All hail the Dragon!

Thanks to Amanda for getting this post online for me.

I had thought that, with the passing of the Hugo Awards, that the sh*tstorm would have dissipated as my fellow fans flock to the Peachtree State to revel in the glorious chaos and beauty of Dragoncon but alas, I was sorely mistake.

Twitter, Facebook, even Instagram (freaking Instagram!!!) the PuppyKickers are out in force, berating anyone deemed not supportive enough of the exclusiveness that is Worldcon and the Hugo Award. The attacks are bitter, flailing and, quite frankly, desperate sounding. But why, I asked as I spotted another attack on the International Lord of Hate on his Facebook page, the sudden attention back on the Sad Puppies after the self-proclaimed “victory” for the oppressed at Worldcon?

It’s almost as though someone, somewhere, is terrified of something… but what could it be?

Maybe this?

dragonaward

This beautiful piece of hardware is called the Dragon Award, which is being awarded at Dragoncon this weekend for the first time. This award came about after many members of Worldcon challenged those who did not like the Hugos to “start their own.”

Apparently, someone else replied with “challenge accepted.”

The finalists for the Dragon Award are truly varied and wide-ranging, from Ann Leckie to Jim Butcher, Larry Correia to Kin Stanley Robinson. This award was truly selected by the fans and it shows in how varies and just how many nominations were cast. I can’t wait to see the final tally numbers of just how many people actually participated in the selection and voting process.

I’m hoping that the award ceremony is live-streamed and everyone can watch it. I know it’ll be on DragonconTV (so in hindsight, that statement I just made is rather asinine because if it’s on DragonconTV then it’ll be online… but I’m leaving it in so you can understand a little about just how oddly my brain works) so… yeah, covered that.

Personally, I’m rooting for Charles Gannon. I’ve known the man for a long time and he always writes innovative and thoughtful material tightly-wrapped within an action packed story. I was also pleased to see that some smaller houses made appearances in the short list for their respective categories.

Quite frankly, it’s refreshing to look at the short list for the different categories and not get the feeling that anybody is “owed” the award because they’re “paid their dues” or whatever the hell that means. It feels open and honest, and I don’t have the strong desire to go take a scalding hot shower to scrub myself clean.

Something I cannot say after watching the Hugos this year.

(Shameless self-promotion time. Right now Kraken Mare is currently on sale for $0.99 at Amazon. If you haven’t picked up the craziest milSF/horror in recent memory (this week) then this is the perfect opportunity. Sale ends Monday September 4thso you better hurry.

72 thoughts on “All hail the Dragon!”

  2. Link to picture of Dragon Award is broken.

    And Worldcon has had a major case of butthurt with DragonCon since they realized 20 years ago that a) Worldcon and DragonCon were in competition over Labor Day weekend, b) DragonCon was so hugely popular that they couldn’t afford to miss it, c) the actual fans were going to Dragon Con and not WorldCon, and d) DragonCon foreshadowed Captain America and said “No, YOU move.”

    😎

    1. Thanks. It was there when I set this up for Jason yesterday. When I am on the computer in an hour or so and not on my phone, I’ll try to fix it.

  4. Response to the Dragons from the Usual Suspects varies between mild interest and outright contempt. Many seem to think that it’ll die from lack of support. There’s even a few pushing the totally-not-a-conspiracy theory that the Puppies are secretly in charge of it.

  5. I didn’t realize people were still complaining. I’m not on instagram or twitter, and I wasn’t on FB much yesterday. Weird that it would still be a topic.

    1. Yeah, weird – I was away from all media yesterday for about six hours, myself. The Dragon looks very classy – art-glass, like one of those intricate paperweights, I presume?

      1. To be honest, just based on aesthetics? I want a Dragon Award for my office a lot more than a Hugo. (There are other reasons I’d like a Dragon Award, but it really does have the prettier [if less historic] trophy).

        1. Me too. I already have two toy rockets and a Sad Puppy needlepoint on my bookshelf, plus a lot of other peculiar crap like a horse vertebra. A Dragon Award would be a lovely capper.

              1. Now if there were only a Sad Puppies t-shirt.

                Jeff, your post about the whole Sad Puppies/AP situation is perhaps the most even handed I’ve read. Kudos

                2. Many thanks! That series got me more exposure than anything else I’ve ever blogged, and I’ve been blogging since 1998. There was no need to be angry about it, and I’m not an easy person to anger. I lost a few friends…and gained a whole lot of new ones!

  7. According to some of the more unhinged Usual Suspects, the Dragon Awards are RAAAAAACIST!!!1! because PUPPIES!!!!!1! were allowed to play.

    The extent to which these people do not get Fair Play and Sportsmanship is truly remarkable. The totalitarian impulse sweeps away all else with them.

    I voted per the rules in the Dragon award, may the best dragon win. And may the SJWs have a terminal hissy at the very idea of The Raaacist Phantom being allowed to participate. Bunch of pearl-clutching matrons that they are.

    1. Also, that the Dragon Awards will cause a rift in the fabric of reality and destroy the universe – I’m hearing those no-good SJWs say that all the time. Gosh darn you to heck SJWs!!!!

      1. Oh, look it’s straw SJW. Hi, straw SJW! Ayone want to bet that the same happy social justice crowd that brought us Requires Hate, won’t be claiming that Dragon Con causes global warming? Or the heat-death of the universe?

      2. One does not have to look far to see Puppies being called racists, Mr. Flopatron. Sometimes in one’s own comments it doth occur. Repeatedly. At some length, in fact.

        And then the replies from those Puppies suddenly vanish somehow, as if by magic… or swallowed by a rift in the fabric of someone’s totalitarian leaning brain.

        Such things do occur on teh interwebz.

  10. Love the new Dragon trophy! May the best burn win!!

    There should be another award, the Snow Shovel, for the “Person or work which did the most to free fandom from the burden of special snowflakes during the previous year”.

  11. It sounds like the usual suspects are demanding “Come back here and vote for the stuff WE like, you racist, sexist homophobes!”. Who could possibly resist an invitation like that?

      1. When the Beautiful People act like bigots in private among themselves, it doesn’t take much provocation for them to reveal their bigotry in public. At which point they stand revealed as common trolls instead of Beautiful People.

  12. I appreciate the deceptive simplicity of the award design. Easy enough to reproduce, and each one will still be unique.

    There is going to be one in shards all over the floor, no doubt. Some people have destructive forces in their households.

    1. Even worse – Gannon’s protagonists have been known to oppose multinational persons of incorporation, and non-white leaders of anti-Democratic rule, and invading aliens.

  14. Don’t worry,Amanda. You post here so we know your mind works…in an innovative fashion.

    But it will be interesting to see. Maybe Dragons will be a mark of quality for a few years. At least may not be a warning like the Hugo.

      1. Yes. I realized that a bit later. My mind works innovatively too sometimes. But this was excessive blood in caffeine stream.

  15. It is indeed a beautiful thing and it will be interesting to see who wins. I wouldn’t hold my breath about getting the voting numbers or detailed results, though, but we’ll see. 😀

    1. Ah, there you go. I knew you couldn’t let a chance to cast aspersions on the Dragons pass. Nothing to back up your comment, of course. Just throwing shit where you will. One has to wonder why you feel the need.

      2. I am happy that the Dragon Awards are around and voting for them was fun, so I’m certainly not throwing any shit. Just pointing out that rules say nothing about releasing any numbers, and I feel it’s a strong possibility that they’ll only tell who won. (The rules didn’t even say that the winner has to get the most votes, btw.)

        But tell me, in case numbers are indeed published, what sort of figures would you consider a success? Hugos had a little over 4,000 nominators. Do you believe we are talking about a significantly larger voter pool here now that no con memberships are required?

        1. I notice you want to compare the Dragon finals numbers to the Hugo *nomination* numbers – which we know are larger than Hugo voting numbers due to the difference in eligibility (roughly 2 sets of Worldcon members nominate, 1 set votes on winner). It seems you an agenda to throw shade and sow distrust of the Dragon process,

          I think you want to make the most favorable comparison for the Hugos, but you would have a better argument with an apples-to-apples comparison. Otherwise it makes you look less than honest.

    2. What, Shortbus? You mean like how the Nebulas made all their numbers “private” after it became obvious that a small cadre of authors was voting for each other in rotation?

      I mean, that can be demonstrated. You are just yammering and flinging your excrement around, hoping a few people will not think about what you say, and just go away with a bad impression of the Dragons.

      1. Excrement? I thought I was just dicussing the numbers.

        I take it you expect to see some statistics, then. Will you be happy with just the voter/nominator counts or do you hope to see more specific breakdowns?

        1. I agree with SpaceFaringKitten in one aspect. Having vote totals would be nice.

          Why? – The Dragon will hopefully be a huge participation, crowd-sourced award for recent SF works. If we get the vote totals, the average fan will know what large proportions of other fans liked which is important if the voting ended up being close.

          Unlike the Hugos which have a very tiny voter pool of largely insular group representing one sliver of fandom, hopefully the Dragons will be very large scale.

          Example: Say one of the novel categories gets 25,000 total votes. Say the winner gets 52% of the vote and the runner up got 25%. The 25% of 25,000 is a much bigger vote total than any Hugo and represents a large number of readers/gamers or whatever. What that 25% liked may we worth checking out especially if we know the vote totals.

          But hopefully the Dragons will never have a rube-Goldberg voting method and produce reams and reams of numbers which can be interpreted so many ways because the voting method itself is so obtuse.

    4. Well, seeing as how they will be simple and straightforward, I can see why you’ll have a hard time understanding them.

  16. If this year’s Dragon Awards finalists are typical, then the Hugo in-crowd damned well *ought* to be worried about them. I can’t speak to the gaming side of the awards, but the talent on display on the fiction side of things was truly awesome. A couple of the categories pretty much came down to coin flips, for me (Alt-Hist in particular; I’m a huge fan of both Harry Turtledove and Eric Flint).

    I also picked Chuck Gannon for Best SF novel (I also hugely enjoyed JCW’s gloriously insane “Somewither,” but in the end I found it perhaps a touch too insane in comparison). And I had to go with Larry Correia over Jim Butcher in the Fantasy/Paranormal category, although I won’t be too broken-hearted should Butcher triumph because, well, Jim Butcher.

    On the other hand: I confess I picked “The Expanse” over “Game of Thrones” in the TV category, largely because I’m still pissed over GoT burning Stannis’ daughter at the stake season before last, and so as far as I’m concerned all of Westeros needs to be Terekhov’d from orbit. (I’ll bet that gives you a clue who I voted for in the Mil SF category, too . . . 😛 )

    1. Yeah, it was pretty great to see choices you actually liked reading instead of the lesser of evils. What happens if Larry wins? Will that make him a real author. Gee, I hope not. He’s got a family and can’t afford the requisite income reduction that goes with that status.

  17. And ohhh, the butthurt if one or more Puppy partisans win a Dragon. Sunday can’t come soon enough.

    We don’t need the Puppy Kickers anymore, in any role at all. We successfully cast them into the Outer Darkness by leaving them where they were, walking away, and taking everything of value with us.

    1. I voted for at least one Puppy partisan in the Dragon Awards.
      [I say at least one – because I was dithering in a few categories and I can’t recall which way I finally dithered]

      1. There were far too many good (or neat-looking, since I have not read all of the titles in all the categories) titles to have to choose from.

        2. There seemed to be a contingent of stuff associated with the Sword and Laser people that I wasn’t familiar with that looked interesting.

          As an award becomes more established it will probably become more predictable – which makes new awards more fun. They are more capable of nice surprises.

          Not suggesting this for the Dragons but it would be interesting to have an award where a work having been a finalist for Awards X,Y,Z disqualified it.

      2. You know, I was laying awake at night just wondering how you voted. Now I can get some rest. Bless you for your kind words in our hour of need. [/sarc]

  18. We’ll see.

    For me sweetest part of the whole thing was not seeing anyone on the puppy-related side of fandom, not even those on the so-called racist, sexist, something else-ist alt-right element kick up a screaming, kicking, international mass- and social-media campaign over the fact that second-rate prog faves like Ancillary Noun got nominated to “their” award.

    Shocking, really.

    It’s almost as if the camelwhatsits, spacekitwhosits, and assorted Torlings were the moral inferiors of even the most radical “Puppy”

    Who knew?

  19. All hail the Dragon indeed. Congratulations to Larry and all the other winners. It’s about time some good works got recognized.

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