, that might have an effect on the value of Hugos themselves. Even if that happens, though, Antonelli misses the mark badly.
@Camestros: Hey, thanks for the comparisons! I haven’t read that much short fiction, and particularly I haven’t read it in last year(s). I recognize the truly bad apples, but recognizing the quality of others is a problem.
Gosh and how they HATE what Mike did – I never would have predicted that. And they didn’t stop posting weird stuff in response but just ranted about him quoting it.
Imagine what they could have done with the effort they put into this?
Considering the prime example of what the SPs said they wanted should have been Scalzi, the author they most despised, the whole movement was pretty doomed from the start (at least as an artistic movement). But an anti-clique movement based on some guy’s friends isn’t very auspicious either.
What’s the over/under on the next SFF non-scandal? I’m guessing 31 days after the Hugo awards.
Camestros Felapton: Gosh and how they HATE what Mike did – I never would have predicted that. And they didn’t stop posting weird stuff in response but just ranted about him quoting it.
That’s right, he “raped the truth” by posting their actual words and including direct links to provide context. How heinous!
I have this cat — he’s huge, weighs about 20 pounds. He sticks his head under the bedskirt, with the other 19 pounds still visible, and is convinced that he is fooling everyone by being hidden.
The Puppies remind me of that: it’s as if they’re children who don’t realize that people who aren’t Puppies can actually see all the posts and comments they’ve put on the Internet, and now they’re angry because they’ve found out that they’re actually visible, and everyone knows what they really think.
Well, traditionally after a major plot line featuring a terrible SF threat (e.g. Klingons, Daleks) the threat in the next plot line has to be both similar too but clealry differentiated from the last one (e.g. Romulans, Cybermen). Therefore the great-writer’s-room-in-the-sky will be working on a different coalition of outragedness which is clearly different from the Puppies. Consequently I suspect it will be a coalition of PEETA – 911 Truthers and anti-vaxxers determined to use the Hugos to reveal the hidden truth behind mercury in puppy vaccines for kennel cough.
My dog hides soft toys in much the same way.
Joining in to thank Mike for posting the roundups, and the commenting community for such great discussion (and book suggestions!).
“Mike Glyer … unfortunately has kept the wildfires burning by collecting up Puppy posts and republishing them on his site”: so weird that Mike’s “sin” was letting the puppies speak for themselves and enabling fact-based and courteous (for the most part) discussion here.
” … wretched hive of scum and villainy” – a while ago Mike mentioned trying to recast this recycled insult. How about “File 770, that blessed hive of joy and literacy”? (At least it scans the same way …)
“Puppy fiction”
I dunno, I see a lot of reference to something called the “Human Wave” in their sites, but I dunno if it actually means anything or is just a calorie-free buzzword.
Joseph Tomeras seems to think he’s just too good for the BDP and Graphic Story categories. And too good to do what so many of us have done: read or watch every Hugo nominee that we can. (Edge of Tomorrow up next; The Lego Movie won’t be available to me till 7/18; prospects for seeing the BDPSF nominees not yet determined. If I can’t get them, I won’t vote in that category; I won’t No Award it.)
And while I will miss the roundups, I look forward to whatever comes next.
My impression, from the various things Antonelli has said and done, is that he has little familiarity with internet discussion. If you say something on the internet, you should do it with the expectation that anyone in the world with an internet connection could see it, and may have an opinion about it. Somebody quoted you? Sure, why not? I think the real issue is that Antonelli is shocked at the negative response he’s getting from some people outside his safe space.
Anyway, I don’t see this having a real effect on what I read. Most of the slate authors were unknown to me, and most didn’t impress me. I have one book by Wright, which I didn’t like, and already had decided to avoid him. Trying to read his slate stories and his bizarre “Transhuman and Subhuman” essays just strengthened that a little.
So, meh, big deal. And I am going to keep saying “science fiction.”
Stobor: I think the real issue is that Antonelli is shocked at the negative response he’s getting from some people outside his safe space.
I think you’re right; his post claiming that since everyone was nice to him at the three conventions he’s just attended and no one harassed or attacked him, it clearly means that they all agree with him, certainly would indicate that.
For months (or more likely, years) they’ve all been reading, and commenting on, each others’ blogs, reinforcing each others’ opinions and high-fiving each other — and since no one who disagrees is interested in spending time around that, making comments and being abused for it, they’ve assumed that they really do represent the vast majority of both SFF fans and Americans.
Now they’re finding out that there’s a big world outside their little insular circle — filled with people who do not share their taste in either SFF or politics — and they simply can’t comprehend that their “reality” is skewed and that they’re in a minority.
Noah Body: What’s the over/under on the next SFF non-scandal? I’m guessing 31 days after the Hugo awards.
I suspect that VD has one more shot in his locker, but that it is not actual wrongdoing (as opposed to namecalling) by a specific person*. In which case I predict there will be a tangentially-related-to-the-Puppies and/or -Hugos non-scandal during the week following Bastille Day (14 July); time enough for it to dominate the conversation up to the deadline.
I hope to be able to point and laugh at it.
* Firstly because I don’t think there is anything, secondly because actual evidence would be better aired as soon as he had it to get procedures/sanctions moving (which would create an ongoing story) and thirdly because that would look too opportunistic even for him. I might be wrong on the third point.
Thank you Mike for the roundups! I’d be sad about them ending but to be honest I’m looking forward to what happens next. I hope everyone sticks around for it. 🙂
ETA
@Lis Carey
I think Edge of Tomorrow is going to be too violent for you, but its a good film. I hope you enjoy it. 🙂
I suspect that Pox Day has a story or three guaranteed to cause faux outrage all stored up ready to unleash as a reaction to the voting. He will of course declare victory in all circumstances, but frankly if he can’t find someone saying something nasty about him either here or on Making Light then he’s not trying hard enough.