If you enjoy watching Theodore Beale/Vox Day getting stomped on (and who doesn’t?), I must recommend that you read this analysis of Beale and his supporters by Philip Sandifer. He doesn’t mince words. And I agree entirely with his conclusion.
Pharyngula
Evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal
From the linky:
Holy crap, but that description sounds familiar. It describes the texts in the tryst of a certain shirty red-shirted blueshirt.
I’d nominate this for the “Sick Burn” category if the Hugos had one.
The part that I find endlessly amazing about Beale is that he seems to think he’s a dominant male predator/wielder of flaming swords and swooner of women – but the reality appears to be that he’s a petulant and vengeful weakling who even a mild-mannered SJW like John Scalzi can make a laughingstock of. If he’s as successful as a pick up artist as he is at being an “alpha male” he must be frustrated a lot of the time. And I don’t even feel bad for him because he appears to be completely incapable of learning from the various slap-downs that life keeps handing him.
Amazing essay that is a must read for anyone interested in this debacle.
As the author states, there is indeed no point in trying to ‘convert’ the hardcore believers like Vox himself, because there is no reasoning with people who effectively espouse fascist beliefs (in the real sense of the word). It is however important to remind everyone that this is not ‘left wing SF fans’ versus ‘right wing SF fans’, it is ‘SF fans’ versus actual fascists and christian dominionists.
Choice quote:
May that flaming sword picture live on forever.
Wow. I had not quite grasped the sheer nastiness of Theodore Beale and John C. Wright. That is an incredibly long but very illuminating read. These people are absolutely worth fighting.
Also, on a happier note, I now really want to read Uber.
>blockquote>… suddenly find yourself staring down a thirty item bulleted list with frequent citations to barely relevant and inaccurately described
historicalevents, which, should you fail to address even one sub-point, you will be declared to have lost the debate …Is that what we call the “Gish Gallop”?
Saaad@#6 May that flaming sword picture live on forever.
I love swords (I’ve made a couple…) and all I can think, when I look at that one, is how dull it is. The edge looks like it’s about 1/8″ thick. It’s hardly a sword at all, it’s a sword-shaped blunt object. Which is a perfect metaphor for Vox, really.
Wait, somehow, for all my research on this piece, I missed the flaming sword picture. Is that a real thing that Theodore Beale knowingly participated in the making of and put out into the world? And if so, is there a higher resolution version that I can add as an illustration to the article?
Great article.
Also, re: the sword. From the Voxer Rebellion’s blog, 2005:
“A few decades ago, if you saw a lovely spaceship on a book cover, with a gorgeous planet in the background, you could be pretty sure you were going to get a rousing space adventure” without any cultural or political implications? Really? Asimov’s “Nightfall” & Ursula LeGuin’s “The Left Hand of Darkness” are just a couple of counter-examples that readily come to mind. And then there’s Harlan Ellison’s entire body of work …
Great article! I think the thing I’m maddest about this is how Beale drafted works that he knew would get a Hugo anyway without consulting people to make sure at least one of his “picks” won a Hugo. Specifically, Guardians of the Galaxy is what I’m thinking of.
I’m beyond pissed that Beale tried to rope “Dog Dean Afternoon,” Supernatural into this mess.
“Myers is lying about me! I’m actually 6’1″ not little.”
-Vox Day in about 3 hours.
well if he was going to pick any SPN episode, it would have to be one of the worst episodes ever produced…
Can I nominate Philip Sandifer’s blog post for Best Related Work next year???
If you click on the picture, you get the largest copy I have.
Can I nominate Philip Sandifer’s blog post for Best Related Work next year???
Perhaps he should re-title it to “No Award” — that way everyone will vote for it.
@11
LOL…I love the elaborate backstory that he gives for the picture. It reeks of total deception. A unnamed(?) writer who’s going to write an article, at a paper, who was then transferred and then just never bothered to write the story…yeah right. And an unnamed photographer, whom I assume he hasn’t credited, sent him a few copies just because he loved the pictures so, so much. A perfect story that can’t be verified and gives cover to the obvious fact that he is so narcississtic that he, himself, arranged to have this “awesome” photo taken, just cuz he is so damn cool.
Self-aggrandizement at it’s finest.
Words deserving to be illuminated in letters of gold:
the useful way to understand fascism, at least for the purposes of Beale, is as an aesthetic – as a particular mix of fetishes and paranoias that always crops up in culture, occasionally seizing some measure of power, essentially always with poor results.
Damn straight – dismiss these creeps as the preening little bully poseurs they are rather than the tough-minded intellectuals they imagine themselves to be.
Thanks for the essay, Phil. Not just for pointers to “If You Were a Dinosaur, My Love” and “Electric Lady,” but a great takedown of Mr. Voice of God to boot.
Yes, because feminism ruins marriages that are ostensibly partnerships of people on equal standing! Of course, I’m making a moot point because Beale’s model of marriage has no concept of equality.
Ibis3 @ 21:
And As Good As New by Charlie Jane Anders!
I’m confused. Isn’t Beale a Creationist? If so, what’s with invoking the existence of other human species as part of his scientific racism bullshit?
Oh. and regarding Antonelli:
Yes, and? What exactly about this well-documented evidence-based analysis of these “children of elites” is wrong?
That is a good essay. Philip Sandifer is a good writer. If this could be nominated for an award for related work, it ought to be (maybe you could nominate it, Cathy F, if you do whatever it is that one has to do to be able to put forth a nomination).
I’d like to quote Sandifer for truth and because he expresses a sentiment that anyone who is disheartened about this mess should hold close,
Beale has lost, if ‘winning’ was ever the game. At whatever he’s worked he’s most certainly failed. Perhaps for a few years people will come across his name only in relation to the exposure he’s now getting for being, and I quote Sandifer again,
I haven’t made it through the excellent essay quite yet. Gads, trying to read a sentence of sad puppy writing makes my brain glaze over. It’s all weapons and war described in clunky sexual metaphor. * * I especially like this part about Larry Corriea;
I have all of the recommended stories book marked for later. Yay, good writing has managed to surface from this sad situation despite all of VD’s efforts. *not an actual quote
@Tethys
” my missiles penetrated the ionic cloud and detonated in a frenzy of purple laser beams and …”
It reads better with a porn-style soundtrack and heavy breathing. Try it!!!!
Hm, actually, that would make for a pretty fun youtube video. :) Anyone got a shakespearean actor handy who’d do a dramatic reading? Or a porn star. Either would do…
Thomathy@#26
Beale has lost, if ‘winning’ was ever the game.
And that’s the real point. Beale (and Wright, and Torgerson) can’t write anything as good as “If you were a dinosaur…” on their best day, downhill, with a tail-wind. “Winning” doesn’t mean carrying home the rocket statue (although, that’s nice) — it’s a matter of being really, really good at what you do. When Pratchett made his oft-quoted quip about “going home to cry himself to sleep on a matress stuffed with 20-pound notes” he was being characteristically gracious by not mentioning that the root cause of the mattress’ stuffing was that he wrote effortlessly well, and his books brought smiles, giggles and joy more than they brought those 20-pound notes. Beale’s books don’t evoke much emotion, while his antics do. He’s got it backwards, but that’s all he can muster.
Marcus @29
The Sad Puppy gang often claim they are “best selling authors” and try to draw parallels to Pratchett but I have never seen anyone who has met Pratchett and said a bad thing about him. The only bad mouthing I have ever seen involving Pratchett, not shockingly, was Rabid Puppy favourite John C. Wright fantasising punching him…
As a massive fan of Pratchett, and also a strong critic of some of his formulaic books, I could never put him and puppy writers in the same page.
I must add, it is interesting that, on the thread started it all, just over a decade ago, Charles Stross appears to identify the problem with Teddy Beale very early and very accurately.
Georgia Sam @ 12:
Just about every SF novel from the 70s that I own has a lovely Chris Foss spaceship on the cover, regardless of actual content…
Marcus Ranum @ 28:
This is actually a foretaste of what the readers’ letters in Transhumanist Penthouse will be like…
As Good As New was the perfect antidote to sad puppies space weaponry porn. It even has some very relevant thoughts on good storytelling.
I never cease to be amazed at the complete lack of self-awareness of the christian/authoritarian/patriarchy mindset. Can you get more cliched than the flaming sword from the babble?
In the repeated attempt’s and threats at gaming the Hugos, I think a constipation analogy would be more apt. VD and all his supporters have literally clogged the process with crap.
In VD’s defense, if I had a chance to pose for pictures with a flaming sword, I probably would (particularly if I could add some trimethyl borate to the gel, so that the flames were green). It strikes me as a fun thing to do.
The rest of his crap is indefensible.
Tethys @ 34:
My favourite line in Charlie Jane Anders’s story was one you quoted:
That should be tattooed on some people’s foreheads.
“hypervelocities”?
Well, at least we’ve got a future writing Voltron dialog. Infracells up! Megathrusters are go!
Is that what these fools think science fiction is?
Caine
I quite liked it too, obviously. :) I enjoyed but am still processing all the nuance of All That Fairy Tale Crap . Rachael Swirsky is very skilled. Her poetic interludes are works of concise terrible beauty.
Sandifer’s descriptions of fascism and fascists are cogent and illuminating but, that aside, I am not sure I understand him here:
Huh? Correct knowledge of how the universe and presumably its components like humans and their society work is unimportant because it’s “probably not relevant to very many practical situations?” “Probably” not? And what exactly is a “practical” situation, one that can do just fine without accurate knowledge?
Somebody explain to me how I’m missing his point, please.
A great read and well written in and of itself. I particularly enjoyed picking out Uber – I think it’s useful to show that some people are creating extremely violent, gory, hard edged, militaristic universes with fascist glorification but actually subverting it and saying something. It’s not just a black and white – ‘right wingers like big battles, left wingers like poetic musing,’ – it’s possible to create thoughtful work across the spectrum but what Vox Day and his ilk are saying is anything BUT this form of work is impure, anything that does not CONFORM or tries to utilize OUR tropes without fully endorsing them is filth.
I especially noted that the description of Vox Day is entirely accurate. Everyone promote your individual freedom by following me in lockstep! Everyone avoid their groupthink – by joining mine!
My god, but these guys are little babies. These puppies and gamergaters. Worrying about computer games and who wins science fiction awards? That’s the focus of their lives? Maybe it’s time to grow up? I’d never heard of John C. Wright, but this is some shitty writing:
“anyone who does not sense or suspect that modernity is missing something, something important that once we had and now is lost, has no heart for High Fantasy and no taste for it.”
@Skylantec 39 – I believe he was pointing out that their fascist viewpoint is that theirs is the one objective truth, one way of seeing and knowing that they’ve accessed and that not conforming to that view of reality, or holding any other moral or ethical framework is against the purity of that view. It’s essentially rendering beauty down to the same narrow interpretation. This seems to be in essence their stated problem with Ursula K LeGuin – an author who has not blatantly stated what their truth and goodness is and dares to use metaphor.
They are stating that they know the objective divine truth and that progressives are not adhering to it. It’s simple ideological purity but they dress it up as progressives are weak for accepting all viewpoints (a pointless straw man – progressives – whatever they are – are hardly likely to accept all viewpoints).
Puppies generally try to claim territory by pissing on it.
Let me give you a concrete example: for basically all common engineering purposes, “gravity” can be approximated as a 9.81m/s^2 acceleration straight down.
This isn’t, quite, physically correct. See also, all of Newtonian physics.
@Skylanetc, 39
Basically, the claim that there is “one overarching explanation for everything” is not the same as saying that there’s only one reality. What it’s saying is that you only need one model, and everything falls into place. Meanwhile, any accurate understanding is pretty much predicated on understanding that there are a lot of different specialized models of varying degrees of oversimplification useful for understanding various things. Meanwhile, some complete model which actually would explain everything is going to be ridiculously cumbersome in application to just about anything. Different explanations are useful for different things, and in the context of fascism in particular the overarching explanation is generally some oversimplified tripe about all of human society working in some particular way. Meanwhile, actual research on how human society works generates tons of specialized models for different things, as is to be expected.
Marcus Ranum @ 28
Being a miniature wargamer, I’ve consumed quite a bit of military sci-fi over the years, and that is just plain horrible. Even David Drake has able to keep his stories focused on action and plot rather than laborious descriptions of every weapon and vehicle depicted. Less is more (unless you can’t write for shit).
Passenger pigeons?
skylanetc @39:
I don’t think Sandifer was speaking about how human societies work. I think he was speaking about explanations for the origins of the universe (or the nature of reality).
As a child, I wasn’t particularly skilled at math. I remember struggling with fractions and percentages. I couldn’t wrap my brain around these things. At least not until my parents taught me about grocery store applications of these concepts. The basic conceit behind the idea was applying the concepts I learned (or, more accurately, struggled to learn) to everyday situations I found myself in. When grocery shopping with my parents, I often wanted certain items. My parents shopped using coupons, some of which were of the “30% off kind”. They would tell me that if I could figure out what 30% of Product X was that I could have that thing I wanted. They taught me that the concepts I was learning in math class had an applicability beyond the classroom. I could apply those concepts to things that I wanted (or needed) in the course of my daily life.
What that means in relation to your question about Sandifer’s passage is that there are some concepts that we don’t need to deal with or understand in the course of our everyday lives. Certainly, there are some people who *do* deal with questions about the nature of reality as part of their occupation, but for the vast majority of people, we go about our lives not really needing to know how the universe was created. Nor would such knowledge affect our daily activities. Did the Big Bang create the universe? Did a deity create everything? Has the universe always existed? These are questions that don’t have much of a daily impact on most people, so they lack a ‘grocery store application’.
That’s not to say they aren’t important questions, but the answers to those questions don’t affect me while feeding my cats and dogs, watching the news, driving to work, grocery shopping, or bartending.
Akira MacKenzie @#46
Being a miniature wargamer,
I am also a fairly small wargamer. :) Mostly napoleonics and, of course, D&D during the hayday of Ral Partha.
#48 has the long and short of it.
Smallpox. Driven extinct by science.
Rinderpest. Also extinct. Next up is polio.
We are also missing chronic religious wars and average lifespans of 35 years. The Dark Ages. The Demon Theory of Disease. And a whole lot more that we lost by hard work and hard thinking.
That was a fantastic essay. Too many great points to quote! I absolutely agree that Beal & co. have lost before they even began.
One thing on Teddy’s back story about the flaming sword:
Not nearly as happy as I am, Theodore, not nearly as happy.
I know a struggling author who was hoping to get a Hugo nomination. With the hijacking that is not going to happen, at least not this year. What a shame.
dobby: That is precisely the tragedy of Toxic Vox-Ick’s little game. He is not just trampling all over the awards ceremony, but he has effectively given a heckler’s veto against all of the worthy Hugo nominations of the entire year. It’s horrible.
My only quibble is that if you argue (correctly, in my view) that fascism as a political framework is incoherent jabbling, and that it’s best understood as an aesthetic, then why not go the whole hog and call it reactionary? Luddites put forward the idea of a balanced social order that had been disrupted by machines, with Ned Ludd as its saviour. It even featured the incoherence of later fascism, including a half-hearted focus on social welfare mostly calculated to make them not look like thugs.
I mean, I think ‘fascism’ and ‘neofascism’ are more visceral than ‘reactionary’ (albeit diminished by college students shouting it at George W. Bush, who for all his many faults was no Theodore Beale), but I think some precision would be nice.
Found this a couple of days ago: Black Gate Withdraws From Hugo Consideration.
@ rq
Interesting, and in my opinion a good decision by them. I’m also in favour of this “No Award” movement that appears to be gaining traction. I read through some comments on BlackGate, and someone called Sai S has summed up the situation nicely, in my opinion:
General question to the room: Last year’s winner of best novel; Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie. Worth a read, or no?
I read a lot of fantasy and historical fiction, but not a lot of sci-fi, and think I am missing out on a wealth of good books as a result.
Thumper
YES!
Read it. I will safe Ancillary Sword for the smmer holidays.
++++
I’m still wondering: If there was this alleged big conspiracy of SJWs to keep the good old conservative writers off the ballots, how is it possible that the puppies gamed the system so easily?
Thumper
I have now added that (and Ancillary Sword) to the reading list. :) Perhaps we can discuss eventually.
+++
Giliell
Obviously, SJWs are too liberal to be organized enough to maintain power and due to their socially justified hearts and irrational emotions, do not have the strategic logic to counter the offensive tactics of the sad puppies. Don’t dictatorships build greater things than democracies because of forced labour or something like that? [/s]
Giliell
Excellent :) ta very much. Kindle store, here I come.
Don’t you see? It was the liberal elite fixing the ballot. A powerful minority with an odious agenda to foist their Social Justice on the decent, hardworking, red-blooded folk who make up the majority of sci-fi fandom! If the oppressed masses rise as one, then the elite can never keep us down! Their control relies on the fear of the masses confining us to inaction; overcome that fear and, like any bully, they’ll run. Welcome to the revolution!
Translation: Everybody really thinks like us! Waah!
@ rq
I’ll see you in the lounge when I’ve finished it :)
Oh and Thumper I quite liked this comment from that site, by AWAbooks:
Giliell @ 59:
It’s a classic fascist viewpoint. The “enemy” is both able to maintain a huge conspiracy to suppress good, honest, salt-of-the-earth conservative folks but at the same time has a gaping weakness that no one else has ever “noticed” before. In their view, “SJWs” are both too influential and strong and yet have a glaring weakness that only they, our ubermensch betters, have realized.
They’re stupid assholes, in other words. Not a surprise.
Thumper, yes, do give Ancillary Justice a read.
@ rq #63
I enjoyed that one too :) I’m tempted to go and give Voxy’s blog a read, just out of curiosity, but I get the feeling that it would make my head explode with rage.
@ Shala #64
Exactly; it’s the classic conservative conspiracy theory. The Liberal elite are a tiny powerful group who control the scientists and opinion polls and, apparently, Hugo awards, and use their power to further their agenda. They convince themselves that most people think like them and the poor majority are having their opinion squashed by the liberal elite. Everyone thinks like them, but are too afraid to speak out. They are the righteous majority subjected to the tyranny of the SJWs, and all they have to do is organise and rise up to overcome their opressors. They are unable to acknowledge that there is no liberal elite, and that the reason things are more progressive now is due to the changing tide of public opinion which has left them and their ilk stranded on the sands of their bigotry, because that would involve admitting that they are the minority that everyone thinks is nuts.
This is all compounded by the fact that, when they do organize and rise up, it normally works. Not because it’s the real majority, as they think, but because it’s perfectly possible for a noisy and organized minority to wreak an awful lot of damage.
@ Anne #65
Thanks, shall do :) already downloaded to the kindle.
The Goblin Emperor, which was nominated this year and is not part of anybody’s slate, is also a good read.
Another devotee of Napoleonic minis here…nice to know we still exist. I’ve got an entire corps of Russian infantry boxed up, wish I had money to get some Frenchies…:)
Also, Vox Day is an asshole. But not just any asshole. He is the asshole of a rat, which lived its entire life in the sewers under a greasy spoon restaurant across from a police station, and died of a nasty infection brought on by swimming literally its every minute in the effluent full of fascist hopes and dreams, as well as undigested fat globules and half eaten chips.
Matt Cramp: I was thinking of saying something similar, but I think that the author is on the right track. I think three things just needed to make it more explicit.
Militarism: This is a key element of most definitions of fascism. A war-like mentality, an emphasis on might, obsession with the military, war, weaponry, etc. This makes it even more obvious that fascism is an aesthetic: it is a militaristic aesthetic that uses the two mythological elements mentioned in the article, specifically.
Extremism: Related to the other two things I am mentioning, the key to the way fascists think and the character of all of their proposed policies is “By Any Means Necessary”. Nothing is off the table for them. They are willing to do horrible, horrible things. Because the Betrayers deserve it, and because doing anything, no matter how immoral, is worth it to bring back Teh Golden Age.
Demonization: This is possibly emergent from all the other properties, or vice versa. And it is alluded to in the article by those viewing certain groups as “subhuman”. They view themselves as superhuman and/or view their “enemies” as less than human.
I think all of these were alluded to, to some degree, in the article, but I agree that they should have been made more explicit. because it avoids the problem of being able to call too many different ideologies “fascist” (Christianity could be called inherently fascist if the only criteria were a Lost Golden Age and Stab-in-the-back, but when add the other factors I mentioned, regarding what they DO with this ideology, it narrows the field a bit better).
That was a truly excellent essay in the link from the OP, and a brilliantly effective take down of the ugly beliefs of Vox Day and his fascist fellow travellers.
Saad: Openly Feminist Gamer @ 6;
I know, it’s great isn’t it? Taken alongside his political stance, that image is such a revealing window into the mindset and insecurities of Vox Day. The obvious phallic symbolism, and the militarisation of that symbolism – he couldn’t more obviously declare his aspirations to toxic ‘alpha male’ status if he had it tattooed on his forehead. The need to over-egg the picture – a sword is not enough, it must be one fire for some reason. And then there is the whole ‘old school hero pose’ (he really just needs his foot to be positioned on a rock/the fallen body of his vanquished foe to complete the effect) that plays into his vision of himself as a Nietzchean superman who stands above mere mortals and is deserving of uncritical respect and fealty, as described in the linked article from the OP.
The fact that he looks utterly ridiculous is also a nice bonus.
I suspect that Vox Day spends quite a lot of time playing with his sword.
Gregory Greenwood, #70
I wish this could be the caption that automatically appears every time someone uses that picture anywhere.
Also note the red background. Because blood.
Thanks for posting this. After reading the article I am not going to differentiate between the sad and rabid puppies.
Making something obvious to anyone but a moron and then arguing that it is an unfair accusation is another fascist trope. Like Putin’s claim that Russia had absolutely nothing to do with the coup in Crimea until he admitted organizing it.
The two groups have logos by the same artist that make it clear that they are the same. But they just play the ‘you can’t prove I’m a facist’ game.
It is therefore no surprise that they are anti-post modernism because the principle realization of the post-modernists was that it is not possible to prove everything that is true is true. That there are limits to knowledge should be a fairly obvious, basic observation but it has taken a long time for the truth to sink in.
Back at Oxford I studied formal methods of computer science trying to reduce the operation of a machine whose every action is bounded by mathematics to mathematical certainty. While I proved more code correct than anyone else had to that point, doing so taught me the severe limits of the approach. The machine is governed by mathematics but it is only a part of a system that includes humans. Which was the point at which Tim Berners-Lee persuaded me to join him on the Web.
Truth is good but truth is not always available. Dawkins is certain god does not exist. I don’t know and I don’t care. Such questions are not only unanswerable but they are meaningless. The only way that we can give them meaning is to sneak the answer into the question. But the fascist demands an answer to every question.
Of course I can’t prove that the sick puppies co-ordinated their campaigns but to believe otherwise is to give a group of people who have given ample evidence of their bad fair the benefit of doubt that simply does not exist. The number of coincidences that have to be ignored or explained is simply to great.
I’m in the middle of one of the best books I’ve read in a long time, Ken Liu’s The Grace of Kings, book I of the Dandelion Dynasty.
Tethys @ 38:
Oh, I love that. All of it.
Caine, Tethys: That is very good. Gotta read the whole thing. I did read the comments though. Post is a year and a half old, but I see that when it was made they got a few asshats making snide comments. Immediately after the first comment, which was praise in the form of “Better than anything Vox Day ever wrote”. True, but faint praise. And makes me suspicious about where the negative comments came from…
I enjoyed Charlie Jane Anders’ story so much I read it twice. Back to back.
I always find 14 ways of looking at a blackshirt to be helpful in describing fascism.
Nthing the recommendations for Ancillary Justiceand Ancillary Sword. I’ll also add a recommendation for Saladin Ahmed’s Throne of the Crescent Moon, which I just finished; it was recommended in someone or other’s discussion of the Hugos. I’m also enjoying Our Lady of the Islands, by Shannon Page and Jay Lake, which I ran across at the library.
Caine
Thanks for the feedback. I’ve been eying it for a while, but it’s quite expensive for an ebook, so I didn’t want to buy it on a whim.
@78: I notice near the end of Eco’s essay this little gem of foresight: “There is in our future a TV or Internet populism, in which the emotional response of a selected group of citizens can be presented and accepted as the Voice of the People.”
Hello Slymepit/Puppies/MRAs/etc.
Giliell:
It’s a sweeping epic, brilliant, beautiful, and brutal. Story upon story upon story crash and roil into the greater arc, like all the drops of water which make a cresting wave. And silkpunk. I love that.
Dalillama:
I read that, and recommend it, with a caveat. This is the review I wrote:
I do not recommend The Beasts of Tabat:
Tony! @ 77:
I loved that story! Charlie Jane Anders’s debut novel will be out in February. I’m looking forward to it.
Caine
I’m waiting on a copy of Grace of Kings from the library, and looking forward even more to it now.
Where Virtue Lives, showing the meeting of Adoulla and Raseed, and Judgment of Swords and Souls in the same universe give some more background, but I suspect the endless God references are intended as a setting feature, and aren’t going anyplace.
It looks like a plastic He-Man sword. And he’s holding it in the most undynamic way possible, like he’s afraid of it. (I mean, he should be, but still…)
These guys always seem to think they’d be the knight in shining armor in those days, when in all likelihood they’d just be another peasant.
And anyway, I thought everybody had gotten tired of “Blah Blah Sword Blah Blah Dragon” years ago.
Ever heard of A Song of Ice and Fire? or Dragon Age?
These series are built upon a neat narrative trick: in both case the “Blah Blah” is the most interesting part (ASIF is about feudal corruption and petty feuds among the ruling class bringing forth a massive societal collapse, while Dragon Age is pretty much “Late Middle-Ages Crisis: the RPG“), but in both case, the customers are brought in by the promise of magic swords, large dragons and brave heroes using the firsts to vanquish the seconds.
One of the defining traits of fascism is that their enemies are always, at the same time, “too strong” and “too weak.”
Yep, Nazi Antisemitism was kind of the beginning, when they declared a group that was actually not very powerful to be in control.
Traditionally bigot ideology worked from the assumption that white straight cis men were not only better, but also in control and that the weak elements, women, PoC, LGBTQ needed to be kept in check.
Modern bigots are mostly working under the assumption of “reverse racism” “misandry” “gay agenda” etc. , whole undisturbed by facts.
+++
Rey Fox
And they’d not die of an infected tooth, or the flu, or the measles. Reanaisance Fairs are cool because there’s still running water, toilets and paramedics.
@ Dalillama #78
OK, I just went and read the blurb, and that looks fucking epic.
I get paid next Thursday… the Kindle store will have a red letter day.