Because hope springs eternal…

…I went and left a comment on chief puppy Brad R. Torgersen’s blog, after reading the excerpt on the daily File 770 round-up.

My comment was prompted by his repeating a saw I’m pretty sure I’ve already seen multiple times from him: the idea that “social justice warriors” is a real thing that the people he spends his time taking written potshots at called themselves.

It’s a little thing, in the long run. But the insistent way in which the chief puppies stick to their guns about this is such a perfect representative example of the alternate reality they have constructed for themselves and from which they are conducting their campaign, and I just keep thinking—probably foolishly—that if they can manage to recognize the truth of this matter, it might make them more amenable to questioning the other fallacies they’ve taken as articles of faith regarding who their chosen opponents are and what we’re about.

I may be a poor choice for emissary, given how much time I spend skewering them… but the truth is the truth, whether it comes from a clown or a priest. The truth is still every bit as true when it comes from your most hated enemy as when it comes from your closest friend.

While hope springs eternal, my previous forays in bringing the truth to Brad Torgersen’s blog have not convinced me it’s worth sticking around to engage over there. So to that end, I’m reproducing my comment here (with a few typos and errors cleaned up). If anybody wants an actual discussion about it, I’ll be happy to have it here.

---

 

I’m sure I’m not the first person to try to tell you this, but the people who spew hot air about “warriors for social justice” are all over here with you. That’s not a thing people called themselves. It’s a pejorative made up to dismiss people, a la calling someone “PC patrol” or “feminazi” or “thought police”.

Some people have taken it as an ironic badge of honor or made geeky riffs on it (like “Social Justice Paladin” or “Social Justice Bard”), but by and large, you’re chiding people for not living up to the standards of a label that was foisted upon them in the first place.

Which is actually part of the function of the label. Most of the people I have seen getting slapped with the “SJW” label not only don’t describe themselves as social justice warriors, they don’t describe themselves as activists. They’re just people, living their lives, dealing with their own problems, and acting their consciences.

Example: I’m not an activist. I’m a writer. Like most writers, I try to write the books that I want to read. As a reader, it’s really kind of important that books 1) acknowledge the reality of my life, that people like me exist, or failing that, that they don’t 2) openly insult me, or 3) portray people like me in laughingly unrealistic ways that jar me out of the story. For “people like me”, you can read queer, women, disabled… any of that.

Now’s the part where you blather on about I-Dentity Politics and PC Police and imaginary quotas and the censorship you think I’ve just called for and wonder “What ever happened to telling a good story and not caring about politics?”

But is a story a good story if it is otherwise good yet portrays Christians all as being wrongheaded, narrow minded superstitious fools? I mean, can it be a good story if a significant cross section of humanity is rendered in an extremely unrealistic—say nothing of meanspirited, let’s focus on whether it’s realistic—fashion?

Some of this is subjective, obviously. We all have different life experiences, which means different things will ring hollow to us (which is one reason that so many thoughtful writers suggest having beta readers with different experiences). One example that I believe came up in the comments on File 770 is that it’s a sure sign a man wrote a piece if the female viewpoint character is described admiring her perfect breasts in the mirror. That’s a very small, very mundane, and fairly innocuous example of bad writing that happens essentially because of an empathy gap or experience gap, but it’s not going to jar every reader the same way.

Now imagine a book full of things that are all just “off” by that same amount.

Well, you probably don’t have to. You’ve probably read books that are like that, in their treatment of men, or Christians, or the military. And it didn’t just strike you as insulting, but also as bad writing. Right? Your ability to enjoy the story suffered, because while disagreeing with a writer’s politics is one thing, seeing yourself replaced by caricatures page after page is another.

When you talk about taking politics out of writing, what you’re doing is demanding everybody else stops noticing these things as they affect us, but you haven’t announced any plans to do the same.

Anyway, if all you wanted to do was open wide the tent flaps, then you weren’t competent. You were horribly inefficient. You stirred up a ton of bad will, you’re still spending your time and effort fighting the negative impression of you and yours that your actions have fostered, and you only succeeded in the wrong goal (getting a slate of nominees on the ballot isn’t “opening the tent flaps”, is it?), and if we are to take you at your word, you only did that accidentally (because it was demonstrably only the push from that totally-not-with-you guy and his rabid pack of dreadful elks that got any of your nominees on the ballot).

As I said on my blog: next year, if you want the world to believe that your goal is to raise awareness that anyone can nominate whoever they want for the Hugos, make a blog post that says, “Hey, everyone! Did you know that the Hugo Awards, one of the top awards for science fiction, is awarded by the members of WorldCon? And did you know that for $40 you can buy a supporting membership in WorldCon? Now’s your chance to nominate whoever you want!”

That’s all it takes. It won’t succeed in getting a slate of hand-picked nominees on the ballot and blocking people you think don’t deserve to be on the ballot because the wrong people like them for the wrong reasons…

But hey, that’s not what Sad Puppies is about, is it?

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

STATUS: Tuesday, June 2nd

 

The State of the Me

I’m at the stage of respiratory illness recovery where I feel completely great except for my throat, which is bearing the scars of the previous week’s drainage. So I’ll be doing great until something sets it off, and then I have a coughing fit that leaves it raw. Mint tea, crystallized ginger, and lozenges are the order of the day.

The Daily Report

It’s going to be a weird week, as my enthusiasm and energy conflict continuously butts up against the reality of my upper respiratory tract. Ah, well.

Case in point: I have a brand new microphone that I got shortly before I got sick the last time, and I’ve barely used it. Yesterday I was feeling so awesome I decided to try doing a test recording. That was a mistake. So, instead of trying to do anything big and bold, I’m easing back into creative writing after essentially two weeks without it.

Plans For Today

I’m declaring today a random write whatever day. Got to prime the pump.

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

Sad Puppies Review Books: STREGA NONA

STREGA NONA

Reviewed by John Z. Upjohn, USMC (Aspired)

If you want chilling proof of the radical feminist lesbian witch cult (also known as “Social Justice”) that has infiltrated all ranks of society, look no further than this book which blatantly glorifies witchcraft, matriarchy, and the creation of a loyal slave nation of emasculated beta male cucks.

Exactly as foretold in a literal straightforward reading of the Book of Revelation, this book portrays a near-future world where even the Catholic Church itself is in thrall of a woman. The church is no longer the Bride of Christ but the scarlet woman of Babylon.

“Although all the people in the town talked about her in whispers, they all went to see her if they had troubles. Even the priests and the sisters in the convent went, for Strega Nona had a magic touch.” If that isn’t straight out of the Bible then I don’t even know what the Bible says. I do know that it says to not suffer a witch to live, not to treat her as a valued civic leader.

I think we can all agree that this is an example of the kind of ideological, agenda-driven “message fiction” that has replaced real God-fearing SF/F that embraces and centers Christianity in the best traditions of classic science fiction.

This story shows a town that turns their back on God and then is almost crushed under a “flying spaghetti monster” of its own making. In their last moments they remember who made the heavens and the earth and cry out for Him to save them, and He, as was foretold in the holy book, looks down and whispers “no”. It is exactly what will happen in the end times, only in this fictitious example the witch returns at the last minute and spares them. When it really happens, though, she will find herself as powerless as the rest and the tide of pasta will roll over her with the sheep she led astray for Satan is the real “spaghetti monster” and like Saul Alinsky he is a great deceiver.

In the world that the SJWs seek to create, men don’t woo and win women as God intended but instead women go to a matriarchal elder and have a husband assigned to them and that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Strega Nona decides she is too busy and important to keep a house, do the gardening, wash dishes, or do any of the things that women do for free. Instead she humiliates and browbeats a man who is denied any other employment opportunities because he is living in an upside-down society, forcing him to do a housewife’s work for no other compensation except security, food, shelter, and money.

As you might expect from a work of pure propaganda, the conflict in the book comes when her beta cuck housepet “Big Anthony” has had enough and decides to go his own way, daring to take for himself the power and prestige that Strega Nona decided only belonged to the approved feminist elite like herself. In a proper rollicking adventure story, his bravery would have been celebrated and duly rewarded. Because this is “message fiction” though he gets only bitter comeuppance for daring to seize power.

If this book is true to life in any way it exactly captures the nature of the backlash the SJW Hugo elite has had to the whole Sad Puppy campaign. I’m sorry, were we not supposed to touch your special pasta pot? Was it not polite to ram through a slate of nominees based on the fact that one of us said they were pretty good? Is that not how it’s done?

Well, I’m sorry if I’m not willing to “blow kisses” at the “sacred feminine cooking pot” in order to get anywhere, as this story suggests we all must do. Is it any surprise that the treasonous miscreants at the Caldecott Medal chose this book for an honor?

Two stars.

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

Late Afternoon Update

My decision to basically play triage with my throat has turned out pretty awesome.

This morning before I properly woke up, I was coughing so hard that I was a little worried that I’d been kidding myself that my cold was getting better and it had just migrated south. Then I realized my cough, as horrible as it was, was completely non-productive… my throat was just so irritated that the smallest things would set it off.

I had a good supply of lozenges and ginger candy already, because I made a point of stocking up on that stuff before WisCon… con crud or no con crud, a convention can be murder on your throat. But I also have this giant stockpile of mint tea that I started laying in back when I was mostly off of caffeine. When I started drinking soda again, it started to fall by the wayside and then when Dorian died and I re-arranged my entire office, I lost my tea station and never bothered to set it back up again.

But now after drinking hot liquids all morning, I’m back from my throat feels like someone’s taken a roto-rooter to it to feeling so normal I have to watch that I don’t overdo it with the talking. I have not needed any kind of cough medicine or even a lozenge since this morning.

But man… I forgot how good a good cup of green tea with mint makes me feel. What it does for my body and  brain. It’s like the perfect combination of the green tea’s mood boosting effect, the mint’s focus/creativity boosting effect, and the caffeine’s affect on dopamine… it’s like the thing that has been missing from my herbal supplementation these past several months.

 

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