Tag: writing

Traffic report 2015

The growth in site traffic this year was more than expected, as a surprising number of people initially stopped by to see what was going on with the Hugo Awards in August and then stuck around for the remainder of the year. Last year we saw a single 1.5-million pageview month; this year we had 10 in a row. All of the growth was at VP, as AG was pretty flat due to my sporadic posting there. But as was the case last year, 2015 finished very strong; December was not only up 30 percent over last December, but was the second-most-highly-trafficked month of the year.

In 2015, Vox Popoli had 16,211,875 pageviews and Alpha Game 4,565,094 for a total of 20,776,969 Google pageviews. The blogs are now running at a average rate of 56,923 daily pageviews. And yes, I do find it amusing that the blogs are now seeing considerably more genuine traffic than the “extraordinary amount” a certain SF blogger once lied about having. As for the running annual totals, they are as follows:

2008: 3,496,757
2009: 4,414,801
2010: 4,827,183
2011: 5,969,066
2012: 7,774,074
2013: 13,111,695
2014: 15,693,622
2015: 20,776,969

Thank you all for the part you have played in making that happen. However, there are some more important numbers that merit mention. 2015 ended with 465 Vile Faceless Minions pledging their mindless obedience to the Supreme Dark Lord and preparing for battle in 2016. Expect heavier use this year, VFM, as the SJWs react to our media offensive in a variety of means both fair and foul.

On Twitter, I ended the year with 6,230 followers and 14.628 million impressions for 2015. Not bad, but I can clearly put in a little more effort on that front.

Castalia House grew from 21 books published to 37, including 5 in print and 1 in audiobook. Book sales increased 145 percent and no less than six category bestsellers were published. We also added three editors, an Editor-at-Large, an Audio Editor, and a Blog Editor; see the Castalia blog later today for more details there. Speaking of the Audio Editor, the audiobook for Cuckservative is now available on Audible and Amazon, and is already one of the top 50 Philosophy audiobooks. We expect even faster growth for Castalia in 2016 with the release of upcoming books such as Riding the Red Horse Vol. 2 by Tom Kratman and Vox Day, Iron Chamber of Memory by John C. Wright, Clio and Me by Martin van Creveld, Do Buddhas Dream of Enlightened Sheep by Josh Young, and There Will Be War Vol. XI by Jerry Pournelle, among others.

And yes, one of those others will be A Sea of Skulls.

Thank you for your interest, even if it is no more than morbid
curiosity, thank you for your support, and while 2015 was certainly intriguing, I believe 2016 is going to be absolutely extraordinary.

Advice for the would-be blogger

Mike Cernovich offers it:

People didn’t start blogs to win fame or fortune. People wrote because they thought they had something to say, and it was fun.

Or people started blogging in hopes of getting a book deal. Before self-publishing, people actually sat around waiting to be discovered! Or they’d pitch book ideas to publishing houses, which are staffed by 22-year-old Women’s Studies majors.

Now everyone wants to write for one hour a day and earn millions.

When you write for fame or fortune, it shows in your writing. Every post has the, “Please pay attention to me and buy my stuff and hire me” tone to it.

It’s a hard tone to explain, although Aristotle wrote about ethos in Rhetoric.

I write because it’s fun. Even though it’s how I learn my living, this website is the time of my life.

There’s not a day where I have anything approaching writer’s block. How could I? This is a blast!

Blogging was a conversation.

No one ripped off each other’s articles. Not giving attribution – called a “hat tip” – to someone was seen as unethical and would lead to ostracizing.

If someone wrote something interesting, you’d quote what he said, add your comments, and join the conversation.

Today people steal concepts and re-write entire articles.

Shorter version: write because you enjoy the process and because you actually have something different to say. Don’t do it for the attention. Don’t do it for the money. Don’t do it because you like what you perceive as the lifestyle. Don’t do it because you like the image. Especially don’t do it because you think it is some sort of get-rich-quick scheme. It’s not. It’s the exact opposite due to the supply-and-demand curve; there are more people who want to write and are able to publish than ever before, combined with fewer people who read and buy books than there have been in decades. Writing is a hobby, not a profession, a career, or a business.

If you don’t have anything to say that isn’t already being said, don’t bother. If you’re just looking to express yourself, that’s what Pinterest and Twitter are for. If you’re just looking for attention, Tumblr and Facebook will suffice.

But if you do have something to say, why should you listen to Mike? Because of what he has done by himself, without the benefit of a mainstream publisher pushing his books into the distribution channel or striking marketing deals with various booksellers. What he has done is not at all common. The average U.S. nonfiction book is now selling less than 250 copies per year. Less than 5 percent of books sell more than 5,000 copies. He is an extreme outlier.

Gorilla Mindset has sold 15,164 copies. I sell on average 70 copies per day.

Essays on Embracing Masculinity has sold 1,500 copies. I sell on average 8 copies per day.

Juice Power has sold 1,500 or so copies. Juice Power sells a copy or so a day.

Last Man Standing will outsell Gorilla Mindset, and comes out in early 2016.
I would be remiss if I failed to mention that Castalia House will have the privilege of publishing Last Man Standing.

Cuckservative: initial responses

The sales have been exceptional. The reviews have been excellent, by which I don’t mean that they said the book is great, although they mostly do, but in their attention to detail and their substance. Sadly, some observers are just not taking it well.

Phil Sandifer ‏@PhilSandifer
Man, Vox Day must be spending an awful lot of his daddy’s money to drive up his new book’s Amazon ranking this high.

To which there can really only be one response.

Otherwise, the usual SJWs have been stunned into silence; the observable fact that I not only have considerably more support than they do, but actually happen to be in harmony with the popular zeitgeist at the moment is rather more than they are equipped to rationally process. The success of SJWs Always Lie was bad enough, as far as they were concerned, but to follow it up with an even bigger success of broader appeal is simply beyond imagining.

There has been only one real criticism aimed at the book to date, namely, the absence of footnotes. It’s a legitimate point, and I will address it, first as if I were Red Eagle, and second in my own inimitable fashion.

Cuckservative makes a strong rhetorical appeal to defend historic America, but its weak point is that you have to read it as an appeal addressed to you, the reader. It’s not factual ammunition for you, the already-convinced reader, to use in a debate with the unconvinced, because the authors have omitted footnotes. Cuckservative uses a lot of facts, and Vox Day has said on his blog that he’s got solid sources for everything, and that omitting references gives critics less to attack. That’s fine if you believe he’s not bluffing, and I do; but “one of the authors says he has a source for that, but he won’t say what it is” doesn’t fly in a serious argument.

Ann Coulter’s Adios America will supply facts by the ton when it comes out on Kindle. Meanwhile Cuckservative is the best current statement of the militant right-wing case against mass immigration and against ineffective “respectable” conservative politics regarding it.

Imagine, if you will, that you are a married man. You’ve worked a long day. You’re tired and you’re not in the mood for explaining yourself or getting into an argument with your wife, so when she asks you if you want Chinese for dinner, you have two choices. Either A) you simply say no, or B) you tell her no and you explain why.

If you say no, that ends the debate. Perhaps she suggests something else, perhaps you do, either way, there is no need for discussion. But if you go with option B), you have given her the opening to take issue with why your position is incorrect and to attempt to convince you that you really do want Chinese. Whether she manages to convince you or not, you’re in for an argument, and most likely, you’ll end up eating Chinese even though you didn’t want to.

Now, in case the analogy has escaped you, the reasons for not wanting Chinese food are the footnotes and the wife is the critics. Here endeth the lesson.

From my perspective, books are discourse. I expect and anticipate criticism both fair and foul. I remember when Ann Coulter was absolutely pilloried for having endnotes rather than footnotes. I also know that not having footnotes allows me, or the Cuckservative reader, to call out the critic who attempts to cast doubt on them.

The correct response to the critic who claims that something in Cuckservative is wrong is to ask him what the correct answer is. If he wishes to deny that the Danish army’s measured average IQ has fallen by 1.5 points, ask him for the correct delta. Ask him if it has risen, fallen, or stayed the same. He will not be able to do so, thereby discrediting himself and revealing that he is not an honest interlocutor.

The only people who actually need the footnotes are those who are attempting to undermine the arguments presented in the book by disqualifying the source data. Red Eagle and I simply made their task more difficult by denying it to them. If you want to cite a source, then cite our book. That is sufficient.

But perhaps my chief reason for not providing my sources, which are, of course, impeccable, is my experience with TIA. Simply because I cited my source, many people who read the book took my original arguments and credited them to the source, who, ironically enough, made precisely the opposite argument in the face of the data they had collected.

For much of the world before the 17th century, these “reasons” for war were explained, and justified, at least for the participants, by religion.
– The Encyclopedia of Wars, p. xxii

No, they really weren’t. I make mistakes, but I seldom make the same mistake twice.

UPDATE: My co-author speaks for himself:

This isn’t an academic treatise, it isn’t a book report we’re submitting for approval and critique by authority, and it isn’t a defensive, plaintive rearguard work in the cuckservative style.

We’re on the attack. Let the lefties and cuckservatives be on the defense. Let them impotently quibble and whine about us failing to cite our sources. Let them do their own homework if they want to argue or nitpick, and let them be the ones who try to qualify themselves.

Preach, preacher!

Why new readers don’t read old authors

John C. Wright explains why in the midst of delving into literary aelvipology.

We are in the Dark Ages, and the darkness influences all things in society, including speculative literature. I mean the term not as an exaggeration or a metaphor: the technological products of our enlightened forefathers spring from the worldview which says science is a proper way to discover the mind of God by studying His works. Eliminating that God from one’s worldview eventually eliminates the respect for human life, free thought, and reason in law and custom which are necessary precursors to scientific endeavors, and eliminating science eliminates technology. Once the lamps go out, the darkness is everywhere, even in the little corners of society where children read books about spacerockets or elves.

The moderns have been taught to hate and loath their own country, their ancestors, their parents, and been told everything written before the current day is racist, sexist, homophobic, Islamophobic, transcismophobic, and pure evil. These nutbags think that their own standard bearers of the Progressive movement, the founders of their genre, were not Progressives like themselves.

One need only hear sexual libertarian and radical egalitarian nut Bob Heinlein being excoriated as a member of the misogynist phallocratic patriarchy to realize how far off the edge of the world the lunatics have sailed the ship of fools.

This is not some lunatic fringe belief. It is lunacy, of course, but not fringe. It is mainstream. The core institutions and standard bearers of Science Fiction, the largest publishers, the most prestigious awards, our once-respected guild the SFWA, the oldest and most famous magazine: they all buy into the narrative and all support the narrative with a singleminded fury that is Bolshevik in its vehemence, patience, and pettiness.

Progressives hate the past and seek forever to blacken, demean, and obliterate it. Anyone reading the older books would see immediately that the modern works are only merely equal, not as innovative, and that the modern award-winning works are notably inferior.

The notion of progress is the notion that the past is bad and the present is better and the future will be better yet. If you read old books and find that they are either slightly better or remarkably better than modern offerings, you see a decline, not a progress,  and the foundation of progressivism, is overthrown.

The reader will probably recognize that while the elves of Selenoth are a blend of Tolkienian and Longaevian, the Faeries of the Eternal Warriors trilogy are explicitly Longaevian.

The great ones know

A fascinating article by the great Japanese writer Haruki Murakami about when he decided to become a novelist and how he developed his unique style:

To tell the truth, although I was reading all kinds of stuff, my
favourites being 19th-century Russian novels and American hard-boiled
detective stories, I had never taken a serious look at contemporary
Japanese fiction. Thus I had no idea what kind of Japanese novels were
being read at the time, or how I should write fiction in the Japanese
language.

For several months, I operated on pure guesswork,
adopting what seemed to be a likely style and running with it. When I
read through the result, though, I was far from impressed. It seemed to
fulfil the formal requirements of a novel, but it was somewhat boring,
and the book as a whole left me cold. If that’s the way the author
feels, I thought, a reader’s reaction will probably be even more
negative. Looks like I just don’t have what it takes, I thought
dejectedly. Under normal circumstances, it would have ended there – I
would have walked away. But the epiphany I had received on Jingu
Stadium’s grassy slope was still clearly etched in my mind.

In
retrospect, it was only natural that I was unable to produce a good
novel. It was a big mistake to assume that a guy like me who had never
written anything in his life could spin something brilliant right off
the bat. I was trying to accomplish the impossible. Give up trying to
write something sophisticated, I told myself. Forget all those
prescriptive ideas about “the novel” and “literature” and set down your
feelings and thoughts as they come to you, freely, in a way that you
like.

While it was easy to talk about setting down one’s impressions freely, doing it wasn’t all that simple. For a sheer beginner like myself it was especially hard. To make a fresh start, the first thing I had to do was get rid of my stack of manuscript paper and my fountain pen. As long as they were sitting in front of me, what I was doing felt like “literature”. In their place, I pulled out my old Olivetti typewriter from the closet. Then, as an experiment, I decided to write the opening of my novel in English. Since I was willing to try anything, I figured, why not give that a shot?

Needless to say, my ability in English composition didn’t amount to much. My vocabulary was severely limited, as was my command of English syntax. I could only write in simple, short sentences. Which meant that, however complex and numerous the thoughts running around my head might be, I couldn’t even attempt to set them down as they came to me. The language had to be simple, my ideas expressed in an easy-to-understand way, the descriptions stripped of all extraneous fat, the form made compact, and everything arranged to fit a container of limited size. The result was a rough, uncultivated kind of prose. As I struggled to express myself in that fashion, however, step by step, a distinctive rhythm began to take shape.

Since I was born and raised in Japan, the vocabulary and patterns of the Japanese language had filled the system that was me to bursting, like a barn crammed with livestock. When I sought to put my thoughts and feelings into words, those animals began to mill about, and the system crashed. Writing in a foreign language, with all the limitations that entailed, removed this obstacle. It also led me to discover that I could express my thoughts and feelings with a limited set of words and grammatical structures, as long as I combined them effectively and linked them together in a skilful manner. To sum up, I learnt that there was no need for a lot of difficult words – I didn’t have to try to impress people with beautiful turns of phrase.

I found this fascinating, because as you may recall, I studied Japanese, and although I don’t speak it anymore, I retain enough of a sense of it that Murakami’s writing has never struck me as “translated” in the same sense that other Japanese writers do. I’d always just assumed that he had a better translator, but apparently it is the English structural influence that he imposes on his Japanese style that creates that effect.

One Murakami fan has observed: “When you read Murakami in Japanese, it’s almost like he’s translating his own writing from English.”

In any event, if you haven’t read Murakami, he’s well worth reading. He tends to stick to the same themes and Japanese fatalism runs through all of his works, but he always presents an interesting variation on those themes. My favorite Murakami novel is A Wild Sheep Chase. And I found it unsurprising to observe that the great ones usually recognize their own talent before others do:

That’s when it hit me. I was going to win the prize. And I was going to
go on to become a novelist who would enjoy some degree of success. It
was an audacious presumption, but I was sure at that moment that it
would happen. Completely sure. Not in a theoretical way but directly and
intuitively.

That’s why I always laugh at those who claim that if someone openly states that they are X, it should be taken as evidence to the contrary. That’s totally false. From Ruth to Jordan, from Tolstoy to Murakami, the great ones always know it and they are not at all surprised by their own success. They expect it.

Did I miss anything?

The eight steps of SJW Attack:

  1. Identify Weakness
  2. Point-and-Shriek
  3. Isolate and Swarm
  4. Reject and
    Transform
  5. Press for
    Surrender
  6. Appeal to
    Authority
  7. Show Trial
  8. Victory Parade

Step 4 means when they reject the apology offered and transform it into evidence for the prosecution. Obviously not every SJW attack involves each and every step, as a resignation at step 3 or step 5 will jump right to step 8, but that’s what the full process looks like.

Good news, bad news

For fans of my writing.

First, the bad news: Book Two of Arts of Dark and Light, A SEA OF SKULLS,  will not be published this year. The cover is done and it is awesome, the story is proceeding well and I’m told that it is better than A THRONE OF BONES, but I’m only 200k words in and there is no way I can finish it and still publish the other books Castalia is committed to publish this year, such as the three books of THE STARS CAME BACK, THE 4GW HANDBOOK, and RIDING THE RED HORSE Vol. 2, among others. It’s just not possible, as there aren’t enough hours in the day. I am still working on it, however, and my reasonable estimate is March next year.

The good news. I will publish a book this fall, most likely in September, and it will be a non-fiction book entitled SJWS ALWAYS LIE: How to Defend Yourself From the Thought Police. The meme is rapidly spreading, more and more people are understanding that the First Law of SJW is both a truism and a reliable metric, and everyone needs to know how to defend themselves against an SJW swarm. And based on who is writing it, the Foreword may well be the best part.

Since nearly everyone here is either on the anti-SJW front lines or is an observer to action on that front, I’ll be interested to know what elements you think need to be there in order for SJWS ALWAYS LIE to be reasonably comprehensive.

An early SF gatekeeper

One wonders how many more excellent SF juvenile novels Robert Heinlein might have written for Scribner had it not been for his editor Alice Dalgliesh’s determination to meddle, in true SJW fashion, with the political ideology expressed in Red Planet. This was the first serious crack in the relationship between Heinlein and Scribner’s, which eventually culminated in Scribner’s rejecting Starship Troopers for publication. From Grumbles From the Grave.

April 19, 1949: Robert A. Heinlein to Alice Dalgliesh

The manuscript of Red Planet is being returned, through Mr. Blassingame.

You will find that I have meticulously followed all of your directions, from your letter, from your written notes, and from your notations on the manuscript, whether I agreed with them or not. I have made a wholehearted attempt to make the changes smoothly and acceptably and thereby to make the story hang together. I am not satisfied with the result, but you are free to make any additional changes you wish wherever you see an opportunity to accomplish your purposes more smoothly than I have been able to do.

Most of the changes have been made by excising what you objected to, or by minor inclusions and variations in dialog. However, on the matter of guns, I have written in a subscene in which the matter of gun licensing is referred to in sufficient explanatory detail to satisfy you, I think.

The balance of this letter is side discussion and is in no sense an attempt to get you to change your mind about any of your decisions concerning the book. I simply want to state my point of view on one matter and to correct a couple of points….

You and I have strongly different evaluations as to the best way in which to handle the problem of deadly weapons in a society. We do not seem to disagree in any important fashion as to the legitimate ways in which deadly weapons may be used, but we disagree strongly as to socially useful regulations concerning deadly weapons. I will first cite two points which sharply illustrate the disagreement. I have one of my characters say that the right to bear arms is the basis of all human freedom. I strongly believe that, but you required me to blue-pencil it. The second point concerns licensing guns. I had such licensing in the story, but I had one character strongly object to it as a piece of buttinsky bureaucracy, subversive of liberty—and I had no one defending it. You required me to remove the protest, then build up the licensing into a complicated ritual, involving codes, oaths, etc.—a complete reversal of evaluation. I have made great effort to remove my viewpoint from the book and to incorporate yours, convincingly—but in so doing I have been writing from reasons of economic necessity something that I do not believe. I do not like having to do that.

Let me say that your viewpoint and evaluation in this matter is quite orthodox; you will find many to agree with you. But there is another and older orthodoxy imbedded in the history of this country and to which I hold. I have no intention nor any expectation of changing your mind, but I do want to make you aware that there is another viewpoint that is held by a great many respectable people, and that it is quite old. It is summed up in the statement that I am opposed to all attempts to license or restrict the arming of individuals, such as the Sullivan Act of the State of New York. I consider such laws a violation of civil liberty, subversive of democratic political institutions, and self-defeating in their purpose. You will find that the American Rifle Association has the same policy and has had for many years.

France had Sullivan-type laws. When the Nazis came, the invaders had only to consult the registration lists at the local gendarmerie in order to round up all the weapons in a district. Whether the authorities be invaders or merely local tyrants, the effect of such laws is to place the individual at the mercy of the state, unable to resist. In the story Red Planet it would be all too easy for the type of licensing you insist on to make the revolution of the colonists not simply unsuccessful, but impossible.

As to such laws being self-defeating, the avowed purpose of such laws as the Sullivan Act is to keep weapons out of the hands of potential criminals. You are surely aware that the Sullivan Act and similar acts have never accomplished anything of the sort? That gangsterism ruled New York while this act was already in force? That Murder, Inc. flourished under this act? Criminals are never materially handicapped by such rules; the only effect is to disarm the peaceful citizen and put him fully at the mercy of the lawless. Such rules look very pretty on paper; in practice they are as foolish and footless as the attempt of the mice to bell the cat.

Such is my thesis, that the licensing of weapons is subversive of liberty and self-defeating in its pious purpose. I could elaborate the arguments suggested above at great length, but my intention is not to convince, but merely to show that there is another viewpoint. I am aware, too, that even if I did by some chance convince you, there remains the unanswerable argument that you have to sell to librarians and schoolteachers who believe the contrary.

Heinlein knuckled under, but he was not happy about it. He was so unhappy about the forced change that he even tried to get Scribner’s to put Dalgliesh’s name on the cover as Red Planet’s co-author, but the publishing house refused, as they believed it would hurt sales.

May 9, 1949: Robert A. Heinlein to Lurton Blassingame

As to the name on Red Planet ms., no, I’m not adamant; I’ll always listen to your advice and I’ll lose a lot of sleep before I will go directly against your advice. But I feel rather sticky about this point, as I hate like the deuce to see anything go out under my own name, without even sharing responsibility with Miss Dalgliesh, when said item includes propositions in which I do not believe. The matter of style, plot, and the effect on my literary reputation, if any, I am not adamant about, even though I am not happy about the changes—if you say to shut up and forget it, I’ll shut up. It’s the “Sullivan-Act-in-a-Martian-frontier-colony” feature that I find hard to swallow; from my point of view I am being required to support publicly a doctrine which I believe to be subversive of human liberty and political freedom.

The whole situation bothered Heinlein so much that when Dalgliesh’s successor pitched Heinlein on returning to Scribner’s, Heinlein flat-out refused to work with them again. Which is not terribly surprising, considering how he took the rejection of Starship Troopers, which involved not only the entire editorial board, but Charles Scribner himself.

“I do not know as yet whether I will do another juvenile book or not. If I decide to do another one, I do not know that I wish it to be submitted to Scribner’s. I have taken great pride in being a Scribner’s author, but that pride is all gone now that I have discovered that they are not proud of me.”

Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.

Mailvox: bad science fiction

In which examples are requested:

Normally I try to improve my writing by reading lots of good quality writing, hoping that will come out in my own. But I’m wondering if any sort of list of bad, “don’t do this” examples (I mean in terms of writing quality, not ideological leanings) would come easily to mind for you that would be instructive for those of us who want to improve our own writing.

It would be very helpful, for me at least, to then see if any of those bad writing habits or tendencies reveal themselves in my own work, and train myself out of them.

I go back to the four elements of a book: CSSC. Characters, Story, Style, and Concepts. In decreasing order of importance, those are the most important elements.

Characters come first. The huge success of Rowling, Tolkien, Lewis, and Cooper stem from their heightened ability to create characters about whom we care. Therefore, the first example of what not to do should be those that suffer from poor characterization.

Go ahead, name three.

Story is the second most important element. You can have a pretty good book where the story makes no sense, so long as the characters are of sufficient interest. An even worse book would have poor characters and a generic or nonexistent story.

Name three more.

Style comes third. This is where we tend to most notably part company with the Pink SF crowd. They put style first, except when they put message above that. (Note: I did not say concept, but message. The latter is a subset of the former.)
But if you’ve got poor characters, a generic or nonexistent story, and bad style, now it’s getting pretty grim.

And three more.

Concept includes everything from Very Important Message to worldbuilding. And if you’ve got poor characters, a generic or nonexistent story, bad style, and a Very Important Message in a generic world, you’re approaching the nadir, which in my opinion is best represented by Mercedes Lackey.

Read Arrows of the Queen if you want to know how best not to do it.

Talia, a young runaway, is made a herald at the royal court after she
rescues one of the legendary Companions. When she uncovers a plot to
seize the throne, Talia must use her empathic powers to save the queen.

Mailvox: Sociosexuality and Selenoth

Cogitans Iuvenis was the first of several to ask:

So how would you classify each character in Throne of Bones.

My own work tends to illustrate the intrinsic challenge of writing outside one’s rank. Let’s look at the perspective characters first:

Marcus Valerius: too soon to tell. Either Alpha or Sigma.
Valerius Corvus: Alpha, but less Alpha than his brother Magnus
Valerius Fortex: Alpha
Severus Aulan: Beta
Theuderic: Sigma
Lodi: Beta
Meerfin: Delta

Non-perspective characters:

Valerius Magnus: Alpha
Severus Patronus: Alpha
Charles-Philippe de Mirid: Alpha
Skuli Skullbreaker: Alpha

Now, considering that it is a book that concerns a considerable quantity of kings, aristocrats, and generals, it is entirely appropriate that the characters should be weighted towards the Alpha rank. But I think the book would be better, and more interesting, if a broader range of characters were portrayed, so long as they were portrayed accurately according to their socio-sexual profile.

The challenge is that it is no easier for an Alpha to convincingly write a Gamma than vice-versa. Or for the Delta to write a Sigma, etc. Just as the Gamma writes paper Alphas, the Alpha is likely to write excessively sniveling Gammas that don’t do justice to either the observable exterior or the rich, self-centered interior.