The Business of Writing and #20BooksTo50K continue to put out good content for you folks (like me) in lockdown.
The videos TBoW did on the SBA process are going to be more valuable to you operating formal businesses, but just about any of you involved with writing and publishing should get good value out of the #20Books videos. You're likely to get more out of that than whatever passes for entertainment on mainstream TV.
That screeching sound is OldPub losing its mind over their paper pulp business burning up like a California wildfire.
Friend of the Retreat, and my editor, Brian Niemeier also has a post on this development today. He's been talking about OldPub really being in the paper business for quite a while now, and it is obvious that the aforementioned Facebook post is a confession that this is in fact true.
In a related corollary, the audiobook business just crashed; this exposed what many suspected about that market- it's base is people commuting to their bullshit makework fake jobs, which goes alongside a major percentage of users of streaming video and audio services, and OldPub has been as stupid about audio as they have about digital so this news just threw gasoline on the fire.
Daddy Warpig gets into the issue in this Twitter thread here.
Not just comics. TradPub is getting it right in the neck. Full post by a Tor editor below, but TL;DR is "we depend on paper from China to print our books, we be screwed".
— Daddy Warpig (@DaddyWarpig) April 6, 2020
But, like comics, this is actually their fault, not the Wuhan Fluhan Death Hack. /2https://t.co/WncMMmQWW2
And he's right. OldPub could have--should have--gone ahead of the curve on publishing technologies and business models years ago but stubbornly thought they could squash them instead and keep everyone on their paper pulp plantation perpetually, using that captive audience to then serve the Death Cult (as they have been) and ensure their own power just as perpetually.
Now it's come undone. Not "coming", "come"; there's no returning from this. All that remains is for the metal fatigue to hit the breaking point and collapse in a cascade that ends in the industry falling into an ashen heap. It couldn't have happened to a more deserving bunch of bastards, and I won't miss any of them once they're gone. It's not like the actually valuable material they published won't find new ways to get published--even in print--once Corona-chan's come and gone.
Meanwhile, I get now how Alucard feels.
Because this is some apocalyptic shit going down, and man a lot of people are finally getting what's coming for them.
Tonight the Metro City Boys has a guest, Voice Actor Sean Chiplock. Between all of the usual goof going on, there's Real Talk about the business to be had. Get comfy and hit that play button.
Whatever you do, be careful not to drink anything hot while they're being goofy. Coffee coming out of your nose hurts.
Today we've got a lot of writing-related stuff to spread around, starting with this week's Geek Gab.
You can find the Kickstarter campaign page here.
Both of the writing-related channels I follow--Business of Writing and #20BooksTo50K--have had regular video releases over the week or so that you want to check out. The former, especially in the last few days, have been about current events and getting help from the Small Business Administration (if in the U.S.); you owe it to yourself to go there and watch his stuff. The latter's been a series of interviews with other authors on different business aspects regarding the indie writing world, and you really should queue those up and give them a listen; you're going to find these useful.
Oh, and a bonus, and a reminder of just what one man with the right tools can do now, Part 5 of Astartes dropped finishing this story arc. Better than anything officially done.
It keeps happening!
Months after leading an SJW against the OSR in general and me in particular for "Toxic Masculinity", Adam Koebel (Storygamer, Male Feminist, and creator of Dungeonworld) did a bad bad thing, proving yet again what kind of masculinity is REALLY toxic.
Koebel is a Dangerhair SJW Death Cultist. That he'd demonstrate by his behavior that he's projecting hard enough to be a viable launch vehicle for NASA should surprise no one, and I fully expect some ritual displays of contrition that are as fake as he is before this is all swept under the rug and everyone pretends that it never happened whether they want to or not. Why? He's a Somebody in the Tabletop RPG cell of the Death Cult Network, and Somebodies get their indiscretions papered over until the power dynamic shifts and they're pushed down the ladder or expelled from the Party. (e.g. Weinstein) Granted, not much of a Somebody, but still Somebody.
Once again, quoting one of the video comments: "Physiognomy turns out to be real yet again, Koebel was always sickening to look upon, I had a weird feeling about that guy from the first time I saw him."
Reset the clock!
Friend of the Retreat Brian Niemeier has a post today about SJW infiltration into anime production, taking the approach we all suspected: getting on the production committees. Head over there and read that before continuing.
I'm not mad about this as such. They'd already been executing a containment strategy, but actual pozzing was always the goal and this is the means to do it. The problem I see is that it may be too little and too late, for them and us, as forces beyond anyone's control have made this development moot.
No, not just Corona-chan, though that will play a role. No, not just the ChiComs, though they are exerting pressure. The problem is what's coming out.
Since the high-water mark of the late 90s--there's that marker again--the entire field crashed creatively and technically. 2000-2010 was a decade more or less lost to both the changeover to CGI-dominated production, with its own learning curves and growing pains as well as talent turnover. The genres that made anime popular worldwide fell into disuse overnight, with so few good original works coming out that when one finally hit like the old days (Gurren Lagann) it was treated like the Second Coming. The majority of the embarassing output that marks typical production today began here, but there's another trend to address.
Like Western pop culture, Japanese pop culture stagnated. More and more reliance on fewer and fewer franchises. More and more remakes, retreads, side-stories, and nostalgia works--more plays into the Nostalgia Trap--and fewer original works outside of a couple of commercially viable genres. More of the works that do get made focus more and more on childhood and high school life and not on adult life or feature adult protagonists; more works are contemporary in setting and not exhibiting imagination or speculation. The fanfic phenomenon afflicting the West is abundant in the East also, with all of the consequences to go with it.
In short, what we're now seeing here is that--as with the Western experience--the SJW push into anime is no different a chase of corpse-eating grubs finding more to eat than it was previously. The anime business is over-reliant on so few genres that you can count on one hand and have digits left over, and about as many remain present enough to retain an overall illusion of variety; the result is an increasingly freakish audience, and freakish r-selected audiences are breeding grounds for SJW pozzing.
As much as I enjoy the remakes and revisits of late--they are very well done--you can't rely on them forever. As much as the anime industry have finally recovered in technical competency from the CGI turnover 20 years ago, they remain creatively bankrupt and the practices are not conducive to making the healthy cultural works of the previous heyday; it's no surprise that few new works compare favorably to those of that past era anymore than Mouse Wars compares favorably to Uncle George's films.
In short, consider the possibility that this is necessary to fix a persistent problem, and it is unlikely that anything within the present context will solve it.
And if you get the idea that I'm fine with this, you haven't been paying attention. It may be necessary, but that doesn't mean I want the pain to happen. I just want there to be an anime industry clean of this poz once this is over.
Toshiro Mifune, one of the greatest actors that ever lived, was born on this day 100 years ago.
Yes, there is a documentary about the man, released in 2016.
I don't admire many entertainers, but two of them are Japanese and Mifune is one of them. Whatever his flaws, as an actor--and an icon of manliness--he was one of the best and he has few peers, only one of which is still alive. (That would be Clint Eastwood.) Such a figure deserves to be remembered and celebrated. While famous for his samurai films, his dramatic turns in more contemporary pieces are what drives home the fact of his mastery of the craft- often directed by the legendary Akira Kurosawa. You are not wasting your time by watching his films; hit up his filmography and start watching.
Then look forward to seeing him appear, in spirit, cast in the role of a Star Knight.
