Author: VD

When Retconning Works

Inverse contemplates the retconnning of Gollum:

In the 1937 version, Gollum is just a weird creature.

From the original Hobbit (1937):

But funnily enough he [Bilbo] need not have been alarmed. For one thing Gollum had learned long ago was to never cheat at the riddle-game, which is a sacred one and of immense antiquity.

From the revised Hobbit (1951, 1965, et al.):

He knew of course, the riddle-game was sacred and of immense antiquity and even wicked creatures were afraid to cheat when they played it. But he [Bilbo] felt he could not trust this slimy thing [Gollum] to keep any promise at a pinch. Any excuse would do for him to slide out of it. And after all that last question had not been a genuine riddle according to the ancient laws.”

Tolkien tinkered with “Riddles in the Dark” up until 1966, making him something of a George Lucas; continually modifying his story to fit with his other books.In the first, 1937 Hobbit, Gollum’s love of the Ring isn’t connected to any, deeper, sinister meaning. Tolkien initially mentioned in passing that “…if you slipped the ring on your finger, you were invisible…”. But in the 1951 revisions, when Gollum’s attitude became more intense, it became a “ring of power,” and the after-effects of using the ring would make you “shaky and faint.”

Without Tolkien utterly revising Gollum — and thus, revising the Ring — nothing about The Lord of the Rings would make sense, and arguably, the entirety of Middle-earth would be far less interesting. If Gollum had remained a curious, silly little creature who possessed a whimsical magic ring, it’s doubtful we’d all be obsessed with this wonderful fantasy world today. It’s also unlikely that, had Tolkien not utterly retconned Gollum and the One Ring, we’d even be talking about the careers of Peter Jackson and Andy Serkis.

So while the impending creation of The Hunt for Gollum might, for some, feel like a strange, unnecessary prequel at best (and a blasphemous retcon at worst), there is a massive and pivotal precedent to mess with Gollum’s story, straight from Professor Tolkien himself.

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Yeah, So, About That

The imposter Neil Gaiman has “a perfect anecdote” that also happens to be a tremendously ironic suggestion for helping his fellow imposters get over their “syndrome”.

Some years ago, I was lucky enough invited to a gathering of great and good people: artists and scientists, writers and discoverers of things. And I felt that at any moment they would realise that I didn’t qualify to be there, among these people who had really done things.

On my second or third night there, I was standing at the back of the hall, while a musical entertainment happened, and I started talking to a very nice, polite, elderly gentleman about several things, including our shared first name. And then he pointed to the hall of people, and said words to the effect of, “I just look at all these people, and I think, what the heck am I doing here? They’ve made amazing things. I just went where I was sent.”

And I said, “Yes. But you were the first man on the moon. I think that counts for something.”

And I felt a bit better. Because if Neil Armstrong felt like an imposter, maybe everyone did. Maybe there weren’t any grown-ups, only people who had worked hard and also got lucky and were slightly out of their depth, all of us doing the best job we could, which is all we can really hope for.

And the Big Bear laughed. Oh, how he laughed! Literally everything about these people is fake. Once you are able to recognize the pattern, you can’t help seeing through everything.

Gaiman’s words of comfort to his fan, arguing that no one at all really feels like they know what they’re doing, is clearly resonating with people. The feeling that you are severely under-qualified for the task ahead of you, or that you’re secretly the most incompetent person in a room full of bonafide geniuses, it seems, is pervasive.

Certainly, among all of the imposters and incompetents. Never has there been a greater testimony to the mediocrity and ineptitude of modern society.

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What’s Wrong with Mary Sue

The intrinsic problem of writing self-inserts, demonstrated in a single meme.

Now what could be wrong with my Mary Sue?
She’s very important, she’s got so much to do!
She pretty, she’s smart, and everyone loves her;
She’s got endless depths for her fans to uncover.
Though it must be admitted there is one problem, true,
Since there’s nothing at all for her sidekicks to do!

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The Easy Answer

Duke of Sussex asks former aides to help plot RETURN from his US exile in first stage of ‘rehabilitation’ strategy: Prince’s friends vow to help smooth path back and dub it ‘Operation Bring Harry In From The Cold’.

Simple. It only requires four easy steps.

  1. Apologize to your brother, your sister-in-law, and your father.
  2. Admit that the children are fake.
  3. Get rid of the grifter.
  4. Leave the USA.

That’s literally all it will take. But it might be beyond him anyhow.

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Weimar Britain

And no, this isn’t a result of Brexit. Germany is in even worse shape. But regardless, it is clear that the decision to back Ukraine has been a fatal one for the British economy, the coming collapse of which is becoming increasingly obvious in the wake of Ukraine’s recent defaulting on its massive debt:

22 July 2024: we have a deal!
Almost as soon as Zelensky’s visit in London concluded, the Government of Ukraine announced that a deal was reached with its main bondholders to restructure the country’s near-$20 billion worth of bonds, including a 37% reduction of the amounts owed. But this was only “an agreement, in principle,” reached with an “ad-hoc creditor committee,” and it wasn’t binding on all the bondholders. Instead, it imposed on Ukraine’s government “the Restructuring as soon as practicable,” to be implemented through a “consent solicitation.” In other words, Ukraine was expected to chase after its creditors and beg them to accept the deal, even offering them a 1.25% “consent fee.” Well, things were about to take a sharp turn for the worse…

24 July 2024: Ukraine strikes the Fitch iceberg
Only two days after Ukraine announced the deal with their bondholders, Fitch downgraded Ukraine’s credit rating from CC to C, reflecting extreme credit risk reserved for countries that “entered default or default-like process.” Significantly, Fitch made it explicit that “the publication of sovereign reviews is subject to restrictions and must take place according to a published schedule…”

31 July 2024: Zelensky ‘temporarily’ suspends debt repayments
Zelensky signed a law enabling Ukraine to suspend payments of external debts for two months (or longer).

Thursday, August 1 2024: debt repayments freeze takes effect
Bondholders’ grace period expires; Zelensky’s unilateral debt repayments freeze takes effect.

What’s peculiar about the British financial system is that the taxpayers are obliged to reimburse the Bank of England for any losses it sustains on its balance sheet assets. If the price of gilts on the bank’s balance sheet collapses, British taxpayers must cover those losses and make the bank whole. So, what kind of money are we talking about? As the the FT reported last July, the BOE has estimated it will require the Treasury to transfer a total of £150 billion by 2033 to cover expected losses on the central bank’s quantitative easing program.

So how much is £150 billion? Provided that things haven’t deteriorated since July 2023 (they have), we’re talking £2,240 per man, woman and child in Britain. Stand and deliver: that’s the ransom that the BOE is claiming from them! But given that the British workforce is only about half the population, and that private enterprise accounts for less than 55% of the British GDP, this sum represents nearly £10,000 per employee working in the private sector.

In all, the situation is impossible and all the cabinet reshuffles and cosmetic patches changed nothing of substance in the UK; they amounted to a sort of rearranging the deck-chairs on the Titanic as the ship is already sinking.

Translation: Ukraine is bankrupt and can’t even pretend that it’s going to repay all of its massive war-related debts after defeating the Russians. The economic collapse of the Ukrainian government will lead to a political collapse and the military collapse of its armed forces; Russia’s increasingly rapid advances in the Donbass are in part due to the beginning stages of the latter. And the surrender of Ukraine may lead directly to the economic collapse of Britain as well as several countries inside the EU, most likely those most deeply invested in Ukraine, which includes the Baltics, Germany, and Poland.

28 August 2024: Game Over? Ukraine Announces Partial Halt to Payments on Its Gargantuan Debt

This is the genius of Putin’s patient multi-front attritional strategy and why he has an economist running the Russian Ministry of Defense. He never needed to bomb Britain or Berlin in order to comprehensively defeat them. And as for the USA, well, China and Iran are taking the lead with regards to the Clown World’s major stronghold.

DISCUSS ON SG

Clown World Knows No Law

The reason conservatives can never win or successfully resist Clown World is because they believe that the law is something real, and something material. Whereas, as literally every single lawyer will tell you, what the law actually is not the black letter words passed by the politicians or the policies of the regulatory agencies, it is whatever the judge of the relevant matter says it is.

Justice Alexandre de Moraes of the Supreme Court of Brazil has ordered the operations of X (formerly Twitter) to be “immediately suspended” and threatened draconian fines against anyone trying to sidestep the ban. De Moraes demanded that X censor several accounts that “spread disinformation” by criticizing him, but the platform’s owner Elon Musk refused.

On Friday, the judge ordered the platform banned in Brazil, giving Google and Apple five days to remove X from their app stores. He also threatened a fine of around 50,000 Brazilian real (approximately $8,874) a day for anyone using a virtual private network (VPN) to get around the ban.

On Thursday, de Moraes froze the accounts of Starlink, a subsidiary of Musk’s SpaceX, saying this was needed to ensure the payment of fines levied against X for failing to appoint a legal representative. Musk objected to the “absolutely illegal action” taken without any due process, pointing out that X and SpaceX are “two completely different companies with different shareholders.”

According to X’s Global Government Affairs team, de Moraes “threatened our Brazilian legal representative with imprisonment. Even after she resigned, he froze all of her bank accounts.”

We view this sort of thing as bad. But in Switzerland, the government broke multiple laws to prevent the failure of Credit Suisse from financially harming any of its account holders. Everyone, with the exception of a few shareholders and creditors who ended up getting the short end of the stick, thought this was a very good thing. But whether these things are considered good or bad is irrelevant, the point is that what everyone believes is “the law” is nothing more than a collection of general suggestions that the three branches of government will ignore in a heartbeat whenever they feel that doing so is desirable.

Nothing can be repaired or restored by so-called legal means when the authorities harbor absolutely no respect for what passes for the law. Any policy or distinction that depends upon “legality”, such as immigration or limits on legal speech, doesn’t exist in a practical sense so long as one is government by a government of men, not laws.

Nancy Pelosi just told Bill Maher that she plans to grant citizenship to every illegal immigrant and give them free housing.

See how easy it is to deal with a problem of illegality? One stroke of the pen, one judge’s order, and the problem is magically solved!

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He Jumped on the Grenade

Greater love for his fellows hath no man than the Dark Herald, who is suffering through the second season of The Rings of Power on our behalf:

It’s been two years since the first season of Amazon’s The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power was unleashed on a helpless and unsuspecting world. Seven hundred and thirty days has not been enough to dull the pain of the horrors it inflicted on the genre of high fantasy.

J.R.R. Tolkien was without question the greatest and most influential fantasy writer of the 20th century. Every writer that followed him had to consciously either embrace or reject Middle Earth. The Lord of the Rings was the story of a struggle of good against absolute evil. A story where the protagonist succeeds in his quest to take the One Ring to Mount Doom but ultimately fails in his mission to destroy it. He is saved by Providence and the self-destructive nature of evil.

In the 21st century, there has been a race on to turn as much of the fantasy genre as possible into a pastiche and palimpsest of Professor Tolkien’s life’s work, or perhaps a better term would be a mockery. This production is certainly the pinnacle of that school of thought. There is no ultimate good or absolute evil there are simply shades of grey and at the end of the day everyone is the same and we are all equal. No one has the right to judge anyone for anything unless they are a white male, in which case they bear the sins of all the world and must constantly perform acts of contrition from morning to sunset.

Nowhere is this school of fiction more pervasive than in Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power.

throws back a quick shot of Four Roses

Let’s get after it.

The show starts with a recap of the first season. This is probably a sad necessity for its audience. I know that I personally had to (pauses to shudder) rewatch the entire first season because the brain cells that had been assigned to remember it had died of embarrassment. I’m not the only one, everyone who has to review this has been groaning about having to wallow through the acre of rotting of pig dump that is 2022’s Rings of Power.

Within minutes of starting this new season, you know that Amazon has outdone the last one in terms of sheer incompetence.

It’s impressive that Amazon actually managed to lower the bar. But, as we know, the real purpose of these abominations is to destroy the affection for the source material. Fortunately, the joke’s on them, because we can read old books!

Which is vastly more entertaining than thinly-disguised lectures on girl power and how orcs are people too and they just want a better life for their children, and anyone who doesn’t open the gates of Gondor to them are racists for whom there is no place in Gondorian society.

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There is No “Imposter Syndrome”

People are often advised to “fake it until you make it”, but speaking as a publisher, I see a surprising number of people who never quit faking it even after they achieved a modicum of success. The main reason for “imposter syndrome” is that there are a lot of imposters out there.

Not all self-doubt is unwarranted. And to paraphrase Garrison Keillor, the urge to perform is not a reliable indicator of talent.

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Hear For Yourself

The wall of silence surrounding Neil Gaiman is cracking and beginning to crumble, as both The Bookseller and Publishers Weekly have now publicly referenced the latest Tortoise Media episode, and, as previously mentioned, The Bookseller has been actively reaching out to Gaiman’s publishers for comments on the growing number of accusations of sexual assault, to absolutely no avail.

I suspect the reason further cracks are appearing is that hearing Neil Gaiman’s words in his own voice is more convincing to a skeptic than any amount of documentary and testimonial evidence would be. Any hope of simply blaming the podcast series on an anti-trans agenda or that it’s a whole lot of nothing is rapidly disappearing. The transcript of the sixth episode is now available, and it is extremely damning. Though again, not as damning as actually hearing Gaiman’s whiny, self-pitying voice.

NEIL GAIMAN: Hello!
CLAIRE: Hey!
NEIL GAIMAN: How are you? Apart from probably very nervous about this call.
CLAIRE: (brief chuckle) Um… I’m doing well, I – (inaudible, trails off in background) …my letter…
NEIL GAIMAN: …reading your letter, I – if I’d known that – I’d took up that headspace…
CLAIRE: (audible breath) Heh…
NEIL GAIMAN: for you… I would’ve… I don’t know! I would’ve – I definitely would’ve been reaching out a long – time ago! I… I… you know… I’ve never thought of you with anything other than fondness, and…
CLAIRE: Mm.
NEIL GAIMAN: – a little awkwardness, and… um… you know… have me feeling like I’ve got the wrong end of the stick, but I thought you were – terrific! And I – was heartbroken, seeing that I was giving you nightmares, and… (heavy sighs) So I’m really sorry!
NEIL GAIMAN: I … don’t think anything is gonna unwrite the bits that I’ve obviously fucked up on all this. And – and I’m trying to make up some of the damage.

PAUL CARUANA GALIZIA: Claire tells him that she’s had a long stretch of therapy, one that’s put financial strain on her family, and she expresses concern about how expensive the baby she’s expecting is going to be. Neil Gaiman is quick to offer a solution.

NEIL GAIMAN: Would you like me to send you some money?
CLAIRE: I – again, the whole – like, putting a price tag on –
NEIL GAIMAN: I mean, I’m not – I’m not trying to put a price tag, I’m –
CLAIRE: (nervous laugh) …yeah…
NEIL GAIMAN: like – just trying to – I’m – I’m not sure that I’m – reading you – I’m, I, I said that very bluntly, ‘cause, uh – (CLAIRE laughs) Like – listen – you’ve got a baby on the way and I appreciate that five hundred – dollars a month…
CLAIRE: (laugh) Yeah.
NEIL GAIMAN: …is, over a decade, is gonna stack up, and … a lot of that must have been my fault.

PAUL CARUANA GALIZIA: The two end the call slightly awkwardly. Five days later, Neil Gaiman calls Claire again.

NEIL GAIMAN: So, I have a plan.
CLAIRE: Okay?
NEIL GAIMAN: And I wanted to run it by you… and see if it’s acceptable for you. Um… and I’ve been doing a lot of thinking. A lot of – a lot of listening to what you were saying on the last call. Um… so… what you said about paying for your… therapy. (CLAIRE murmurs) I did the numbers and I went, “Well, that’s 10 years… at $500 a month,” which I make comes out to about $60,000.
Um… so what I would propose… is that I will give you 15 thousand dollars a year for four years. Which… is the – the top level of a tax-free gift.
CLAIRE: Mm.
NEIL GAIMAN: So I can gift it – I can gift you $15,000 each year. And you do not have to pay that, pay any tax or anything on that. That is just a gift. Um… and then, I’m gonna make a hefty donation, to… to the place you sent me the link to.
CLAIRE: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
NEIL GAIMAN: …And that is my plan, if that is acceptable to you.
CLAIRE: That – is really generous! Um, and I appreciate your – um – your appreciation for the –
NEIL GAIMAN: …You know, I did something so much shittier than I ever dreamed, that I – I didn’t even realize I was doing something shitty. I did something really shitty.

PAUL CARUANA GALIZIA: On the 2nd of August 2022, Neil Gaiman sends Claire $60,000 to cover the cost of her therapy. It’s not the first time Neil Gaiman has paid women he was involved with money. Two months earlier, he had sent some NZ$13,000 (which is nearly US$8,000) and a non-disclosure agreement to Scarlett after an allegedly abusive sexual relationship that lasted three weeks. And around 8 months before paying Claire, he had paid US$275,000 and an NDA to Caroline Wallner after he allegedly coerced her into providing him with sex under the threat of evicting her and her three daughters from his property.

Mr. Galizia and others who are actively investigating the allegations have assured us there is more to come. A lot more, I would imagine, considering some of the unpleasant things that are being uncovered and some of the unexpected connections that are now being made. At this point, given that we now have reason to suspect Gaiman of being another manufactured success, I don’t think it’s even entirely safe to assume that the actor playing the role of the writer necessarily wrote everything that “Neil Gaiman” is presently credited with having written; the larger question is how deep this particular rabbit hole is going to go.

#GaimanGate quote of the day: “Neil Gaiman’s work is for immature goths at an 8th grade reading level.”

Indeed.

DISCUSS ON SG

So That Went Well

It didn’t take long for Ukraine to lose its first F-16. And by “not long”, I mean the very first mission. So much for the so-called game-changer.

Well, the quintessential ‘game-changer’ of all game-changers was unceremoniously shot out of the sky on its maiden mission. As I had stated from the get-go, F-16s were being utilized only in “safe” defensive roles in the far rear of the country to help shoot down Russian drones. Apparently even this task was too great for the poor F-16. But the more shocking detail was revealed when Ukrainian Rada rep Mariana Bezuglaya claimed on her official account that the F-16 was kiboshed by none other than a friendly American-made Patriot missile system. Face palm. Pentagon spokesperson Sabrina Singh confirmed the loss but refused to comment on whether it was indeed a Patriot that brought the plane down.

All in all, it’s a testament to the fact that modern near-peer, high-intensity conflict is not about wunderwaffe and ‘game changer’ toys. There is no such thing as a golden bullet or unicorn weapon that can really move the needle in near-peer conflict. It’s all about the totality of what your nation as a whole can bring to the table, economically, militarily, productively, and in terms of willpower, political influence, morale, etc. Any single weapon system is meaningless in the grand scheme of things and can be destroyed easily by the plethora of available modern counter-systems.

Simplicius is right. As is Martyanov. Victor Davis Hanson’s division of the way of war into Eastern and Western variants needs an updating, because there is a more important and fundamental difference between the way a sea power wages war on an expeditionary basis, a land power wages war on an existential and attritional basis, and an air power wages war on an regime change basis. This is why Clown World is obsessed with gestures, gimmicks, and short-term game-changing moves that look pointless and insane from a land power perspective; not even when their threats prove utterly toothless do they understand that their defeat is as inevitable as was Japan’s in 1941.

UPDATE: Ukraine’s General Staff has confirmed that a Western-supplied F-16 fighter jet has been lost along with its pilot.

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