Category: Uncategorized

Introducing Arkhaven

Arkhaven is the new Castalia House imprint which will be responsible for publishing comics and graphic novel series like Alt★Hero, Alt★Hero Avalon, QUANTUM MORTIS, and Wodehouse, among others. It will be publishing in both digital and print editions, and we’re pleased to announce that the first Arkhaven digital comic is now available today.

QUANTUM MORTIS A Man Disrupted #1: “By the Book”

Chief Warrant Officer Graven Tower is a ruggedly handsome military policeman who hates aliens. Fortunately, as a member of His Grace’s Military Crimes Investigation Division – Xenocriminology and Alien Relations, he gets to arrest a lot of them. Sometimes he even gets to shoot them.

But while he doesn’t like aliens, Chief Tower does very much like Detector Derin Hildreth of the Trans Paradis Police Department, who is unmistakably human. So when Tower has the chance to investigate the mysterious murder of an alien on the streets of Trans Paradis with her, he’s not about to miss the opportunity. Especially when their mutual investigation just might give him the excuse to shoot an alien or three.

Issue #1 is 28 pages, retails for $2.99 at Amazon, and is available on Kindle Unlimited. If you want to check out the interior artwork, click inside and you can see the first few pages. The style is very retro Dick Tracy, which is decidedly out-of-fashion today, but then, it also lacks transgendered minority deviants, disturbing and inappropriate portrayals of children, and endless social justice advocacy. We did say we were going old school, you may recall.

UPDATE: Thank you all for the enthusiastic support!

  • #1 in Kindle Short Reads > 45 minutes (22-32 pages) > Comics & Graphic Novels
  • #1 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Comics & Graphic Novels > Military
  • #1 New Release in Kindle eBooks > Comics & Graphic Novels
  • #12 in Comics & Graphic Novels

The first 24-page print edition will be available in February and we’re planning to have Issue #2 out in digital then as well. Since we’re new to producing comics, we’re using the QM series as a point man of sorts in order to avoid making any serious mistakes with Alt★Hero production. But no worries, we are still on track to have three of the first A★H digital editions out to the backers in February.

We also have a new line of Arkhaven t-shirts available at Crypto.Fashion, including both first official Alt★Hero Captain Europa t-shirt and the first official Alt★Hero Rebel t-shirt. Posters and more will be available there soon.

Coincidence or The Storm?

Or perhaps a little of both? Chaos at JFK airport:

Thousands of passengers are stranded at John F Kennedy airport following more than 6,000 flight cancellations or delays stemming from the ‘bomb cyclone’ that rocked the Northeast on Thursday.

The airport had closed on Thursday afternoon due to the storm and was reopened on Friday morning.

But the reopening has been compounded by further disasters – such as a plane needing to turn back for an emergency landing after a false alarm and a collision on the tarmac.

Passenger Lily Crawford told Pix 11: ‘People are sleeping on the ground, people are sitting on the ground. People have taken over wheelchairs. There are no outlets, people are running out of power on their phone.’

She added: ‘It’s complete chaos.’

It’s easy to get impatient. But don’t. These things play out over time; Rome wasn’t corrupted in a day and she won’t be cleaned up in a day either.

Never trust a moderate

They aren’t on your side and the Arab logic of “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” does not apply to them, because they are not truly the enemy of the Left. They are the Left’s lapdogs and they absolutely love to signal their virtue by attacking anyone seen by others as being “on their side.”

I wish I could say it was surprising. Ever since I created Alt★Hero, people were telling me that I should get in touch with the Diversity & Comics guy, that he was “really good on SJWs” and so forth. I was dubious but I followed him on Twitter and sent him an email about the Freestartr campaign, and it soon became evident that he was as useless as Mitch McConnell. Sure enough, he eventually revealed his true moderate colors.

Ethan Van Scriver
Some Alt Right individuals are condemning me for helping to create so many “diverse” characters while also seeming to be against SJW comics. Well, dudes, quiet down. I believe in creating representative characters. They simply need to be good. Mine are. So Pbbbbblt!

Seth Englehardt
I remember arguing against one of those. Dude thought that the Alt-Hero Kickstarter was precisely what I wanted from comics. No, we don’t want political propaganda from ANY side.

Ethan Van Scriver
Alt Hero is a mess. Dude raised so much money from people wanting less Far Left Wing politics in comics and he wants to spend it to create Far Right Wing comics? How about just good comics?? Why does everything have to be aggressively agitating?

Diversity & Comics
ALT*HERO is RE*TARDED

They’re such quality critics, they don’t even need to wait for anything to be released in order to criticize it. And to think people wonder why I simply ignore everything these type of people advise. (Before you say something patently absurd, please understand that people often email things to me. I’ve never even heard of the other two guys.)

As for the “representative characters” argument, that’s one of the proto-SJW arguments. It’s so old that I remember it being used by early SJWs to justify statistically improbable appearances by minorities in college yearbooks back in the 1990s. The best example of this was when the University of Wisconsin-Madison actually photoshopped a black student into a photograph used in their application materials back in 2000; they wanted an image that would be “representative.”

But speaking of comics, we will have not one, not two, but THREE related announcements later today. Which is to say, if you are a Castalia House Book Club member, check your email… but don’t discuss it here.

Wait, the sword cuts BOTH ways?

The Hollywood Left belatedly realizes that there are no conservatives in Hollywood to be affected by the campaign against sexual harassment.

When Hollywood’s most prestigious organization, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) — the group of nearly 7,000 actors, directors and other industry types who dole out the Oscars — expelled Harvey Weinstein on Oct. 14, audiences applauded. But by acting so swiftly, a mere nine days after the New York Times first reported allegations of sexual assault against the movie producer, the outfit now finds itself facing a dilemma.

Put simply: What to do with the rest of them?

“Harvey opened the floodgates,” said one male Academy member. “Now the Academy’s drowning in a tide of s—t. They don’t know what hit them.”

What hit, of course, were more alleged horror stories about so many other members: Kevin Spacey assaulting multiple young men, Dustin Hoffman sticking his hands in women’s pants, director Brett Ratner forcing himself on actresses. Ben Affleck seen on video groping a female host on “Total Request Live.” Screenwriter James Toback accused of sexual misdeeds by nearly 40 women. (As of this past Tuesday, the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office said it is considering criminal charges in five cases against Toback. He, Spacey, Hoffman and Ratner, deny the claims against them.)

“[We] can’t regret [kicking out Harvey] because [we] didn’t really have a choice,” said one male member of AMPAS’ board of governors. “Some members were quite vehement. But [we] didn’t have time to really weigh out the repercussions.”

The emergency meeting to deal with Weinstein was conducted by the 54-member board of governors — which includes Steven Spielberg, Tom Hanks, Whoopi Goldberg and Laura Dern — after it received a Change.org petition with 100,000 signatures calling for his ouster.

“But they didn’t give themselves time to plot out how to deal with this going forward,” said one prominent female AMPAS member. “Kathleen Kennedy [producer of the ‘Star Wars’ series] and some other female governors panicked and felt compelled to act. They thought [Weinstein] could hurt AMPAS’ cred. Some of them did admit this was a slippery slope. But I don’t think they imagined how slippery. It’s definitely caused some problems and fights among the board members.”

I give it about six months before the media declares that anyone who cares about sexual harassment, rape, and child abuse in Hollywood is a) alt-right, b) sexist, c) homophobic and d) anti-semitic. We’ve already seen from Cat Rambo, the SFWA, and Worldcon that SJWs will tolerate even the most vicious sex criminals rather than accept the imposition of any moral standards on the deviants in their midst.

Glenn Reynolds makes a salient point: Remember, they’re not making a big deal about sexual assault in Hollywood because they found out about it. They’re making a big deal because you found out about it.

They all knew. They didn’t care until they realized the public was onto them.

A Super Bowl theory

Whiskey1Zulu has a theory:

Here is my theory about the superbowl: Since at least 2005 the NFL looks for the best storyline to finish the season, and maybe back to 2001, where after 9/11 Patriots = USA = winners. In 2005 the owner of the Steelers was in failing health and the superbowl was thrown to them so they could have the most rings before he passed away.

Patriots will win over the Vikings. Vikings make it because they will be the first home team to ever make it to the superbowl, with the side benefits that they are the best team in the NFC and they are the best franchise to never have won the game.  Patriots will win because if they don’t there will not be a dynasty for the 2010s, the Patriots would be the first double dynasty, and pundits can tout Brady & Belichick as the greatest of all time forever, continuing to gloss over the constant favorable calls, known cheating, and allegations.

This combination provides the best possible storyline going into the final game and would get more people to watch because of those factors, attempting to redeem the season in the eyes of people who are already sneaking back to the TV for better quality football and forgetting about the protests and various other reasons football has been declining.

I have to admit, going into the season, I had a feeling that if the Vikings finally made it back to the Super Bowl with such a questionable team, it would tend to confirm the Original Cyberpunk’s theory that the entire NFL season is scripted.

And his logic is compelling, especially with the media suddenly – out of nowhere – banging the drum for the end of the Patriots era. That being said, I think LAST YEAR was supposed to be the last hurrah for them, which may be setting the stage for them to suddenly lose all of the mysterious bounces that have consistently gone their way over the last decade and more.

Personally, I don’t think there is formal scripting so much as a little gentle manipulation at the edges, particularly in playoff games that start to look like blowouts. For example, I don’t think some of the questionable calls that went the Titans’ way when they were on the verge of being put away were meant to help them win, but merely to keep them in the game.

For example, as a longtime spectator, I knew that the Titans were going to get the important calls once they were down 14-0 and looking hapless on national TV. Sure enough, Mariota’s fumble on the big hit by Johnson was blown dead due to nonexistent “forward progress”, which if is to be regarded as a precedent going forward, will preclude virtually all sack-related fumbles in the future. My theory is that Jeff Triplett isn’t actually the terrible, clueless referee he appears to be, but serves as the NFL’s Tim Donaghy, a hit man in stripes working for the Commissioner.

If nothing else, that would explain why Triplett still not only has a job, but is assigned to work playoff games.

Defense doesn’t win

Not when it comes to the media. The God-Emperor needs to remember this and go back on the attack:

President Trump defended his mental health again at a press conference on Saturday, saying his Ivy League education, television fame and 2016 election win are proof he is more than competent to run the country.

Responding to claims in Michael Wolff’s new book Fire and Fury that White House insiders worry he is suffering mental decline, the president fired back and said he was never interviewed for it – hours after declaring himself a ‘very stable genius’ on Twitter.

‘It’s a disgrace that he can do something like this,’ said Trump said of Wolff, who he called a ‘fraud’ as he attacked the libel laws in the United States at a Camp David press conference attended by GOP leaders.

‘Libel laws are very weak in this country. If they were stronger, hopefully, you would not have something like that happen,’ said Trump who had defended his intelligence just moments before. 

‘Only because I went to the best colleges, I was an excellent student, came out and made billions and billions of dollars and became one of the top business people, went to television and was a tremendous success, as I am sure you all know and ran for president first time and won.’

‘And then this guy who doesn’t know me, doesn’t know me at all. Who said he interviewed me for three hours in the White House, it didn’t exist, it’s in his imagination.’

‘He was never in the Oval Office,’ said the president who blamed ‘Sloppy’ Steve Bannon for bringing him into the White House.

Trump then dubbed the biography ‘a work of fiction’.

Earlier on Saturday, Wolff, who is a contributor to the Hollywood Reporter, gave that publication a follow up interview on Saturday in which he said he knew Trump was apoplectic with rage over the book.

‘I hear that the president is very angry, or, let me be precise: I hear that he is truly bouncing off the walls,’ said Wolff to the magazine.

The journalist’s book – ‘Fire and Fury’ has already shot to the top of the New York Times bestseller’s list and portrays Trump as an imbecile who never believed he would win the 2016 election. The book also severely questions the president’s ability to carry out his job and casts aspersions on his mental acuity amid suggestions from White House sources he might be losing his mind.

This is a classic gamma attack on an alpha. The gamma doesn’t have any actual power, so he lies about the alpha, thereby angering the alpha, and provoking him into a response that the gamma then smugly claims to be a victory. And you know this guy Wolff is a total gamma by the way he asserts that no one in the Trump White House reads books because they hadn’t heard of him. I read, edit, and write books and I’d never heard of him either. That’s a phenomenal example of gamma posturing combined with self-serving gamma logic.

The problem that Trump has here is that it doesn’t matter how intelligent and mentally stable you actually are, or how accomplished you are, you’re never going to look either smart or mentally stable by stating the obvious. It always comes off as a angry, bewildered, overmatched unfrozen caveman claiming “me am too smart!”

It’s considerably more effective to call out the gamma directly, openly mock him, and engage in direct conflict with him by utilizing objective measures. Trump should have a) compared his SAT scores with the journalist’s own scores while b) having the Secret Service dig up Wolff’s history of mental health issues and calling them into question. The chances are very high that Wolff, who is a known fabricator, has been on some sort of medication for depression for years and is doing little more than projecting his own mental instability onto the God-Emperor.

Gammas always, always, always rely upon nebulous insinuation and provocation, and they always, always, always retreat from any form of conflict that can be objectively measured by outsiders. For example, this is why the site traffic comparison is so damaging to Scalzi; there is simply no amount of dancing, twisting, redefining, or obfuscation that can permit him to credibly claim victory somehow which his gamma nature psychologically requires.

This also demonstrates why a knowledge of socio-sexuality is crucial in understanding how to appropriately respond to attacks. Wolff is absolutely delighted with being angrily denounced in general terms. That, to the gamma, is exactly what victory over an alpha looks like.

We know Trump isn’t a sigma because he didn’t simply smile and publicly ignore the book while having both Wolff and his publisher audited by the IRS and investigated by the DEA.

Banning CNN

This is a winning strategy
Life Time has scrubbed all-news cable channels from the screens at its fitness centers, saying a growing number of customers think they don’t fit a healthy lifestyle.

The Chanhassen-based company this week dropped CNN, Fox News, MSNBC and CNBC from TVs in front of various workout machines.

While the screens were in view of all in fitness areas, audio could only be heard through earphones.

With a few exceptions, TV screens built into treadmills and other cardio machines also “currently do not have the ability to display these channels,” Life Time spokeswoman Natalie Bushaw said Thursday. However, a second phase in this viewing shift, to be completed by the end of February, will have all stations available, Bushaw added.

USA, A&E, Discovery, HGTV, the local over-the-air stations and ESPN are all that remain on the visual menu of distractions while sweating off the caloric consequences of the holidays.

Make California Mexico Again

Michael Walsh asserts that California lawmakers are moving towards seceding from the Union:

California Democrats—as radical a group of anti-Americans as you will find in this country, whether legal or “undocumented”—have again fired on Fort Sumter. And once again (don’t kid yourselves), the goal is de facto and, later, de jure, secession from the United States of America, as part of the Aztlan-inspired Reconquista of what Hispanic radicals consider lost territory.

Never mind that California has been a state since 1850, and fought on the Union side in the Civil War. Never mind that California was settled by hard-working New Englanders and Midwesterners, who transformed it from a wilderness into the most prosperous and, later, largest, state in the Union. Never mind that, since the early 20th century, California has been the pot of gold at the end of the American rainbow, where both winners and losers went to seek their fortunes. The Mexicans, who failed to settle the territory properly in the first place, now want it back.

California should be encouraged to secede, and the rest of the USA should deport all of those who sympathize with the California Democrats to live under a regime more to their ideological liking. The irony of Walsh’s remind that California “was settled by hard-working New Englanders and Midwesterners” is his refusal to acknowledge that it has been subsequently settled by Mexicans and dreamchasers seeking Silicon Valley fortune and Hollywood fame from around the USA.

Walsh also ignores that the territory was settled long before those “hard-working New Englanders and Midwesterners” arrived and ruined the place. The fact that he doesn’t regard those Indian and Mexican settlements as “proper” is irrelevant; if you’re going to assert the right of conquest to a territory, then you have to surrender that territory when it is subsequently invaded and conquered.

Immigration is invasion. It always has been. And if you’re dumb enough to believe otherwise, well, don’t cry when you lose your territory and your ability to rule yourself, because it is absolutely and inevitably going to happen. And, to be blunt, you deserve to lose it, because you refused to defend it. America is endangered and the USA is in its death throes because Americans were stupid enough to swallow their own bullshit when it was fed to them in a poisoned variant. The astonishing idiocy of Americans, who believed that invading foreigners would genuinely sacrifice the interests of themselves, their families, and their peoples in order to become imitation Americans will be marveled at by future historians. It may well prove to be the single stupidest, most self-destructive act by a powerful nation since Moctezuma allowed himself to be captured by Cortes as “a diplomatic gesture”.

Meanwhile, both Israel and Pakistan are proving their ability to do what is supposedly impossible for the Greatest Nation on Earth.

On Wednesday, the Pakistani government ordered 1.4 million Afghan refugees to leave the country in 30 days.

If the God-Emperor is going to save the Union and Make America Great Again, he is going to have to order the same for all post-1965 immigrants and their posterity. Anything short of that will prove insufficient and will most likely lead to war and the breakup of the USA within 15 years.