397 thoughts on “Do Not Forsake Me, Oh My Puppy 5/6”

1. Rev. Bob “Next to those, “I don’t grok gender, so I think of everyone as ‘she’” is nothing.”

   Justice of Torren/Breq understands gender. Strip someone naked and she certainly knows the sex of that person.

   At the beginning of the book, she is speaking a language that *does* take the gender of the person she is speaking with into account. She knows to use male pronouns for Seivarden in that language. But she can’t tell from external clues a local person’s gender so she guesses wrong sometimes. The locals can tell (Women wear stripes? Men’s hair is in a bun? Who knows?) but Justice of Torren/Breq hasn’t figured out what those cues are yet, so she can’t.

   Later in the book, they’re speaking Radch, which has no gender differences and so everyone is referred to as “she”. She does not then have to guess to get the pronouns right.

2. Wow. There’s quite a lot being thrown around about Ringo’s books here, and in several cases it’s pretty obvious that the people talking about them haven’t actually read them, Specifically, the aforementioned There will be Dragons.

   Nevermind that it’s in a far-future culture where body-mods are cheap and individuals can express themselves in a variety of interesting ways due to body modification, right down to people having modified themselves into merpeople. Nevermind that it’s pointed out that the culture of the time in the book specifically points out that the flat-chested look is in for women a large number of characters have been modded for it (not to mention the discussion one mother has with her daughter about the history of beauty standards and how they’ve changed).

   Everyone wants to focus on the rape. And wow, are they taking it out of context. The book is very explicit that rape is bad. Characters throw up over it. The person who is victim ends up seeking counseling and suffering severe trauma comparable to post-war trauma. They struggle with it, as does their family, and their friends. The lone character in the book who serves as the male perspective on the issue struggles with his own desire for sexual dominance and spends the book determined to prove he is not a slave to those urges, that those urges are wrong, and that he can beat his own dark side.

   Every post I’ve seen thus far has ignored that. They’ve also ignored the fact that the acts are perpetrated by the villains of the story, and one of the morals of the book is “terrible things happen in war, and this is one of them, we shouldn’t let these things happen.”

   Now, some of the other books? Haven’t read them, so I can’t say anything. But at least in the case of Dragons. a lot of the complaints I’ve seen fall flat if you’ve actually read the book.

   Are there other issues with the book? Sure. Ideas I disagree with? Right again. But some of the stuff that was said earlier has been taken far out of context, so much so it could almost be another book.

3. Ahh, there we go. Kill enough minions, you get the end boss. ;.;

   You’re not asking in good faith.

   Sadly, I’ve been told that using the original Greek (St. John’s gospel) is no longer understood. (I prefer the Greek). So, VD:

   “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God”.

   We understand your game, we know you don’t even know what “good faith” is, and we’re not going to answer your questions.

   I do.

   And I’m really not happy with what you’ve done. “Immanentize the Eschaton“.

   I’m a little pissed off with your kind. And I’d touch a cross real quick to know if I’m messing around: tables in the temple; stock market Wall St.

   You are not my people.

4. I love it when a guy that’s on your side shows up to tell you you’re wrong about the size of a thirteen year old’s breasts and then is super condescending in all of his further statements.

5. @ULTRAGOTHA:

   Not to quibble overmuch, but grok != understand. Yeah, she gets that there is such a thing as gender, and under the right circumstances can properly distinguish them, but she doesn’t really get gender. She’s at a handicap when dealing with it, as Chapter 1 demonstrates.

   In short, we’re using different words to say essentially the same thing.

6. Max, what you’re telling me is that John Ringo has multiple books where the protagonist spends a lot of time thinking about rape. That’s… wierd.

7. @VD – It turns out there were a bunch of neutral folks who were asking for some kind of example of all of the allegations. I have a friend who listens to right-wing radio and actually believes it, he would have been willing to be persuaded if any of the Puppies had presented actual evidence instead of ranting about ‘SJWs’.

8. I love it when a guy that’s on your side shows up to tell you you’re wrong about the size of a thirteen year old’s breasts and then is super condescending in all of his further statements.

   And you’ve jumped the shark.

   You’ve literally no idea what’s going on / down, but think your snark is cool.

   How’s that working out for you?

9. Rev. Bob: “I’ve already loaded the sequel onto my ereader. I’m not sure where the story’s going, but I’m coming along for the ride.”

   I thought the author did a great job of “not resting on her laurels”. AS takes the plot in a completely different direction from AJ, and throws in a bit of a mystery, for good measure.

10. Influx – I expected it because it just seemed logical to me that if one isn’t certain it’s more offensive to assume than to use a neutral form.

    JJ – ‘That is how the main character in AJ perceives those around her. Her perspective is “I get that this distinction means something to you, and I’ll do my best to respect it and speak to it, but I really don’t understand it.”’

    Well yeah, that’s why to me neutral felt like it would make more sense until known and then to switch to the correct usage.

    Rev. Bob – ‘Yeah, the pronoun thing’s there – it’s explained in the first chapter’

    Not in a way that jived well with me and didn’t really feel important to the story. It didn’t stop me from reading it as it faded into the background quick enough, I just expected it to play some sort of a role in the story. Instead it felt like window dressing. It was about a year and 40 books ago though.

    It had some really good scenes within it (particularly the middle portion), which I’ll avoid saying since you’re in the midst of it. I really like the one character with multiple bodies stuff. I wasn’t a fan of how it started and how it ended as I felt there was way too much deus in the ex machina. Just my opinion though and obviously others felt better about it than I did.

    I hope you enjoy it! When my opinion runs counter to the popular opinion mostly I just feel jealous that I didn’t connect with the work and derive pleasure from it the way others did.

11. “Note: I wasn’t interested in you, I was talking to P J.”

    You’re an odd bird. Posting a comment in a place like this invites public discussion. If you are disinterested in my comments to you, replying to them all is an unusual way to demonstrate that sentiment.

    Your use of music videos by The Prodigy to insult is another strange move. But I like that band, so I am not complaining.

12. Gibrarian,

    Great, thanks for asking!

13. @alex @Max F
    Yes, in fact that bit about fighting the dark urges sounds as if it was lifted word-for-word from the Ghost series, the one that inspired OH JOHN RINGO NO.
    The latter has a lot more rape and teenage (female) sex slaves, if I remember correctly.

    For bonus squick, both series have a ‘good-guy’ character who runs up to a woman immediately after she is raped and feels that the most important thing that needs to be said is, “Don’t let this make you become a lesbian!”

    I would suggest reading his Troy Rising series instead. It isn’t nearly as creepy.

14. Matt Y: “When my opinion runs counter to the popular opinion mostly I just feel jealous that I didn’t connect with the work and derive pleasure from it the way others did.”

    That’s how I feel about The Goblin Emperor and The Three-Body Problem. Intellectually, I “get” why so many people have been waxing enthusiastic about these books. But in reading them, they just didn’t “do it” for me that way. And, of course, I’d rather have more books “do it” for me than less, so it’s a bit of a disappointment when a book that does it for so many other people doesn’t do it for me.

15. Gibarian: I’m shocked to discover that you have registered with a nonexistent e-mail.

16. Max Florschutz:

    Perhaps what you’re missing here is that not everybody wants to read about the horrors of rape, even when they are accurately portrayed as horrors. Not every story needs to include these things, and when one does, it is—no matter how naturally it seems to slot into the story the author is telling—a choice.

    I have heard people in the Puppy camps (and in the related encampments of Gators) say again and again that what they want is good old fashioned fun, a book or game they can lose themselves in without having to wade through the kind of real-world issues that are boring at their banal best and world-worrying at their worst.

    If you can strain your empathy to understand why someone might not want to read a book that deals explicitly with, say, feminist issues through a progressive lens, can you not also understand why a book that deals with the real-world issue of rape might leave some people cold? Or hot, or shaking?

    If you can understand that, then you should be able to understand that not every discussion of this sort of content consists of “no one should write about this thing, ever!” In fact, I’d say almost none does. Instead we talk about who does so, so that it can be avoided by those who have no wish to read it. We talk about how prevalent it is, and how well it is handled, because these things also matter.

    Despite the breathless fearmongering used to gum up support for revolts by rampaging gators and puppies, the point of this kind of critical discourse isn’t to ban certain authors or certain types of stories. It’s to answer questions about what’s out there and why, so that people can then make informed choices as consumers.

    Might some people who have misgivings about a particular book find that they aren’t borne out if they actually read it? Sure. And some wouldn’t. And some would find it’s worse than they expected. Do they owe it to any book in particular to take that chance? Nope. It’s their time, their money, and their state of mind they’d be gambling with, not yours. It’s not as though you are reading literally every book in existence, or even every book published by a major publisher in a language you read, just to give it a fair shake.

17. *Sigh*

    Forum can’t process Ancient Greek / Aramaic fonts which is tiresome. Multiple muppets don’t understand the meta-play going on and all in all, no-one can actually source serious data or fun times music (with embedded code).

    VD:

    So Jesus came out, wearing the crown of thorns and the purple robe. Pilate said to them, “Behold the man!” When the chief priests and the officers saw him, they cried out, “Crucify him, crucify him!” Pilate said to them, “Take him yourselves and crucify him, for I find no crime in him.”… Jesus answered him, “You would have no power over me unless it had been given you from above; therefore he who delivered me to you has the greater sin.”

    I miss the Greek language.

18. @Mike Glyer – a real Email can be attached, with full ID Google+ …

    But, you know, getting doxxed is a little boring when you’re playing with puppies.

    Don’t make the mistake to think I’m a troll: that’s the opposite end of the horseshoe.

19. Rev. Bob–a slight correction, Sword is the most powerful of the ship classes.

    Craig–I found Ancillary Justice enormously fun. At its core, it’s about Breq’s quest for revenge against the person who murdered people she cared about, and crippled Breq in an attempt to murder her. That’s a pretty standard plot, so it’s the execution that matters. The pronoun games, both the use of female pronouns and nouns, and the sort of multiple-I Rev. Bob describes, are about immersing yourself in Breq’s head, which is a very strange place in many, many ways.

20. to insult is another strange move. But I like that band, so I am not complaining.

    Sigh.
    If you think the video links are insults, get out of your own head. Seriously? You can’t process the actual content as a meta-commentary?

    Oh, boy. I’m on your side

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8F5VQnMYtw8

    Sorry, I forget: you’re all a little retarded in this time / space area.

21. Gibarian: It was the comment that was mostly question marks that did it for me. If you say it was an attempt to import Greek, then fine.

22. @Matt Y: “neutral felt like it would make more sense until known”

    I get where you’re coming from, but again, “aliens are alien.” What sounds natural and reasonable to 21st-century humans does not necessarily hold true in other places, times, cultures, or forms of intelligence. I didn’t find it unusual that a 4000-year-old ship’s perspective on the matter might not align with my own, so I just chalked it up as “thinks differently, understood, moving on.”

    “I just expected it to play some sort of a role in the story.”

    It does! It highlights the narrator’s inhumanity, which is no small thing. At this early point in the book, I don’t expect it to be plot-relevant any more than I expect “Vulcans have pointed ears” or “Bajorans have funny-looking noses” to be central to Star Trek plots. It could be, but it doesn’t have to.

23. Alexvdl: read Ghost (which was originally written by Ringo not for publication but for his personal … entertainment) to get a good picture of his thoughts on the topic. Or read the “Oh John Ringo No” summary of it for when you “WTF, NOPE!” away from wading through the war porn and the porn porn. http://hradzka.livejournal.com/194753.html

    Personally, I think Ringo writes good fight scenes, but on the whole, I’m not willing to wade through his sexual issues (which seem to get more play in his books since the success of ghost) for that payoff. His habit of starting a series, going for about four books, and then getting blocked on what to do next, or bored and interested in some new shiny, or whatever the fuck stops him wrapping them up, and leaving a bunch of dangling plot threads, was already stating to wear on me. If I wanted my entertainment to leave me dangling with major plot arcs unresolved, I’d watch more TV.

24. The only point of this was to get VD to watch:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wo2FeI4_6lA

    That’s what you’ve done. To me.

25. Rev. Bob,

    I think I said it somewhere around here as well – I think that the two Ancillary books are very good but they are actually a lot better if you read them as one book – even though both do have their separate stories to work through, it is the central story that takes central stage and the building in the first one start paying off in the second. I have a very strong suspicion that the third will make me say that I wish she had published all three as one book. But we will see.

    Anyway – have fun reading them.

26. #Alexandria:

    That wasn’t my point at all, I believe you may have completely missed the point of my post. The early posts seemed to imply that Ringo had written a book that was all about rape. Forced, non-consensual sex. And while that’s certainly a topic of the book, the post also made it appear that there was little else too the book, and worse did not mention that the book made it quite clear that rape was bad. Instead, the post seemed to infer that the book didn’t have any problem with it (it may have very directly inferred this, as opposed to just inferring it, but it’s late and I don’t feel like digging back for it).

    Which does the book an injustice. Forgive me if I’m wrong, but you seem to imply that it’s fine for content to be given without context. What the prior posts did was akin to mentioning a book of World War II history but then condemning them simply for speaking about World War II, with no regard as to the actual thrust of the education it offered, good or bad.

    “There’s nothing wrong with not wanting to read books about a certain topic,” seems to be what you’re saying, and I can’t help but agree. Everyone is free to choose their own reading material, regardless of what other’s think (which, to tie back into the whole Hugo war, seems to be a part of the problem, people are being very vocal about telling others what not to read). But in the process, if one completely misconstrues what the context of a work is, then one can’t say that they’re any better than the “message” they claim to disparage. It’s misrepresentation.

    Which was the point of my counterpost discussing Ringo’s There will be Dragons. The initial post completely ignored all context and seemed to ignore the fact that the book clearly didn’t approve of rape. Instead, it seemed to imply the opposite, which was a gross misconception.

    If someone doesn’t wish to read about one topic or another, fine. But blanketing “books that discuss rape” or even “books that discourage rape” under “books that condone rape” is a very different matter.

27. I would class some of what goes on in Ringo’s work as “books that excuse rape”.

28. Note: the Joan of Arc video was deliberately</em of a bad film and bad quality. That's how much respect I have for VD.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ePRZC_OulYc

    And I looked back, and there was only one who loved me, at which point I stopped the ire of God

    And, VD, you were not one of them.

    /fini

29. VD – ‘Because we know your game. You’re not asking in good faith. When presented with evidence, you will simply redefine and come up with various excuses to claim X is not X. ‘

    Yikes! That’s terrifying. I applaud Blackgate and Martin for facing the fear of explaining how they came to a conclusion instead of asking for their followers to take them of faith alone.

    In the beginning I did ask on good faith. When nothing was forthcoming I realized that was because there was nothing there.

    But then, anyone who disagrees with you is an SJW, who always lie.

    Drink!

30. I offered him a debate and he promptly ran away.

    Because, in the end, you’re a non-entity.

31. Thank you, all who’ve responded.

    If that’s true, I have even less sympathy (hard to believe, but true) for the Puppy position; if the sort of playing-around-with-language-and-gender that was somewhat experimental back in the early 80’s is still getting their undergarments into the incorrect topology, no wonder they’re not winning awards.

32. Matt Y: I’m not falling for that again. I’m still hung over from the last VD drinking game.

33. >>I offered him a debate and he promptly ran away.

    >Because, in the end, you’re a non-entity.

    And for the same reason that biology professors don’t debate evolution with the old man standing on the street corner yelling at the clouds.

34. The trick is, you never stop the drinking game. Then you never get hungover!

    …that makes sense, right?

35. JJ – Yep, bingo.

    Rev. Bob – I get what you’re saying, but to stretch your metaphor until it screams it was like bad alien make up to me, it made it different but it took me out of the experience too often. But as you said it was likely an intentional thing to make it feel more alien. I think it’s amazing how she swept the awards last year, I just wish the work jived more with me.

36. Wildcat: My brain likes that idea, but my liver and my wallet don’t approve.

37. “‘Because we know your game. You’re not asking in good faith. When presented with evidence, you will simply redefine and come up with various excuses to claim X is not X. ‘”

    Puppies never provide evidence.*

    More precisely, the core claims of Puppydom — the big SJW secret cabal, the decline of the Hugos, the “message-fic” aspects or the political blacklists — have not been usefully demonstrated.

    Instead, what we see is increasingly narrow focus on specific points — “Is X a slate”, or “what does a ‘bloc’ mean”, or “Is Person X possessed of Characteristic Y” — as if winning some fragment of that argument against some small fragment of the many different people arrayed against Puppyhood would indicate the greater truth of Puppyhood’s points at large.

    I’ve often noticed this phenomenon when dealing with evangelists of whatever sort — I first noticed it with Trotskyites, but saw it only coming to full flower with Christian apologists (especially the Presuppositionalists) — they seem to think that if they can win *any* point of argument, then *every* point of their argument is true.

    Clearly, this is fallacious, but it adequately explains their frequently-observed process of continuingly narrowing the point to mostly-irrelevant issues.

    It may be that the Puppies have, aside from a bare few, mostly given up here — I’ll wait, and look forward to hearing from them (since I believe most of the comments have been from non-Puppies) about Ancillary Justice.

    But for the most part, when I’ve asked for specifics, what I’ve gotten back is more handwaving, or the “Defend ‘If I Were A Dinosaur…’ and if you can’t, I win!” attempt (see above regarding proving *a* point (not that I will surrender that ground) means proving *all* points.)

    And more than anything else, this is what gives me hope for the Hugos in the future — or, more precisely, SF in general. An absence of argument will not be enough to convince a sufficient number of people who matter to stop producing the kind of work I enjoy reading, and support, nor, I suspect, to even seriously dent it.

    I’ve been saying for years that we hit, at some point (I know not when) an SFnal singularity — where two people could be “well-read” in SF without having read many (if any) of the same books. This is *certainly* true for books written after 1980 or so — whether you *have* to have read certain works before then is an argument about canon-or-no-canon, which is a different thing altogether.

    No one can reasonably claim to speak for SF. We can speak for subgroups, for themes, for movements, for geographical locations (sort of) — but none of us can speak for SF. Or for Fandom.

    And if anyone attempts to tell you that someone else is doing so — that someone else is dividing up the world into trufen and wrongfen, or infen and outfen, or whatever you wish — that’s a sign that we’re back to the lovely question I’ve posed at previous cons:

    Binary Thinking: Threat or Menace?

    *Emotional truth. Any attempt to argue that this isn’t actually “true” will clearly be a sign that the reader doesn’t get rhetoric. 😉

38. VD. This was neutral ground – since you’ve retreated , I’ll have fun on your blog.

    Be Seeing You.

    How dare you claim what you did. To me. To us. To our kind.

39. >Puppies never provide evidence.*

    >More precisely, the core claims of Puppydom — the big SJW secret cabal, the decline of the Hugos, the “message-fic” aspects or the political blacklists — have not been usefully demonstrated.

    I asked on one of their blogs a few weeks back and was told that they don’t have any evidence for the conspiracy because it was a *secret* conspiracy. I am not joking.

    I read a claim (have not verified myself) that Larry admitted that he was unable to point to any quality book that had been kept out of the running for lack of message.

40. VD: ‘Because we know your game. You’re not asking in good faith. When presented with evidence, you will simply redefine and come up with various excuses to claim X is not X. ‘

    This is, I point out, coming from a man entity who, when found to be stretching the truth, claimed to be rhetorically truthy rather than dialectically truthful because Aristotle. Or something.

41. “I applaud Blackgate and Martin for facing the fear of explaining how they came to a conclusion instead of asking for their followers to take them of faith alone.”

    No one is taking me on faith. They have all observed the same things I have. You say “where is the evidence?” We point to PNH, Stross and Scalzi having more Hugo nominations than Asimov, Heinlein, and Clarke. You handwave it away. One media guy even tried to claim it was only because Scalzi and Stross are editors….

    You’re not asking for evidence, you’re asking for the opportunity to debunk by any means necessary.

    “Because, in the end, you’re a non-entity.”

    Right. You’re all crying up a storm and shrieking about feelbads, newspapers from the UK to New Zealand are reporting on it, Martin himself has written more about it in the last month than anything set in Westeros, and panels at conventions in England are debating my true intentions… because I’m a non-entity.

    I’m fine with being a non-entity, but then what the fuck have you all been going on about for over a month now?

42. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8F5VQnMYtw8

    After listening to a couple of the songs by Smoke Fairies, I can only presume they come from the album Too Depressed to Lift Your Arm to Change the Player.

43. Partisans are usually willing, nay eager, to provide evidence for the righteousness of their cause, even to partisans of the other side. Ask a creationist for evidence against evolution and be prepared for a very long reading list. If I ask the conservative/libertarian folks on my FB friend lists for evidence that Obama is wrecking the economy or that Hillary Clinton is corrupt, they will happily provide it. Actually, I don’t even have to provide it: they post this stuff on their own initiative.

    I consider the evidence unconvincing—that’s why I’m not a creationist or a Tea Party Republican—but hell, at least there is something to talk about.

    The funny thing about Puppyism is that it doesn’t even rise to this level. Feeble, guys.

44. >”Nick Mamatas – Looking for the Sad Puppy Counter-reading list
    If the Hugo Awards have really been dominated by leftist material that prized message over story since the mid-1990s (Brad’s timeline), it should be very simple for members of the Puppy Party to name
    a. one work of fiction
    >b. that won a Hugo Award
    >c. while foregrounding a left message to the extent that the story was ruined or misshaped
    >d. per set of winners since 1995.”
    That’s all. Just a list of twenty books or stories—a single winner per year. Even though a single winner per year wouldn’t prove domination, I’m happy to make it easy for the Puppies.

    Source: http://nihilistic-kid.livejournal.com/1922041.html

    Mr. Mamatas has put forth a request for a list based on nothing but one’s personal preferences and interests. The request is almost like asking for someone’s favourite colour. For example someone might like the colour green, while someone else might prefer the colour purple. These two individuals can discuss in great length why they prefer their respective colours, but ultimately it is unlikely for either of them to change their respective preferences.

    So this request seems arbitrary at best. Anyone could compose a list of almost random works and leave it there. But why hasn’t anyone? It could be because the internet is a pretty big place and one voice can easily disappear into the stream of hundreds of comments and posts. Or perhaps because presenting such specific list would be a mistake, a folly.

    For example; let us assume that someone tries to gather those who like the colour green, but specifies which shades of it are accepted. Would you join the gathering if they reject your preferred shade? The same goes when it comes to dislikes, would you be keen to listen a group that openly dislikes a thing you like?

    Not to mention how such a specific list would mostly just draw unwanted attention to the listed works and authors, in addition to generating the expected heated internet arguments of preference. Hence, it is smarter to just welcome all who like the colour green, or more closely in this case; happen to dislike the colour purple.

    And we should not forget how political preferences differ even in very close geographic proximity. Something that is deemed left or right, might not be it few miles in any direction. Let alone hundreds of miles with country borders in between.

    And as final complaint towards the give request; Mr. Mamatas is not particularly specific which awards he even accepts. Yes, he mentions ‘a Hugo’ but later specifies books and stories. Books are somewhat clear, but what exactly falls into the category of stories? It could be easily debated.

    So, I’ll just repeat how people are free to nominate and vote for whatever they like. May the more numerous group decide the victor.

    And as for the works nominated and voted for in earlier years, just go to Amazon and check the lenghty one star reviews. Those usually give an idea what someone might find wrong in a work. (You cannot please anyone.)

45. Crap… I meant: You cannot please everyone.

46. “This is, I point out, coming from a man entity who, when found to be stretching the truth, claimed to be rhetorically truthy rather than dialectically truthful because Aristotle. Or something.”

    They’re the same thing, as you would recognize if it wasn’t over your head. I’m not going to speak in dialectic to people who don’t understand it. You don’t read things to understand them, you skim and ignore until you find something that you think is a weak point and attack it.

    Jesus said not to cast pearls before swine. You are swine. Ergo, no pearls for you.

47. VD – ‘We point to PNH, Stross and Scalzi having more Hugo nominations than Asimov, Heinlein, and Clarke. You handwave it away’

    Of course I do, it’s anecdotal. Mike Glyer probably holds more nominations than all of them combined. It’s a nifty factoid though. Correlation and causation and all of that.

48. Re: Hugos for Asimov. It wasn’t ‘hand waved’ away, but I did see an analysis of this that pointed out that a lot of Asimov’s shorts were from before the Hugos, so of course they weren’t nominated.

    In short, people disagree about it because it sounds good on the surface, but with even the slightest bit of actual thought, it is clearly not a persuasive argument.

    But, VD, if you are convinced that that form of argument is correct, what does it mean that Wright got something along the lines of five times as many nominations in this year alone as Heinlein ever got in a single year. Is Wright really five times as good a writer as Heinlein?

49. @Cat – Is the uniform modified to be sexier, or just modified to fit better? Current Army regulations may not allow alteration of battle dress uniform, but allows quite a bit of modification to Class A and Class B uniforms. See TM 10-227. And the army in the _March_ series isn’t the US Army. USAF AFI 36-2903, for example, allow alteration of all uniforms to improve fit. Because seriously, uniforms can fit like a tent and you end up looking like a bag of ass.

    On a different note, the spelling is “Sergeant”. It’s pronounced “Sargent”, but that’s because English is weird. See Colonel.

50. >Jesus said not to cast pearls before swine. You are swine. Ergo, no pearls for you

    And he claims to be surprised that GRRM doesn’t want to have anything to do with him…

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