Oh look, a Troon loving faggot bitch is writing this.
This is the Narrative Director for Diablo 5
— mrphillipchan 🥚🇺🇲 (@mrphillipchan) September 12, 2026
Pack it up guys, D5 is cooked pic.twitter.com/PImVIEn7v2
Not a good sign.
Time for the diggers to dig and find something that can get this cunt punted face-first into a ditch and replaced with a proper writer that respects the property.
Reminder that the other twat that started The End of Globohomo is still doing her racket.
And as for the recent shit racket release:
Go ahead, review bomb that shit.
Then, if it is actually worth playing, pirate that shit.
We're playing by Chicago Rules now. It's all Fair Game. Have at it, gang.
The big thing that the #BROSR found is that the Real Game is a holistic, purpose-built machine whose every part is required to achieve the desired and promised result to the user. It is not a bucket of LEGO. It is not Calvinball. It is not subjective in the least; BDubs has the right of it.
You think I’m exaggerating until yoh see the profile flags of those who use the most moronic talking points. “Ur 1st point makes 2nd pt bad bc it gives me the sads and ur 3rd point reminds me I hate my dad”. 100% #SoupAisle#BROXT #dnd #ThankYouJeffro https://t.co/6rlx8SaUSZ
— BDubs (@Bdubs1776) November 25, 2025
All of the rules that the Bros talk about, and the practices that use them, are designed to interact in order to use emergent properties to generate the end result.
Braunstein is the summary of what the result is, and Total Non-Stop Braunstein is the practical implementation. (From UMBROS, pg. 65)
But what if, instead of running a Session Braunstein now and then, you refused to stop? What if every week, without fail, the factions of UMBROS clashed? Every week, a Session Braunstein. Whystop? Instead make it NonStop. A Total NonStop Braunstein!
Do you believe in three referees working in concert? One running Session Braunstein, one adventuring, one mid-level wars. A campaign in constant motion with every level of play represented. That is the Total NonStop Braunstein.
The TNB method will assure a drastically changing game world week to week. And, if you use 1:1 Jeffrogaxian Time (which you should), then you can easily allow Co-Referee’s to run weekly Sessions in your game world concurrent with your TNB campaign.
Total Non-Stop Braunstein is the Real Game.
The Clubhouse is the institution to realize this ambition.
This is how the hobby survives after the collapse of Conventional Play is complete, the Cargo Cult is dead, and the Normies/Tourists/Casuals fuck off to Vidya/Boardgames which is what they really want as Revealed Preferences have shown for decades. It is underground, it is elite, and it is non-commercial- a true hobby scene by and for those willing and able to meet the standards demanded.
We already know how the fight against the Cargo Cult, against the Soup Aisle, ends. I'll just do the portrait now.
Years ago, back during the Gamergate days, I said that the final line of defense for the enemy was the banking sector. I am now being proven right.
This is not just bitter bloated bitches screetching into their husbands' ears to add this or that to the Mastercard-10 List (the list that says "LOLno payment processors for you").
This is part of a larger pivot within the institutional positioning of the Death Cult and the Mammon Mob, seeing that they can't poz Eastern media before it eats their lunch, so they are reacting by choking off access to enemy offerings across the board as fast as they can.
Millenial Woes did a good essay about this shift in the enemy's consensus due to a combination of institutional dominance and social/economic incompetence. Go read it. It's generally uplifting, but not without caution; because the enemy has hard power, and it now feels (correctly) threatened, it is using that hard power as hard and fast as it can.
Cutting off the non-compliant from payment processors is what we're hearing about now. Flat-out banking access revocation is next, and remember that in many places in the West you cannot use cash to pay for things anymore so a loss of electronic banking access is tantamount to having your money stolen. Most people cannot withstand that pressure. The enemy knows this; they engineered the system specifically for this reason- and hate Crypto, as well as cash and workarounds like what Gab and Unauthorized use, accordingly.
It's scary. It's going to harm people. It's stil a sign that we are winning. Take heart, praise God, and pass the ammunition.
Author Brian Niemeier wrote, some years ago now, about corporate fandom and dubbed it "The Pop Cult".
This is the key element he identified then:
"...the PopCult doesn’t offer any answers. It’s pure escapism. The problem is it’s an escape from self-mastery and virtue into the clutches of soulless megacorporations."
Since then what we've seen is that the members of the Pop Cult are not so easily herded. Psuedo-religions are still religions, and as such the Faithful can and do reject the direction of the leadership if they (a) detect that the leaders are going where they ought not go and (b) they sense that there is a critical mass that agrees on (a).
This leads to the question: "Who decides what is Canon?" It was presumed that the Pop Cultist would slavish conform to whatever their idols told them. This turned out to be not true. What Is or Is Not in Canon, once the Creator is gone, is for the Audience to decide: not the Corporation.
Why? This is why.
So a friend did some digging and apparently Alan Merrett, the guy upheld as the source of "female Space Marines used to be canon," is a pathological liar who was disliked by his coworkers and helped Games Workshop make some of it's worst business decisions. pic.twitter.com/xptfrXJsgr
— Marshal Bohemond ⚔️⛨ Space Crusader Vtuber (@HMBohemond) October 12, 2024
Good stewards recognize this fact. That is why they are scrupulous about the property that they sheppard, especially if their compensation is directly tied to its long-term health (and thus value).
We see this being the case (most of the time; there have been mistakes) with the Howard and Burroughs Estates. It was the case for Tolkien until Christopher died and the new stewards did some truly Boomer-style things to what their ((great-?)grandfather created.
One need look only at Lucasfilm, Marvel, and D.C. to see what happens when good stewards are not in place.
"But how can the audience make those decisions?"
Force of numbers. In addition to SpaceMace 39K, Mouse Wars, BattleTech, and many others under incompetent or traitorous management are increasingly cut out of the culture by the audience.
Or do you think that corporate seething at user-driven online publishing isn't just about Mainstream News losing their Narrative monopoly? No, far more important for day-to-day living is that those same platforms allow the audiences of various properties to completely cut out corrupt and incompetent corporate management from the conversation and thus push them out of what is and is not in the canon. No amount of Official Pronouncements means jack shit without buy-in.
Proof? Sorcerers By The Sea outright bribed a cohort of YouTube channels to shill for Corporate Positions because they had considerable audiences, were rather effective and efficient at it, and could be bought with the pocket change usually reserved for tipping the pizza delivery guy.
Why? Well, you get things like this out of them and this is far more effective at determine what Is and Is Not than what they say or do.
I can go on.
The corporate stewards that seethe over this are, at best, Mammon Mobsters mad that the audience will not mindless Consume Product and then get excited for Next Product. You see this most with Stupid British Toy Company and the Devil Mouse.
But the ones that hate it most are the Death Cultists that serve Molech, and as their entire apparantus for taking the openings made by Mammon Mobsters acting as 5th Columnists to turn the corporate operations into recruitment funnels into the Death Cult. As these corporate actors (unlike those in more important segments of the economy) do not have the ability to just use State power to silence these dissidents they have to compete using personal connections with Fellow Travelers in either those platforms or related ones (like Stripe or Patreon) to do it instead, and in the meantime find or build up a compliant group of shills spouting the party line.
They have to do this, because otherise their attempts at being sly about their Death Cult pozzing will keep getting exposed and thereby rendered impotent.
Oh, and that includes their attempts to regain their previous cloak of invisibily via BRIDGE.
This is what corporates and propagandists don't get: the audience gets not only a say, but the final say.
That audience? VETO! VETO! VETO!
And those attempts to pozz non-Anglo media? Already meeting even heavier resistance than the Western pushes ever got. No blackpilling folks. This can be beaten.
Especially once you account for audience use of Print On Demand technology to keep what is considered Orthodox available. We just want our Hunchbacks, and we'll have them the way they must be one way or another.
In case you missed it, gamers recently bloodied the nose of one of the major videogame corporations.
The takeaway here is that Helldivers 2 gamers did not take the change lying down. They organized, their acted in a coordinated manner, and they persisted until Sony surrendered to their demands.
This did not take billions of dollars. This did not take networks of NGOs, armies of professional activists, or links to the Intelligence community to pull off. All it took was one clear attack vector that Sony could not ignore, and the organization of those directly affected into attacking that vector in a cooridinated manner that persisted until victory.
Mark Kern is the man with the plan here, a plan he's also provided to those resisting the censorship of Stellar Blade, and he's been recognized as a High Value Target by the Enemy given the press whore pushing defamatory matter upon him as they do. (If they did that against me, they would face criminal charges.)
But that's already too late. Gamers, you made Sony bleed.
What does this mean for you dealing with Tabletop convergence issues?
All of these Tabletop companies are SMALLER THAN SONY! Most of them are orders of magnitude smaller than Sony. Making them bleed is even easier than it is with Sony.
Organization of easy-to-execute action upon an attack vector, acting in a coordinated manner, and persisting upon that action until the target surrenders or collapses is easier to do in Tabletop than in Videogames.
And given that we're up against an opposition that resembles a blend of Nurgle and Slannesh in terms of Chaos devotions and blessings, not relenting until the enemy stops entirely is warranted. That ESG money is drying up, but it's not gone just yet; bleed that out, and you'll bleed them out.
There is one other reason to embrace the need to fork away from the dumb and return to your hobby being an active pursuit and not this:
And, for those following this story, it is no surprise at all.
Let me dial it up for the hard-of-hearing out there.
You think that Stupid British Toy Company is immune?
Like their counterparts out in Washington State and Floria, Dumb Toy Corp. will lie through their teeth as their business withers, collapses, and dies- including to their shareholders, and will increasingly engage in shady (if not illegal) practices to maintain control and further the Death Cult agenda.
So. Fucking. What.
The hobby is not the corporation. The hobby is not the Brand. The hobby is the audience that partakes and enjoys the hobby, and the hobby does not need the corporation or the Brand.
Rules can be copied and shared online for free. STL files means that anyone with a 3D Printer can make their own minatures, just as traditional printers means that anyone can print their own counters or 2D stand-ups (e.g. Car Wars, BattleTech) as well as their own maps. Terrain? Dude, hit up any hobby shop that deals in dioramas or model trains or any craft store and you're golden. (I cannot count how many '90s BT games were on barren rocky worlds because we just used rocks from outside and SOLO cups as terrain on a bare table.)
"But I like the lore."
Nevermind Axanar (and that is a convoluted mess of a story to itself), you have audience-originated works that are still used as go-tos for people: Astartes, SODAZ's 40K videos, Hired Steel (for BT), and the entirety of the "Tex Talks BattleTech" series- now followed closely by Sven van der Plank's videos (also for BT). Arch and Luetin09 are still better storytellers for SpaceMace and Fightstick than what Dumb Toy Corp. employ most of the time- and there's plenty of others that are about as good as they are, including for games other than those two (such as BTech). Buddy, the audience does this better.
And with sufficient social pressure, they can and do cave. Refer to the example of the UrbieLAM from yesterday- a shitpost memed into existence and bullied into acceptance.
Everything else is justified so long as it serves the hobbyist. Once it no longer does, it is unfit for purpose and must be destroyed. We are seeing that come to pass now.
You know what your options are by now: Quit for Vidya, Quit Entirely, Return to the Clubhouse. The hobbyists will be at the Clubhouse, sharing files and making terrain when they are not playing at the table.
And those Twitter Freaks, Tourists, and Death Cultists trying to turn the hobby into Art Therapy Hour? Gone. They never wanted what we had; they only wanted to take it from us, and they are about find out that you can't steal what exists between one's ears, so once they figure out that taking over the corporation doesn't take over the hobby then they're going to freak out- those that don't An Hero will flounce off to bother someone else.
But what I pose to you is this: Consider that the real mistake was going mass market and corporate in the first place. Over half of the problems we summarize with "Conventional Play" would not have happened if that did not happen. Hobby pursuits need to remain within the hobby scene.
Over the weekend, a certain British toy company did a dumb.
They are about to learn what FASA, Wizkids, and now Catalyst learned the hard way: You can make all the proclimations you want, have your shills cut videos about it all you want, but none of that matters because the authority over what is acceptable IS IN THE AUDIENCE'S HANDS!. Again, Razorfist explains.
The Tourists fundamentally fail to understand because they think taking over a corporate property is no different from stealing a car.
Instead, what's happening is that--like in OpenSource software--the audience are going to fork the property away from the Tourists and carry on. That's the difference between a property based on something you do (tabletop gaming) vs. one based on something you consume (film, TV, print media).
"We put in (THING YOU DON'T LIKE)!"
I don't have to accept it. I recognize that (CHANGE) is contrary to the core of the property, so I reject it as I recognize it for what it is. That and, well, as they say when they shill for their side:
As for my take I use the proper terminology to say so.
Because Heresy is Heresy, and being the owner/publisher/licensed agent does not give you a pass.
Far more wealthy, powerful, and influential corporations have tried and failed to do exactly the dumb that this British toy company just did. They won't succeed either.
Fork the thing. Spread the fork. Carry on. The Retroclone Movement in the OSR did this successfully years ago; it can and will work here and now.
Good luck stoping the signal when it comes from Dontfuckafuckinstan where the typical Lawfare doesn't work. We're global now.
Between JD Cowan's series going over the murder of the Pulps and today's Geek Gab, it is clear that here and now is the time for that crime to be avenged.
The Pulps are, in a very different form, coming back.
Instead of being focused on serial publication in magazine format, today's writers are focused upon online distribution in multiple lengths and forms. We have magazines, novels, collections, etc. in both print and electronic format. We're diversifying off of Amazon to other major online storefronts and, increasingly, opening our own storefronts on our own websites and working with new ways to deal in subscription-based business models as well as serial publication.
More of us are also recognizing the value of video and audio, and so more of us are also ensuring that audiobook versions are available as well as dealing with A/V supplementary media such as podcasts and online discussion spaces like Discord. We're already well aware of having multiple means of generating revenue, both in terms of commerce as well as direct neo-patronage via Patreon, Subscribstar, etc.
Watch as the more successful of us being moving into spaces where truly taking full advantage of the power of the Internet, something that only people like the RPG Pundit has done in recent years (and he only in part), moving ourselves and our households away from places we need not be and relocating to places far more secure physical, politically, and financially to continue to produce the thrilling adventure tales that people actually want.
No, you won't be hitting up the newsstand, dropping a nickel or a dime, and getting this week's new Pulp magazine. This isn't even the last vestage of the Pulps, Shonen Jump, but that spirit--and, increasingly, the rapid publishing model--is here again and our stuff is dominating the zombie corpse of Fandom that is OldPub. We're already seeing it spread to comics and games, and soon the nascent presence in film and TV will breakout when the tools and skills get cheap and easy enough for a critical mass of good material to build up- and by then, the distribution issue will present at least one solution.
In a time of gloom, knowing that there's good news--that a historical wrong is being righted--is itself good for morale.
The Pundit talks about the grunts of the Death Cult and their go-to tactic: threatening communications.
Context: "Others have already done videos about the Anti-TSR threatening emails SJWs sent to certain companies, but I think they missed the most important detail about them."
That's right, SJWs in tabletop RPGs have actually done the same bullshit against Gary's heirs that SJWs in North American anime did to Vic Mignogla: spread threatening communications to anyone that they discover is aiming to collaborate or associate with someone they've targetted for Unpersoning because of WrongThinking.
This time, it's not working so well. The power of such tactics comes from the shame presumed to exist by implication on the part of the attackers, as per their moral vision. That power is blunted, if not destroyed, by publically exposing the communications and then defying the attackers in public.
Tabletop RPGs are lower on the status ladder than videogames, so they can't rely on their fellow travelers in Fake News to cover for them unless it's actually Current Year D&D or Baizuo. Sure, they may get it anyway due to a slow Fake News day, but it's not like they can just hit a Slack chat and have someone at LOLtaku write a hit piece on demand.
No, they have to rely on your pals at RPG Net (LOL) or some other increasingly-irrelevant site to send forth the memo to the Hive Mind as to what is Good Think about it and how to act accordingly, and that's also increasingly unreliable these days.
As the industry collapses and the hobby returns to its Cottage Industry roots, taking what money there was away with that collapse, so does the decline of the clout it has culturally match that reversion to the mean, and with it the appeal of Death Cultists to bother with it. I have said this before, and it's starting to bear out now: THE ONLY WAY OUT IS THROUGH THE FLOOR!
The increasing failure of SJWs to police associations like this shows that we have a winning formula for purging them from a scene. It's painful, but it works, and it reveals why they came to converge it in the first place; by taking away its socio-economic-political utility (money and clout), it becomes useless to the Death Cult so they discard it. Tabletop RPGs are well positioned to benefit from this, meaning that the hobby that rises out of this collapse can install better gatekeepers to make a second convergence harder to pull- the aim being to make it far more trouble than it's worth to try.
The time for corporate gaming is over. The return of owner-operated enterprises has come.
What a long, strange trip it's been.
Seven years since this all jumped off with #gamergate, eh?
And the gaming industry--video and tabletop--continues to be a trashfire overall, but man has the word gotten around by now. Sure, the news media across the board still does what it did, but so has the awareness that it is a pile of shitheels and shill pretending to be proper investigators and reporters for the people- a tanking in credibility now comparable to that of governments.
Since then, the word's gotten around. Even the religious aspect to the enemy--that they are the Death Cult, a Chirstian heresy--has started to get around to major nodes like Reddit. So has the word that the best thing to do is to starve them, fork off our own parallels, and route around them.
Some areas are easier to do this in than others, and because it is neither flashy nor speedy it is often overlooked until the momentum picks up and becomes an avalanche- a Preference Cascade in action. We're seeing this happen in comics and genre fiction novels, where independents have successfully forked off and built up parallels to converged insitutions, with videogames not that far behind.
Other areas remain difficult to address due to the importance of the power behind their position, with the most immediate example being payment processors. As it is now, while there are projects in the works it is difficult to fork and replace them due to the power that control over finance provides to the enemy; even then, they can fall back to the credit card companies themselves. For now, the practical alternatives are themselves limited in application for political reasons (because they are Chinese or Russian), but they are available; so long as you can deal with those limits, you'll be fine.
Nonetheless, the overall trend doesn't look good for the enemy. Their positions are eroding and collapsing, but some of what they control has further to go than others and this is the source of the disparty between reality and apperance; there is simply more to erode in film, television, and videogames than there is in comics, tabletop games, and genre fiction novels.
And make no mistake: the smaller segments are already in a state of collapse, and it is ultimately to our benefit to hasten that collapse as best we can.
The other day I said that tabletop RPGs will be best served by making the environment inhospitable to the enemy. This is applicable across the board, and a lot of the general direction I said in that post regarding how hobbyists should serve that scene are applicable generally: more self-sufficiency, tenacity, and cultivation of individual character and skill; less reliance on Muh Product, Muh Brand, and on centralized solutions.
We never needed them. They depend on us. We are the real thing. They are the illusion. We continue to Git Gud. They remain scrubs. Paul didn't break the Harkonnen on Arrakis in a day; it took years. We're already outlasting them, and we continue to live rent-free in their heads.
We have already won. It just takes time for a corpse that massive to finally run out of momentum and fall.
How do you know when you see a Preference Cascade in action? When its biggest boosters jump ship.
CarBot is, like Asmongold, one of the long-running boosters of that Irvine-based subsidiary of Activision-Blizzard. Their parodies have had a long-standing audience, including within the company, such that there is an official mod of Starcraft based on the parodies done.
This is a big tell that the zeitgeist shifted. One can dismiss Asmongold easily as he is a Wrongthinker, but CarBot is A-OK and so to see him go is damning- especially when he not-so-affectionately mocks the company for allowing degenerate practices such as botting to wreck both the player's enjoyment and the game--and company's--internal economics.
Not that CarBot won't be just as much the Jester to FF14, but the affection formerly shown will now be applied here, and we'll see more of it down the road.
And yes, the smarter heads in both corporations pay attention to such things because they are reliable tells, tells now confirmed by available data, and we can safely conclude that--Cult convergence or no--that Irvine-based company isn't going to be what it is for much longer. Something's giving way, and what comes after the collapse cannot be guessed at this time (regardless of speculation).
All we know is that the collapse of the company's character has hollowed out the company's competency, and now everything else is cascading down- resulting in players fleeing the offerings for alternatives, with the MMO being the final pillar to plummet into the abyss and will take what remains of the company with it.
Collapse is a process. It starts within. It spirals outward unless arrested and reversed. It has not, so it consumes like a black hole until nothing remains.
And the real tragedy? I could not care less about its fate. Trash deserves to be removed with all the dispassion one has for scraping mud from one's shoes.
As reported by Bloomberg Law yesterday, the State of California has sued Blizzard Entertainment over sexual harassment and a hostile work environment.
Video game giant Activision Blizzard Inc., maker of games including World of Warcraft and Diablo, fosters a “frat boy” culture in which female employees are subjected to constant sexual harassment, unequal pay, and retaliation, according to a lawsuit filed by the California Department of Fair Employment and Housing.
A two-year investigation by the state agency found that the company discriminated against female employees in terms and conditions of employment, including compensation, assignment, promotion, and termination. Company leadership consistently failed to take steps to prevent discrimination, harassment, and retaliation, the agency said.
According to the complaint, filed Tuesday in the Los Angeles Superior Court, female employees make up around 20% of the Activision workforce, and are subjected to a “pervasive frat boy workplace culture,” including “cube crawls,” in which male employees “drink copious amounts of alcohol as they crawl their way through various cubicles in the office and often engage in inappropriate behavior toward female employees.”
Which immediately brought to mind all of the virtue signalling Blizzard has done in recent years, along with the high-profile senior employees getting out of there, and how guillible some (those that are not Death Cultists) have been regarding it.
The legal documents on file are linked to in the linked article, but I think they may be paywalled one way or another. I have sent word of them to Nick Rekieta, who is aware of the suit and will likely cover it on his channel tonight or tomorrow.
This is not your usual he-said/she-said. This is a suit brought by a government agency after a lengthy undercover investigation. That means that there will be covert recordings enterted as evidence demonstrating alledged behaviors. That means that people now no longer with the company will be served, deposed, and called to testify. That means that people who thought they dodged a bullet will begin to scramble to cover their asses. Meanwhile, the dogpiling of accusations has begun now that the news broke.
II is unsurprising that we've seen previously with overly-performative virtue signallers again proves to be true: it's all one big DARVO gaslighting scam, and Blizzard's own PR statement isn't refuting that framing one bit.
As much as I am willing to let Due Process play out, I am reminded that every previous example of Performative Wokeness has been revealed as camoflage for predatory behavior.
Not that this lawsuit, even if successful, will actually solve the problem; that requires a solution that the West is unwilling to accept. The corporation--all institutions--sees this as a Public Relations problem, an optics problem, and nothing more. They will do nothing other than yet more performative pretending in order to sucker the population back to sleep and compliance- just like the recent performative purging in the Hellmouth didn't do anything of substance. At the very least, however, you can stop giving them your money.
Clownfish TV is in the same sphere as the Fandom Menace, so they're Pop Cultists in denial. That said, they do delight in showing that the Death Cult has competition for the attention of the masses.
Yes, you've heard me say that Japan is a bastion for those disaffected by Western mainstream entertainment media, but this is data that can't be denied.
Therefore, it is going to be--and is being--attacked in typical Death Cult fashion by Cultists in the affected converged companies and sectors and it is being hit with the usual "Discredit and Disqualify" attack routine.
"They're not comics!" (Yes, said with a straight face.)
"It's (wrongthink) trash!"
You get the idea.
I said previously that if attempts to converge Eastern media cannot succeed, then the strategy will move to quaratine and constrict access. This is the real function of intermediaries such as Funimation and Crunchyroll: to insert themselves between the masses under their media umbrella and the foreign competition, hoping that putting fellow travellers and useful incompetents in place will sufficiently sour things to turn the masses back to what they offer.
It ain't working, and it certainly isn't as more and more Japanese companies get the memo on what is going on over here and decide to cut out the middlemen in favor of directly selling to Western customers. I remind you that Japan is no paradise, and that even they can be turned, but--for now--the fact remains that the Western-centered Death Cultists in the entertainment media have fierce competition for attention from non-converged alternatives that are heretofore resistant to pozzing and they do not like that they cannot exercise total power over the minds of a captured audience.
The proof is that more Japanese companies are expanding their online outlets, increasingly supporting in-house (or, at the least, not-pozzed) translations of their releases, and working in multiple languages to support business outside of Japan. You can reasonably expect other countries such as South Korean, Taiwan, etc. to do the same, if they haven't already, as they too wish to avoid Western insanity as best they can in favor of direct selling to customers overseas.
Might I suggest that, as we independents grow our own presence, that we return the favor as we are able?
While the Death Cult gives no fucks about sensible business practices, as they presume access to the money printer or being able to monkey-branch to another converged cult front company, we can't do that- and that, in time, will be our strength and their weakness.
Just be prepared to set up with a payment processor outside the West.
Jeffro Johnson, author of Appendix N: The Literary History of Dungeons & Dragons has again been savage on Twitter. This thread starts here.
Around 1980 or so, pop culture ceased to be an expression of culture, but instead because a SUBSTITUTE for culture. With each succeeding decade, it has become more infiltrated, more subverted, and more demoralizing. It's past time to unplug and start over.https://t.co/RpNXa6KDYD
— Jeffro Johnson (@JohnsonJeffro) May 7, 2021
And rather than have you swim through that cesspit for this gold, I'll quote it below, after the jump.
The man who is to the 40K scene what the RPG Pundit is to the soy brigade in tabletop RPGs stakes a position and argues the necessary thing that we must do.
Arch is correct. Gatekeeping is a neccessary condition to create and maintain a healthy hobby. He would also be correct to say that it is necessary to create and maintain a healthy culture, and with it a healthy nation and the states they create remain functional as intended.
Arch is no Hard Right guy. He's very much an Enlightenment liberal, but since he's to the right of Chairman Mao and Josef Stalin he might as well be a French Aristocrat during the Terror.
Because right now that is what Death Cultists in power are doing: instutiting a new Terror.
Arch is consistently villified by entryist poseurs virtue-signalling Death Cult allegience simply because he won't accept their attempts at Convergence, won't go along with the Narrative, and refuses to entertain their heresy. Furthermore, he's become rather energized by resisting them; he embraced the fight, and this video demonstrates his willingness to resist them.
You've seen what happens when you don't: Mouse Wars, Fake Trek, Dr. Snooze, shit "localizations" in non-Anglo media that deliberately insert propaganda, corporate takeovers aimed at turning the company into a poz-spredding vector, etc.
You've seen this happen because the walls were not manned. Outsiders were not vetted. Initations were not required. Dues were not paid. There was no attempt whatsoever made to keep poseurs out of the scene, and as it is with hobbies so it is with countries and civilizations; this principle scales up. Too few bothered to do that which is required of them, and those that did were undermined by fools and traitors that wanted to throw open the gates in the name of "popular acceptance" or some other fraud.
No, everyone does not belong. Stop trying to include those that have no business being there, either because they don't want to belong or because they are incompatible- as all poseurs are. If you don't zealously guard those gates, you will lose them to the poseurs who will use them to throw you out of what you built and cultivated--what is yours--and steal even your identity from you if they can to leave you with nothing.
Man the wall, or you will lose it all.
This changes the game.
Diamond Distribution not only had--had--a monopoly on comic book distribution in the United States, but also dominated distribution of tabletop games. Especially now, it is common for comic shops to sell card and tabletop games on the side or vice-versa, especially if they also furnish space for play in-house- something very common for shops tied into doing tournament play for Magic: The Gathering, Warhammer 40,000 or something else that needs tablespace for in-person gameplay.
Having the Big Two, however moribund both comics companies are, defect away from Diamond in favor of Penguin is a big deal. It means that a relatively small monopoly got broken in favor of assimilating into a bigger one. This is nothing more than another wrinkle in OldPub eating itself as it collapses.
Penguin is one of the few remaining big New York publishing houses. That they would resort to declasse material as comic books is very telling as to the state of OldPub; you would never hear an old-time New York publisher even conceieve of comics being on par with publishing the classics of Western literature or the latest non-fiction work by some old college pal that's now working for the Tri-Lateral Commission between Federal Government postings.
Yes, that's an admittedly Anglo-centric thing--Continential Europe isn't exactly like that in attitude--but it is there and even now the Hugofag clique barely tolerates comics as literature; if Neil Gaiman and Alan Moore didn't exist, they wouldn't bother hiding their contempt- they certainly don't with Eastern comics or literature.
I am encouraged by this news, because Diamond going down will have knock-on effects in tabletop gaming that will likewise force the Death Cultists and Pop Cultists to cope and they are not prepared for this. Instead, they'll double-down on depending upon crowdfunding all the things and using Amazon and Drivethru nigh-exclusively; smarter heads will soon see their clarity come through for them.
It's not over yet, but you can see it on the horizon.
This thread by Cirsova Magazine, taken from Twitter, is about both the Old School Renaisance in tabletop RPGs and the Pulp Revolution in literature. Reproduced in its entirety and edited for clarity.
It's gone from "Everyone's read these, so there's no point in talking about them." to ignoring the Pulp Revolution that Jeffro's writing on Appendix N inspired, to co-opting Appendix N to undermine it. Peeps are sucking off Bebergal's book like it's super relevant. (Archive Link)
Bebergal's book is TradPub trying to co-opt Appendix N and turn interest in the works that inspired AD&D 1st Edition into controlled opposition.
'wUt iF gNoLLs wErE eNbIEs?'
Accept no substitutes.
@JohnsonJeffro's book is a work that launched countless other pulp publications. (Editor's Note: Including my own.)
(Jeffro Johnson's Appendix N can be found here.)
"These stories are really sexist, but it's okay because Berbegal gets Weird Tales skin-suit editor Ann Vandemeer to write an afterword about how sexist it is."
Appendix N is "an unfortunate reflection of the limited social horizons of Gygax’s target audience."
Bebergal's anthology is compiled and edited by and for people who hate you and Appendix N and revel in the trash that D&D has turned into.
It will be up for every award.
This is known as "Getting in front of the movement."
The play is to seize control of a possible threat to a shot-caller's control by inserting themselves into the group, usurping leadership and defanging it by either destroying it or by assimilating it into the shot-caller's machine. The Death Cult do this sort of thing as their overall Method of Operation. It is part-and-parcel of enacting Convergence of a targetted organization.
The idea, in this case, is that the OSR and the PulpRev threaten the Death Cult power in legacy media- specifically in tabletop RPGs and genre fiction. Jeffro's book was the catlyst for both to explode into their present period of creative innovation and commercial growth, such that Death Cult control of OldPub and the biggest TRPG publishers are now increasingly obvious as things being routed around and ignored- not strongholds to assault.
How do you deal with something you do not control? You seize control of it. If you can't find a single point of failure--leadership of a centralized group, for example--then the fallback step is to find the narrative driving the enemy and begin undermining it because a demoralized enemy is far easier to destroy than one that is not.
That's what this entire attack on Appendix N is: an attempt to undermine the narrative driving two separate, but related, threats to the Death Cult's power in nodes of the culture industry.
They wouldn't take this move if they didn't see it as a threat to them, and they wouldn't attack here if they didn't think it a weak point to hit.
It's a reliable tell that the Death Cult reveals what they fear by what they attack and how they attack it. For some reason, they fear Appendix N. The immediate counter is to spread the word, both of Jeffro's book and the old SF canon Gygax relied upon to make D&D the legendary game that it is.
It is worth further consideration.
They aren't going to learn when they have big incentives not to, despite the reality of it smashing their faces into the wall.
Deep emotional commitment cannot be easily broken. It's a lot like assault a well-developed trench line; there's defense in depth and as such multiple lines to fall back to and regroup about before counterattacking.
Now we're seeing it in the psychological realm with the Fandom Menace. Despite clear evidence that they are as effective as a dog biting a tank, they persist and we have already seen them fall back to deeper positions to rally, regroup, and resume the fight.
Geeks & Gamers fell back on Muh Charity and immediately pivoted to minimize or ignore Synder's unevocable disavowal of them and the Menace. Doomcock immediately did this without the slightest hint of self-awareness in response to calls to boycott the movie.
This is the psychology of a cultist in denial about their actual status. Author David Stewart explains.
The narrative pivot here is astounding to behold, and you have to be familiar with apocalypse cults preaching End of the World scenarios being imminent to have prior experience with how this operates. The Menace, being a cult, predicted that Synder getting his cut would validate their existence and all of their efforts- thus confirming them as players to be reckoned with and not noises to be muffled.
They're noises to be muffled, and Snyder muffled them good and hard to their faces. That is a direct attack to whom they believe themselves to be, and they ain't having it.
They want to be in the club. They're not. They never will be. They're the very suckers that the Hellmouth readily exploits, and they won't admit it; until they do, there's no coming out of their cult. They made an idol of their entertainment, a false god of these brands, and they will not confess their error until every last defense is smashed apart before their very eyes.
I am quite happy to let them deal with the monster they made. They are in an untenable position; all that good people need to do is be ready to catch them when they inevitably fall out of their cult and back to reality- and better that we do, for otherwise the Death Cult will take them.
The leading Hispanic Voice in Science Fiction, Jon del Arroz, held a livestream late last night. Recapped in this video below.
Jon calls Geeks & Gamers and the Fandom Menace generally "coomers", as they exhibit the mentality of the sex addict, but given that they attach religious fervor and devotion--to the point of seeing this in moral terms--to their pop culture obsessions I agree with Brian Niemeier and call them Pop Cultists. These are not contradictory appelations, but rather complimentary ones; the latter is what's driving the mentality, while the former is what it appears to those outside the cult.
This particular Pop Cult made an idol out of a mediocre capeshit film, bought into the idea that it would be better if the original director's version got released, and pushed for it relentlessly with exactly that religious fervor I previously mentioned. They got their wish, they thought they won, and they were taking a victory lap by participating in a charity drive that also included said director- the object of their idol worship of the moment.
Their idol specifically named them, disavowed them in no uncertain terms, and condemned them as anathema because they are not part of HIS cult- the Death Cult.
The Fandom Menace vastly overstates their reach, their power, and their influence. The only serious damage they did was to point out the rotting merchandise to contradict the narrative that the Devil Mouse's sanctioned fan films are doing very well, knowing full well that said IP relies on merchandise sales to actually make a profit- especially between major media releases. The only other useful thing they did was when one subgroup proved to be a semi-professional outlet and began churning out semi-pro news and analysis of the entertainment business. (That, by the way, is Midnight's Edge.)
Most of the clique, on the other hand, are like Geeks & Gamers and thus are useless goobers who will either come of their delusions or become the very things they say that they are against: SJW Death Cultists. Given that they already cede the moral frame to their supposed enemy due to their pop culture obsessions, this will be a matter of time and it will be sad to watch.
Don't be like the Fandom Rejects. Walk away from the Death Cult. Support people that don't hate you and produce new, original works. Jon's got his books and comics going; you'll find his campaign for Deus Vult here. Brian's got plenty of novels, and he's branching into games and merch; you'll find the campaign for his next book here. Both campaigns have at least one option for getting a pile of catchup stuff to tide you over.
There's plenty more out there. Go explore!
P.S.: I see that the Rejects are using "Muh Charity Fundaising!" to deflect. That didn't work, did it? Oh, and if you think Hollywood is corrupt, wait until you dig into the charity world. How much of that money is actually going to people that actually need it?
