From worst to blah blah blah blah

Saga #36

An arc ends. It’s reasonably good. The next issue of this will be after I’ve moved and switched to digital instead of supporting the comic shop where I’ve been buying comics since third grade. I can’t imagine I won’t be trade-waiting this at that point.

Sex Criminals #15

There’s a moment, most of the way into this basically good issue, where a bunch of characters meet, many for the first time. Most of these characters were introduced months and years ago, this not always being the speediest of books. And Fraction and Zdarsky drop to four panels of all text, white on black, beginning “imagine now a scene where everyone is introduced to everyone else and their roles within both our story and the lives of the characters are hastily, dutifully, yet exhaustingly rendered.” Before, of course, skipping that scene to get on with the plot. And that moment, right there, where Matt Fraction basically told me to go fuck myself if I didn’t remember all of the characters and relationships of his sporadically published sex book, is where I dropped this book out of sheer fury. This book needs to stop disappearing up its own ass and actually tell a fucking story in a coherent manner again.

Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur #6

The first arc ends with some good emotional beats nicked from the other iterations of Marvel’s “new teenage sueprhero book” style in recent memory. As usual, they work well filtered through Reeder and Montclare’s exuberant madness, and the cliffhanger into arc two is wonderful and sad and touching, and sets up loads of interesting stuff. Still, I can’t help but feel like six issues was a bit long for this arc, and I need something more than “yep, quite well done” to jolt my excitement about it.

Batgirl #51

An answer to how we’re winding down the Fletcher-Stewart-Tarr era, namely with a two-parter by Fletcher with a bevy of artists (Eleonora Carlini, Minkyu Jung, and Roger Robinson – they’re quite good). I’m relatively excited about post-Rebirth Batgirl – it’s one of two titles I’m likely to buy – but man, the setup here where the book is basically a team book among a bunch of second and third-tier minority Bat characters that occasionally crosses into things like Gotham Academy is tough to say goodbye to. I know the “weird like Batgirl” DC You lauinch was a flop, but this really is the most functional and long-term stable a DC book has felt since… what, Infinite Crisis-era? Ouch.

Silk #7 and Spider-Woman #6

Missed Silk last week, so ended up with these two parts of Spider-Women together. This is really good stuff – a vintage Marvel crossover that moves forward every issue, has actual character beats, and feels coherent from issue to issue while still showcasing its individual characters. These were my first two issues of their respective series, and while I can’t see myself picking up Silk (who, as a protagonist, is a little too on the nose – a created-in-a-vat heroine finding her place in a Marvel Universe that will no doubt fridge her within the decade), Spider-Woman‘s genuinely compelling and funny. …

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It’s funny how a year of steeling yourself for something doesn’t actually mask the taste of bile rising in your throat when it happens. It’s hardly a surprise that the Rabid Puppies got sixty-two works on the ballot beating their haul of fifty-eight last year. Until E Pluribus Hugo passes, the voting system is flawed in a way that made stopping the Puppies at this stage impossible. This ballot has been predictable since last year. Still, it’s sickening. Short Story, Novelette, Related Work, Graphic Story, Professional Artist, and Fanzine are all full-Puppy categories at present. All categories save for Best Editor Short Form and Best Novel are majority-Puppy. Most of what I have to say I said last year. You can buy the book if you want. But here’s some scattered and off-the-cuff thoughts on this year’s dogfucking.

First, as predicted, the Sad Puppies were a non-entity. That’s a little tough to judge given their new “we’re just a recommendation list” sheen of pointlessness, but it’s notable that the most conspicuous omission from their list, The Fifth Season, got a nomination in best Novel, and that in Fan Artist, a category where they had four picks, three of which were not on the Rabid Puppies slate, none of theirs made it on. Indeed, at a glance I can’t find anything that’s on their list, wasn’t an obvious contender anyway, and made it. These were Vox Day’s Hugos, plain and simple.

Second, let’s not have any silliness about pretending that what was picked reflects any agenda other than Vox Day’s spite. He’s been unambiguous that his sole goal this year is to disrupt the Hugos, not even making an effort to pretend that he was picking works on merit or because there’s actually some body of quality sci-fi he thinks is being overlooked by the awards. His only goal was to ruin things. The nominees exist only for that purpose. They are political, yes. Avowedly so. But their politics does not have even the barest shred of a constructive project. This is fascism shorn of everything but violent brutality – political in the sense of an angry mob kicking a prone body.

And so once again, the course is clear: we must resist. With every tool we have, we must resist. The highest priority, of course, is passing E Pluribus Hugo, the repaired nomination system that will serve to prevent this from happening again. Also important is No Awarding. 

But, of course, that’s more complicated this year than last because of Vox’s tactic of poison pill nominees (which I also called last year, because for a supposedly brilliant tactician Vox sure is predictable). Some of these will hopefully correct themselves – both Stephen King and Neil Gaiman are occupying slots in all-Puppy categories and have the power to withdraw to make room for people that were kept off the ballot by Vox Day. I have a tough time coming up with any justification for such decorated writers not to do so.

Other categories are trickier.…

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The Kickstarter for Neoreaction a Basilisk will begin next week. For now, here’s another excerpt, this time after a section looking at the notion of “the red pill,” a concept Mencius Moldbug introduced to the alt-right, and claims that his blog offers readers.

No, what’s really striking is Moldbug’s repeated insistence on the “agony of ingestion.” While a fair description of his writing style, it’s rather hard to see what he actually intends it to refer to in terms of neoreaction. And this is clearly a definitional thing about the red pill. It doesn’t just offer the truth; it offers the searing and traumatic truth. That’s the entire point of Joe Pantoliano’s character in The Matrix, who, having taken the red pill, has decided that the Matrix was his preferred drug after all, a position that is not so much refuted as set aside when its sole proponent is impaled. And Moldbug is visibly desperate to believe he’s got it, despite the almost painful lack of agony.

But look, Moldbug isn’t insincere. If he says the red pill is agonizing to swallow, we can safely assume that he, at least, thinks there’s agony. So the question becomes: what, precisely, does Moldbug find agonizing in his own thought? This is closely related to the question of what his monstrous offspring looks like. What’s the moment in his reasoning that he doesn’t want to be there? He says that it’s Part 9a of the Gentle Introduction which begins, after several parts not mentioning anything like the red pill at all, “Today you begin your irreversible descent into black, unthinkable madness.” Oh boy! But let’s continue with our “Moldbug is sincere” principle and assume that, after his eight part buildup, he really is delivering what he imagines to be the goods. Certainly Part 9a marks a turning point, as he explains it, between the first eight parts that explain “what history really is, and what it really has to teach us,” and the finale that offers a program of action.

So what is the program of action? It’s not, to be clear, putting Steve Jobs in charge; that’s Moldbug’s wish, but he isn’t actually proposing it as a plan of action. Actually, Moldbug is being refreshingly realistic here, trying to come up with a program that can be enacted on an individual level. As he conceptualizes it, the idea is to be “political engineers” designing a backup system that will kick in when American democracy inevitably goes south. And the first step of this backup system is, as he puts it, becoming worthy, by which he means the embrace of a doctrine he calls passivism. He describes it thusly: “The steel rule of passivism is absolute renunciation of official power. We note instantly that any form of resistance to sovereignty, so long as it succeeds, is a share in power itself. Thus, absolute renunciation of power over USG implies absolute submission to the Structure.”

And suddenly the abyss gazes also. Moldbug has stared into the truth of history, seen that it is a massive pack of lies designed purely to justify the corrupt status quo, and the only thing he can think to do about it is to submit entirely to the status quo.…

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State of Play

(They’re genuinely helpful in quantifying what the episode did.)

The choir goes off. The board is laid out thusly:

Lions of Meereen: Tyrion Lannister

Lions of King’s Landing: Jaime Lannister, Cersei Lannister

The Dragon, Daenerys Targaryen

Ships of the Wall: Davos Seaworth

Burning Hearts of the Wall: Melisandre

Roses of King’s Landing: Margaery Tyrell

Snakes of Dorne: Elyria Sand

Direwolves of Winterfell: Sansa Stark

Direwolves of Braavos: Arya Stark

Spiders of Meereen: Varys

Kraken of Winterfell: Theon Greyjoy

Shields of Winterfell: Brienne of Tarth

Stars of King’s Landing: The High Sparrow

The Sword, Daario Naharis

Flayed Men of Winterfell: Roose Bolton, Ramsey Bolton

With the Bear, Iain Glenn

The episode is in nine parts. The first runs eight minutes and is set at the Wall. The opening shot is of the Wall at sunrise, as the camera pans down into Castle Black.

The second runs ten minutes and is set in Winterfell. The first section is three minutes long The transition is by image, from Jon Snow’s dead body to Miranda’s. The second section is seven minutes long. The transition is by dialogue, from Ramsey and Roose talking about Sansa to Sansa.

The third part runs six minutes  and is set in King’s Landing. The first section is four minutes long. The transition is by hard cut, from Brienne’s anguished face to the sails of Jaime’s ship. The second section is two minutes long. The transition is by hard cut, from Jaime holding Cersei to Septa Unella’s book.

The fourth part runs two minutes and is set in Dorne. The transition is by hard cut, from Margaery in her cell to a garden in Sunspear.

The fifth runs one minute and is set in King’s Landing. The transition is by family, from Doran to Trystane Martell.

The sixth runs four minutes and is set in Meereen. The transition is by hard cut, from Trystane’s corpse to an establishing shot of the city.

The seventh runs nine minutes and is set in the Dothraki Sea. The first section is three minutes long. The transition is by faction, from Varys and Tyrion to Jorah and Daaario. The second section is six minutes long. The transition is by dialogue, from Jorah and Daario concluding that the Dothraki have captured Daenerys to Daenerys among the Dothraki.

The eighth runs two minutes and is set in Braavos. The transition is by hard cut, from Daenerys to a street in Braavos.

The ninth runs five minutes and is set at the Wall. The transition is by family, from Arya Stark to Jon Snow. The final image is of Melisandre going to bed.

Review

For what is surely the most highly anticipated episode of Game of Thrones ever – the first 100% off-book episode (well, 90% – Arya’s still in A Dance With Dragons) – this is a shockingly thin and uninspiring thing. Given that… I’d say there’s a fine line between a languid start and just trolling the audience, but it’s not that fine a line, and the title is on the wrong side of it.…

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First of all, we hit the Game of Thrones reviews threshold on Patreon, so I’ll be back tomorrow night for “The Red Woman.” 

I also just cut a podcast with David Gerard, who probably very few of you have any idea who is, but has been an online friend for literally over a decade, starting in the Wikipedia trenches and evolving to… the Tumblr trenches. He ended up being the beta tester for Neoreaction a Basilisk by dint of being mad enough to volunteer, and kept me confident that this fifty-thousand word piece of madness was actually working despite all common sense that this was a very bad way to write a book. Anyway, that’ll be out in a few weeks, along with some other people who’ve gotten preview copies of it.

Also finally wrapped the backmatter of the “Fearful Symmetry” chapter, and am about to make a tilt at not having to take a break before “The Abyss Gazes Also.” Which brings me to my question, which is really just “so who’s being obsessive enough to track my structural gimmicks there?” To be clear, literally no problem at all if you aren’t; if the chapter doesn’t work for non-obsessive readers the chapter fails. I, who complain regularly when I can’t follow monthly superhero comics, have no right to whine if I can’t make a Watchmen pastiche work. But those posts get low comments, which is totally understandable – they don’t lend themselves to comments. So I don’t really have a sense of how that aspect of it is landing at all. Or any questions people want to throw out about that project.

Actually, since the Neoreaction a Basilisk excerpts aren’t necessarily comment friendly either, I should explicitly solicit Eruditorum Press reader questions on that book as well. 

Obvious answers to questions on both topics, then. 

1. Last War in Albion Volume 1 will be out in late summer.

2. The Neoreaction a Basilisk Kickstarter will start in May.

3. I don’t know for sure whether the specific work you’re wondering about will be covered in Last War in Albion, as I’m only just starting to have my first serious “actually write things down” thoughts about the structure of Book Three in the last few weeks, but broadly speaking it’s probably got a pretty good chance of at least coming up.

4. Monday’s Super Nintendo Project post is a hoot.

That last one’s not really an answer to a question. It’s just true. …

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