Tag: freakshow

Men on Strike: the ultimate review

An Amazon reviewer makes the quixotic choice to “review” Dr. Helen’s important new book by discussing my idiosyncracies, mostly inaccurately:

The first chapter of this book includes a section on why video games (in conjunction with porn) are a driving force behind men making the decision to not get married (it is because they cost less money than dating). It gives a description of “pickup artist theory:” a theory of how interaction between the sexes works by breaking men up into several categories (all of which are represented with Greek letters to make it sound more scientific than it is) and then ranks those categories by the sexual desirability of each category. The highest category, Alpha, is fully described as “the male elite, the leaders of men for whom women naturally lust.” It actually made it into print that the lowest men, the Omegas, are “the losers… most never surmount the desperate need to belong caused by their social rejection. Omegas can be the most dangerous of men because the pain of their constant rejection renders the suffering of others completely meaningless in their eyes.”

You read that right. Sociopathy is just a symptom of being a loser. Get over it, Lecter!

Here’s the thing, though: that particular version of “pickup artist theory” was created by Theodore Beale, who has no accredited training of any kind in psychology, behavioral science, or any other field that would lend him any amount of credibility. His blog, Vox Popoli (where he writes both as himself and his pseudonym, Vox Day), has two characters he invented named of McRapey and McRacist. Proudly displayed on the front page is a picture of a scared anthropomorphic pink rabbit, wearing a shirt that says “Rapey McRaperson” on it. Whenever someone says that racism exists, McRacist makes a blog post about how white men have it tough. Every time someone acknowledges the glass ceiling, McRapey posts a tirade about how every woman trying to live her own life is just insecure about how tough it is to get a man to do it for them.

Theodore Beale is the man that Helen Smith has trusted to help write a book on social interaction between men and women. Theodore Beale is a man who trivializes rape for a hobby. Theodore Beale is an unapologetically racist white man who literally wrote a blog post (please do not read this if you are capable of rational thought:[…] ) on female privilege, using a department store and a credit card with no credit limit as a metaphor for the fantastic life that women have by virtue of their race and sex. He began this blog post by trivializing rape and asserting that women who “threaten not to have sex with anyone” are wrong to choose not to have sex with anyone. Women are to blame not only for their female privilege, but also for their white privilege, which Beale dismisses as a non-issue whenever it affects white men.

We are only in the first chapter of this book that a publisher somehow decided was worth printing, where it is revealed that Helen Smith’s most basic assertions about modern romance are filtered through the lens of a man who proudly and openly claims that racism and sexism are tools of oppression used mostly against whites and men. One of Helen Smith’s primary research sources on the subject of men and male psychology invokes McRapey whenever he writes about men being “oppressed,” and we are expected to take this man seriously as an intelligent advocate for the dismantling of feminism as a whole.

No, this is seriously the message conveyed by Men On Strike. We are supposed to believe that Theodore Beale is an intelligent and well-reasoned man who is arguing in favor of sexual equality. We are supposed to believe that Beale’s categorization of men, arbitrarily assigned to letters of an alphabet for a language he does not speak, is an accurate portrayal of society and social interaction. We are supposed to believe this because Helen Smith presents this information alongside nonsensical statistical evidence, such as the suggestion that roughly 24% of men are Alphas who get to choose their sexual partners from the 76% of women who refuse to go a lower rung on the social hierarchy’s ladder. The logical conclusion, Smith argues, is that the remaining 76% of men are forced to compete for the remaining 24% of women. The existence of the hierarchy is not questioned: it is taken as a given truth that an outspoken misogynist has correctly identified what women universally and instinctually find attractive in men.

Helen Smith has not just written a book that is aggressively wrong on a broad range of topics: she has literally been assisted in writing this book by a man who actually believes that American society systematically oppresses men because women have the right to not have sex with someone they don’t want to have sex with. Men On Strike is not worth reading. It is not worth considering as a source of information. It is one of the most mangled attempts at statistical analysis and critical thinking that I have ever been witness to.

It is a certainly a strange sort of notoriety that triggers this sort of rabid, mindless reaction in one’s critics.  And I wish I had invented McRapey and McRapist, but as it happens, they are real, award-winning science fiction writers and fellow members of the SFWA.

As for the legitimacy of the socio-sexual hierarchy, the reason it has been adopted by more and more people as a useful means of understanding intersexual relations is that it reflects the reality they observe on a daily basis.  Credentials are irrelevant; I find it hard to think of anyone less likely to correctly identify what women instinctually find attractive in men than a highly credentialed academic of either sex.  Also, neither intersexual relations nor the socio-sexual hierarchy can be reasonably be described as “pickup artist theory”, as it is not limited to picking up women.

Anyhow, Dr. Helen can be pleased that she has clearly hit a sore spot among the defenders of the Female Imperative with her new book, as these people only attack the individuals and ideas they believe to be dangerous to their pernicious ideologies.

The cognitive dissonance of Saint Gay

Bret Easton Ellis isn’t overly impressed with the lavender media’s insistence on whitewashing the sexually abnormal In the Reign of the Gay Magical Elves:

Was I the only gay man of a certain demo who experienced a flicker of annoyance in the way the media treated Jason Collins as some kind of baby panda who needed to be honored and praised and consoled and—yes—infantilized by his coming out on the cover of Sports Illustrated? Within the tyrannical homophobia of the sports world, that any man would come out as gay (let alone a black man) is not only an LGBT triumph but also a triumph for pranksters everywhere who thrilled to the idea that what should be considered just another neutral fact that is nobody’s business was instead a shock heard around the world, one that added another jolt of transparency to an increasingly transparent planet. It was an undeniable moment and also extremely cool. Jason Collins is the future. But the subsequent fawning over Collins simply stating he is gay still seemed to me, as another gay man, like a new kind of victimization. (George Stephanopoulos interviewed him so tenderly, it was as if he was talking to a six-year-old boy.) In another five years hopefully this won’t matter, but for now we’re trapped in the times we live in. The reign of The Gay Man as Magical Elf, who whenever he comes out appears before us as some kind of saintly E.T. whose sole purpose is to be put in the position of reminding us only about Tolerance and Our Own Prejudices and To Feel Good About Ourselves and to be a symbol instead of just being a gay dude, is—lamentably—still in media play.

The Gay Man as Magical Elf has been such a tricky part of gay self-patronization in the media that you would by now expect the chill members of the LGBT community to respond with cool indifference. The Sweet and Sexually Unthreatening and Super-Successful Gay is supposed to be destined to transform The Hets into noble gay-loving protectors—as long as the gay in question isn’t messy or sexual or difficult. The straight and gay sanctimoniousness that says everyone gay needs to be canonized when coming out still makes some of us who are already out feel like we’re on the sidelines. I’m all for coming out on one’s own terms, but heralding it as the most important news story of the week feels to me, as a gay man, well, kind of alienating. We are apart because of what we supposedly represent because of… our… boring… sexuality—oh man, do we have to go through this again? And it’s all about the upbeat press release, the kind of smiling mask assuring us everything is awesome. God help the gay man who comes out and doesn’t want to represent, who doesn’t want to teach, who doesn’t feel like part of the homogenized gay culture and rejects it. Where’s the gay dude who makes crude jokes about other gays in the media (as straight dudes do of each other constantly) or express their hopelessness in seeing Modern Family being rewarded for its depiction of gays, a show where a heterosexual plays the most simpering ka-ween on TV and Wins. Emmys. For. It?

I find the Saint Gay thing offensive myself, less because it is a societally damaging attempt to normalize the sexually abnormal, disease-ridden, and not-so-secretly self-loathing, and more because it is an insult to the intelligence of even the intellectually subnormal.

I always find the charge of homophobia from the likes of McRapey to be amusing because I’m far more comfortable around gays than most men are, and not in that fake, perma-smiling, I’m-liberal-so-I-MUST-be-tolerant, politically correct way. I worked at Dayton’s when I was fifteen. I was signed to a gay record label making electronic dance music. I’ve been accustomed to gay men making puppy dog eyes at me as long as I can remember and it doesn’t bother me in the least. Sexual attraction is a compliment and a form of flattery, after all; that’s why women constantly seek it from men towards whom they do not reciprocate it in any way.

Rabbits like McRapey are simply incapable of understanding the difference between the personal and the political, between the micro and the macro. 

It is because I have known many gay men and I know the darker aspects of their psychological profiles and lifestyle that I have such contempt for the Saint Gay propaganda. Being homosexual is hard, not due to “Minority Stress” and other people making it hard, but because reality makes it hard.  Some find it ironic that a number of those who have made It Gets Better videos subsequently killed themselves, but that’s exactly what one would expect.  Gay Pride propaganda has killed far more young homosexuals than the largely mythical gay-bashing ever has; Pierre Tremblay presented a 2000 paper at San Diego State in which he noted: “Empirical data indicates that, to
the age of 16 or 17 years, the lifetime “suicide attempt” incidence for
HOM youth has risen about six-fold, from about 5 to 30 percent from the
1950s to the 1990s.”

Repeatedly beating the young over the head with the idea that something problematic is not only okay, but good, creates a fundamental cognitive dissonance between what they believe they are supposed to believe and what they actually believe.  The Saint Gay approach is nothing more than magical thinking; I’ve exchanged a number of emails with the man I call The Gayfather, the self-proclaimed architect of the Gay is Good theme, and he readily admits that there is nothing empirical, scientific, or even philosophical about his theme.  It’s simply a postulate.  Gay is Good, ergo Gay is Healthy, ergo Gay is Moral, ergo Gay is Normal.

But calling RGB 255,255,255 black doesn’t actually change the color on your screen, no matter how many people you convince to follow your example.  Such propaganda is not impotent, but neither is it capable of reshaping reality.

Coming out as homosexual should not be condemned nor should it be celebrated.  It should be considered more like a diagnosis of diabetes; something that isn’t fatal in its own right, something that may or may not be curable, and something that won’t necessarily prevent the individual from living a reasonably happy, normal life if managed properly.  Even if one doesn’t believe in the existence of sin or its wages, one should be able to grasp that the celebration of Saint Gay has been accompanied by a body count that considerably exceeds that of the dark days of the notorious closet and question its legitimacy on that basis.

Wait, they’re the GOOD guys?

I don’t think the Obama administration was particularly keen in following the neocon cheerleading for yet another American invasion in the Middle East, this time in Syria.  But this sort of thing will pretty much eliminate any public enthusiasm for one, especially in light of the disastrous “Arab Spring” that, as I correctly predicted, led to rule by the Muslim Brotherhood rather than the much-ballyhooed secular democratic liberalization that was supposedly in the works:

The unverified clip, posted by a pro-government campaign group shows Khalid al Hamad-  who also goes by the name Abu Sakkar – the well-known founder of Homs’ Farouq Brigade – standing over the uniformed corpse in a ditch while ranting against President Bashar al Assad.

Using a knife, the man hacks open the torso and removes two organs before holding them up to the camera and declaring: ‘I swear to God we will eat your hearts and your livers, you soldiers of Bashar the dog.’

He then raises one to his mouth and takes a bite.

Of course, even if the US military doesn’t invade in order to put men like this in power and import a few hundred thousand of them as the usual consequence of a modern military invasion, the devotees of the Diversity Gospel shouldn’t despair.  They can still hope for men like this to acquire green cards and marry their daughters. Nothing says tolerance like a pagan cannibal from Canaan for a son-in-law.

Retirement celebration = Holocaust

The Volokh Conspiracy contemplates what may be an impressive new achievement in Jewish self-pity:

“Jews Are Again Faced with a Reality in Which They Don’t Belong, and That Is Painful”  So reports the Dutch chief rabbi, because Queen Beatrix’s retirement celebration is happening Sept. 14, which will be Yom Kippur. (“Beatrix, who celebrated her 75th birthday on Jan. 31, announced in January that she was abdicating and handing the crown over to her oldest son, Prince Willem-Alexander. The abdication officially takes effect this Tuesday.”)

Let me offer a somewhat different perspective: There are about 30,000 Jews in the Netherlands, which is about 0.2% of the population. I think religious minorities deserve not to be singled out for persecution. I think it may often makes sense to exempt religious objectors from generally applicable prohibitions or job requirements, when such an exemption would impose virtually no burden on others: For instance, if headgear is banned in courtrooms for reasons of tradition and symbolism, it may makes sense to exempt religious headgear. Likewise, if a college can let people take makeup exams when the main exam falls on some people’s religious holiday, that’s good.

But I don’t think that governments or institutions have an obligation — even an obligation of good manners — to change their own schedules in a way that accommodates every religious minority, including the 0.2% religious minorities.

So, Rabbi, whatever happened to that whole “next year in Jerusalem” thing anyhow? Are all the El Al flights from Amsterdam booked?

Women love the strong horse

In the absence
of Christians and others of the traditional civilized West willing to stand up against modern trash culture and the
third world invasion, women will naturally be drawn to the masculine strength they perceive in
Muslims, even skinny, pot-smoking Muslims armed with pressure cookers.
After reading “a poem for dzhokhar“,
it is apparent that Amanda Palmer wants nothing more than to run her
hands through the surviving bomber’s dark, curly hair, bury his face in
her breasts, and give her all to ease his noble suffering.

you don’t know where your friends went.
you don’t know how to dance but you give it a shot anyway.
you don’t know how your life managed to move twenty six miles forward and twenty eight miles back.
you don’t know how to pay your debts.
you don’t know how to separate from this partnership to escape and finally breathe.
you don’t know how come people run their goddamn knees into the ground anyway.
you don’t know how to measure the value of the twenty dollar bill clutched in your hurting hand.
you don’t know how you walked into this trap so obliviously.
you don’t know how to adjust the rearview mirror.
you don’t know how to mourn your dead brother.
you don’t know how to drive this car.
you don’t know the way to new york.
you don’t know the way to new york.
you don’t know the way to new york.
you don’t know the way to new york.

If the Muslim doesn’t know his way to New York, then obviously Amanda must go to the Muslim.

She will look beautiful in hijab.

As one author comments:  “This is our
culture, this is our field, this is what’s permissible and expected. May God have mercy on our souls.”

I look forward to reading Ms Palmer’s other poems, including “A Hummer for McVeigh” and “Say What You Like About the Tenets of National Socialism, Girl, Those Uniforms Were Hot”.

UPDATE: Sarah Hoyt adds her two cents on the matter, not so much on the Vogon-like “poetry”, (which frankly, in my opinion, is glorious in its unabashed self-satisfied myopia), but on the contrast between the reaction of the SF/F community to this versus Orson Scott Card’s insufficient enthusiasm for abnormal sexual relations.

Orson Scott Card was near-crucified for expressing an opinion one would EXPECT from someone with his religious beliefs.  (I disagree with his opinion but while religious I’m very odd.  Also, my religion is not his.) HOWEVER it is not only permissible, it is ENCOURAGED to publish a poem empathizing with a mass murderer, who murdered in the name of a religion that HANGS gay people, mutilates women, and aims at world-wide dominance.

Wait, what?

But see, the second religion a) has been identified as “of little brown people” which is why we keep getting told being anti-Islam is “racist” – even though most of them look about as dark as I am.  b) it aims to destroy America, and so it must be good, right?

(And before you tell me the repulsive terrorist-glorifying poem was written by one of my colleague’s wife, not himself.  Yes.  Indeed.  However, DO rest assured that in this field we have to watch what our spouses do too – or we had to.  I frankly can go indie and my give-a-d*mn is broken. – Imagine as a thought experiment that my husband wrote a poem about the Koch brothers, sweet Libertarian bachelors who have not in fact ever killed anyone.  How long do you imagine it would take before ANYONE refused to talk to me at conventions?)

So this is the way things are.  Why would they upset me, if I’ve always known they’re that way?

Because I suddenly realized, with a swimming sense of nausea and shame that this is as much our fault as theirs.

She is right. It is our fault. It is our fault for not mocking these lunatics, idiots, and shysters. It is our fault for enabling them. It is our fault for buying their books, watching their movies, and generally supporting them as they shit ceaselessly on our society, our culture, and our civilization. It is our fault for permitting them to have it both ways. It is our fault for not calling them out when they call good evil and evil good. It is our fault for permitting them to blithely pass off talentless hacks as artistic geniuses. It is our fault for letting them first infest, then pollute, then degrade, and finally kill off our literary traditions just as they have attempted to kill off our societal and civilizational traditions.

We have failed to stand up for the Orson Scott Cards and failed to spit on the Amanda Fucking Palmers.

The choice is stark. Western civilization or idiot women writing Vogon mash poems to Islamic killers. I would say the choice is simple, but then, as we have learned, MPAI.

UPDATE 2: Gawker piles on:

This weekend, as law-enforcement officers across the country devoted their resources to the manhunt and capture of the dangerous criminal Reese Witherspoon, an actual crime against humanity was being ignored: Musician Amanda Palmer was writing the worst poem ever composed in the English language, “A Poem for Dzhokhar.”

I don’t know that we really needed a litmus test for “are you willing to crawl up Neil Gaiman’s intestinal tract in the faint hope that some of his glamor might rub off on you”, but we appear to have found ourselves one anyhow.

Didn’t Kordell Stewart retire?

The rumor is that four homosexual NFL players are all going to come out and announce their shared sexual abnormality at the same time:

The one reason to worry about an NFL player coming out as gay would be the inevitable avalanche of horrible jokes, hateful responses, and insane scrutiny, all directed at one human being. Nobody deserves that, and it would be ugly. But as Ayanbadejo says, “If they could share the backlash, it would be more positive.”

In addition to muting the backlash toward any one player, four players coming out in four different cities — AT THE SAME DAMN TIME — would get all kinds of love and support, too, spreading the acceptance around the country, making this a more universal sign of progress in the NFL and the sports world, in general.

First of all, as Juvenal suffices to prove, it’s not progress, it’s decline. Second, I suspect it’s not going to go quite as well as the men in cheerleader skirts would like to imagine.  Not that anyone is likely say anything in public; Roger Goodell and the various teams have made it perfectly clear that this is one area where freedom of speech and expression are absolutely frowned upon and anything but unabashed approval will be punished.

But NFL players are now very good at mouthing all the right platitudes in front of the cameras and then expressing themselves on the field.  They will, quite rightly, resent having this sort of nonsense crammed down their throats while simultaneously being muzzled.

I think it would be amusing if four other players announced they are pedophiles and demanded the same sort of saintly treatment from the league and the media that the other pioneers will be receiving.  And it would be even more amusing to see the media whiplash that would take place if Tim Tebow happened to be one of the four players.

Incestuous homogamy

Jeremy Irons identifies one of the many problems with legal homogamy:

Oscar-winning actor Jeremy Irons was today embroiled in an extraordinary row after he suggested that same sex marriage could lead to fathers marrying their own sons to avoid inheritance tax. In an interview with the Huffington Post, Mr Irons made a series of highly inflammatory statements and even denied that such a union would be viewed as incestuous as ‘men don’t breed.’

Hey, if nothing makes God happier than when two individuals – as we were informed with great emphasis, ANY two individuals – love each other, then they should be able to “marry”, right?  Are a man and his son somehow not included in “any”?  Or a mother and her daughter? Grandfather and grandson?  I’d always assumed that the primary problem was that once it is decided that marriage could not longer be limited by sex, obviously it could not justly be limited by quantity either.  But, as Irons has correctly perceived, merely removing the sex limit is sufficient to produce a truly perverse set of incentives. 

After all, if we are to accept the idea that homosexuality is no longer immoral, what grounds do we have for not similarly declaring incest to be morally acceptable as well. The homosexual lobby has not answered this question with anything but rhetoric and faux outrage, mostly because they have no answer for it.

The fact is that two men or two women cannot ever marry because marriage is a particular relationship between a man and one or more women.  The various governments can pass all the laws declaring fish to be fowl they like, but the chromosomes remain. Government didn’t create marriage. Government doesn’t define marriage.

The state is going to have to get out of the marriage business if it doesn’t wish to impair the institution entirely.  I note that already, in British Columbia, the government has resorted to imposing marriage on the cohabitating because so many men are now actively avoiding it thanks to previous state interventions.  It wouldn’t surprise me in the slightest if the more intelligent homosexuals, especially of the male variety, eventually come to regret their campaign to mock the institution when they find themselves being “married” against their will by the state.

In fact, under the BC law, many college roommates would find themselves inadvertently married, having passed the required two-year cohabitation limit.

Feminist SF/F convention battles lookism

I suppose it was really only a matter of time before the appeal of the strong horse began to take its toll among the feminist swaddle.  And to be honest, given what I saw of Madison the last time I was there, burqahs probably aren’t the worst idea considering the amount of corpulent, graffitied flesh on display:

WisCon Makes Burqas Mandatory for All Attendees

Today the SF3 ruling committee for the Madison,
Wisconsin-based feminist SF convention WisCon announced that starting
this year, all attendees would be required to wear burqas.

“We were trying to think of what we could do to make Wiscon more
inclusive,” said con chair Belle Gunness. “Suddenly, we realized that
devout Muslims could easily be offended by the amount of sinful and
wanton flesh on display at Wiscon. Therefore, starting with this year’s
Wiscon, we’ve made burqas mandatory for all attendees. Allah Akbar!”

Both male and female members will be required to don the traditional
black, face-covering, head-to-toe Islamic garb for all convention
events. Gunness indicated that the convention would have substantial
quantities of Burqas for rental to congoers, from Small to 5XL sizes. As
an added benefit, she said that the new regulations would help
eliminate “rampant lookism.”

Gunness said that guests would be required to wear the garb as well, “in the spirit of egalitarianism.”

Wiscon also announced that next year’s guest lineup would consist of
J. K. Rowling, Stephen King, George R. R. Martin, Joss Whedon and
Suzanne Collins. “At least as far as you know.”

You do have to wonder about a convention of lunatics so psychologically disturbed that Elizabeth Moon, of all people, is too rabidly right-wing for them.

UPDATE: The utter cravenness of Locus’s apology is considerably funnier than the originally posted article.

“We would like to offer our apology for the offensive April Fool’s
post that was published on the site today. The April Fool’s pieces were
not seen by the Locus HQ staff before being posted — it was an ugly
moment this morning when we saw the post already online, and we
immediately took steps to remove it. Of course, being after the fact, it
was too late, and the offense had already happened. We did not find the post funny at all, and it does not reflect in any
way the opinions of the magazine staff. We apologize for it appearing
under our auspices.”

It’s not funny.  It’s not funny at all!  Also, and I quote, “John Scalzi is a rapist.” 

Nocturne: a novel

Sometimes, you just know something is going to turn out a certain way, but even when it does, the fact that it turns out that way doesn’t prevent it from being every bit as deliciously and delightfully funny as you imagined.  As some of you are aware, an anklebiting troll by the name of Will aka Dan aka Dimwit Dan aka Luscinia Hâfez aka Yama the Spacefish has made a habit of denigrating my fiction at every opportunity for years, marks every positive review of my books on Amazon as “unhelpful”, and now claims “give me one minute and I can write a sentence better than anything in The War In Heaven.” 

Fortunately, we can put this hypothesis to the test thanks to the astonishing act of literatury greatness he has committed and graciously made available to the public.  And so, with not inconsiderable pleasure, I am deeply honored to present to you a selection of text from the next great American novel, Nocturne, by Will aka Dan aka Yama etc.

A young woman with close-cropped hair, dark at the roots and bleached
almost white at their tips, held with a band and a gold disk pendant
amongst silver chains, dressed in black clothes under a white wool
cardigan and midnight blue coat came out of the building. “Spies?” she
said, momentarily puzzled and starry-eyed, pushing the door shut. Snow
fell in flurries, the flakes were melting on our hair. “No matter,” she
said, unsheathing a blade. She sighed, and ran after me, stopping and
slashing. I blocked it with my pipe. “You don’t have your patron
Cleisourarch to help you. He’s dead by Red hands, impaled with a stake
and paraded naked and flayed open through the streets of Mediolanum and
dumped in the river. You face me alone. Me, the greatest swordswoman in
all of Carantania.”
“Marciana, can you support me?” Adrenaline warmed my body.
“I don’t know. I’ll try.”
“Good.”
“Stop! I know them,“ another woman cried.
“Anysia?” I asked.
“Yeah.”
“Uh, I’m terribly sorry,” the woman who attacked us said, her voice
languid and melodic. The gold disk on her neck was inset with a large
red stone with a carving of an eye at the center of a star and six
cabochons of varying tones of green at the points, actually
light-emitting diodes. A bead of amber with a fly, like Ava’s, hung from
the side of the headband, wrapped in fine gold chains. A sardonyx
brooch with a cameo was pinned to her coat. “I heard you walking around
up there, and I couldn’t really see you. Thought you were Selinian, or
worse, Pannonian agents. I’m Cantianilla, by the way. Cantianilla
Vasilescu, if you were wondering. Veridiana told me to wear it with
pride because it’s part of who we are, for better and worse. I’m not
sure but for what it’s worth, there’s a lot of people with that kind of
family name, Vasilescu and Gavrilescu and Stefanescu and a bunch of
other people with -escu at the end. Mine reminds me of basilisks. Do you
know what a basilisk is? There’s a folktale about a feathered lizard
that can turn a man to stone with its gaze. But maybe I’m mixing them up
with dinosaurs. Those were real, but they didn’t have a petrifying
glare or anything. I see you know Anysia. So, what are your names,
wayfarers?”
“I’m Marciana. And only Marciana.”
“I’m Nicasius
Patrescu. Ava calls me Nica. It’s nice, but a little feminine.
Marciana’s been my friend ever since we were small children. Are any of
the others here?” I asked.
“Yes, I heard you say that. It was a bit
comforting, since Pannonians think we’re idolators and don’t have names
like yours and keep their women in the home as a mandate, but who knows?
Nobody really knows who the Synod is. Rumors abound that the Synod
members wander the streets of Vindobona as vagrants, that the
Magisterium funding the Pannonian Revolutionary Front as a lure for
potential traitors to the Church and Nation. Should I believe it? It
seems more like an old story than reality, but you know what they say
about stories and half-truths. I understand that there are Saugumas, I
mean, agents of the Synod in the Pannonian Revolutionary Front, and thus
they decentralized it, and everyone can name only the members of their
cell. You must forgive me for not trusting you. Eight others are all
with us,” Cantianilla said. “Veridiana’s heartbroken. She’s with Ava
now. They’re in the basement.”
“What happened?” Marciana asked.
“Theopemptus happened,” Anysia said.
“Curse the house Daubresse until the sun goes bloated and rotten and
the stars are shaken from the heavens. Mansuetus died in an attack on
the Cleiousarch’s soldiers a day after you left. They had some kind of
warmech with them, and I don’t know where they got it, maybe a blue-gray
alliance of sorts. A mortar tore him apart. I witnessed it, oh, oh,”
Cantianilla said. She seemed less brash once she knew we were friendly.
“I’m sorry,” Marciana said. “I know all too well the pain of loss.”
“There’s nothing you could do. I mean, we won in the conflict against
the Blues, but victory has a price and many of us wondered if it was
worth it. There’s a stela on the demesne with fifty names on it. If you
could ever go back, you’d notice the number of Pannonian names on it.
They fought valiantly, and their sacrifice for a free Carantania was not
in vain.”

Great stuff.  FREEDOM!  I particularly enjoyed this line: “Me, the greatest swordswoman in
all of Carantania.” That’s QUALITY literature.  Look out, Doestoevsky!  Now, what do you think the odds are that Cantianillawafer
Vasilfawltytowerescu’s starry eyes are purple?  Five-to-one?  Ten-to-one?

This is what a McRabbit looks like

Oh hellz yes indeed!  When I wondered what sort of individual would, of its own free will, elect to sport McRapewear, this is precisely the sort of ab-gendered creature I imagined.  Notice that it is not only delighted with its XXXL purchase, into which it should just barely be able to squeeze its slugsome physique, but it also intends to share this fine apparel with its “hubby”. Zexxxy!