The other day, I visited Mike Glyer’s File 770 in response to his post that Sad Puppies 4 has been announced, with the infamous Kate the Impaler taking up the black flag from Brad Torgersen.
Kate the Impaler, of the Evil Legion of Evil, will be picking up the banner for Sad Puppies 4 and running with it. I even promised not to impale anyone with it (it’s such a pretty flag, and getting blood and… stuff… all over it would make those poor sad puppies even more sad. Even the Evil Legion of Evil has standards, you know. We’re completely against letting Sad Puppies stay sad. We want them to be happy).
There won’t be much action from Sad Puppies 4 for quite some time, but rest assured I will be lurking in the shadows looking for worthy candidates for the campaign to End Puppy-Related Sadness. When the time is right, announcements will be made and campaigning will begin in earnest. In the meantime, I shall rub my hands together and practice my evil cackle.
This is good news, of course, for those of you who were unable to join the Legion in the Sad Puppies 3 campaign. In any event, I explained that a number of the commenters had some fairly basic misconceptions about Sad Puppies in the following manner.
With all due respect, Mr. Fitch, I suggest that a popular movement led by a woman named “Kate the Impaler” is not overly concerned with an appearance of dignity. In fact, her appellation tends to suggest what the members of the movement believe can be done with those historical concerns about professional dignity.
As for the notion of being scorned, well, that’s the benefit of having been roundly scorned before. It renders one immune. They had one bullet. It’s been fired. And it is worth noting that Sad Puppies are simply following the advice of Mr. John Scalzi.
“Change the Hugos by nominating, voting and participating, or (much more slowly and far less reliably) actively making your case to the people who are nominating, voting and participating. As a pro tip, explicitly or implicitly disparaging their intelligence, taste or standing to make choices when you try to do that is unlikely to persuade them to decide anything other than that you’re probably an asshole.”
– John Scalzi, April 5, 2013
After answering a number of questions, correcting still more misconceptions, ignoring numerous passive-aggressive shots at me, and deflecting Andrew Marston’s usual nonsense, that led to this comment from one Martin Wisse:
Vox Day loves to play the victim, loves to fall back on his 1/8 Cherokee princess ancestory when called on his racism and it’s never, ever his fault that people are mean to him, despite his long and sordid history of being a racist, sexist gobshite.
He doesn’t care about science fiction, not even to the extent a Correira or Torgedsen still care about it, he just cares about sticking it to the liberals in his head.
What the Sad Puppies are doing is just your bog standard wingnut culture war, fighting an imagined persecution of their “art” when the truth is that their work is at best mediocre and worse, not nearly as popular of that of their perceived enemies. It burns them up inside to have Redshirts winning the Hugo and optioned for a tv show.
On top of that, James May posted a Twitter stream at Brad Torgersen’s site by some of the very people who were “engaging” with me at File 770. As you can see, they don’t appear to have been doing so in good faith:
Cora Buhlert ?@CoraBuhlert 3h3 hours ago @PrinceJvstin @shaunduke @SFReviewsnet Are we talking about VD vomitting all over File770?
Paul Weimer ?@PrinceJvstin 3h3 hours ago @CoraBuhlert @shaunduke @SFReviewsnet yes, and how I’m crazy for trying to engage with him.
Cora Buhlert ?@CoraBuhlert 3h3 hours ago @PrinceJvstin @shaunduke @SFReviewsnet I tried to engage with these people, too, at first, but I really think they’re beyond engaging.
shaunduke ?@shaunduke 2h2 hours ago @CoraBuhlert @PrinceJvstin @SFReviewsnet It would be nice if one could reasonably expect an actual engagement, but you can’t, really.
Paul Weimer ?@PrinceJvstin 2h2 hours ago @shaunduke @CoraBuhlert @SFReviewsnet I’ve tried. Lord knows I have tried
shaunduke @shaunduke 3h3 hours ago @PrinceJvstin @SFReviewsnet
After all, calling him out for being racist and sexist is just fact. He
is both of those things.”
Setting aside the observable absurdity of calling someone racist then openly mocking his Native American heritage, what is important is for us to understand that there is no point in even trying to engage with these SJWs because they quite clearly believe that we are beyond engagement.
Well and good. That is a feature, not a bug, as far as I am concerned. There is no reason to bother trying to convince them otherwise, as we shall simply cease to engage with them. When the SJWs whine and complain and cry and beg for mercy, they will hear nothing from us. From now on, let the only engagement we give them be the bottoms of our boots treading upon their fat, tear-stained, and screaming faces.
You can smell the SJW fear already. And however acrid and reminiscent of Cheetohs it may be, the scent is sweet indeed:
If there is proof on the Gator thing (and it is certainly wretchedly plausible, since Beale threw in with them early in one of his desperate bids for fanboys) I will be angry, and a little frightened, since coming to the attention of that particular group has proved very unsafe.
At the same time–and this is the part that frustrates me–a vote from someone who wants to watch the world burn is just as good as a vote from someone who read and agonized and voted for books they loved, and the judges can’t distinguish because then we careen down the slippery slope–and the extra maddening bit is that there doesn’t seem to be anything to DO about it!
How do you bring the weight of community disapproval on someone who isn’t part of the community?
They had one bullet. Or rather, they thought they did. It turned out to be a blank. What’s amusing is that last year they were busy victory-dancing and babbling about how upset the Sad Puppies were about our failure to win any awards. I said, entirely truthfully, that I didn’t give a damn about awards. I never have. Perhaps now they are starting to understand that I do not lie.
And I didn’t throw in with GamerGate. GamerGate is MY community. It has been for my entire life. GamerGate is my brothers and my sisters. And while I’m not the smallest billy goat in #GamerGate, I’ve certainly got some big brothers who are much bigger and badder than me.