Puppies Prove Impotent

This year’s Hugo winners

All the Puppy News That’s Fit to Print!

I’ve been gone since Wednesday, at WorldCon (woo woo!). I’ll start with the Hugo Awards, since that’s the big thing everyone cares about. They were AWESOME. Pat Cadigan was entertaining as hell, everyone loved her. Last year was high drama due to all the Puppy Poo, so the emotional imprint of this year’s awards wasn’t as high. But on the other hand, it was nice to have a mostly-normal awards ceremony again, which focused primarily on the artists and the joy of the awarding. There were a couple No Awardings again, and Neil Gaiman delivered an EPIC smack-down to the puppies, but it wasn’t the focus of the ceremony.

The Puppies were again shown to be impotent during the event. This night was literally the optimal-case scenario for the regular fan community, I don’t think a single result could have gone better. Vox’s strategy of slating “human shields” absolutely backfired, almost as much as the Tingle slating, it was glorious to behold.

WorldCon Community to Vox Day

I checked Vox’s blog the morning after, out of curiosity, and he of course was crowing about his great victory. I guess if you define victory as “We fucked up the nominations”, then yes. But I got the impression he was trying to say the victory extended into the awards as well? Man, good luck to him spinning that one. The community showed once again that a small tantrum-throwing minority can game the nominations, but they speak for no one else. He is, as Scalzi said, the wad of chewed gum stuck on history’s shoe.

I heard from someone who couldn’t attend that the livestream of the event was a clusterfuck. While we were having a grand time in the auditorium, free of Puppies, they were showing their colors online as trolls. Our friend stopped streaming after a while, because the chat was such a frothing ragestorm. WorldCon would be well served to switch to a streaming company that pays a moderator or two to watch the channel.

Speaking of throwing a tantrum, there wasn’t NO Puppies activity this year. You’ve probably already heard of the State of Short Fiction panel kerfuffle (wherein Puppy-sympathizer David Truesdale, who was supposed to be moderating the panel, instead launched into a rant about SJWs ruining SF and hijacked the entire hour with shenanigans).  It was one of two panels going at the same time that I was torn between attending, and I ended up going to the OTHER one, since I’d been to a short-fiction panel the day before. I chose poorly. :( I missed out on the most-talked about event of the con. It was a fantastic conversation piece, even better than Tingle-talk. This was a great year for chatting with people you don’t know well! :)

While not widely reported (since everyone pretty much focuses on Truesdale’s cock-up and expulsion), there was a large guy in the audience who stood up at one point to berate of the panelists for turning his back on Truesdale during his rant, and shout about the panelists “lack of respect.” (reportedly “It’s people like you that are the problem!” or similar) A member of my Colorado writer’s group (call her “Lady M”) was sitting directly in front of that man, and she was scared she would get hurt. Now yes, I always hate reports of “I was afraid for my safety”, because a person can’t control someone having an irrational fear-reaction of them (happens all the time to young black men). But I felt really bad for my friend, as she’s an incredibly sweet and funny lady in her 50s, and normally a really tough cookie. Feeling scared is a shitty feeling.

Also, I can understand her fear, because I think I ran into the same guy. I attended the WSFS Business Meeting on Sunday, to vote in 3SV and EPH. During the meeting a big dude took the floor out of order, and nearly refused to yield. Though he did return to his seat, he was angry and aggressive for the entire 3SV debate. He had the beefy look of ex-military or ex-cop, and his tone and body language was very much “gearing up for a fight.” I was glad I was one row from the front in case anything happened, but I really did NOT want anything to happen! He was fuming and arguing with officers during the break, and finally stormed out before we came back into session. So no harm done. Guess he just needed to vent and get stuff off his chest. But I can see why even our normally-assertive Lady M was intimidated if it was the same guy at the Short Fiction panel.

Anyway, that’s it for the Puppies this year. With EPH now in effect it’s nearly impossible for them to sweep a category anymore. Given that, I assume they won’t bother to throw down another $40 next year just to be ineffectual again, but who knows? It might be worth it for some people to get their annual rage-fix. If so, 3SV will be ratified next year and we’ll finally be done with their tantrums forever.

Tomorrow, a journal-ish post of my weekend, with pics! Had such a good time!

Me and some friends at the award ceremony