Monthly Archives: December 2014

Yamanama’s epic stalker breakdown.

I’ve an update up on the Yamanama aka Andrew P. Marston the Stalker PSA thread. It is a rather epic illustration of how some people are apparently placed on this planet to be horrible warnings to the rest of the human race – and possibly others as well. Andrew P. Marston of Marshfield, Massachusetts, is clearly one of these things. Over the years, he has displayed absolutely appalling levels of misogyny and racism towards myself, shown himself to be a liar and a stalker who holds the most absolute of double-standards of ‘not for thee but for me,’ has no problems violating laws or invading his victims’ privacy when it suits him to do so, has no issues with harassment, defamation, slander, public smear, misrepresentation and intellectual theft as long as he’s the one using them, but the moment that anyone tries to defend themselves, fights back, or exposes him, he attempts desperately to implement  DARVO tactics

This is why yama always tries to accuse but never gives proof of his accusations

DARVO tactics description

Happily the attempts to do this to myself don’t work, as I’ve carefully kept a public record of his words and harassment over the years. Since I’m doing the unthinkable – a little Asian woman daring to defy the white-man-bully that he is- he makes the completely unfounded claims that I am the ‘stalker’. This is very clearly not the case and his behaviour as a whole has remained entirely unchanged throughout the years, at least since the documentation I’ve seen of the last group he harassed back in 2005.

Notably Yama aka Andrew is very keen to have the records of that incident erased, as it documents his use of pornography and illegal pornographic content, in a deliberate attempt to expose two eleven year old girls to it – something he did because he wanted to punish the mother for her beliefs (Which, I grant, are unpleasant since she’s a white supremacist) but note that Andrew P. Marston went after the children, not the mother. This was something he felt was completely acceptable to do. This in turn makes his threats towards my own family quite credible as a result. Andrew has already gone after my housemate Aff, and my partner Rhys to harass for their association with me (as documented by the sticky)- thus if he had the opportunity to harm my children, he would clearly do so as past evidence proves.

There are indications from the way Andrew has spoken that he has my home address and my phone number and dispersed it – either partially or in whole – to persons unknown.  Presumably the people he would have revealed these details to might be encouraged to take action against what they think are soft, easy targets. Whether this is mere harassment, or even greater harmful intent is speculation at this point, but of one thing we can be certain: Andrew P. Marston means my family nothing but harm and there is nothing but hatred and malice in his actions.

I understand that the blogger, writer, publisher and Internet personage Vox Day is in the midst of initiating legal proceedings against Andrew. Regardless of what you may think of the man, he is quite correct that 56 months of harassment from Andrew P. Marston is quite long enough – I myself have been harassed by Andrew since late 2009. That’s going For some reason, Andrew thinks I am the instigator of this process, or at the very least is desperate to paint me as the person responsible for what he demonstrably is falsely claiming is harassment and stalking. Prior to very recent events, while I did refer to Vox’s blog for additional evidence of Andrew’s harassment and stalking, I had not participated nor commented on that blog. The only reason I did so recently was because Andrew was exploiting a flaw in Blogger/Blogspot’s comment permissions and attempting to impersonate other people in a desperate attempt to paint himself as a victim, and I headed off the possibility of him stealing my identity in such a high-traffic place. Invariably, he did attempt this, but I am fortunate enough to have a place that Andrew cannot exploit and pretend to be someone else on – namely, my website, and the associated Affsdiary Forums. It is a digital place where Andrew is unwelcome, and cannot pretend to be someone else, nor use proxies and other methods of obscurement on.

For those who are his victims, it is a simple matter to create an account and establish their own identity there, and create their own proof thread to show they are in fact the ones posting on blogger or Blogspot.

After reading through Andrew’s temper tantrum from over my shoulder, a friend of mine notes:

Have you ever had that feeling that you’re standing in a room where everyone hates you, and wishes you would move along like a bad fart?

I bet Yama gets that every day.

There’s surgery for disfigurements, and medications for certain mental conditions. There isn’t any help for stupid, and Andrew here has a terminal case of it.

Quod erat demonstrandum, in ways irrefutable indeed.

 

 

I keep doin’ this to myself

Elven Fried Bread

 

So, I spent a rather insomniac night craving doughnuts, so I bounced around the Internet, gazing hungrily at doughnut recipes, because I’ve never made doughnuts before.

Well, okay I was also looking up ideas for making black forest truffle balls, because I am seriously, seriously missing me some Red Ribbon Black Forest Cake. ;_; (The last one I had, ever, was thanks to Ford Prefect42 and Akilika! Thank you~! I treasure the memory . )

So thanks to that, I ended up on a blog called Let The Baking Begin! Aaaaaaaaand in the manner that one usually ends up Trapped In TVTropes, by the time I resurfaced, it was 5 am in the morning.

Thanks to that I have a nice recipe for latkes that I want to try sometime. And a recipe for home-made soft cheese.

I am casting the puppy eyes at Rhys to help me make these doughnuts. And possibly fried elven bread – a more savory, salty, as addictive as popcorn bread that I make.

I probably should explain that one a bit more.

When I was a teen/early twenties I was able to get my hands on the Leaves from the Inn of the Last Home Dragonlance sourcebook. To my delight, they had recipes, and one of the recipes was for a travelling fried flat bread sometimes referred to as elven bread because the Kagonesti made the things. Being simple it was one of the first things I made out of the book. Yes, I didn’t make Otik’s Fried Potatoes; I wasn’t very good with spices at the time. Shocking, I know.

(Mutters: I haven’t seen the book since we last moved house. grumbles!)

Baked it was a bit dense and got hard very quickly (we guessed it may have to do with the flour) but my mom and I decided to try the fried version, which is the one favoured by ‘adventurers and wilder elves’, hence the resulting name.

It was good. We ended up with a chewy, addictive bread, but still lacking something.

Flour was cheap. So was oil. Over the next while, we made batches of the fried bread, tweaking and adjusting. My brothers were happy to eat the experiments anyway and we hadn’t had any problems with the amount we made.

I found the notebook I wrote the resulting recipe in (It’s got oil splatter on it, hahaha) so I’m sharing it now. It’s a deep fried, salty, chewy bread, that we make into small balls and eat like popcorn while watching movies or reading books.

 

Elven Fried Bread, inspired from the Dragonlance recipe

Ingredients

2 cup water

4 cups flour

1 tablespoon salt

1/2 tablespoon sugar

1 tablespoon yeast (I use a granulated yeast) / 1 packet yeast

1/4c (plus more for your hands) olive oil (I tend to use extra virgin olive oil)

Mix 1 cup water, at body-temperature warmth (what I call ‘blood-warm’, since it’s actually warmer than body temperature and hotter than lukewarm) with sugar, and dissolve. Add the yeast and let it grow in the water.

Dissolve the salt in the other cup of water. In a bowl, sift the flour and make a well.

When the yeast has bubbled, pour into the flour and mix to make into a sticky dough. Add about a handful of olive oil and mix it in – this helps make the dough flexible and chewy, as well as adds flavour, and has the side benefit of helping keep the bread from sticking too much to the bowl. You’ll end up with a very sticky, stretchy dough. If you want to knead it you may, but I tend not to.

Cover with a damp cloth and set in a warm place to rise for 1-2 hours.

Heat enough cooking oil for deep frying.

Oil hands and pinch off enough bread dough to make a 2-3 cm wide flat circles and slide into the hot oil. Or balls the size of quarters / 20 Australian cent pieces. Fry on both sides till golden brown, drain in a colander with a paper towel on the bottom. Best while hot.

 

The original version sounds a lot like American Fried Dough.

Now if y’all will excuse me I’m gonna make a batch of this stuff, because writing it up made me hungry hungry hungry.

 

 

 

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An Attempt By Yamamanama To Impersonate Me

So while walking back and forth between my computer and my kitchen, checking on recipes while cooking I get an alert on my email saying that “I” had just posted on Vox Day’s blog.

Uhm. What the shit? I head that off right fast.

For future reference, any comments I make on Blogspot, or sites where impersonation of another is possible, will be posted in this thread with the unfortunately necessary diligence in order to prove that I am me.

https://forums.affsdiary.com/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=52

If anyone is unsure if the person they are talking to is myself, register on the forums, and send me a private message. As the site is hosted by ourselves, we can at least ensure the authenticity of my own identity here, as well as ensure for our own security that the person on the other end is NOT yama.

The online websites I currently participate in discussion in are:

Shadowdancer Studios (my own website) and these forums at Affsdiary.com
According To Hoyt
Mad Genius Club
Monster Hunter Nation
scifiwright.com
TLKnighton’s website
Cedar Writes
Livejournal
(very rarely) Google Plus.

and, as only of a few days ago, Vox Popoli, in order to establish my own identity as Yama had begun to impersonate other people there in order to facilitate his own misdirection and misrepresentation in an attempt to whitewash his own actions and claim victimhood as well as desperately attempting to muddy the waters while he slings more shit around him. He has made false claims that I ‘suggested’ to Vox that someone named Emma be stalked, when in fact I have no idea who this even references. He attempted to make it sound like Jordan179 was ‘in on the plot.’

If it is someone local to him, then he believes that I have, somehow, the magic capability of being able to have the influence and connections necessary to ID his friends, and believes that I have the same kind of inclinations and obsessions he does. If that were the case why am I restricting myself to documenting his activities of harassment online? Beyond where his IP address geolocates (which only goes as far as either Marshfield or Duxbury Massachusetts), I have no idea where he lives, and honestly have no intention of finding out – why would I?! He behaves as if I would do to him what he has attempted to do to me – namely attempted to crowdsource harassment of myself and my friends online – and is now behaving as if I would source harassment of his friends outside of the Internet based simply because of their association with him.

This is a classic Yama projection (believing that I will act, think and behave the same way he does), and has me wondering if he has attempted to do this to me RL as well. I am already aware that he likes to bring me up in completely unrelated places and frequently will do so in places where he thinks he may garner support in encouraging dislike of myself based on his lies, smears and baseless accusations.

Unlike Yama I have a life and a family, and books to write and friends I spend time with. I do not spend all of my time hounding someone I don’t like – I will generally ignore them and avoid them instead.

It is because Yama himself chooses NOT to leave me alone that ensures that this documentation even continues to exist. In fact he came after me when I all but vanished from the blogosphere because I had no time for it and played L2 as my mode of relaxation when I came home from work. There was no reason for him to do this. The game had nothing to do with RL politics, or Muslims, or such, yet Yama felt that my mere presence there was enough for him to go to the forums and then harass people there.

He has been actively stalking me for whatever demented reason he has, that none of us can actually figure out, since late 2009. Andrew P. Marston has made it his life’s work to destroy me online, to try and drive me off the Internet.

Here’s a thought for the people reading this:

Who has he managed to do this to, that he is so determined to keep doing this? How many victims has he had, that I am unaware of, that we are unaware of? From his harassment of Larry Correia, Sarah Hoyt, Vox Day, Tom Kratman, John C. Wright and many other authors, it is clear that I am not his only target in attempts to silence whatever it is we have to say, whether it is politics or our writing books, or simply enjoying ourselves.

Who else has he targeted and successfully driven away from their joys and passion and friends online?

======

This post was originally written up for the Stalker Sticky Thread.

https://forums.affsdiary.com/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=41&p=110#p110

Please also be advised that any announcements I make about communications will be reiterated here and on the forums. Any other attempt by other people and sources to pretend to be me and make false announcements about my modes of communication will NOT be able to do that. If it doesn’t exist on Shadowdancer Studios and the Affsdiary Forums, then it didn’t come from me.

Note: I do have some blogger pages but I don’t post there and am not using them. Consider them abandoned for lack of security and privacy control.

Our first real tree

The current post over at Mad Genius Club talks about the trials and tribulations of the holiday season, especially if one has cats that like to climb Christmas trees. Having spent the evening after filling the stockings for the children cuddled up with Rhys, marvelling that somehow, we’d managed to put together a Christmas for the kiddlywinks, and reminiscing as we watched the tree lights sparkle, I find myself reminiscing again – this time about the first time we had a proper Christmas tree. As a child in the Philippines, the tree I remembered having was made out of little pine cones shaped into a Christmas tree that came from Baguio. It wasn’t big and we could put it on top of the TV.

The first Christmas we had in East Berlin, I bought the tree, and my classmate and I carried it home. My father had plans of buying a plastic tree but I would have none of it! We were in Germany and we could finally have a proper Tanenbaum! But no, my father reasoned that it seemed cruel to get a cut tree. This made no sense to me as the tree was grown and cut for that purpose, and since it was cut already, it was a waste not to use it for the reason why it was cut down.

I was telling my friend about this while walking home the 2 or more kilometers home from school. She was quite baffled at the thought of a plastic tree, but reasoned that it was too hot where I came from for tanenbaumen, when we saw someone selling trees out of a truck in a parking lot. My friend suggested buying one. I made up my mind right there to buy a tree if I could afford one with my pocket money. I had enough money for a 2 meter tall tree, which was the smallest one available.

Everyone else buying trees, I remember, was a grown up. The sight of two children, one German and the other a tiny little auslanderin, very seriously picking out which tree to buy, seemed to be a source of amusement. We didn’t mind them; this was, to our minds, something important!

Nevertheless, we picked out a tree, and paid the five marks for it. The man selling it asked if we lived nearby. No, we replied, we lived at (street), and he remarked at how far we had to go. Yet these two little girls lifted the tree onto their shoulders, and trudged off, with those darned heavy leather schoolbags on our shoulders digging in through our anoraks. I remember people pausing to watch us go by, because we looked like a horizontal tree that had sprouted legs.

It was afternoon, but the sky was already pitch dark, and snowflakes, big fat clumps of white, drifted out of the darkness and into the street lights we followed to our apartment building. The day was very cold, but carrying the tree, which was heavier than either of us had anticipated, kept us warm, and the tree itself shielded us from quite a bit of wind chill.

My mother was quite shocked to find out that we had walked the whole way; we said the tree wouldn’t have fit through the bus’ door. My brothers were simply excited that we had a tree!

My friend showed us how to have the tree set up. We went back down with a pail and filled it with sand from the little playground next to the apartment building, and we planted the tree into the bucket of sand and stood it to one side of the living room, next to the windows.

Afterward my mother plied us with drinks of hot chocolate and cookies bought from the West side of Berlin. She made up a thank you gift of food and treats and gave them to my friend when it was time for her to go home.

My father was surprised by the tree when he got home, and shocked to find out how we’d gotten it there. Seeing as I’d made such an effort, he decided that we go out and buy decorations, so we drove out to the West side and came home with lots of decorations and decorated the tree that same night. It looked quite magical to us, that first proper tanenbaum and my father conceded that I’d been right to push for a real tree. In the years we stayed in Germany, every Christmas we got a proper, real Tanenbaum. We went with the plastic trees later on, but by then we were all quite a bit older, and Christmas was less about the tree and the presents and more about the company, the religious connotations, the social gatherings and the food.

I am very clearly the center of the universe or something for someone

For a certain ridiculously persistent stalker and social plague, that is.

Because Picard for the win~

I mean, there’s gotta be a reason why I’m constantly being dragged up in conversations which have nothing to do with me, especially over the past few days where I’ve been too busy and physically fried to actually keep up with things online.

Coz, you know, Christmas preparations and all that, in real life, mean that I’m kinda swamped and busy. Especially with baking things (there may be actual posts about that, we’ll see) and other things.

At any rate, have yet another update of the Stalker Sticky as well as the Spewdonym List.

========

Edited to add:

Vox Day has two very fascinating posts:

Pity the Troll – Part 1 and Part 2

Woah. /keanureeves The stuff I discover when I resurface from being AFK RL BUSY MODE.

eta: Okay having read through a chunk of that, I think it’s a good idea to put this out there once more. This was a facepalming flame directed at Yama on Jordan’s blog yeaaaaaaaaaars ago. It bears repeating now.

But holy shit, in what UNIVERSE DID YOU FUCKING THINK THAT WOULD WORK?!

Seriously, where were you when God was handing out brains? And why, why, why is it starting to look like that your ancestors went out for tacos instead of waiting for their Apple from the Tree of Knowledge? It’s gotta be like that because there is no way this much stupid could be distilled down to three successive generations, which makes me boggle. How in the name of Darwin did natural selection not get you?

I mean it. Anyone with two neurons floating in the center of a sac of saline would have cottoned on at light speed how that ‘plan’ was going to go very, very, very, epically fail. And mutate into so much wrongness, I’m surprised that the Gods haven’t struck it down as an abomination of reality.

====

A friend of mine also linked these to me.

http://www.cracked.com/blog/4-things-i-learned-about-teenage-trolls-from-being-one_p2/

http://www.vox.com/2014/9/29/6840773/confessions-of-a-former-internet-troll

Dropping them here for later reading.

============

Added 11:38 AM

Yama is getting very, very desperate to try squirt ink and muddy the waters by spoofing somehow Jordan179’s blogspot account.

Here’s the associated screenshots highlighting the vast difference of commentary (link, because the image causes quite a bit of side scroll). Note that Count Bullets-ula is Yama in the last screenshot, where he starts trying to make the spurious claim that I had Vox stalk this Emma person, who I don’t know and have never heard of before. If she’s the girl in the video Vox links on his blog, I did not watch, as I’m not really into hipster stuff and since the close up image is of her nostril, I’m not likely to click. The fake Jordan179 makes the same claim. This is demonstrably stupid, as I actually TALK to Jordan179, and stupider still, since I have Jordan’s RL address because I have plans to send him a present. So I KNOW where Jordan lives.

Note the posting of Yama as an anonymous in thethread that the real Jordan links. Again, Yama makes the comment of ‘filing spurious reports’, desperate to make it sound like Jordan has done so, when Jordan has actually said outright that he hasn’t filed any police reports.

Yama’s visted my LJ no less than three times from the times I’ve checked. Yeesh.

Speaking of LJ, Yama is currently harassing someone I look up to as an artist and writer, MCA Hogarth. Over Cuba. Where Micah is FROM. Pay attention to how he pooh-poohs the suffering of her family, by trying to draw the false equivalence that ‘people have it worse.’

ETA AGAIN 12:27pm Dec 22 2014 Australian Eastern Time:

Hey! Look who just visited!

Clearly Yama’s not happy that I’m able to show he’s pretending to be Jordan.

I like how he’s tacitly admitting to be Jordan in his reply.

Yep I hit a nerve.

====================

I have decided to comment over on Vox Populi for the first time.

First, this is to establish my identity so that Yama cannot try to pretend to be me, as he is currently doing with Jordan179, and apparently, Markku in the Vox Populi blog.

Second, as proof that this was me commenting, I have taken a screenshot of my post, and posted it here and in the Stalker Sticky thread.

(oops. Looks like I made a mistake, and the old comment got eaten since I’ve never really posted to blogspot before. Here’s my updated comment.)

I will ALSO make the point of posting screenshots of my own comments to prove that I am the one posting in the Forums as that is someplace where Yama has been banned from and is unable to post to.

Troubleshooting…

Or, PSA – my email address is being spoofed

Hi all

Please be advised: at this point in time my gmail is only a forwarding address and I do not reply using that, nor do I send any emails through this any longer. I use it as an initial contact point because it was my email address for years and years but it seems someone out there is spoofing it and sending malicious emails / spam / possibly infected emails.

I will tell people to contact me initially through that email address (shadowdancer.duskstar@gmail.com.) but I will not reply using that same email.

If this seems abrupt and cranky it’s because I’ve been dealing with this all night long and haven’t slept yet.

I have asked friends to also pass this on, so if you got a link to here that’s why. Thank you for your patience.

-Shadowdancer / Rory / R.K. Modena

=============

Completely unrelated to the above, I’ve updated both the PSA Sticky and the Spewdonym List.

These were heroes.

In the wake of the Sydney hostage ‘siege‘, and in the wake of several schools being attacked by Islamic extremists/Taliban in Pakistan, there are ordinary people who will step up.

These are the people I choose to believe in.

This was a man, not a boy, who stopped a suicide bomber from killing more people at his school.

These were ordinary people, with ordinary lives, with extraordinary hearts and spirits.

Your families grieve for your passing and having lost you. I salute your bravery and sacrifice, and mourn that such wonderful human beings were taken from this earth.

Chocolate de Tony Modena

 

This recipe is named after my father, who would make this chocolate on cold autumn and winter nights when we lived in Europe. It is best had while still hot, with bread to dip into it (like brioche, or pan de sal), or excellent with Churros if you know how to make those (‘coz I’m afraid I don’t… yet. As of this writing anyway.)

You may substitute the sugar and butter with the sugar substitute of your choice, and butter-flavoured margarine. I’ve been told by friends that the use of these does not in any way or form detract from the fullness of chocolatey flavour. I am unsure how this would taste if one uses a cow milk substitutes, as the cream of the milk is part of what gives this the rich flavour. Do feel free to experiment and let me know how it goes!

I should warn that this is very addictive stuff, and utterly wonderful comforting delight while reading a book

Ingredients

3/4 cup cocoa powder / Dutch cocoa powder (unsweetened)

3/4 cup (packed) brown sugar

2 1/2 cup evaporated milk OR full cream milk (must be full cream)

125g butter (or 1/2 cup butter) or half a 250g cake of butter

2 teaspoons instant coffee powder (I use Nescafe Blend 43 or 45; or Arabica… but feel free to omit, or substitute a preferred brand This helps enhance the flavour of chocolate and gives it a dark richness and depth.)

1) Cream the butter, sugar and cocoa powder together in a saucepan, the way you would if you were making cookies. If you are using coffee powder, you may add coffee at this point. If using granules I prefer to put it on the next step.

Butter chopped into cubes ready for mixing into a chocolate powder mixture

Chopped butter is easier to mix.

Mixing tablea powder mixture with butter, best done with a food processor

Use a food processor; it’s easier! I only found this out afterward.

Tablea chocolate mixture being finished off by hand mixing

Then you won’t have to do this.

 

1.b) You have the option of turning this to chocolate tablea, by taking the mixture, rolling it into 1 inch size balls and refrigerating till solid. If making this for tablea, it’s best to use a glass or ceramic bowl. Each 1 inch ball will correspond to roughly 1 mug size serving.

Shaping chocolate mixture into tablea balls

Roll into balls roughly 1-inch in size

Balls of chocolate tablea ready for chilling

Cool the balls in the fridge for about 30 min to an hour

Balls of tablea chocolate in glass jars

Put into jars or a plastic container and keep in fridge

2) When it is well blended, add milk and simmer at medium heat, mixing constantly. When it reaches a boil, lower the heat, add coffee powder and keep stirring till chocolate is of the thickness you wish it to be.

2.b) If having made tablea, pour 1/2 cup milk or cream into a small saucepan and add tablea. Stir as the milk heats to melt the tablea. Prepare as above, diluting with milk until it reaches the thickness you want.

Ball of tablea chocolate being added to a mug of hot milk

Add 1 ball to about 1/2 cup hot milk

Tablea chocolate being stirred into hot milk

Mix the tablea into the milk until fully dissolved

Mug of hot chocolate ready to drink

Drink your hot chocolate!

Serve at half-mug servings with toast for dipping, or add warm milk for drinking at each cup. Sinfully good. Makes roughly 4 mugs of undiluted chocolate. Chocolate may be reheated in microwave.

Notes:

  • Here where I live in the Philippines they sell butter in a brick cake that is equal to 1 cup butter / 250g of butter. Some brands go only up to 225g, but the one I use is 250g. I used salted butter. The butter takes place of the butter in melting chocolate if using melting / baking unsweetened chocolate or chips.

**I added the coffee powder so the chocolate tastes extra dark when dipped, out of preference. Taste the chocolate before adding coffee powder so you can adjust for preference in flavour.

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays!

Lofty Christmas Plans

I have plans to make edible gifts – thinking mostly Christmas fudge with mint candies, cheesecakes, cookies, brownies.

Yeah, I’m being ambitious but it’s CHRISTMAS. Not making efforts towards a celebration is depressing as heck. I miss baking.

I’m not sure I could make my rumballs though. Liquor here is expensive. I used to make them all the time. =(

FsckMyLife 7 up on Deviantart and Forums

In case you don’t have a Deviantart account, I’ve posted strip number 7 up on the forums for everyone to view. Due to the rules of dA I marked it mature content.

F.M.L. 7 – PEBKAC

As always feel free to comment either on the forums or here. ^_^

 

Compare and contrast a woman versus grrrrl

Merely existing does not equate to Holocaust

So I spotted this article about a psychotic hosebeast of epic proportions on Larry Correia’s twitter:

http://www.breitbart.com/Breitbart-London/2014/12/10/The-Madness-Of-Queen-Shanley

Some of the battles Kane has fought on behalf of the sisterhood include objecting to the use of the device terminology “master” and “slave” (they’re “oppressive”, apparently), flouncing off websites for being called out on parasitic financial practices, telling women that if they have a male co-founder he will probably rape them one day and attacking prominent academics such as Vivek Wadhwa, who works tirelessly on behalf of women and minorities in Silicon Valley.

By any reasonable person’s definition, and even by the standards of Silicon Valley, Kane is an abusive engine of discord, creating precisely the opposite conditions to those needed for happy co-operation between the sexes. So how did she land a feature-length profile in Matter, Silicon Valley’s long-read organ of choice—even though her paranoia and control freakery eventually screwed up what would probably have been a fawning profile and left journalists and readers alike aghast at her childishness and self-destructiveness?

(In case you’re not familiar with the story, follow those two links, which have to be read to be believed. Evidently Matter started calling around, asking people about Kane’s personal and professional life in preparation for their profile of her and her work—doing journalism, in other words—and she threw a hissy fit and started defaming and smearing the journalists in question, who were respectable professionals, beyond reproach in their dealings with her.)

While my gob is totally smacked by the massive screeching witchhunt that this Shanley crazy did over proper fact-checking investigative journalism, Kate Paulk links me this delightful contrast.

http://www.linuxjournal.com/content/girls-and-software

Seriously, it is a joy to behold for those of us who actually value true equality and meritocracy.

Open source was my refuge because it was a place were nobody cared what my pedigree was or what I looked like—they cared only about what I did. I ingratiated myself to people who could help me learn by doing dull scutwork: triaging issues to keep the issue queues neat and orderly, writing documentation and fixing code comments. I was the helpful kid, so when I needed help, the community was there. I’d never met another programmer in real life at this point, but I knew more about programming than some college students.

It Really Is about Girls (and Boys)

Twelve-year-old girls today don’t generally get to have the experiences that I did. Parents are warned to keep kids off the computer lest they get lured away by child molesters or worse—become fat! That goes doubly for girls, who then grow up to be liberal arts majors. Then, in their late teens or early twenties, someone who feels the gender skew in technology communities is a problem drags them to a LUG meeting or an IRC channel. Shockingly, this doesn’t turn the young women into hackers.

Why does anyone, anywhere, think this will work? Start with a young woman who’s already formed her identity. Dump her in a situation that operates on different social scripts than she’s accustomed to, full of people talking about a subject she doesn’t yet understand. Then tell her the community is hostile toward women and therefore doesn’t have enough of them, all while showing her off like a prize poodle so you can feel good about recruiting a female. This is a recipe for failure.

Honestly, the problem comes from caring too much about the superficial stuff, versus the really meaningful and important things. The constant obsession about sex, sexuality, and who you’re sexually attracted to lends to really boring conversation and people because guess what – people aren’t just their sex drives and their sexual organs to me. Thankfully, the ones who do constantly focus on the superficial unimportant crap – SJWs and their endless focus on gender, race, sexuality – are very loud and obvious and I can steer clear of them. I seriously DO NOT CARE about your ethnicity, dangle-or-boobs, or boinkchoice, I’m more interested in if ‘you are a jerkass’ or ‘can I actually talk to you without you biting my head off in a giant ragefit of a rant simply because we disagree’?

I’m not the only one baffled by this.

http://prosebeforehohos.com/2014/12/10/on-diversity/

Seriously, the people who whine and cry about their hurt feels are not new. I leave you with the wonderful Ray Bradbury’s words on that.

http://www.rjgeib.com/thoughts/451/451.html

The point is obvious. There is more than one way to burn a book. And the world is full of people running about with lit matches. Every minority, be it Baptist / Unitarian, Irish / Italian / Octogenarian / Zen Buddhist, Zionist/Seventh-day Adventist, Women’s Lib/Republican, Mattachine/FourSquareGospel feel it has the will, the right, the duty to douse the kerosene, light the fuse. Every dimwit editor who sees himself as the source of all dreary blanc-mange plain porridge unleavened literature, licks his guillotine and eyes the neck of any author who dares to speak above a whisper or write above a nursery rhyme.

      Fire-Captain Beatty, in my novel Fahrenheit 451, described how the books were burned first by the minorities, each ripping a page or a paragraph from the book, then that, until the day came when the books were empty and the minds shut and the library closed forever.

      “Shut the door, they’re coming through the window, shut the window, they’re coming through the door,” are the words to an old song. They fit my lifestyle with newly arriving butcher/censors every month. Only six months ago, I discovered that, over the years, some cubby-hole editors at Ballantine Books, fearful of contaminating the young, had, bit by bit, censored some 75 separate sections from the novel. Students, reading the novel which, after all, deals with the censorship and book-burning in the future, wrote to tell me of this exquisite irony. Judy-Lynn Del Rey, one of the new Ballantine editors, is having the entire book reset and republished this summer with all the damns and hells back in place.

 

 

On Behalf of Lovecraft…

Relinking Larry Correia’s facepalming and defence of Lovecraft.

http://monsterhunternation.com/2014/12/10/fisking-the-guardian-again-this-time-for-hp-lovecraft/

I had visions of Larry’s fingers twitching every now and then in the general direction of his tetsubo.

 

 

Edit: Actually, have two glorious fiskings. Larry’s is about Lovecraft, and this other one fisks one about Frozen.

 

http://chezapocalypse.com/thefrozenthing/

I’m actually yelling at the screen at the sheer amount of idiocy. I’m VERY glad the person doing the fisking read the article for me because goddamnit even just the quotations sound like someone left their brain in the jar for the day.

The Thieves of Joy

Reposting this comment I made in reply to a comment over at Larry Correia’s blog just now, in reply to a fanfic writer who is having her joy stolen from her by people who were hurt by something that she wrote in a story.

Don’t let them steal the joy from you, because every person who loses the joy in creation is one less person who could make the world a little bit brighter. Reading over your description, I think you handled it (the scene and character reactions) well. The fact is, regardless of your intentions, there will always be people who will misinterpret how you wrote a scene (sometimes, wilfully) and use it to rant at you for something that is probably completely unrelated. This is ridiculously common these days.

Remember that there are people out there who will take offence no matter what you do, or how careful you are. For every person who gets upset, there may be a person further along who might relate to the scene in a positive manner, or appreciates that you made a point of trying to portray what is a sensitive scene well, despite how difficult it is to write.

Keep writing. Keep telling stories. Don’t give up what’s important to you, and don’t let someone else define who or what you are. If you lose this thing that makes you happy, that gives you joy, what else will they be able to take away, till there’s nothing left? And sometimes, having that little something you can hold on to makes all the difference in the world.

First, allow me to state my bafflement about a couple of things. Obviously she wrote a story well enough that it affected her readers. To me, that’s the hallmark of a good writer. The way a story affects the reader is well, really out of the hands of the writer, as far as I can tell, because it’s not something the writer can control. Someone else’s emotions, or actions, or reactions are their own. I’ve had traumatic experiences, and sometimes I’ll read something that reminds me about it (‘triggers’ it seems to be the word for it these days), and I’ll have flashbacks, I’ll remember the event, how I felt… and sometimes it’ll be too much for me to handle just then. I’ll put away the thing I’m reading. I’ll cry. I might be depressed and upset and seek comforting from my darling Rhys, or cuddle my children. Sometimes I’ll wish I had a closet I could climb into and hide in for a little while (metaphorically speaking).

Do I blame the writer for my reaction? Hell no! The writer is not omniscient outside of their story, the writer is just a human being. The writer does not know my personal problems or hurts, or inner wounds and scars; nor should they write around me to accommodate that. I’m aware that bad things happen to people in the world, and that the world cannot protect you from the horrible things that happen. I don’t pretend that the writer has an OBLIGATION to not write about the horrible stuff either, just ‘in case’ they will trigger someone’s horrible memories. The writer is not obliged to be endlessly sensitive and aware of all the things out there that have happened to other people and tiptoe around the readers’ potential negative reaction. You can’t predict that! And a writer cannot control another person’s reaction, especially if they’ve actually worked to try be sensitive and accommodating as far as the story can handle it. Don’t go screaming at the writer for your reaction, your pain, your hurt. You can choose how to act – you can choose never to look at that story again. You can politely tell an author that this scene triggered you and made it difficult for you to finish the story… or you can talk to your friends about it. There’s a whole list of things you can do yourself, for your reaction. Comfort yourself, read something else, walk away and maybe come back to the story later if you decide to. Don’t look at the thing that made you unhappy. Don’t rail at someone else for the existence of a reminder simply because they’d included it in a story.

Yes, there are plenty of stories written of rape, murder, torture and worse. They’re very common in detective mystery and thriller genres, crop up in fantasy, sci-fi, and war stories, or stories about crime and human trafficking. They also crop up in the news and in history books. They’re an unfortunate part of reality. They come up in discussions, in talks – are you going to scream at random people for simply talking about it? If not why is it ‘okay’ to rail at someone for including it in a story?

The above reaction puzzles me beyond belief, but it seems to be a very common reaction now – to make someone else feel bad in retaliation for negative reactions and feelings. It has become increasingly common and ‘accepted’ behaviour to hound someone who holds a different opinion, for not jumping on a bandwagon, for hesitating, or going ‘wait a minute’. Worse, ‘how dare you be happy about something I don’t like/agree with/hate.’

Welcome to thought policing, and welcome to having one’s individuality stolen away by what the SJWs deem is ‘acceptable’ – a rapidly changing, frequently contradictory mindset that honestly, reminds me deeply of the way cults function. And before someone decides to jump on me about religions, I’ll remind you that cults of persons existed throughout history, and had nothing to do with religion. March yourself to the library and read up on Mao, Hitler, Stalin, Che Guevara, Pol Pot, and practically any 20th century tinpot Socialist and Communist strain there was. Oh and trigger warning horrible stuff, because it’s history and reality.

Larry Correia’s post, Why I Don’t Like SJWs, identifies a deep problem in the current iteration of an old, familiar war – well, familiar to those who are students of history, not the whitewashed stuff that seems to be common these days. Thought policing is an old tool, and we’re seeing it not just in SFF, but things like the later wave of #Gamergate – and no, I’m talking about the part where the anti-GGs went after anyone who was supportive of #NotYourShield or #GamerGate because they don’t like being told what not to like and what not to play, and didn’t actually care about Sarkeesian, Brianna Wu and whoever else there, didn’t like the dishonesty in the gaming review sites, and otherwise simply disagreed, or refused to be the excuse that the anti-GGs were using to destroy other people’s lives. The reasons for support simply were ignored, en masse, even if they were completely reasonable, and anti-GGs used it to destroy lives. Frankly, if people want to make SJW games, I have no problem with that at all. But don’t make me play Depression Quest, or whatever the hell game it is Brianna Wu made, because I really don’t have fun being depressed and I don’t like the graphics for Wu’s game.That’s all the reason I have for not wanting to and that’s pretty valid, and honestly have nothing to do with their politics or stances.

We’re seeing reflections of this insane zerg rush dogpile of condemnation regardless of facts and proof in other things such as the UVa /Rolling Stone scandal, which will undoubtably hurt real rape victims in the long run even more, but is now being also used as an excuse to condemn anyone who is reasonably sceptical of an accusation. For example in the UVa story: If she was lying on glass for three hours being assaulted, why didn’t she seek medical treatment? She should have scars, horrible ones. Who helped her remove the pieces of glass? Her friends do not recall seeing her bleeding, and if she were really afraid of speaking out or going to the police for fear of social penalization, this does not seem to be the case in going around talking with rape awareness groups. Similarly, Lena Dunham’s claims of having been sexually assaulted but for some reason never seeking legal aid or justice, echo this strange reluctance to seek legal justice, but the insinuations are instead published in a book. Now that the story has been exposed as being at best ‘bad journalism’, to a confirmation bias affirming slander piece at worst, people are trying to handwave it away, while using variations of shaming terms and shut up methods to broad-brush and paint opponents as pure evil (Victim blamers, rape culture supporters, misogynists, etc).

These are not new tactics. They’re old and have been used to terrifying effect in places like Mao’s China, in the uses of it in Stalinist Russia, Nazi Germany and Socialist Germany abound (don’t take my word for it, go research) and the end goal is still the same: to create new enemies, to inspire terror, and keep control of the ‘masses,’ to hector them and terrify them from committing the ‘sin’ of badthink. If you don’t fall in line, they will destroy you, regardless of how you really behaved, and it doesn’t matter how much you originally contributed to those around you. The most abject tyranny has been under the non-religious movements such as Communism and Socialism, as they would not work without this ghostly enemy to constantly struggle against, the hammering down of free thinking individuals to prevent too closely looking at the handwaved speech and actions. Reason, logic and sense has no place in the world of thought police, only obedience, blind support, and if you falter even for a moment in trying to tear apart the newest enemy – even if it were your beloved spouse, parents, children – you too would be punished.

Sound horrifying? Well, it’s not news to the people who have been aware of it for a long, long time.

Does it sound a hell of a lot like abuse? Well, let’s look at this wonderful quote by Synova.

Some of the comments by people who had been subject to the full treatment just made me want to cry. I didn’t think it was funny because the guilty parties and enablers aren’t the ones who are hurt. Yes, we can scoff at Scalzi when he makes a rational counter-argument and is made, ultimately, to retract and abase himself and agree in public and start proselytizing in public that no… you really can’t trust your own brain and if something seems wrong to you or you feel like defending yourself it is simply proof that you’re guilty.

But there were people who reported rather severe PTSD type reactions to even sitting down at a keyboard to write because they were so terrified of offending… again. Because *rationally* they’d done nothing wrong the first time, but they were forced to an irrational acceptance of their guilt. So now they’ve “accepted their privilege” and “checked it” and confessed and repented (they could come to the Dark Side and be welcomed, but they don’t know that, and have been taught that the Dark Side is evil, and that’s why shunning is so very evil within closed communities… being exiled is a horrific punishment) but since they had NO IDEA how they could have done something wrong in the first place, they also have no idea how to avoid it the next time.

Imagine doing this to a child.

 

The kid is walking through a room doing nothing much and suddenly POW… and then you tell the kid… well that was YOUR fault. You screwed up. You stepped on that spot on the floor.

 

So the kid looks at the spot and it looks like every other spot. But the kid is told that, no, the fact that she can’t even SEE the spot is what the problem is. You can’t SEE the spot… that’s why it is YOUR fault. Also, a good child will try to learn. You’re a good child, aren’t you?

 

So the kid says, yes… it was my fault. I could not SEE the spot. Not seeing the spot makes this my fault.

Afterward, it’s still impossible to see the spots, and walking across the room becomes fraught with danger. Sitting down at the keyboard gives this very “good” person the shakes and panic attacks… where are the spots? She still can’t see the spots but she MUST agree and believe that those spots exist.

 

I have a LOT of sympathy for those who were hurt, just like I have sympathy for any abused person.

Yes, it’s abuse. It’s horrible, it’s dehumanizing, and it’s wrong. That’s why I replied the way I did to the poor fanfiction writer, who I honestly do not know personally, because my heart hurt that s/he was losing his/her joy in writing.

These are good things to remember, so I will continue with quotes.

Larry Correia:

The SJWs say they stand for equality. Only they don’t. That’s a smoke screen. They are champions of diversity, provided that everyone is diverse in exactly the same approved manner. At their core they are petty, vengeful, tyrannical thought police, who simply can’t abide someone sinning. They’re an unholy cross between puritans and communists, with a heavy dose of Zanax, and severe self-esteem issues.

Social Justice Warriors are control freaks. Nothing more. Their bizarre antics have given true feminists a bad name. Their mad accusations of racism against anything and everything causes real racism to get lost in the background noise. By accusing well meaning, good intentioned individuals of horrible crimes, they legitimize and empower the real criminals.

SJWs stifle artistic creativity. When artists, authors, designers, and creators are afraid of crossing the invisible lines, art suffers. What some of you haven’t realized yet however is that the lines just aren’t invisible, they move based upon how much the SJWs like you. Basically, if you are on their shun list, no matter what you do, you will give offense and cause outrage. And if you are one of them, you have a dispensation to sin freely.

If the SJWs decide you are an enemy anything you do is automatically sexist, racist, homophobic, or something, and they will tell thousands of complete strangers all about it. Regular nice people don’t like being accused of horrible, vile things, so usually they fall back in line. Of course, actually reading the books or knowing anything about the author is unnecessary before slandering them, which is how come to them I’m a white guy with white privilege who writes about manly white men doing white things for white people.

For those who end up on the shun list, if you have a minority character you are guilty of “tokenism” or worse, “cultural appropriation” which is a totally asinine concept, especially in a nation based upon cultural appropriating every winning idea and strategy in the history of the world. My children are Portuguese, Danish, Finnish, Russian, Jew, Mormons, descended from conquistadors, Vikings, cowboys, pioneers, and prophets, and we had Indian food for dinner last night before watching a Japanese TV show while I glued together pieces of a Spanish war game. My ancestors introduced the chili pepper to Thailand and my wife’s ancestors were legal to shoot on sight in Missouri. Who the hell do you think you are to tell an American not to culturally appropriate stuff?

However, if you are a SJW approved writer you can write tweets that are so blatantly, absurdly bigoted and racist that if you do a find and replace of White Man for Jew it would read like a Heinrich Himmler speech.

The SJW’s campaign of suppression is insidious and far reaching. They don’t just come after you after you’ve created, they scare you before you start.

This stuff is pervasive. It is everywhere. Don’t do this. Don’t do that. I got involved in the End Binary Gender nonsense because I actually like encouraging writers, especially new ones. SJWs like scaring writers. They’ll lecture you on forbidden topics and forbidden words, because the most important thing in the creative process is that the author walk on egg shells, worried that he might inadvertently sin.

One of the things I’ve constantly puzzled about is how these people find so much time to do nothing but hunt down and search and destroy any possible targets they could find. Some of them will latch on and refuse to let go of a target for years – in this I have personal firsthand experience and have been documenting several years worth of stalking and abuse

  • and some will not give up until they have destroyed their target in every possible way, not just online, but in ways that affect their lives outside of the Internet. The dedication is insane, the obsession and determination, something most people simply cannot comprehend. Most people can’t understand unreasoning, unwarranted hate.

It doesn’t take a psychologist to understand that this hate gives them purpose, fills their otherwise rather empty lives. It makes them feel good to believe they’re doing something good. Now, not all SJWs are like the noisiest of them all. Some of them sincerely believe – or are mistaken about – something they think is a Bad Thing, or a Good Thing. Some of them are young, and some haven’t seen how this approach of zerg swarm damages more than what they intended. The SJW over-reach is starting to find opposition, especially when the cannibals eat their own.  But the noisiest, the most rabid, thrive on destroying other people’s security. They themselves cannot honestly create because they are hampered by the belief that ‘someone else is in their way’ and blame this vague ‘other’ for whatever it is they lack. This is why they must constantly have an ‘enemy’ to struggle against. Without this imaginary dragon to slay, they don’t really have anything better to do, nothing to fill their time. And, for reasons that make no sense, these people seem to think that if they don’t like what makes you happy, you should not be happy about what you like, and you should feel bad because they don’t like it.

It’s like saying you should like only one kind of apple, and only the apple they approve of. You’re not allowed to have any other kind of apple, can’t look at any other fruit for the matter, because THEY think only ONE apple is good, and all the rest is bad. That doesn’t make any sense, does it?

You can’t please everyone, you won’t like the same exact things someone else does. Seek instead to make yourself and other like-minded or appreciative people happy. Work at improving your craft – whatever it may be!- and learn to identify when critique is honestly given, and when it isn’t, and when not to listen. I’m not saying don’t grumble about something when it makes you unhappy or discontent – but don’t let it take over your time to the point you aren’t creating, aren’t enjoying.

I’ll leave you with Larry’s words of hope and encouragement. Know that you’re NOT alone. You don’t have to be loud and noisy. Just quietly refuse to surrender, and refuse to let them steal your joy.

The solution?

For creators, don’t play by their rules. Write what you want. Write about what inspires you. Make up whatever characters you think make for the most interesting story.

When the SJWs come for someone, and you know that they are liars, stand up for the truth. When they form an angry mob, at minimum don’t join in. If you’re like me and not adverse to confrontation, fight back. Tell the truth. When they say something bug nuts crazy, you’re not doing anyone any favors by validating their stupid opinion.

Don’t let them set the terms. When they say you’re something-ist, and you’re clearly not, tell them so. Never accept their lies. When they start explaining how you’re guilty because of invisible privilege, micro aggressions, or original sin, then all the observers will realize just how full of shit they really are.

When they judge someone based upon the color of their skin or their sex, rather than the content of their character or the quality of their ideas, call them on their bigotry.

Don’t let them determine what constitutes an acceptable response. They will show up, insult you, and then demand polite debate. An SJW can malign and insult you all day, but when you respond in kind, they call you rude, aggressive, hateful, and so angry, why you need to be dismissed! This is a one way street. They do it to individuals, groups, and even entire political movements. SJWs will pick the most bat shit crazy person on the opposition’s side and use them as the poster child to tar the whole movement. And if one of those people doesn’t exist, they’ll fabricate one.

When you’ve reached that point, you’ve got nothing to lose. Mock them relentlessly. When you discover that you’re dealing with a Concern Troll, just skip ahead to where you are going to end up inevitably anyway. The onlookers will appreciate your honesty.

SJWs are predictable in their responses. When I inevitably get attacked for this blog post, it’ll be all about how I’m something-ist or something-phobic, and want to keep Group X out of Industry Y. It is all about dismissing their opponent. The truth is optional.

Their predictability makes them vulnerable. Their toolbox is limited. That is why they can’t just condemn Requires Hate’s dirty tricks, because they those same dirty tricks are all they’ve got to cow the opposition into silence.

One thing you need to realize before joining in this fight, the goal isn’t to convince the SJWs. Swaying the decided is a nearly insurmountable task. The real goal is to convince the undecided, and debate is a spectator sport. When one side has nothing but lies, slander, and intimidation, all you need to do is expose them for what they really are.

Above I talked about the eternal human theme of light vs. dark. You’ll note in most of those mentioned religious texts from all over the world light and truth go hand in hand. The darkness hides the truth. SJWs thrive on ignorance, bigotry, hate, and fear. It is time to turn the light on and watch the cockroaches scatter.