All these assymetric concerns are alive and well in this kerfuffle. I agree with you that the "Status Quo" was already political. But then let's drop the pretense that the awards were not political, and that there weren't battles and agendas being fought in here for a good while now. What the Left does in an extremely competent way is to determine that their own agendas are the Moral Good, and thus to fight them, anyone is automatically deemed as Immoral, as a "Violent" person commiting despicable acts "against the Innocent". There's a religious moral aspect to this that I won't go into, but the way the Puppies were labeled and insulted not only from anonymous sympathizers with Scalzi and co., but more to the point, by the wider media, Tor editors and a lot of other "influential" people really inforced the notion that the Left will do anything in the name of the "Moral Good", whatever it is that it decided today to be.
And this is different from what the puppies are doing how, exactly?
It is not different! It is exactly the same! Again, it's always the
same story. Correia + Day + others think that the Left has usurped Culture and Sci Fi through illegitimate corrupt means. The Left cannot win by legitimate means (because they are lazy, insert any typical stereotype of the Left in here), and they are winning? Obvious signal of corruption. Paradoxically then, they establish the Left as being the actual status quo. A revolution is then needed. Thus, they storm the castle and try to overthrow the status quo. Meanwhile, the status quo complains about the "thuggery" of the revolutionaires.
Second, the "process" of it being towards Left is not dangerous at all. I actually, and contrary to your assertions, don't mind it at all.
Then stop complaining, because what you are seeing is the result of that process. Fiction does not exist in some holy vacuum untouched by the world around it. It moves with mores and interests of the populace. That's why genres exist in the first place. It's why the Hugos exist by extension. If the population moves left, writers are a part of it, and so are their works. If we've been moving left the time this Hugo Awards covers, so likely will the stories in those awards. It's entirely predictable.
You are still conflating those three things I mentioned, which you shouldn't. Also, one thing is to not mind that Ctuhluh moves Left, quite another is minding
how Ctuhluh is made to be moved Left. That is, the methods. The
means. Current generation seemingly has a penchant for witch hunting, thuggery, blitzkrieg social justice movements that **** on people's lives, on facts and on reason in order to "have a larger conversation" and solve wider "problematic" issues that are still systematically devising the oppressive patriarchal system we live in, etc., etc.
I fundamentally disagree with all these methods. They are anti-Enlightenment. Anti-Reason. They are profoundly based on emotional baggage and manipulative ethics. Psychopathic and Sociopathic behaviors abound in all these movements. It's
not making the world better, it just parades that it is.
As you are not a writer, you have perhaps not thought on these things; Battuta is a writer, and has. So have I, though I confine myself to the strictly amateur end. You're trying to argue your perspective against people who would have experience relevant to what is at hand you do not; who have first-hand experience of the interactions between author, story, audience, society, and environment.
These things are all true (except the suggestion I haven't thought of these things) and I have admitted to them. So what?
There's no fallacy to my mind and I think it'll be quite illuminating to hear you argue for the existence of one, so try.
It's the most usual type: A Strawman. I never said that censorship of these books was happening. It's a lot more subtler than that, I referenced the
Overton Window, not 1984. What is at stake here is what is deemed "acceptable", "sensible" and "popular", and the Hugos, despite Battuta's insistence that they are really irrelevant (lol), they provide one measurement of this Overton Window in the Sci Fi scene. IDK, I'm portuguese and I've known about the Hugos and the Nebulas ever since I started reading sci-fi, that is, when I was a teenager. To claim the Hugos are just a townhall thing is hilarious to me. It really is. I was never exposed to town meetings of, say,
Louisville, Mississipi in my life, let alone when I was a parohical teen unaware of the wider world communities.
You're arguing for a clique group (that would have been diluted by a massive turnout increase, that's a fallacy there)
If there's a fallacy there, is one of
Composition and it's
yours. If there's a clique working there, it influenced what happened
until now, and in 2015 those 2500 votes are a testament to a very new and different thing altogether.
..., you've not established its existence in any way, shape, or form. That's also a fallacy.
No, it's not, stop making **** up. An incomplete argument is not a fallacy, it's just incomplete. I'm not making a PHD thesis out here for your entertainment, and we know others have made their own arguments and theories far, far more complete than anything I've written in here. I'm writing with the obvious assumption that we all know that these exist and can easily be reached.
Would you care to stop then? You've not proved a clique exists, you've not proved this is really not a sample of the population, you've basically built your entire argument on unsupported assumption that some conspiracy or clique is denying the Hugo.
I might be entirely wrong, sure. I will merely say that all the evidence I've seen so far tells me that there's (way) more than just smoke in the air. If I am not convincing you, sure, that's perfectly fine. It's not part of "my agenda" to convince or convert you to my truth.
Show me evidence. And don't pull a Goober with the way things are awarded; that evidence cannot be construed only the way you want it to be, and presenting it as if you can is blunt lying. Don't tell me that this Hugo was evidence either, because turning out against Vox Day et. al. is not necessarily turning out for the left or against the right; it can be personal, it can be of genuine belief in the lack of quality of the work, it can be a vote against politicizing the award, it can even be a "get your politics out of my escapist fiction asshole". You've admitted several of these are possible already, so you can't very well claim that it's certainly a vote against the right now. If there's a clique, I want to see the clique itself and hear you explain why it got more powerful when both sides experienced massive turnout increases.
Goober made a good statistical analysis. You call it a "pull a Goober". I can only sigh at that. "Evidence cannot be construed only the way you want it to be", what the hell does that even mean? One works with the evidence one has. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, but claims of politicking and clique maneuvers in a tight community isn't exactly an
extraordinary claim now is it.
But let me be blunt about it: I'm not the expert that can write you a good teatrise on how and why my "theory" is correct. And thus you'll have to search for it if you are so inclined. I also accept other possibilities because I'm not a fanatic. Of course I accept other possibilities.
If you wish to abandon reason for rhetoric, don't be a part of reasoned discussion. This is part of a long and painful history of the right side of the aisle claiming censorship when they're shouted down and if you want to be part of that tradition, you get to suffer as other members of it have.
Is that a threat?
