Statement Concerning My Being Disinvited as the Guest of Honor for Origins Game Fair

I posted the following on Facebook yesterday:

So I’m no longer the writer guest of honor at origins. My invitation has been revoked. It was the usual nonsense. Right after I was announced as a guest some people started throwing a temper tantrum about my alleged racist/sexist/homophobic/whatever (of course, with zero proof or actual examples), and the guy in charge (John Ward) immediately folded. He didn’t even talk to me first. He just accepted the slander and gave me the boot in an email that talked about how “inclusive” they are. I actually heard about it on facebook before I even saw the email.

Oh well.

They did this to John Ringo at ConCarolinas a little while ago, and took a lesson from it. This is just another new way for bullies to target people who disagree with them. Throw a fit, make up some accusations, and cry about how you feel unsafe. Now that they know it works, it is just another tool in their tool box.

For the record, I’m not any of the things they accuse me of. Despite writing a whole bunch of books, and a ton of political articles, and all of my many personal interactions with fans (I’ve done up to 15 cons and events in one year), none of these people can ever find any actual examples of me being sexist, racist, or homophobic (and the Guardian looked hard and still came up with nothing).

That’s because in reality, I’m a libertarian who does not give a shit who you are, or what you do, and it is none of my business, as long as you stay off my lawn. 🙂

This time they kept calling me a “rape apologist”. They dug up that classic that John Scalzi created about me several years ago. It’s total nonsense. I spent many years teaching self defense to women, and I’m all in favor of every rape attempt ending with the rapist receiving a couple hollow points to the chest. But that just goes to show the power of lies, rumor, and narrative.

So years later, complete strangers come out of the woodwork to talk about how evil I am. Yeah… That does get tiresome. It is wearying.

I’m really sorry for any fans who were planning on seeing me at Origins. Hopefully I’ll get to meet you at some other event.

For me personally, meh. I go to enough events. I’ll just do something else fun that weekend.

The saddest person in all of this is my son, who was my plus one. He was looking forward to playing a bunch of games, and then we were going to go to the zoo on Sunday. (they have manatees there!).

 

That was my only real public comment on the matter.

I woke up this morning to find that the internet had blown up.

Here is my full statement:

Origins put up an announcement on Facebook about their five guests of honor. Immediately a bunch of people started freaking out about how my presence made them “unsafe”. These same people were going on about how the guests were all male, so Origins hates women and transsexuals, and the guests were too white, which meant brown people were unsafe. No. Sadly, I’m not making that up. I’d say go read it for yourself, but Origins is scrubbing everything in a vain attempt at damage control.

I read it as it was unfolding, and it was disappointing. I did not comment in the Origins thread, but I brought it to the attention of the author who had arranged my invite.

The allegations were the typical thought terminating clichés (and I’ll respond to each of them further down, because they’re all nonsense) they said I was a racist, sexist, homophobe, who hates transsexuals, and I was a Sad Puppy, which meant that I was a racist, sexist, homophobe who wanted to keep women, minorities, and  homosexuals out of publishing. When my fans demanded proof of these allegations, they linked to opinion pieces from places like Gawker or Vox, quoting a bunch of people who hate my guts. Best of all, one woman talked about how I’d attacked and harmed her loved ones. More on that later.

John Ward, head of GAMA, folded like a cheap lawn chair. Only a couple hours after their post went live, a fan told me on Facebook that Origins had put up an announcement that I’d just been disinvited.

So then I went and checked my email. (and I am perfectly happy to share every single email ever sent between me and Origins). John Ward had emailed me, and his email was nearly identical to the public Facebook announcement (including the spelling errors). He said that he was recently informed of some of my “personal views” which made me a detriment as a guest, and that Origins is a family friendly and inclusive event.

Inclusive… Uh huh.

Since this same sort of thing had just been done to my friend and co-author John Ringo at ConCarolinas a few weeks ago, I wasn’t shocked. I emailed him back and asked specifically which of my personal views was so abhorrent.  I also pointed out that everything alleged in that thread was utter nonsense, but he hadn’t even bothered to ask me about it first.

After I sent that email, I realized I’d not asked about the status of the short story reprint I was allowing them to use in the Origins anthology, so I sent a second shorter email saying that they’d probably want to pull my story out, because I’d hate for any of my icky imaginary hatemongery to get all over them.

John Ward did not even have the basic professional courtesy to respond.

Of course, the internet blew up. My fans got ticked. Origins released a new GoH announcement with my picture scrubbed off it like something from one of Stalin’s purges (seriously, it was so hamfisted it was hilarious).

Now for the allegations, I am none of the things these people have accused me of.

I am not racist, sexist, or homophobic. In reality, I’m an individualist. I judge everybody based upon their words and actions. I don’t like identity politics. I don’t like when a whole bunch of individuals are shoved into neat little demographic boxes for political expediency.  I’m libertarian by philosophy, meaning that I don’t give a crap what you do, stay out of my business and I’ll stay out of yours.

After I got the boot, the internet blew up, and my fans began defending my character (some of them rather vigorously). That’s because these people know me, have read my stuff, and interacted with me for years, so they know the truth.

I’ve done as many as fifteen conventions and events in one year (I’ve been to dozens of different conventions), as well as hundreds of book signings. You’d think if I was such a dangerous hatemonger that made people “unsafe” there would be some actual examples. But there never are. They just toss an allegation like a bomb and then run off.

You would think that since I’ve written thousands of Facebook posts, thousands of blog posts (many of them about controversial political topics), and a bunch of novels, that there would be some evidence of my bigotry. But there isn’t, because I’m not. If they cite anything at all, it is never my own words, it is always a quote from somebody who disagrees with me and their straw version of what I believe. I’ll go through some of the ones that popped up yesterday.

The woman who started this temper tantrum said that I made “brown” people unsafe and that I had personally hurt her loved ones. I have no idea who this person is. My guess was that by harming her loved ones, she meant that I’d disagreed with one of them on Facebook.

According to one of my fans who looked, her boyfriend is this guy who wrote an article about how GenCon was racist. His article was absurd, so I fisked it. This was four years ago, but apparently these people can really hold a grudge. This was my response that cause so much angst. https://monsterhunternation.com/2014/08/19/no-tor-com-gencon-isnt-racist-a-fisking/

I would invite you to read that, looking for examples of my supposed racist hatemongery that makes me so dangerous that I’m not allowed at a family friendly, inclusive event. (plus, you should read it anyway because it’s funny, and it shows the perpetually offended mindset of the people we are dealing with).

Up next, I was repeatedly called a “rape apologist” and an advocate of “rape culture”.  This one is particularly egregious because I spent ten years as a concealed weapons instructor, teaching lots of women how to defend themselves with lethal weapons. But I know exactly where this little bit of slander comes from.

It is also from four years ago. Remember when one of the Ms. America contestants said she was in favor of women learning self-defense, and some angry feminists flipped out because that was “victim blaming”?  Yep. I wrote an article about how silly that was. https://monsterhunternation.com/2014/06/10/the-naive-idiocy-of-teaching-rapists-not-to-rape/  Which author and former SFWA president, John Scalzi, immediately took to twitter to twist my words and portray me as a rape apologist.  Go ahead and read what I wrote and judge for yourself. That’s absurd.

But those two things from four years ago just demonstrate the nefarious nature of slander. Once it is out there, suckers are going to believe it, truth be damned. It lingers forever.

Up next, there was much outrage about how I was a Sad Puppy. Correction, I was the original Sad Puppy, and I’m proud of that. Now, the way these people portray it, this was my evil scheme to rig the sainted Hugo awards, to get myself an award, and to also simultaneously keep women and minorities out of publishing.  Which is ironic, since by “rig” they meant I got more fans to participate in the voting, I turned down my nomination, and since the other people I got nominated included a bunch of women and minorities (as well as authors of various sexual orientations and belief systems) I must really suck at this bigotry thing. But keep in mind, the people slandering me over Sad Puppies are the same folks who the year before hailed 14 white liberals and 1 Asian liberal winning as a huge victory for diversity.

In reality, it was my attempt to demonstrate that the Hugo awards were not in fact an award to represent all of fandom, but were actually extremely politically biased, and dominated by a few small insular cliques. They went out of their way to prove I was right. Since Sad Puppies is an extremely long and convoluted story, here is a detailed account that I wrote for the benefit of the newcomers. https://monsterhunternation.com/2015/04/06/a-letter-to-the-smofs-moderates-and-fence-sitters-from-the-author-who-started-sad-puppies/

When it was all said and done, these champions of honesty were so adamant about standing up to my imaginary racist misogyny, that they No Awarded an extremely talented, accomplished, and successful Jewish single mother for best editor, just because I was the one who recommended her.

Plus, that was three years ago, I proved my point about WorldCon and retired. I’ve not really been involved with it since. My fans moved on, and then the Hugos went back to nominating nothing but the same tired leftists (Sorry, No Labels Police, I’m not even exaggerating).

Of course, just like they did to John Ringo, after the con folded, the haters came out of the woodwork to proclaim what a wonderful victory for free speech it was that these hateful voices of disagreement were silenced. Now that stuff, I don’t even bother to read. I recognize the names. It’s always the same gaggle of bitter dipsticks. If you say my name, they show up to bitch.

Yesterday, my wife was furious. I find this constant bombardment of lies about me to be tiresome, but she’s really sick of it. It’s because back when I rocked the Hugo boat, the organized slander campaign was so thick that she was getting contacted by people she’d not talked to since high school, asking if she was safe, living with such a monstrous, racist, sexist, abuser. That’s how nefarious this stuff is.

So I made that one public comment, and then the internet blew up. It’s funny, when you tell despicable, easily disproven lies about something that people are fond of, they get righteously angry. I was getting tagged a lot in a ton of different threads so I really couldn’t keep up. People who were coming because I was there were cancelling their memberships (and only getting partial refunds, which is just a dick move). Other fans looked up the contact info for the people in charge to complain.

I saw where fans started talked about boycotts. The only comment I made during all this was to leave the vendors alone. They’re just small businessmen trying to have a good sales weekend. John Ward is the one who immediately caved to bullies without even doing the slightest bit of homework.

But the fans were torqued, and I’ve got a lot of fans. Go figure. Whatever. After years of getting lied about, I’m used to it. I went to bed.

I woke up this morning to discover that the GAMA board is getting hammered, and got messages through various back channels, which I’m not at liberty to disclose the details because these are multiple private conversations, but the word “clusterfuck” got used a lot.

Still no response from Ward. This is my shocked face.

My fans had risen to my defense rather vociferously, and some of the Origins people were saying that if I was such a nice guy, why didn’t I call them off, or ask them to be nicer… Ha! Well, first off, A. I was asleep. And B. You guys are the ones who did something ridiculous to annoy a bunch of fans, so why should I cover for you?

To be clear, I hold absolutely no animosity toward any of the attendees, vendors, sponsors, or staff of Origins. I hope you guys have a great time. It ain’t your fault that (in my opinion) John Ward is spineless and incompetent. I was looking forward to it.

I’m a gamer. I love gaming. I’ve written up novel length game journals on this very blog. I’ve written novels and short stories for game companies. There are RPGs based on my worlds (and more games coming!). I’ve created my own rule set for a new game which we will be kickstarting next year. From where I sit I can see a few hundred painted minis. I love games. In fact, today’s blog post was going to be about the tabletop war game tournament I went to this weekend. I was only in the middle of the pack score wise (won 2 of 5 rounds, 26th out of 48 overall) but I won Best Painted. Which as an avid mini painter, was super cool, and very humbling because there were some excellent pro painters there.

But despite that, I’m not welcome at this “inclusive” event for gamers, because some lying internet rando declared my opinions were too dangerous (come on, really? I voted for Gary Friggin’ Johnson!).

Even Cat Rambo, current SFWA president, who probably disagrees with me on just about any political subject, tweeted about how Origins behavior was unprofessional, and how if this had happened to her she’d be upset and angry. Thank you, Cat. I hope you don’t get burned at the stake for publically agreeing with Larry Correia. 😀

The problem is that we live in a society where being a self-aggrandizing victim gets you social status. As long as people cave to the demands of cry bullies, they will continue to lie and demand things. I found it ironic that even after Origins scrubbed me from existence, the same perpetually offended crowd were saying that this was “a good start”, but how Origins was still sexist/racist/transphobic and How Dare They not let this small but loud group pick all their GoHs for them based on skin color and purity of thought. Silly, Origins, you can never appease the perpetually offended. Oh well. That’s why you don’t negotiate with terrorists.

One thing that is kind of funny is that a bunch of my fans were pointing out that by removing me, they’d made the GoH list less diverse. For the record, ethnically, I’m Portuguese (which back when I worked for the Air Force, the Department of Labor declared to be “Latino” go figure). But my dad wasn’t all white (North African according to Ancestry.com, but regardless, he was way darker skinned than any of the angry doofi yelling about me yesterday) and my mom is half Jewish. But since I’m now self-employed and don’t have to fill out EEOC forms, I don’t know which demographic box liberals are sticking me in this week. Personally, I don’t give a crap because I’m an American. I find that whole game amusing.

They did this to Ringo, now they’ve done it to me. Since the political bullies have discovered that this is a viable tactic, I expect them to do this to every convention. Have a guest who offended one of them once, they’ll pitch a fit and whine that they feel unsafe. Cons will either give in, or stand up. It puts them in a terrible position.

My bet though is that the majority of tantrum throwers weren’t going to go anyway. It’s just a chance for them to virtue signal and pile on. We saw the same thing with ConCarolinas. In that case, to appease a handful of no names and maybe a dozen perpetually offended jerks, they pissed off thousands.

Since it just went down last night, I don’t know how this one will shake out. I’m fine. I’ll just do something else this weekend. But I’ve also got a solid career, a lot of books out, and a rabid fan base. I can weather this kind of slander. The sad thing is, these assholes do this to any author who gets out of line.  You cross them, they’ll lie their asses off about you and try to burn you down. So authors who haven’t made it big keep quiet, and keep their heads down, to not draw the wrath of the mob, so they don’t hurt their career.

Note, this only ever goes one political direction.  If you are a left wing author, you’ve got to get caught doing some pretty horrible stuff to be too dangerous to get disinvited from an inclusive family friendly event. If you’ve got correct politics, sexually harass a bunch of women? No problem. Just issue an apology, you’re good to go. But if you’ve got the wrong politics (like half the country) all you’ve got to do is say so, and you’re an abhorrent monster who must be shunned for everyone’s safety.

So that’s it. John Ward rewarded the bullies, so I predict that we will see more of this behavior in the future. Plus, I fully expect any convention which invites me in the future to get hammered the same way. That’ll be fun, getting accused of all sorts of horrible things by complete strangers in the name of tolerance never gets old.

EDIT TO ADD: Hey, John. You still owe me for the reimbursement for my plane tickets. You’d better get on that.

Geeky Hobbies Update: I Won A Painting Contest
May Update Post

369 thoughts on “Statement Concerning My Being Disinvited as the Guest of Honor for Origins Game Fair”

  1. To be fair, from your photos it’s obvious you’re half-orc or ogre or something like that, maybe a hill giant suffering from dwarfism. So you’re technically “monstrous.”

    But really — the War of the Ring ended literal AGES ago. Can’t we move on and accept that the descendants of people who fought for the Dark Lord do not bear the sins of their ancestors?

    I mean, I’M a Deep One, but that doesn’t mean I worship Cthulhu! Just maybe sometimes put the multitentacular menorah on special holidays! 😉

    1. “I’M a Deep One, but that doesn’t mean I worship Cthulhu!”

      I don’t know, that assertion sounds kind of fishy to me.

    2. Oh, I don’t know. If I have my Middle Earth metaphors correct, I’d say that Mordor may have fallen in 1991 but that it looks like Sauron’s supporters are vigorously trying to stage a comeback regardless. The self-righteous riots and looting of small shops in Dain and elsewhere would seem to bear that out. So also the curious support for a small faction of ruling Haradrim in North Korea, etc.

  2. “In reality, I’m an individualist.”

    Well, there’s the problem right there. According to our moral and intellectual superiors, Individualism is fascism. Also, war is peace and freedom is slavery.

        1. As far as I can tell, the current round is “Identity = Ideology”, “Death Before Discomfort”, “Will Over Reason” and “Sex is God.”

        2. New slogans? These have always been the Party’s slogans. There are just some typos in this historical document that I shall edit.

        3. “New” slogans? We have always averred the Truth in Ignorance.

          We’ll have to see if your Twitter Block Officer know about these claims.

  3. Please mentioned that you do have lawyer on retainer to get your plane fair refund. It’s not like they’re paying you to be there.

  4. I’m furious about this. I had purchased another hardback copy of Hard Magic that I was hoping to get signed at Origins for my brother for a Christmas present. I thought Larry might have a signing. Now this plan is dashed.

    I’m furious with the Origins board. Origins is a gaming convention. Lo and behold they got a famous author who actually games as a guest of honor. Then they “disinvite” him.

    I’m going to Origins. I’m running a session and have a full slate of gaming. I cannot let down the group I have a session scheduled with. But Origins leadership is seriously screwed up. They horribly messed up computer registration – and now this.

    1. Same here. My fiancee was planning to go just to meet Larry. I’m committed to GM, but bought an MHI hat I’ll be wearing

      1. I think Larry should plan a weekend at his mountain-side construction site, and ask everyone to pile into a red VW Microbus, with all their shovels and rakes and various implements of destruction to do manual site work. Everyone brings a hard copy of one of his books to be signed. Of course when 40,000+ people show up, I’m sure the local law enforcement folks will have a cow. Correia Con?

    2. Just make your session about manatees. Everyone going because of an event should put manatees front and center. People should remember this as HoonCon.

    3. At the moment my plans are to wear my MHI “mardi gras” beads I got at Liberty Con along with a “I Don’t Believe in Slander” tag on my ID necklace.

    4. Post your game as a “Larry Correia” tribute session. Put it out on all your social media. Make a flyer with his face the MHI logo what-have-you on the door if Mr. Correia doesn’t mind.

      If anyone wants to use, modify etc. my Sasquatch Larry w/manatee doodle for the purpose of rubbing special snowflake nose in it, it’s all yours.

    5. Everything is political. Origins must bend the knee to the great Bolshevik Khaleesi like everyone else, or suffer the wrath of dragon wokedom. The greater socialist reich must always receive praise and support by all peoples without hesitation. Further questions should be directed to your local Antifa gauleiter.

  5. This is just another new way for bullies to target people who disagree with them. Throw a fit, make up some accusations, and cry about how you feel unsafe. Now that they know it works, it is just another tool in their tool box.

    This bit here should be a lesson. They do it because it works for them and they suffer no negative consequences for doing it. Anyone who’s ever successfully raised a two year old should know that the most important thing about tantrums is that they must never succeed. Let them succeed once and you’re stuck with them. The other is negative consequences for bad behavior–it can be a “time out” or a loss of privileges.

    If these people insist on acting like two year olds, perhaps we need to be more diligent in treating them like two year olds.

    1. Anyone who’s ever successfully raised a two year old should know …
      Well, that leaves out an awful lot of the snowflakes……………………

        1. Hey, at least the two-year-old is likely to outgrow tantrum-throwing. My cat, on the other hand, is going to be dumber than a toddler her entire life.

          The more important point is that unlike the professional victims, cats and toddlers are generally cute enough to be endearing despite their annoying qualities.

    2. They aren’t acting like two-year olds. A two year old doesn’t beat or shoot people to death because he didn’t get his cookie. Two-year olds don’t loot black-owned shops and set them on fire in the name of fighting racism. Staging Kristallnachts in all the major cities over a period of months sounds more like the behavior of mafioso. A two-year old can be cured with a good talking to, and a spanking when necessary, but Nazis and Internazis usually require a much stiffer response. I think it will require more than disapproval and ridicule to tackle this new faction of violent socialist extortionists.

  6. I have to laugh when the Usual Suspects accuse us Puppies of refighting old battles and not letting go. What’s very clear from the tweets I’m seeing from their side is that they will *never* forgive Larry for standing up to them.

    1. They haven’t browbeaten Larry to the point where he loves Big Brother. They can’t. So they seethe at him.

      1. The impotent rage at a pack of screeching hamsters seething from their cages is a wonderful thing

      2. Well, some do.

        Quite a lot do it to intimidate the N00bs

        “That’s a nice little writing career / small gaming business / illustration career you’ve got going there. SHAME if anything happened to it.

    2. They’re doing the same thing in the video game industry. “GamerGate” was 4 years ago, yet they constantly try to tie everything happening today back to it.

        1. From what I’ve seen over the last couple of days, they just make up their own history. Like the one where I declared writing should only be done by white men, and then I tried to kick everybody else out (inexplicably) by getting a bunch of women and minorities nominated for a fan award.

          1. “You hate women and minorities!” seems to be their go-to smear when they need an excuse to hate people while pretending they’re being noble.

          2. Rewriting history and then assaulting people until they enthusiastically affirm it can be very lucrative. If you’re a trained Marxist who plays her cards right, you too can be shopping for choice real estate in the posh parts of rural England.

  7. I followed this whole cluster from the beginning to the end and I couldn’t believe the outcry from the various people who, “didn’t feel safe” by attending an event. The part of me that immediately wants to give the middle finger to idiots had me wanting to get a group of conservatives to start protesting various left leaning people in the same way and use these actions as examples, but I realize that wouldn’t help anything and we would just be ignored because of our politics. My only hope, at the end here, is that you could possibly use the actions of these people, and the convention revoking your invite, as a way to prove loss of income and sue some of the people that have created these rumors and give them some monetary consequences (maybe go Hogan/Gawker on Glyer for example). Even if that doesn’t happen just know that you have numerous fans and their response shows that they will defend you from lies made by people who constantly seek to be offended.

    1. Here is an idea. Since John Ward sent an email to vendors explaining his reasoning why don’t Larry’s fans send emails to the same vendors explaining how much of a cluster the whole thing was? Maybe something saying we understand they cannot take the hit by pulling out this year but if they attend next year, without any change in the con’s leadership, Larry’s fans will take that as supporting the policies and we will no longer support those vendors with our money?

        1. OTOH, this kind of thing going on tends to make for a bad sales weekend. I would not be overly appreciative for that, were I a vendor. Perhaps some encouragement to make that clear to John Ward?

        2. Of course, John Ward claims vendors contacted him with their concerns, because you’re a dirty, evil individualist, which I suspect is a bunch of shit.

          1. A few did, you can see it on twitter. Hub Games and Green Ronin protested and celebrated when Larry was canned.

          2. The evil side of me wants to go up to the Green Ronin booth at GenCon, chalk up a big purchase, then stop before checking out and ask, “Wait, didn’t you people work to get Correia disinvited from Origins? Never mind. Put it all back.”

            Probably for the best I’m too lazy to do that.

      1. One of the board game companies that I am seeing show up on the “boycott lists” is owned by a friend of mine, whose politics have far more in common with what I’ve seen on Larry’s blog than anything you would describe as Social Justice. So maybe I have a personal bias, but I think it would be wrong to harass or otherwise assume ill of these people simply due to association. I agree that what the Origins management did was scummy and obnoxious. However, I also don’t believe we should force innocent people into the crossfire who are just trying to meet fans and sell games.

        One way or another, I think that the sort of boycott you are proposing would constitute forcing someone to politicize their business, which I think is wrong. We need to respect people’s decision to be as apolitical as they choose when doing business.

        1. I’ve repeatedly told people to leave the regular vendors alone. They’re just small businessmen trying to have a good sales weekend. None of this is their fault.

          Now, loud assholes like Green Ronin? They’ve taken a public stand. They chose to get involved. Good for them. Then they can’t whine if people get mad.

          1. Fair enough. If they made the choice to get involved in the political side of things, that’s their decision. I just don’t think it’s right to force it on anyone who doesn’t want it.

    1. I mean, can you demand that they pull it yourself? After all, why should you contribute to their shit if they malign and demean you in public?

      1. Post the story free on Amazon and let Origins try to sue him. Then again, that goes against Larry’s credo of “Always get paid!”

        1. “Cowboy up. Kill it. Get paid” MHI Credo.
          SJWs must get some gratification in denying others joy.

    2. Well that’s just Ducky!!! It’s a load of bull!! Better off without all the hassel, but sorry about your son .

      1. I was figuring that since they publicly maligned him, demanding that they pull the story and forcing them to re-publish the antho would hurt their wallet more. As it stands, they’re making money with his contribution being in there and his name being on the cover.

        1. This is also a focus of concern to me, since it strikes me as something that needs to happen, because these scum profiting off of the anthology with an author they publicly slandered is sickening.

  8. Well to be fair Larry you are building a mountain fortress. . . . That’s telling everyone in the world you are evil.

    1. Well, now, even Superman had the Arctic Fortress of Solitude. And Batman had the Bat Cave, Wonder Woman had a tropical paradise island …

      … actually, come to think of it, that’s evidence in itself for who’s the smartest of the Justice League.

          1. Dear Superman,

            It’d take you .05 seconds to clean the FoS after each visit. We know, we’ve checked.
            So, how about it, big guy? Before we have to start using nasty words like “restricting access” or “additional fees”.
            All our best,
            FoS Management.
            PS, you’re behind 3 months in your assessments. Catch up, or we give Deadpool your timeslot for 2018.

  9. Individualism? Sounds like Kulak mischief!!! Good Stalinists know better than to associate with dirty Zeks! Forward, in name and blessed memory of glorious Vohzd! :/

  10. I find all of this extremely chilling, to say the least. The worst part is that the first woman who complained refused to offer any proof of her accusations- AND PEOPLE WENT WITH IT.

    You know that party game that was popular around WWII? The one where players would go around the room and guess who would be the first to “Go Nazi” should Adolf succeed at taking over the whole world?

    These people would be first.

    1. There was a whole essay written on that very topic, first appearing in Harper’s Monthly back in 1941 – “Who Goes Nazi?” by Dorothy Thompson.

          1. Thank you. I’d never heard of it before, and now I’ve saved it.

    2. “You know that party game that was popular around WWII? The one where players would go around the room and guess who would be the first to “Go Nazi” should Adolf succeed at taking over the whole world?

      These people would be first”

      Only because they cheated by being Nazis already.

  11. From now on I’d write up a contract that stipulates reimbursement and a cancellation fee with a penalty clause tied to how close to the event they cancelled and I’d make it stiff.

    Maybe even put in something about them being responsible to do their due diligence in vetting you prior to signing the contract and that any issues voiced after the signing cannot be used as ground to cancel.

  12. “cancelling their memberships (and only getting partial refunds…” — in that case I would call my credit card provider and dispute the charge.

  13. Larry, just as with John Ringo, if you want to sue these bastards, put up a GoFundMe for the legal fees. I’ll donate. (Can’t just buy your books, since I have them all in one form or another.)

    1. This. Sue the ever loving f*ck out of them until the only safe space they can afford is a refrigerator box they stole from a furniture store.

      1. Agreed. If enough people make a point of law suits every time this happens, future con-leadership will be less likely to disinvite their’ guests of honor. Also noteworthy, didn’t this same shit happen to Uncle Timmy at Archon a few years back?

        1. What sucks is I think a lot of what happens would depend on the judge. We’ve got a lot of examples showing that Progressive judges have a very. . .loose . . .interpretation of the law.

    2. You can ALWAYS buy more. Don’t you have any friends or family? Christmas is always on the way, and the best relatives shop months in advance for signed books.

    1. Got that right! Can you imagine if, say, Harlan Ellison were an upcoming author trying to build a fan base? He’d be doomed with his acerbic, confrontational personality. And yet, evil hags like Marion Zimmer Bradley and her pedophile spouse were not only tolerated but protected for DECADES. Many still hold her, not just her work, in high esteem because somehow “feminism” blah blah. Tell that to the people (the ones who have survived) who are still dealing with trauma, real not precious “somebody disagreed with me online” trauma, inflicted on them by MZB & Breen years ago. I know these doorknobs are already starting to arrange their firing squads in circles, but in the meanwhile it’s just aggravating.

      1. To be honest, I liked MZB’s Darkover novels. I didn’t hear about her bizarre personal life until decades later.

        1. I also. But even at the time there were bits that were off-putting. Like the one in Hawkmistress! Where a 30-something guy puts the moves on the teenage heroine… She’s just old enough… but she’s in disguise, and HE thinks she’s a pre-teen boy.

          Knowing what they did to children, I can’t re-read them. They’re gone.

          Colours of Space is still okay, if you want to hang on to the part of her art that wasn’t corrupted.

  14. I have to wonder at what point the organizers for an event like this will realize “X number of people have complained about a guest coming, but when that guest has been disinvited, Y people complained. Y is several times bigger than X, so it’s better for us to ignore the X people who complain.”

  15. I have some acquaintances in the game publishing business and this shitshow from Ward/GAMA is no surprise.

  16. I am heartened to see the number of people coming to Larry’s defense. Many (most?) fans are justifiably angry, and fannish memories are long. This will not end the way these bullies think it will; a reckoning will someday come, and they will not like the result.

    Enough is enough. I am watching conventions, fan groups, and even long time friendships disintegrate because of this holier-than-thou SJW poison. If fandom is to be saved, these emotional barbarians need to be fought.

    1. I didn’t even realize it’s happening in Ohio… I’m torn, because cool stuff almost NEVER happens in Ohio… and now it’s a crapshow run by a guy who could apparently out dumb a sack of doorknobs.

      The only thing worse than this is the University. Every time I walk on campus I get that line from “Last Crusade” stuck in my head.

      “Well boy, we’re pilgrims in an unholy land.”

  17. The fisking of the Ringo fiasco earned you their bullseye. And, you’re absolutely correct in saying that this is just the beginning. Every con from here on out will now have to work overtime to combat this type of internet mob mentality. The villagers are no longer carrying pitchforks and torches. They’re carrying online slander and hurt feelings.

    1. Well, stupid is as stupid does. Posting a rant with the most easily refuted postulates, and then feeling butt hurt because you got righteously powned in a fisk just shows a distinct lack of maturity.

  18. I’ll preface this by saying I only found out who you were a year ago after some Humble Bundle ebook thing.. and afterwards became a fan. You’re a solid author and I enjoy your books.

    As a fellow gamer and centre-right ish, but mostly classically liberal conservative, I admire the stand you’re taking. In fact, I am consistently amazed at the current climate – in a positive way.

    Five years ago, this sort of backlash and response would not have existed. But we live in a Trumpian post-Kanye world now. People are finally being able to articulate themselves responsibly and decry the lies, slander and outright nonsense, and the support shows.

    You may just be a nerdy author and game enthusiast, but remember that you are fighting the good fight — we can see that this toxicity bleeds into everything. Because apparently I can’t even read a good Warmachine novel without finding out the author is being fucked around for having a perfectly reasonable opinion.

    Keep fighting the good fight. Justice and virtue are on-side. And as Andrew Breitbart once said..

    Politics is downstream from culture.

    Keep your back up and your shoulders straight, man. I’m with you. So, so many people are. You just largely won’t hear from us unless necessary – doesn’t mean we aren’t there.

  19. I’ve said this elsewhere, so I might as well say it here. Why don’t we punch back twice as hard? Target a liberal writer. Say we’re afraid of their behavior or opinions. Get them uninvited from a Con. Let’s see how the SJW’s like the rules when they go against them.

    1. I’d sooner let the liberals do it to each other. Given time and the tightening purity spirals, everyone will be problematic and make someone uncomfortable.

      1. Agreed. There’s not enough capital, social or otherwise, involved to sustain these things at any scale once they start the spiral. It’ll be a short process that will have minimal collateral damage. Trick is, stopping the marauder effect. Once an organization’s Edgar Suit rots away, the destructive forces will need a new host.

      2. Agreed, they always enter into a purity spiral. They will end in a pyre of self conflagration trying to out “lib” each other. But there will be a lot of damage before they reach that point.

    2. I hear you, and I have on more than one occasional thought long and hard about doing just that. Hell, there are plenty potential targets to choose from – look how many Leftist authors support Communism and Marxism these days.

      But somehow… I think tit-for-tat will be self defeating in the long run. The better revenge is that we deny them any control over us, and grow our fandoms and our presence. To the point that we become the dominant voice, and they become the insignificant fringe (which really, they already closely are). Trust me, 80,000-100,000 fans attending a convention with a Larry Correia or John Ringo GoH will piss them off far more than anything we can ever do in retaliation.

      I keep thinking of Asimov’s future history and the fate of the Spacers. The Spacers were the first group of humans to venture out into space. But they settled their planets with the aid of robots and technology, and essentially brought their luxurious lifestyles with them rather than do the hard work necessary to settle a galaxy. When time passed and another group of humans came along who wanted to colonize new worlds, the Spacers looked down upon them with contempt, because the Settlers eschewed robots and their help, opting instead for hard work. In time the Spacers and Settlers stopped communicating with each other, the Spacers retreating to their worlds confident that the Settler worlds would all die out. But it turned out the Settlers were able to conquer and colonize the galaxy, while the Spacer worlds all withered and eventually died.

      We’re the Settlers. These bullies are the Spacers. Let them have their meaningless victories and inconsequential awards. Their vision is an intellectual dead end devoid of any joy or meaning. They will wither and die in isolation, while the rest of us continue growing despite them

    3. You’re assuming they would take any complaint that someone felt “threatened” by the likes of John Scalzi or N.K. Jemisin seriously.

      (Now feeling threatened by their fans, on the other hand . . . but then the simplest answer is just not to go to the event, sadly.)

      1. Simplest answer is to discourage anyone from going to their event; and state why. Numbers count.

    4. Yeah, I’m pretty sure they’re already perfectly fine with ignoring legit threats to conservative authors.

    5. Problem being, that kind of hate is, well… *boring.*

      It’s not the least bit interesting to me. This is why folks like us don’t do the torches and pitchforks thing. We’ve got better stuff going on. Family awesomeness. Amazing friends. Pets. Jobs. Hobbies. Books.

      Torchmobs and lawsuits take time and effort. And I’m lazy. I’d rather point and laugh than get angry about it- though there are exceptions that do bother me (i.e. messing with families, wives and kids, a la the latest Ringo mess they tried).

      Would I support a lawsuit over libel/slander? Of course. I will happily point out their stupidity. And laugh about it. A lot. But I’m not going to get all mad about a bunch of losers whining about their poor, poor feelings being hurt by a guy who doesn’t even know, or care, that they exist.

  20. I suppose a response to anyone who claims they decided to support Origins because of disinviting Larry is to ask to see their ticket stub. As you note, if they weren’t going anyway, Origins gained nothing by trying to appease them.

  21. ok I see the problem you are willing to shoot a rapist. of course that makes male feminists uncomfortable. the ven diagram of “male feminists” and “sex pest” is a circle.

  22. I need to start suing these conventions for compensation. Every time they do this to an author I buy one of their books (del Arroz, Ringo, and now Mr. Correia)… and then I get hooked on the series and I have to keep buying their books to see what happens next.

    For the love of Grog, people, stop banning authors!!! I can’t afford to keep doing this!

  23. I beg to differ… I’m NOT rabid, the doctor cleared me last week. 🙂 Seriously, this appeasement doesn’t bode well, as all it does is empower the Nazis…

  24. I’m sorry you’re a victim of this garbage. Keep doing what you do and I’ll keep buying.

  25. What has really pissed me off are the people who believe we are just doing this because we agree with Larry on everything. I know I don’t…well, ok I agree with a LOT of what Larry says because we are very similar but there are things I am sure we disagree on.

    My point is that THIS community of sci-fi/fantasy geeks are protective of ALL writers of the genre (unless, like Scalzi et. al. they have done something to pull themselves out of our cocoon). If this was Eric Flint that it had happened to, I would be fighting just as hard. Eric, by the by, is a card-carrying-member of the Communist Party and makes no bones about it. Stifling his ideas and the conversations ARE JUST AS EVIL as silencing someone more in line with whatever you think. As long as that person is not actively attempting to take your rights away or is threatening you, then letting the conversation happen IS WHAT SHOULD HAPPEN! Argue with them, debate them, try to prove them wrong OR be proven wrong in return and modify your thinking. THAT is what the human race will survive on. Echo chambers lead to these last words being echoed: “What happened? Why are we all dead?”

    1. Agreed. I’ve never read anything by Larry (that I recall) and I’m not at all a fan of John Ringo, but if I knew how to start a Con, I’d want them both to headline it.
      I’d have a standard reply to outraged messages – “Quote the person, or STFU”.
      Make these idiots prove their claims.
      And sue them when they lie.
      I doubt if many of them could even correctly define the words that they use.

      1. In one sense, starting a con is easy. I’ve been in two groups that have done it. Pick a weekend and contract a hotel. Invite guests. Create programming and invite vendors and arrange an art show and put together a program book. Go to other cons and throw room parties and take memberships. Put up a Web site and get your con listed in all the con lists you can find. Put out flyers at all the local places local fans might go. It sounds like a lot of work, and it is, but it’s a lot of things that ordinary people can do and have done. None of the tasks are particularly onerous or hugely challenging.

        In another sense, it’s quite hard. A con is a mental construct more than anything else. You have to believe in it hard enough to get other people to believe in it, too. That is not a lot of work, but it is just about the hardest thing I know how to do.

        1. I read the first paragraph and said, “Okay, no problem. I’ll knock it out over the weekend!” (It is funny, really)
          But then I thought, I’m retired, it’s summer, I have a motorcycle to ride on the good days and and a webcomic to write on the bad…
          I have no time to run a con. But if I did…
          ConSciCon ’18! (Conservative Science Fiction Convention 2018) in Savannah, GA!
          Libertarian, actually.
          I think I’m losing my mind. More coffee, please.

          1. Well, generally you’re not going to do this all by yourself and, generally, if you don’t have the interest or the expertise then you can just not do whatever it is that you can’t or don’t have any interest in doing.

            I mean, you need some sort of space unless you have a get-together at some other convention. (Consider the example of “CornerCon”) You need someone to set up programming, unless you have a relaxicon. Don’t have anyone to run gaming? Then don’t have a gaming room. (Yeah, I know. Sacrilege.) Ditto with a video room or an art show or a charity auction. If you don’t charge admission or have badges or anything then you don’t need a registrar. If you don’t invite guests, then you don’t need a guest liaison.

            Conventions don’t HAVE to be these huge complicated events with lots of unwritten rules about who you can and can’t have at them. That’s not what they started out as, in any case. They started out as just a fun thing to do with a bunch of friends. I’ve been talking about doing a post-Mardi-Gras thing in Galveston, mostly as an excuse to hold a room party at the conventions I go to, but when the feeling comes over me, I just lie down until the feeling passes.

  26. I think its time we started a new con. Call it SHOOT-CON, hold it in the free state of New Hampshire at the Sig Sauer Academy and invite authors and their fans who like to shoot, have it be chaired by Larry, John Ringo, and Sarah Hoyt. We could have writers workshops right next to “best double tap techniques”, and Q&A’s that range from the practical to the impractical, all while serenaded by the gentle sounds of fully supressed automatic weapons fire.

    For a capstone event, some lucky attendees (either drawn by lot or sold to the highest bidder) gets to shoot off against their favourite author at six inch targets at a 1000y…

      1. Yes, it is… but every single year, LibertyCon sells out within a few days (sometimes a few hours) of ticket sales opening. Clearly there’s a lot of pent-up demand for a second con along the same lines as LibertyCon.

        1. LibertyCon is a unique beastie, good sir. It’s a family run 501c charity con- everybody pays, and I do mean everyone, up to and including the con chair herself. But that’s not *what* makes it unique…

          The LC folks patently *don’t care* about your politics (or mine). At all. They will tell you, when you volunteer for staff duty, to leave that stuff at the door. Folks come to LC for many reasons- for the room parties, for the panels, for the authors, to see their friends from far away… Also because LC is by designs a *small* con.

          Were it to grow larger, it *would* lose some of the things that make it special. If you want to run a similar con, by all means do so! There is *ample* demand to get one off the ground and going. I’d schedule it sometime in the fall, were it me, to keep from competing- you’d want some of the same folks to show up, I don’t doubt.

          Getting the right people is going to be one of your major headaches (moreso than publicity, in some cases). Ask the pros for advice- heck, ask Brandy herself, she’s good people. Get your planning and your venue straight, get some ops people to sort your panels, get a good southern gal to run the catering for the guests (trust me), and make friends with a good artist or two. Networking helps.

          But again, people. LC works because the people who run it are invested in it. There’s heart there, and history. If you go forward with it, make darn sure your core group is solid. Good luck, and let us know if y’all decide to go through with it!

    1. Sounds like a chance to blow a lot of money!
      Not that I’m complaining, I’m just sayin’.

      1. I did Sig’s “Long Range Precision Rifle” block (six days ending with their Reach for a 1000) and other than the $10 sandwich that turned into a $900 suppressor…

        Wait, ok, you are right, it would be a great chance to blow a lot of money 🙂

  27. I will chime in with basically the same comment I left on the Origins announcement to “recend” (intentionally misspelling that made me cringe).

    I’m a pretty liberal person but I don’t believe politics are a reason to turn into a hateful idiot. We live in time when people are comfortable constructing a straw man argument about anyone that they doesn’t agree with them. Sadly, they seem to believe the utter load of BS that they have constructed. I’m all for actual civility and tolerance, not just civility and tolerance for the people that agree with you.

    Upon reflecting on why this level of absurd conduct seems to be so prevalent in the SciFi / Fantasy / Gaming community I made a few suppositions. I think people act this way because they’ve embraced the community as a form of escapism. The pitchfork-and-torch crowd don’t like their lives and thus spend their days wrapped in fantasies. They’ve narrowed their intake of experiences and people to such a myopic level that they can’t cope with people that disagree. Their shock born response is to sling vitriolic lies. It’s sad and just leads to an escalation of who can be the biggest jerk.

    I was happy to see that the number of people that condemned this mess far outstripped the idiots. I don’t think this is the sort of issue you overcome through counter attacks. Call attention to liars. Let their behavior be an example to the rational majority. Decent people everywhere are sick of this crap and they will side with the people who aren’t behaving poorly.

  28. At this rate, by fall we can put together an *awesome* con with all the authors who have been “disinvited” from others. And I bet it would be more successful than all the rest combined.

  29. I don’t know you or the whole story but from someone that used to work for John Ward and GAMA I can tell you that none of the condemnation you or your fans have heaped on them even scratches the surface of how despicable the behavior is of Mr. Ward, his wife, and the majority of the Board (Some of the Board members are new and I’ve had no interaction with them so I’m not speaking about them personally.) If they’re scrambling right now it’s only to preserve their cash flow. They care nothing about any person that’s been affected negatively by their behavior. For anyone that knows them this is no surprise at all.

  30. Nice. I agree with all of this. Consenting Adults, Off Duty and stay the Hell off my lawn! And even the correct plural for ‘Doofus’ 🙂

    1. I’m pretty much sick of both parties and think there should be a ‘Get off My Lawn Party’ or maybe a ‘Leave me the F8ck Alone Party’.

      The platform is: Limited Government, Low Taxes, secure borders, and enough military to kick the ass of the entire rest of the world at the same time if it’s needed. Weapons restrictions are limited only to weapons of mass destruction (atomic bombs, ballistic missiles, chem/bio weapons). Want a tank or a fully loaded Apache attack helicopter? Go for it if you’ve got the scratch. Other than Department of Defense the only other Department is the department of ‘Get off your ass and do it yourself”.

        1. I’ve decided on the “leave me the f8ck alone party’. If Cthulu or SMOD wanna crash my party I’m gonna pop ’em with .308. Damn space/extra dimensional carpet baggers.

          1. I think Cthulu requires something more than a .308. I’m figuring at least .338 Lapua, or that’s how I’m explaining the need for another rifle to Household-3.

          2. Totally agree, unfortunately .308 or 12 gauge slugs is the best I can currently do/ So while it’s probably less than a mosquito biting an elephant, I’ll at least get the some satisfaction and last minute target practice before my soul is tortured for eternity by the giant space mollusk.

  31. No doubt all part of the same outrage brigade that “No Award”ed Jerry Pournelle because of the company he edited a book for.

    Libel was malicious enough back in the old days, when you had to go digging to find it. Since the advent of the internet, it’s there, probably on the first page of any search results, until the end of time.

    I’m not a big fan of litigation as a general rule, but I’m increasingly of the opinion that a barrage of lawsuits is going to be the only way this sort of thing gets brought under control. Because right now, it’s disgustingly easy to control the public dialogue by getting there “firstest with the mostest” amount of bullshit you can manage, and watching an easily-manipulated mob get riled up and attack the people that have somehow hurt your feelings.

    Note: I have now quoted Nathan Bedford Forrest, which means that when this eventually finds its way to the sort of people I’m talking about, they’ll no doubt label me as some sort of monstrous ideologue. Rather than a guy who likes pithy quqotes.

  32. I wonder how long it will take for the remaining decent folks to realize Agent Gibbs’ advice “Never apologize, it makes you look weak” is pure gold.
    An apology is to SJBs just like blood in the water to sharks.

  33. I’ve known John Ringo for night on 20 years now, and Larry for considerably less. I’ve seen them both interact with fans on and off site at conventions, in public and in private, on panels and out with us grubby “masses”. That’s a pretty wide range of environments, and a large number of people, as well as very diverse people.

    I have never – not once – seen them treat anyone with anything less than the respect they deserved. Yes, they have responded entirely appropriately with people who were actively hostile to them, and that can be a bit abrasive/harsh.

    Kinda hard to find fault with that. Human beings do that. I do that. Be honest, you do it, too.

    I have seen them both politely but firmly step on socially awkward, overly enthusiastic men, to make space for women to speak freely and openly. Because their fans are important to them, I assume. Yes, they have unpopular opinions. There’s a wide number of social topics on which I vehemently disagree with them both. So what? I’m pretty sure there is no one on this PLANET who 100% agrees with my every opinion. Their wrong opinions (LOL) don’t make them bad, immoral, hateful, abusive people.

    That’s not how humanity works, and if you can’t see that, you’re not a subset of humanity with which I choose to associate. Because I know damn well you’ll be coming after ME next.

    This middle school, mean girl bullshit is unacceptable, and the complaints about John and Larry are absolutely nothing more than that.

  34. I haven’t read any of your books yet, but after reading this I want to. I want to thank Origins for bringing another author to my attention!

    1. Well, this right there is a good thing to come out of the bullshit that’s happening to Larry. Have fun and enjoy the ride, and your wallet is going to complain at the speed of getting books. ^_^

    2. You lucky dog. If you like action, you’re golden. If you like guns, all is well. If you dig really good stories, be they rural fantasy, historic superhero, or straight grueling caste-system kickassness, you’re in for a treat.

    1. Nope. They just keep making it. The quality may degrade to simple walls and tears but honestly that’s just them being honest about their cry baby status. Mind you, this unintentional honesty on their part. It’s the only kind of honesty they practice.

  35. As a complete outsider (but long-time science-fiction reader), I might suggest that the reasonable fan base make their opinion known to the organizers.

  36. If you are a *White, CIS Gendered, Male, that doesn’t lean far enough left.* You can be discriminated against. Come up to Ogden/Clearfield area, we can play games and you can talk about politics, guns and books all day long.

  37. I met Larry once; he kindly signed my copy of Hard Magic. John Ward and the bullies are out of line.

    1. I’ve met him twice. It’s always an interesting experience to encounter someone taller than me, and I’m six-five.

      He’s a good guy, and this sort of jackassery fills me with cold rage.

    2. I’ve never met Larry. Disagreed with him in an Amazon review once…even then he was professional.

  38. Larry Correia wrote, “Note, this only ever goes one political direction. If you are a left wing author, you’ve got to get caught doing some pretty horrible stuff to be too dangerous to get disinvited from an inclusive family friendly event.”

    Not quite true. The firing squads had already started to circle. Will Shetterly was banned from the Fourth Street Fantasy Convention (that he was a co-founder of) late last year because he made some fans “feel unsafe”.
    http://shetterly.blogspot.com/2018/03/positively-fourth-street-or-on-being.html

    1. Didn’t Shatterly cheer the firing squads when Elizabeth Moon was disinvited to Wiscon some years ago (after she made some innocuous comments about ME terrorists)?

        1. If I recall correctly, and I might be totally wrong because it’s been a long time, Shetterly was one of the people on the other side who pointed out that the Sad Puppies might actually have legitimate gripes about being excluded and treated unfairly. But I can’t remember because there were a lot of people with opinions on that one.

          1. I remember a few people who were in the “I disagree with them but that doesn’t make them evil” camp; I just didn’t make as much note of them as the ones who were fighting busily to the front of my ‘never buy anything involving this person’ line.

          2. I believe this is why the PTB overturned the vote of the Sasquan business meeting attendees to release the nominee voting results.

            Too many people voted mixed Campaign to End Puppy-related Sadness* and Other.

            *Seriously people? Why did you cede this to the Enemy? You always let them win the “define your terms” game?

        2. Thanks. I remember he was in the mix of voices on that incident, but I guess I just misremebered which side he was on. Its good to see someone on the Left take the free speech position.

  39. I am so sorry you have to deal with this crap – and I’m really sympathetic with your wife, it’s harder to see your friends and loved ones get hit like this than it is to get hit with it yourself, or so I’ve found.

    I like to think that the crazy frenzy escalations we’re seeing are a sign that they’re losing, but it’s hard to really believe it from this angle.

    Regardless, keeping writing your wonderful books, painting your minis, lighting cigars with hundred dollar bills (or the equivalent), and generally having fun and being a good guy. That means you win, no matter what.

  40. I’m one of those rabid fans. Damn the leftist socialist pigs.
    I’m waiting for the “Gun census taker” to show up at my door.
    Party time.

  41. I’m an Origins attendee of many years who has never heard of you or your work. I had heard you were removed from the guests of honor and decided to learn more about you from your website. I know nothing whatsoever about your politics, nor do I care. Everyone has their own views.

    However, I will say that to people unfamiliar with your work, this post is a very bad representation of you. It comes off very much like a long rant-y temper tantrum. You are accusing others of the terrible sin of throwing a temper tantrum in the midst of throwing one yourself. It’s not a good representation of you and your work, and one potential fan has been turned away by it.

      1. Tone police or concern troll? I’m going to go with “wasn’t going to buy your books, regardless”.

    1. Thomas, buddy… the problem is that for years, authors like Larry, John Ringo, and others have been slandered, lied about, had mud thrown on their reputations, and been treated like dirt because of deliberate representations of their political views.

      And the traditional response is just what you are advocating- just be nice and hope the bad press goes away- they don’t want to lose customers like you Thomas, if they know what’s good for them.

      And we’re sick and tired of the “shut up and go along” bullying that happens. People are slandering our favorite authors, and we aren’t just going to sit and take it.

      Now Thomas, what would your reaction be to being slandered and lied about with a deliberate view towards ruining your life and livelihood? Would you just sit and take it?

    2. So, tell me: how would you react, if someone said you were a menace to society, based on approximately no evidence whatsoever, and people decided to treat you as such? Would you just sit there and take it, or would you attempt to refute the charges?
      Because it sounds to me like you define ANY attempt to defend oneself from such charges, rather than groveling apologies, as a “temper tantrum.”

    3. I read rants. I *write* rants. Some of my best friends* write rants. This is NOT a rant.
      Heck, this doesn’t even rise to the level of a fisking. It’s terribly level-headed and reasonable. Look at the comment thread where people are saying “I wouldn’t take it this calmly!” Sheesh.

      (* OK, honestly, they’re more like acquaintances. But they still write really good rants.)

      1. Agreed. Ranting contains more volatility. I know, because I do it on occasion, too. This contains too darn much calm common sense to be a proper rant.

        Sorry, ILOH. Your inner adult is showing. *grin*

    4. Let me see if I have this right. Author gets invite to be the guest of honor at an event, looks forward to it, because he’s a big gaming nerd, plans to take kid, pays for tickets, and gets ready to go.

      Then author gets dumped in the most unprofessional way ever – based on lies and misrepresentations – via a Facebook post, which was then copied and pasted into an email to him, with not so much as an effort to discuss the issues involved.

      Author is now out airfare, and he’s publicly maligned and smeared – based on the complaints of a shrill harpy whom he apparently pissed off four years ago by fisking her boyfriend’s article along with some of her screeching supporters – even as he still has a story in their anthology!

      Author asks for additional communication, and he is summarily ignored, even as the person who made the decision emails exhibitors and vendors and LIES about what transpired.

      Author then details everything to his rather large fan base, because transparency is a good thing, and you have the unmitigated gall to come over here and whine about his fucking tone????

      Eat a dick, concern troll. If you can’t comprehend the need to detail everything that transpired here, you’re either retarded or you care much more about personal political views than you let on.

      1. That’s all they can whine about, Nicki; because anything else would require more substance and spine than a planarian has.

        (On a side note, I really miss your posts and comments, so am happy to see you here, fighting the good fight. Hope life is treating you well! *hug!*)

          1. Things are progressing well on my end, if stressful (because of so much to handle at the moment). Super busy right now – I check blogs only while eating breakfast; it’s a breath of quiet for me!

            On the upside, I published a book and finished a cover for someone else!

        1. Because the comment voting system has been broken ever since the blog got a facelift, and fixing it has been a pretty low priority for Larry’s website guy so far.

      1. Yep. From the Internet Arguing Checklist, that was a #2 Disqualify: You Sound Angry, plus some #7 Concern Trolling. 🙂

      1. He should have just been silent and let his fans get angry AFTER they show up at the con and realize he isn’t there like they were promised. I understand.

  42. So…
    The main Games trade association just effectively declared Mormons persona non grata.

    That is quite possibly the most self-destructive thing I’ve ever heard.

      1. It can be fairly extrapolated.
        Larry is being demonized for his opinions.
        Those opinions are widely shared.
        The people committing the offense are collectivists, guilt by association is their bag, baby.

        Family game night is a big deal in LDS circles. As consumers of the industry, they punch well above their weight.

  43. Larry:

    Steve Jackson of Steve Jackson Games is a regular attendee of Libertycon, and a fellow libertarian. He also has dealings with GAMA in the past. Perhaps it’s time to have him see about organizing an internal back lash within GAMA to this tomfoolery.

  44. The social justice crymob should never be capitulated to. They are Orwell’s ” boot stomping a human face forever”. Anyone giving in to them does not deserve our time, money, or good will.

  45. I’m still shipping them 100 lbs of Puppy Chow. How long I stay annoyed will determine if they get it in bags or 500 separate first class envelopes.

  46. Ouch. What a train wreck on the con’s part. And as usual, the accusers have vanished into the dark corners of the web, giggling madly and refusing to back up any of their claims. They were just there to stir the mob and make accusations. Apparently if you scream loud enough, you don’t even need proof.

    What a sorry state of things. Still, on the other hand, when companies and organizations do dumb things, people have a tendency to stop supporting them and go elsewhere. Natural selection in action.

    Ah well … Still sucks, though, especially for all those who already purchased tickets and made travel plans just to have the rug yanked out from under them. Hopefully they’re able to get their refunds (or at least dispute the charge or something).

  47. You made a serious tactical mistake four years ago; as an instructor in self-defense you should have known better. You should have sued Scalzi to within a millimeter of his uterus for defamation. Instead, you let it go. And grow. And take down other innocent and worthy people.

  48. As your wingman at cons (so you have a witness present at all times), and as the guy in the office with you when we invented the Sad Puppies, I can’t even muster a shocked face anymore. Working for the government beats a lot out of a person, and these constant outrage Olympics the rest.

    1. Amen. I work in a government office, and it has worn me down to a nub. If only I had another viable option right now, but I’m kind of stuck.

      As to the other, I joined Sad Puppies under the misguided notion that the WorldCon crowd could be reasoned with. In the end, I realized how dumb that assumption was, and it was completely disheartening.

      Incidentally, Steve, I’m quite happy for your success. I worked with you some back on the Reading Excuses website days, proofreading some of your stories as you did some of mine. I had to put off writing for various (complicated) reasons. I’m glad you persevered and are beginning to see the fruit of your labors.

  49. Larry, just because I foam at the mouth a little bit when I finally get to read one of your new books/short stories/novellas/etc. doesn’t mean I’m a RABID fan…

    Those of us who have met you know that you’re the nicest guy in whatever room you happen to be in. Don’t let the b’tards get you down. After all, you’ve got a brand-new Yard Moose Mountain to play with (once it finally gets built).

  50. I think the funniest part is the con managers begging you to call off the hell-hounds swamping their email today. They really don’t understand what’s going on here.

        1. It seems to me that they find the concept of such a mob being directed far more comforting than the realization that the mob is made up of individuals that made up their own minds, and are angry on their own bat, ON THEIR OWN, and are moving in the same direction of their own free will.

          The former is also how they operate, even in small events and in nearly their day to day decisions. It is comforting, because they can then disavow responsibility, like the Nazis of yore. “I was just following orders! It’s not my fault!”

          The other is far more terrifying and ‘dangerous’ because individuals can make decisions as the situation requires, through observation of one’s surroundings. THAT is why we scare them. We are not under anyone’s control, and thus, we ‘must be subjugated, or made impotent.’

          1. It makes sense. A lot of leftist agitation theory revolves around how to fashion and direct mobs against selected targets. That’s what a “community organizer” does, after all. So when someone on the left suddenly gets targeted by a mob, the immediate response is to assume that it’s the exact same tactic that they’re used to.

      1. It’s part of the normal prog projection. None of their “movements” are truly grassroots (except maybe the mobs), so they assume someone must be in charge of this one, too.

  51. Back in the 60s I would read statements by the professionals announcing how proud they were to be inclusive. Of course, back then we had Bob Heinlein and John Campbell alongside Isaac Asimov and Arthur C. Clarke. Yet to that community what matter was your interest in science fiction and fantasy, and while your politics did have a voice in how you were viewed they were accepted.

    Today the impression I get is that a small minority of reactionaries have won a platform that lets them obscure the work of others. I’m talking about fanatics, and they are a pitiful lot.

    John Scalzi, you disappoint me and I find that I cannot trust anybody as far right as you.

    Larry Correia. You bastard, now I have books to look up in the local library. Hope you’re proud of yourself.

  52. I read some of the anti-Correia comments on the whole ordeal—painful, I know, but I think it’s important to read the other side’s words every once in a while, and in this case was a stark reminder of how weak the opposing argument really is. I found exactly one instance of a direct quotation of Larry’s words, and it was one where he complimented a nominated author as being very talented, but simultaneously lamented that any time the SJW crowd mentioned that author, it was to discuss how he was a non-European ethnicity rather than to actually look at the author’s work. Yeah, sounds pretty evil to me.

    1. I don’t think they were aiming for accuracy.
      When their “neutral” friends in the mainstream media write a piece, they can now preface Larry Correia’s name with “the controversial and divisive author, who has been disinvited from several SF and gaming conventions for making people uncomfortable with his extreme right-wing views”. So this has been a rather successful disqualification attempt. This probably counts as a victory in their book.
      And they had nothing better to do with their time anyway. It’s not like they could have written a book in the meantime or something. So the next-best thing is to prevent those who can from doing so.

  53. There is a con in Vegas in November. Some Romance eliterati decided someone was an -ist and started raising hell.

    Those folks were immediately refunded their money and told they were not welcome.

    So some people are learning the right lessons.

  54. So, I was following the trail backwards starting from here: https://ombreolivier.liberty.me/hell-hath-no-fury/

    And that face looked familiar to me…

    So I looked back at the original fisking: https://monsterhunternation.com/2014/08/19/no-tor-com-gencon-isnt-racist-a-fisking/

    Then at the original article, which was linked from above and I have no need to link again. Then I checked the referenced Twitter account, and I know i had looked at it before. Then it struck me:

    That particular “Strix” (http://dfa.wikia.com/wiki/Strix) has been an actress on the HyperRPG twitch show “Death From Above” (http://dfa.wikia.com/wiki/List_of_Episodes_DFA), which I watched the hell out of because it was linked to the Battletech game that I had Kickstartered. It was a lot of fun to watch, mixing some improv acting and some game nerdiness with the actual game developers and perma-death (if someone died on the board , they were off the show).

    Everything was good until “Coryphée” joined the cast and after a few weeks I was hoping the perma-death could get very focussed. Story was fine, character was mostly fine, but the actress herself seemed to have only one setting to her improv: bitchy. Seriously, there was no let up from the toxicity and waspish comments. I still watched the whole thing but it was such a relief when they had an episode without her.

    She apparently has a twitch show about diversity and inclusion and she’s a D&I consultant of some kind. How very capitalist of her to find a problem that she can then get paid to consult about. Even better if she can “discover” the problem in the first place. That’s a license to print money in the Seattle area.

    She and her fiance (author of the thoroughly and deservedly fisked article, and only article he has on the Tor site) are getting married in twelve days, according to her Twitter feed. To that I have only one thing to say: I wish you both much joy in your life together.

    Expecting a “but” to follow that? No, no “but”s. That’s it.

    1. I loved MZW’s comment on her FB post talking about the wedding…but the man himself should write it…personally I just want to ask his 1% self (daddy is a billionaire) what it’s like to be the wife…

    2. Oh. It’s that Strix? I’ve seen a couple of people with that handle and was assuming that it was one of those. That’s disappointing.

      And Strix had a show where she would run indy RPGs on Hyper. It was not terribly enjoyable to watch.

    3. She has pretensions of being an academic of some sort, but has only one real publication that I can find (conference proceedings, not a journal article), though apparently she contributed part of a “charter” (sic) to a forthcoming book.

      Note to Ms Beltran: listing stuff you’ve written for convention program booklets as “publications” on an academic C.V. just makes you look sad.

      Presumably the academic career is no longer important, though, since she’s apparently going to be calling in rich sometime this week.

  55. Larry if this opens up your calendar, you might try joining some PRS or NRL matches. There tend to be less whiners at rifle matches.

  56. I am sorry this happened to you. So I went to Amazon and bought another book from you! That’s all I can do to show support, except pray for SJWs to grow hearts and Mr. Ward to grow a backbone,

  57. Well all I can say is it boosted your readership by one. I ordered your book Son if the Sword today. If I like it I’ll read the rest. Good luck…

  58. Columbus Zoos manatees are great, sorry your son will not get to see them that weekend! To be honest the only reason I would have attended was because it was going to line up with a regular doctors appointment and thought would be funnier than just a round trip 4 hours for the doc. It is a shame we live in an age where people do not require proof before caving in to bullies simply because they are afraid of being next! Until more people stand their ground they will keep doing it.

  59. Just more evidence that we are at war for the very soul of this country. It expresses itself in so many ways.

    Sorry to hear about the John Scalzi thing, too bad, I’ve liked some of his writing, but I won’t support that sort of attack, doesn’t matter if it’s a favorite author or the mother next door.

    Stick to your guns (pun intended), Mr. C, you’ve earned your money. Your reputation isn’t tarnished with those who pay attention.

  60. > and then we were going to go to the zoo on
    > Sunday. (they have manatees there!).

    Just go to any gathering of SJWs. They’ll have manatees there, some with blue hair, some wearing “This is what sexy looks like”, and some cosplaying as humans.

    1. That’s great, Steve, you’ve gone and unfairly insulted the manatees by comparing them to SJW’s! I’d stay away from all bodies of water if I was you (or carry large quantities of lettuce).

  61. Larry, I just bought two more of your books to show support in the small way that I can.

    GAMA’s long-time secretary has run my hometown gaming store in Davie, FL for over 30 years (and worked at its predecessor for a few years before that). I’m very disappointed that, what is effectively an institution for South Florida gamers, has been sullied by the GAMA board’s cuckoldry at the hands of a few SJWs.

  62. I didn’t know who you were until just now. I have never read your books, but you have made a fan out of me, by vitrue of your commitment to libertarian ideals. The way the left is censoring now a days is despicable. Personally, I feel ass kicking is in order!! Its the only truw way bullies learn to cease and desist. Anyway, love ya!!

    1. I recommend starting your reading with the Dead Six trilogy or Hard Magic…but really its hard to go wrong with any of his stuff.

  63. This is why if I’m an invited guest anywhere, I expect money for my travel expenses up front. I signed a contract for one event, and the first time I heard, “well, can I reimburse your air fare afterward,” I lawyered up and got out.

  64. If we ought not boycott the vendors, perhaps each vendor should be gifted a copy of one of Mr. Correia’s books. It would be grand to bury them in books while contributing to Mr. Correia’s bottom line

  65. Except for terms of art, I disapprove of casual vulgarity.

    But what that Mr. Ward did was a dick move.

  66. I don’t agree with most of your politics either but disinviting you was a dick move and they should be ashamed of themselves.

  67. Well I hadn’t hear of you, Larry (sorry). But now I have and I just bought Hard Magic. I’m spreading this link around. I hope you cash in from this 🙂

  68. “my mom is half Jewish” I’m inclined to doubt that it is possible to be half Jewish. I’d credit a claim that a grand parent is or was Jewish.

    What would it mean to be half Jewish in practice? For a Portuguese maybe to be from the Belmonte community?

    What would it mean say to be half LDS? Pay half the tithe? Drink reduced caffeine coffee? Have a Bishop’s recommend to attend BYU part time? FHE on the first and third Mondays?

    Half Methodist? Maybe go out after Church on Sunday and stomp the moonshine still that got your business Saturday night? Nah that’s regular Methodist in some parts of South Georgia.

    1. As in bloodline, not religion. Grandma was from a family of Polish/Lithuanian Jews, she left home as a teenager, never talked about her family, and became a… I’m not sure… nominally some kind of Christian, but she wasn’t particularly religious. My fans in the IDF however thought this was awesome.

        1. Yeah, like I said, I found that out from a bunch of fans in an IDF tank company. They thought it was hilarious. My mom didn’t even know this until after Grandma passed away and she was going through her old papers. Grandma never ever talked about her family. So my mom’s comment to me was “No wonder you’re such a good accountant!” 😀

          1. Maybe… when you get a Tank someday, you might want to look at a Merkava for the Mountain Fortress? It would be able to make it up the hill at least, unlike a British Chieftain. And hey, you have all those IDF fans who could give you pointers from 8000 miles away!

            Also, this entire Origins thing is beyond infuriating to me as well. You’re an adult and able to handle this better than you’re sidekick who just wanted to go play some games. I never realized much more angry something like this would make me since becoming a dad as well.

          2. I’m full on Jew, and my dad leads congregations in prayer and performs funeral ceremonies, and I can barely add. What happened to my accountant gene???

          3. Considering how spun up the Left is about Israel this week, being Jewish probably makes you even more of an evil hater.

  69. Just tweeted this:

    @originsgames Time to #BoycottOrigens until they #FireJohnWard

    Get the message, @Gen_Con, @TheGAMAOnline , @VanRyderGames ?

  70. Maybe you need to start suing these idiots and hitting them where it hurts. They will learn a lesson for slandering and defamation when you start taking their money and donate the judgements in their name to charities you support.

  71. Every time something like this pops onto my radar I buy one of your novels and give it to one of my friends. Since giving you financial support and growing your fan base are two of the least desired outcomes of your screeching critics I figure it’s exactly what should happen.

    1. A positive action that hurts nobody – and is only an imagined slight by the already perpetually offended!

      (and yeah, this is what I’m doing too.)

  72. Hang in there, Larry! There is certainly no shortage of crazy in this world. Have a relaxing weekend!

    1. GenCon already eats their lunch.

      Back when I did a lot of gaming ages and ages ago, Origins was the gold standard and GenCon more regional despite TSR association. These days, it’s completely flipped.

      Of course, it looks like the GenCon Writers’ Symposium has gone a lot more SJW this year, so who knows how long that will hold.

      1. Well forget TSR. It looks like the company has been banned from Gencon and Origins because of an interview by Ernie Gygax:

        https://www.enworld.org/threads/ernie-gygax-on-new-tsr-wotc-beefs-trademarks-licensees-5e-more.680877/

        https://www.dicebreaker.com/companies/tsr-games/news/tsr-games-ernie-gygax-cut-ties

        http://vengersatanis.blogspot.com/2021/07/open-letter-to-gaming-conventions.html

        The irony is, AD&D is the same game that came out with cursed Girdles of Gender Change. So I suppose this whole scandal is really his father’s fault. And maybe the Apaches and Aztecs too.

  73. I don’t go to cons and never will, but I find the notion that it it would be somehow okay to ban you even if you were racist/sexist/whateverphobic to be equally dumb.

    Quality of writing is the only thing that matters when it comes to authors. I enjoy Steven Brust books as well as John Ringo books, and Brust is a borderline communist shill.

    1. Borderline? He refers to himself as a Trotskyite 🙂

      And, I agree with you, I look forward to the next Vlad novel with the same anticipation of the next MHI, Hard Magic, Black Sword, or any of Ringo’s creations.

  74. I disagree, strongly, with ‘don’t screw the vendors.’

    This is going to go on and on as long as cons allow it. The ones who stand up may survive. The ones who cave have to fold. The way to get them to fold is to hit them in the wallet. It’s the only thing that will work.

    So, yes, tell your fans to hit the vendors. Hit the authors who do attend. Refuse to go to the con. Ask the pros who are attending, why they support bullying. Don’t buy their books. Don’t buy their products.

    Boycott, Divest, Sanction.

    We need to stop rolling over and BRING THE PAIN.

    1. Wasn’t it Kurt Schlichter who said ‘They’re gonna hate living with their new rules’?

      1. Yes. He says it pretty much every article. It’s why Monday and Thursday are now my favorite days of the week. Nobody can snark like Schlichter!

        It’s been funny watching comments from Leftist when they attacked now ‘Wait, you guys are better than that”. “Yep, we are. However you’ve had your free shots and now it’s my turn”.

    2. Maybe the middle of that? Telling the vendors you WILL screw them if they don’t stand up for decent folk?

      1. I plan on attending Origins his year, as I have for many years in a row. Usually, about 7-10 days before the convention starts, GAMA/Origins will post what they call a “site book” to their website. That “site-book” will contain a map of the vendor hall layout and list ALL of the vendors that will have booths at the convention.

        Given that Larry’s issue (as he has stated) is primarily with John Ward and NOT the vendors, the attendees (like me), the volunteers, and other participants who did not have anything to do with the few jackwagons that made this decision, I would not be the person to put that list together, let alone post it here.

        But I have no problem informing other concerned fans exactly WHEN that list of vendors/authors will be made available to the general public, or that it can be FOUND on the Origins website early next month.

        1. With all due respect, our issue in WWII was with the Nazi leadership – but anybody who supported them was ipso facto an enemy. If the vendors had said “boo”, there would have been a rapid reconsideration of the disinvitation.

    3. Wasn’t planning on going to Origins… but I think I will contact the publishers of the games I still play and ask for a statement on GAMA’s actions.

    4. I have to agree after some rather reluctant consideration that hitting the wallets – ergo, taking our business elsewhere- is probably the only way things will change. BDS tactics IS what the bullies have been doing while being noisy about it; it’s what gets them attention.

      On the flip side, while some of us have chosen to do the same thing (e.g. ‘never buying anything by -insert name/company- again’) – but quietly. We do it individually, and it doesn’t catch as much attention (slow burn with lots of flying sparks type fire, as opposed to a flashfire) so the businesses might not be as inclined to take notice until the hit on the wallet is seen – and also dependent on how hard that hit is.

      It will take time though, given how our lack of being community-organized mobs, and dependent on how many of the ‘woke’ companies end up doubling down further.

      Get woke go broke doesn’t happen easily. I understand the reluctance to become like the monsters we fight though. And in a lot of cases, we smaller fish can’t even really fight back in terms of litigation and finances. It’s an ugly situation we’re in and I sadly think it’ll get worse. I hope it won’t, but…

  75. As someone who has done a great deal of events planning in a previous life, I’m watching and listening to these ‘dis-invitations’ of major talent from conventions with a mix of horror and fascination. It’s similar to watching a multi-car pileup on the highway with body parts and flashing blue lights. You can’t look away.

    First of all, do these conventions have ANY professionals on their staff? Or are these all amateur volunteers?

    Second, there’s a fundamental rule in events planning – “Never piss off the talent that puts butts in seats.” Your customers are paying big money to be in the same room with the talent you contracted to attend. If for some unknown reason, you no longer want said talent to attend your event, you handle it very discretely. You pay the talent a reasonable sum to go away quietly. Then you put out a communication saying something like ‘…scheduling conflict…..unable to attend….we’re happy to announce that so-and-so will be our new headlining act for this event…’

    The way this convention is handling the communications around this event is starting to look like a parody example of everything NOT to do in this business.

    It sounds crazy but I have to ask – are they TRYING to drive away their paying customers? Looking at their behavior, it is the most reasonable explanation…

    1. Yeah, it’s funny. He said his got rid of me to avoid controversy… Yet he managed to do it in the most controversial way humanly possible.

      1. Possibly working with the “Bad press is good press” idea? ‘Cause it looks like he’s following the numbers manual on how to fuck up.

        1. “Never attribute to malice what can be adequately explained by incompetence” and all that.
          John probably thought Larry would meekly & quietly slink away. He probably though Larry was “not a real author”, and wouldn’t get this sort of fan reaction.
          And when the “unexpected” happens following a super stupid decision like this, most people panic and make really, really ultra stupid decisions- doubling down on false info, for one. Lying about communications. Everything John Ward has done has the hallmark of the PR equivalent of running around in a screaming panic with no real actual idea of what to do.
          Which will result in a big financial hit, Ward’s well deserved firing, and the next group who will do the best they can to rebuild the reputation they just destroyed.

          1. Never assume stupid people can’t be malicious.

            Why, some of my best friends are stupid…

            The entire thing comes across as contrived. The timing is awfully quick and Ward’s Facebook message is damned near DESIGNED to gather controversy.

            Also, that Larry was invited as the Guest of Honor would indicate against Ward ‘n company not knowing who he is. SOMEONE had to reason out why he should be the GoH.

            More time was spent looking into his bonafides than into any “allegations”.

            Regardless, if Mr. Ward is stupid or stupid and malicious, the man acted in bad faith (at best) or invited Larry with the intent to act maliciously.

          2. True, there’s always space for “why not both”. He may think he’s some sort of chessmaster garnering free publicity and positive controversy, but he’s working from a flawed perception. And most of the folks who try this sort of thing wind up failing even harder.

    2. It’s a well-known fact among regular gaming hobbyists that Origins is run by clowns (GAMA clowns, to be exact). Year after year they encounter numerous problems with their event registration system, fail to make reasonable improvements or plan for their server demands, and yet have no explanation other than “let’s do it again the same way next year” because “reasons”.

      Like a few of the other posters around here, I honestly had no idea who Larry Correia was until someone posted a comment in a different forum that he had been invited, then dis-invited (“recend” is the word, right?). So I did some googling, found this site, found some other websites, wasted time at Vile770, and read about the Sad Puppies campaign It’s clear to me that Larry was targeted strictly because he is a gun-toting libertarian Mormon in Utah (and all the “so-called” negative baggage that comes with that), and came to the conclusion that just his very existence triggers every mamby-pamby, safe space creating, Starbucks-swilling, pink haired wannabe from here to Berkeley.

      That’s when I realized “hey, I think I like this Larry guy!”

      It’s sad that Larry won’t be coming to Columbus. I am of the opinion that he should just come to Origins as “my” guest, get a badge for himself and his son, and be just like all of the others who want to be there for the games and to see friends. Screw it if his GoH status was “recended” and just come for the fun of it as a gamer, not an author. Perhaps his mere presence will make enough people upset that we can then watch the complete and unfettered breakdown of mental midgets who can’t bear to be confronted by their own bigotry and hatred.

    3. Actually, as I quick follow up (and because as a new poster I don’t know how to edit a post) – the actual Origins event and the five days it encompasses is actually a very well run machine – but that actually has nothing to do with John Ward, GAMA, or anyone with “decision making” power. It is a great convention because for those five days, it is entirely composed of volunteers who just love to play games. I have never actually seen a real GAMA employee on site – just volunteers doing their best, despite the fact that the back office is clown-central.

      1. Yeah, I’ve tried to be clear in my statement that I’ve got no issue with the people, volunteers, staff, or vendors of Origins, and I hope they have a really fun weekend. My issue is entirely with the behavior of John Ward.

      2. Sometimes Origins onsite is a well run machine. For many years the on-site registration and badge pickup was messed up due to poor planning by the organizers.

        This year event registration was totally screwed up for more than the first 24 hours of registration. They sent an “apology email” to every registered person.

        I agree that the events themselves are well run – but GAMMA has nothing to do with any of them.

        GAMA is a handful of people in a trade association.

        In an email sent to GAMA members where Ward claims to have “received emails from exhibitors and sponsors” complaining about Larry. And the only specific thing mentioned was “the Hugo Awards.” I guess he could not summon enough manhood to tell Larry directly.

        You can read it at:
        https://www.reddit.com/r/boardgames/comments/8jocyh/gama_letter_to_exhibitors_about_the_larry_correia/

        He also complains that mean people sent him mean emails. He further claims that “none of the 20 emails were registered for Origins.”

        I’m going to talk with my buddies at Origins next month as well as online. After I get back I’m writing both the Origins organizers and the GAMMA board to complain about:
        a] The complete suck of a registration system
        and
        b] Inviting and disinviting a guest of honor.

        Larry is right, the average vendor and groups running Origins events have nothing to do with this. It is totally on the GAMMA staff and a handful of complaints they fielded.

        I’m both attending and running an event.

        1. I know for a fact his claim of 20 emails, none of them guests, is a lie he told to placate the vendors. Because I’ve had more emails copied to ME than that. And also, that doesn’t jive at all with the number of refunds they actually processed that day. Not by an order of magnitude.

          1. And I am also going to call bullshit on John Ward saying that none of the emails that he received were from “guests”, because I specifically sent him an email asking if the removal of Larry was a “mistake”. I also asked him if the reason for the dis-invite was due to a few small, but loud, voices making a stink. I was pleasant, but expressed my disappointment in a professional way.

            He still hasn’t replied. I have a sneaky suspicion that he won’t, despite the fact that I have had multiple email discussions with him since the 2016 check-in fiasco.

          2. I sent him a very polite email expressing my disappointment. Nothing. No reply, no acknowledgment, nothing.

  76. Their loss and very dis-appointing. I for one am a fan of your work and would honored to have met you and nabbed an autograph on one of the many books of yours I own, as well as a picture with you.

    I really dis-like how social media destroys people.

  77. So this person is muting or blocking anyone that disagrees with her. They make a bombing run and scatter bombs willynilly with complete disregard of the carnage. But the do it under the guise of “peace love happiness and I’m diverse!”

  78. Not only would I sue him, I’d send the process server to him during (or just before) the convention.

    1. Doing so during the opening ceremonies would work nicely.

      For bonus points, have the process server wear a Paranormal Tactical polo shirt.

  79. Really sorry to hear that.

    People need to realise that caving into bullying just leads to more bullying.

    Opinions are too dangerous? This is not going to go anywhere good.

    Oh, and congratulations on winning the painting competition.

    1. I would wear that!

      I have an outstanding order with a T-shirt company that is held up due to IP issues. I think I am going to have to call them and give them a different design instead.

      Thanks for the awesome suggestion. If I get the shirt, I will wear it on Thursday during the convention for when I am walking around the vendor’s hall – perhaps a visit to Ronin Games or Hub Games (and any of the other vendors who have publicly expressed support for Mr. Ward’s cowardice) just to see their reaction.

  80. This whole thing has become really f-ed up. With Ringo I was personally more concerned about his safety. People need to put on their big boy/girl panties and learn to occupy the same space with someone they don’t share opinions and worldviews. It is really not going to be the end of the world.

    1. No. Death to the infidels. The enemies of Left fascism must be cleansed by Holy War. They must be put down by fire and steel, in the name of the Most High and of the Sacred Texts of the Great Karl. They must be liquidated as a class.

      We are Legion. No one is safe from our righteous fury:

      https://www.esquire.com/entertainment/books/a33532809/george-rr-martin-hugo-awards-2020-controversy-explained/

      Bow to the Red God, you racist transphobic mortals. The night is dark and full of terrors, Look to your sins, George.

  81. dexf on File 770 provides “evidence” of LC’s racism:

    “Saladin’s a nice guy, and beloved by SMOF (we were up for the Campbell at the same time), but I’m predicting he’ll come in last, because this is his only book and he’s not built up a huge SMOF backer faction yet, but just having nominated a guy with an ethnic name will make the SMOFers feel all warm and tingly inside and good about themselves, so that’ll be enough for them.” – Larry Correia

    http://file770.com/?p=42224&cpage=1#comment-803934

    Yeah, I can just see the hate dripping off that.

    1. My comment is derisive toward the sleazy, virtue signalling WorldCon voters. Not Saladin. I wish him the best. I hear he’s doing well in comics. The cliques were super happy to brag about voting for a Muslim, “look how inclusive and diverse we are! gold star for us!” and then after that they forgot about him. They certainly didn’t help his book sales any. They nominated him for the Campbell twice and best novel once, and yet I hardly ever saw any of them actually talk about his work. They talked about his identity and they talked about THEMSELVES.

      That’s a huge disservice to any author’s career. But they don’t actually care about the authors. They care about self-aggrandizement.

      So I’m perfectly happy to stand by that quote.

      But seriously? I’ve been blogging for a decade, writing political articles, twenty books, forty something short stories, hundreds of appearances in front of thousands of witnesses… and that’s the best they can do for evidence of my hatemongery?

      1. “My comment is derisive toward the sleazy, virtue signaling WorldCon voters. Not Saladin.”

        That’s obvious to anyone reading for context without bias. Two criteria that exclude SJWs.

        To your last question, that’s the closest I saw to anyone trying to support their accusations against you before I couldn’t stomach the File 770 commentariat any longer.

        1. When the Guardian crowd sourced their witch hunt, they got a bunch of people to comb through everything I’d ever written, and they were dredging up everything. Literally the very best thing they could come up with was my voluntarily teaching self-defense to women was “victim blaming”.

      2. Judging by how many times the Ahmed quote — and ONLY that quote — has been cited the past week, the answer is . . . yes.

        1. That’s just pathetic.

          All this massive huge freak out, and that’s literally the best “evidence” they could come up with? I said that the WorldCon voters (which is overwhelmingly white, liberal, and old) would use somebody to score virtue points.

          Let’s say that their ridiculous interpretation is right (it’s not), but bear with me. Even if they were right, does that comment years ago justify the national freak out? Not even close. What a bunch of losers.

  82. Best way to expend everybody’s energy would be in a campaign to have the con’s sponsors remove their monetary support.

    Otherwise it’s just a practice in “It’s fun to be angry!”.

  83. Just saw a video about this kerfuffle. Read what ya wrote, read a couple other articles on said issue. Read the articles about you.
    Keep on keeping on BROTHER.
    Outside of recently seeing your book series in BN. This is my intro to you and your work. I THANK the group think for putting you on my radar. Will be picking up you monster hunter book tomorrow.

  84. John, I love your work, and I loved how you stood up to offer a diverse slate of titles to SciFi fans with the Sad Puppies a few years back. You introduced me to a ton of really good stuff that I would have otherwise overlooked. You might want to take a look at what is going on over in the Comic Industry surrounding Richard Meyer aka Diversity & Comic’s attempts to publish his crowdfunded comic book Jawbreakers. He’s crowdfunded to over $300,000. Tons of readers wanting the book. Yet a cabal of comic professionals led by Mark Waid and a colluding group of comic shops just threatened the publisher Antartic Press and got them to fold and drop the book. Meyer has had enough. He has filed complaints with the FTC referencing Sherman Act violations and he has engaged a lawyer to go after at a minimum certain individuals for tortious interference in the contract dealings between his publisher and himself. Good for him! That’s the only way this is going to stop.

    Similarly they just interfered with a contract arrangement between you and Origin that resulted in a loss for you. Plus a tremendous amount of slander. I assume given your history as an author you likely have access to some legal advise. It might be time to use it. Not simply for squishy things like slander. But for the clearly coordinated actions designed to deny or interfere with your business dealings. Those are Federal Crimes. Both Civil and Criminal. Rattle their cages.

    1. So Meyer is now exploring legal action? Good for him. It’s about time someone took these thugs to task.

  85. “People who were coming because I was there were cancelling their memberships “,and only getting partial refunds,” If they paid with a major credit card contest the charge for “Failure to deliver”

  86. I suppose it’s necessary to offer a defense against baseless accusations, but the people who need to read that aren’t going to; or if they do, they aren’t going to believe it. Their trusted sources of moral purity have spoken, relieving the low-functioning organ behind their glazed eyes of any unnecessary burdens.

    Anyone from the outside looking at this can see – from the sheer incompetence and unprofessionalism on display from Ward and his gang – that your character needs no defense. “Show me the evidence” should be sufficient, but these power-tripping bullies have created an environment where the good people have to react to the most absurd and ridiculous allegations.

    I’m afraid Ringo has it right up-thread. Until these people start getting hit harder than they’re hitting (by informing vendors and with cease and desist letters on Law Office letterhead), it’s only going to get worse. They don’t know how to self-regulate.

  87. So I gotta ask because it’s been bugging me. What the hell does the word “unsafe” even mean in this context? How can the fact that an author is in attendance at a conference cause one to feel “unsafe”? And how do these people react in an environment that literally is unsafe?

    I have a feeling that even if someone explains it I still won’t understand.

    1. Leftist crybullies hysterically create imaginary physical threats in their heads and then use those invented boogeymen as the basis for their hostile antics. Even more than that, after having invented these boogeymen, leftist crybullies use their own hysterical behavior as itself the reason to be hysterical. “Oh, oh! I’m so upset — look what the giant meanies did to me and my widdle feewings! The giant meanies are totally unsafe and scary and need to be banished right now!” Really, it’s arrogant, disgusting, infantile solipsism that goes around and around, endlessly.

      Seriously, if you’re for instance a Republican or even a Democratic Trump supporter, then your mere existence causes malignant cancers to spontaneously erupt in puppies and orphans. Being an outright libertarian or objectivist is exactly the same thing as being Adolf Hitler plus the puppies and orphans develop hideous, disfiguring boils. That’s genuinely how these ridiculous yet scary goblins think. Perhaps a few dozen goblins should be … sacrificed for intensive laboratory study of their brains to discover whatever might be behind this profoundly diseased behavior. I can think of quite a few suggestions on which highly public goblins would best serve the purpose of timely scientific inquiry, and I’m sure other folks have their own ideas on potential candidates.

      1. I understand your words, but I don’t understand their mindset. They actually think they have a “right” to be protected from people they disagree with?

        My simple mind sees that as un-American. Of course, I have a feeling they would wear that label as a badge of honor in their circles.

        1. It is hard to understand. Look at it this way: This is a religion to them. It is what they put utmost faith in, what they believe, and defines their state of mind and of spirit. It is what they are at the very core of their souls.

          Now: This is a faith, but it is a fragile faith when put up against, oh, a real belief system like Christianity or that uncaring thing called Reality. But it’s the core of what they are. To have that threatened is to have the core of what they are threatened. They will do anything, pretty much, to prevent that threat from manifesting, including denying that it already has and is overwhelming.

  88. This kind of ugly attack on Mr. Correia’s livelihood is just the tip of an iceberg that includes everything from blacklisting to attempted murder — reference the recent deadly attack by a “Bernie Bro” against multiple Republican lawmakers that came remarkably close to igniting a frightening civil war between leftists and everyone else.

    I’ve long said that it’ll be necessary — most likely in this modern age with a crowd-driven cloud application — to relentlessly track toxic individuals and make every legally viable effort to get them abruptly fired from their jobs, to get them forcibly evicted from their homes, to get them banned as terrorists from tens of thousands of private businesses across the country, to get them violently arrested on the smallest of pretexts, to get them instantly sued for the tiniest torts, and to otherwise make their lives sheer, unending hell. They want to act like nasty little goblins, well … they have no idea of the sort of nastiness that can emanate from a furious group of decent folks who’ve finally had it up to orbit with the hostile, creepy shenanigans of “social-justice” howler monkeys and other leftist vermin.

    I’ve been a voice in the wilderness on this for twenty years and more, and it gives me little satisfaction to see the zeitgeist finally shifting to acceptance of the need to strike back, terribly and overwhelmingly, against the arrogant leftist filth. The culture war, verging erratically as it has into actual murder and raw thuggery against conservatives, libertarians, objectivists, and other decent folk in the United States and other supposedly advanced countries, will be ugly indeed before it’s over. They started it, but we will finish it with the near-total destruction of the enemy’s physical ability to attack, harass, frighten, injure, or murder true human beings.

  89. Oh, brother. It looks as if my paragraph formatting was automatically stripped, leaving behind the proverbial wall of text. -_-

    1. There’s no way they didn’t know who they were inviting. The very first hit when you Google “Larry Correia” is his Wikipedia page, with Sad Puppies in the first paragraph.

      They only invited him so they could signal their virtue by uninviting him.

  90. “and my mom is half Jewish.”

    Which half? If your mother’s mom was Jewish, according to Jewish law that makes you a Jew.

    1. I’ve noticed that a lot of “people of color” that hold high ranks in Leftwing organizations tend to be very very white looking. Yes, they may have minority parents* (not all, as per Rachael Dozel and Liz Warren), but the look is usually pure vanilla.
      There’s very very very few actual minorities from actual poverty, that look like minorities in the inner circles.

      *Who are very often upper middle class wealthy types.

  91. I’ve been to Origins six times. I planned on going this year, and hitting GenCon as well for the first-ever “double-con” year.

    Canceled my tickets to Origins. Won’t be going back unless they grovel.

  92. A John Ward is running for congress in my district, and he’s as much of a pushover as this guy: His “conservationism” vanished when I asked him about NFA repeal and then told him him claim “weren’t necessary” was hypocritical when he opened with the British being kicked out by armed civilians (A shame that wasn’t being recorded from what I know). Don’t think it’s the same guy though: Origins Game Fair isn’t even in Florida

  93. Enough’s enough. We need a life-sized cardboard cutout of Larry that we can take to conventions where he isn’t welcome. Larry’s a big guy, though, so carrying that around might be a full time job. Fun, though.

  94. Wth do they mean by “inclusive”?? How the *&?!%^ is it “inclusive” to ostracize someone because you *may* disagree with their views? The Left threw every modern apostasy charge they could think of at Larry to get him ostracized

    The SJW compliance goons, acting as classic thought control enforcers of the type Orwell writes, want to *force* you into their model of the In short, they want to control your imagination.

    So this means Gaming is no longer a Safe Space for geeks, nerds, goof balls and the imaginative, the real iconoclasts and creative.

    Gaming was my original Safe Space, if you will. A place I could go to hang out with others to escape the troubles of the daily grind. Some of us had to deal with addiction and substance abuse at home…or physical abuse…feelings of being an outcast, a loner, or ridiculed for being a book-smart geek or a bone-head lunk.

    None of that mattered when leading my character to fate and glory in a D&D game, delving into a temple to face down mind-shattering Cthulean horrors, or charging your cavalry troop into the flank of your foe.

    Gaming is all about imagination. It was what you did in game was what mattered, not who you were in real life. So that one guy likes to play female elf characters and might be sweet on that other guy. So what? Or that gal likes to play Barbarian characters and smash stuff. Maybe she’s having a bad day, or maybe she things at home she works out in the game. Or maybe you don’t have any big issues and like the idea of being able to use magic to fly and levitate.

    In the game we could just be. Gay, straight, white, black, who cared when you’re pretending to be a Half-orc, or a Halfing or a Vargyr (Traveler-verse).

    And we could do all this knowing we would *not be judged.* I wouldn’t judge them, they wouldn’t judge me — except as how I acted in Game.

    And now the SJWs want to judge. They want to control. They explicitly want to decide who belongs and who does not, and what you can say, do an think. *!@@&! Them!

    That’s being an anti-gamer in my book!

    1. So this means Gaming is no longer a Safe Space for geeks, nerds, goof balls and the imaginative, the real iconoclasts and creative.

      Gaming was my original Safe Space, if you will. A place I could go to hang out with others to escape the troubles of the daily grind.

      THIS WHOLE POST. YES. THIS! THANK YOU!

      (and I played a tall, busty Dark Elf in an MMO for YEARS because it was a person I could never be, and it made me laugh.)

  95. The course is clear. We’ll just have to create a new con designed to thoroughly explode their heads. Call it something like “Make Fantasy Great Again!” or something. We’ll get Larry, Ringo, Mike Williamson, and a few other as GoH. Make a special point to invite all the SJWs, because we’re inclusive like that. Hand out crying towels to the protestors, and then laugh at them.

    And because we’re concerned about their safety, open or concealed carry in mandatory.

    1. The things I’m look looking forward to at Trigger Con include:
      1. Open carry
      2. Gunfighter cosplay (with live weapons in holsters)
      3. In-convention gun show

      And as a consequence,
      4. Zero crybullying snowflakes

  96. Origins was launched by Simulations Publications, Incorporated and The Avalon Hill Company as a board wargaming convention. I remember when it happened.

    Now, I am actually somewhat familiar with the board wargaming hobby and its history.

    I started playing board wargames, what we now call hex-and-counter games, in 1958. That was when the first modern board wargame, Tactics II, was published. It’s like becoming an SF fan, by subscribing to Hugo Gernsback’s new magazine, Amazing, in time for the first issue (which I have read, thank you). Of course, back then the hexes were actually squares.

    In 1963, I played a computer wargame using what was perhaps the world’s first joystick. The computer in question, a PDP-1, is I gather now in the Boston Computer Museum.

    In 1964, I founded what was probably the first college wargaming club, the MITWGS (now the MITSGS).

    Soon thereafter, I published the very first board wargaming fanzine, The Tank. We advertised in the world’s first and only board wargaming prozine, the Avalon Hill General. The Tank was the first board wargaming magazine to publish a complete board wargame in one issue. (I designed it.) I later published a number of other game magazines, including The Guide To Wargaming Periodical Literature, History Of Wargaming Quarterly, the American Wargamer, Strategist, and Game!

    In 1974, I published, in another zine I founded, this being the American Wargamer, a review of that new set of miniatures rules Dungeons & Dragons. The rules had been written by two friends of mine, people with whom I had corresponded for some years, Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson. I said that Gary and Dave had in fact not written a new set of miniatures rules. They had created a whole new branch of the hobby, to be compared in its importance with board wargames, miniatures, and diplomatic games. At the time I published this claim, it was unique and not widely believed. As it turned out, I was right.

    I also collect board wargames and their literature. My board wargame collection now approaches 6000 titles, a count that will probably be passed this year. I also collect board wargaming magazines. My collection occupies 16 four-drawer filing cabinets.

    I therefore have some modest knowledge of the wargaming hobby.

    If I think back to the early 1970s, and a meeting of the MITSGS, I am reminded that members might have very different political opinions. At a given meeting, we had several people who were far to the right, we had the student political analyst whose computer software in 1968 meant that the Technology Broadcasting System called the presidential election correctly and accurately well before any of the other networks did, I had my Battle of the Bulge opponent who spent his time between his moves reading Mao Tse-Tsung’s On Guerrilla Warfare because after all he was a far left sort and should read the material written by distinguished far left leaders, and finally there was the young lady whose support of women’s liberation included her shaved-to-the-scalp haircut. We were there to meet and play games, not to argue about politics, which we didn’t.

    We now arrive at the present and the recent Origins action with respect to Larry Correia.

    In my opinion, the conduct of the Origins convention has disgraced our entire wargaming hobby. The convention organizers should be ashamed of themselves. Prior generations would have greeted news of their actions with contempt, assuming that disbelief could have been overcome.

    As it happens, I am President of the wrold’s oldest non-regional SF club, the National Fantasy Fan Federation. We welcome fen of all political persuasions.

    1. Hi George,
      Its Louis, missed seeing you at the Sunday night movie events at Blackie’s house.

      I did get a copy of your book about the AH game Stalingrad and have been looking to find the time to watch your youtube series about wargame design.

      More on topic; I also find it incredible that something that started out as a mostly wargaming convention has come to this, banning a person partly because of his support of the 2nd amendment right to keep and bear arms!

      Glad to hear from you,
      Louis J. Desy Jr
      LouisDesyjr@gmail.com
      Tuesday, May 22, 2018 10am

  97. What a ridiculous situation. Our society seems to have lost the art of civil disagreement. I’ve bought a copy of Son of the Black Swords; looks promising 🙂

  98. I’m a libertarian and you should stop. You’re embarrassing us. I read your reply on tor.com and it’s hard to imagine being so intellectually challenged. It’s not that you don’t recognize institutional racism. You describe it at great length, for example when you talk about how the people with disposable income to travel are a privileged subset of the whole, or how RPG comes from a western cultural inspiration. The problem is that you reject that these things are racist and you talk over a person of color in a super condescending, preachy way. As a libertarian one would have thought you’d have an analysis for how these racist outcomes are rooted in statism, in the two examples I cited, historical redlining practices and manifest destiny respectively. But nooooooooo … You pick up the tired “color blind” canard that has nothing to do with equality and everything to do with erasure. You’re not a libertarian, you’re right wing trash who doesn’t give a shit about anyone’s freedom but your own. Shame on you.

    1. Bitch please, move your tired shit along.

      The Billionaire Heir got all butt hurt over 50,000 people not catering to his angst. Yes, racism exists. I never said it didn’t I talked over him because his argument was an illogical crybaby temper tantrum about how 50,000 strangers didn’t cater to his personal hang ups. Racism existing doesn’t change the fact that his article is bullshit, and no, fuck you, somebody doesn’t get special privilege to say dumb shit unopposed just because they are one paint chip color darker than I am. So fuck you.

      Also, none of that has anything to do with individual liberty or limited government, so fuck you twice.

      1. Oh, but if you’re such a libertarian, I’m betting you’re one of those Legalize Pot and fuck everything else kind. Because most libertarians don’t fall for the collective guilt nonsense, nor do they try to shame thousands of individuals because they are having fun wrong. Social justice is neither social, nor justice. So go fuck yourself a third time.

        1. You know what, the more I think about your post, the stupider I think you are.

          Now, you can say that I”m being racist against you, because I’m being rude and dismissive to your stupid self-righteous bullshit, but I don’t even know what you look like (same as I didn’t know what George the Turns Out To Be A Picked On BILLIONAIRE was either). I judge ideas based upon their merits. I judged people based upon their character. His point was dumb. His character struck me as entitled, whiny, and bossy. Ergo, he got mocked.

          Now you strike me as a chickenshit.

          You toss around the word statist, but I’m not the one telling people they’re having fun wrong. I’m not the one banning people from events. I’m not the one attacking strangers over their perceived racism. I’m not the one blaming individuals for the sins of their society. I don’t buy into collective nonsense.

          So in conclusion, allow me to reiterate my initial Fuck You. I probably should have just stuck with that and saved us all time.

        2. Some people just don’t get that “Libertarian” and “Libertine” aren’t the same thing.

    2. As a female person of color I reject your point of view as infantilizing , condescending and racist, insinuating that people who aren’t white aren’t capable of anything without a hand up from white folks, or without being specifically catered to, as if we have a disability by being not white. Fuck you. You’re probably a xenophillic self-hating Westerner living in the West, not recognizing that other non-white groups are perfectly capable and are racist. No? Look up how the Japanese treat ‘halfs’, for an off the top of my head example. Racism isn’t only something white people do; neither is slavery.

      Role playing is a Western cultural inspiration? Wow, somehow, kids worldwide playing local versions of their cops and robbers / cowboys and injuns / heroes slay the dragon/demon/evil faerie become cultural appropriators without knowing it! I guess nobody in history ever played house. You flaming idiot, roleplaying as a game is something any kid in any culture does – PLAY PRETEND; RPG gaming only comes from that and is at the very roots, human-cultural.

      For a supposed libertarian, you sure have swallowed shitloads of Leftist Marxist lockthink – rooted in statism, seriously? You’re a fake, bub, and couldn’t pretend to be a libertarian even with a script and a lip-synch voice over.

      1. I guess he at least studied some of Larry’s views and chose to claim to be Libertarian instead of the usual “I’m a Lifelong Republican…” or “I’m a Concerned Christian…” or similar.

        Though the prog talking points kind of gave the game away.

    3. I’m still trying to figure out what on earth a game inspired by Norse mythology has to do with Manifest Destiny.

    4. I’m an actual libertarian and you should stop. Your blatant Left fascist hypocrisy is embarrassing us. I read your reply here and it’s hard to imagine being so intellectually challenged. It’s not that you don’t recognize racism and the solution to it. You describe it, for example when you allude to the color blindness theme of Dr Martin Luther King. The problem is that you claim beliefs that represent a rejection of racism are themselves racist, and then sanctimoniously talk over a person of color in a super condescending, insulting, preachy manner. As someone who claims to be a libertarian one would have thought you’d have an analysis for how racism is rooted in the very sort of bigotry and statism that Critical Race Theory and the violent cop-hating race-baiting Marxist hypocrisy of “Black Lives Matter” represent, to mention two relevant examples of the present day, and of the cancel culture practiced by Left fascists so reminiscent of the early treatment of Jews or “Juden” by National Socialists and Ukrainians or “kulaks” by Bolshevik socialists of the 1930s. But nooooooooo … You claim MLK’s “color blindness” and dream for a ethnically tolerant world is a tired canard that has nothing to do with equality and everything to do with erasure. You parrot the same systemic socialist racism of the National Socialist “Nazis” and Bolshevik and Maoist “Internazis,” who force everyone into ethnic pigeon holes and “ethnic ghettoes” and “soviet republics” and similar enclaves where people are judged solely on the color of their skin, their ethnic intersectional pedigree, their preference for sexual partners and their assumed gender, rather than the actual content of their character. Indeed, you cheerfully ridicule those people of character who openly and bravely reject the flagrant racism of modern Marxists and of Marxist socialism in general. You’re not a libertarian, you’re left wing trash who will deliberately misrepresent the words of others and the behavior of Left fascist hooligans, and even shamelessly lie for the sole advantage of a Left fascist ideology. You clearly don’t give a shit about anyone’s freedom but your own, and that’s simply not what being a libertarian is about. Shame on you and your deceitful ideological appropriation.

  99. I have decided to register my displeasure with Origins. I could do this by not attending Origins… but the fact is I had no plans to do so anyway. Instead, I have ordered three new Larry Correia books. I call this strategy, “I win, Larry wins, SJWs get nothing”.

  100. Hi,
    I do not know of anyone else getting pulled from the schedule except myself.

    My name is Louis Desy and in 2016 I was scheduled to give a total of ten hours of lectures as part of the Origins War College lecture series. Eight of those hours were on the economy between the World Wars. Two of the hours were a one hour on a lecture titled, “The Culture Wars” and another hour on “GamerGate”.

    I thought those topics would be of interest since the lecture series is about the instruments of national power, history, warfare, economics and politics. “The Culture Wars” and “GamerGate” I thought the topics would be of interest since it has been discussed that “Culture drives politics” which then effects the use and deployment of the instruments of national power, and those seemed to be recent topics on culture that was and is driving politics.

    Because I had dared to put those topics on the schedule without realizing that the ones that are really in charge had forbid any such discussion in any forum of said topics, I was banned from the lectures. The proposed lectures had been seen by a number of people before they ended up on the schedule and no one thought it was out of place or a problem to give such lectures at Origins.

    Once the schedule was posted Origins got comments in its social media, and then took me off of the entire schedule for all lectures, forever.

    I was never sent anything in writing or email, and John Ward himself would only deliver the order through another person that I was working with and in the area of Columbus, OH; and even delayed relaying any message for several days as I wondered what was going on.

    It all seemed to be a very sneaky and underhanded way of dealing with the situation.

    As if that was not bad enough, Origins left my eight hours of economic lectures still on the event worksheet through the entire Origins 2016 event, so anyone looking at that would have thought that I simply did not show and the failure to give any lectures was on me.

    I think that part that myself and others do not understand, is that they was no proof that the people calling for the lectures to be shutdown even attended Origins! Also, in my case, some of those people were ‘running around’ checking to see if I was scheduled for any other cons, like Gencon, with the objective of doing the same thing there to me.

    Take care,
    Louis J. Desy Jr.
    Monday, May 21, 2018
    LouisDesyjr@gmail.com

    1. GamerGate, which came after Sad Puppies and had similar ‘exposure of the hypocrisy and collusions’ results in games ‘journalism’ and more was very, very hated by the socjus zealots – and is blamed for loads of stuff including getting Trump elected while being simultaneously dismissed as being ‘just a bunch of whiny, white cismale fedora-wearing neckbeards with no real power.’ And unlike Sad Puppies, had much wider reach and audience, being focused on Western gaming being infiltrated and bashed on by feminazis and their allies, and similar things. There was a faction called “Not Your Shield” that was composed of folks that the social justice zealots were claiming to be speaking on behalf of and claimed (insert content/game here) was offensive to (insert group here) – and those folks vehemently rejected those claims, and were strongly “Do not presume to speak for me, I do not agree with what you are saying, etc”

      ANY minority or woman who disagreed with the social justice zealots on GamerGate were summarily marginalized and shouted down as ‘fakes’ or ‘sockpuppets.’

    2. Addendum: What happened to you was a standard tactic – social justice zealots who weren’t going to even be at the con would swarm, mass-email cons, businesses, etc, and threaten to boycott, or worse, until their demands were met. There was never any proof that they were going to ever do business with those institutions.

  101. Damnit… the way that things are going, I don’t know if I will ever get to see you unless I just show up at your house, Larry. I’m pretty sure that none of the Chicago area conventions are going to extend you an invite seeing as a lot of the folks involved would rather invite guests that sit on the preferred side of politics than just guests with talent.
    But, in the slim chance that I see any airborne porchetta over the skies of the Windy City, I be sure to buy a badge for that event.
    So if you see a heavy set black guy at your door from Chicago, check and see if he’s wearing a MHI patch…if so, it’s probably me.

  102. Hell, I’m the next thing to a Commie AND an artsy-fartsy writer, and I say Origins did wrong, wrong, wrong. So did ConCarolina (hadn’t heard about that until now). This is vastly screwed up.

  103. Origins removing you the way they did had one interesting result. I had never heard of you as an author before this. Sorry, just the truth, and no doubt a result of my wandering through life as a creature of habit rather than innovation. Now that I have heard of you, I’m reading pretty much everything you have available on Amazon. Just finished book 6 of Monster Hunters, and picked up Hard Magic and Into the Storm, because they sound awesome. You are a very fine writer, and I’m finding your books easy and fun to read. It doesn’t hurt that you, like me, are a firearms enthusiast.

    So, you lost a GoH credit, but gained a new and enthusiastic reader. I suspect that I am just one of many. Not the result the complainers were hoping for, I think.

  104. I’m really glad you stopped shoving hot wheels cars up your butt long enough to post this long rambling diatribe.

  105. Hmmmm
    Nazi’s or People who create Hate while pretending to be against Hate.

    Hard Choice, But one is definitively a lot more honest about who they are.

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