In the three-ish years I’ve been a full-time freelance writer/novelist, I’ve largely managed to avoid being the target of online dickishness.

That ended yesterday with a hysterically amazing incident on Twitter. The Adventures of Strongarm & Lightfoot is currently part of a month-long promotional effort through Author Shout and is getting a lot of exposure on Twitter — where it caught the attention of a user whose name I won’t state here, because I don’t want to inflate this sad little man’s fragile ego any further.

The initial post seemed innocuous enough. He wanted to know if Erika Racewind, the character in the center of the cover, was an albino, and why she was wielding what appeared to be a Persian weapon. I responded that she was part of a race of elves whose appearance was characterized by chalk-white skin but said nothing about the sword.

(In case you were wondering, she’s chalk-white because she’s meant to be a subtle poke at the traditional Drow-style “dark elf” archetype. But I digress…)

Now, here’s where the fun begins. His next tweets were:

so why would an elf have a Persian blade? Do Persians have elves in their mythology? I know they have unicorns

but their unicorns are wolves& I don’t ever remember anything about them having elves

At this point I had a sense where this was going but I responded anyway, stating, “Persia doesn’t exist in my novel, ergo it isn’t a Persian blade; it’s elven.”

And that’s when it happened…

His next several tweets, posted in rapid succession:

it is a Persian blade, they are the only culture I know of that uses those blades

I’m getting the distinct impression that you either:

thumbed through a weapons book and thought they looked cool or are mimicking PJ’s LOTR

Note that it’s Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings.

either of which would be amateurish and juvenile

it is a Persian blade, they are the only culture I know of that uses those blades

copying it and calling it Elvin doesn’t undo your stealing it from their culture, directly or indirectly

But apparently basing a fantasy world heavily on medieval Europe and adapting its cultures and arms is totally cool.

and “ergo” is a pretentious word, and you didn’t even use it right

 

Wait, did I? Let me check…

Nope, everything looks good here.

And now, the grand finale of this carnival of the absurd:

and elves don’t exist moron, myths draw from the weapons of the culture that created; don’t be infantile

And then HE blocked ME.

I did a little digging around on this guy, and I am far from the first writer he’s thrown shade at. I found quite a few other accounts of this guy picking on an author for some ridiculously trivial thing, giving him or her shit for a while, and then disappearing back into his dank cave to lie in wait for the next victim after blocking the latest target so he/she can’t respond to the troll’s blather.

If anyone out there has had any similarly amusing run-ins with online trolls, I’d love to hear about them.

In closing: elves don’t exist?

I beg to differ.