Search Results for: puppies
Vox Day’s Next Move
An image from Vox Day’s forthcoming SJWs Always Lie, depicting him as Grant Morrison atop a throne surrounded by his friends and a frankly alarming number of subliminal penises. |
Vox Day (who we’ll be spending a bit of time on this week; look for my review of his forthcoming SJWs Always Lie on Thursday) is making much of the question of what he’s going to do next. Including a private conference with his readers to serve as a “strategy meeting” for next year.
This is, like almost everything to emerge from the Day Bunker, largely bravado. Day’s tactics, which are really little more than what you’d get if you handed a fifteen-year-old on 4chan a copy of Saul Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals, are in fact eminently predictable. So here’s your 2016 Hugo Awards preview.
First, the thing to realize is that Day’s tactics are shaped by one massive and fundamental constraint: there’s not actually a huge pool of people who want to follow a racist, misogynistic fascist lunatic. He boasts 440 “vile faceless minions,” his self-effacing term for the mob that has actively signed up to follow his orders. That’s consistent with the data from the Hugos this year, which suggested around 500 Rabid Puppy voters. More interestingly, the proportion of Rabid Puppy supporters in nominations and voting is about the same. In other words, it really doesn’t look like Day can wield more than 10-20% of the total voting pool, assuming that anti-fascist fandom (both moderate and hardline) holds their nerve and keeps up the fight.
Second, the thing to realize is that we don’t actually have to do that for all that long. Nomination reform passed at Sasquan. Another year spent cleaning dogshit off our yard is only going to make ratification of it next year easier. Which means that as of 2017, the effect of slates is going to be heavily, heavily muted. Day will have an easy time getting one or two works on the ballot, and a nearly impossible time controlling the entirety of it. At that point, the Hugo Awards will go back to something more or less like business as usual, only with, I suspect, a long-term suspicion of overtly conservative SF/F born from the memory of what utter cockmongers conservative SF/F fandom has been in the past.
Which means that 2016 is going to be the year Vox Day tries to burn it to the ground so that he can declare victory and walk away, conveniently exiting the fight as the “winner” right before the rule changes to blunt his flaming sword go into place.
Given this, I think we can safely assume that the Rabid Puppy slate in 2016 is going to consist of five nominees in every category, to try to maximize the number of categories with no non-Puppy nominees. I suspect he’s also going to pointedly include nominees that exist to dare the left to vote against them. Frankly, given his past praise of him, if he doesn’t put something from Miéville’s Three Moments of an Explosion up in short story, he’s a moron.…
The Award of Cruelty
Diversity and social justice issues were creeping into the Hugo Awards, or rather into the cultural artifacts they celebrate, as such issues creep into the culture generally. It happens because people are getting more and more interested in them, more open to them, and caring more about them. This is, by the way, the product of material struggles for recognition and equal rights by people who are marginalised by mainstream culture in the West (i.e. racist, sexist, transphobic, bourgeois-hegemonic culture). It must be stressed that such claims are not only valid on their face but also are represented, in artistic terms, by valuable work that deserves recognition.
The Puppies saw this trend and it infuriated them. Just as they are doubtless infuriated by any such progress, by the increasing volume of the voices they used to be able to talk over and down to with impunity, by the increasing – and increasingly recognised – validity of these voices, not only in themselves but in their abilities. The Hugos are, the Puppies think, their turf, just as the rabble of GamerGate, and the constituency they pander to, imagine that video games are their turf. They took the gradual changes occuring in an institution that has always reflected a seam of progressivism in SF/Fantasy (just as it has always reflected other seams) and blew the phenomenon up out of all proportion. (Seriously, I wish their distorted view of Hugos, and culture generally, were really true, and the voices they hate and fear really were as ascendant as they fantasize them to be.)
They saw this smidge of progress and imagined that it constituted some kind of attack upon their freedom. They imagined it, and believed it, having chosen to imagine and believe it… because it’s amazing how sincerely and passionately people can believe ridiculous things that further their interests, confirm their prejudices and pamper their privileges. They did this because that’s what reactionaries always do. It’s a classic maneuvre when you’re rallying around the defence of established privilege and entrenched power relations (which is what reactionary politics always is, at base): paint yourself as the victim. It’s great camouflage. And they love it too. They love the smell of the victim paint on their bodies, drying on them, crusting and cracking, leaving a trail of victim flakes everywhere they go. Conservatives and reactionaries and fascists and ressentimentalists are as fond of being the victim as the whingeing, entitled, self-pitying minorities that live in their imaginations. (There is probably something psychological to be made of the right-wing love of victimhood, and the way they always portray themselves in much the same terms that they complain about in their confabulated enemies and hate-figures. I remember how, at school, bullies would always howl “But he started it!” and “It wasn’t my fault!” when caught, and then pout self-pityingly at the injustice of being told not to bully.)
But yeah, they interpret the struggles of the marginalised and mocked, their demands for justice, as an attack. Moderate demands. …
Hugo Commentary
Oh, fine, let’s just make this the Hugo thread, as apparently I want to say stuff.
First of all, Vox Day lost, and that feels fucking amazing.
Second of all, the “burn it all” No Award position lost, which means I did too. And frankly, that feels fucking amazing too. I mean, don’t get me wrong; I don’t regret voting No Award in every category. I stand by every word.
But I want to go back to something I said in “Guided by the Beauty of Their Weapons,” which was that the thing I have always loved about the Hugos is their capacity for weirdness. The Hugos are a great literary award because they have a wonderful unpredictability that happens with surprisingly few outright bad and unjustifiable winners. There aren’t a lot of awards like that. The Oscars and the Emmys are littered with far more flatly undeserving winners and clear travesties, and never do anything nearly as weird as give awards to XKCD and Digger.
So yeah, my side only won five categories. What a crushing defeat; we only doubled the total number of No Awards in history in the course of a near complete repudiation of the Sad Puppies, with the only Puppy winner being something that would have made the ballot anyway, and helpfully shutting down the argument that the electorate only voted on politics, as opposed to considering politics alongside other things. (Even if I freely admit that I did vote on politics, clearly the electorate didn’t.)
Meanwhile, we had Laura J. Mixon, who exposed a loathsome troll within the progressive science fiction community, and who used her acceptance speech to speak out for #BlackLivesMatter. We had a beautiful refusal to obey the “don’t clap until the end” rule for Terry Pratchett. We had the beautiful moment of Robert Silverberg telling stories of the 1968 Worldcon in Berkeley, a date and place that speaks volumes about what the actual heritage of science fiction is, as opposed to the ahistorical lies peddled by Brad Torgersen. We had a win for Orphan Black, one of the most self-consciously diverse shows on television, and a good one to boot. We had, over and over again, voice after voice raised in support of that heritage. And we even had a Dalek on stage, so the Puppies can’t complain they weren’t represented.
But most beautifully of all, we had all the prose awards given go out to works published in translation, which is a genuine victory for diversity.
That’s the award I love and respect. That’s why the Hugos were worth fighting for in the first place.
This was an enormously good night. Thank you to each an every one of you who stepped up, bought supporting memberships, and made it happen.
I lost; we won.
EDIT (Sunday morning): And the good news keeps coming. The fairest and most effective plan to reform the nomination process, aka “E Pluribus Hugo,” just passed at the Business Meeting. It’ll need to be ratified at next year’s Worldcon, but it looks like next year will be the last year of fending off fascist entryists, and like come 2017 we can get back to being fans.…
Saturday Waffling (August 22nd, 2015)
In case you missed it, I interviewed Peter Harness.
On to new business, the Hugo Awards will be announced this evening, so let’s just call this a thread to talk about those, even if that does mean things won’t really pick up much until Sunday.
In any case, a brief note about them, made in advance of any actual outcomes. The Puppies, and particularly Vox Day, have insisted that widespread victories for No Award would constitute a victory for them.
Bullshit.
You know what would constitute a victory for the Puppies? What they actually campaigned for, which was their slate. If their slate gets roundly and rejected and defeated, that’s called losing.
In fact, this is pretty straightforward. If Puppy nominees win, it’s a victory for fascist scum. If No Award wins, it’s a victory for SJWs. If non-puppy nominees win, it’s a victory for moderates like George R.R. Martin who put value orthodox sci-fi fandom for its own sake and independently of what it actually does.
Two of those outcomes mark a defeat for my position and my view. One doesn’t. Just about the only exception is the Dramatic Works categories, where the Puppy slates were mostly not that different from what would normally get nominated, and even there, I’m inclined to view it as a category where there’s just less to gain for the Puppies compared to the other two sides.
But either way, the winners are going to be, you know, the ones who win.…
All the Birds in the Sky Review
All the Birds in the Sky can be pre-ordered on Amazon here. Doesn’t look like UK pre-orders are available yet, which is sad. The first four chapters are online, starting with chapter one here.
So, with the eligibility period for the 2017 Hugos just four months from opening, I think it’s time to talk about the clear frontrunner for Best Novel, which is Charlie Jane Anders’s All The Birds in the Sky.
John C. Wright Has Just Advocated For My Murder
In the comments over at Vox Day’s blog, John C. Wright posted the following:
The first line is Wright quoting a previous post of mine. The second paragraph is him advocating for my murder. Because he disagrees with my definition of mysticism.
I am, to be clear, not particularly scared by this. I do not imagine that John C. Wright will now be hiding in my bushes, waiting for the opportune moment to strike. This is empty, vicious rhetoric of the sort that Day and Wright specialize in – sound and fury that, while not exactly signifying nothing, is still clearly told by an idiot. Hell, if I were a woman blogging about the stuff I blog about I’d get half a dozen far worse threats a day. The threat itself is not a big deal.
My goal has never been to make the very obvious point that Vox Day and John C. Wright are absolutely terrible human beings. If that’s not obvious to you, frankly, you’re beyond hope. But I have long been interested in demonstrating the depth and nature of their evil, which goes far beyond the most superficial and obvious horrors of what they say.
This is, after all, the man who wrote a story about how one must obey the dictates of god (or at least the dictates of god as relayed by a talking cat) whether or not one understands them or believes them to be right. This is a man who believes in the importance of blind and fanatical obedience. And his god’s dictate is apparently that people like me should be murdered because we use definitions of words differently than him.
So when I say that I believe the god he worships to be a monstrous, vicious tyrant that is nothing more than his own prejudices and hatreds projected into metaphysical grandeur, this is why. This is the vision the Sad and Rabid Puppies exist to advance. This is their true face. Not the constant spew of racist, sexist, and homophobic drivel. Not the Twitter bullying of anyone who disagrees with them. Not the bullshit campaign to fire Irene Gallo for a minor infelicity of phrasing on her personal Facebook page. This: a world in which god demands that anyone who doesn’t think like them be put to death.
In which case perhaps the saddest thing about them is that I don’t have anything to fear. Nobody is going to be showing up on my doorstep with a knife. They serve a mad tyrant who apparently demands that people like me be killed, and yet all they’re willing to do in his name is bitch on the Internet and fuck with literary awards.
We should thank God that such evil should also be so utterly pathetic.…
The Vox Day Interview: Transcript
Although this interview was not funded by my Patrons, I have the time and ability to pursue work like this largely because of their generous support. If you enjoy the work I do here and can spare a few bucks a month, please consider backing.
Below is a transcript of my interview with Vox Day, aka Theodore Beale, which you can listen to over at Pex Lives. I’ve lightly edited it to remove infelicities of language on both Day’s part and my own. I’ve also added a couple of footnotes clarifying aspects of the discussion. I am sure that Day would offer several clarifications of his own. Those interested in more of my thoughts on the interview should check out Jack Graham’s Shabcast 6, in which Jack and Kevin and James from Pex Lives sit down with me for a two hour chat about the interview and the proper course of action when talking cats tell you to kill. It is cheeky and irreverent in the ways that I expect my readers would prefer.
Shabcast 6
Shabcast 6 is now available to download or listen to here…
BUT HANG ON!
This Shabcast is an accompaniment to this month’s edition of Pex Lives (download or listen here), which features the long-awaited encounter between Phil Sandifer (from off of TARDIS Eruditorum) and ‘Vox Day’ (from off of fascism and fucking up the Hugo Awards).
Kevin and James have kindly turned the June installment of Pex Lives over to the Sandifer/Vox Day interview, in which Phil quizzes Vox about his attitudes towards two texts, One Bright Star to Guide Them by John C. Wright (which Vox loves and Phil hates) and Iain M. Banks’ The Wasp Factory (which Vox hates and Phil loves).
One Bright Star… slid into the Hugo noms on Vox Day’s Rabid Puppies slate, by the way. Hmm.
Shabcast 6 is something in the way of an ‘afterparty’ for Phil, in which Phil chats with myself, Kevin and James about the Vox Day interview. Very much necessary listening. And lots of fun. After the serious business of the interview itself, the four of us kick back and have a chat which veers from the serious to the plain giggly.
This Shabcast also features frequent and vehement contributions by my elderly, crotchety and extremely loud-voiced bengal cat Quiz. You won’t be able to understand her, but I can… and she’s telling me to kill.
You’ll need to listen to both podcasts so, once again, here are the links:
Pex Lives/Eruditorum Press – the Sandifer/Day Interview
Shabcast 6 – The Sandifer/Day Interview Afterparty
(Also, here’s a link to Shabcast 3 in which myself, Phil and Andrew Hickey chatted about the Hugo Awards fascist fuck-up fiasco not long after it hit.)…
Saturday Waffling (May 30th, 2015)
First of all, the Perdido Street Station post is going to be in June. I foolishly didn’t look at the length of the book before planning my reading for the month, and am only halfway through. Will go back to reading after I schedule this though.
Hoping to clear time to look at the Hugo Packet a bit, if only to get a broader sense of the Puppies. My interview with Day/Beale isn’t quite nailed down yet, but it’s getting close. (He’s still rereading Wasp Factory, which is the main delay. I, in what was in hindsight the wrong call, reread it prior to Seveneves, putting Perdido Street Station after that.)
But for those who have read the Hugo packet, how are things in it? What are your ballots, if you’re not voting No Award in all categories (or if you’re ranking things below No Award, as I am planning to do with the non-Puppy choices, after perusing the Puppy choices to see if there are any surprises there.
Other than that, I’ve wrapped up the Davison revisions and started in on Colin Baker. Friday’s Last War in Albion is a big one. And there’s my first stab at original fiction in years up for people backing the Patreon at $5 or more. See you tomorrow night for Hardhome.…