The gang at Geek Gab had Jon del Arroz on today to promote his new Kickstarter campaign for Flying Sparks.
Speaking of which, here's the Kickstarter so you too can give Jon your hard-earned money and get in on this fantastic comic book action.
Jon's a reliable producer. He delivers, and he's figured out how to deliver routinely. You won't go wrong by backing his project. If you want original superheroes and you don't want the poz that DC and Marvel insist upon, then this is one of best ways to get that itch scratched without going over to reading manga or watching anime.
Side note: This week's Study post talks paperbacks for Reavers
As promised, Nick Rekieta followed up last night with a disclosure of Funimation allowing the abuse of Toei intellectual property in violation of both internal company policy--that shit you're supposed to get fired over--as well as the license agreement. Pornographic audio skits and lines, often involving incest, child molestation, and buggery were most of them. The open contempt for the audience and the fans is on display, and now that they're out the reactions are predictable.
This on the heels of Nick revealing Ron Toye as a proven wife-beater, via legal documents, giving a new motivation behind this conspiracy to unperson Vic Mignogna.
The cancer is truly widespread at Funimation, and we know that this cancer is in place at Crunchyroll also. North American Anglophone anime dubbing is in deep shit because of these revelations, and quite frankly the actors so expose should be confronted about this at appearances. This is not acceptable professional behavior and it cannot be tolerated. Sony needs to be pressured to clean house, and Toei needs to do their duty to oversee their licensees, because Funimation and the #KickVic crowd are damaging the Dragon Ball brand with these amateur hour clown college antics.
As much as I think some North American voice actors would be decent for Star Knight, I can't trust this scene to do as I instruct unless and until this cancer gets cut out.
Last night on Nick Rekieta's show he played a teaser from a pile of material he's intending to display tonight regarding the #KickVic case. It concerned the North American (English) actor Sean Schemmel, the voice of Goku for Funimation's English dub of Dragon Ball Z/Dragon Ball Super. Listen for yourself.
— ▙▚αα¬α’ααα΄α«α▞▟ πΡΠΎΡ ΡΠΈΣΠΊπ (@RotWithDespair) August 29, 2019
Oh ho, what have we got here? Is this a hypocritical violation of the Narrative? Why yes it is, and the fundamental dishonesty on display--on Schemmel for shitting on Vic over this sort of thing, on Chris Sabat's part for archiving this (as he owns the studio where recording is done), and on Funimation's part for hypocritically allowing hired talent to violate policy in this manner--doesn't help the case against Vic. Oh no, it damages an already strained credibility by demonstrating an unwillingness to live up to the standards professed and enforced upon Vic.
Yes, it's pure Alinsky. Alinsky used it because it works. He didn't discover it or invent it; he just published it.
Tonight's livestream should be interesting. I'll be tuning in. Nick's YouTube channel is here, and his Twitter account is here. He Tweets out well beforehand if he's going live tonight, and archives his streams on his channel so you can watch them after the fact.
What this lawsuit reveals is astonishing. First, it reveals that the North American anime business really is an amateur hour clown show. Funimation is run by morons. The con scene is as overrun by SJWs as I'd expected. Most voice actors are just schmucks who lucked into the job, or real actors who couldn't get steady work elsewhere, and even then they rely on con appearances for the bulk of their income; Vic's the proverbial big fish in a small pond.
We can see this incompetence and petty stupidity at play with Crunchyroll also, and since those two are the biggest players in North American anime we can conclude that most of the rest are either smaller-scale counterparts or earnest competitors who just ain't making the grade yet. I hope the latter focus upon being properly professional, stridently anti-SJW, and respectful of their Japanese partners- something neither Funi nor Crunchy are.
Until this is fixed, my previous decision to disallow any of these companies to touch Star Knight stands. There will be no English dub, and I will write the sub scripts.
The Queen of England agreed to Prime Minister Boris Johnson's request to suspend Parliament in order to guarantee Brexit happening. It's about time the matriarch of that dysfunctional royal family did something useful, and I'm glad Boris' desire to be remembered like Churchill has already produced a good result. Fuck the European Union. My relatives across the pond deserve a free, independent, and wholly sovereign United Kingdom. Far better to deal with Westminster than Brussels, and hopefully this leads to further devolution and increased subsidiarity- something we need restored in the United States.
Have a good time at the pub tonight, my British friends and relations. You deserve a pint.
Yesterday, at 5pm Central Time, World of Warcraft: Classic went live and official Vanilla WOW finally became a reality. Some folks are having to eat crow today.
I just realized Rami was a non #classicwow believer too.
I suspect J. Allen Brack--whom I willfully misquote in the title--is taking this all far, far better than the #fakenews fraud like Ramalamadingdong here will. Being so very wrong doesn't sting so bad when it means making a tidy bonus of some sort by the end of the year, and Classic did just that purely by having massive numbers of lapsed players resubscribe just to access the Classic servers. Even Mark was all happy about playing; he streamed his play live earlier today on Twitch.
As I write this post, the login queues to all but the most pathetic of servers remains significant. I can get to a North American RP realm easily. Anything else? Might as well leave it open and do something else, including going to work and putting in a full day, because the queues can get that stupidly long. (10:30 hour wait time just for ONE PVP server? Madness.)
Of course I'm playing. Hell no, I'm not racing to the cap this time. Nor am I rolling a class that's going to suck as solo play, or be very dependent on gear. That means I'm sticking to Rogues and Hunters for now, as I'm going to be casual about Classic and take my sweet time to arrive at Level 60. I don't care about raiding; I'll go once things are on farm so I can get Profession-related drops that only come out of raids that I can't trade for. I plan on being an in-demand crafter, not a World First raider, who does PVP on the side.
So what does this mean? That we're officially experiencing the popular emergence of the Old-School Renaissance in MMORPGs, following Runescape's example previously. As with tabletop, I fully expect most people to swap between Current and Classic WOW as the current game ebbs and flows; Classic is intended to be a customer retention scheme to keep the subscription numbers up, and as the game is truly static--no, phasing the content to emulate patch releases doesn't mean it's not static--you eventually reach a point where you're done with a character. Current will need Classic and Classic will need Current, and both will make WOW a better game in the long run, assuming the two dev teams don't fall into a pointless dick-measuring contest.
But the real hope is that Classic's massive success shows the Current team that a lot of the changes made that took away the RPG in their MMORPG weren't good for the game and need to be reverted, starting with all the catchup mechanisms that turn Current from playing the expansion to playing the patch like it's a seasonal thing ala Path of Exile or Diablo 3 and working back from there.
We'll see in due course what comes of this development, but for now here's to the return of the game that broke MMORPGs into the mainstream--to the D&D of MMOs--and the many people who've decided to come home again. Blizzard even cut an ad for it.
Spot the celebrity cameos. Also, the woman who plays the current Warchief, Sylvanas Windrunner, gets a spot. Good ad. Well done. See you in (Classic) Azeroth.
My colleague, and editor, the Dragon Award winner and multiple-nominee Brian Niemeier has launched his new crowdfunding campaign for the next Combat Frame XSeed novel: Combat Frame XSeed: CY 40 Second Coming.
And here's the pitch:
It's Not Over
Genius or madman? Monster or savior?
HALO mastermind Arthur Wake is missing in action. His fragile grounder alliance shatters under the Coalition’s counterattack.
Desperate to recoup their losses, the Coalition turns to a young combat frame pilot with a grudge against HALO. Brutal false flag attacks soon jeopardize Hainan Island’s hard-won independence.
Sullia Zend uses the fray on Earth as cover for her secret agenda. But can even the Sentinel manage a ruthless lawman, her own estranged sister, and a HALO defector on the eve of a cataclysmic reckoning eons in the making?
All of you Mobile Suit Gundam fans need to get in on this series, as this is aimed squarely at the very form of Real Robot mecha fiction that you want for your entertainment. Great, original designs. Fantastic action. Thrilling intrigues. Characters where the sort of characterization one usually says of Char Aznable is the minimum level of quality, not the ceiling. And yes, there is some real science behind the fantastic fictional technology, and Brian ain't shy about sharing when asked.
You'll get the quality entertainment that you're seeking here, and you'll want to see this put into the hands of some top-flight talent in the manga and anime fields so they can bring his vivid prose to life in those media- complete with moving music by the rising stars and reigning masters of anison. Imagine being part of the early Gundam fandom, before it all took off and blew into what it is now- that's what it feels like when you read Combat Frame XSeed, and you'll want to see it get even bigger just like I do once you're through reading just the first novel.
So back this today if you're able. You won't regret it; check the Perks if you're new, because there's a catchup bundle deal that's too good to pass up.
Count on piracy making a comeback when there's too many sub-based streaming services and too little content worth a damn between them, which is already the case depending upon your interests. The reason competition like this is bad is because the service is nothing more than a fucking storefront; it exists solely to provide customers with finished goods to purchase and consume, and as such there is no need for there to be more than one.
The result is predictable. More than one can be tolerated. Much more, without specialization, turns into resentment and a desire to simplify by removing useless redundancy. In this context, that means piracy and it's entirely justified by that point because you're made not being a pirate (once again) more of a bother than being a pirate and thus you've played yourself into failure. Good job, morons.
Side effect? You stop giving money to people who hate you. See? There is an upside to this corporate stupidity.
And feminist women wonder why they think all men are predators. They should stop hanging around such a crowd, or they would if their r-selected rabbit-brains would allow them to cease making it easy for predators to prey upon them. This? This is r/K Theory in action, and once you grok this so much about SJWs and their fellow travelers becomes crystal clear to comprehend.
This movie is aimed at low-info voters and Boomers who do the film festival circuit. Most of us who pay attention to such things already figured out, or were already informed, that Huawei was nothing more than an arm of the Chinese Communist Party. The site for the film is up (here) but we're still early in its hype cycle, so it's not much more than a landing page for its promotional materials combined with an official point-of-contact link. This is not a documentary; it's a drama inspired by the actual events, and likely reveals far more than it officially acknowledges as to what has gone on.
The film focuses on the concept of "cyberwar" while actually being a shot in the ongoing narrative war between pro-Western elites such as the God-Emperor and those who want it to fall, which does include--for their own reasons--the CCP and their Hollywood allies. The narrative war target here is Hollywood; this film is outside their system, and this is a show of force to demonstrate that outsiders are capable of producing material that Hollywood claims implicitly to be theirs alone to command.
No doubt it has some faults to it, but that it exists shows that Bannon gets Narrative Warfare better than most on the God-Emperor's side. The media will react, for now, by freezing it out of their media entirely and trying to freeze it out of the festival circuit. The reaction will be to demonstrate that viable alternatives exist, paving the way for others to follow such as the Alt-Hero movie Rebel's Run.
And that's good for us, because once the better-heeled players blaze the trail we smaller ones will have a road to follow that isn't converged by SJWs.
I went looking around YouTube for some Warhammer 40K stuff the other day, and I found this video reviewing Relic Entertainment's excellent Space Marine action game. Take a coffee break and watch this. It's hilarious.
One of the most influential anime of the 1980s returns in a brand-new Kickstarter project by AnimEgo co-founder Robert Willson, and it aims to release a Blu-Ray quality physical release and get out as much additional material as possible.
Having any of the originals involved, and willing to contribute if stretch goals are met, is huge. And yes, we're already talking stretch goals because funding has already been met just two days in as of this post. I won't waste space here repeating what the campaign video and page spell out, so watch it and read that to get more info; if I had the cash to throw at this, I'd do it in a heartbeat because the artbook alone is worth the price of that minimum backer tier.
They don't make 'em like this anymore, literally, so get your hands on a classic while you can.
It's the 5th anniversary of #Gamergate, and they're still both mad and clueless about it.
I keep wondering how former GGers will look back on GG as they get older. Will they be embarrassed? Will they pretend it never happened? Will they still think it was a righteous cause?
Satanic Death Cult gotta hail Satan, so here's a basic bitch bullshitter spewing some stupid half-assed gaslighting. Notice that he presumes regret on the part of the pro-side, and none of his own; that's the tell that this NPC, in his arrogance, remains completely unaware that his own behavior justified--and continues to justify--the truth of #Gamergate.
It's been a wild ride since the Zoe Post, and there's been plenty of twists and turns--overall for the better--but as this anniversary post, and the NYT shitfest it's commenting upon shows, it ain't over yet. They're still gaslighting like mad and plenty of basic bitches still believe it. But a lot of us have decided to build upon this, and the results continue to show in the culture war, and it will continue to do so as long as the Death Cult continues--by behavior--to validate its existence.
My colleague Rawle Nyanzi had something big to say today, and you had better take the time to listen to it. See for yourself at his blog.
You wonder if there’s something — anything — you can do. Sure, you can avoid the cinema and cancel Netflix, but that can only do so much. Deep down, you want to replace the shows on those services, but you don’t think that’s possible.
You’re correct — right now, it’s not possible. Emphasis on right now.
But you can help change that.
What did he make using what he can do right now? This.
You want better? Then quit being a paypig, cut the cord/cancel Pozflix, and give that money to Rawle instead. He's opened a Patreon account if you want to fund him directly, or you can buy his books if you'd rather fund him indirectly by reading his books.
It is necessary, BUT NOT SUFFICIENT, to not give money to people who hate you. It is also required that you give your money--your material support--to those who want to entertain you properly. They like you; TAKE YOUR OWN SIDE and give them your money instead.
The man who I turned into a saint in Galactic Christendom is the focus of this week's Sabaton History video.
It's not without reason that my ficitonal future Church canonized him. What he did is amazing, even if you just stick with his official confirmed kill count of 505. He did that with a bolt-action rifle, on his own, using just iron sights. For all that American snipers venerate Carlos Hathcock--rightly so--he is not Simo Hayha, nor has any other sniper bested that Finn's deeds since.
My landlord cut the cable to my house, literally. He did so trying like a Boomer to clear a dead branch. I am stuck with my phone until my ISP can get here to fix it. Should be tomorrow before service is restored.
In case you missed it, this livestream by BlackPilled done on the 10th should replace whatever TV or movie or whatever you have on your To Do list today.
I recorded my appearance on the Superversive Livestream yesterday afternoon. Here it is.
The loss of Hangouts On The Air has had an effect on the podcasts for those of us who aren't up on the full extend of streaming tech, so we recorded this instead of trying to do it live, and hopefully Ben will figure this out in time for the next guest on the podcast so he can do it live again.
This came as a pleasant surprise after a week of suck and blow in the media. It's just over 45 minutes, and it is in English. Enjoy yourselves.
And it's summarized thusly:
"Mobile Suit Gundam" is a science fiction anime about a war-torn future where humanity has colonized outer space. Over the decades Gundam has become one of Japan's most iconic media franchises. But when the original series debuted in 1979, ratings were low, and it was initially deemed a flop. So how did Gundam become beloved by generations of people? What was the making of "Mobile Suit Gundam" - the beginning of this cultural phenomenon - like? We spoke with the people who were there to hear the inside story.
Billionaire pedophile and trafficker Jeffery Epstein was found dead in his cell today. The official cause of death is suicide. No one believes this. Not Crazytown, not Normieville, not Dems, not Cuckservatives, not shitlords, NO ONE. It's such an insulting display of arrogance to call it such that we have a term--going back well over a decade when this happened to threats to the Bush 43 regime, at the least--to mock this: "suicided".
He was murdered. You know it. I know it. That homeless crackhead on Skid Row knows it. The Twitch thot scamming boys out of their lunch money knows it. The famous whore servicing a Saudi prince on a yacht in Monaco knows it. Your grandma knows it. Your baby brother knows it. Ash from Pokemon knows it, and so does the artist doing Rule 34 fan art of Misty. Only the dead and the unborn aren't certain to know it, and we're not so sure that they don't anyway.
And yet there's nothing to distract our attention away from this as of this post. I'm expecting just that to happen before Monday, and that means more hapless "white" guys being wound up and set off in a gun-free zone to massacre another batch of hapless innocents while someone who just happens to have survived recent high-profile incidents of this sort is mysteriously on hand to give yet another eye-witness account to a waiting media establishment.
I don't call this "warfare" out of some sense of hyperbole. Real people get slaughtered over fucking narratives; if that ain't warfare, then no one knows what it is.
I'll finish this with Stefan Molyneux's reminder on the matter. Someone panicked. It wasn't Epstein. This is the result.
Dragon Award winner and nominee Brian Niemeier began a Twitter thread today on the Star Wars franchise, with the aim of helping people recreate its success in order to make new Intellectual Property that can supercede that dying franchise and its influence on the culture.
Folks are calling for a new breakout IP to replace the shambling corpse of Star Wars. That's good.
You ought to take the time to read it, and participate if you can contribute. In the meantime spread the word about those of us who've begun this journey and are trying to satisfy the audience that the Devil Mouse Empire forsook, abjured, condemned, and defamed in their malice and folly.
My contribution can be found at Amazon, as can that of Mr. Niemeier and severalothers. Each of us takes the issue from very different perspectives, but we're all out to satisfy that underserved audience and give it what it wants- and needs.
Ever notice that "whiteness" is not about being Causcasian, anymore than "Western" is about being European? They're not. They're codewords for God and Christianity. Being, at heart, unable to even say His name they have to pervert and invert words to dance around the truth they wish to murder. They use "whiteness" as code for God because of a superficial fact: Christianity arose in the West, where the white nations reside. This ignores the historical Christian nations outside the West, and the rising presence of Christianity outside the West (especially China), because it doesn't fit the Rhetorical aim of the wizardry at issue.
In short, they hate God. They can't admit this or they would lose support, so they cloak it in terms they already control. Rub their face in it; don't let them deflect. They won't stand up to the truth when it burns brightly so close to their face, and they will freak out accordingly. There's a reason that SJWs and Muslim terrorists bizarrely work together against Western Civilization; they hate God, and God is (for now) most present in the West where the white nations reside. This persists when aimed at targets outside the West, as the targets are places where God has a presence.
It's about hating God, folks; it's cosmic Daddy issues run rampant, and it has the same solution as earthly Daddy issues do. Apply accordingly.
That fallacious argument comes up a lot in World of Warcraft threads regarding player-controlled flight and competitive advantage. Nevermind what the object is, or the context; focus on the "competitive advantage" part because that's the one with real-world applications here.
The reason for why not using flight in WOW is not an option is because those who use it utterly dominate those that do not. It's that big of a competitive advantage. The same principle applies to everything else; if you don't do a thing that the other side is using to screw you, then you lose and you get no other outcome. It doesn't matter if you can't do it or you won't do it; you still lose to those who can and do.
There are only two useful responses to such an advantage: adoption or negation. The reason is that only these two responses actually address the issue of the advantage by either zeroing it out, much like you're doing one of those "Solve for X" problems in Algebra, via taking up the same thing (adoption) or changing the situation to remove its utility (negation). Flight is fantastic, but useless when you're underwater or in confined spaces. Firearms are great so long as you can feed them ammo, you're able to ignite the primers, or you're not armored past their ability to penetrate. You get the idea.
So when someone demands that you (a) surrender your access to a competitive advantage you can bet that they are trying to (b) negate yours while (c) keeping theirs. It's an old trick, but effective more often than not, until you see how the wizard pulls off his trick and then it never works again.
For all my fighting game friends, get aboard the hype train.
That's right, new Guilty Gear. That teaser is all there is right now, so I can't make any comments. Enjoy, friends, and I hope you get the game you're longing for.
In a bit of irony, this clip from The Good, The Bad, & The Ugly demonstrates why gaming isn't storytelling.
In practice, Tuco would've shot him before he got a word out. There's a time to talk, and it's not when either hot iron or cold steel has been drawn. I can't count the number of times I've seen players gank an opponent who--operating under narrative logic--tried to talk during or just before a fight only to get cut off, often by getting cut down.
GM: "Evil Roy says-"
Player 1: "I waste him with my crossbow." (Rolls, hits, kills)
GM: ?!
Player 2: "Either he knows nothing, or what he knows we can get without putting up with stupid, risky bullshit or worrying about if he's lying to us."
In short, Evil Roy talked when he should've shot and got punished for it. Narrative logic is how you can get away with talking when you should be shooting. Narrative logic doesn't apply in a proper RPG, and frustrated storywankers need to let go of that false conception or they're going to have a bad time until they do. Don't believe me? Go look at TORG, where they have to hard-code narrative tropes into the rules, because gamers--as a class--don't do dumb shit like that otherwise. It's part of why the Fake Gamer crowd went all-in on gaslighting via fake shit like Critical Role; they think they can program gamers to obey this bullshit, only to find out that most of the audience doesn't even play at all.
And that crack about getting intel without needing to listen to the NPC? It happens. Perfect interrogation powers, alternate paths to the same info, etc. are routine- as is powering through without bothering at all because the info is not critical to the players' success. Note, I mean "players"; what the GM or anyone else thinks is irrelevant. If the players got what they wanted, they succeeded.
One of my favorite Twitter people, Mombot, got nuked off the site. Journalist Brad Glasgow got in touch and confirmed that Mombot won't be coming back. Video below.
Goodbye, Mombot. You were one of the best, and ran one of the best stings against the enemies of gaming ever, and went down only due to the consequence of the Mouse Empire's refusal to let Steamboat Willy fall into the public domain.
The RPG Pundit talks religion in tabletop RPGs. Chances are you are doing it wrong.
Most people in gaming don't get religion at all, even if they are nominally religious, because they never spent any time thinking through how a religion operates. This is not just confined to Christianity. Authentic Judaism, Islam, Shinto, etc. all operate under different paradigms and therefore manifest different systems of behaviors, beliefs, and institutions through which that paradigm becomes a culture- and from that culture comes the basis for conflict, and therefore of both true RPG gameplay as well as storytelling.
Instead, religion in gaming is actually treated as nothing more than a drag outfit for the powers that a Cleric (or whatever your healbot is called) possesses, if it's at all different from being a Magic-User at all. It's rather sad, because (a) it's both very close to how most pagan religions work and (b) still manages to be complete wrong about how it works.
This is because our contemporary world--East and West alike--is so divorced from any concept of the sacred that it comes as no surprise that religion in gaming is nothing more than an excuse for superpowers. Without that sense of the sacred, religion in gaming cannot and will not be played properly.
Side Note: Stop using the Cleric class as a generic priest. It's Van Hellsing as a Templar; it's an explicitly Christian archetype. Other religions don't get there from here. For most pagan priests and cult leaders, the Magic-User is your huckleberry. That's because "priest" does not equal "healbot" outside of gaming, and then only in D&D and those like it (e.g. WOW); it's almost a strain of Mech Piloting, where you treat a class as a robot chassis with a core loadout.
