Fenris Wulf: Loki’s Child (2016 edition). A witty political satire using pop music! I bet you’re delighted already.
A guest post by David Gerard.
Every field has its standard ways to fuck up. Experienced artists never do these in public, but you’ll see the lesser lights fall for them if you go looking. Someone gets a rush of blood and is struck by aninspiration to do something different, something the big guys aren’t doing, for a new take on things! Not realising that the experienced artists don’t do these things because they don’t work.
Like writing a novel about the pop industry. No, better: a political allegory in the form of a novel about the pop industry. No, better still: a right-wing fever dream political allegory in the form of a novel about the pop industry. Yep, that’ll show ’em all!
Phil Sandifer tweeted a “hey, look what I just stepped in”:
As a connoiseur of the worst of popular culture — and novels about the music industry are definitely the worst of popular culture — I foolishly looked. (Doing a great swan dive naked into the abyss and wallowing while sending back reports probably involves staring at some point.)
The least-unreadable examples of this species of folly, that don’t make you shout “WRONG! WRONG! BULLSHIT!” twice a page, tend to be thin fictionalisations of real events; plenty of fucked-up shit happens in the music industry that makes people go “someone should write a book about this.” Platinum Logic by Tony Parsons fails as an even slightly coherent novel, but every lurid and tawdry incident in that book is a version of something that happened, and spotting the players is the fun part.
There are genuinely good novels that have the music industry as a theme — Pratchett’s Soul Music, Banks’ Espedair Street — but these tend not to be about the music or the industry as such, and avoid going into too much detail even as they slip in the in-jokes. Even The Commitments, which is literally about a band. They resist the urge to be didactic. It’s a trepidatious endeavour, though: get the details even slightly wrong and you look like a fool.
Fenris Wulf gets the details mostly right. The problem is everything else.
“Hi, I’m Fenris. I’ve considered myself to be a LaVeyan Satanist for about 10 years, and I also embrace a Lokian version of Asatru, as my name indicates.”
Loki’s Child is published by Castalia House, i.e. Vox Day, the abovementioned human dumpster fire, who is now most famous for doing his damnedest to fuck up the Hugo Awards with the Rabid Puppies.
I thought Day was the author of this thing — “Fenris Wolf” was the name of his 1990s video game studio, and he was once in a band with minor hit records so he’s brushed up against the business. But Vox is not known for either patience or attention to detail, and this is a work the author’s been polishing and polishing for years — he put the first version up as Record Producer from Dimension X in 2005, then publicised the rewrite as Loki’s Child in this 2011 post to a fan board for Ayn Rand’s right-wing political philosophy Objectivism:
The novel gets progressively more ingenious, and it exposes the disgusting evil of the nihilist Left in a way that hasn’t been done before. The heroes are based on various pagan gods, and the villains are based on historical movements such as the Jacobins, Luddites, Puritans, Aztecs, and others.
Well, I’m glad he enjoyed it himself. (“Aztecs”?)
Here’s how he describes his own brilliance on a Ron Paul forum a year later:
It’s about a group of musicians who foment an insurrection against the federal government. It creates a detailed alternate history in which America is taken over by the radical Left and collapses into dictatorship and cultural psychosis. It’s simultaneously dark and hilarious, surreal and all too believable. It’s incredibly inventive and contains literally hundreds of passages that will make you laugh out loud. Its viewpoint is staunchly libertarian and it upholds a strict constitutionalist approach to everything from economics to education to war.
Here’s the blurb from the author’s site — he’s a radio station engineer who “records local bands on analog tape” — describing his own book as “A libertarian tour de force … a savagely funny takedown of culture and politics”:
Meanwhile, the Jacobin Party is wrecking the economy, dismantling the Constitution, and smuggling weapons to street gangs in order to control elections through violence. Blenderman is drawn into a conspiracy to bring down the music cartel and the State itself, orchestrated by a young woman who worships Loki, the god of chaos.
Let’s have a closer look at that cover:
I honestly couldn’t tell if that image was a Photoshop disaster of a render, a Photoshop disaster of what was once a photograph of an actual human female, a Photoshop disaster of an artwork by an artist who couldn’t draw, or an unholy cut’n’paste of some or all of these. It turns out that’s a default model from 3D graphics software Poser, with a pose that appears to be from XNALara. Which is the laziest possible solution to the problem. (Really nice boots, I’ll credit. Though the broken ankle is a standard telltale of anatomically incompetent modeling bit of a worry. But full points to her being good enough to fingerpick an electric, which I’m sure was the artist’s intent.)
The artist is RGUS (I looked through his DeviantArt gallery and kept shouting “BOOBS DON’T DO THAT” — there’s a reason artists take life drawing classes), whose Poser/XNALara Castalia has used elsewhere. To his credit, when Day attempted to spam him into the 2016 Hugos he declined the nomination.
(Don’t go looking for “Poser art” without SafeSearch on.)
Here’s the original 2011 self-published edition cover, which is a photo of a guitar put through an oil-painting filter and eyes added in ah homage to a rather more famous book cover. The 2016 cover is certainly more striking. And fully up to Sad Puppies cover quality requirements, of course.
The intro asserts the sound engineering and production sk1llz of the hero, Mixerman Blenderman, and his dab hand with ProTools SonoViz®. It ends with:
That is, this is a fictionalised crib of The Daily Adventures of Mixerman by Eric Sarafin. An amazing tale, purportedly real-life (and ringing fairly true), about Sarafin recording some well-funded bidding-war nobodies. I read it when it was originally being posted to ProSoundWeb in 2002. Every music industry sufferer will delight in it and you should read it.
Presumably this is an attempt at using your human “humor” (not “humour”). Reading this, I hear a three-second sample of canned laughter on loop with a mismatched splice, forever.
So we’ve started our novel about the pop industry with a rehash of an actually interesting insider tale and some hilarious parody. Fair enough, that’s a standard approach.
Then he starts mixing in his opinions on women.
Feminazi bitches, amirite?
I totally describe myself to myself every time I see myself in a mirror, and I’m sure you do too.
The heels bit is a “wait, what?” He thinks these women look twenty-four, but he has them wearing heels that they literally haven’t learnt to walk in yet. Let me tell you manly blokes a secret: it’s not that hard to walk in heels. You walk on tiptoe and slightly move your hips in time. Keep your shoulders up, don’t hunch. It takes hours to learn, not years. Including drunk. Of those women who wear heels at all, the only ones who go out, typically to see bands, in heels they can’t walk in yet are literally teenagers.
“Clown paint” is an allusion to anarcho-capitalist (yeah, those two words can actually go together) cult leader Stefan Molyneux’s famous admonition “stop making yourself look like fucking sex clowns to milk money out of men’s dicks”, his most renowned contribution to valuable Men’s Rights Activist discourse on how women use makeup to oppress men.
Nobody talks like any of this, and that sort of hideous four noun pileup is the exclusive domain of people like me.
Here are the narratorial descriptions of these silly little girls who are so cutely play-acting at thinking they’re a band:
Note that these detailed inventories of assets are taken in real time during a conversation.
Foolish human female, interrupting my important Brownian exposition to pretend to know as much about the thing you’re actually here to do as a man would have picked up watching television and scratching his balls.
yes thanks that’s great Fenris thank you
yes thank you Fenris
We’re now into a chapter narrated by Scotty, Blenderman’s trusty assistant, but it’s good to see that he’s completely — some might say indistinguishably — in tune with his boss’s views on the filthy distaff of the species. Glad to see those fucking sex clowns won’t be milking any money from your dick. Just like they didn’t manage to in high school. (Or try to.)
This is clearly a cut and paste from an actual session. The Scotty chapters are about the didactic technobabble (and, of course, making it clear that those silly human females can’t be expected to understand this stuff). The character’s job is to expound Mr Wulf’s views on recording — how much nicer analogue tape is than ProTools SonoViz®, LOUDNESS WARS, why he can’t stand listening to MP3s. But job-related pub anecdotes don’t in fact make good fiction writing.
This starts a passage defaming Mutt Lange and Shania Twain. But what I’m wondering is if “pet veal” is an allusion to Piers Anthony’s “In The Barn”.
This starts probably the first actually-amusing scene in the book …
… but we can’t be expected to notice it’s funny unless the characters supply a written laugh track!!
Chapters 7, 8 and 9 are the band recording. Tedious riffing on Mixerman, and lots of another standard pop novel mistake: page-length slabs of purported lyrics. These are bad enough when an author’s trying to write good fictional lines, but much worse when they’re just writing a strawman to demolish. Never do this.
You fucking tool, Fenris. Steve Albini would rip your head off and shit down your neck.
The extended Mixerman crib is in fact the good part. The book then takes a right turn (Castalia books do not turn left) into political polemic — the victory of the anti-Social Justice Warrior warriors courtesy the singer, who is either virtually or literally Satan, and her musicians fomenting a Galtian anti-government rebellion, some anti-Islam ranting, lots of cribs from Ayn Rand and right-wing conspiracist nutcases — all the ideas you hope the meme-spouting Trump fans on your Facebook feed are only joking about, though you fear deep down that they seriously mean them.
Even an otherwise-positive Amazon reviewer notes: “In Part 2 and Part 3 the pillow of political ranting slowly suffocates the story, the characters, and the laugh out loud vibe of Part 1.” The earlier versions attracted similar complaints. It’s a pity that’s the intended purpose of the book as far as the author is concerned.
I could continue dissecting it in horrified detail, but as Phil puts it:
On the other hand, it did momentarily make #2 in Amazon’s “satire” category! So that’s something. (Even if you can make #1 in an Amazon subcategory with three dollars and five minutes.) Also it’s technically alternate history fantasy, so doubtless a hot favourite for next year’s Rabid Puppies slate.
Everything about this book is written in crayon. Read Mixerman instead, it’s vastly superior and contains every good idea in this book and none of the bad.
There’s a reason there isn’t a genre of novels about the pop industry — just a scattering of survivors and a burning garbage heap of cautionary examples.
David Gerard is an embittered superannuated music journalist. He normally writes this sort of thing for Rocknerd, publishing all the fits that’s news since 2001. If you liked this piece, feel free to grab him a coffee. David gratefully acknowledges the vital assistance of observant goons in the composition of this review.
Hi my name is Fenris Blen’derman Teddybeale Wulf Rand and I have long fluffy black hair (that’s how I got my name) with Objectivist streaks and helpful tips that reaches my mid-back and icy rational eyes like limpid tears and a lot of people tell me I look like Anton LaVey (AN: if u don’t know who he is get da hell out of here!). I’m not related to Ayn Rand but I wish I was because she’s a major fucking hottie. I’m a sound engineer but my teeth are straight and white. I have pale white skin. I’m also a Lokian Asatruer, and I go to a magic school called Castalia in Finland where I’m in the seventh year (I’m seventeen). I’m a Libertarian (in case you couldn’t tell) and I wear mostly black. I love the Ron Paul forums and I buy all my ideas from there. For example today I was wearing dark angst with matching ennui around it and a black leather attitude, grey world-weariness and black combat boots. I was wearing no makeup, none of that clown paint. I was walking outside Mom’s basement. It was snowing and raining so there was no sun, which I was very happy about. A lot of SJWs stared at me. I put up my middle finger at them.
then he put his Mises into my you-know-Rothbard and we did it for the first time
Jack Graham
September 9, 2016 @ 9:39 am
Are these people for real?
David Gerard
September 9, 2016 @ 10:03 am
There’s a reason this article is festooned in links.
CliffDor
November 13, 2018 @ 8:34 pm
Joe Bonamassa is a famous country singer, so don’t miss the possibility to visit [url=http://joebonamassatour.com/]Joe Bonamassa Florida tickets [/url]
Yossarianduck
September 9, 2016 @ 11:01 am
My goodness, that My Immortal riff at the end has me grinning, I’d take that over Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality any day.
David Gerard
September 9, 2016 @ 1:31 pm
May I earnestly recommend Harry Potter Becomes a Communist. It’s just about perfect.
Yossarianduck
September 9, 2016 @ 2:36 pm
Simply beautiful, it’s like a Babushka doll of straw men (or straw women, as it were).
Jack Graham
September 9, 2016 @ 2:53 pm
If I had unlimited time and patience I’d write my own serious version of that premise.
mr_mond
September 11, 2016 @ 7:34 am
There is nothing I would like to read more.
Peteski
September 9, 2016 @ 11:14 am
That really was something.
Sleepyscholar
September 9, 2016 @ 2:18 pm
What impressed me about the cover is not fingerpicking an electric (even I can do that) or playing with a broken ankle (give me enough whisky…) but that she can play the guitar standing up without a strap.
Proof, if any were needed, of the supernatural power of Randian Objectivism when combined with pseudo-Norse Fascism.
David Gerard
September 9, 2016 @ 2:48 pm
DAMMIT I DIDN’T SPOT THAT
Sleepyscholar
September 10, 2016 @ 2:51 pm
In the words of Bob Mortimer: ‘And it is to your credit!’
David Gerard
September 11, 2016 @ 4:32 pm
AND IT’S NOT EVEN PLUGGED IN
AND DOESN’T EVEN HAVE STRAP BUTTONS OR A PLUG SOCKET
TRULY IT IS AN ETHEREAL AND PERFECT AIR GUITAR
David Gerard
September 9, 2016 @ 2:49 pm
Things I left out:
couldn’t find a good place to call it “Lurkey’s Chud”, as the cover seems to have it
The cover: Total Distortion: You Are Dead
The cover: reminiscent of a Nazi Taylor Swift variant (except Swift is a lot taller)
unkind speculation on RGUS’ historical relationship with human breasts, which were cut to the suggestion to take life drawing classes. (He added one recently which literally looks like implants gone bad. YOU KNOW, BOOBS ARE MOSTLY NOT SQUARE.)
if you search Record Producer from Dimension X, you’ll find all the pro-audio forums Wulf got banned from for spamming his book
the half a chapter on “Gillian Hitler”, where he revels in his own sparkling wit; Jasmine from Fatal Lipstick (the cover girl) is of course a huge fan
fellow posters on the Electrical Audio forums (Steve Albini’s site) telling him to shut it with the politics. “Maybe stick to the Tech forum, Fenris. You come across like a bigoted 15-year-old retard on this one.”
the bit in a Scotty chapter where he interrupts his own bludgeoning author sound recording polemic with a bludgeoning author political polemic (which might actually count as foreshadowing parts 2 and 3)
oh my goodness the Islamophobia, though that doesn’t kick in until the later parts
Objectivists tend not to be into Rothbard because he and Rand hated each other, but then fanfic is all about wrong ships.
Larry W
September 9, 2016 @ 3:20 pm
Has there ever been an explanation of Libertarian values and ideas that wasn’t a flaming radioactive manure pile?
Below is a link to one of the funniest takedowns of Ayn Rand I have seen. Randian heroes talk with Cobra Commander (much of terrorist leader’s response is facepalming)
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/daylightatheism/series/atlas-shrugged/the-cobra-commander-dialogues/
Simple Desultory Philip
September 12, 2016 @ 6:25 pm
Oh man. This is solid gold. Thank you.
Daibhid Ceannaideach
September 9, 2016 @ 5:17 pm
In addition to all the other reasons this is awful, can we also pause for a moment to consider the absurd doublethink of a book with a gratuitously sexualised cover girl which despises the character so portrayed for her appearance?
Camestros Felapton
September 9, 2016 @ 8:55 pm
‘Aztecs’ is a Vox Day tell.
David Gerard
September 9, 2016 @ 9:20 pm
Please elaborate – I’m pretty certain this guy is a real person who is not Vox Day, and he was using “Aztecs” to talk about the 2011 version of the book. Is “Aztecs” some more general esoteric-wingnut conspiracy trope?
Camestros Felapton
September 9, 2016 @ 11:13 pm
Vox often refers to Mexicans as “Aztecs” both pejoratively and also in terms of Vox’s own supposed multi-ethnicity.
He’s been doing it since at least his World Net Daily columns days.
I don’t know how common it is in other rightwing circles though.
WordCubed
September 9, 2016 @ 9:12 pm
I’ve only ever heard white nationalists use the term “Nordic features”. Or just Nordic in general.
Jarl
September 10, 2016 @ 9:46 am
Hey, that’s not fair. There’s also a belief among alien conspiracy folks in a race of nordic aliens.
Probably a lot of overlap there, I’ll admit.
prandeamus
September 10, 2016 @ 9:58 am
I don’t think that Nordic is particularly right wing as a term in itself. I read it and thought “ah, clichéd tall thin and blond”. It’s not great prose mind you.
I will admit that Nordic is next to Aryan in some people’s thesauruses, though. Scandanavian is a term with fewer political connotations.
Reading the prose extracts above I would recommend a much better editor. Too many adjectives, my dear Mozart.
Fenris Wulf
September 10, 2016 @ 10:27 am
I appreciate any and all reviews, including negative ones. However, this is not a review. It’s a bunch of pseudo-witty sarcasm that has nothing to do with the book itself. Also, when you take it upon yourself to write a book review, you’re supposed to read more than just the preview.
I’m amazed that you would put that much effort into nit-picking it line by line. When Alexei Panshin did that kind of thing, at least he had the sense to go after a prominent writer.
Camestros Felapton
September 10, 2016 @ 10:32 am
It’s actually-witty rather than pseudo-witty.
David Gerard
September 10, 2016 @ 2:35 pm
SELF: It is a 400 page… I’ve read 200 pages of it and that is a 200 page recruiting leaflet for the BNP.
LITTLEJOHN: Well, you can’t comment until you have read the other 200.
SELF: Why? Does it suddenly turn into Tolstoy?
Tim B.
September 10, 2016 @ 12:12 pm
As an aside, and I don’t want to waste time or energy on the Stefan Molyneux make-up facet of the MRA cesspit, but I’m going to go ahead and assume that the owners & positions of power in the cosmetics production & retail industry as well as the media industries that promote/discuss etc the products are almost exclusively male.
And who names their padded cell Anubis? (sorry, randomly capitalised words are like bad kerning to me)
Also the Steve Albini analog reference, how can you get sued for lack of misrepresentation?
Fenris Wulf
September 10, 2016 @ 12:30 pm
And then there are people who are unintentionally funny…
Tim B.
September 10, 2016 @ 2:03 pm
And lack self awareness…
Lovecraft in Brooklyn
September 11, 2016 @ 1:49 am
Harlan Ellison’s SPIDER’S KISS was a weird little anti-Elvis rock and roll novel… I’d read more exaggerated tales of the music industry if they were decent.
Relevant Tangent
September 12, 2016 @ 4:32 pm
Are you the same LiB as used to be on Metafilter?
Kit Power
September 11, 2016 @ 10:28 am
I quite dug Powder as a music industry novel, but I think that’s the only one I’ve read. Really enjoyed this post. More please, should you be able to bare it.
Mixerman
September 11, 2016 @ 2:45 pm
Fenris Wulf used to haunt my forums on ProSoundWeb. He started out as Pricey before he became Fenris Wulf. I can’t remember when we finally cut him loose, but his real name is Brian Price, and he’s no “insider” when it comes to the Music Business, or the recording industry. He’s never even made a record of note, and clearly he struggle with originality.
He also wrote that “satire” (don’t you have to actually know something about what you’re satirizing?) in the early aughts. He may have added or revisited it years later, but there really can’t be much in there of any relevance to how the music business works today.
If Music Business satires interest you, I would recommend my newest book and audiobook #Mixerman and the Billionheir Apparent which can be found in hardcover at your favorite book retailer, online or otherwise. Check out the trailer.
Enjoy, #Mixerman
David Gerard
September 11, 2016 @ 4:11 pm
His legal name is apparently Fenris Wulf, so I’m happy to call him that. And I was delighted to see you are still writing 😀
Mixerman
September 11, 2016 @ 3:06 pm
Oops! https://youtu.be/w12uaTuHh6Q
Thanks for the shoutout David Gerard!
dwoz
September 11, 2016 @ 3:53 pm
So…I’m one of the admins at the audio industry forum website where “Fenris Wulf” a.k.a. Brian Price lurked and honed his libertarian pen, through the mid-‘aughts.
I may have to personally take some blame for this book of his, as I was in the early part of that time a willing foil for his staunchly libertarian blather. It was, after all, the early days of forums, and of internet troll fights. We all thought it was good wholesome fun…and compared to today’s flavor of internet trolling, it was degrees-of-magnitude more civil. Various of us forum participants took turns “beating up” on Pricey/Fenris/Brian’s libertarian screeds, his ideas being such easy, low-hanging-fruit targets. Who knew that shooting fish in a barrel could be this fun?
However, as time went on, it slowly became clear amongst the moderators and admins of the site that something was a little bit “sour” with our internet forum friend Brian, who alternated handles between “Pricey” and “Fenris Wulf.” sometimes conducting sock-puppet conversations with himself.
The similarities that Phil Sandifer discovers between “Loki’s Child” and “The Daily Adventures of Mixerman” are absolutely no accident: Pricey/Fenris/Brian started this book during that period, at Eric Sarafin’s audio industry forum website built around the “Mixerman” persona, half as a paean to Mixerman, a sort of aggrandizng “fan fiction” effort, and half as a refutation or rebuttal of him and the persona of Mixerman. At that time, the monikker “Mixerman” was still an anonymous pseudonym, its real owner (Serafin) a closely-guarded secret. This annoyed Pricey/Fenris/Brian NO END, and he constantly tried to divine the true identity of mixerman. Pricey/Brian/Fenris was himself only associated to the music industry in the most tangential way…a hobbyist, who had done stints as a radio station tech.
It was quite common at that time for actual industry pros to keep their real-life identity quiet (Bruce Sweiden being the notable exception), as it was de rigur on the forums for belligerent bedroom-recordist hobbyists to REFUTE what the pros said about recording. Real pros quickly tired of this nonsense, sighed, and left, leaving the unwashed to squabble amongst themselves about this microphone or that preamp. So there was always a sort of mystique about anonymous handles…was this a REAL industry person, or was it just another punter like me?
This question was BURNING in Brian/Pricey/Fenris’ posts. He was obsessed with it. He was also obsessed with Objectivism, which he managed to inject into discussions about compressors, studio control room layouts, tour hospitality riders, acoustic foam, and whether guitar amplifiers should be on chairs or on the floor when recording.
But alas…all good fun must come to an end, and so it was with Brian/Pricey/Fenris. His writings on the forum became increasingly unhinged, off-topic, sometimes threatening…prompting many site moderators to voice deep concerns about Brian’s state of mind, whether he was capable of hurting himself or others. I do not hold myself out to be a psychiatrist of any repute, but there were many characteristics that one finds in the DSM-V. Since the audio industry content of his posts had diminished to approximately zero, he was eventually heavily moderated, and ultimately banned.
Apparently though, that book he wrote as an “answer” to “The Daily Adventures of Mixerman” lived on. My entire internet forum experience with “Fenris Wulf” left a decidedly bad taste in my mouth. Much of it directed against myself, as I eventually realized that I had been unwittingly baiting and encouraging someone that needed (and likely wanted) to be treated quite differently. I hope that his publishing this book is a catharsis and that it lets him move on, into a positive real-life experience.
Fenris Wulf
September 11, 2016 @ 5:23 pm
Christ, I can’t believe I’m still being harassed by Mixerman’s clique, twelve years later.
The above is a combination of half-truths and confusions. Yes, I got into political flame wars and willingly made an ass of myself. It occasionally made for good comedy. I did not hijack threads, nor did I ever start a political thread myself.
I was mildly curious about Mixerman’s identity, as were most people, but I respected his privacy. I borrowed his “studio diary” idea, but I took it in a much more gonzo direction and I was careful to avoid plagiarism. Eventually I turned it into something that was good enough to get a publishing deal.
The zany humor on the original “RecPit” was an inspiration. A few things in my book will ring a bell, such as the “Gromko” which is my take on the infamous “NibNob.” Unfortunately, some of the personal attacks got out of hand, and consequently i haven’t had anything to do with Mixerman’s forum for the past 10 years.
I have a pretty cool analog studio, I do a lot of low-budget recordings, and I had a weekly radio show that reached the entire Sacramento area, until I got bored with it. That’s the extent of my street cred. I’m a semi-pro audio engineer with a modest literary talent.
Mixerman and his cronies periodically go after people they don’t like in a manner that is more befitting to teenage girls than to professional audio engineers. We’re getting too old for Internet slappy-fights and I’m sure we all have better things to do.
dwoz
September 11, 2016 @ 5:44 pm
“Fenris,” it’s good to see that you’re still among the living (quite frankly…), and I mean no personal affront. You’re right, we are too old for that kind of slappy-fight nonsense.
So, maybe you’re not a Salinger, who’s freshman effort was his crowning literary achievement. Perhaps it will be your sophmore work that tops that bar!
I hope all is well with you, and good luck!
Elizabeth Sandifer
September 11, 2016 @ 7:59 pm
Oh fuck off. You just published a book with a press run by a white nationalist who’s made a career out of harassing people and are now whining about a bad review you got on an avowedly left-wing site. You really don’t get to crash a conversation among people who fucking despise everything you stand for and then complain that the people talking shit about you are harassing you. This ain’t your fucking safe space, and literally nothing that happens here is even remotely aimed at you, targeting you, or trying to talk to you.
Fenris Wulf
September 11, 2016 @ 6:44 pm
Well, I’m glad we can be friendly after all these years. I recall that you’re a fairly accomplished person who’s had a lot of interesting jobs, even if I didn’t like your political views.
I remember the Photoshop job someone did of “The Mixerman Movie” starring Bill Murray, which was a hoot. I still have my first-edition copy of the book. Mixerman was one influence out of many. In any case, I’m sure he would prefer not to be associated with my book due to the political elements. If I do a second book, it’ll be a gonzo radio novel.
Fenris Wulf
September 11, 2016 @ 9:26 pm
@Phil: Inviting people to revisit old fights from 12 years ago is bad form. It’s all right if people hate my book, but I prefer to write my own bio.
I knew the Mixerman connection would come up eventually, so I took the opportunity to acknowledge it and move on.
Elizabeth Sandifer
September 11, 2016 @ 9:42 pm
We’d all prefer to write our own bio, but history doesn’t work that way, and you’ve consciously allied yourself with someone who’s an open eliminationist towards literally everyone who works for this site and practically everyone who visits it, so my sympathy for your “boo-hoo people are dredging up the fact that I was an annoying fuckwit even before I found Vox Day” act is literally zero.
The Flan in the High Castle
September 13, 2016 @ 7:14 pm
I think the only piece of music industry fiction I’ve really enjoyed was Frank Cottrell-Boyce’s 24 Hour Party People. Largely because it admitted up-front that it was more interested in being a good film than a factually accurate one. That Howard Devoto scene… classic.
David Gerard
September 14, 2016 @ 10:20 am
“I really don’t remember this happening, you know.”