Let's Examine Crusade

[Cecelia5578]

I think his behavior regarding TSW towards the end turned some people off- though there's also a hivemind thing going on. SDN has been trending sharply to the left ever since... around the time the current recession began. A lot of the people here who are most likely to be sympathetic* to Stuart's politics (and those of HPCA) have been getting quieter- partly because they're being driven off, and partly because they don't want to talk about anything that might get them driven off.

Meanwhile, the mirror image of this has been happening on HPCA, as far as I can tell. By 2010, the difference was getting sharp enough that there wasn't a lot of room for common ground between the two groups. With the end of TSW as a story (which brought the two communities together over issues where they could talk to each other without trying to strangle each other, like the physics of angels), there really wasn't anything to keep the two communities from becoming allergic to one another. SDN has developed a strongly allergic reaction to all things Stuart-ish simply because it regards his politics, and those of his associates, as toxic.

I think HPCA, since its beginnings, has always been further to the right than SDN has been to the left, though I'll agree that the range of acceptable opinion at SDN has moved very far to the left (and dare I say in very peculiar ways) over the past few years. Mil tech wanking was/is the only thing that the two groups had in common, and Stuart's works provided that in massive amounts.

The TBOverse always seemed to me to be nostalgia for a past that never existed; its how the 20th century should've been, according to a certain strain of right wing logic. The ironic thing is, that a large chunk of its most die hard fans are the same people who criticize the Obama Administration for doing things like cutting back the F-22 and F-35 (which I sympathize with), but at the same time most of these people cheered on the Iraq/Afghan wars, and pushed for the Bush tax cuts. You can have a TBOverse high tech military machine that neglects the conventional army, or you can have high tech toys. You can't have *both* COIN and large numbers of F-22s.

Anyways, TBO is really a peek inside the America Fuck Yeah mindset of 9/11-2004ish, which to me makes is horribly anachronistic. Like Stuart not knowing the difference between Sunni and Shia and the Caliphate, its like Alan Jackson's song in which he proudly proclaims his ignorance of the difference between Iran and Iraq. Ah, good times. BTW Stuart, how did that WMD search go in Iraq?

[Shroom Man 777]

Is it that hard to understand why people would get pissed off and estranged from a man, and that man's adherents, when he surrounds himself in the likes of racists and homophobes and psychopaths in his personal fief?



Personally, I followed Smarma Get'em and Pancake's Side. Smarma Get'em's story progressed quite well, even if it was a one-sided curbstomp, so you could follow it just to see how the curbstomp progressed. Whereas Pancake's Side was just... stagnant. Nothing happened. At all. For a looong time. So I stopped reading it.

Anyway, after reading some comments by a Curtain Click, I decided to make my own satirical spinoff that, while at the same time, was an affectionate parody of the original works. Something different, zany and wild and weird in contrast to the sterile and dry and dour state of the original. That was Doom Patrol. At that point, I still thought of Bart Blade well and I actually PMed him my ideas.

I also PMed him the draft of each Doom Patrol chapter before I posted it here. Because, well, it's based on his work, as a matter of courtesy, etc. I was very excited after making the second chapter and I PMed it to him, but received no response. Maybe he was out of town, or maybe he wasn't following SDN anymore (I personally learned of the shenenigans related to Blade and his departure rather lately, precisely because I stopped reading Pancake's Side).

So I went into HPCA to look for him and ask him his opinion before I posted Doom Patrol chapter two.

And... basically what I saw was...

I, Bart Blade, Grand Poobah of HPCA, Commander of the Legions of Murca do hereby declare my dominion over the earth and all that it contains. Crawl to me, liberals/union protesters/journalists, knowing the eternity of hanging/white phosphorus/bayonets that awaits you.

And there's only one thing a man can say when confronted by something like that.

Balls.

So, fuck that noise.

[Simon_Jester]

I think HPCA, since its beginnings, has always been further to the right than SDN has been to the left, though I'll agree that the range of acceptable opinion at SDN has moved very far to the left (and dare I say in very peculiar ways) over the past few years. Mil tech wanking was/is the only thing that the two groups had in common, and Stuart's works provided that in massive amounts.

I'm not trying to assert symmetry here, but... well, unless I'm badly wrong, if you go back to the 2002-2005 timeframe on SDN you see a lot more collective acceptance of right-wing viewpoints, of what I think of as the "Den Beste Republicans."* You'd get heated argument about it, but expressing an opinion in line with a Republican platform plank wasn't a surefire way to get mobbed in N&P as far as I can tell.

I'm getting all this from looking through old threads, mind you. Maybe I'm wrong about that. But what I do know is that nowadays it is a recipe for getting mobbed- to the point where America-bashing is the most popular pastime in N&P, preferred to things like fundie-bashing. There is basically always at least one active thread in N&P which consists largely of condemnation of American human rights abuses, the corruption of the US government, or some related concept.

A lot of people here who are (always were) here because they just like science fiction and science have learned to keep their mouths shut about anything remotely political, because it's just no longer worth the shitstorm for them. I can't blame them; whether they're right or wrong, it's a big investment of a man's time to agree to spend hours a day to defend their political beliefs against random Internet people. If you want to be politically vocal without being left of the American Democratic Party on SDN, that's pretty much what you've got to do.
______________

*Named for an early blogger I read and respected in college, in that at least he didn't strike me as being totally brainless in his support for various elements of Bush-era foreign policy.

Anyways, TBO is really a peek inside the America Fuck Yeah mindset of 9/11-2004ish, which to me makes is horribly anachronistic. Like Stuart not knowing the difference between Sunni and Shia and the Caliphate, its like Alan Jackson's song in which he proudly proclaims his ignorance of the difference between Iran and Iraq. Ah, good times. BTW Stuart, how did that WMD search go in Iraq?

Yeah. It's also, in my opinion, a sign of what's starting to happen to the intellectually non-bankrupt Den Beste Republicanism. The technocratic neoconservative Republicans who adhered to it are either being forced out of the party by the corporatist and religious-fundie wings, or being assimilated by those wings to the point where they lose the ability to recognize bad policy.

One of the linchpins of Den Beste Republicanism is that, by rights, history ended in 1992 with the end of the Soviet Union, and "we won." The remaining trouble spots are just rabble to be swept aside as a mild nuisance, and anyone who doesn't want to sweep them aside so that we can complete the Triumph of Western Capitalism risks getting called a traitor to the ideals of Western Civilization which "we" struggled for during WWII and the Cold War.

That does not lend itself to perceiving current events accurately, not in the Middle East and not at home.

Is it that hard to understand why people would get pissed off and estranged from a man, and that man's adherents, when he surrounds himself in the likes of racists and homophobes and psychopaths in his personal fief?

Nay.

[Stark]

Dude, HPCA has been a hilarious caricature of a circle jerk for years - certainly as long as I've been going there for entertainment. Drawing your mindless parallels to one side, SDN doesn't glorify violence the way HPCA does. However you simplemindedly divide political attitudes (and really, stop), SDN has always had policies against all kinds of really lame stuff that goes on all the time on HPCA.

If you want to bang on about more political terms you made up and use, expecting others to give a shit about, go ahead. But don't try to compare Elfdart and Alyrium to people who repeatedly and constantly fantasize about mass murder and political violence. HPCA might laugh at SDN for being a bunch of decadent lefties who don't hate gays or taxes enough (and certainly do), at least it isn't powered by paranoia and brutality against opponents.

I call this 'Frakuphonics', after the five broken wizards of Guam.

[Simon_Jester]

Dude, HPCA has been a hilarious caricature of a circle jerk for years - certainly as long as I've been going there for entertainment. Drawing your mindless parallels to one side, SDN doesn't glorify violence the way HPCA does. However you simplemindedly divide political attitudes (and really, stop), SDN has always had policies against all kinds of really lame stuff that goes on all the time on HPCA.

...This isn't about symmetry. I don't know why the hell you think it is.

HPCA fucking sucks. Yeah, it's a circle-jerk. "Hilarious caricature of a circle-jerk" even describes it pretty well.

SDN... nowhere near that bad, but are you going to try and tell me that it hasn't shifted to the left, or that this hasn't had the effect of shutting up or driving off people with right-wing politics?

Because if you could say that with a straight face, I'd be impressed.

And yeah, I made up a term, because I needed a word for something. You are free not to give a shit about that. Or you are free to give a shit, and fling that shit, while yelling "neener neener." It's what you do, after all. I don't understand why you embrace the job description of "shit-flinging monkey who swings through conversations at random," but you do. Such is life.

But don't try to compare Elfdart and Alyrium to people who repeatedly and constantly fantasize about mass murder and political violence.

Are you going to show me the quote where someone actually made that comparison? Or are you just going to disappear on me again, like happened the last umpteen times you thought you were flinging high-quality shit that would really hurt, and it turned out to be pure gibberish?

[Stark]

Nobody cares about politics except you. Nobody 'hates' HPCA because they're right wing (or because SDN is left); people laugh at them because they're full of violent fantasies of political potency and outrageous reactions. Nobody posts threads on SDN about the Gay Stormtroopers ousting democracy and killing journalists. How is your perception of SDN relevant to this? You say right wing people have become silent, but the brutal revenge fantasy clique has always been limited by the rules. Indeed, the staff have attempted to create rules and enforcement to prevent the kind of dogpiling behaviour you describe. Uh oh!

And dude, your made up terms are the best, because you give a little footnote about yourself. I love how you get so butthurt about it! Do you believe yourself an intellectual? You describe people rejecting a man who flat-out lied as 'a hivemind'!

EDIT - Oh shit, you can't make this up!

SDN has developed a strongly allergic reaction to all things Stuart-ish simply because it regards his politics, and those of his associates, as toxic.

That encourages the SDN community to start looking at the bad side of his writing style or personality in ways that were mostly ignored when he was more widely respected.

What a great paragraph! End of fannish immunity to critisim is painted as bad. Maybe a bad hivemind!

[Guardsman Bass]

SDN has developed a strongly allergic reaction to all things Stuart-ish simply because it regards his politics, and those of his associates, as toxic.

That encourages the SDN community to start looking at the bad side of his writing style or personality in ways that were mostly ignored when he was more widely respected.

What a great paragraph! End of fannish immunity to critisim is painted as bad. Maybe a bad hivemind!

Simply pointing out that SDN's leftward drift over the years has had an impact on the criticism that Stuart's fiction is facing is not condemning that criticism. In this case, though, I don't think it was a matter of changing politics so much as it was the shit that went down after the end of TSW Part 2.

. . . Enough about that, though. Does anyone want to comment on the other TBO novels?

Anvil of Necessity: I own this novel, but I honestly can't remember enough from when I read it to make a good comment.

Ride of the Valkyries: The A-Plot is interesting (an attempted Caliphate biological weapon attack on the US), whether or not you think it's plausible that the Talibanesque Caliphate has this type of scientific project going on (Stuart's rationale for the Caliphate using bio-weapons, aside from their low start-up cost, was that they were religious fanatics who thought that God would protect them from getting the diseases). The B-Plot has some shit going down between Chipan* and the Triple Alliance of India, Australia, and Thailand about some islands in the Pacific. The grammar and formatting are definitely improved, even if you still see some occasional mistakes.

* Does Chipan make sense as a political entity? I don't know enough about the history of Japanese involvement in China to make a good argument either way. I do think that they were an example of Stuart trying to force the TBO timeline to fit with RL events, since they end up going full-blown socialist and face a Soviet Union-style crisis along the lines of Stuart's essay on how Ronald Reagan won the Cold War.

The Lion Resurgent: This story is alright, but it's still a weird example of Stuart trying to fit in the Falklands War at the exact same time as what happened in real life.

[Coiler]

* Does Chipan make sense as a political entity?

No. If casualties got too high in China, Japan would set up puppet governments and rule indirectly through them, not become "Sinified"-as if a society as nationalistic as Imperial Japan would let that happen.

I do think that they were an example of Stuart trying to force the TBO timeline to fit with RL events, since they end up going full-blown socialist and face a Soviet Union-style crisis along the lines of Stuart's essay on how Ronald Reagan won the Cold War.

I think you're right.

The Lion Resurgent: This story is alright, but it's still a weird example of Stuart trying to fit in the Falklands War at the exact same time as what happened in real life.

I actually found it to be the worst story of his that I've read. Besides the implausibility of it being fitted in exactly as in real life, the fact that is a description of an RL war, except with more shout-out military toys eliminates essentially all of the alternate history aspect, and Stuart's dull-as-ever prose means there's no interest on that front.

[Edward Yee]

I also think that his writings suffer from basically being webfics. I notice that a lot of online stories have the author writing chapters about stuff in order to please his audience, lots of shout-outs and so forth. This is a lot of fun for an online group activity, but it is absolutely toxic to writing a good narrative. Of course such a story could still be salvageable if the author was willing to take a big pair of scissors and cut out all of the redundant material, as well as actually seriously edit what is left. On the other hand if you take that first draft and only clean up the grammar and the layout...

Didn't Stuart say that he would have excised some of the more obvious bits, i.e. "McNamara in the ninth circle of Hell," in the event of actual publishing? In fairness, a lot of the obvious examples were seemingly inconsequential bits, i.e. names like *ahem* Aperture Science, whose editing wouldn't have affected the actual story one bit.

Even the ridiculous nature of the world (Caliphate and the history of the German victory) could be forgiven if he outright admitted it was a cautionary tale of the "be careful what you wish for" nature. Instead he demanded that it be taken seriously as alternate history.

The funny thing is, the "be careful what you wish for" interpretation I've only seen on TV Tropes.

It's like Warhammer 40000 can be great fun if you realise that it's tongue in cheek, but it becomes completely ridiculous in a bad sense if you try to take it seriously.

Ironically, I actually have a friend who can't bring himself to RP 40K (long-term anyway, he ended up abandoning a Rogue Trader campaign over this) because of his own taking its premises to a seemingly logical conclusion... he couldn't get himself to RP a Man, claiming that the setting would simply shut down (EXTERMINATUS) any attempt to play a good guy (by our standards, not 40K standards *cough*).

So it was a similar situation to the Goa'uld from Stargate where they strategically have huge technological advantages over us (like planet wrecking pyramid ships with FTL drives) but are tactically unremarkable, even inept due to their rigid and paranoid culture (their clumsy Jaffa mooks)? I read there's an interesting sounding backstory that Hell's demons were the cousins of Earth's humans.

I'll PM this one if only to minimize talk of TSW content/premise.

He first put out Armageddon, if I recall, in early 2008 -- which is also when the fic was set, the point of divergence being "a few days ago." Incidentally, I specifically recall that one of the issues with the Pantheocide pacing was that its chapters were actually set/dated in that timeline at about or at the same time as the IRL time of posting.

Anyway, after reading some comments by a Curtain Click, I decided to make my own satirical spinoff that, while at the same time, was an affectionate parody of the original works. Something different, zany and wild and weird in contrast to the sterile and dry and dour state of the original. That was Doom Patrol. At that point, I still thought of Bart Blade well and I actually PMed him my ideas.

Hey, I remember that, it was essentially his story meets Generation Kill! It sure beat a certain someone else's attempt at a TSW fanfic... (Hint: It wasn't Stas Bush's, I actually enjoyed reading that story* and I remember being alluded to in Pantheocide.)

* Stas Bush, if you're reading this post, know this: Guillaume gave me some of the best TSW-related entertainment I've ever known.

[Guardsman Bass]

No. If casualties got too high in China, Japan would set up puppet governments and rule indirectly through them, not become "Sinified"-as if a society as nationalistic as Imperial Japan would let that happen.

That sounds right. Certainly the name "Chipan" sounded implausible, particularly since it's an english mix-mash that would please neither the Chinese nor the Japanese.

I actually found it to be the worst story of his that I've read. Besides the implausibility of it being fitted in exactly as in real life, the fact that is a description of an RL war, except with more shout-out military toys eliminates essentially all of the alternate history aspect, and Stuart's dull-as-ever prose means there's no interest on that front.

Maybe it's just bad memory on my part. It's been close to a year since I've read any of it, and I might be just remembering parts of it (like the forced marriage to the rich Argentine chick, the fighting on the Falklands, and the point where the US ambassador puts a finger to the wind in front of the Argentine leadership as a not-so-subtle way of saying "We're going to nuke the shit out of you if you keep this up").

I think I remember a bit more about Anvil of Necessity. It has Gandhi getting a Stuart-esque death, although a relatively merciful one in comparison to "The Film Maker" and "Ramsay Chalk" - he gets run over by a car or the like.

I also liked bits and pieces of Interstellar Highways, even with the weird honor culture (complete with pacifist jabs) and the ADHD People (a sort of contrast to the Demons/Methuselahs). The aliens had some interesting elements, like the lack of organized team violence (wrestling, but not football), and the evolution from a species that co-opted apex predators.

[Scottish Ninja]

No. If casualties got too high in China, Japan would set up puppet governments and rule indirectly through them, not become "Sinified"-as if a society as nationalistic as Imperial Japan would let that happen.

That sounds right. Certainly the name "Chipan" sounded implausible, particularly since it's an english mix-mash that would please neither the Chinese nor the Japanese.

To give it some justification, "Chipan" was never an official term; officially it was always the Empire of Japan, and "Chipan" came into use as a slang term in the West that emerged as a reflection of the increasingly Chinese power structure of the Imperial Japanese Army. I sort of like the parallel that he tries to create with the Mongols and Manchus, but I'm really not sure how that squares with the demonstrated Japanese propensity to set up puppet regimes in the area.

BTW Stuart, how did that WMD search go in Iraq?

I believe the current word is that they are likely to be found in Syria.

[Gandalf]

I think I remember a bit more about Anvil of Necessity. It has Gandhi getting a Stuart-esque death, although a relatively merciful one in comparison to "The Film Maker" and "Ramsay Chalk" - he gets run over by a car or the like.

AoN was probably my favourite of the four TBO books that I've read. If you ignore the whole Thai part of the story, it's a decent read.

Nobody cares about politics except you. Nobody 'hates' HPCA because they're right wing (or because SDN is left); people laugh at them because they're full of violent fantasies of political potency and outrageous reactions. Nobody posts threads on SDN about the Gay Stormtroopers ousting democracy and killing journalists. How is your perception of SDN relevant to this? You say right wing people have become silent, but the brutal revenge fantasy clique has always been limited by the rules. Indeed, the staff have attempted to create rules and enforcement to prevent the kind of dogpiling behaviour you describe. Uh oh!

This is why I post the "This Week in HPCA" threads. Conservative hilarity is commonplace online, no matter where one goes. The reason I get it from HPCA is because of its wonderful team of old guys who think they're still fighting the Cold War and preparing to live in Red Dawn. Everyone has to outdo each other to be the angriest and therefore most patriotic. This isn't just the young hangers on, but the more central respected members. Say what you will about SDN, but you'll never see Dalton or Nitram posting an email about Obama being switched with a guy from Indonesia. Lets not even get into the racism.

[TimothyC]

For a good period of time (prior to 2008) HPCA was a more welcoming community than SDN was. From my point of view both have been closing themselves off from outside views, HPCA more rapidly than SDN, but both are doing so by sliding into the respective corners, and it isn't a good thing for either community. [The above is opinion, and I'm not going to argue it with anyone].

Edit: Part of this is a function of size. SDN is a larger forum, and has different rules. The more extreme voices in larger communities tend to get drowned out by the majority, and in smaller communities that doesn't happen.

I think I remember a bit more about Anvil of Necessity. It has Gandhi getting a Stuart-esque death, although a relatively merciful one in comparison to "The Film Maker" and "Ramsay Chalk" - he gets run over by a car or the like.

No that was in TBO. The irony is it's the only major murder the Ambassador gets suspected of that she actually masterminded.

[Stark]

If only anyone cared how 'welcoming' you think fantasy assassination is? Perhaps it's the bigotry that makes you feel 'at home'? Just play along with the popular guys and you'll fit right in!

[Thanas]

Where are the vocal majority non-radical voices on HPCA, Timothy?

[Stark]

Well, there's Edi.

Implicit in the idea that radicals stick out less when there's more users is equating 'need social welfare' and 'gay rights ok' with 'kill liberals' and 'traitors traitors traitors' and 'fix bayonets made of white phosphorus'. They're both 'radical' right?

[Count Chocula]

I also think that his writings suffer from basically being webfics. I notice that a lot of online stories have the author writing chapters about stuff in order to please his audience, lots of shout-outs and so forth. This is a lot of fun for an online group activity, but it is absolutely toxic to writing a good narrative.

There are ways to do this and still have a well-crafted story. Eleventh Century Remnant's remarkable amazing jawdropping adequate fics on this site are proof of that! I write stories myself, but because they always wind up 10% personality/90% cool stuff or wank, they don't see the light of day. While I enjoy reading Stuart's works, he comes off as a very very dry Tom Clancy to me.

FanFiction.net looks like it would be a fertile training ground for authors who WANT feedback on improving their fiction. I've read stories at that site for years and they have a large pool of beta readers.

[TimothyC]

If only anyone cared how 'welcoming' you think fantasy assassination is? Perhaps it's the bigotry that makes you feel 'at home'? Just play along with the popular guys and you'll fit right in!

Shove it troll. How long did it take for the guy who publicly fantasized about killing me to get banned?

Oh yeah - a month, and then only after he widened it out to include other people.

I am not trying to draw moral equivalency, and HPCA isn't some paragon of virture, but SDN can be vicious too, so don't pretend that it's a clean community.

Where are the vocal majority non-radical voices on HPCA, Timothy?

Did you not read what I said?

I said it doesn't get drowned out by a vocal majority. Why do you think I'm reducing my activities there (look at the post counts - I post about twice as much here as I do there)?

[Stark]

Ah! The truth is, HPCA doesn't direct bigotry against anything you care about. Plotting to kill liberals = welcoming. Mods not banning idiots fast enough = not welcoming.

Intrinsically selfish attitudes? In a CONSERVATIVE? Stunning.

[Coiler]

Didn't Stuart say that he would have excised some of the more obvious bits, i.e. "McNamara in the ninth circle of Hell," in the event of actual publishing? In fairness, a lot of the obvious examples were seemingly inconsequential bits, i.e. names like *ahem* Aperture Science, whose editing wouldn't have affected the actual story one bit.

If you only take out the more obvious bits, you're still just rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. In the titular book of this thread, look at the namedrops of the TSR-2 and Arrow for no purpose except to show off military hardware. Or the barely related plot in Asia. Stuart even drops a large segment about the politics surrounding the arms purchases of TBO Taiwan after Marisol is shot down but before any other action scenes in the Middle East. That's just the most blatant example, but all this plot-jumping, though understandable in an online work, gets in the way and prevents any real narrative from building up.

Worse, the focus utterly destroys any drive for characterization. Stuart often never devotes any effort to characterization, and the times he does, does so either by telling and not showing and/or by making a ludicrous strawman. Why? Because, to be honest, most people in it for the weapons and explosions don't care for interesting characters, so there's no point in developing them, and besides, they have to share room with a dozen other characters in a half dozen other plots, so there's no room to develop them. Same thing for improving the prose or the drama-if everyone's telling you it's great, why bother making the effort to improve it?

If you're going to take a written-as-you-go forum work and turn it into a serious novel, you need to do some major and thorough editing. Stuart hasn't.

[Edward Yee]

I was referring to TSW, not TBO; admittedly I haven't read TBO which is why I'm treading very lightly on that end.

[Coiler]

I was referring to TSW, not TBO; admittedly I haven't read TBO which is why I'm treading very lightly on that end.

You can apply that to both equally, though. Stuart's writing is still the same, and so is the method by which the stories are made.

[Shroom Man 777]

Ah! The truth is, HPCA doesn't direct bigotry against anything you care about. Plotting to kill liberals = welcoming. Mods not banning idiots fast enough = not welcoming.

Intrinsically selfish attitudes? In a CONSERVATIVE? Stunning.

Troll it, shove. How long did it take for prominent members who publicly fantasized killing political dissidents while spouting racial slurs and whatevers get banned?

Oh yeah - never. In HPCA. Where they fucking run the place.

Nobody's pretending that SDN is a clean community*. But pretending that dorks going "quantify your turbophaser gigajoules bitchhole refute the argument or concede concession accepted turdtardonkeydouchenozzlefuckpalmer QED!!!" about fucking Star Wars or Star Trek is anything remotely near the rampant amounts of homophobia and racism and psychosis and "BRAGHEADS FRAGHEADS CRAGHEADS!!!!" and whatnot that goes around routinely there is hilarious.

Oh yeah, SDN is left-leaning and rough and crass and shit. But seriously. Jesus Christ, it's just hilarious to see someone - from a board that goes on about hanging liberals, white phosphorusing journalists, and bayoneting student protesters - go on about how "wah wah SDN is mean!!!!"

Turns out we think a board that allows (and encourages?) folks to go on about hanging liberals and white phosphorusing journalists and bayoneting student protesters is a board full of fucking idiots. WHO FUCKING KNEWWWWWWWWWWW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Like I said somewhere else, these people only do that when they're hanging around with like minded whatevers, where they feel comfortable in an environment where everyone else is basically saying the same thing, that kind of tough guy hang liberals and so on nonsense. But it's hilarious how these people, like Bart Blade himself, when confronted directly with conflicting opinions, or when ridiculed, just deflate like shriveled prunes because for all their tough talk about liberals and homosexuals and fragheads, they really can't take the heat when it's directed back at them.

It's like, they're the result of going to the toilet after eating nothing but Cerelac (Nestle baby food) the entire day.

Soft shits.



*Strak and members of the Curtain Click will be the first one to strakk SDN for its faults, I mean these assholes were in the middle of a drama shitfest a year ago, remember? They were strakking about how shitty Bart Blade was even before the man's fall from grace. Hell, they were strakking this very board too.

So the argument that Strak, and others like him, can't point out or recognize the faults of SDN is invalid since Strak points out and recognizes faults in everything.

And also, whatever faults SDN may have, doesn't detract from the fact that HPCA is fucking reprehensible.

[Shroom Man 777]

As to why we're doing this, well... think about it, Bart Blade was admired on this board whenever he espoused his thermonuclear what's its, he was generally well liked. I liked him too. Narry a bad word was uttered against him here, or in the TSW threads, for a long time because we all supported him (not all of us, but a whole fucking lot of us). In fact, the main criticisms leveled at him that I saw were posted by the Curtain Click somewhere else. Because he was such a phenomenon here.

But now, it's all disintegrated and people are bringing it out to public, thanks in part to that same Curtain Click, that the man is a psycho and that his board is full of racist homophobic lunatic motherfuckers. So, I think there's a whole lot of sourness in the whole "hey, turns out the mang you respected actually endorses those kind of low lives" and for those of us who initially thought otherwise, well, that fucking sucks.

So this is basically a public denouncement of all that ugly stuff, because we ourselves don't endorse racist motherfuckery and other such bullshit. Like, think of it as Nikita Khrushchev's Secret Speech, think of this as de-Stalinization. De-Stuartification if you will.

We've realized just how sucky the dour boring ass curbstomp stories were, those same stories we once thought were hot shit. We've realized just how loony the man who runs a board full of hyperthyroid stormtroopers is, the same man we thought was so awesome.

And so, we're basically announcing "fuck that bullshit".

Or, in other words, we're metaphorically saying "Balls!" and firing a JDAMRAAMLRSLBM92F-117/11 from the cockpit of our F-118 Night Aardvark with its active electronically scanned array from eagle flight over the South Pacific because we realize that that mang and all he stands for is actually a gigantic herald of Robert Satan Merkatrignamara flying in the sky and proclaiming a message of shit.

And now that he's been hit by that JDAMRAAMLRSLBM92F-117/11 and is down for the count, we are also reading boring Vladimir Putin speeches at him.

[Starglider]

That makes a lot of sense actually. There's also the aura of expertise about him which makes people loathe to question him when he speaks up about things outside of his field of expertise. Which of course creates a rather nasty feedback cycle, in that tons of people agree with him that anyone who argues with him is stupid or crazy. Apparently in the online comic writing world that sort of thing is called a hugbox, where everyone hugs each other and shuns the outsider.

If the author is mature and sensible this can be relatively harmless. Unfortunately Stuart Slade is deeply insecure and has a nasty temper. The result is that he works hard to put on a polite, knowledgable front in public, but also deletes all criticism when he can, makes up random crap and tries to pass it as authoritative fact, and sends hillarious personal attacks (in the full of broken grammar and typos sense) by email. It's a real shame that he can't actually just be the affable, knowledgable personna he likes to pretend to be.