#//but i WILL force you to look at my completely contextless art for it

[troublcmakcrs]

//very excited to be done with adult tweek bc now i can properly brainrot about metro

[davidmann95]

Comics this week (3/17/2021)?

Justice League #59: This issue feels like the biggest testament to the word that Infinite Frontier is just the interim before the real relaunch that’s coming, because there is zero pomp or circumstance here of the kind you’d expect even if you think Bendis sucks. Young Justice of all things felt weightier than this in its debut; this is perfectly passable mind you, but if it was anything less than Justice League I’d go “ok, this is one of those Bendis books I don’t care about” and pass it by. I’m pretty sure his more substantial plans for the title are being kept for a proper new #1 waiting in the wings, but in the meantime it’s a perfectly slick team book with a couple decent bits, a bunch of my favorite characters, and pretty Marquez/Bonvillain art so I’m fine with it. Obviously the V/Xermanico Justice League Dark backup was the highlight.

Superman: Red and Blue #1: Apparently a lot of Superman fans didn’t like this, which doesn’t surprise me - a lot of it is Clark beaten down, needing help, or otherwise on the back foot one way or another, and that triggers a lot of alarm bells for a certain type of stan at this point. For my money though these were almost all great, and I was even able to get the cover by the Final Fantasy logo artist Yoshitaka Amano.

* Ridley/Henry/Bellaire/Sharp: The big advertised presentation, I’ve been really curious in the wake of Other History what Ridley would do with a Superman solo story and this absolutely didn’t disappoint. A harrowing take on Clark as truly vulnerable and how his mindset shifts or doesn’t in response I’m kind of astonished DC let the team get away with, this came together wonderfully.

* Easton/Lieber/Chan/Cowles: The weakest of the bunch, a severe but moving tale contrasting Superman’s splashy adventures with his potential impact on those around him bookended by some much weaker stock “are you sure you’re doing enough?” material, though it’s absolutely beautiful under Lieber and Chan, especially the final page.

* Craig/Bennett: A fantastic little tale of parallels on the human scale existing in Superman’s wake, and while that material’s only front-and-center for a couple panels here I would kill to see Craig draw a big cosmic epic.

* Watters/Dani/Sharpe: The big standout aside from Ridley’s story, there’s kind of no excuse for this not having been the first feature of the issue given it’s about the gimmick of the format in a way that leads directly out of its inspiration in Batman: Black and White. I do wonder what colorblind readers would make of the message of this one though, even if I read it the point of what happened as extending beyond the literal physical. In any case, I desperately hope this and Future State: Superman/Wonder Woman won’t be the extent of Watters’ work in this territory.

* Bennett/Thompson/Peteri: A simple but sweet little story of a young Clark learning a formative lesson - don’t see the gimmick that often of having both caption boxes and thought balloons around for different purposes, and it’s one I’m always happy to see.

Nightwing #78: As a Taylor fan, gotta say, this sucks. Flat, twee, totally without narrative momentum or weight except for a single completely bonkers new element in Dick’s world I’ll discuss in another ask, and of all things for some reason a bizarrely shameless Fraction/Aja Hawkeye ripoff alongside its rote regurgitation of Dixon and Snyder. This is everything people who hate the guy’s (non-Injustice, non-DCeased) work think of it as, and Redondo, Lucas, and Abbott’s next level, jaw-droppingly gorgeous work here is crushingly wasted. I’m not sure I can judge this as a ‘failure’ when it’s absolutely going to succeed at its actual goals - not as a story even if I understand even more people are pulling it than the new JL, but as contextless panels to circulate around comics Twitter/Tumblr in perpetuity - but as someone who thought a lot of Taylor’s strengths have been often overlooked and was hoping he’d pull out of some of his worst habits, it’s such a downer to watch him dive in face-first. An instant drop.

Catwoman #29: Fully out of the Brubaker shadow for me at this point and into its own oddball take on crime in Gotham, it doesn’t seem to be attracting much heat but I hope the team gets the space to see its story through and I suspect this run will be looked back on very fondly as a hidden gem in years to come.

Batman vs. Ra’s Al Ghul #5: IT’S BACK BABY, AND LESS EXPLICABLE THAN EVER. So happy.

Captain America Anniversary Tribute #1: Actually picked this up for a friend of the family who was interested and it’ll be shipped to him later, but read it while we have it and it’s exactly what it says on the tin, so if a bunch of artists doing their spins on these pages appeals it’s perfectly worth your time.

Iron Man #7: I continue to be unable to believe in the best way that this is what the ongoing Iron Man comic is about now.

S.W.O.R.D. #4: Alright, alright, alright - probably the weakest issue so far (which is to say it’s still a lot of fun by most any other books’ standard), but we’re past the King In Black of it all and ready to get into the promise of that debut.

Radiant Black #2: I was really concerned whether this would live up to the promise of the first issue or immediately begin to decline, but I’m happy to report that so far this seems like it’s leaning into its better aspects even if the superheroism remains the weaker half, and I’m still curious to see where this goes.

Abbott 1973 #3: Picked up some after the last issue was losing me, I’m back in the tank for the remaining couple.

Orphan and the Five Beasts #1: Stokoe doing kung-fu horror, madness, and righteous vengeance, an easy win.

Ultramega #1: I was skeptical about this one - I’d barely heard of James Harren even as folks were suddenly talking as if him doing work was long understood as a must-see, the preview didn’t especially grab me, and this didn’t seem to much stand out to me among the increasing surge of toku-inspired material. I was ready for the hype to betray me, but while I’ve seen a critique of this as a sausage-fest unwittingly or otherwise building a lot of its narrative on the pain and death of mothers I’d like to see femme or nonbinary critics unpack further, as a reading experience (prior to seeing said critique) this absolutely blew me away. Incredibly dense even at 60 pages - where a lot of those are splash pages no less - beautifully disgusting, gut-wrenching even aside from the pages with guts being wrenched, monumental, and mysterious, a tale of what happens when we’re let down by the men forced into the role of godling-saviors and what happens next. That Harren mentions in the afterward that this is the first comic he’s written is as remarkable as its is infuriating.

[churchyardgrim]

hey! I finished a scene today!!!

the beginning is abrupt and contextless but shh it works I promise, there’s Academia Suffering and Sickeningly Adorable Domesticity and just! read it!!

“Heading home already?”

Harker turns, smiling tiredly at the speaker. “Yeah, it’ll take me half an hour to get my telescope back into alignment, and I want to be home before Erika crashes.”

The wolf takes everyone differently. Sometimes it’s the old seventh-son-of-a-seventh-son trick, coming on unexpected and mutinous. Sometimes it’s invited intentionally, through ritual or purposeful contamination. Sometimes it’s just passed on from parent to child, like blue eyes or ADHD.

In the case of Harris Cormey, it’s hereditary, and messy. Some wolves can change in an instant, all fluid magic and a flippant middle finger to the laws of mass conservation, but Harris’s family change slowly, over the course of the month. At full moon they’re long-limbed and hairy, and find speech very hard with how far out their faces stretch. At new moon they could almost pass for human. Right now, on the waxing space between crescent and quater, Harris’s ears prod out pointedly from under more hair than he feels is strictly necessary and his round face has the look of someone with braces, his lips pushed out around slowly growing fangs. It’s not so bad that he lisps yet, but his eyes are a deep golden brown, just a shade feral.

And right now, those eyes have the apologetic look of someone bearing bad news. “Might want to hurry then, Prof Reynolds wants to see you.”

Harker swears. “She’s still here? It’s after ten!”

Harris gives a sympathetic shrug. “She’s still here, you’re still here, we’re a nocturnal bunch Harks, you know that.”

“What does she even want this time, do you know?” Harker asks as she starts walking back up the hall, dragging Harris after her with the question. He bears it goodnaturedly, hands in his pockets.

“She didn’t say, but I can take a guess.”

“Urf, don’t, your guesses shame me.”

“What I guess���”

“Don’t.”

“—is that you’ve missed another assignment.”

“Augh!”

She wails, half-jokingly, but the exaggeration falls flat. Harris pats her shoulder consolingly. “There, there. It’s not your fault, if only they gave out a schedule of when they wanted those pesky things, life would be so much easier wouldn’t it?”

Harker grumbles, shoulders hunching defensively. “And fuck you too.”

She can’t stall any longer; they’d reached the offending door and Harris is cutting off her escape. She looks back at him imploringly, and is met with unforgiving blandness and a raised eyebrow. She huffs.

She knocks.

“Come in.”

Harris remains at her back, foiling her last-minute plan to bolt and pretend she was never here. She grimaces quickly, then schools her expression back into pleasant neutrality and stepped into Professor Reynolds’ office.

The room is fairly standard for the science department: square, glass on the outside wall, shelves set into the walls on either side, a desk dropped in the middle and a severe-looking woman behind that, her silver hair pulled into a bun that belies the lab coat she’s wearing. Like librarian meets chemist.

Reynolds nods. “Harker.”

Harker feigns innocent ignorance. “You wanted to see me, Professor?”

Reynolds spreads her hands on top of the desk. “You have an attendance problem, Harker.”

Harker suppresses a wince. “Ah, right, that.”

Reynolds barrels on. “You have missed two critical assignments so far. I have been lenient. I will continue to be lenient, but if you fail to complete the makeup assignments or miss any future due dates I will be forced to suspend you.”

“But that’s not—” fair, she was going to say, but swallowed it. Fairness isn’t relevant. What she says instead is, “Professor. I’ll admit I’ve been lax with the coursework, but my research has potential. There are flaws in our understanding of the metaphysical landscape outside of Earth’s atmosphere, if I could just—”

Reynolds interrupts her. “Your pet project does not supersede course requirements, Miss Blackwell.” Oof, last name. “If it’s something viable you can submit it for thesis evaluation, but until then I will need you to focus your efforts on the tasks at hand.” Her expression doesn’t soften an inch, but she exhales very slightly in something that could charitably be called a sigh. “I admire your enthusiasm, I really do. But you need to be putting it towards something more… plausible. Reliable. Not so…”

“Far-fetched,” Harker mutters, and Reynolds nods.

“Exactly. I’m glad you understand.”

Harker slinks from Reynolds’ office, saddled with a depressing folder of makeup assignments, her forced politeness sour in her mouth. She waits until she’s far enough away, across the narrow walkway bridge that spans the road passing between the two parts of the science building, then kicks a trashcan as hard as she can. The metallic crash and clatter echoes satisfyingly in the empty building and Harker snorts forcefully.

She hadn’t told Reynolds about the obscure papers she’d found supporting her theory — Remhi in 1993, and then Jeffords in 2008, both proposing theories too similar to Harker’s to ignore — and she certainly hadn’t told her about the dreams. The repeated sense of limitlessness, of far-reaching whiplashing lines of force, like a grid across the sky. That almost but not quite vanished upon waking.

Nope, Reynolds would have dropped any remaining patience like a stone if Harker’d told her that.

She’s just so sure! The certainty lives like a stone in her chest, solid and unmovable and directing her every action with its gravity.

The way their current understanding of what is commonly called “outer space” works is that magical influence ends where the Earth’s magnetic field does. The theory goes that magic is generated — or at least received — by the Earth itself, behaving in similar ways to the electromagnetic shell that most of the world is aware of. Magic just… stops working once you’re past the moon. If extraplanar bodies — stars, other planets, meteors — have their own magical fields, they’re not detectable from Earth.

But Harker — and Remhi and Jeffords — have reason to believe that’s not entirely true.

There is evidence, subjective and flimsy but evidence, that there is a functioning fabric of magic permeating the outer reaches, and that the only reason it has remained undetected for so long is because everyone else is just looking in the wrong way.

Problem is, she doesn’t know what the right way is yet. Some communities put great stock in dreams and gut feelings, but the Bridgeport University of Arts and Unseen Sciences isn’t one of them. Reynolds and the other department heads need more than hunches to authorize a grant, even a piddly little grad student sized one, and so far she hasn’t been able to deliver.

And now she has a nice shiny failure-shaped blade hanging over her head just waiting to come swinging down. Argh.

She kicks the toppled can a second time, for good measure.

Then she shoves her hands deep into her pockets, stalking for the stairs to the ground level. She just has to… get Erika to be her reminder, yeah. Erika doesn’t even go for groceries without scheduling it, if Harker can’t keep track of her assignments Erika sure can. Whether she can bully Harker into actually following through remains to be seen.

Harker kicks the pushbar on the door to the unforgiving outside, hunches her shoulders against the chill wind coming at her, and makes for the parking lot.

—————

The university is an old collection of buildings, first built in the early 1820s, half of them destroyed by fire and built again in the 1880s, and enduring an ongoing series of repairs and renovations ever since. Most recently a new science building had been added, for which the university’s researchers are forever grateful, including the observatory Harker’s spent the last five hours in.

It didn’t start out as a magical school — and indeed as recently as 2006 there managed to be a student who went through the entire undergraduate program oblivious to the nature of their education — but it became one not long after the Deanship was passed to a rather powerful witch, who desired a place to collect and disseminate his wealth of knowledge.

Now the student body is made up largely of magic users, with a smaller but still substantial population of nonhumans. Werewolves get free reign of the adjacent state park whenever they need it, and most metal fixtures and tools are aluminum or stainless steel instead of iron, in deference to the handful of fae students that come over from their Avalon. Other species are accommodated for on a case-by-case basis, and there are enough to keep the Internal Relations Office too busy to complain.

The campus as Harker leaves is glittering with strings of white lights strung between buildings and lampposts and around bare trees. It’s only November, but winter set in early, before the pumpkins left out on porches had even started to rot, and she guesses someone on the student council thought the place could use some extra brightness in amid the dark and cold. She can’t say she doesn’t appreciate it.

Streetlights shine sodium orange into her car as she passes under them. Resentfully, she’s scooched the driver’s seat up as far as it will go to reach the pedals comfortably, and her cropped short hair resists the weight of her sweater hood with stubborn stiff curls. The sides and back of her head are shaved nearly to the skin, making the fluff on top stand out pleasingly.

As she drives Harker works on her breathing, trying to bleed the tension out. Her hands work the steering wheel like she’s strangling a chicken, frustration stubborn. At a red light she sighs forcefully, pressing her skull back into the headrest. She doesn't want to be this pissed off right now, she wants to be able to relax with her partners when she gets home.

There’s something to be said for working evenings, there’s almost no traffic and she’s home within twenty minutes.

“My loves!” she calls, opening the apartment door to a blast of warm, fragrant air. Ifian looks up from her sewing rig, her dark hair done up in a messy bun. “Habibi! Erika’s in the shower, come, see what I’ve been working on.”

Ifian Jolaha is large, bright, beautiful as a sunset. She dresses in more colors than most people consider in their lifetimes, and enjoys the benefits of belonging to a tailoring family going back generations. As she’s fond of saying, she’s never bought off the rack in her life, which is fortunate given that mass clothing manufacturers still haven’t caught up to the concept that people over a size six are still capable of being fashionable as all hell.

Harker drops her bag on the couch on her way over and leans on Ifian’s broad shoulders to get a look. Ifian’s family is Iranian, and they specialize in traditional Muslim patterns and styles. The spread Ifian’s got out is a jewel blue jacket in a middle stage of construction, each piece embroidered with gold thread in precise, pleasingly geometric shapes.

Harker looks up at the sound of the hallway door opening, a cloud of steam preceding her other favorite person in the world out into the narrow hallway. Erika smiles widely, half the apartment’s ration of towels wrapped around her. “Let me put some pants on and I’ll be right out,” she calls, and disappears into her room.

Harker blows a kiss, suppressing a comment that she’d hardly mind if Erika stayed pants-less. Erika is pushing six feet, and favors three-inch heels; between her and Ifian, Harker looks positively undersized. Her hair is bleached a shining platinum, and it contrasts beautifully with her dark brown skin.

A minute later she returns wearing plaid pjs, smelling strongly of body wash, and pecks Harker on the cheek.

Harker grins and returns the gesture. “Save me any dinner?”

“Sweetie, we ate like three hours ago. It’s almost midnight.”

Harker stumbles dramatically, holding onto a chair for support. “I’m wounded!”

Ifian pats her face. “There’s more waffles in the freezer, you’ll be fine.”

Harker straightens up, all pleasant. “Oh, well, that’s alright then.”

She fetches, toasts, and drenches with syrup the terrible toaster waffles that are her go-to after work meal. Erika bustles alongside her in the kitchenette, fixing herself sleepytime tea and making Harker smile wearily. “Babe, I need a favor.”

Erika looks up from refilling the electric kettle. “Hm?”

Inhale. “Can you, maybe, put my phys lab assignments on your schedule and remind me when they’re due?”

Erika blinks her large tawny-brown eyes. “Sure, why… wait, isn’t phys lab the one you were having trouble with?”

Harker winces. “Not… trouble, okay. Just, the prof is an asshole and gets worked up over the smallest things! So I missed a couple assignments, big deal!”

There’s a sudden looming sensation and Ifian’s steady voice says from behind her, “You did what now.”

“Ahaaa great, dogpile time.” Inhale again, turn so her back’s against the counter and she can see both of them. “It’s not that bad, really! I just… need to cram in more work time so I can get done the makeup work she wants without losing too much time on my project. It’s cool! Manageable!”

Ifian fixes her with a gaze like iron. “Harker. Last month you were nearly hallucinating from sleep deprivation. We didn’t see you for three days.”

Another wince, guilty. “Still not completely sure that was the sleep deprivation… but okay fine I get your point, just. What else am I supposed to do?”

A heavy hand lands on her shoulder. “Same thing I’ve been telling you, cut back on the telescope time. Not all the way!” she forestalls, seeing Harker’s hackles rise, “Just enough that it’s not killing you, alright?” Her gaze softens, going warm and tender enough to make Harker squirm in a not-entirely-unpleasant way. “I don’t like seeing you so worn down, neither of us do.”

Oof. Not fair, going for the gut like that. Harker groans and leans forward, resting against Ifian’s soft bulk. Her girlfriend wraps her up in a warm hug, her other girlfriend smiling as she finishes constructing her tea. Erika leans to peck Harker on the top of her head. “Yes, I will remind you of your academic obligations, and yes, seconded, stop being destructive.” Then she kisses Ifian as well and sits down at their rickety table to sip her tea.

Ifian finally lets Harker go, rubbing between her shoulderblades in the way that hits the knot that always forms there. “Come on habibi, sleep soon.”

Sleep means food, which Harker inhales, and Ifian prescribes her warm milk which is horribly cliche but also works like a dream. Harker muses out loud what parts of her project she can prioritize to make room for the makeup assignments, not even pausing when Ifian puts the warm mug in her hands.

“The orbital monitoring I can probably hold off on for now,” she rambles as she finally stands up to start heading to bed, mug still half full, “there’s some interesting data coming through but I don’t have a means to interpret any of it, it’s just nonsense, so that’s a few hours at lea—”

She stops, abruptly, her mug falling from her fingers to crack in two on the floor, honeyed milk soaking into the rug. Neither Ifian or Erika have time to react, though, because the shattered halves of the mug hover up, over the sodden carpet, and ascend to eye level.

“No,” Ifian starts to say, but the ceramic halves crack again, crunching into shards, then fragments, then pieces no bigger than a thumbnail that orbit purposefully around a centerpoint.

A centerpoint that appears to be behind Harker’s collarbone.

Harker sucks in a breath as the fluorescent lights set into the ceiling hum louder, glow brighter, and the air is filled with the sound of breaking pottery; the entire drying rack of dishes shatters at once, the shards joining the remains of the mug in their circling of her. She wants to swat at the satellites hemming her in but she can’t move, she can only tremble as dread paralyzes her—

The corners of her vision flicker with black, indistinct shapes, and as her feet leave the floor it occurs to her that it might not be dread doing the paralyzing.

[republicstandard]

Racial Profiles: Borzoi Boskovic, Host of The Poz Button

In ten words or less, describe your political persuasion.

Racist trade-unionism with nationalist characteristics.

How and when did you become “red pilled”?

Trayvon, etc. It's not really an interesting story. Most "redpill" stories aren't, to be honest.

What (or who) is the single biggest threat to the continued existence of Western civilization?

Liberal and decadent bourgeois whites. There's nothing to save if people don't want to save themselves.

What figure has been the greatest influence on the development of your political/ideological beliefs?

Probably Ted Kaczynski's writings, but it was never something I really took seriously or developed as you don't want to be known as the guy who said he was influenced by the Unabomber Manifesto. I grew up in a committed non-religious family so naturally, my mind became obsessed with death and by extension, it became obsessed with eschatology and the end of all things. Just normal teenage stuff, right? I got really into reading all about post-apocalyptic societies and the different end scenarios for all things, and thus that led to me discovering the grey goo scenario (spoiler: nanomachines go out of control and devour the world). Interest in that led to me reading, in college, the famous Wired article Why The Future Doesn't Need Us. Kaczynski was never anything more than just a whack-a-doodle bomber whose artist's sketch terrified me as a child, someone whom I was told as a teen that my nascent libertarianism at the time would inevitably lead towards, but that article gave me exposure to his ideas for the first time and I became obsessed with the possible futures that Kaczynski outlined. I wish he'd never committed the heinous and horrific crimes he committed, as we lost such a brilliant mind to system but I suppose that was inevitable when your professor is Henry Murray, the OSS's guy who pioneered the techniques for MK-ULTRA.

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Now here I am, actually influenced in my thinking by his writings on technological society and not entirely sure we can avoid the TechnoGay PissEarth future he outlined for us.

I guess they were right to warn me after all.

What are some other influences on you personally but perhaps not politically?

G.K. Chesterton is still a massive influence on me in terms of attitude and spiritual character. Satan fell by the force of his own gravity. It's important to be able to have a sense of humor about yourself and the world and to still have a mirthful character even when you're staring down at the possibility of PissEarth 2025. I'm a dour and melancholic person by nature; Chesterton's works have always managed to give me a counterbalance to that attitude. My thoughts these days are turning toward Houllebecq these days though, so I guess we'll see how long that attitude holds out. With Lauritz on vacation from The Third Rail, someone needs to embody his well-spring of boundless optimism.

What does your perfect America look like?

I don't know. I don't think I even have one. Non-whites who know my politics have quizzed me on this before, concerned about where my politics will lead to for them. I've said before that I would be perfectly content with a stricter Singaporean system. I don't run around talking about ethnostates or the like though because it's basically pointless. Here's some hard to swallow pills for people:

We aren't going back to the way things were, and we couldn't even if we wanted to.

We are never going to be left alone. There will be no country with giant walls that we get to live our lives peacefully isolated inside.

Every possible good future still ends with us fighting the Chinese.

Our fight is ultimately a global one, and not just because our European brothers are fighting for their countries too. If our enemies succeed, what will happen to many of our most talented people is that they will become a diaspora people serving the Asians and their projects. It's already happening, just look into what's going on with shipbuilding in South Korea and China. If we succeed, well, we still have to oppose the Asian sphere who will do everything they can to hobble us while they expand their soft empires.

These are big geopolitical ideas, I understand. For the regular, average Amerikaner, I just want them to have intact and crime-free communities they can raise their children in without the societal wrecking balls that neoliberal policies smash them up with.

Your critiques of literature and especially film are something the Right has been sorely lacking minus a few exceptions like Trevor Lynch. What got you interested in cinema in particular and what impelled you to begin producing The Poz Button?

I only started the show because I was fascinated by Eyes Wide Shut and the depths of it and wanted to do a podcast about movies I liked. If you listen to the first episodes of the show, it's pretty obvious I had no idea what I was doing. I still don't know what I'm doing with it, but in hindsight it was pretty obvious it would get to this point due to my obsession with Metal Gear Solid 2 and the ideas it introduced to many new audiences about how to program a human being, meme theory, and the creation of new contexts in which to manipulate a person, the core purpose of mass media.

The reality is that people believe movies to be reality. How many people have you known who base their opinions and understanding of history with "But, bro, have you seen Schindlers List/Glory/Hidden Figures?" and so on and so forth. The key phrase in the opening song is from Videodrome: "Television is reality, but reality is less than television". These were ideas that George W.S. Trow was touching on in his peculiar work Within the Context of No Context, and these ideas were at the core of Marshall McLuhan's body of work, which was the inspiration for the Brian O'Blivion character in Videodrome. These are the ideas that are at the core of Edward Bernays' incisive understanding of propaganda. You are not immune to propaganda. The most incisive meme against the internet right has been mocking them for their obsession with movies like Bladerunner 2049 and Drive. You are just as bad as the people as you mock, and without understanding this aspect of yourself and your relationship to media, you will be just as cowed and controlled as everyone else. The ultimate form of controlled opposition, really.

There's this very incorrect notion floating around that I'm a cinephile, something which I don't do much to dissuade people from believing due to my enjoyment of fruity foreign and art films. I'm really not though. Every conversation about movies I have with Nick Mason, a true cinephile, always goes like this:

Nick: Have you seen X?

Borzoi: No.

If you've listened to my show consistently then you've likely noticed I don't actually talk about the movie in question much and I almost never talk about actual film techniques, get deep into the cinematography, or really anything that they'd teach you in film school about film. That's because I'm more interested in what Trow was warning against in his short work Within the Context of No Context, that media (but television in particular) was creating a landscape where people completely have no context for understanding reality because of the contextless reality that media provides for you. To put it more simply, Sven once brought up how since the age of the internet, everything culturally fracturing more and more and there's no 'culture' in the way there was a 70s culture, an 80s culture, a 90s culture, and so on and so forth. That's living without context, and that leaves you utterly atomized.

My background is in literature. I'm a writer at heart. I find movies and television to be mostly frivolous. Films are a static medium and force you to always be a passive viewer. They don't have the collaborative, dynamic, or spontaneity that come from other art forms or even hobbies. I'm only interested in it because people watch movies more than they read books or watch plays, so in order to understand what's truly going on in the world and the culture at large you have to meet people at their level. Almost no one outside of our niche circles is reading Yukio Mishima's Sun and Steel, but millions of people are watching Game of Thrones. There's no value except for its own sake to do a podcast on the former instead of one on the latter.

What are some films you would say are “required viewing” and why?

I don't know. Again, I'm not a cinephile. But you can't go wrong with watching Stanley Kubrick's films. He's the most important filmmaker of the 20th century for a reason. If anything though people should watch documentaries and study their manipulative techniques. Fictional movies have actually exhausted themselves quite a bit and are on a downturn. People want reality but they want it in a digestible form that mimics the structure of storytelling. A lot of this is due to, again, living within the context of no context and thus documentaries not only provide that but also give them a seemingly true reality they can point to for their political and societal views since the democratic society requires that everyone be constantly engaged in it and at the ready to justify themselves and their views.

The reason for the rise of television isn't just because they got better at making it, but because they're able to be more niche instead of going for the lowest common denominator, which movies are required to do in order to justify their budgets, is because it gives you that hit you need for consistently rising and falling action and twists and turns. Why is the twist so ubiquitous and why is it so essential to television series nowadays? Because the human brain is so fried from the media it constantly consumes that it needs novelty in order to keep that high going. People are chasing the dragon when it comes to storytelling. It's the same reason why soap operas and professional wrestling are still so massively popular. It's the twists and turns that keep people coming. Television just promises you twists that are seemingly less ridiculous than soap plot twists.

What do you like to do in your free time? Do you have any future projects in the works?

My free time is mostly spent working out, shitposting, reading articles, playing tabletop games, socializing with average people, and chatting with friends. Like I said before, I don't really watch television and movies. I'm working on writing and expanding my show, but I work a pretty hectic job so I get done what I can get done for now.

How do you define success, both personally and in terms of your political and social aims/beliefs?

The only success that will matter is if the Right and the average person takes the threat and the power of the Left seriously. Currently, they do not. Their mindset is stuck in the 1980s. Look at the obsession with 80s-style music and 80s aesthetic and nostalgia for how much nicer things were in the 80s. What these people don't seem to remember though was that the 1980s were a large product of the feeling that nuclear war could occur at any moment, at the madness of these two massive superpowers that they couldn't just put the missiles down and talk to each other. That fueled the 80s, and at the core of it was escaping to frivolousness and the good times because of the madness going on outside. And despite all that nostalgia for this time period, the Right and the average cannot and will not acknowledge the Left for the threat they actually are.

I'm a guy who doesn't care about the long-term goals if you can't even get the simplest step done. That's success to me. If we can't even get these people to take the most immediate threat seriously, then how are you going to accomplish anything else?

How do you see this ending? Is the United States doomed?

The United States as an entity is definitely doomed. The best option for racially conscious whites is to simply band together and check out from the system once it becomes demographically impossible to affect change and let everyone else have the system. Don't try to stop it from collapsing, just let them run it into the ground. The only way that can work though is through true consciousness being achieved, otherwise, you'll just have Brazil with bold men like Bolsonaro doing everything they can to make that shell of a nation still work. But the American people, the Amerikaner as I call it, they'll persist. There are millions of us. But they'll have to determine the future they want to forge, if it will be a separatist one that they can rally around and slowly retake land or if they'll find another way forward. The best case for us presently is to buy as much time as possible so that serious people can emerge that can develop a bold vision for the future of our people.

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What about the West in general?

Every institution of the West is either dead or dying. Like I said before, we're not going back to the way things were. We couldn't even if we wanted to. What remains then is to take what worked and prepare it for the new ways, with a bold and dynamic vision for the future to come. To quote Guillaume Faye's Archeofuturism: “When this dream has faded, another will emerge.”

The choice the West is staring down, and no amount of fantasy will make this any different, is death-and-rebirth envisioned by our most optimistic thinkers or the maximal total war scenario that Linkola warns about in Can Life Prevail.

I say this so often that it's a cliché, but you need to have a mind for marathon running, and if you don't then it is better to just go and live life as a woke normal person.

I find it very strange sometimes that people ask someone like me for my perspective on things, but the reality is people do so it's important to me that I do not sugarcoat things for people but at the same time outline a workable vision of the future. Circumstances change constantly and you adapt to those circumstances. Once you understand that things will never be the way they once were, it frees you up to make what happens next work and work towards a vision of the future you'd like for your own.

This fight is not over. It never will be.

Follow Borzoi on Twitter.

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