The Wrong Kind of Laugh: Hugos as Joke

It has come to my attention that we of the Sad Puppies are taking the “True Fan” Puppy Kickers, far, far too seriously. Once, I joked that I was the Sad Puppy comedy corner with my Sad Puppies Bite Back series, Tom Knighton pointed out to methat I fit right in. After all, the spokes-critter was a Manatee for God's sake – all the Tweets were some variety of “Hooonnn.”

And for all that, we're still taking them too seriously.

I've seen multiple reactions to the Hugo awards ceremony. Tom Kratman said, “Yes!” Larry shrugged and said “I told you so.” Ringo said “So glad to have all my previous statements about the Hugos proven right. There is no point to tilting a diseased windmill.” Vox Day was happy to get five No Awards. Tom Kratman wanted even more. Cedar Sanderson makes me wonder if she's joining WitSec.

One reaction I have not seen was laughter.

Sure, they threw insults at us. But I've been a fat, nerdy, Conservative Catholic New Yorker for years, if I let insults bother me, I'd have slit my wrists already.

But let's look at this – They had a Dalek come out to present the award for Best Dramatic Presentation (Short form), and a Dalek announces that it was a fan of John Scalzi, Puppy Kicker -in Chief…

Could I have a show of hands? How many people would want their spokes-critter to be a genocidal alien Space Nazi? 

This is like atheists getting a personal endorsement by Satan. This is Planned Parenthood getting a quote from Moloch. I'd really rather not get an endorsement by Adolf Hitler, thank you.

These “True Fans” thought it was a *good idea* to get an endorsement from one of the most famously evil creatures in science fiction. Hell, if they had said “Vox Day,” that would have at least fit the theme they had going of Vox as Supreme Dark Lord. Since Daleks run on hate, it would have fit Larry's joke of being the International Lord thereof.

But no, they picked a Dalek for a fan. Nice going, “True Fans.” Do you idiots even watch Doctor Who? Or did you figure that it was nominated every year, then google it to find the first thing that came up?

Sad Puppies Bite Back XV: Bite Harder

If you are new here, this is part of a series. The whole series is collected at the Sad Puppies Tab Above

This is the end.  It's over.  The Hugo awards were announced this past Saturday, and the votes are in. It's done.

Wow.  Who knew you could carry a joke this far?

There are some more SWATting incidents I typed up, mainly because one person was ready-made, and one person made an offhand comment that I felt compelled to follow up on.  I would have SWATted John C. Wright earlier, but between the problem of trying to SWAT a brain in a jar, and having never read him, I had nothing to go on until I interviewed him for the show.

Now, a word on Vox Day / Theodore Beale.  He's ... a nerd.

I saw him speak during a webinar giving commentary on the Hugos.  A woman I watched with? Called him cuddly.  He supports the Wrights' superversive fiction movement, and ....

I was promised Darth Vader, damnit!  I got Dark Helmet!

Funny thing, Vox pretty much called the results from the other day as the Webinar started.  Then again, he almost sounded surprised about how vicious they were against the Sad Puppy nominees.

Anyway, and now, for the final time ....

UNLEASH THE PUPPIES.

John C. Wright

"The Brain"

[SWAT kicks door in, swarms house. In the front den is John C. Wright, the living brain in a jar, pounding out a novel using telekinesis.]

[JCW keeps typing]  Can I help you gentlemen? You could have knocked you know, it would have been possible that I would have even invited you in and explained the situation; though I had expected it much much sooner than this.

[SWAT team looks confused.  SWAT #1 looks at JCW.] We had reports of --

[JCW] --a deranged man waving a gun around, I know; I had figured; after all, it was inevitable, giving the current climate in which we reside. After the first few threats to my livelihood, I've managed to become accustomed to this level of stupidity and hostility that has been thrust upon me by the reprobates at Tor Books and the Morlocks who follow them.  We will not even discuss the loathsome comments of one Irene Gallo. Just because I dared to be unapologetically Catholic; I'm becoming tired of this general destructive nature of the luecrottas.  Somehow, I am a racist, though Catholicism is not a racial characteristic but a spiritual one, and sainthood is not an inherited characteristic.

[SWAT #1] Well, um, sir --?

[JCW] Yes, I'm a sir. I may be a brain, but I'm not gender-neutral.

[SWAT #1] We should probably leave now.  Obviously, someone made a mistake.

[JCW] By all means, leave. But there was no mistake. After all, look up the imbecility of the situation online, you'll learn that this was quite deliberate.  Just ignore anything that attaches me to GamerGate -- the only gamer who has read my work is one Daddy Warpig. Were I a pagan, I'm certain that I would erect a suitable shrine to Daddy Warpig, a stepped pyramid rising from the steaming jungles of Mexico, adorned with larger-than-life marble statues of raging boars coated with hammered gold, on which to sacrifice captive foes, and offer their still beating hearts to his glory!  AH hahahahahahaha!

[SWAT team looks decidedly uncomfortable.]

[JCW] Of course, I'm joking. It is almost depressing that I am required to say that to be understood.

[SWAT] Goodbyem sir.

[JCW] Good day, all.

[JCW  continues to pound out his novel, starring Vatican ninjas, Aslan in powered armor, fighting Kaiju demons]

Yeah, I've been told for quite some time that I had to include JCW in my SWATting, it just took me a while to figure out a way to properly pull it off.  And, yes, I did C&P a lot of his text from the attached links, but that's because he has such a distinct style of speaking, I wanted to nail it down. 

Penny "Kitteh Dragon" Redford

[SWAT opens door. It was unlocked. They charge in. SWAT leader accidentally kicks a small cat. Cat seems to be completely unharmed as it lands on its feet with a heavy thud, as though it was a heavier animal. SWAT sweeps and clears the home. They regroup in the living room.]

[SWAT #1] Did dispatch give us the wrong address?

[SWAT #2] I don't think so.

[SWAT #1 squints at a sign on the wall]  What's that? "Don't feed the kitty-dragon"? What the hell is a that? Sounds like something a kid would make up.

[Cat pads it way to center of room, and open its mouth wide, as though it's yawning, and then breathes fire, singing the nearest SWAT members.]

[SWAT #1]  RUN!!!!

Redford is an acquaintance of mine on Facebook, and oft refers to "Kitteh Dragon" in her posts. You can understand why I had to do this.

Sad Puppies Bite Back X: X marks the spot

Dear Angry Pussies,

Please stop giving me material to work with.

Thanks, love me.

For those of you who are wondering what has happened to this blog, you're going to want to go to the tabs at the top, click "Sad Puppies" and start from there. This is a very, very long story.

For those of you who are caught up, this offer of peace was posted at 2:09 AM on Friday by puppy kicker "The Cryptkeeper" David Gerrold (Just in case, a blog commenting on it: the blog is posted at nearly noon.)

Apparently, this was posted at 1:09pm THAT SAME DAY (Friday).

Ummm.... so, wait, neither Brad nor Larry commented on your 2am apology, you had angry people still pissed at being called neo-Nazis, and NOT EVEN 11 HOURS LATER you want to play This is War! No, seriously, David, are you brain damaged?

Also, I had promised some SWATting today.

A good swath of this opening was cut by Matthew Bowman, Novel Ninja, who has discovered that the characters just don't STOP talking. Welcome to the party, Matt.

And now, it's time to unleash .... oh, you know by now.

Puppies Come to WorldCon

Update: Despite the ending notes, this is now a whole series. [Click tab above for more]

Sad Puppies Bite Back (Part 3)

The "Sad Puppies" parody world I have created in my head is slowly taking over my brain, so bear with me.

If you haven't read the last two parody blogs, you might be new here.  This started with a thought: what if Sad Puppy authors were SWATted (part 1)? Then it sort of drifted from the "ringleaders" in part one (Correia, Torgersen, Hoyt) to "mere" supporters in part two (Kratman, Ringo, Weber).

While I was chatting briefly with Tom Knighton, mentioning that the tank really was all him, I was struck with a thought: What would happen if the Puppies showed up at World Con, where the Hugos are handed out?  And not the real ones, the ones I've created here.

Stop me before I post again!

... But until that point, more puppies.  I just hope this isn't too much inside baseball, like with It Was Only On Stun!

Though for those people who know what I'm talking about, it may not be ENOUGH inside baseball.

If you're surprised that this has come to a point ... you're not the only one.

William "The Morrigan" Lehman

Lehman asked for this. Literally. Never say I am not obliging.

[Lone SWAT guy comes to submarine held in drydock (literally. On stilts, on dry land). SWAT guy knocks on the hull.  From the conn tower pops The Morrigan, William Lehman, looking more like a pirate than Johnny Depp ever will, parrot on one shoulder, cutlass in hand]  Avast! Who goes there?

[SWAT guy] Hey, Will, it's James. How're you doing?

[WL] Ahoy matey! What can I do for ye?

["James"] 911 called us, they got a report of you threatening someone with a gun?

[WL] Nonsense! All me muskets are locked up tight.

[James nods]  That's what we figured.  We knew something was off when they called your place a house. You hosted too many shindigs back when you worked with us on the force. See ya around.

[WL] By the way, matey, what day is it?

[James mentions date]  Avast! I must be off!

No, that's not the end of the story. Wait for it.

Sad Puppies Bite Back

This puppy is ready for WAR

This is one of those fever dream moments. You know, that bit where you don't know where the ideas came from, or what you were thinking, or even why it happened in your head at all? It's sort of like how I wrote It Was Only on Stun! (if that doesn't explain the book, nothing does).

In his books, Love in the Ruins, Walker Percy wrote that anyone not on the left tended to adopt insults as a battle cry.  I think he was referring to something Barry Goldwater did.

Anyway, that tradition really has continued, with politicians adopting nicknames that is basically a reductio ad absurdum of every insult ever thrown at them.

That's why, if you look down the Sad Puppy backers, you have "Sarah Hoyt, Evil Yet Beautiful Space Princess" (Yes, as a proper name), Larry Correia has adopted the moniker as the International Lord of Hate.  Brad Torgersen .... anyway, we'll get there in a moment.

To be honest, I have no idea how many were self-named, and how many just sort of ... happened (and how many originated with John C. Wright having fun with it all).  I'm not that close with them. I'm "friends" with Brad and Larry on Facebook, and we all know what that's worth.  Sarah Hoyt's nickname is especially hilarious since she's about as Evil as, well, a puppy. A real puppy, not a sad puppy... oh screw you, you know what I mean.  She's downright pleasant and nice, and will even talk to losers like me.  I also know Cedar Sanderson ... though I don't know if we're friends friends, or acquaintance-friends. Sarah and Cedar talk to me. So you now know the extent of our relationship.

Anyway, back in January, I tripped over a funny piece by Vox Day -- presumably before Vox declared "Burn this bitch down!" about the Hugos -- which basically boiled down to "The monthly staff meeting of the Evil League of Evil" (in the Lair of the Puppies).

For some reason, ever since I heard about the death threats on the Puppies, and I wondered when Larry Correia or Brad would be SWATted, all I could think of was, well, what would happen?

For those people who are not familiar with the concept of SWATting, it's the practice where someone calls 911, insisting that the target has a gun, is violent and actively threatening to shoot people, in the hopes that the SWAT team knocks down someone's door and possibly gets them killed. Fun, huh? This has been a tactic that's come up in the last year. I was going to call this SWATing Sad Puppies, but I can't see that title going over well.

But just imagine....

CatholicFiction(.net), and "Dereliction of Duty"

Sometimes, I love my fellow Catholics.

And sometimes, they are brain-dead stupid.

If you look at this article from CatholicFiction.net, you'll see this great example of brain death.

Science fiction has also been derelict in its duty. Who does science fiction serve? Sci-fi is a significant buttress propping up the established church of Scientism. Sci-fi flatters both rightist and leftist elites: square-jarred heroes battle alien savages along the outer space frontier while proclaiming anti-religious and anti-natalist platitudes. As an avid reader of the genre, I have come up with a list of the major shortcomings of the genre.

While I can think of some particular examples of what this nimrod (a creature from the black lagoon named Nito Gnoci), this is just ... "Avid reader?" Really?

Funny, as an avid reader myself, Nito, you're an idiot.

If you've followed the guest posts I've written for Right Fans, or read my reviews of Karina Fabian's work, you'll probably note that this very concept is already starting to get under my skin.  But, sure, there are problems within science fiction -- science fiction fans know that "sci-fi" started as a derogatory term -- so let's play this out some, shall we?

If you compare and contract the article excerpts here with the original article, you'll note that I've cleaned up the lousy formatting.

1) Aliens

Aliens: Sci-fi stories often involve contact with numerous alien civilizations.In 1950 Enrico Fermi, in conversation with his colleagues at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, famously asked “Where is everybody?” (Meaning: If alien civilizations exist why haven’t we heard from them?) I don’t think the question has received a satisfactory answer. It is unlikely other technologically advanced civilizations exist within our galaxy. If they existed they would have already explored the galaxy, a process which takes only some hundreds of thousands of years, which is a mere moment in geologic time.

Ummm ... doesn't this presume that the aliens are more advanced that us?  This is a presumption that Rod Serling never made.  In fact, there are three distinct episodes that immediately come to mind (Third Planet from the Sun being one of them, I forget the titles of the other two).

Also, if there are other life forms out in this galaxy, doesn't that mean that they could be as advanced as we are, or maybe even less so?

This argument basically reads: If there are aliens, therefore they must be more advanced, therefore they don't exist because otherwise we would have heard of them by now?  What idiot thinks like that?

Not to mention that this presumes that any technological advancement is leaps and bounds ahead of us.  In fact, Nito assumes that aliens would advance at ONE EXACT RATE OF SPEED.  Yikes. Nito the nimrod presumes so, so much.

I'm not saying that there are aliens, but there's a lot of space out there. As Douglas Adams noted, space is big. Really big. The idea that we're the only ones in the galaxy is kinda presumptuous, don't you think? Also, the author limits himself to this Galaxy.  There are more galaxies than just ours out there.

2) Bad predictions

Sci-fi often features time travel or routine intergalactic travel. Instead of dubious scenarios that involve debating with Socrates or zooming to the Andromeda Galaxy for the weekend, sci-fi should focus on less speculative but still astonishing advances in medical, communication, and computer technology. Sci-fi readies us for a future that will never come, and too often assumes the future will mirror the past, an assumption both unrealistic and unimaginative. After all, what is the starship Enterprise but a British or American colonial gunboat?

Um, excuse me.  When 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea was written, it was science fiction, and now we have nuclear submarines. Is that not predictive enough?

But Robert Heinlein created mechanical suits of armor for soldiers to fight in, and our modern military is designing it.  Captain Kirk had the first flip phone. Doctor Crusher had the first tablet, and Captain Picard read off the first e-reader. J. Michael Straczynski's Babylon 5 developed a star fighter called Starfuries -- which NASA wants to use a model to design space construction craft. The science fiction show had the most functional design.

Oh, wait, medical technology? You mean the people who've been designing a medical tri-corder from Star Trek and the people who've made an actual Doctor Who sonic screwdriver aren't enough for these people? Are we kidding?

Oh, and these things will never come? Maybe not in our lifetime, some of them, but we've already got scientists who are coming up with variations on warp drive.  Presuming that Einsteinian physics will always be physics is like saying that Newtonian physics is the end all and be all of physics. Hint: it's not.  Considering what quantum physics might end up giving us, we might end up with better technology than warp drive.

Hell, we've already got the early stages of a transporter, dang it. Meaning that Nito the Nimrod not only doesn't know science fiction, HE DOESN'T KNOW SCIENCE!!!!

THIS! IS! 500!!!!! Thanks, and the top ten list

Cedar

This is the 500th post for this blog.

We've done a LOT since last time.

The Pius Trilogy has finally come to an end.  Each of the books, A Pius Man, A Pius Legacy, and A Pius Stand have all had great reviews, with only one prick who decided that I had kicked his puppy or something. Though if he really wants Sad Puppies, go here.  Cedar, Larry Correia and Sarah Hoyt can really make puppies cry. MUAHAHAHAHAHA

Margot

I'm sorry, where was I?  I was distracted by crying puppies.

Oh, yes, 500 posts.

I've been trying to sell these books since 2007, and I've been running this blog -- or vice versa -- since 2010.

Because of it, I've made some great friends, like Sarah Hoyt,  Ann Margaret Lewis, Karina Fabian, Daniella Bova, Daria Anne DiGiovanni, Margot St. Aubin, and Matt Bowman, the Novel Ninja.

I've read some awesome books, like Amy Lynn, Ordinance 93, The Watson Chronicles, the Book of Helen, Stealing Jenny, and a whole slough of others. Slew? Slough? Oh, you get the idea.

Kia

And these people.  Wow.

Heck, due to Kia Heavey, I have a new model for Manana Shushurin, now that the previous model is far, far too respectable to be associated with the likes of me.  She was before, but I guess she finally figured that out. :)  Kia is an author, and I recommend her books. Heck, I have.

Ann and Karina have been responsible for dragging me into the Catholic Writer's Guild. And if they weren't (it's been so long, they may not have), they're a large chunk of the reason I stay.

There's the CLFA, and that's also a long story.

Margot was largely responsible for the gun shop visit of 2014, and accompanied me to the Catholic Writers Guild conference that I was a guest at.

I've lost some good friends.  One of my first beta readers for A Pius Man died before it was published. The first artist for the site, with whom I was acquaintances since college, and I drifted apart.

Guest blog: Cedar Sanderson's "I Got Politics in my Fiction"

What's this, Declan? Exploiting the image of a hot redhead to garner hits? Not today.

This blog post is brought to you by the awesome Cedar Sanderson, author of nineteen novels in science fiction / fantasy.

Yes. I feel I now need to step up my game. The best I can do is a guest blog over on her site.

Like me, Cedar is also not someone who likes .... gah ...politics. But, again, like I did, she tried to get away, but they reel her back in. Even when she's designing kittens with butterfly wings from scratch. 

No, I'm not kidding.  Though I may be getting ahead of myself. She's obviously a metric ton smarter than I am, as she is currently going after a dual degree in forensic science and microbiology.

I better let her explain.