In an interesting development, Brian Keene deleted my comments critical of his rant on writers who don't write three books a year being lazy whiners, though I'm not quite certain why he did so.

You may be thinking I must have said something insulting in order for that to happen[*] (because that would be the only reason someone would ever delete someone's comments, right?) but I do promise that I behaved myself and kept what I said brief, polite, and as non-accusatory as possible.

Of course, I can't prove that because the comments are gone, so you're free to believe whatever you wish. Regardless, I think, perhaps, I'll fire off an e-mail and see what's what, though I suspect I will have to work up a good rant about human behavior appropriate to the situation. Well, hopefully I won't.

[*] Which, if you did think, would be an interesting reaction to note on your part, given that we're talking about judging the appropriateness of responses to a guy who called a bunch of other writers whiners and derided their work-ethic because they produce more slowly than he does.

This is a post about logic and behavior. It is not about respecting your feelings but challenging them.

Still, I'd like to start this without pushing anyone's buttons, because affective heuristics happen, but I'm afraid the rest may not make as much sense as it might without starting by pushing some buttons.

For some of you, the history actually won't push any buttons or incite bias...still, I'll hide it behind a cut for those of you for whom it may, and you can jump down to the discussion and forego the history if you want to try it that way. Or you might try to short-circuit the probable reaction bias and give On Expressing Your Concerns a read to help consciously note the particular subconscious primate social instincts expected:

...history abounds with lessons on the price of being the first, or even the second, to say that the Emperor has no clothes. Nor are people hardwired to distinguish "expressing a concern" from "disagreement even with common knowledge"...If you perform the group service of being the one who gives voice to the obvious problems, don't expect the group to thank you for it...

• Everyone who disagrees with you has clearly never read your material or they would agree with you, and if they say they have they are lying.


• Should anyone provably have read your material and still disagree, they clearly didn't understand it, are irrational, or don't want to accept its truth.


• Everyone who disagrees with you is attempting to shut you down. Especially if they continue disagreeing.


• Everyone who questions or attacks your truths also never attacks the side you are against, because if they are not with you they must be against you.


• Everyone who questions or attacks your truths is helping support the side you are against, giving aid and comfort to the enemy. Therefore, they are the enemy.


• If someone makes you deeply, personally angry, they are a Nazi, and the issue is not with you.


• Everyone who disagrees with the group truth is an ignorant fuckface who should be beaten up.


• If someone questions or argues against group truth, ignore them because they are ranting asshats.


• The only sane, rational, good discussion is that which reaffirms the righteousness of the accepted group truths and do not challenge it.

I saw this via my friends list recently, and I thought "Awesome. Stick it to her, OSC!"

And then I started to see the responses to it, and the hi-larity which can only be found on the intarwebs ensued, because, "Oh Noes! You cannot mock or profane teh sacredn'holy Mother of Potter, the JKR herself!"

Holy Christ, people, she wrote some well-loved books, made a sick amount of money off of you doing so, and was criticized thereafter for being a hypocritical horse's bum. It is not like anyone is nailing Jesus to the cross.

But to hear Potter-fans react, you'd think so. The on-rushing tide of furious offense cometh!

JKR can do no wrong, apparently, and anyone who says otherwise is jealous, stupid, insane, or some combination of the above.

The Second Coming arrived, and pissed showers of gold down upon the heads of her adoring ones, and when someone said, "Hey, you know, this is piss!" they crucified him. Never mind that it really was piss.

Of course, you'd also wonder how most Potter-fans managed to read her work, given that responses to this come-uppance from OSC indicates the majority of them suffer from a serious deficiency in reading comprehension, to such an extent it seems unlikely they were actually able to follow the plot of the Potter books (maybe they just liked the way they smelled?). I've a feeling they wouldn't know satire if they looked it up in the dictionary.

Here's just one gem: "I've read each of the Harry Potter books more than once, and I didn't catch any similarity between Harry and Ender...I really enjoyed the Ender's Game book, but now it feels sullied after reading the diatribe."

I mean, really? You realize OSC is not actually claiming JKR stole his work, he's making a point that if you're going to sue someone you'd better make sure it isn't over a frivolous comparison. You realize that, right?

No, no, not the JKR fans.

At least not the ones who read the whole article before leaping to her defense, and nevermind the ones that claimed (faces full of shame) later that they hadn't really read the article before leaping to the emotional defense of their Lady Saviour and equally emotional attacks on OSC.

Hey, genocide in Darfur? You kids heard of it? Wizards and rich, white, petulant authors is more important than real people? Because, seriously, look at the number of posts the site was flooded with on that issue compared to any other issue you'd care to read about ever...

Of course, OSC is a stinking right-wing hack who calls himself a Democrat but praises Bush, the Iraq War, and Fox News, and thinks separate-but-equal is a good idea when it comes to them there gays ('cause we all know it worked so well with African Americans), so he's as full of shit as anyone else...well, more so being on the right.

See, this is why I have no respect for Penn & Teller and their ilk. They portray themselves being moral rationalists and defenders of logic and mental freedom and individuality, as but really, they're nothing more than the Billy Graham's and Pat Robertson's of the far left.

The show features notoriously vicious anti-Catholics like Christopher Hitchens and Aroup Chatterjee. Viewers are told that she intentionally let the poor suffer, providing neither beds nor bathroom facilities. "She had the f---king coin and pissed it away on nunneries," says Penn Jillette.

Donohue said it did not bother him they called him "Catholic Boy" on the show, and not even when they referred to him with the F word since he could "only see good in her." But when they mocked the Catholic Church's teaching on the meaning of suffering; when the nuns who worked with Mother Teresa in the Missionaries of Charity were referred to with the F-word and the offensive C-word for female genitalia; and when they said of the poor that "They had to suffer so that Mother [F-word] Teresa could be enlightened," he protested. "They are behaved like monsters ... It turned into hate speech."

Ok, so I was getting excited about the Ashcan Front until I read this:

...unless you have illicit access to printing or photocopying at your workplace it's going to cost you more per unit in time and materials to make ashcans than it would to use a POD printer to print books. And of course we can't guarantee the number of copies you'll sell. So you have to consider the risk that revenue from sales won't cover your expenses.

But this isn't the profit taking stage of indie publishing. This is the development stage. In effect, the expenses here beyond your sales revenue are an investment in getting what you need to carry through on your design goals and deliver on your game's potential.

We think that if you're working on a roleplaying game, and you've playtested and refined it and yet you're still not satisfied it's reliably delivering on your goals, that expenses incurred doing an ashcan that returns input from engaged hobbyists are well worth it...