Category: Uncategorized

Mailvox: If this is failure

I suspect success might go to my head.

I actually put off reading the Throne of Bones series because I figured your fiction couldn’t possibly be any good. Why? Well, nobody can do everything well! You’re a clear political writer and superb thinker, you even had a band at one point. You’re an immensely creative organizer, you started your own publishing house… “What are the odds for this guy also being a good epic fantasy writer?” I asked myself. Also, the title, Throne of Bones kind of put me off. I thought you were referencing G.R.R. Martin. Well, I finally read it, and was delighted. Sea and Summa followed in due course. Your writing has the key characteristics that I value in excellent fantasy: resonance and novelty. There is a sense of familiar mythic themes, but rendered in a new and surprising way. Elves and orcs and dwarves and Romans! Oh my!

I noticed a mention that you will come out with a revised book (Sea?) soon. I’m wondering, why revise? Why not write another one? (Please?) Will the revision be an expansion where I can just start reading the new stuff, or will I need to read the whole thing again to find the additions? (Not that this would be a dreadful fate!)

Now that F&SF has become a loathsome wasteland of Social Justice and Abused Pronouns, we need more writing like this.

Actually, it’s not a revision, but an extended edition. By Amazon’s reckoning, A Sea of Skulls will go from 430 pages to 924 pages. I don’t quite see how that is even possible, since by my count, it will go from 165,000 words to 297,500. None of the existing story will be excised or even modified; I have no reason to change anything, and besides, I don’t have the time.

And don’t forget, The Last Witchking & Other Stories is now available in audiobook. I waited years to put any of this out in audio because I was waiting for the right narrator, and Jeremy Daw is just that.

An excerpt from “The Last Witchking”.

In the eyes of the villagers of Pretigny, Speer Gnasor was a boy not terribly unlike any other. He was taller than the other boys his age, but someone has to be the tallest in every village, and no one ever appeared to think it odd that at nearly thirteen years of age, the top of his father’s head barely cleared his shoulder. Speer was quick-witted but not remarkably so, although he was both envied and mocked by the other boys for his ability to read.

He participated in their games, albeit in a desultory manner. He was not unpopular, and if he had exerted himself even a little, he might well have made himself a leader of one of the little packs that divided the children of the town on lines roughly conforming with their fathers’ occupations.

Per Gnasor, his father, raised bees and made candles, and his mother raised the small flock of geese and chickens that provided him with his daily egg, and on feast days, the fowl for their little family. His two passions were fishing and books, and it was said that he had read every one of the twenty-eight books in the village at least twice.

The Gnasors themselves were said to possess seven books. By Pretigny standards, this amounted to a family library of almost mythic proportions. He dutifully attended the small church of the Immaculate twice each week, and if he ate the wafer and drank the wine given to him by the priest with little thought for what it represented, in this he was no different than any other boy in the village.

He was not an unhappy lad, and he was entirely content with his life as he found it. He did not, like some of his youthful acquaintances, chafe at the smallness of their familiar surroundings or dream of one day seeking his fortune in what, from the perspective of Pretigny, was considered to be the great city of Niederholen. Even the rumors of the riches of distant Stalchwil on the banks of the Ghlêne more than a ten-day journey away held little fascination for him. He learned to tend his father’s bees, to twist wicks and shape wax, and slowly, but surely, he even began to take notice of the butcher’s daughter. She was a tall, slender girl with a wide mouth and pale blue eyes who was nearly of a height and an age with him.

Left to his own devices, allowed to pursue his homely dreams, it was likely that Speer Gnasor would have married the butcher’s daughter, learned the butcher’s trade, and eventually become a fine, upstanding pillar of the local church and community.

But on his thirteenth birthday, everything he knew about himself and the world around him was forever transformed by a letter from his father.

After a dinner that featured rare treats such as Valoyan sausages and the sweet cheese called Niederholt, Per Gnasor sent him into the forest armed with nothing more than his warmest coat and a small shovel and told him to unearth his birthday present one hundred paces north of his favorite tree.
Both excited and confused, he lost little time in finding the peculiar oak with a thick lower branch that twisted over its leftmost neighbor, and paced off the distance. He had to dig a hole that was deeper than his knees before he struck something hard. With a little more work he saw it was a small wooden chest. His heart beating faster, he extricated it from the ground and opened it.

The first thing he saw was a letter written in an unfamiliar hand. Despite the shadows cast by the looming trees, there was just enough light breaking through the leaves to permit him to read it.

To my son and my heir,

You are not what you think you are. You are more, so much more. Kings and princes would tremble and scour the earth in search of you were they to hear even a rumor of your existence. It was to save you from their wrath that your mother sacrificed herself. It was to protect you from their vengeance that you were hidden away even from yourself. The man and woman you believe to be your parents are my true and loyal servants, and they have raised you at my command, even as they release you now to your destiny as they have been instructed.

You will be told many lies about your true kind, we whom the vulgar and the frightened wrongly named witchkings. But this is nothing more than fear. It is the shameless perversion of history by the vicious little minds of its victors.

As you will learn, we Wahrkönigen were simply dedicated to the truth and only the truth, regardless of its consequences and heedless of its costs. And what was this fearful truth, this dark god that struck such terror into the hearts of Men and Elves, Orcs, and Dwarves? Only this: There is no Good and there is no Evil. There is only what Is. Nothing more. Have the courage to grasp this fearful truth, and you shall be a worthy successor to the long line of kings before you.

I have prepared the means that you will require to learn both the Lesser and the Greater Arts. Master them well. An arduous task lies before you, but I know you will succeed, for you are my son and you will surpass me. And in the place that has been prepared for you, you will also find the answers to your inevitable questions, including your true lineage.

You are a phoenix raised by sparrows, my son. Now it is time for you to fly. When you have grown into your strength and become worthy of your heritage, you will set the world on fire.

These are the three charges that I lay upon you, my son. Instruct the Elves. Break them of their ancient pride and shatter the remnants of their kingdoms. Humble the Northmen. They must pay a tithe of blood for their treachery. Harry them throughout their islands and drive them into the sea. Preserve the Blood. You must not be the last of your line. Father many children, on many women, but instruct only the most worthy in the Wahrkunst. The Blood will tell.

You are young and you are alone in a harsh and unforgiving world, but never doubt that you were loved as few sons have ever been loved. For your mother and your father so loved you that they died for you, not once, but twice. We allowed ourselves to perish and we erased ourselves from the minds of mortals, so that you might live.

Your enemies, and they are many, will not find you until you are ready to be found. Be brave, my son, be strong, and never permit yourself fear. For you are a true Wahrkönig, and in your veins flows the pure blood of the greatest and most powerful sorcerers the world has ever known. Embrace your greatness, my son, embrace the Blood, embrace the challenges I have set before you, and one day, you will teach the world that you are harsher and more unforgiving than it could ever dare to be.

Avenge me, my son. Avenge your loving mother. Avenge your noble race,

Mauragh, son of Thauragh
King of Thauron, Nordandir, and the Wolf Isles

The trend is bigger than the man

As I’ve observed, pointed out, and argued repeatedly, the trends are much, much bigger than individual men or even individual movements:

He must have known what was coming. Senator Bob Corker of Tennessee, a pillar of the cowardly GOP Establishment, announced he would not be running for re-election on Tuesday [Republican Sen. Corker announces he won’t seek re-election, by Richard Lardner and Erik Schelzig, Associated Press, September 26, 2017]. Corker’s departure is widely being interpreted as a sign of the Establishment’s inability to control the GOP base, as the election of President Trump, the rise of nationalism and the emergence of alternative media outlets (such as Breitbart and VDARE.com) make it harder for cuckservatives to Republican primary voters in line [Sen. Bob Corker’s retirement is notable for when it’s happening, by Amber Phillips, Washington Post, September 26, 2017]

And now, we have the ultimate proof in Alabama. Judge Roy Moore, one of the most persistent targets of the Southern Poverty Law Center, is now the Republican nominee for the Senate. And he defeated incumbent Senator Luther Strange despite Strange being endorsed by President Donald J. Trump himself…. Even before Trump’s inauguration, when there were troubling signs the new President was surrounding himself with the Republican Establishment, it was clear that the President’s supporters would need to rise against Trump in his own name. The victory of Roy Moore is the best example so far of how this insurgency will play out.

And most importantly, it shows how the populist and nationalist movement is larger than Trump himself.

Trump’s advisors seem to know this. In the Fox News interview referenced above, Dr. Gorka claimed “no one voted for Trump, we voted for his agenda.” And during his speech in support of Moore, Bannon referenced Jeff Sessions, not Trump, as the “spiritual father of the populist and nationalist movement.”

But does Trump himself know this? Already, the Main Stream Media is trying to present this as a devastating defeat for the president personally. The New York Times kvetched about Moore’s social views and sneered that his victory “demonstrated in stark terms the limits of Mr. Trump’s clout” [Roy Moore Wins Senate G.O.P. Runoff in Alabama, by Jonathan Martin and Alexander Burns, September 26, 2017]. Jason Le Miere at Newsweek suggested Trump had suffered his first major political defeat at the ballot box and hinted his political weakness could trigger his impeachment. [How Alabama Senate Election Results Could Trigger Trump’s Impeachment, September 26, 2017]

This wildly overstates the case. Trump had hedged his bets, suggesting at one point he made a “mistake” in endorsing Strange [Trump supports Strange, but says it may be “mistake,” Washington Post, September 25, 2017]. He also said he would “campaign like hell” for Moore if Moore won [Roy Moore: ‘I can’t wait’ for Trump to ‘campaign like hell’ for me, by Sean Langille, Washington Examiner, September 25, 2017].

It’s hardly a devastating defeat for President Trump when his supposed enemies are fanatically loyal to him and his “allies” can’t wait to stab him in the back.

People get caught up in the heat of the moment. It’s easy to forget that the battles of last week, last year, and last month were, at the time, seemingly every big as important as whatever the battle du jour happens to be.

You can only ride the trends, you can’t reasonable hope to control them. This is why it is foolish and futile to attempt to brand and spin and otherwise attempt to control a trend as narrative, because that is a category error. The main reason Alt⭐️Hero is going to be successful is not due to the quality of the storylines, the artwork, or the characters, but because it is in line with the winds of the zeitgeist at a time when Marvel and DC Comics are trying to fly directly against them.

If Trump is wise, he will not only recognize that he is not bigger than the movement, but that the movement is not bigger than the trend.

#1 New Release

SJWs Always Double Down is the #1 New Release in Political Philosophy.

And it won’t actually be released until October 9th.

Meanwhile, SJWs on Twitter are shrieking in amygdala-stress about how no one will read Alt⭐️Hero, no one cares about it, how they are Laughing Out Loud about it, and how it is utterly doomed to failure. This is a rather remarkable response considering that not only has it not been released yet, but we have not even launched the Freestartr campaign for it yet or released the video for the campaign.

I promised you REEEEEEEES. Have I not delivered? Am I not kind?

A few informative examples:

Candy Corn Vampire‏ @BrendanHykes
I look forward to not even noticing this as it comes and goes.

Choz‏ @Chozraham<
I’m sure this will be a smashing success and will in no way lead to your sad humiliation.

zeverzanger‏ @zeverzanger
pfhehehehehe. Oh wait you’re serious. Let me laugh harder! BAHAHAHAHA.

Zachariah‏ @BrainshockZetav
Sounds like you desperately want a comic that panders to your scared white ass but ok lmao

Lil Uzi Vers‏ @bifIexuaI
Lmaoo what

Thibault LDS ?‏ @Thibault_LDS
AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

Q U E E R VO I D‏ @wryyyan

What I found the most interesting was the idea that anything short of an undefined “success”, which as we all know will be redefined and re-redefined as Alt⭐️Hero meets with the usual metrics of success over time, is tantamount to “sad humilation”. Think about how twisted one’s psyche has to be to make that connection, and what a crushing fear of failure one would have to have in order to think that way.

That is the heart of the SJW, which is not only terrified of failure, but is terrified that someone, somewhere, will be successful doing something of which the SJW does not approve.

Of course, SJWs have good reason to be terrified of Alt⭐️Hero. Because they know they are the true villains and the enemy in the cultural war.

On a very minor Voxiversity note, the new microphone I bought to improve the audio for the videos has already proven its value, as it fixed whatever audio problem I was having with the iPad Mini on Periscope. So if you’re a Darkstream regular, you can thank the 199 201 Voxiversity backers for that.

UPDATE: The first Alt⭐️Hero fanart has already appeared.

The rise of the real alternative

Senator-to-be Roy Moore is what the real alternative Right looks like. Anti-establishment, Christian, nationalist, and populist.

Firebrand jurist Roy Moore has won the Alabama Republican primary for U.S. Senate, defeating an appointed incumbent backed by President Donald Trump and allies of Sen. Mitch McConnell. In an upset likely to rock the party establishment, Moore clinched victory Tuesday over Sen. Luther Strange to win the GOP nomination for the Senate seat previously held by Attorney General Jeff Sessions. Moore will face Democrat Doug Jones in a Dec. 12 special election.

Moore is the state’s former chief justice who was twice removed from his duties for defying federal courts over same-sex marriage and the public display of the Ten Commandments. Propelled by evangelical voters, Moore consolidated support from a number of anti-establishment forces, including former White House strategist Steve Bannon.

Incumbent Sen. Luther Strange wished jurist Roy Moore well after losing the Alabama Republican primary for Senate. Strange told his supporters Tuesday night that “we wish (Moore) well going forward.”

But he quickly shifted to his own bewilderment at the race he just finished. “We’re dealing with a political environment that I’ve never had any experience with,” he said. “I’m telling you, the political seas and winds in this country right now … are very hard to navigate, very hard to understand.”

And this is why it is a mistake for the Alt Lite to fear accepting the Alt-Right label. The failed attempts of Richard Spencer, Greg Johnson, and Andrew Anglin to “brand” it as their own preferred ideology are no more significant than the attempts of the media to brand it as National Socialism.

But it doesn’t matter what it is called. You can’t kill an inevitable philosophy with guilt-by-association. The conservative movement has failed. The libertarian movement has failed. The neo-liberal world order has failed. Multiculturalism has failed. Civic nationalism has failed.

An alternative Right is the only possible alternative to the failed right-wing ideologies and philosophies of the past. The label is irrelevant, what is clear is that whatever it is is an alternative, it is Right, and it is winning.

Notice that Roy Moore has seen considerably more setbacks than the average individual. He has seen far more pressure and opposition from the Republican and media establishments, and been literally discredited and disqualified. But now he is very likely to be the next Senator from Alabama, because the Alt-Right is inevitable.

Fire your players, Art

The owners are starting to get just a little bit shaky after seeing the ratings drop another 10 percent while fans burn their gear and season tickets:

To Steelers Nation:

I want to reach out to you, the members of Steelers Nation, based on what I believe is a misperception about our players’ intentions in not taking the field for the National Anthem in Chicago. The intentions of Steelers players were to stay out of the business of making political statements by not taking the field. Unfortunately, that was interpreted as a boycott of the anthem – which was never our players’ intention.

Our players come from many different backgrounds and are united by what it means to play for the Pittsburgh Steelers. They are active in their communities and participate regularly in events designed to give back to those communities. And they appreciate the support they get from Steelers fans around the country and here at home. I also know that our players have tremendous respect for the members of our military services, including their teammate Alejandro Villanueva. There was never any desire on the part of our players to show disrespect for our service members.

Yesterday, I received an email from a Steelers fan who said tell the players to just play football. That is exactly what they wanted to do. They wanted their sole focus to be on playing the game, while also coming together as a unified team.

The main thing we can do is learn from this and strive to come together remaining unified as a football team. I believe we are capable of accomplishing this with the support of our fans. Steelers Nation is made up of the best fans in the National Football League. We appreciate your continued support of our players, coaches and staff.

Sincerely,

Art Rooney, II

 He chose… poorly. It’s rather remarkable how many owners are choosing to side with the media, the players, and the league instead of the one thing they actually need: the fans.

A trigger to 11

Don’t worry about the continued SJW convergence of Marvel and DC Comics. The Alt⭐️Hero campaign is very, very close to launch. The art is ready, the video is good to go, and all we are waiting for now is for Freestartr to add a feature that we require.

We all underestimated how bad the convergence in comics had become; we had to actually see it in order to believe it. I suspect we may be similarly underestimating the degree to which the SJWs in comics are going to be triggered by the mere existence of Alt⭐️Hero, let alone if it proves to be even remotely popular. This has the potential to make the response of the SF-SJWs to the Rabid Puppies look calm and measured by comparison.

UPDATE: Judging by the initial response of SJWs on Twitter, which is about as calm as measured as a vampire’s reaction to garlic-infused holy water, this is going to be even more triggering than I’d imagined.

UPDATE: I have been reliably informed that they are not at all triggered. Not even a little bit. No, you see, they’re all laughing. That’s a new one….

Can Star Trek be converged?

Or is that an intrinsically redundant concept? ST:D answers the question:

As for the Klingons, they’ve received the biggest redesign of the series, both physically (the design falls somewhere between the ridged foreheads of Next Generation and subsequent shows, and the rebooted race from Star Trek Into Darkness) and aesthetically, with the Klingon outfits taking on an ornate, golden style that’s different from anything seen on Trek series before. Discovery’s Klingons are also fiercely religious, seeming to worship Kahless the Unforgettable, the first Klingon ruler to unite the species, and the founder of the Klingon Empire.

The new Klingons are also incredibly devoted to the idea of Klingon culture above all else — T’Kuvma, the Klingon leader, has a rallying cry of “Remain Klingon,” and while he is (relative to the other Klingon houses) open to accepting any Klingon, even those considered to be outcasts, he loathes the Federation ideals of equality, diversity, and peace. It’s easy to draw parallels to America’s current political atmosphere, where issues of isolationism and racial supremacy are sadly rearing their ugly heads again — which the showrunners absolutely intended, according to an interview with Entertainment Weekly.

Yes, believe it or not, you can actually turn the SJW convergence up to 11, even on Star Trek. I’m genuinely surprised that they didn’t name the Klingon leader D’Drumpf. And can there be any doubt that a villain will eventually appear with fabulous hair and a name like Y’Milo?

All the media reviews are positive, which tends to suggest that the show is going to tank faster than DC Comics introducing a gay black Superman in a wheelchair.

The SJW media and the NFL

I appeared on Cernovich Media last night discussing the connection between SJWs in the media and the NFL protests.

 
If you’d like to skip ahead to my appearance, you can click here. Cernovich Media is absolutely killing it on Facebook video; clearly we’re going to have to get rolling with that for Voxiversity and Alt-Hero. Anyhow, my thesis is that it is the media that is primarily responsible for this, not the players, due to the way in which they have tirelessly advocated the cause of Colin Kaepernick’s employment for the last year.

Instead of addressing the anthem protest issue directly last year by disciplining Kaepernick, NFL thought it would go away once the ex-49er quarterback was out of the league. And they probably would have been right, were it not for the media SJWs taking up the cause of Kaepernick’s non-employment as some sort of holy crusade to atone for their having missed the grand campaign for a starting black Super Bowl-winning quarterback of the 1970s and 1980s.

And if you haven’t signed up for the Daily Meme Wars yet, you’re missing out. Don’t do that.

In remembrance

In remembrance of Jerry Eugene Pournelle

I have been asked today to say his eulogy. From the Greek, as he would tell us, meaning true words, spoken in praise of the dead. And as the eldest of his children, presumed by age to know the most about his life, that duty falls to me.

But how is it possible to write truth in praise of a master of fiction? How is it possible to eulogize a man who rose to public acclaim while I was mostly away? Away to school, away to the Army, away to university, away to build my own career?

I cannot say truth about the personality—the public figure, known far better to many of you here than to me. I can only do my best to say truth about the person; about the man. About what I know to be true about the son, the husband, the father, the grandfather—and the loyalist of friends, to those fortunate to know him as a friend.

I begin with what we all know of him: his insatiable intellectual appetite. His breadth of subject was literally encyclopedic: as a child, alone on the farm, his parents away working, he entertained himself by reading the Britannica from A to Z. That reading foreshadowed an essential, but surprisingly inobvious, core trait of his character: iron discipline. Not imposed on others, but imposed on himself. The chaos we all observed around him, immortalized in the household epithet “Chaos Manor,” was actually symptomatic: the result of him making everything—absolutely everything—secondary to being done.

He quite openly expressed this sense of discipline about his writing: writing, he often said, was work. It was not difficult: you merely sat in front of a typewriter until beads of blood popped out on your forehead. Yet he did it, time and again: dozens of novels and anthologies authored and co-authored—eight of them bestsellers. Hundreds of columns, delivered weekly, on time, over decades.

But both his joking aphorism and prodigious output belie the other disciplines that lay behind them. First, his disciplined reading. He read voraciously. He read everything, on every subject. His walls at home are literally lined with enough books to fill a small library—and those are only the ones he kept. Thousands more no doubt fill others’ shelves today, donated to book sales or simply given away. And that’s the books: the breadth of periodicals, online and in print, is staggering.

Read the rest at Chaos Manor.

I only met Jerry Pournelle once, in my early 20s, at a computer trade show, possibly Comdex. It was a brief encounter, I merely shook his hand, told him that I enjoyed his Byte column and was a big fan of his There Will Be War series. There is no chance he would have remembered it.

But he was, and is, one of my few intellectual heroes. Like Aristotle, Marcus Aurelius, Guy de Maupassant, and Umberto Eco, I encountered his works at a key nexus in my life and they left an impression on me that has lasted until this day.

Just create. Just do it.

Davis Aurini commends those who go out and create rather than sit around and complain:

Rather than trying to distribute the ideas – and handing them over to the Obsessives and Extremists who turn them into a farce – we need to own them.  We need to implement them.

We must go out there and create.

Roosh V took this theory, and put together a series of books which explained it’s application to his audience.  He wasn’t lecturing about theory – he was writing about practice.  He created something useful and marketable, a solid base which he owned.  This expanded into his forum, a community which has taken on a life of its own.  It is worth noting that the RVF exists for its own sake, not as a counter-reaction against an ideological opponent.  While feminists are frequently ridiculed on its pages, those who comprise the membership would be just as happy if there were no feminists to oppose.  RVF members don’t derive their identity from being anti-X – their identity comes from their individual accomplishments, and they frequent the forum for the sake of intellectual debate, entertainment, and networking.  Any political actions which derive from this shared identity will be as organic as the community-group that participates in local politics.

Another prominent example of the Red Pill in application is Vox Day’s various endeavours.  Of note are Castalia House and InfoGalactic.  Upon realizing that the publishing industry and Wikipedia had been taken over by far-left interest groups who eschewed objective truth and good fiction in favour of ideological nepotism, he didn’t go on a quest to ‘raise awareness’ of the problem; instead, he saw an opportunity for action.  While both of these projects are still finding their footing, by all accounts InfoGalactic is not only providing unbiased information, it’s providing it at a superior level to the equivalent articles on Wikipedia.   Castalia House, meanwhile, is free to pick up the talented authors who are being ignored by the mainstream publishers due to their race or sex.

The truth is that the SJWs are creating more opportunities for us than we can reasonably pursue. The trick is to identify the institutional weakness and hit it hard. For example, one thing I’ve learned about the comic industry is that the artists are often not paid royalties, just a flat per-page rate. So, one thing we are going to do to ensure that we eventually secure the best talent over time is, in addition to the flat fee, pay royalties for an extended period of time on our comic book sales, just as we do on our regular book sales.

You can’t start at the top, but you can come up with a plan to get there eventually. The Castalia House team goes over every print book carefully; if you compare our earliest print editions to the latest ones, you can see that we’re continually trying to improve the product. Creation is a dynamic process, and so the more you focus on improvement, the more you will gradually improve, until one day people suddenly blink and say, “Hey, you know, that’s actually rather good.”

Ever notice that no one calls Castalia House my vanity publishing house any more? I never had to say one single word to convince people otherwise. We just keep working on improving our offerings, one ebook or print edition or audiobook at a time. (I’ve always said that we’ll know that Castalia, or Infogalactic, is truly successful when the SJWs start denying that I had anything to do with it.) There is no magic plan for success and no easy path. You simply have to choose your path and walk it as tirelessly as you can.

Speaking of Castalia House, it turns out that today is a dual-release day. THE LAST WITCHKING & OTHER STORIES is now available on Amazon and Audible. Narrated by Jeremy Daw, our wonderful new narrator, it is 9 hours and 13 minutes of epic fantasy set in Selenoth. It includes “The Wardog’s Coin”, “Qalabi Dawn”, and “A Magic Broken” as well as the three stories from the ebook edition, “The Last Witchking”, “The Hoblets of Wiccam Fensboro”, and “Opera Vita Aeterna”.

The next Selenoth audiobook will be Summa Elvetica & Other Stories, which will also be narrated by Jeremy Daw.