If you look at the Hugo Awards as a Sad Puppy route -- in everything but Best Novel -- one should ask, What is the point, purpose, and future of Sad Puppies? Should there be an SP5? If there is, what does it do? Does it chase the Dragon? Does it stick with the Hugos?
If you look at the Hugos and its latest collection of nominees, such as "Space Raptor Butt Invasion," be this the end of the Hugos? Won't everything just be No Awarded again?
And the answer to that my friends, is ... do any of us care?
Yeah, you heard me, do we give a flying $%*& about anything the Hugos do? Do we care if they can be saved from themselves?
In fact, no offense to Vox, but at this point, do we even bother burning them down?
Everyone obviously knows where I stand: we're done.
The Dragon award will be a fair, unbalanced place to get genuine fan feedback in awards. 60,000 fans all there to have fun, and all of them nerds. Let's see someone, ANYONE, try to rig that. No one has that many people in their back pocket, not Vox, not Scalzi, not 770, not Larry et al.
Obviously, the Dragon is only starting, and it's still in flux, and they're trying to get their baring. But let's face it, with that many people on board, it's not even a contest.
As for the Hugos ... The very existence of the Dragon will out muscle the Hugos, by numbers if nothing else. Looking at the farce from last year, if you asked me how long the Hugos would last as a presence, I would have said 10 years. It would slowly peter out, becoming a close-knit, clubhouse award within 5 years, and in another 5, it would fade away so much, people would think it's died a natural death, even if some people still bother with it.
With the Dragon in the mix? I'm not even sure I'm going to lay money on it lasting five years. Maybe three, if Vox decides that it's still worth his time.
Yes, Rabid Puppies seems dedicated towards the destruction of the Hugos. Or taking them over. One or the other. Though if it becomes too easy, maybe even Vox will decide to let them fester and die on their own. No idea, one way or the other.
Vox, meanwhile, has declared the Sad Puppies irrelevant, since we only really impacted one major category. Though I think the entire enterprise is just beating a dead horse at the time.
There is an argument against walking away from the Hugos, of course.
Technically, ignoring the Hugos from now on would be forfeiting. If this were a sport or a war, that would be tantamount to surrender. Though I would think that it's more along the lines of knife fighting on a frozen lake, and then your opponent falls through and can't swim -- if you don't continue fighting, their last words can be about how you walked away, you pathetic cowards, and blurb blurb blurb ....
And sure, if Sad and / or Rabid walked away from the Hugos, the SJWs could go and laugh about how they sure beat those ruddy Puppies, they sure beat us, and gee, why has everyone gone to Atlanta?
I've had conversations with several people over the future of the Sad Puppies. It's been suggested that we should do, well, something with it. I concur, moving on to something else would be interesting. Though no one is really considering having the Sad Puppies impact the Dragon awards, unless, somehow, something becomes really freaking screwy with them. But that's been rejected as a possibility by every sane person I know. And most of the insane ones.
We mustn't dismiss the possibility of the Sad Puppies refining this year's technique so that we kick ass and take names next year. Though I'm wondering ... why would we want to?
Though thus far, the best reason I've heard for continuing Sad Puppies with the same mission? Just to drive left-wing douche bags insane. Which I guess is a good enough reason. After all, if the SJWs want to troll us, then I see no reason not to return the favor.
If you look at the Hugos and its latest collection of nominees, such as "Space Raptor Butt Invasion," be this the end of the Hugos? Won't everything just be No Awarded again?
And the answer to that my friends, is ... do any of us care?
Yeah, you heard me, do we give a flying $%*& about anything the Hugos do? Do we care if they can be saved from themselves?
In fact, no offense to Vox, but at this point, do we even bother burning them down?
Everyone obviously knows where I stand: we're done.
The Dragon award will be a fair, unbalanced place to get genuine fan feedback in awards. 60,000 fans all there to have fun, and all of them nerds. Let's see someone, ANYONE, try to rig that. No one has that many people in their back pocket, not Vox, not Scalzi, not 770, not Larry et al.
Obviously, the Dragon is only starting, and it's still in flux, and they're trying to get their baring. But let's face it, with that many people on board, it's not even a contest.
As for the Hugos ... The very existence of the Dragon will out muscle the Hugos, by numbers if nothing else. Looking at the farce from last year, if you asked me how long the Hugos would last as a presence, I would have said 10 years. It would slowly peter out, becoming a close-knit, clubhouse award within 5 years, and in another 5, it would fade away so much, people would think it's died a natural death, even if some people still bother with it.
With the Dragon in the mix? I'm not even sure I'm going to lay money on it lasting five years. Maybe three, if Vox decides that it's still worth his time.
Yes, Rabid Puppies seems dedicated towards the destruction of the Hugos. Or taking them over. One or the other. Though if it becomes too easy, maybe even Vox will decide to let them fester and die on their own. No idea, one way or the other.
Vox, meanwhile, has declared the Sad Puppies irrelevant, since we only really impacted one major category. Though I think the entire enterprise is just beating a dead horse at the time.
There is an argument against walking away from the Hugos, of course.
Technically, ignoring the Hugos from now on would be forfeiting. If this were a sport or a war, that would be tantamount to surrender. Though I would think that it's more along the lines of knife fighting on a frozen lake, and then your opponent falls through and can't swim -- if you don't continue fighting, their last words can be about how you walked away, you pathetic cowards, and blurb blurb blurb ....
And sure, if Sad and / or Rabid walked away from the Hugos, the SJWs could go and laugh about how they sure beat those ruddy Puppies, they sure beat us, and gee, why has everyone gone to Atlanta?
I've had conversations with several people over the future of the Sad Puppies. It's been suggested that we should do, well, something with it. I concur, moving on to something else would be interesting. Though no one is really considering having the Sad Puppies impact the Dragon awards, unless, somehow, something becomes really freaking screwy with them. But that's been rejected as a possibility by every sane person I know. And most of the insane ones.
We mustn't dismiss the possibility of the Sad Puppies refining this year's technique so that we kick ass and take names next year. Though I'm wondering ... why would we want to?
Though thus far, the best reason I've heard for continuing Sad Puppies with the same mission? Just to drive left-wing douche bags insane. Which I guess is a good enough reason. After all, if the SJWs want to troll us, then I see no reason not to return the favor.
At this point I think the most useful (to me) purpose of Sad Puppies would be as a reading list.
ReplyDeleteJust continue on as with SP4 - open suggestions for the different categories. (Perhaps even do it for the Dragon categories, I know I had to think hard about any books I'd read in a couple of them when I was nominating) Compile the results (or more likely make a script to compile for you, to save a lot of time in the long run) and publish the top 10 in the first months of each year.
No mess, no fuss, and people can do with it what they will.
That .... makes a great deal of sense, really.
DeleteI can think of a reason, purely from a "devil's advocate" standpoint, for the Rabid Puppies to keep holding the flame to the Hugos and torch it: If you're going to kill some (figuratively, in this case), don't stop half-way. Depending on the outcome of this year's voting, the Hugos may still stagger on into 2017. I don't see it making it to the year after as anything more than the punchline to a joke told on late night TV, though, unless Vox Day walks away.
ReplyDeleteIt was already a close-knit, clubhouse award. That was the problem.
ReplyDeleteWat: By close knit I mean that NOBODY knows about them, because everyone else thinks they closed up shop years ago.
DeleteNohbody: 1) Props on the username. 2) Well, if people in horror movies did that more often, there would be fewer sequels, so I catch your point.
3) 2018 as an expiration date on the Hugos? No bet.
I agree with NicBoffin. SPV should be the same as SPIV - a list of and description of the categories, with the ability to nominate eligible works thru, say Jan 31st. Mark each category with an icon to tell us which award the category is for (say, a Dragon or an Ass-terisk). We get a list of suggested reading, and even better, a list of great books and stories that came out in the last year that maybe we missed because we were re-reading all of Heinlein (except the later stuff which was weird and incest-y).
ReplyDeleteIt has been suggested by a friend of mine that we make it a year-long thing, and people can vote as they like as they go along, creating a massive recommendation list.
DeleteI really like the Puppies as a reading list. The Superversive folks can have their list, the Catholic Geeks can have their list... etc.
ReplyDeleteI really like the Puppies as a reading list. The Superversive folks can have their list, the Catholic Geeks can have their list... etc.
ReplyDeleteWhere I see the main difference betwixt the Sad and Rabid puppies is in the belief that the Hugo can be returned to the glory it had last century. By increasing participation to record levels the Sad Puppies have met one of their victory conditions. Unfortuntely the nominees seem to have gotten even less diverse thanks to the Rabids, though the represented niches are different.
ReplyDeleteIf I were going to honestly advise the Sad Puppies, I'd say leave the Hugos to die in a dumpster fire battle between the CHORFS and Rabids. Using the same process as SP4, start creating a reading list explicitly for the Dragon awards based on their eligibility time frame and categories. You still get the benefit of reading list created over a year long period, without the abuse and scorn inherent in trying to save the Hugo awards from their inevitable decline into obscurity.
Yes, there is a certain sadness in leaving the Hugo legacy in the hands of the CHORFS, who in supreme irony detest the historical winners as reactionary fascist white cis het males, but continuing to financially support the antics that were pulled last year is just self abuse. Especially when the Dragon awards are free to play.