Man, every time I read Larry I admire him more. Seriously, if he would come to WorldCon I would be stoked, I’d love to meet him. He just wrote a long response to the Sad Puppies Victory.
My two big complaints about Sad Puppies are:
1. They replaced the conversation of a couple thousand people with the decree of three men (Correia, Torgersen, Vox Day) and they call it a triumph of democracy.
2. When they’re done driving away everyone who cares about WorldCon, they won’t take responsibility to keep it going. They will crow about their victory and leave ashes behind, like common vandals. I don’t think for two seconds they have the dedication to put in any actual work. And they call this “taking back” the Hugos.
It looks like Larry is aware of Point 1. He didn’t expect to sweep every non-Novel catagory (Yes, I’m lumping Sad and Rabid Puppies together here. Same base, even if it wasn’t Larry’s intention), and thought they’d get maybe 1 or 2 in each, which was why they suggested as many as they did. The full sweep was unexpected. Looks like they fell victim to being TOO successful. He claims that have no interest in becoming the Hugo Pope – “We don’t want to replace one kingmaker with another. We don’t want to replace one dominate clique with another.” It sounds like he’ll try to do something to remedy this. I am extremely curious as to what. Now that I’ve calmed down, I’m again excited to see what changes are coming.
I’m still wary about Point 2. It tentatively sounds like Larry may actually be doing the responsible thing and making sure he doesn’t destroy the con. “this isn’t just me and a couple of my friends having fun with this anymore. It is bigger than that. There are a bunch of us involved now. For next year, we’ll take a look at how this shakes out and proceed from there. Kate Paulk is in charge next year and will be organizing what we do.” That’s an encouraging sign. Does this mean the Other Side is going to start getting their shit together and respond in kind? To the ramparts!
Ahem. As everyone knows, there were problems with the Hugos. Many of us acknowledged this, and said it wasn’t that bad and it was being handled internally. His most relevant point is that he disagrees. “there wasn’t a green room at any con in the country where you couldn’t find authors complaining about the sorry state of things. But nobody did anything. […] But still nobody did anything, and it got worse and worse. […] So I did something.”
Now, I’m in the camp of “It was a problem, but not a huge one.” But, to be honest, I can’t recall of anyone doing anything to fix it. Maybe something was happening? But not so that I noticed. It was mainly swept under the rug. Losing a slot or two per year to these forces didn’t feel like a big deal to me, certainly not something I would put a ton of personal effort into fixing, and I imagine most people felt the same way. Larry saw it as a bigger problem. And you know what? He did do something. And I respect the fuck out of that. It didn’t work out exactly how he’d like it to, but shit, when does anything? It’s not like there’s a playbook for this sort of thing, he’s flying by the seat of his pants, and that takes tons of guts. What the hell did any of us do? We all said in private “Man, Throne of the Crescent Moon was bad,” and some of us said it in public, but did a single person on our side publically raise the point that this should never have gotten a Hugo Nomination? Why *did* it take Larry and his crew to say that?
It sucks that we lose an entire year of Hugos to this Sad Puppies nonsense, but maybe it’ll help us be a bit more honest with ourselves in the future. Maybe we’ll feel freer to speak our minds without being worried about being called racist. That would be a good thing.
God though, I really hate Vox Day. /sigh
19 Responses to “Sad Puppies Rebuttal”
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“1. They replaced the conversation of a couple thousand people with the decree of three men (Correia, Torgersen, Vox Day) and they call it a triumph of democracy.”
This is the sheerest buffoonery. Correia and company put up a few blog posts and mocked some retards on Twitter. That is the complete and entire extent of their participation. What started as a joke and a lark has come to be Sad Puppies: The Ass Kicking.
I’m one of the “flying monkeys” that made this happen. You know, one of the brainwashed. The zombies, the Koolaid drinkers, the NeoCon zealots, the Great Unwashed, the mindless robotic horde. Yes, I am oner of the Stupid People Who Are So Dumb We All Do What Larry Says. You’ve got to be fucking kidding me man.
Correia put up some blog posts I spent actual money. You want to know why?
Tor.com “fan” writer Alex MacFarlane. “I want an end to the default of binary gender in science fiction stories.” Also contributing to my resolve, the ShirtStorm. Yeah, remember how a shirt was more important than the spacecraft that landed on a comet?
That stuff pissed me off. A lot. I decided y’all needed some sand kicked in your faces. So I paid money and now Alex MacFarlane and the rest of her odious clique have received my communication. My one vote.
My one vote times a thousand, because SURPRISE! there’s an awful lot of people out here like me. This is not about Correia or Torgersen or Paulk. This is really really not about Vox Day, who I consider to be an off-scouring.
This is about, ferinstance, Isabella Biedenharn. http://www.ew.com/article/2015/04/06/hugo-award-nominations-fall-victim-misogynistic-and-racist-voting?hootPostID=221657cca998c926458486c3f53fbe17 Isabella considers my vote to be “misogynistic” and “racist”.
This is about Teresa Neilsen Hayden, or pretty much any post on Making Light about the Hugos. They don’t like me. A lot. I’m pretty much a criminal, maybe worse.
This is about you, embrodski. You’re sitting here acting like I’m a mind controlled drone who can’t think for myself. Sadly for you, that’s not the case.
I’ve hated what the Hugos have become for almost thirty years. I finally got off my ass and did something about it. This really is a triumph of democracy. You don’t like it? Maybe you should go look in a mirror to see what pissed me off. Me and a thousand others who all paid money to tell y’all to cram it.
I’m planning on continuing, too. I’ve got plenty of money and plenty of time.
At the risk of repeating myself… I didn’t say anyone was sheep. I think unity IS strength. The SPs united, and won. I don’t call the Romans retarded monkeys for fighting in organized units against the barbarian hordes. I call them smart. I’m not sure why you’re so defensive about uniting.
However I think you just made my point for me. Your purpose is vandalism. I get that you feel justified in your rage, at least you aren’t pretending it’s for a noble cause. I hope my side can get enough organization together to defend our con.
How is it “vandalism” for a thirty year fan of SF&F to nominate books they *actually liked* for the Hugo?
Please see my reply at Why Vandals? It has nothing to do with taste in fiction, but rather about what I suspect will happen to the con.
Insofar as tearing down a statue of Saddam Hussein is technically vandalism, of course my purpose is vandalism.
I’m participating in kicking the asses of people who have declared me persona non grata from general society. In certain cases they appear to want me and everybody like me in camps where they can re-educate us to Goodthink.
In a civilized society, there are some actions that just cannot be allowed to pass. Alex MacFarlane and the Haydens of TOR and many others have transgressed mightily and must pay. This is them paying now. They’re feeeeeling it, aren’t they?
And the best part, the juiciest, sweetest, most delectably awesome part, is that ALL I HAD TO DO WAS SHOW UP. I showed up and voted for art which I have read and liked, and would like to see more of. That’s what I did. That was my act of “vandalism”.
And y’all went nuts. Read the Haydens, read K. Tempestuous Fat Girl, read that utter retard Laura J. Mixon who got nominated for the utterly retarded post she did about Requires Hate. (Who you morons almost gave a Hugo to a couple years ago, if memory serves.)
Behold, my mere presence is a source of rage and panic for people who for some reason hate my guts. I’m going to be showing up and voting my preferences all over the place from here on.
Vandalism. By your every word and deed do I mock you.
As to the Hugos, I hope and expect them to return to their former state as the very acme of quality. I hope and expect that once again, as it used to be back in the mists of time when dinosaurs roamed the Earth and TV was in black and white, when I pick up a Hugo Award winning novel I will be unable to put it down. That is my aim in doing this.
Or, to quote another man who raised the black flag and ran out the cannon, I aim to misbehave.
I’m going to avoid the obvious snide remarks, because I’d like to keep *some* sort of dialog going.
Do you have any idea what the Requires Hate thing was about? Because I honestly thought the Sad Puppies would be livid about the whole situation. This is exactly what they claim to hate. An author was attacking people she didn’t like by calling them racist, misogynists, homophobes, etc. Using all the typical Stasi tactics, in an effort to destroy people’s careers and make their lives miserable. I mean, that’s LITERALLY what the Sad Puppies say they are against, right? So…. how is it that you jeer at the exposure of that awful Stasi person? It makes the entire movement seem a *tad* hypocritical.
> I hope … when I pick up a Hugo Award winning novel I will be unable to put it down
So, because not *every single award in existence* caters to your taste, you are being persecuted? There are other awards. I listed a couple of them in the previous post. Larry says he went to 15 cons last year. Is it such an insult to your life that people who have my taste in fiction rather than yours, and find YOUR books insufferably boring, have an award that we give to a novel that WE are unable to put down?
Is it impolite to point out that over the last 50 or so years of the Hugos there have been some right clunkers that have won, and some just awful books that made the nominations. Bad books on the Hugo list isn’t actually a new thing.
Not impolite at all. Given human nature, it would be a miracle if this didn’t happen!
“Do you have any idea what the Requires Hate thing was about? Because I honestly thought the Sad Puppies would be livid about the whole situation.”
Yes I do, and no not really because it is BUSINESS AS USUAL in the fluke infested swamp which SF/F fandom has been allowed to become.
Requires Hate didn’t prey on Conservative writers, because they were already shunned and excluded. Plus, they don’t really give a shit what SJWs say. She preyed on -liberal- writers who she felt were insufficiently liberal.
What makes the Mixon piece so astoundingly stupid is she didn’t really have a problem with RH, just thought RH was being too mean about things. Wanted to rehabilitate RH and bring her back into the loving fold of GoodThink-GoodSpeak. Which, by the way, has already been done.
Meanwhile, -I- am a racist/bigot/homophobe monster because I like David Weber books. Or worse, Larry Correia books. I don’t have to do anything to earn this abuse, I just have to exist.
So spare me the horseshit. You asked for it, you got it. Toyota.
>no not really because it is BUSINESS AS USUAL
So first you scream “They aren’t doing anything to fix the problems in their community, we must take drastic action!!” But when one of the people WorldCon was trying to honor was literally someone trying to fix this problem you retort “OH WHATEVER, THAT DOESN’T COUNT, BUSINESS AS USUAL”
You’ll forgive us if we don’t believe you’re acting in good faith.
>Requires Hate didn’t prey on Conservative writers, … She preyed on -liberal- writers who she felt were insufficiently liberal.
First of all, isn’t the thing you’re complaining about that some people say your favorite writers are insufficiently liberal? Isn’t “too conservative” just another word for “insufficiently liberal”?
And secondly… you basically just said “It’s cool, because RH was attacking the liberals that I don’t like.” You almost literally said “I’m ok with the tactics that were used, as long as they’re used against people I don’t like instead of people I do like.” I suddenly have lost a LOT of faith in the Puppies movement. :/
You have an odd way of reading. You have completely inverted my meaning.
What I said was that Requires Hate was business as usual. As in, that’s what we -always- see when we look at the Internet, conservatives being attacked, smeared, trashed, excluded, shunned, and even SWATed. That’s an average Tuesday for us. We are used to it.
Case in point: http://www.nationalreview.com/article/417155/wisconsins-shame-i-thought-it-was-home-invasion-david-french
Its the zeitgeist. Get it?
What -y’all- found remarkable about Requires Hate was her choice of target, not her methods. -Your- side is not used to being on the receiving end of -your- methods. You are used to Conservatives arguing logic, facts and doing so with fairly decent manners.
We are still not doing that Requires Hate thing. We just paid money and expressed our preferences. Now its all “The HUGOS are in DANGER from the BARBARIANS! AIEEEE!!!”
Which is so lame.
>As in, that’s what we -always- see when we look at the Internet, conservatives being attacked, smeared, trashed, excluded, shunned, and even SWATed.
Are you familiar with the internet? Because the internet doesn’t discriminate. You say that this is a thing that happens to conservatives, and that’s true, but it’s not a thing that happens ONLY to conservatives. It happens to every single group out there. Half the point of the internet seems to be to get two groups rabidly going at each others throats for trivial reasons. Every thing that you say happens to conservatives happens to every other group just as much. You are not special.
>-Your- side is not used to being on the receiving end of -your- methods. You are used to Conservatives arguing logic, facts and doing so with fairly decent manners.
HA!!! :D OMG, that was actually hilarious! Good show sir! :)
Wow.
I liked _Throne Of The Crescent Moon_.
And I will point out that the people who nominated it were reading books they thought they would like, and nominating, honestly, the ones they thought deserved a Hugo. They weren’t using a slate to direct their reading and they certainly weren’t using a slate to direct their nominating. How do I know? Look at the Spurps (SPRPs). They left big fat tracks that anyone could find, because the only way to get people to nominate the things on your slate is to tell them what it is. 350 people don’t keep a secret very well. And sure, there used to be fewer people nominating, but 100 people don’t keep a secret very well either.
Sad Puppies put Vox Day on the Hugo ballot just last year. They basically told him “look, it doesn’t matter how bad the story is if it has a slate behind it. Let us show you!” and they gave him a proof-of-concept demonstration. Non-Puppies quite reasonably think of Spurps as one group because the SPs *created* the RPs.
Suppose we let the Sad Puppies just choose *one* of the five Hugo nominees. What happens then? Slates work, so we get more slates. But slates shut out things the slate-makers don’t know about–just like the Spurps left the Heinlein bio and Three-Body Problem off their slates by mistake and shut them out of the Hugos, when they would have loved them. I know they would have loved them because I saw Spurp leaders Larry Correia and Vox Day admit in separate comments that they’d have included those books had they known about them in time.
So then we end up with a bunch of slates, and probably Vox Day controlling the strongest one. How’s that going to work? When a significant portion of the people who might hope for a Hugo are faced with the prospect of having to meet Vox Day’s approval?
Yum.
“Excited” is not the word for how I feel about this. I see a real likelihood of the Hugos ending up the kind of thing that no sensible person wants to be involved in. They might be destroyed by “Vandals”–people who came to destroy it. But they might just as well be destroyed by people who decided *they* should control who got nominated, instead of letting the nominations happen honestly.
+1
Any suggestions on what to do? Counter-slates seem like the only viable counter-tactic to me, but as you say, that degrades the entire process. I plan to go to the WorldCon Admin meetings this year and I wouldn’t mind hearing a few viable options. I don’t think “just No Award everything and hope they go away” is likely to work.
So sad. Gamer Gaters or Sad Puppies or whatever you want to call them. I thought this blog might be a place such people don’t visit. Oh wells. I do mostly live under a rock and decided to visit your blog again EB to find out about it. Thanks for being a decent source of news :)
I do what I can. Scalzi finally posted regarding the whole issue. Again everyone is reminded why he’s gotten a reputation as such an awesome dude. :) I think I’m done addressing it directly for a while, and will go back to the usual blogging (although maybe with the addition of Puppy Notes on book reviews)
Honestly, I just found out about this whole thing today, but I’m going to put in my opinion. You can argue, as John Scalzi has (more on him later), that the Hugo Award is supposed to represent a snapshot of SF/F at the time the award was given. And that’s as valid an opinion as any is and he probably has a point given that Ender’s Game wouldn’t even get a nomination in the present climate because of the author’s political views. That said, when I was 12 I was given a first run paperback of Ender’s Game and it’s the book that got me into reading (an activity that I had previously hated) and it’s also the book that cemented in my mind that the Hugo (and Nebula) awards should be for books that are special.
And let’s address Heinlein. As an author he’d be blackballed from the modern day Hugo because of Starship Troopers, while his critics completely ignore Stranger In A Strange Land. Heinlein was a rare author that could put forward a controversial topic, write a good storyline around it, and do so competently. Yet many liberal jackasses can’t put away their belief that Heinlein was a closet fascist because of Starship Troopers and many of the debates I’ve had with liberals over the book lead me to believe that they haven’t really read it and are just disappointed that the movie (which they watched first) script wasn’t a faithful adaptation of the book (a gripe many fans of the book share).
Scalzi being a different breed of jackass doesn’t help the Hugo old guard’s cause. I liked Old Man’s War for the well-written and well-told, if inauthentic from a military perspective, story that it is. I can’t say I particularly like the person any more than I like Vox Day. Speaking of, Marko Kloos (a friend of Scalzi) damned well deserved that Hugo and it’s a crying shame he felt tainted by association, which highlights the dangers of not taking a work on its own merits. Because in the end what this dust up is really about is a traditionally liberal preserve being encroached by Others and everybody is completely ignoring whether the works are worthy on their own merits.
> Ender’s Game wouldn’t even get a nomination in the present climate because of the author’s political views
>Heinlein. As an author he’d be blackballed from the modern day Hugo because of Starship Troopers, while his critics completely ignore Stranger In A Strange Land
I don’t believe either of these claims *in the slightest.* You know who was nominated for the Campbell just a few years ago? Larry Correia. You know who was nominated for (and nearly won) Best Novelette? Brad Torgerson. Author’s political views will turn off some voters, sure. But overall, they don’t make much difference. Most people don’t even know an author’s political views.
Old things show their age sometimes. Compared to today’s writing Heinlein couldn’t compete. I read Heinlein as a kid. Looking back he wasn’t all that good.