"Leaders" going off the rails- a commentary

In case you missed it, the Sad Puppies are supposedly sleeping. Yeah, it's an archive link. I'll explain why later.  This will be a partly fisking post, original in italics, mine in bold.

So what happened to Sad Puppies this year?

In a form or another, we’ve been getting this question for months.  I thought I had explained back when I announced I was “leading” it, though I’ll confess by now I expected to have done something more about it.

So, what happened?

Apparently what always happens when I’m supposed to lead: my health goes feral.

And we're hearing about it halfway through the year because? If you were a real leader, you'd have owned up, and passed it on MONTHS ago, because you couldn't handle it. I'm going to skip the health paragraph and take you at your word there.

On top of which WORK has gone feral.  I need to finish at least five more novels this year (I intended to be at four by now) and that’s for traditional, not counting my indie career.  I’ve also picked up a three-times-a-week columnist gig, and there are other potential jobs in the horizon.  (Man, this ruined career sure is a lot of work.)

  How long ago was your last book before Darkship Thieves? I recall you mentioning 2 years in a previous post, so I'm just doubting your speed anymore. If I'm right, I wish you well with the column, because that's all the writing that'll be visible for quite some time. 

If we’d planned to do something different this year, I’d have passed it on to Amanda early.  But since what we’re planning has no defined deadline, as soon as we get it up (eh) in the next couple of months, we’ll be fine.  And we want to make sure we do it right.

Sure. Right, but you're so far past any relevant times for even the Dragons.  Nevermind the Hugos, which many still had nominating rights to this year. So, what happened to your original site that was up for a day? It had one post on it, and then you deleted it all.

So, originally, we’d planned to do nothing. 

I'm not convinced that's not still the plan.

But the problem with a decentralized, almost leaderless campaign is that it’s prone to be high jacked, and we realized late last year that if someone didn’t announce then someone who was wholly (really) in the rabid camp was going to take it, and make it sound like the campaigns were always one.

Firstly,  the Sads were only really leaderless last year, because you and your friends wanted to play egalitarians. Second, highjacked is one word. Third, so what? Most of the F770 crowd already or still believes they are the same. Yes, they do think Brad is just as evil as Vox.

  But there was no point lending color to this by having a self-proclaimed Sad Puppy leader who’d always been on the periphery, who’s barely competent to carry his own hat in a high wind, and who thinks the whole point is to back the Rabid selections. Yeah.  No.  So I announced.

So you admit your entire play this year was for going after Declan?  Except he made one nomination list last year for the Hugos, and was a Dragon finalist. So where were you? Oh, yeah. Doing less than he was. And ALL he did was list some recommendations, and state very clearly in his post that you were in charge this year. You won't even name names, which is cowardly and dishonest.

 Skipping most of the next paragraph...

Which has its roots in the left and in social markers for an excellent education.  It’s like medieval scholars showing off their Catholic Orthodoxy, or well… Or Shakespeare writing a lot of propaganda plays about the Tudors, which even Shakespeare couldn’t turn into anyhting but dross.  Which tells you the long term value of this trend.)

First, why mention Catholic Orthodoxy specifically? Second, I'll take Shakespeare's dross over your fiction any day. I'm not impressed.

Our intention was always to just create a page, in which those who register can post reading recommendations, not just of recent years, but of anything that struck their fancy.  There will be a place where you can say when the book was published and if it’s eligible for an award — and not just a science fiction award — and a link to the award page for people to follow, if so minded.  Yeah, we’ll include the Hugo, but probably with a note saying the award is in the process of self-destructing.

You had a wordpress site. Run it through Disqus, or a forum software. This isn't hard to slowly build up to. You had a forum style site for SP4, so don't lie about the work. It was up fast, and started literally almost two years ago.  The recommendations pages went live September of 2015. As to the Hugo, if you didn't care, why did you make such a big deal about it months ago?

 Thing is, I meant to have this up before nominations for the Dragon Award opened.  But on top of the comedy of errors above, our website provider either crashed or was hacked, so while trying to survive auto-immune and meeting more deliveries than UPS, I’ve been trying to get it up and running again.  (My author site is down also.)

So you lost the keys to your blog, or they were stolen? Pull the other one. There's this wonderful thing called tech support you should have called regarding your own site. As to the new one, who cares, the walls weren't painted yet. Start anew, and your'e good to go inside of an hour. With a new post. I don't trust you to not delete that post. Hence archive.

 We’ll put it up sometime in the next couple of months, and then Amanda and I will run it, and then Amanda will take over  Or Amanda, Kate and I will continue shepherding it.

Sounds like you still don't have a plan. Really.

 When we said this before and pointed out that PARTICULARLY indie books need some place to mention them, we were linked to/lectured by someone one the rabid side, because apparently they already have a site, so we don’t need one of our own. 

Who? And that likely wasn't the point. Instead, it was likely "see how easy this is?".

 
You just turned Marxist aesthetics on their head, and are judging books by being anti-Marxist and how much they don’t support the neo Marxist idea of justice.  That’s cool and all.  To each his own.  And since, so far, your crazy isn’t being taught in schools, it’s slightly less annoying than the Marxist crazy.

Wait. Are you talking about my book reviews? HAHAHAHAHA.... Give me a moment. 

You know that's just a schtick, right? I try to give honest feedback on negative things, but largely, I'm just having some fun at the SocJus crowd's expense. Not to mention that way folks know it's NOT an SJW virtue signal fest. Which took a LOT of people away from SFF for years, decades in some cases.

 
Look, the Tudors won, okay?  And yet the Shakespeare plays supporting them, all but Richard III which is good for other reasons, are the worst dogs in his repertoire.

I repeat my sentiment about Shakespeare's dross. 

 The Sad Puppies stand for literature people ENJOY reading, even if their beliefs are not those of the author.  Also, writing that is not pushing any belief, beyond the natural leaking that happens when an author writes something and puts part of him in the story.

What? Larry was out to expose the collusion, and just put together lists of books HE liked. You're posing as arbiters of good taste. 

 

 We fully support your right to have the recommendation sites for those who read your catechism and who will enthusiastically love and adore Piers Plowman.  It’s who you are, it’s what you do, and why shouldn’t you have a site for those who think like you?

Are you really going after the SFF Catholic crowd here? That actually write Catholic characters? I've heard tell you share the faith, but this is a funny way of showing it.

 
Your recommendations no more invalidate the need for a site of our own than do the recommendation sites from the left, going into exquisite detail about how “other” the author of some unreadable tome is, and how they have just the right amount of vaginitude and melanin.

So, where's the site? Ten minutes, up and running. Seriously.

 So, yeah, there will be a Sad Puppies recommendation site — glowers in the vague direction of servers 

 Suspension of disbelief has not been engaged.

And that’s where the Sad Puppies are.  They didn’t run away.  They’re just sleeping in the mud room

You haven't convinced me they aren't "sleeping" at the vet's.

And there you go. A full post, right there, Mrs. Hoyt. See how simple it CAN be? It doesn't need to be perfect, just get it UP and RUNNING. Before you dismiss me, I have a growing number of authors sending me books, some established, some growing. Don't bother, I've read a few of your short stories. Really. I'm not impressed.

 When you play Social Justice, the world loses.