The Essential Truth of Vox Day

A while back, I challenged any Puppy on Twitter to show that they really valued truth and honesty and factual reality as so many claim by acknowledging that the idea—widely promoted by Vox Day, including with a made-up quote—that David Gerrold had threatened the career of Brad Torgersen was not supported by facts. I asked them to either cite Gerrold doing so or label Day’s pronouncement a lie.

No one did. When pressed, one person said he couldn’t call it a lie because he felt that what Day had said was “essentially true”. He couldn’t cite facts or quotes, but it was “essentially true”. Its essence was true, or at least, it rang true to him.

Now, in fact-based reality, David Gerrold did not threaten Brad Torgersen. He did not imply that Puppies wouldn’t be welcome at Worldcon or the Hugos ceremony in particular, or that they would be treated discourteously as winners or losers. In fact, when it came to the ceremony, he laid down the law in the opposite direction: all are welcome, all are welcome. Connie Willis turned down a presenter gig specifically because she didn’t feel like she could abide that directive.

But if he didn’t do those things, the feeling among the Puppies is, he ought to have. It fits their worldview, their narrative, so much better if he did, so it doesn’t take much prompting from even a middlingly talented wordsmith to get them to believe that he did.

“If it’s not true, it ought to be!” could be given as a summation of it.

I’ve been calling Day out obliquely (as in, I’m not challenging him directly so much as pointing out what he’s doing) on Twitter for a while, whenever he engages in these lies. I don’t know if I’ve actually made anyone think by doing so, but I believe he’s afraid that might be happening. I mean, I don’t flatter myself to believe his blog post entitled Bi-Discoursality is entirely a response to me. Rather, I believe I’m a part of the general situation he is attempting to defend himself from.

Day’s supporters like to trot out “You don’t understand Vox, he’s a troll. He’s trolling. It doesn’t count.” when someone pins them down with something he said that is 1) too egregious, 2) too much of a lie, or 3) too egregious a lie for them to defend. This response ignores the fact that we do understand him, we know he’s a troll, and that’s irrelevant to the point at hand.

Well, Day is attempting to codify “Was trolling, didn’t count!” into a defensive shell against people calling out his lies. See, they’re not lies, they’re rhetoric, which is the only language those silly emotional irrational SJWs understand, you see? He has to use rhetoric to deal with, even though as a creature of pure logic and reason it’s such a foreign language to him that if he wasn’t also a certified supergenius he would never have been able to internalize its principles in order to communicate with us!

He would much rather use the reasoned method of dialectic to communicate with everyone, except he has to reserve that for those minds that are susceptible to reason and influence, you see, and…

Wait.

Wait.

Wait a minute.

Vox… Mr. Day… when you said “SJWs always lie.”, the example of a rhetorical statement that you put forth in that post, were you addressing us, those you call “SJWS”… or were you addressing your followers?

When you made your famous essentially true statements about David Gerrold, were you trying to convince those wily SJWs they were allied with a skunk, or were you trying to whip up your own base?

And regardless of your intention when you engage in these, ah, rhetorical flourishes… take a look around. How many of supposedly overly emotional, irrational SJWs that you claim to be trying to persuade with them wind up being persuaded? And how many of your own followers wind up repeating the lines and running with them like they’re God’s own truth?

God’s own essential truth, that is. The facts may not bear it out, but emotionally, the target of the rhetoric knows it to be true.

The post I’m referencing is itself a piece of rhetoric. It lays out no actual logical premise, no evidence, and no conclusion. It’s just a pre-emptive defense against anyone questioning his lies, wrapped up in hollow flattery towards his audience: you are so reasoned, so rational… and because I’m writing this dialectically, anyone as smart as you will understand that it is true! It’s a hedge against the day when the intellectual debt incurred by one of his lies overcomes the emotional investment his chosen audience has in agreeing with him.

He winds up the post by predicting that those who only speak rhetoric will see his post as nothing more than a man attempting to sound smart and then attack it. I suppose that, grade school gamer that he is, this is what he regards as a particular cunning trap and he takes this post as a sign that it worked. Or that’s what he would say, anyway.

In reality, it’s just another hedge. It gives his followers an out for ignoring any criticism. Don’t listen to the child who says the emperor is naked. The wise can totally see the clothes!

Originally published at Blue Author Is About To Write. Please leave any comments there.

Sad Puppies Review Books: THE LITTLE PRINCE

The Little Prince

Reviewed by John Z. Upjohn, USMC (Aspired)

What is this fallen world even coming to. First we had science fiction books with stuff that no one cares about in them alongside the spaceships but now the clique of SJW bullies has decreed we must put up with science fiction books that don’t even have the spaceships in them.

The hell with that! I say we break the clique and make it so that anyone can read any book they want, and then books like this won’t exist anymore.

Reading this book it is obvious that the author was relying more on demographic appeal than quality storytelling, a fact that is only confirmed when you realize that The Little Prince was written by a Frenchman. It is well-known that the French have been Stalinists ever since they were conquered by Hitler. Did you know that Hitler was a leftist? They teach kids in school that Fascism is the opposite of Stalinism but Hitler and Stalin agreed to carve up the world between them and they would have got away with it if it wasn’t for God’s America.

The one good moment in the story is when the Prince realizes that a self-entitled bitch of a rose is taking advantage of him and decides to go his own way. If more men went their own way then we would break the stranglehold that Feminazis have on the sex supply and you can bet there would be more equality around here.

Everything is out of balance because of feminism. You have women who are 6s, 5s, and even 4s who believe they deserve a man who is a 9 or 10 and they won’t “settle” for you even if you’re a 7. They’ll never get the man they think they deserve but because women don’t need sex the way men do they can turn lesbian and hold off forever.

Beta men should be the ones who are complaining because they’re the ones who suffer the most. Deltas and gammas never had a chance of being laid, but all the women that would have gone with betas are holding off for the “Prince” that feminism promised them. Do the betas complain? No. They roll over and take it. They were half-emasculated to begin with and modern feminism has finished the job.

The Prince goes on a tour of many small planets which are all thinly veiled SJW hatchet jobs. Saul Alinsky must have laughed his ass off when this manuscript crossed his desk for approval. Businessmen are stupid now? Have fun buying books without capitalism, pinko perverts! In a better book like one by Ayn Rand the first man who thought to own the stars would have been a hero. He would have been the hero of the book. The Man Who Owned All The Stars is a book I would like to read, but that is not this book. That he is a figure of fun here proves that this book is nothing but base propaganda.

The story just goes downhill from there. Even though the bitch rose admitted she was wrong, the pathetic gamma Prince still misses her. He was better off without her. You know what the thing that makes him long for her is? When he finds out that on earth roses are a dime a dozen and you can just pick them right out of the ground.

Listen, I’m not sure if the Prince wanting to fuck a rose is supposed to be bestiality or symbolism. I don’t approve of either one of those things, but either way it’s just plain illogical. If roses do it for him, why would he be upset to find out that he can have all the roses he wants? This is some namby-pamby SJW bullshit. He had the power. He had all of the power! The book acts like he didn’t because that’s the lesson it wants to teach young men: that they never have the power. They want men to believe that even with dozens of girls around them they aren’t entitled to sex.

In the end the Prince kills himself by allowing himself to be bitten by a snake. If I understand the symbolism (and I think I do, though I still don’t approve) this is meant to be a homosexual act which naturally results in death, as the only natural end result of such an act. Sex creates life, therefore homosex leads to death. Even the liberals can’t pretend otherwise. All they can do is try to spin it into a good thing, conditioning our youth to accept homosexuality and its consequences as good and right. This is why they champion a culture of death with euthanasia and abortion and gay marriage and this book. Christians, keep this book out of your children’s hands.

The snake being full of poison could also be taken as a metaphor for toxic masculinity, which is the coded Feminazi rallying cry for male genocide. This is why I don’t trust metaphors. A massive glistening rocket ship with thousands of tons of thrust behind it is just one thing. If you start saying that things can be other things, there’s no limit on how many other things they can be. When anything means everything, then everything means nothing.

This is the liberal endgame. Don’t let them re-define words. If you let them they’ll have you believing that up is down and left is right and people can be anything they want.

Two stars.

Originally published at Blue Author Is About To Write. Please leave any comments there.

STATUS: Wednesday, May 6th

The Daily Report

Well, I’ve finally found a way to feel good about this Sad/Rabid (Sabid?) Puppies mess: satire. Yesterday I wrote three satirical book reviews from the point of view of a sort of generalized Puppy figure. One I posted immediately. The other two I queued up to up today and tomorrow. I don’t have concrete plans for any more at the moment, though I am idly thinking about possibilities, or other things I could do with the character of John Z. Upjohn, USMC (Aspired).

Mainly though, I just feel good. I didn’t ask for a culture war to spill out into the spaces where I hang out and work, but since it did I’ve had a hard time ignoring it and just enjoying what I’m doing. Now I feel like I have a framework for getting back to where I’m enjoying myself. Humor feels like so much of a better response to all of this than harsh invective, however well-founded it might be. There are limits to what we can do, systemically, to counter people acting in bad faith backed by their own biases. There are certainly limits to what debate can accomplish. The best answer we have for absurdity is a mirror.

Expect more blog posts about other things, and less tweeting about Puppy nonsense. I’m not making a hard and fast rule against engaging in all seriousness with puppygator shenanigans. I’m saying that we’re well past the point of diminishing returns on entertaining their nonsense as more than nonsense.

The State of the Me

Feeling good. There’s been some welcome good news in the extended family. There is some illness in our house right now, though I am doing well personally. We’re getting into the time of year when sleep gets trickier becuase of heat/humidity, but I’m on guard against it.

Plans For Today

I’ve got some email business to catch up on, then some random writing, then some Tales of MU.

Originally published at Blue Author Is About To Write. Please leave any comments there.

Angels of the Meanwhile: LAST DAY TO ORDER

I am sorry to interrupt your web surfing day, but I need to ask your help with something very important to me.

A few months ago, genre poet, author, and my functional muse Elizabeth R. McClellan was injured in the process of avoiding an auto accident. What’s a functional muse? It means she inspires me to get stuff done, mainly by saying, “ALEXANDRA, GET STUFF DONE.” It’s a rare gift, don’t ask me how she does it.

It is not exaggeration to say that she’s the reason I kept writing fiction when I started out, nor is it an exaggeration to say that she’s the reason I started writing poetry.

She needs help dealing with the unforeseen expenses that mount up in the aftermath of an unforeseen injury. To that end, I’ve been putting together a e-chapbook of sorts, a quick-and-dirty anthology consisting of poetry and prose and stuff in-between from the people in our extended community of artists.

This book, Angels of the Meanwhile, contains works by such numinous luminaries as Bryan Thao Worra, Rose Lemberg, Catherynne M. Valente, Phil Brucato, Amal El-Mohtar, S.J. Tucker, Ellen Kushner, and many more. You can read more details and the entire table of contents so far beneath this post, minus some late additions still being slotted in.

In order to raise funds quickly while they can still have an impact, we’re offering this book as a pre-order on a pay-what-you-can basis. The way it works is this: you PayPal any amount directly to Elizabeth, we add your email address to the list. On our release date (currently estimated to be late July, so we have time to deliver the best product possible despite the haste), we’ll send you a packet containing both Kindle and epub formats and a PDF, for easy reading on whatever device pleases you best. All 100% DRM free.

We are only able to offer this remarkable book through June 1st. That’s today. Please make your contribution before midnight today 

Just use this simple form. If you don’t fill in an address, we’ll use your PayPal one.

Email Address (For Delivery)

Thank you.

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Table of Contents

Bits of Prose (Flash Fiction, Prose Poems)

• This Is The Place Where Lost Things Go – Kythrynne Aisling
• The Merry Knives of Interspecies Communication – Bogi Takács
• The Choices of Foxes – Sonya Taaffe
• Foam – Dusti Morton
• The Sweat of their Brows – Alexandra Erin
• The Dirty Fairy – Deborah Walker
• Beauty Sleeping – Ellen Kushner

Verse

• Beastwoman’s Snarled Rune – Rose Lemberg
• Pain Shared Is Catching (For April Grant) – Erik Amundsen
• Gorgon Girls – Saira Ali
• This Is What It’s All About – Lupa
• Blodeuwedd – Amal El-Mohtar
• Burning Wings (For C.S.E. Cooney) – Jennifer Crow
• The Changeling Always Wins – Nicole Kornher-Stace
• The First Wife – Lev Mirov
• Nuestra Señora de las Maravillas Lost at Sea, 1527 – Lisa Bradley
• The Secret of Being a Cowboy – Catherynne M. Valente
• Firstborn – Christina Sng
• Children of the Faun and Fae – Merideth Allyn
• Ivan Icarus – by C.S.E. Cooney
• We Named Our Grief Irene – Virginia M. Mohlere
• Fucking Doughnuts – Legoule
• Allison Gross Speaks of the Worm – Gwynne Garfinkle
• Sand Bags – Dominik Parisien
• Hot Wet Mess – S.J. Tucker
• These Are Days – Roni Neal
• lis pendens – Mike Allen
• Thread Between Stone – Bryan Thao Worra

Prose Stories

• The View of My Brother’s Profile In The Rear-View Mirror – Randee Dawn
• Inside, Looking Out – Alexandra Erin
• Changed – Nicolette Barischoff
• Fire Flight – A.M. Burns
• The Legacy Box – Satyros Phil Brucato
• Illusions of Safety – Angelia Sparrow

Originally published at Blue Author Is About To Write. Please leave any comments there.