Wednesday, June 21, 2017

Done With Dead Puppies




Well, it's over guys. The Sad Puppies are dead. Put a fork in them, they're done. Thanks to the complete and utter incompetent mismanagement by certain members of the Mad Genius Club, namely Sarah Hoyt from what I can gather, it's time to retire the business entirely. Relevant context here. 

In that link, you'll find discussion on a fair amount of nonsense, little of it relevant. It's an excuse-filled, poor-me rant combined with a pungently desperate grab for power and relevance. Much like the other post Hoyt made in January, it strikes me as being very close to Leigh Alexander's "I AM GAMES JOURNALISM, SILLY CHILDREN" claims during Gamergate. And we all remember how she ended up.

What Hoyt essentially admits to in that post is that she brought back the Sad Puppies this year specifically to crush Declan Finn and his hopes of contributing to a slate. They took his suggestion as assertion of dominance, refused to talk with him, and then Hoyt wrote a tear-stained rant about how the Sad Puppies were THEIRS, DAMN IT!

Okay, so the Sad Puppies are yours, damn it. It's really not worth fighting over at that stage. So I do have one question...

What did you do with them?

Oh? You...wow, nothing?

Really?

So you had six full months, even factoring in work and medical problems, after effectively pissing all over this brand to mark your territory, and you did nothing with it in all that time? Didn't even put together a tentative Sad Puppies list for the Hugos and Dragons? What about for smaller awards? Really? Nothing?

And now you're going to come back next year with a big shiny website to promote your "aesthetic" in fiction using the brand recognition of the Sad Puppies to attract people who think you're still doing this for altruistic reasons after engaging in the exact tactics that created the atmosphere the Sad Puppies were created to expose and combat?

Well polish my knob and call me Bob, that's one helluva plan there, my proto-Games Journos Pros.

And then when people in the comments section get all uppity (Translation: Try to help with advice nicely put), you're gonna act like a total shitheel to them?

You should write a book on how to keep friends. Or maybe read a book about SJW tactics and then try not employing them. 

One thing I will say on this is #NotAllMadGeniuses. I'm not sure all of them were in on this corrosive behavior, and don't approve of this absolute nonsense. I don't know them, so I can't say for sure, but knowing of some of them and their behavior in the past, I don't think that all of them would go for this kind of thing.

I'll also say that if anyone who associates with me wants to continue to associate with the MGC, that's perfectly fine, and I won't jump up your ass about it. I understand not wanting to make waves, and not wanting to punch right. For myself, however, I don't know these people, and am forced to judge them by their actions and how they present themselves. In my view they're duplicitous snakes who were worried that someone might take away their main claim to fame, and as such began punching right themselves in a desperate bid for self preservation. Associate with them all you like, but I'm not going to now and in the future. This, in my opinion, is quite evidently mask-slippage. True colors have been shown, and this is how I do something about it.

I don't care if they disagree with my political opinions, or my opinions on literature, or my opinions on any topic you care to name. I was perfectly fine with letting shit lie because a motto of mine since Men In Black came out has been, "Don't start nothing, won't be nothing." But every once in a while, someone else starts it. Hoyt started it when she brought the Puppies back specifically to shit on a friend and ally of mine, and before she had her little freakout in January an ally of hers as well. I value loyalty very, very highly. We can disagree on anything and everything under the sun from major political issues to what kind of pizza we like, but if you have my back I'll have yours, and I'll even have the backs of friends of friends over a random stranger because my friend probably has a reason to hang out with that person. But when you drop an ally, hit him while he's down, and that ally also happens to be a friend of mine, well then you can't rely on mutual friends.

I don't play the disavowal game until you fuck up monstrously. For instance, I was more than happy to be on the same side as Glenn Beck... until he cucked and appeared on Samantha Bee's show trying to "build a bridge" with one of the worst, most vicious SJW's in the entertainment industry. You got in bed with the enemy, Glenn. You're fair game now.

Much in that same fashion, Hoyt and Co. have taken it upon themselves to be the arbiters of who is and isn't "in the clique", and I'm not going to sit by and ignore that. They pulled the rug out from under Declan and shat on him, and didn't even have the courage to name him and link to his blog post, let alone contact him in person beforehand like a functioning adult. He's, and I'm fucking quoting Hoyt here,

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.

Now Declan may be many things, but if this is the kind of behavior Sarah Hoyt exhibits over a misunderstanding that Declan worked to correct after being attacked unjustly, then in my view one of him is worth a thousand of her and I'll side with him any day of the week. Congratulations. You've lived long enough to see yourself become the villain.

In any event this coincides nicely with something I've been thinking of for a while, and that's that the Puppies campaigns have outlived their usefulness.  The original point of the Puppies was to expose the corruption in the Hugo's. That was accomplished in spades. The secondary point of the Puppies was to attempt to change it. That had limited success depending on who you talk to. But the Hugo's have declined in relevance over the past few years, and have ceased to be a mark of quality and are driving more and more readers away from these books because they're shit. The Hugo's are in a death spiral, and there's no more need for an attempt to reform them.

If you want to shift the Puppies into a book recommendation service, that's fine by me. I mean we already have The Puppy of the Month Book Club but by all means go do your own thing. But that doesn't change the fact that this is an obvious power grab for the sake of brand recognition at the expense of someone who's done you, so far as I know, no wrong. And I hope it comes back to bite you in the ass, and that we're all there when it does so we can laugh.

Or at least so I can. Not everybody likes a good bit of schadenfreude as much as I do. I hope you enjoy running a once noble thing into the ground. Have fun with your Sad Puppies+.




Music is Crunk Knight by Kevin Macleod
http://incompetech.com/music/royalty-free/index.html?isrc=USUAN1400044
Crunk Knight Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

Monday, June 19, 2017

The JimFear138 Podcast Ep. 56 ft. Steampunk Jon Del Arroz








Hello everyone and welcome to another episode of the podcast! This week we're welcoming back Jon Del Arroz, the number one Hispanic science fiction author on planet Earth, to talk about his new book, For Steam And Country! We also talk a bit about Steampunk, it's origins, the literary movement around it, and a bunch of other stuff. It's a kickass two and a half hours, and we hope you enjoy it!

For Steam And Country: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1925645045/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=jimfear138-20&camp=1789&creative=9325&linkCode=as2&creativeASIN=1925645045&linkId=d990e550dbf5bf206b62451239af814b

Jon's Website: http://delarroz.com/

Jon on Twitter: https://twitter.com/jondelarroz

Jon on Gab: https://gab.ai/otomo


MP3 Download of this episode: https://ia600408.us.archive.org/25/items/jimfear_audio_productions/Ep56.mp3

Social Media Dump:

Itunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/jimfear138/id1107844659?mt=2

Twitter: https://twitter.com/JimFear138

Tumblr: http://jimfear138.tumblr.com/

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/JimFear138

Blogspot: http://jimfear138.blogspot.com/

Bandcamp: https://jimfear138.bandcamp.com/

Gab: https://gab.ai/JimFear138

Minds: https://www.minds.com/JimFear138

Vid.me: https://vid.me/JimFear138

Dailymotion: http://www.dailymotion.com/jimfear138

 Opening Music:
Honey Bee by Kevin Macleod: http://incompetech.com/music/royalty-free/index.html?isrc=USUAN1100755
Honey Bee Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

 Closing Music:
Kings of Tara by Kevin Macleod: http://www.incompetech.com/music/royalty-free/index.html?isrc=USUAN1500071&Search=Search
Kings of Tara Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

Thursday, June 15, 2017

For Steam And Country Is Available!

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B071JNR9HB/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=jimfear138-20&camp=1789&creative=9325&linkCode=as2&creativeASIN=B071JNR9HB&linkId=8fb24c1be9fd9f32c140ab3f2ce1e6c2
Click the picture to go to the Amazon store page

It is officially the 15th of June! Right in the middle of Steampunk Month, started by Jon Del Arroz to celebrate the release of his new book, For Steam and Country! Full disclosure, Jon is a friend of mine and we interact frequently on social media, he is also coming on my podcast this week to do an "interview" (more of a rambling drunken conversation, but whatever) about Steampunk and a whole bunch of other stuff, and he was also on my podcast back when that whole thing with Baycon was going down. Now that all that's out of the way, on with the thing.

I have to say that I did not get an advance review copy of the book, otherwise this would be a review and not a release announcement, but I have read Jon's work before and am a frequent peruser of his blog, delarroz.com, and as such I can say with 95% confidence that this is a very good book. All of the reviews I've read of it say the same, so I think I'm well within the proper 5% margin of error there. But you don't have to take this secondhand info from me, let's look at the description from the Amazon page:

Her father's been pronounced dead. Destructive earthquakes ravage the countryside. An invading army looms over the horizon. And Zaira's day is just getting started...

Abandoned at an early age, Zaira von Monocle found life as the daughter of a great adventurer to be filled with hard work and difficulty. She quickly learned to rely on only herself. But when a messenger brought news that her father was dead and that she was the heir to his airship, her world turned upside down.

Zaira soon finds herself trapped in the midst of a war between her home country of Rislandia and the cruel Wyranth Empire, whose soldiers are acting peculiarly—almost inhuman. With the enemy army advancing, her newfound ship’s crew may be the only ones who can save the kingdom.

For Steam and Country is the first book in the Adventures of Baron Von Monocle series by top-10 Amazon best selling space opera author, Jon Del Arroz.

 "Witty, charming and downright thrilling!  Del Arroz nails the feel of good old fashioned Steampunkery with wit, aplomb and of course... panache." - Nick Cole, author of the Dragon Award winner, CTRL ALT Revolt

"FOR STEAM AND COUNTRY is a rousing girl-powered fantasy tale. I thoroughly enjoyed this action-packed airship adventure!" - Laurie Forest, author of The Black Witch
Now if that doesn't tickle your pickle you might wanna check your pulse and call your local morgue, because you might just be dead. So head on over to Amazon and pick up For Steam And Country, and let's give Jon a great, chart-topping first day of sales. And if you feel so inclined after reading it you can also leave him a review for the book. I know he'd be very grateful. For $5 on Kindle, and $15 for paperback, it'd be hard to find a better price for what may very well be the only Steampunk book on the market that isn't a weak excuse to write a Victorian romance story with airships. You can find the Amazon store page by clicking the book cover at the top of this post.

Monday, June 12, 2017

The JimFear138 Podcast Ep. 55 ft. Oghma_EM








Hello everyone and welcome to another podcast! This time I'm happy to bring you all a conversation with my friend Oghma_EM, whose insightful commentary and take-no-shit attitude makes for a VERY entertaining 4+ hours, trust me. In this one we get into theology, SFF, tabletop wargaming (specifically Warhammer 40K and Fantasy), and Oghma's idea for a shared universe for the Pulp Revolution crowd.

MP3 Download of This Episode: https://ia600408.us.archive.org/25/items/jimfear_audio_productions/ep55.mp3

Oghma on Twitter: https://twitter.com/Oghma_EM

The Temple of Iron: https://templeofiron.org/


Social Media Dump:

Itunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/jimfear138/id1107844659?mt=2

Twitter: https://twitter.com/JimFear138

Tumblr: http://jimfear138.tumblr.com/

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/JimFear138

Blogspot: http://jimfear138.blogspot.com/

Bandcamp: https://jimfear138.bandcamp.com/

Gab: https://gab.ai/JimFear138

Minds: https://www.minds.com/JimFear138

Vid.me: https://vid.me/JimFear138

Dailymotion: http://www.dailymotion.com/jimfear138

 Opening Music:
Honey Bee by Kevin Macleod: http://incompetech.com/music/royalty-free/index.html?isrc=USUAN1100755
Honey Bee Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

 Closing Music:
Kings of Tara by Kevin Macleod: http://www.incompetech.com/music/royalty-free/index.html?isrc=USUAN1500071&Search=Search
Kings of Tara Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/






Sunday, June 4, 2017

The JimFear138 Podcast Ep. 54 - Cirsova Submissions, #SteampunkMonth, & Speculative Fiction vs SFF






Hello, and welcome to another episode of the podcast! This week I'm going over the submission guidelines for Cirsova (get your stories ready!), Steampunk Month and the brilliant trolling of Jon Del Arroz, and talk a bit about horror's place in SFF and why I feel speculative fiction is a better umbrella term for the genre as a whole. Hope y'all enjoy!

MP3 Download of this episode: https://ia600408.us.archive.org/25/items/jimfear_audio_productions/Ep54.mp3

Cirsova Submissions are Open!: https://cirsova.wordpress.com/2017/06/01/submissions-for-cirsova-are-open/

Submission Guidelines: https://cirsova.wordpress.com/cirsova-magazine/submission-guidelines/

Welcome to Steampunk Month: http://delarroz.com/?p=1065

If You Give Del Arroz Publicity Archive: http://archive.is/Zh7XN

Three Things I Think About Science Fiction and Fantasy by Gitabushi: https://pcbushi.wordpress.com/2017/06/01/three-things-i-think-about-science-fiction-and-fantasy/



Social Media Dump

Opening Music:
Honey Bee Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License