When Failure is Inevitable

Booster Patrol’s latest recording, THA RANGZ OF POWER, is an epic lesson on why one would do well to avoid watching Amazon’s The Rings of Power. The Dark Herald further explains:

Some things get a little better when you think about them for a little bit.

This ain’t one of them.

Whenever you are surveying the smoldering wreckage of a horrifying man-made disaster, the same questions are always asked. How was this allowed to happen? Wasn’t it someone’s job to prevent this? Was it a deliberate act of sabotage? How is the richest man in the world this fucking stupid?

These are all valid, simple questions with complicated answers. Which I shall endeavor to answer for you…

The secret to the Bad Reboot school’s success is a combination of an established reputation for success, superb salesmanship (I have to give them that), and a mastery of studio politics as well as fashionable politics in general. Additionally, Bad Reboot skillfully manages its relations with the press. Finally, the disciples of Abrams rigidly follow their business model and always get out before the burning building collapses on top of them. If they were trying to make anything good, I could admire the professionalism.

The fundamental problem is that they don’t know how to make anything good. It’s like cotton candy, it looks big and smells great but once you take a bite the only thing you have in your mouth is empty sugary grit. If you are only trying to grind out pablum like summer tentpoles then that is good enough. Honestly, most fandoms really do only want that, just consume product and get excited for the next project.

Problem.

Tolkien fans aren’t remotely like that. The magnitude of this disaster would have been manageable if they had just invented their own IP that kind of looked like Tolkien. But as it is, they put The Lord of the Rings label on this, so that was the standard they would have to meet.

Ha! Ha! Ha! (gasp…wheez…gasp) Ha! Ha! Ha! (wipes eyes)

Expecting Bad Reboot alumni J.D. Payne and Patrick McKay to meet that standard is like expecting Ariana Grande to win the Noble Prize for Physics. Theoretically possible… But not likely.

Tolkien fans have been arguing over the same five books for better than half a century. The body of scholarly work based on it is gigantic. It is the entire bedrock of modern fantasy. Every fantasy writer has to consciously adopt or reject the Lord of the Rings, but you can’t possibly ignore it. There are frequent and violent arguments over what exactly the Valar were. What was the nature of Tom Bombadil? How much of the legendarium was adopted from Celtic myth? This was not the kind of fandom that you can use as a base for a popcorn burner. And there was no way in hell a couple of graduates from the Bad Reboot school of non-writing were going to be able to fake their way through a five-year series. This project was doomed from its inception.

There were several people at Amazon whose jobs it was to prevent something this bad from happening. As near as I can tell, all of them were circumvented. There is no way in hell these scripts looked good.

This may be the best fan comment that has surfaced yet:

I liked the bit where Galadriel said “I’m gonna fight Sauron alone! and then went home instead. And then she said “I’m never going to give up fighting Sauron!” but then decided to go on holiday. But just before she got on holiday she decided to drown herself instead because her brother said something sad to her when she was a child.

DISCUSS ON SG

The Globalists Have Lost Control

And they know it, as demonstrated by a review of Klaus Schwab’s book, The Great Reset:

The Great Reset is not a book that begins with a fully-formed argument, which it seeks to articulate through successive proofs. Nor is it a book that finds its purpose along the way. It is of that still more miserable variety, that is always on the verge of discovering what it means to say, but can never quite get there. I have a vision of Schwab in his study, typing furiously with extended index fingers like a bicephalic chicken, marshalling all his meagre powers to reconstruct the very unexpected pandemic in which he found himself, such that it might better resemble the kind of global ESG stakeholder capitalism woo crisis that Schwab would really prefer to pronounce upon. “We must get back to my pet themes” is what Schwab is trying to tell us in The Great Reset. It is above all a childish book…

An interesting point is how much pessimism Schwab harbours about the future prospects of globalisation. He writes that “hyperglobalization” (whatever that is) “has lost all its political and social capital and defending it is no longer politically tenable” (p. 112f.), and that even normal globalisation is in decline. Thus politicians must strive “to manage” its “retreat” by making it “more inclusive and equitable,” as well as “sustainable, both socially and environmentally” (p. 112). These are curious admissions, and if you take them at face value, you’d begin to think that the Davos set really do feel under threat, especially from the left, and no small part of their political programme represents some kind of confused effort to appease imagined opponents.

Schwab writes that the pandemic happened because of “a vacuum in global governance” and because “international cooperation was non-existent or limited” (p. 115). He reveals a real childish yearning for “global governance” (p. 118), lest we end up “in a world in which nobody is in charge” (p. 114). The undercurrent of fear returns, and the pandemic recedes from view as a mere example of the kinds of disasters that will befall us if the globalist institutions fail:

There is no time to waste. If we do not improve the functioning and legitimacy of our global institutions, the world will soon become unmanageable and very dangerous. There cannot be a lasting recovery without a global strategic framework of governance… The more nationalism and isolationism pervade the global polity, the greater the chance that global governance loses its relevance. (p. 113)

Kissinger, being rather smarter than Schwab, recognized the historical trend years ago. But the vacuity of Schwab and his anti-intellectual cohorts should not be terrifying. Because it’s now manifestly obvious that one has to be more than a little vacuous in order to cling to the retarded idea that centralization and globalization is going to make anything better for the human race.

The globalists have nothing going for them except inertia, credit money, and influence. And history clearly demonstrates that such things will not be sufficient for them to withstand the rising power, both material and intellectual, of the nations.

DISCUSS ON SG

Better Buckle Up

We’ve been warned, repeatedly. Now even the Russians are warning us.

The world is about to experience major turbulence as a result of illogical moves by Western nations, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has said.

“Most likely, a huge global storm is starting,” Peskov warned in an interview with Tass on Monday.

“In many ways, there are objective reasons for that, but there are also subjective reasons for this beginning storm, which are linked to absolutely illogical and often absurd decisions and actions of the authorities in the US, Europe, the EU and individual European countries,” he said.

The sanctions imposed by the US, the EU and some other nations on Russia over its military operation in Ukraine have backfired causing a spike in energy prices and record inflation across the West.

While the rise in electricity prices is still largely speculative, they will be economically catastrophic even if they are only as bad as the politicians are openly discussing in the media. Behind doors, the situation may be considerably worse; whereas price rises of 20 to 40 percent have already been announced, the real range of future contracts is from 10x to 16x.

This is far more than the vast majority of small businesses can afford, which means that many of them are not going to survive the winter. If Britain is any guide, more than a few will not survive the autumn. And the Russians are not about to let the globalist governments of the Were-West off the hook either.

Russia’s gas supplies to Europe via the Nord Stream 1 pipeline will not resume in full until the “collective west” lifts sanctions against Moscow over its invasion of Ukraine, the Kremlin has said.

DISCUSS ON SG

The Inevitable End of Empire

The English have been displaced in the very capital from which the Empire on which the Sun never set was ruled.

ITEM: Liz Truss is preparing to appoint the first cabinet in history in which none of the great offices of state will be held by a white man. After weeks of preparation while enjoying commanding poll leads, Truss is now close to finalising her top team.

ITEM: Indians – led by those who have lived in the UK for generations, NRIs, investors living elsewhere, students and families traveling to the UK for education – are the largest group of landowners in London, followed by the English and Pakistanis.

How, one wonders, are they “Indians” if they have been living in the UK for generations? Are they not simply English, as English as any Anglo-Saxon whose ancestors have been? Even when they simply relate the facts, the globalists expose their previous lies.

It always amuses me when the governments wax on about the importance of their citizens abroad, while simultaneously insisting that the foreigners resident in their country are every bit as native as the natives who are living elsewhere. It’s not merely nonsensical, it’s intrinsically oxymoronic.

A man cannot choose two masters. And empires fall because the colonized eventually become the rulers.

The USA succeeded England as the seat of the Empire That Never Ends. And it is following in England’s path; it is destined to be ruled by women and foreigners before the final collapse.

DISCUSS ON SG

The Hubris of Morgoth

The review for which you’ve all been waiting. The Dark Herald reviews The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power for Arkhaven.

You would have to have had the hubris of Morgoth himself to take on this project.

As a writer, I would have been terrified of it. If the producers had come to me to finish the Unfinished Tales by Tolkien plus some original pastiche based on the Appendixes, I would have told them. “Look, I’ll require two years prep time before I write word one. I’ll need to completely immerse myself in Tolkien’s work to the exclusion of all else. Then I have to spend a lot of time with Tom Shippey and other scholars, plus a Catholic priest with three doctorates who is really into JRR’s work. And at the end of the day, it still won’t be Tolkien, just so you know.”

Who would take this on? Bad Reboot that’s who.

The inarticulate slaughterer of every franchise where they press diseased foot is their bread and butter. Their mode of operation is now predictably obvious. Being completely incapable of creativity themselves, they select anything at all that might have an audience, invade and metastasize, then give it a Bad Reboot treatment. This consists of a Feminist Heroine’s Journey combined with a bunch of mystery boxes to lure foolish audiences along. Be sure to break the bank on flashy effects scenes.

I spent some time in sales, so I can see what Jar Jar Abrams’s school of non-writing is. It is sales technique disguised as writing. That’s it. That is all that the Abrams Mystery Box school really is. It’s just a hook with nothing attached to the hook but the next hook. It’s just one long sales pitch trying to keep you watching despite the fact that there is in fact nothing to watch.

Let me assure you now, there is nothing to watch here.

There is, however, quite a bit to read. And you should read the whole thing. After which, you should congratulate yourself for not adding to the “record numbers” that Amazon claims to be achieving.

So anyway, we get to see Commander Galadriel the Warrior Princess take up her brother’s quest to find Sauron. Like every feminist heroine, her primary obstacle is disbelief. Her MEN don’t believe in her quest to find Sauron. This is fundamentally stupid because it’s based on the belief that he died of old age which is kind of hard for an immortal to do.

So, they go to some Ice Fortress of ice, (Geode makes a guest appearance) and she kills an ice troll single-handedly, (second step of the Feminist Heroine’s Journey is now in the bag). She find Sauron’s mark thus proving Galadriel was right all along, but her men quit on her anyway. So, she is forced to turn back and report to Gil-Gilad.

Let me be clear about this, in a really bad show, Karen-Galadriel is the worst thing in it. Morfydd Clark is horrendously miscast. I’ve seen her act but only in Little Wounded Bird roles.

We meet Neil Patrick Harris Elrond. It’s an absolutely cringe scene as they declare their platonic love for each other. In the Legendarium, he’s her son-in-law. Here, he’s obviously gay. Elrond attempts to mansplain things to Galadriel who shoots him down as she’s supposed to in the Feminist Heroine’s Journey. She then gets some leaf crown as an award from Gil-Gilad. He then declares her recon team the greatest heroes in all of elf-kind so they get the super big prize. A one-way ticket back to Valinor.

Oh. What. The. Fuck?

Okay, after the War of Wrath all the elves had the option of going back to Valinor… EXCEPT GALADRIEL! If you know anything at all about Valinor then you know she can’t go there.

Galadriel was specifically prohibited from returning by the gods of Middle Earth themselves.

That door was completely closed to her until she refused the offer of the One Ring by Frodo. Only then was she allowed to “…diminish. And go into the west. And remain Galadriel.”

Just to state this one more time. Galadriel could not fucking go to *Valinor.

All of this nonsense has inspired me to set a goal of finishing and releasing the complete A SEA OF SKULLS in electronic form before the end of the year, with the print edition to follow once a few rounds of typos have been identified and corrected. This is doable; just last night I finished Theuderic’s second-to-last chapter.

DISCUSS ON SG

Dude, Take the Damn L

Gammas simply never know when to stop defending themselves and admit that they were wrong, even when it is obvious to everyone. One of the reasons it is wise to develop the ability to admit error is because refusing to take the loss, to learn from it, and then move on tends to inspire people to mock all of one’s subsequent attempts to retroactively reframe the situation and redefine yourself as the winner.

This is the actual Dilbert cartoon. So very funny, is it not? After all, what is more amusing than a butthurt gamma setting up strawmen in order show how smart he is by knocking them down?

The cartoon below is not the original Dilbert cartoon, it is a parody of it. I leave it to you, gentle reader, to decide which one is funnier. And which is The Best Thing That Ever Happened.

DEFINITELY NOT DILBERT: A PARODY

DISCUSS ON SG

Walk it Back, Walk it Back!

Saner minds in the Fake Biden administration are attempting to reprogram the puppet.

Donald Trump and the MAGA Republicans represent an extremism that threatens the very foundations of our Republic.

Joe Biden, 2 September 2022

C’mon, look guys, I don’t consider any Trump supporter a threat to the country.

Joe Biden, 3 September 2022

DISCUSS ON SG