Anonymous Conservative linked to this article explaining how the CIA set up a parallel network of part-timers to use as assets in ongoing operations- including on US soil. AC says the following in commentary.
Basically it is describing a Secret Society of CIA businesses that preferentially employs a Secret Society of CIA spies embedded in them, all living normal lives, and even moving into CIA for a bit, then moving back to civilian life, and then back to CIA. And the CIA makes sure “their” businesses win out over competitors which are not in the Secret Society by giving them CIA advantages as a reward for working for CIA. The only question is, how big is the entire thing?
Imagine if you started a business, but CIA never came to you, and your dreams were leveled because another business got the CIA hookup, CIA agents patronized it, CIA itself supported it, and with that help, it ran you under. And it was your tax dollars paying for it all. And that will be the most harmless part of the thing, when it airs out.
Also interesting is they are in DNA companies to the point they are altering the DNA profiles of CIA agents. Notice how many pieces of the big machine described on this site are peeking around the corners of this piece.
Of course, behind all of this, I see one massive intelligence operation, which Targeted Individuals report follows them across national borders. I see the followers in all the countries on google earth. One operation above them all, possibly just keeping the plebes in the Agency busy playing spy games against each other, blinded to the ultimate reality, even as they create the very covert machine in our society which Cabal needs in each nation to take each nation over – more than any other enemy they think they face ever could.
Having observed the rise in Jon del Arroz's profile result in a massive uptick in Gamma Male anklebiters and similar nuisances, and watching the Supreme Dark Lord decide that he's far more merciful by dealing harshly with them than not, has me thinking that if I am successful then I shall also have these problems and therefore I should pay attention to what my more successful peers do to deal with it.
So that's now the policy here. I have no desire to deal with this shit anymore than they do. I will not put up with it either, so I won't and this post serves to make it clear that I don't. Find yourselves a Minecraft server and de-rez yourselves.
Names of animes in order: God Mazinger, Dunbine, Wataru, NG Knight, Escaflowne, Magic Knight Rayearth, Dual! PTA, War on Geminar, Knights & Magic and Gundam Build Divers Re:Rise.
I'd talked about Dunbine previously, and Escaflowne's reputation is warranted. Wataru is aimed more at boys, but still good fun; the adaptation done for Super Robot Wars X (where it is the backbone of the game's plot) is great. Rayearth is a beloved CLAMP classic, also worth your time. I haven't watched the rest, so that I leave to others; comment below.
The classics come from the 80s and 90s, before the shift to CG for animation, and the higher quality shows in the enduring appeal and popularity. While none of them are the juggernaut that is the Gundam or Macross franchises, and only one has a tangential connection to the Mazinger franchise, that they are still getting physical home video releases and merchandise releases from time to time--and their OPs & EDs still get performed live--should tell you that they're still in the game.
If nothing else, watch Escaflowne and Dunbine. If you can find the manga, read that if you prefer. And it's high-time we start making our own takes that don't suck, because the crap won't stop until that happens.
I watch the Darkstream--Vox Day's regular livestreams--on about as regular a basis as he does them. I'd known about what happened to Owen Benjamin within hours of Owen himself saying so on his livestream, and any other successes and setbacks come up regularly on the Darkstream as well as on his blog. Therefore, when the Supreme Dark Lord began to talk about some party or parties not only shit-talking about him and Owen on the Internet, but also attempting to interfere with their business--to fuck his their money, if not more--I sat up and took notice.
I've observed the man long enough to know that he's neither as ego-fueled nor as fragile as his detractors claim. He's like Dalton in Roadhouse: Nice, until it's time to not be nice.
As a wise man once said, "Don't mess with a man's money." In law one of the ways you can run afoul of this is tortious interference, and deplatforming is just that: you, a third party with no standing to intervene into a contractual relationship, doing exactly thatwith no legal authority to do so. Add in threats--veiled or not--of doing harm to the party you're attempting to have break their contractual relationship, be it physical or otherwise, and you're going to go from civil to criminal right quick.
This, folks, is what I'm getting is going on here. Some dumb motherfuckers are going after Owen and Vox's revenue, and they're using racketeering methods to do so, in addition to brute-force hack attempts into arms of Vox's business operations. As this also includes Owen getting SWATted, then I feel no pity for the morons messing with either man. I will just get the popcorn and watch the show.
If you thought Vox's ability to make Amazon undo their hit on Castalia House, Indiegogo's bending the knee, Patreon change their Terms of Service just to avoid dealing with him, and the Hugos pulling an An Hero to spite the Vox Man was something else then this will really be one to watch. Globally-based hit operations opens up global choice of legal venues, and now the game is afoot- and Vox is a master at wargaming.
These punks are going to wish they accepted his offer to back down.
Author David V. Stewart examines why Mouse Wars is bad fanfic.
Nevermind the problems of the Pop Cult for a moment; this video aptly explains why the Pop Cultists of this flavor reject the Devil Mouse's films. They are, quite frankly, heretical inversions of the cult dogma and core narrative. The Pop Cultists may not comprehend that they are having religious reactions to a desecration of their faith, but that is exactly what's going on. This is why they reject, and why they demand respect; it's all about substituting a fake religion for the real one they either foolishly denied or were never permitted to experience at all, with all of the behaviors and energies one puts into religious devotion.
And yes, the Death Cultists that did this know this, which is why they did it; they're proclaiming their conquest of the cult's culture by killing the conquered's heroes and suborning their myths to the Death Cult's purpose. (Yes, that's exactly what this trilogy did, right down to that ending, and yes the Pop Cultists recognize it as such.)
Why am I harping on this?
Every violation of the brand weakens the cult's ties to it. Every fraid strand segments cultists off. Every ex-cultist becomes someone open to alternatives. Everyone open to alternatives is a customer looking for us to serve their unmet needs. They won't be open to anything outside their cult until their devotion to the cult is broken, and it is vital that we recognize when that moment comes so we are ready to meet them as they come out of it.
This is a turning of events that all of us can and should benefit from. Each emerging ex-cultist has different things about the brand that they are drawn to, things that each of us emphasize in our alternatives, so those who love the military end of it can enjoy Cole & Anspach while those attached to knights and gallantry would love what I do and so on.
The Pop Cult rejected the new Corporate material because it's heresy. If the heretics are not purged, and orthodoxy restored, then the devoted--seeing their idol as a traitor--will reject the cult and walk away. That's the window when they become open to non-brand alternatives to what entertainment the brand offered; as for the spiritual aspects, that's when a competent evangelist knows how to approach one seeking the real religion- and that's for another post by someone more competent than I on the matter.
I've said plenty on Corporate IP ownership, and that the quality of Corporate-owned pop culture productions depend greatly on the adherance of to a concept of stewardship. If a regime holds to it, you get good stuff. If not, you get trash. Regimes turn over, so this can happen to IPs in a cyclical format. For reasons I won't go into here, the regime that control the Gundam property have been more good than bad about being stewards of the property in the last decade and as Gundam's 40th anniversary goes on we're seeing this continue. The below is from the GundamOfficial channel on YouTube.
The style employed shows that this is by the same team that did the anime adaptation of the Gundam: Origin manga, which is a superb prequel to the original series following Char Aznable's youth from being dispossessed as a child due to his father's murder and becoming the legendary Char of the original series by the end (which concludes with the Battle of Loum and its immediate aftermath).
In the Epilogue closing out Origin, we see White Base going to Side 3 to get the original Gundam. That was the teasing of a remake of the original series. This video--and the other version focusing on Amuro--seem to be more aimed at pitching special limited-run anniversary Gunpla kits than any remake, but I bet that the reactions to both these teasers and the kits will be used to measure interest in an Origin-style anime remake.
(But any such remake won't come in 2020. That's due to the owners not wanting anything to take away from the movie releases for the anime adaptation of the light novel Hathaway's Flash, which heretofore you had to play Super Robot Wars V to get any info about it at all other than to read it (and then it's only in Japanese).)
You can get good remakes out of a Japanese corporate-owned property. The on-going remakes of the original Space Battleship Yamato series, with the second finally getting released in the U.S. this year, is proof of that. Not an exact shot-for-shot remake, but still well-received by returning fans and drawing in a new audience to compliment that loyal cohort, and that's what a Corporate-run IP is supposed to look like. The tell? Merch sales and cosplay representation are strong. The result? Good Return On Investment.
This is why I (a) fully expect the Mouse to purge the SJWs from Lucasfilm, and (b) expect that aforementioned remake of the original Gundam series to be announced formally in the coming year. The former is what the now-dominant Corporate faction at Lucasfilm sees as required to get that damage repaired and the machine functioning again, and the latter is what a competent corporate management regime looks like.
It's why I expect more Corporate backstabbing of Death Cultists in their orgs in the coming years; their goals do not coincide, and Corporate is seeing this more plainly now, and being psychopaths they'll have no qualms with being ruthless about purging them like they're Space Marines enacting Exterminatus with their bare hands. What is that saying? "Don't mess with a man's money." Yeah, that. Tends to get Corporate to call the hit squads, and real money trumps fake religion more often than not.
It's the day that the Light of the World arrived, and the true Enlightenment began and the Dark Ages preceding began its stubborn--but inevitable--decline.
And for more commentary on the historicity of the occassion, go to Brian Niemeier's post today and learn why I find traditional Catholicism and Orthodoxy far superior to Protestantism- especially the thoroughly cucked lefty anti-Christian denomination I grew up in. (United Church of Christ)
And speaking of Brian, Combat Frame XSeed: CY 40 Second Coming is now live on Amazon and available. This is the best Gundam-style original mecha science fiction around.
This year I released Book One, Reavers of the Void (ebook and paperbacks links in the sidebar), beginning the Star Knight Saga after an unexpected hospital visit and a lengthy rehab thereafter. So far the reaction has been as I had hoped, and that means there's more coming. This is the plan.
Write Book Two starting right after the New Year.
Write Book Three immediately after finishing Book Two.
Run a crowdfunding campaign to pay for the editing required.
Get backers their copies as soon as the books are ready, then put it for sale on Amazon.
Open a merchandise store to sell Star Knight merch to those wanting it.
Encourage fan art.
The timeline is to get the manuscripts done by the end of April, with the campaign taking all of May. While I wait on the edits to come back, I will finally get going on the side-project I'd been talking about on and off for a while now. This is the first Star Knight Gaiden, "Knight of the Sword" (tentative title), featuring Creton as our lead and taking place on the world of New Vienna. If the resources and time allows for it, I'll get this one done and out by this time next year. If not, as soon as I can in 2021.
I will post excerpts here as I lock things down, including any artwork.
And that, by the way, is what the merch store is about: getting the artwork out there. Stuff is fantastic.
I'd been following writer podcasts since I decided to commit as I found them. This one's working for me, for now, so I'm going to share it here and see if it works for you. This is "The Business of Writing" on YouTube, and below is--as of this post--the most recent episode.
My circumstances are far more restricted than most now, but even so there is a lot to learn from podcasts like this and that's why I'm sharing them. Enjoy.
I write about knights with laser swords. Time for a video essay about fight scenes, with my commentary on how this applies to what I write.
And one more focused on the written word.
While I hadn't seen either video when I wrote Reavers, I did understand certain things such as pacing and displaying character. Good fight scenes are as much an opportunity to show by deed as dialog scenes show by word, and deftly mixing the two--sometimes in the same sequence--can really bring the thrill to the reader. Howard was a master of this, so if there's just one guy to read to get a sense of this in practice it's him. Start with the Conan books--his books, not the pastiches and hackjobs--and spread out to Kane, Kull, Bran, etc. from there.
When I go to write a fight or battle, I have an idea of the space already mapped in my head. I have never needed more than that. Likewise, I know how the action looks; the trick is putting the proper words down to convey this to the reader, and then to pace the action so I don't bore him. The entire sequence where Jack seizes Gabriela is the climax of an entire raid set up as a heist, and Jack's part in it is brief.
Jack's first fight is with some guards, the duke hosting Gabriela, Sibley (our hero's right-hand man), and Gabriela's dandy companion. Jack takes them all on and wins, with Sibley being the last one to go down. Then he toys with Sibley's son Creton, who tries to protect his father and stop Jack but fails in a dramatic and humiliating fashion. Finally he faces our hero Roland and holds him long enough to get away.
What did I intend to do? Establish Jack as a competent antagonist with competent minions of his own; his part of the plan required him to outthink his opposition, most important being the assumption on egress, and ensuring that his backup was on time to thwart that expectation. This was accomplished, though I think if I were to do it over I'd spend a little more time ensuring that the reader had the proper sense of space.
The fight between Red Eyes and Roland later on, looking back on it, could have been done better. I didn't think I got across how dangerous it is to have an opponent whose reach was enough to impose a dead zone--a space where you can't attack your target--due to having longer arms and proportionally-sized weapons. (Red Eyes is half-again Roland's height.) What I did get across, again, was that Roland and Red Eyes had different objectives and so formed fight strategies accordingly- and this time, Roland's was better executed.
And in both sequences, I think I did all right in showing the character traits I wanted the reader to see. Jack's a schemer who rolls with a plan, and so long as that plan is on track he's going to do well. Roland's a fighter, so his strength is in getting into his opponent's OODA Loop; when Jack and Roland rematch, both of them will fight differently due to using past experience to shape the present encounter.
From what I'm hearing, the laser sword film actually makes an attempt to not suck harder than a black hole. But it's too little, and far too late; this is effort that should have been in at the start and not the end. As for why things are this messed up, allow me to present a possible explanation: Office Politics.
That's not tragic. That's pathetic. Corporate office politics ended up crashing a billion-dollar brand, ruining a massive corporate investment, because some Culty Catty Cat Ladies couldn't get their way about trashing the thing they're charged with stewarding for the purpose of maximizing Return On Investment. No wonder the Devil Mouse is mad, and Head Bitch In Charge got quietly sidelined so she can take the fall for this disaster.
I repeat what I said previously: Walk Away. This can't be fixed; even if the Death Cult poz is purged, the Corporate Art Problem remains and this franchise will become whatever Corporate thinks is required to maximize Return On Investment.
Take that energy you want to spend on being mad about Corporate Laser Swords and put it into making and spreading alternatives instead. It's a far more useful and mutually beneficial course of action. You can start with my own Star Knight books; Book One is in the side bars, and I'll have a formal announcement on Books Two and Three this coming week. Others will, no doubt, post links to others below in the Comments or go back into recent past posts where I linked to a pile of them.
I wrote the following at Empire Must Fall just over two years ago:
Anciently, when a conqueror completes a conquest one of the things done to cement control and establish dominance is to change the mythology of the conquered nation. Their heroes get degraded, their deeds defiled, and the conqueror's heroes supercede them in all ways- often with ease. To the generation surviving the conquest, this is insult added to injury, but left unchecked the generations that follow will accept this degenerate mythology as normal- and if the conqueror is wise, they leave an out for the subjects to go all the way and buy into their control. It's the mythological equivalent of killing a man, taking his wife for oneself, and slaughtering his children by her before seeding your own to both remove loose ends and make her accept the conquest as inescapable.
It has come to pass.
And it's come in a manner that's too familiar to the historically literate: a weak and decadent regime allows traitors to take over, whose own actions either actively ally with the barbarians at the gates to let them in or doubles-down on the decadence that results in the incompetence that lets them through. The Pop Cult, betrayed by the Death Cult, is angry and fights back the only way they know how: rejecting the Death Cult leaders while doubling-down on the core object of Pop Cult worship.
(As for the whole Pop Cult angle? Sunday, at that blog aforementioned.)
I'd call it a farce, but no one's laughing- not even Corporate.
One of the best metal bands around went to the Sahara to shoot a video the other day. That video isn't up yet, but the story behind it is.
I look forward to the actual music video, if only to see Indy goofing about as Lawrence.
The First World War is the origin of much of the bullshit that's gone on in the world for the last 100+ years, and one of them was mentioned in this video: the Sykes-Pico Agreement. It's the agreement that (a) would establish the political support for the creation and sustenance of the modern state of Israel and (b) set up the Middle-East/Southwest Asia context that's been a hot mess ever since the fall of the Ottoman Empire. Yes, this includes Syria, for all of those wondering.
The actual story, and not the Peter O'Toole movie take of it, is actually far better drama than Hollywood's best efforts. But, alas, T.E.'s writings of it is as reported.
And while I'm at it, here's their video for "Resist and Bite".
Friend of the Retreat Yakov Merkin launched his crowdfunding campaign for Book 6 of his Galaxy Ascendant series today. As of this post, already at 8% and climbing. This is good stuff, and you won't feel cheated by giving him your money. This is indie Space Opera at its best and when--not if--it becomes an international sensation you can stand proud and proclaim that you were one of his backers from the early days.
And if you're wanting even more, stay tuned. I've got my own announcement to make presently.
The last few weeks have seen leaks of information about that Big Brand franchise with the laser swords and the moon-sized space stations that SJWs took over and promptly ran into the ground. Last night that franchise's final film in its first trilogy after the Devil Mouse acquired it premiered. It is exactly as you expected. When the man who created it wasn't even there, you know it's bad.
There is hope. Some of the fan channels are finally getting it: stop giving money to people who hate you. The problem is that their perception of who hates them, and why, is limited to the Cat Lady and her SJW Death Cult bullshit. They don't see that Corporate itself is the problem. Smart Corporate stewardship can keep the known destructive elements of corporate ownership in check and produce great stuff. (e.g. Gundam, which has far more good than bad in its catalog, especially between 2011-2020.) The Devil Mouse ain't smart.
Yes, even though I like two of the men set to take over operations--and one of the being the creator's last protege, responsible for the pre-takeover animated entries being decent if not good--and the woman is not a cat lady, the reason for skepticism is not due to the Death Cult per se. It's due to the fact that this is a corporate investment by a global corporation, and not an act of authentic creation by the creator or under his supervision. There is good reason to believe the suck will continue, just shorn of SJW BS.
It's going to be a work, folks. I've been saying in for a while now, and so have my colleagues: Walk away from the Devil Mouse. Walk away from Paramount (or whatever it's called this week). The corporate regimes may stop actively trashing those Big Brands, but only insofar as it means repairing their investments and making them meet the heavy expectations for Return On Investment put to them. Let me repeat that: Only insofar as it means meeting Return On Investment expectations.
They don't care about you. Corporations are psychopaths, and IP are means to an end and nothing more- making you, the audience, nothing more than revenue streams to tap. Yes, it's nice to not have Clown World smeared into your face on a daily basis by SJWs, but you're still being farmed via your emotional bond to a brand like cult leaders exploit their cultists.
That's not respectful conduct, and to quote Doomcock: Without Respect, We Reject. Unless and until a non-creator owner demonstrates by deeds that respect, walk away.
TLDR: Recommended because it's better than recent AAA trash and other disappointments.
I concur with Razorfist's overall sentiment. This is the ambitious open world RPG that better-known titles claim to be, but aren't. Observing playthroughs make this clear, and that one can come at this as if your man were Solomon Kane is indeed a fantastic draw. Yes, you can do the Diplomancer thing if you like and talk your enemies to death, but far more satisfying is smiting them and salting the earth wherein they came so naught arises thereafter.
Is it worth paying the New Release price? If you don't balk at tossing $50 (US) at a videogame, go for it. You won't feel like you got stiffed. For the rest of us, wait for a sale or get it used. (So watch your local used shops for physical copies.) This is going to be one of those titles you don't want to miss, a sleeper hit that only grows in good word over time.
As I post this, the show is about to begin. See you in the chat, and I'll edit this after the fact with any observations.
Good points to takeaway:
Corporate owners don't care about the IPs they hold. That's where the suck sets in. Stick to audiences that care. (SJWs don't.)
Aging first-wave gamers will have money when they retire. Expect the nostalgia remakes and homages to pick up in 20 years, assuming everything doesn't collapse by then. Because that audience (a) cares and (b) HAS MONEY.
Nick Cole & Jason Anspach have successfully turned Galaxy's Edge into a proper franchise entity now that other well-known mil-SF authors are coming on board to pen books.
You make a Boba Fett, and you get Fett Fandom.
Having stand-alone side-stories that compliment your main series has proven to aid the visibility of the main series.
Having a landing page where all your stuff can be found is good. Having two or three is better.
Amazon screwed with the algorithim to emphasize paid adds over organic discovery, but the latter does still happen.
The keywords and Also Boughts got depreciated due to hustlers speed-publishing crap to game the system and stay on top of the algorithim to maximize sales and thus payouts.
Selfish actors gaming the system are doing damage at the expense of the whole--Tragedy of the Commons at work--and that drives algorithim changes to police and curb it.
Writer Culture is a lot like Fandom: catty, petty, and Mean Girls levels of stupid- especially when we are better off cheerleading and boosting each other.
Get to know your audience as best you can; they're going to be far better at making you successful than most other efforts in marketing ever will.
It's Friday the 13th. Boris Johnson's Tories win the UK General Election, putting him into No. 10 (i.e. become Prime Minister) and guaranteeing Brexit will happen. Let's add to that shitlib nightmare, shall we? The below comes from Anonymous Conservative's blog post today.
I'll be on @seanhannity 2nite @FoxNews at 9pm ET and will explain how @realDonaldTrump will be eligible for a 3rd term due to the illegal attempts by Comey, Dems, and media , et al attempting to oust him as @POTUS so that's why I was named to head up the 2024 re-election.
While Nick Rekieta talked facts about COPPA, the Excellence of Elocution cut a short rant about YouTube's recent Terms of Service changes and why they're coming right as the 2020 cycle for the US Presidency is about to begin.
If there is one thing you can fault the God-Emperor for, it is being insufficient in looking out for his allies, and online is where he's failed hardest. While I fully expect the God-Emperor to win a second term, it's going to take more work to get the message out online this time due to Big Tech aggressively rigging the game against him this time around. First by changing the algorithims to make discovery all but impossible, privledging Fake News over the alternatives outside the Death Cult's control. Second by going after each ally online in turn and deplatforming them, up to and including financial cutoffs. (Just ask Red Ice.)
It is unwise to expect the God-Emperor to handle this in the time available. The wise thing to do is what the Supreme Dark Lord, Red Ice, and others have done: build your own platfoms, and diversify your presence in existing ones. The latter is very easy to do; set up accounts on competing platforms of that social media type, and ensure that people can follow you there if your FaceTwitTube accounts get nuked. The former is where you're going to need to spend either time or money because you've got to set that up and keep it up; this is where you can do the paywalled value-add thing that Red Ice does for its members-only site and Unauthorized does for its subscribers.
I suspect that, for most of us, we're restricted to the latter strategy for now. Fortunately there is no shortage of alternatives; the catch is getting links before the eyeballs of the audience who are on the main platforms, which is why many of us have opted for doing newsletters via email. (Yes, I have been very bad at this. I will fix this presently.)
As for what to do about the God-Emperor? Besides re-electing him next year, it's to push him--HARD--to smash Big Tech with the power of the state. Will he? Yes, but I think the big reason for a lot of delays in promises like this is due to the need to turn the Federal judiciary, which he has done at all levels- especially on the notoriously shitlib ends like the 9th Circuit and the DC area District courts. (Why should be obvious, but Anonymous Conservative gets into more details.) In short, he wants what he does via Executive power to not get messed with by the courts, and that takes time.
Which returns me to us relying on ourselves until that task is complete. In the meantime, I would recommend getting lawyers to review the Terms of Service; if Vox Day can beat Indiegogo by using their own TOS against them, you can too. Welcome to the Rice Fields.
Spreading this around to dent the FUD going around.
Everyone is talking about COPPA, mainly because FTC Agent Andrew Smith said the FTC would come down on content creators. But, does the FTC have the statutory authority to do so? I don't think they do. Let's talk about it.
Nick does a live show nightly during the week at his YouTube channel here, starting about 11pm Central time.
I don't normally do this, but (a) this is a classic anime series that--like Escaflowne--expertly married isekai and mecha together. If not for its later production problems, it would have been an equal to Gundam and Macross. This is Aura Battler Dunbine and Right Stuff Anime has the Blu-Ray collection on sale for $18 right now; when you see the standard retail price, you know you're seeing a steal of a deal here.
Yes, I want this. Yes, this is a good Christmas present. Get yourself a copy, and a second to give to a pal; it's that cheap right now.
And if you want more, get the follow-up and play Super Robot Wars X as well as Super Robot Wars T.
As seen on the blog of the Supreme Dark Lord today, an interesting article on the correlation between sexual morality and Civilization. I'll reproduce what he quoted here.
Friend of the Retreat Yakov Merkin recently completed his term of service in the Israeli Defense Force. He's also a Girls und Panzer fan. Time for an AMV.
This is the day, in 1941, that dragged the United States formally into World War 2. Moreso than many, I lost a relative--my maternal grandfather's younger brother--in action on the Oklahoma that day. It's been nearly 80 years; the generation that fought that war is all but gone, and the generation directly affected by it is starting to follow, meaning that cultural efforts to rehabilitate the losers (see below) and celebrate the victors (among other things) are also fading in relevance. The world they built after the war, and the norms they used state power to enforce, and the Narrative they told about it all, is going with them.
For those of us who knew that world, whichever side of it, we're finding out now what it took to build that world and why those who did it did so. It isn't pretty, and it's why I call their world one based on a Narrative. Because they left out the whole truth, which reveals things that parties benefiting from this realignment post-war don't want out, and it upends that Narrative in many ways- ways that mean the loss of the power based on that Narrative.
And there are uncomfortable truths coming out, especially to those so long covered by the Narrative that it is a true shock to them. The generations coming up now have no ties to that war, and therefore no reason to invest in the world and its Narrative that arose in its wake. They don't care, and they're increasingly resentful of service to something they see no truth in nor any benefit from maintaining; instead, they see nothing but reasons to abolish it because it is literally demanding their blood and treasure to serve it.
And that's how the ages of Man turn. It's why building anything on anything other than truth is building on sand. It's what Ozymandius--yes, the poem--means; you cannot build forever if your foundation is not truth, because those who come three or more generations after you cannot see--because it is not self-evident--the value in what you built so they tear it down and replace it with another. (This, by the way, explains why cults rely on indoctrination for multi-generational endurance- and why those who run them tend to be either those who cynically exploit it or are fanatical True Believers and rarely in between.)
And that's without willful deception. Deliberate fraud makes it even more pressing to swear only to the truth when building to last; it is far easier to defend what is truth than what is not when attacked by deception.
What's to come? Well, in addition to Boogaloo in various places, expect the cultures of the world to realign. Rehabilitation works will rise in number, frequency, and prominence making previously ones look quaint by comparison- even recent remakes. (e.g. below)
And there is no reason to not move on this now, and--as Sun Tzu would say--prepare the battlefield to guarantee success later. The time to restore what was stolen comes. Let us be ready. Deus Vult.
Anonymous Conservative's blog roundup today had this gem near the bottom.
Trump says he wants Impeachment to happen now and happen fast. What this has shown is that the covenant is broken. We agreed that we would vote, and whoever won got to set policy and whoever lost would abide by it. We kept our end under Obama, even as we suspected there was major corruption, criminal activity, and treason. But then it was violated by Democrats with Illegal Alien sanctuaries. We retaliated with Second Amendment sanctuaries, and would have let it go there. But now the Democrats have shown they will not do the same, as they have tried to overturn the election for the highest leader in the land. Impeachment is the turning point, beyond which the national covenant has broken. Unless Q and Trump break out something amazing, Boogaloo it is.
AnonCon is not the only one to see that this is a trap set by the God-Emperor. Razorfist has concurred for months, and he's finally ranting about it.
I don't share Razorfist's implicit belief that defeating Impeachment prevents Boogaloo, as he shows in that video that the Dems are playing the demographics game to seize and hold power permanently. If they're openly playing this dirty, then they're covertly playing much dirtier and--as the historical record shows--the more intolerant and determined party wins long-term conflicts, especially if they're willing and able to play the attrition game. They need to get attrited hard and severely now if they are to lose for good.
We are past the point where voting fixes things. Again. It's 1859, folks, and you're about to witness the 1860 election all over again next year. I can't say for certain what will come after Boogaloo, but I can say what won't: the America all of us once knew or believed to exist. Don't be like the guy below confronting Tuco. Be like Tuco.
"Disney's 'Galaxy's Edge' park blows. Shit happens. So what?"
Convergence has consequences. As noted by the Supreme Dark Lord, the Devil Mouse's parks division is hardly immune.
The Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance ride broke down just minutes after opening today as part of Disney’s $1 billion Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge expansion at Walt Disney World’s Hollywood Studios.
“Rise of the resistance broke down after about 18 minutes,” one park guest tweeted.
Yep, that's the Devil Mouse enjoying the benefits of Muh Diversity and Muh Social Justice. It builds rides that don't work, attractions no one wants, and relegates talent that could actually produce value for its holdings to venues secured behind paywalls while failing to resist interfering with their work to fulfill Muh Convergence objectives. This is not confined to Mouse Wars. The new Skyliner pods have also had issues.
If the spiritual element doesn't bother you, then shun the Devil Mouse for your physical safety. No, don't think just seeing films in theaters is okay, or you could end up getting cut by crazy Elsa 'stans.
— The Red Elephants Fan Account (@elephants_red) December 4, 2019
But not to despair, the Supreme Dark Lord has called upon the Evil Legion of Evil and things are going to happen now that there is cause for action.
In the meantime, you can find the Big Bear at Unauthorized and you can do direct support to him there via subscribing to him specifically.
Not this was unexpected. We've known there's been yet another round of purges coming for a while, and the smarter dissidents--like Owen, Vox, and Red Ice--have not only set up backups on competing sites like like Bitchute and DLive, but also built their own platforms making most of this deplatforming irrelevant. (They are still vulnerable to financial attacks via payment processors and banks cutting them off, something the SDL has already worked around once.)
The reason I'm not worried about Owen is because the SDL backs him, and the SDL has the Dread Ilk and the Vile Faceless Minions at his command as well as Owen's Bears. This battle will be--for a legal fight--brief, and likely not good for Google/Alphabet due to this front for the Glowies having moronic horndogs for in-house counsel. If this case is a loss for the Big Bear, it'll be for reasons the SDL can use to feed the God-Emperor's efforts to purge the judiciary (because this will be a Federal case) and drain the Swamp.
And a win for Owen will be a win for all of us. Red Ice, Infowars, Tragedy & Hope- all of you folks need to monitor and support this case as best you can because you benefit from this case being a win. This purge is meant to fix the Narrative for the 2020 U.S. Presidential Election, and if it's sunk now it means big wins for everyone down the road- except, of course, the traitors who want this to happen.
I concur with my colleague Brian Niemeier that, for most of us indies in the trenches, we're going to be relying on patronage via crowdfunding for a while.
It is unwise to be wholly reliant on any one thing, so there's something to be said for trying to make the most of revenue opportunities (i.e. more ways to pay the bills while keeping my audience happy).
Given what I have to work with, I have just one question: Do you folks want Star Knight merchandise? If so, what do you want? Post in the Comments below.
The man hated by SJWs in tabletop RPGs talks monotheism, D&D, and why most D&D settings such because it lacks that thing despite all of the other trappings.
You know you've got something worth watching when you get a comment like this: "Yes. Monotheism is the missing link that D&D needs for a medieval authentic feeling in your game. I use it. In addition it does one of two things. It either keeps SJWs away from your game, or it attracts them because they want to break your game or be an antichurch outsider. In those cases they always end up quitting because they don’t get what they want."
That man--one Iron Cross--is not wrong. It is a good and effective filter; what SJWs you get will be the more cunning subversive sorts, in which case the go-to play is to call them out, confront them on their bullshit, and tell them to stop being shitters or get punted.
But it's another comment that really poured salt into the wound: "Wouldn't traditional Germanic polytheism scare SJWs away too, what with all the traditional gender roles like women being masters of the home but men being prominent in hunting, war, and government ? Oh who am I kidding, anything traditionally European makes these guys squirm."
First, that man--one CptMorgan252--is correct. Second, it is also true that you can count the D&D settings that even try to create an authentic non-Christian environment on one hand and you'll have digits left over, and those few attempts are less than half-assed; most RPG designers are not well-read, or properly educated, so they lack the skill as well as the knowledge required to do so. That some manage to do it, however flawed, is entirely by accident. Third, the notable examples of RPGs that did try to do so might as well be dictionary examples of "critical darling" and "cult favorite": Runequest as well as anything non-Christian-yet-historical (e.g. Bushido) are your go-to examples.
I could go on about the degradation of Christendom, and that does play into it, but let's look at a more immediate cause here: most people playing D&D could not give two shits about authentic (non-)monotheism. They're there to play a game, and they couldn't care less about the lore surrounding it. Therefore there's no benefit to putting in the work it would require for a commercial product to make it worthwhile.
Note the bold. I specifically mean this as a thing for commercial publishers to concern themselves with; hobbyists can do or do not as they will, since only their table matters and not the wider tabletop RPG audience/customer network. Despite this being a persistent thing since the 1970s, it is not something that cannot be surmounted; this is, in reality, entirely a failure of marketing. Put together a D&D campaign setting that's all about the Deus Vult and you'll have players saying that it's Time For A Crusade; make the game, not the setting, all about Making Christendom Great Again and you'll get a monotheism in D&D that actually works and players will actually care about.
Which brings me to how many RPG designers fail to comprehend what their job is, but that's for another post.
For those of you wondering why any of us in the #PulpRev talk about light novels, it's because of stuff like this.
That's the 10th volume in the original novel series for Legend of the Galactic Heroes. The author, Yoshiki Tanaka, is also behind The Heroic Legend of Arslan, so this is not new to him. He's been successful as a novelist for decades, and these are two of the works he's most known for due to their manga and anime adaptations. The last few years have seen both of these series become officially available in English for Western audiences, and I recommend both.
This is part of a wave of official translations and releases of well-known stuff in Japan that's been going on for a while. Getter Robo, Gundam: Origin, etc. have all come out in light novel, manga, or both into the West now. We all know that it goes the other way--Western novels are translated into Japanese and sold there--so what we're wondering is what it would take to do so and can we do it with what we've got.
It's that last part that may well prove to be the problem for now. The rest I think is within our means; we have better intelligence on the markets of the world than ever before, so it's really a matter of being able to act on it.
Because we're not in the business of writing books. We're in the business of entertaining audiences, and that's a global affair now, like it or not. Sure, the odds that I'll go big in--e.g.--Mongolia are slim, but it's no good not trying when all it takes is just being present and spreading word of your existence as far and wide as you can with cheap and easy-to-use tools. If you can access the Internet, odds are good you can find indie SF to buy and read.
Yes, even in deeply censorious regimes. Hello, VPN.
And Japan's light novel scene is a remnant of what used to be the norm for global fiction publishing: cheap genre fiction paperbacks. It still exists, and despite its own big problems it remains a key component of Japan's entertainment business infrastructure- often in the form of A/B audience testing prior to intake to a more popular medium such as manga.
I'll think more about this with my work in particular between now and New Year'.
The dawn of the Xmas Shopping Season is here. Say what you want about it, but you know it's a thing and I'd be remiss if I didn't have something to say about it.
First, I'd be thrilled if you gifted copies of my book to whomever you think would enjoy it. Every copy sold makes more Star Knight more likely to come more quickly. Second, if you haven't already then get up on my fellow authors Brian Niemeier and Rawle Nyanzi to read their takes on giant robots of the not-BattleTech vein. Third, go check out Jon del Arroz's Nano Templar series of Space Opera books.
And here's a short list of fellows who have stuff you might enjoy.
Cirsova Magazine is the best new short fiction magazine around for thrilling tales of adventure regardless of genre. Every issue is worth your time.
Adam Smith's Deus Vult Wastelanders series starts with Gideon Ira: Knight of the Blood Cross and between this series and Nano Templar we got the solidification of what Razorfist coined "Cruci-Fiction".
Alexander Hellene's The Swordbringer series starts with The Last Ancestor and if you're looking for Planetary Romance you'll get it here.
The hardest working writer in the Israeli Defense Force, Yakov Merkin, has a brilliant Space Opera series in Galaxy Ascendant. You can find the first book, A Greater Duty, here and begin catching up fast.
And if you haven't gotten on the mil-SF juggernaut that is Galaxy's Edge, by Nick Cole & Jason Anspach, you're missing out.
There's a hell of a lot more out there, so don't fret if I missed someone or didn't mention something. I didn't even mention comics or more notable authors' works (e.g. Legend of the Galactic Heroes, or other non-narrative media such as videogames and tabletop RPGs. If you want me to post more short lists, say so below.
It's Thanksgiving Day in the United States today. I'll be enjoying turkey with the folks, as will most of my friends and colleagues. Enjoy the day, wherever you are, and for the love of God heed what Oliver Campbell said the other day on Twitter.
If you're the person that gets all excited to go pick fights with your families during the holidays, go to hell.
There are 365 days in a year. Take a day off from being a miserable person, for god's sake. You have 364 more to be awful.
Just don't. I don't care if you want to dunk on Trump or own the libs. SHUT. UP. Pass the potatoes. Enjoy the time with your folks, flawed as they may be, because you do not know when that time will end and you will miss them when they're gone. Be thankful that you can learn from them now while you can, especially the ones you dislike.
This is another presentation by Richard Grove of Tragedy & Hope, talking about something relevant to the interests of a lot of my readers: Autonomy for Parents.
This is not just about getting people out of the 9-5, but going into the hows and why behind this scheme to atomize parents from children and put each into environments that neither have any control over and instead are just to execute orders imposed from above by the pawns of the elite class who seek to turn most men into human cattle to herd or cull as desired.
Well worth your time to watch all the way through, as is to be expected with anything out of Tragedy & Hope.
Today I bring you, again, Richard Grove of Tragedy & Hope. This is his #SmartReads episode on Neil Postman's Technopoly for the Autonomy Project.
Pay attention to what Grove says. Compare the clear claims of technology as moral philosophy, as put forth by Postman in his 1992 book, to Brian Niemeier's posts on the Death Cult and its front the Pop Cult. Both of these are explanations for how an elite that hates Man and seeks to exploit and control Man, as one would a herd of cattle, in defiance of and rebellion against God.
And Postman, by the by, was not speaking to outsiders. As with Carroll Quigley regarding his Tragedy & Hope, Postman's writing for insiders and fellow travelers- for those doing the exploiting. He's not teaching outsiders how to defy and destroy the control grid; he's teaching his fellows what their tools actually are, how they actually work, and why they work that way so that they can employ those tools most effectively for the end of keeping us in line.
Remember the date, 1992. Bill Clinton wins the Presidency that year, starting the Clinton Years that define the 1990s for American youth of the day. This was the decade that saw the emergence of the Internet as a commercial entity. What Niemeier identifies as Generation Y emerges here, and everything that would prove to afflict them has its roots in what Grove explores in Postman's book; the atomization accelerated here, pulling out parents and leaving only popular culture--carried by technology--to fill that void.
The takeaway here is this: technological changes force cultural changes, changes that are foreseeable and therefore both predictable and programmable. Thus it is irresponsible to introduce technologies without a full accounting of the changes that would result in doing so; the elite, as a class, are aware of this fact and are doing this, and they have weaponized it. (e.g. using porn as a weapon to demoralize target populations)
Watch to the end; cancel your bingewatch for tonight, take notes, and think about what's being discussed here. You really do need to reconsider your use of technology.
You should be able to find this book in your local library. If not, guess what? Amazon has it.
Friend of the Retreat Wolfman at Large put out another of his art compliations set to music today. This is good stuff. Excellent for pre-writing warmup time.
And yes, that is the cover to Reavers in the mix there. If you don't have a copy, links are in the sidebar to your right to Kindle and Paperback versions.
In the realm of Giant Robot anime, we know what the Big Brands are: Mobile Suit Gundam, Super-Dimension Fortress Macross, Mazinger Z, Getter Robo, Neon Genesis Evangelion, and Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann. There are several others that are known, but don't have quite the dominance or prominence of those, but some titles that get into Super Robot Wars elicit more of a "What?" than a "YES!" and I'm listing some of them below- with links to storefronts where available, all in the spirit of #BrandZero
Panzer World Galient: A deposed prince takes the controls of the titular mecha and wages war against the man who stole his throne and killed his father- and this was years before the excellent Vision of Escaflowne.
Fang of the Sun Dougram: The son of a despotic planetary governor joins the rebels and steals the title mecha to use in their cause. Source of all the famous units in BattleTech that didn't come from Macross or Crusher Joe.
Giant Gorg: Recently orphaned boy meets mysterious scientist and gets caught up in a fight involving the title robot.
GoShogun: This was half of Macron-1 (Srungle was the other), but the original series actually makes sense.
Space Warrior Baldios: Part of the late '70s deconstruction of Super Robot shows prior to the original Gundam series birthing Real Robots. Expect a downer ending.
SSSS.Gridman: One of the recent mecha shows, an anime revival of a live-action original, and well-received at that (without the Studio Trigger weirdness that became of FRANXX).
Xabungle: Tomino in his happy, manic phase. Comedic in its tone.
Steel Jeeg/New Steel Jeeg: Another '70s Super Robot show that got a recent revival, this one a sequel that disavows Season 2 of the original. Fantastic series, both of them, and the revival has a sweet JAM Project OP.
Majestic Prince: "The original reason for creating genetically enhanced humans was to explore outer space; but when the alien Wulgaru attacked using vastly advanced technology, the Evolved Children were instead turned into Mankind's last line of defense."
Metal Armor Dragonar: A near-forgotten Real Robot show of the '80s. Had a catchy OP, and there's English-subbed copies available someplace. Ask your local Straw Hat.
And you can find their OSTs--at least their OPs and EDs--on YouTube, usually in the form of their opening or closing credits, so you can get a sense of the series if you can't find a trailer or some clips. Some of these also have manga versions, which may or may not be available in English or in print (or both).
Almost time for #Shabbat here; hopefully will be able to rest and finish off this cold or whatever I've got. Back online tomorrow night, and I'll be appearing on Geek Gab! Don't forget to pick up Galaxy Ascendant 4 if you haven't already!https://t.co/tDWJKwoLXO
— Buy A Fiery Reckoning 1 on Amazon! 🇮🇱🇺🇸🍒 (@YakovMerkin) November 22, 2019
And you can find it here below. See you in the chat!
I asked this question of Jon during one of his recent livestreams. He took the time to cut a video to answer it. Thanks, Jon.
The big takeaway here is that (a) he has a routine and (b) he measures by wordcount instead of time allotment. The first is important because it makes what he does a regular habit and not something to do when you're in the mood, and I consistently see successful people talk about their practices in terms of habits and routines. The wordcount works because it compels a writer to hone their acumen and come into the wordcount with a plan because the sooner you hit that goal the sooner you can move on to other tasks, and that practice is verified by past masters like Lester Dent.
In short, it's no surprise that the majority of masters are planners and not pantsers even if they started out as such. Mastering the craft, and achieving Pulp Speed, is no different than anything else: first you learn to work smooth, because working smoothly is working fast.
Yes, that's a #QAnon drop. I don't want to hear about your opinion on #QAnon; any comments on that nature will be deleted and dumbasses sperging about it will be banned and spammed. This is not about him; this is about what he said since that's independent of whether or not he is a LARP.
What you're looking at here is that someone in the spook world is spelling out what I've been saying privately and publically for a while now: It's About the Narrative.
What you believe to be true (Narrative), you perform in everyday life (Culture). What you perform as normal behavior (Culture), you will enact as state policy (Politics). This is why control of the Narrative matters, and that means Narrative Warfare is really the secular version of Spiritual Warfare; this is why cults and religions are the bedrock of a nation's identity, and therefore Narrative Warfare is Identity Politics because you're fighting over what the foundation of a given nation--a given distinct body of people, all of whom share the same race, religion, and language--is and whomever has control over that has real power because they have faith on their side.
And faith means religion, and religion means spirituality- performative or not. With the recent revelation that the Glow In The Dark crowd created pedo network cults like The Finders, it's not hard to see that this wisdom is well-established in the Upside Down of Spookland.
The more I ponder this, the less crazy David Icke and those like him (e.g. Steve Quayle) seem. Way to go, Glowies.
Corporate Cancer is now available in paperback at Amazon and Castalia Direct as well as audiobook at Arkhaven. After seeing what Chick-Fil-A and Ford have done this week so far, this book is more timely than before if you run a business in any capacity. Of course reviews are coming in already and two video reviews are below. One is by author David Stewart and the other is by the leading Hispanic voice in Science Fiction, Jon del Arroz.
They'll converge the gun makers if they can, and the ammo makers too. You think convergence is bad for a car? Imagine having to worry that Shaniqua deliberately passed a defective gun to fuck over Whitey because Muh Oppressions REEEEed that she should work a factory job making stuff for Smith & Wesson, and that defective gun is now failing in your hands when you need it to work because Tyrone's playing the Knockout Game with you. Books like this need to get into the hands of vital industry executives and their likely successors now.
Friend of the Retreat Jon del Arroz attended the #20BooksTo50K conference, and while he made the most of his time there the group itself didn't just have a stupid excuse to virtue signal and collude to cancel wrongthinkers; this isn't an OldPub group. This is NewPub, the folks living the return of the Pulp business model, and making a killing doing so in ways that OldPub authors--with few exceptions--wish they could match. These folks, especially the Mil-SF and Space Opera cliques (which heavily overlap), are whom I look up to and learn from- not OldPub.
And you can too. Below is the entire 2019 Conference playlist. Put the games and shows on the backburner and watch this instead if you want your writing to earn you more than some fun money in your change pocket. The Amazon data analysis panel alone is worth your time, regardless of what you write or how you approach it- and you OldPub guys getting the stick end should be paying attention because this is where you're going to go once OldPub pushes you out.
It's been a while since I talked about the man, and there's been some gains in readership since, so it's time to revisit the man who inspired my coining of the term "Narrative Warfare": Richard Grove. He runs a project called "Tragedy & Hope", named after the book of the same name.
Richard got his start with 9/11, which might as well be ancient history in Internet reckoning, and began digging into the hidden history of events that lead up to it. The site aforementioned, its associated YouTube channel, and the podcasts he's done/is doing are all outgrowths of his years of investigation and auto-didactic education on these matters. There are few men alive who are better at Dialectic than Mr. Grove, in part because (a) he knows his limits and (b) he turns those limits into assets that he exploits to improve the effect of his efforts.
If you choose to get into his media works, be prepared to take notes. This is not something to throw on for background noise, and he doesn't play the Rhetoric game of clickbait outrage like the pop culture fan channels do. (They run on Rhetoric; what passes for Dialectic there isn't most of the time.) He makes references to other works on the regular, and to get the most out of his videos and podcasts you need to look up what he's referencing. You can, quite easily, get an informal Ph.D.-level education in the Classics as a by-product of following his work diligently.
Yes, he's clearly a man of the Enlightenment and all that entails, but he is also opposed to the invisible empire running (and ruining) the West. If he's aware of Moldbug and those who came after him, I haven't seen it evident in anything produced yet; he's therefore flawed in being mired in libertarian politics, ignoring the evidence for its failure, as he's still mired in CivNat thinking- as are many in his circles, such as James Corbett of the Corbett Report and James Evan Pilato of Media Monarchy.
But you're not going to find a more accessible source on the real, and verifiable, history of the West online, and for a lot of you looking for something to supplement other homeschooling resources you've got a goldmine here- especially for your adolescents, who are coming into their capacity for higher cognitive thought and the vast increase in their reasoning potential accordingly. Remember that this is the guy who got John Taylor Gatto's final and best interview on what schooling is and how it actually works; he's not a man to dismiss for merely being an idealistic CivNat. It's just that the Internet post-2012 zeitgeist didn't include him and his circles, which is why he seems out of sorts these days.
I wouldn't be talking about the man if I wasn't going to show you some of his stuff, and these are two of his recent videos regarding his Autonomy Project. If you're ready and able to put down the easy dopemine hits, and get into some deep history and analysis--real analysis, not woo--then Grove is your guy and you can kiss your binge watching of Pop Cult crap goodbye. At the very least, watch the Bernays video; he's the villain who co-created the media propaganda machine that the Death Cult now operates worldwide.
Today in "This is why you gatekeep your hobbies", this stupidity from Josh Campea.
Installed Jedi: Fallen Order. Played for 3 minutes and couldn't figure out the controls. Frustrated, I proceeded to uninstall Jedi: Fallen Order. God I wish I had more patience with video games pic.twitter.com/ZSBRfNrCGd
Yeah, that's retarded. He got roasted good and hard, as he should, for saying this. The controls are stupid-easy to learn and reconfigure; the man couldn't be bothered to open up the Options menu and read World's Simplest Infographic. The most charitable light suggests that he is literally retarded and should be under supervision due to being unable to properly handle his own affairs. The most likely take is that he's a lazy shit who expected mindless game-plays-itself levels of (dis)engagement in his entertainment and got mad when his expectation got thwarted; the man should stick to movies and TV instead, where all he has to do is hit "Play".
In short, he's a fake- not a gamer.
And for the record, the game is a decent product; it plays a lot like Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice and it's playtime is short for my takes (about 15-20 hours, so a third of my preferred 1:1 ration of hours per US Dollar). If he had grokked the controls, he would've quit a few minutes later when he had to actually learn how to read someone trying to melee him to death instead of mindlessly mashing buttons. Games in the style of Demon Souls and Dark Souls are not forgiving or merciful.
He doesn't have patience. He has expectations, and those expectations are wholly misinformed due to his own willful ignorance. To quote Oliver Campbell, He did this to himself.
It's good that he's getting roasted for this. Such willful displays of stupidity and ignorance should be mocked without pity or mercy; he did this to himself, and expected to be lauded for whining about it- much like the Devil Mouse itself these days. Yes, he should be; he's a grown man, well past any need for someone to hold his hand and baby him through this stuff. He should be capable of finding out what he needs to know on his own, to adapt to the situation as it is, to learn his way around and improvise a path, and then to overcome it- something that the MMA fighters he claims to enjoy make a matter of daily discipline if they want to master themselves and their sport.
Keep those gates against the fakes and phonies who want to destroy them and all that makes them valuable in the culture. No one's going to do it for you.
Between these two videos by Black Pigeon Speaks and The Quartering, I have sufficient material to substantiate a connection I've been pushing on Twitter for a little while now. First, the videos.
Here's the take-away: The Chinese Communist Party is actively opposing sexual degeneracy using anti-Western Rhetoric. The result is that it exercises this censorious policy on all media allowed in the People's Republic of China, both foreign and domestic, which is why you're seeing degenerate sexuality being scrubbed from Western corporate media properties that are allowed in China.
This is not just anti-homosexual censorship. This is also anti-miscengenation censorship, which is why the Finn/Rose romance (and, to be fair, any Rey/Finn potential) got nixed. Both are in accord with the Party's anti-degeneracy policies. The useful idiots in the trenches fighting for the Death Cult are just now starting to become aware of this fact, and they are confused in their reaction because the Hive Mind hasn't issued any updates on what to think yet.
Which leads to an inescapable conclusion: The canon of a corporate IP is dictated by the most intolerant party involved. This is entirely in line with David Stewart's video explaining corporate ownership of such properties; they want to maximize profits from these properties, so that means getting into China, and the Party knows this so they exert this control accordingly using gatekeeping as leverage.
This is why China had Blizzard purge Overwatch of the gay to get into the country; Tracer and Soldier 76 are actually Gay For Pay, meaning they're really straight as a board but do the gay for Western rubes--that's you, SJWs--because it's currently cheaper to do so than to not. (That time, by the way, is fast approaching its end; once the Blizzard beancounters see how toothless you are, they'll stop pretending to pander to you and everything else China doesn't like will also be purged.)
And we're seeing now on a global scope and scale what the observant have already seen in the United Kingdom with the Muslims: the intolerant hold the high ground. Good luck shaming the Chinese Communist Party into bending the knee to SJW Death Cult dogma; they may, ultimately, serve the same master but they won't be second-fiddle to a bunch of limp-wristed sissies and their loud-mouthed busybody fuckbuddies.
And I have but one recommendation for everyone not a ChiCom or Death Cult asset:
It took a while, but here's episode 3. Have a good weekend, folks.
Here's a takeaway: Gibson writes a lot of these stories as crime stories where the bad guys win on the first draft. Then in the rewrite he inserts The Shadow to ruin their day at critical moments. Remember that he's writing two novels a month, so we're talking levels of Pulp Speed most people today can't even fathom to exist. It's a hell of a way to figure out how to structure your writing process for maximum efficiency; Gibson had a background covering real crime stories, in addition to his stage magician history, so using the mindset of the latter to inform the narrative work of the former had to come naturally.
This, folks, is "Write what you know" done right. He took what knew in terms of subject matter (crime) and acumen (magic), applied his technical skills (writing), and churned out one satisfying thriller after the next for years on end- two a month! And he did it on a manual typewriter, in a day when "doing research" meant hoofing it to wherever that information rested- libraries, archives, subjects, etc. when you couldn't get someone on an analog landline phonecall to do it for you.
Think on that, fellow writers. Think on that prepare-to-write structure, especially if you aspire to Pulp Speed.
Razorfist has words about Hideo Kojima and Death Stranding.
In terms of his talk regarding media bullshitting their way around covering up contra-Narrative developments, he's accurate. They can, and do, employ all sorts of word-magic to baffle with bullshit those they're told to protect. They are doing this with Death Stranding. Reception, in the U.S., is not what some would like to see. That's all factual.
But I think he's jumped the gun. The game's not been out a week yet and only now are the serious players, those who blitzed it, finishing up full and complete playthroughs on anything harder than Babby's First Bideogame. As such, some of the criticisms are not warranted. Summarizing it as The Postman by way of Metal Gear does toss out some important details, naming that what you're set out to do isn't what's going on, and all the weirdness isn't the allegory he's after. The connections talked about are cast in interpersonal terms, but what's going on the larger cosmic connections and the rightful order they bring; when that's disrupted, the system falls apart and a hard reset is ordered. That's what the game is about.
Oliver Campbell said it best in a recent livestream. Kojima is like George Lucas; he's a fantastic producer, a great idea man. Get him quality talent to execute those ideas, and exercise restraint over him, and you get some S-tier results. Let him run things, and you get something narratively dense with pacing problems but otherwise is a fine example of the form; most of Kojima's career since Metal Gear Solid has been the latter, which is why he gets knocked around like he does.
In short, the man needs an editor who knows how to say "No" to him and get him to write cleaner and leaner narratives with better pacing. His current famous associates are none of this, which is not surprising when looking at who is in this game and how they are used. His past associates were no such help either. This is a consistent pattern; the games he puts out are not nearly as difficult to comprehend as they're made out to be. They're just densely packed and poorly paced.
From what I watched, this game is worth playing, but not at $60. Wait for a price drop, buy used--should be a copy available soon--or get a good discount.
What does get me is that Kojima is both worshipped and shat upon in manners one might say were fannish in nature. He does have a tendency to be needlessly obfuscatory about his work, both in talking about it and in the playing of it. He is fixated upon Cold War era fears of annihilation and control by shadowy elites with manipulative practices, a thing that Death Stranding didn't change. That doesn't change that he consistently creates gameplay experiences that do approach the High Art ambitions he aspires to, and we still talk a lot more about the Metal Gear games than their competitors; he ain't Kurosawa, but denying that he's not a legit heavy weight in world culture, and has the output to back that claim up, especially as shit he talked about over a decade ago comes to pass here and now and the last proper game had a thread about language control thought straight out of 1984 with "parasites" as allegory for "cultish paradigm control".
In ludological terms, there's nothing unusual. Non-lethal play is given early and always an option, especially given the consequences for sloppy lethal violence here; damage done to the landscape is permanent regardless of when in the game it occurs, so it persists into the open world post-game state. The Asynchronus online play succeeds in creating the sense of others being present while you--in active play--are alone and have to handle things on your own; you can see others contributing to the infrastructure enabling play on the map, but you still have to do the hoofing it to link up regions to the network and bring them online- doing so phases you into the shared world state therein. You also have to do certain unlocks before you can make and use certain things, like ziplines (and you do want those; gets you around massive regions like mountains fast and easy).
While the narrative has the aforementioned issues, the gameplay is solid and truly What You See Is What You Get. The mechanics of things is explained in a far cleaner manner than the narrative itself, and by the time certain items are obtained or temporarily disabled you should have learned enough about other mechanics (e.g. enemy tells) to make the most of the gameplay changes. Sure, you can't Fulton an entire base of Russians and their gear back to Mother Base, but being able to 3d print a highway so you can speed across a plain is just as fantastic. The game is fine. The hype's the problem.
So lay off the hate, and the worship. He's just a man, flawed like all of us, but still a bright and observant man who's trying to use what he has to say what he's got.
He just needs a manager to rein in his excesses. If he can do that, count on the next game being a awe-inspiring masterpiece, and not a scuffed one like this game is.
Not invented here (NIH) is the philosophical principle of not using third party solutions to a problem because of their external origins. False pride often drives an enterprise to use less-than-perfect invention in order to save face by ignoring, boycotting, or otherwise refusing to use or incorporate obviously superior solutions by others.
In trying to reach out to fan channels at YouTube who claim to be open to any science fiction, I run into something similar. These channels are focused on audio-visual media, often Big Brand media, and increasingly complaining about one or more Big Brands while doing nothing useful to solve the problems that they decry. The parallel is that "here" means "Big Brand media", and "not here" means what is outside of that.
Because of this media bias, they are often wholly unaware of what is going on in the wider field. They don't know about the book world in particular, so the disruption of the publishing world they are dimly aware of due to Big Brands leeching off generations-old classics such as Dune has escaped their notice; they still think OldPub is all that exists, when all they need to do is skim the Kindle Store on Amazon to see that everything they claim to want is there in abundance.
They claim to want it. They don't. They want the Brand. They are not fans of the genre; they are Fans of the Brand. They are true Pop Cultists, and getting them to go outside the brand is exactly the same as getting them to leave a cult like Scientology.
"Not Invented Here" in this content is not hard to see. If it isn't from the Brand--and thus in the media they see as high-status and legitimate, from the sources that validate their existence--they aren't interested and are dismissive if not hostile to everything outside that cultist context. This makes these channels good gatekeepers. By letting these channels complain about the Brand, yet shut out off-Brand alternatives, the Brand benefits by keeping people on the reservation and those people usually--reliably--end up playing the paypig because whatever resistance they may put up is easily worn down.
They are, in effect, playing the same game that Cuckservative Inc. does in the political realm. They just don't know it, and wouldn't grok it if confronted with it. Yet. But the result is the same, and so is the conclusion: they hold the gates to the wider audience. Those that are not hostile to us are wholly uninterested; it is better to route around them for now than to confront them. They have to face the collapse of their cult before they will be open to persuasion otherwise.
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Last night on Twitter, Jeffro Johnson answered a question about how to explain Science Fiction is a subset of Fantasy. I reproduce the text below in its entirely; the Twitter thread starts with the question here.
When mots folks talk about mechs in tabletop gaming, you hear one of five names: BattleTech, Robotech, Heavy Gear, Jovian Chronicles, or Mekton. This is, in large part, because these are the only tabletop games you can readily find, even if Mekton is all but out of print. (It's not, but its invisibility in retail means it might as well be.) and Robotech is in a licensee changeover from Palladium Books to Strange Machine Games. But there are more, and here's a few you might want to keep an eye out for when hunting at book and game stores or scouring online storefronts.
Macross II. This is a long out-of-print licensed RPG done by Palladium Books. While the rulebook and the first sourcebook are standard Palladium faire, what makes this remarkable is that an early Dream Pod 9 did the art for the rest of the line that focused on the warships of the Zentran fleet as appearing therein- stuff that you can use in any Macross game regardless of rules. As one expects, this is a Real Robot style of setting.
The Mecha Hack. "Suit up with The Mecha Hack! If you're a fan of Gundam, Robotech, Pacific Rim, BattleTech, or Transformers, this is the rules-lite robot RPG you've been waiting for. The Mecha Hack is a tabletop roleplaying game of titanic warmachines and their intrepid pilots, made with The Black Hack. The Mecha Hack is fast, fluid, and fun, with a focus on cinematic, narrative gameplay inspired by anime and other mecha properties. Inside this A5-sized, 40-page book, you'll find the complete Mecha Hack ruleset; four mecha chassis and four pilot archetypes; over a dozen add-on modules for your unique mecha; GM tools and mission generators; more than 30 enemy statblocks; printable monsters, mechs, and objects; and so much more! Build your mecha. Form a fireteam. Drop into the combat zone. It's time to suit up, pilots."
GunFrame: Anime Mecha Battle Game. "GunFrame is a fast-playing, exciting and tactically challenging miniature wargame. It has been built from the ground-up to let you play out the spectacle of mecha-on-mecha combat as portrayed in your favourite anime. Use any mecha miniatures to engage in small clashes between a handful of robots, or all-out battles with mecha supported by conventional units including infantry, tanks and aircraft. This complete game also includes rules for building your own units, transforming and combining mecha, unusual environments including underwater and space, and more than seventy upgrade abilities to customize your mecha and pilots."
Far more common, however, is that mecha are a supplementary element of a broader game. RIFTS, After The Bomb/TMNT, every omni-superhero game ever, 40K (Dreadnaughts, Imperial Knights, Titans), and even some takes on the above titles take this approach. Mecha gamers have long become accustomed to this, much like superhero gamers who want to focus on particular takes on that thing do, so don't be dismayed if that's how you have to go about it.
This may not seem like a #BrandZero post, but within this specific context it applies; there are very few tabletop brands for mecha fans, and most of those are almost invisible in the retail space unless you do DriveThruRPG on the regular, hit up Kickstarter/Indiegogo, or scour the used bookstore/gamestore on the regular. One of those is derived from a long-standing goat-screwing of a Japanese property that's still on-going, and continues to skirmish with the big dog in this small space. Therefore, it's not out of line to throw in a forgotten licensed RPG in this mix; Palladium certainly forgot.
And that's before talking about the problems that adapting various sorts of mecha tropes to gaming, a medium that greatly favors Real Robot style approaches over Super Robots for several reasons. It's why you don't see them as the main feature of tabletop gaming very often, but flourish in other media, such as novels like my own Reavers of the Void which you can find in the sidebar for Kindle and below in paperback.
