Author: Dennard Dayle

Categories
NERDING DAY

Nerding Day: MYFAROG 🌭

Now that we’ve sprinted past Cyberpunk 2077, I need a new escape. To watch megacorporations feed a civil war, I can open a window. So I’m going back to my roots: tabletop games, our culture’s unpaid interns. In terms of ideas making other people rich, pen-and-paper RPGs are right between Nikola Tesla and black people.

What’s sold and tacitly supported by Amazon these days?

That looks fine. But let’s try a different book. Didn’t Dungeons & Dragons just pump out a Harry Potter ripoff? That could be fun. People like Hogwarts more than each other.

Stop zooming in.

Varg Vikernes? A true modern polymath. Musician, author, and convicted Nazi murderer. He added “game designer” to that crowded resume in 2015. Because shame, like credit, is out of reach for the people that need it.

MYFAROG stands for “mythic fantasy action role-playing game.” For readers new to speculative gambling, that means “placeholder, replace later.” It kind of evokes the fan-favorite GURPS (Generic Universal Role-Playing System) to attract some swastika-free clientele. Or at least the classic failure FATAL, which is its own article. I’m not explaining celebrity arson and FATAL’s “anal circumference” stat in the same piece.

Varg’s game is a race between ambition, laziness, and hatred. It’s close. But with each stock quote pasted above an unedited aryan fairy tale, laziness inches ahead.

First, let’s break down the gameplay. It’s D&D.

I don’t mean one of those fancy games updating D&D’s ossified foundation, or putting it in space. I mean that Varg screencapped an old Player’s Handbook, gave it a pharma name, and called it fresh product. MYFAROG moves most stats to the left and gets rid of all the classes people like. Leaving time for extra race science.

Consider, but make no attempt to comprehend, this linear algebra test from MYFAROG:

It’s a kissing cousin of this old D&D quarterly earnings report:

Don’t sweat the details of these number mazes, and save “racial modification” questions for later. Reading this means you pay for entertainment, and need that energy for A) work, B) dynastic family politics, or C) panicking. Just know that this is very familiar. In a sea of copycats, MYFAROG distinguishes itself with nothing.

Of course, I could be full of shit. Changing “Wisdom” to “Will” and hitting print might be the height of creativity. The author of “Zany Neuromancer” shouldn’t throw stones. Once people remember Mark Twain wrote a fantasy novel, I’ll be panhandling.

Besides, MYFAROG isn’t about the mechanics. It’s about the world. And to understand that bugshit world, it helps to understand Varg. Varg is the person sane death penalty advocates think of. He has a flashy crime, zero apologies, and a legion of like-minded observers.

But he’s also a dork.

Black metal artists (the subgenre, not my dead dreams) stereotypically worship Satan, and that stereotype is true and awesome. Nothing’s keeping me from a Behemoth tattoo but future interviews/family hugs/I have two. The problems start when they drift from Satan.

Take Burzum’s Louis “Varg Vikernes” Cachet. He ignores our father below to worship paleness. Varg spent 15 years in Norwegian prison (about six American) for pentagram-free homicide and arson. Specifically, bandmate murder and church arson. He’s a white nationalist that has exclusively destroyed white people, culture, and property. Life is strange.

Granted, it’s been a while, and he’s served his time. When an artist burns down one church, there are natural questions about forgiveness, redemption, and online reenactments of The Scarlet Letter. But Varg burned down two churches. Just kidding: three. My favorite things are sacrilege, fire, and tremolo picking, and I still think he should’ve locked himself in first.

Given his race war scorecard, it’s unclear what Varg thinks subalterns will do in the Great Uprising. Cut him a check? Trade him for three first round draft picks? Varg’s done more damage to white people than talk radio. The Uprising’s chat is pretty calm these days:

Naturally, his fans buy anything he touches. If Varg kept his first matchbook, he’d be retired. Instead, we have MYFAROG, one of the strangest cash-ins in master history. It replaces power fantasy with white power fantasy.

Though, in Varg’s defense, I’m probably illiterate. We should let him introduce the game in his own words.

See? You’re safe. You know because Varg told you. Just keep the fire escape clear.

The setting’s called Thulê, which is a better name. If he’d called this game Thulê, people without backup copies of Mein Kampf or black stepdads would play. Publishing would just pasteurize Myfarog’s message into quirky trivia, like Warhammer 40k naming a subliterate warmonger after Thatcher.

That’s not a random shot: here’s the fearsome orcish warlord Ghazgkull Mag Uruk Thraka:

This school of satire’s known as “screaming at the television until the cops show up.” Which is my main hustle. Andy Chambers denies it today, because death makes old feuds awkward. Fair enough. I already have a book covering my ass locked and loaded.

My point? Varg isn’t the first guy to use dice as a soapbox. In fact, he highlights MYFAROG’s educational potential:

I love learning! Let’s learn more about Thulê.

Thulê’s coastal Norway without judgy prisons ruining the scenery. I’m down for that, but I’d introduce my Aryan paradise with a little more sizzle. Tolkein set the tone by putting the slam poetry before the textbook. A screaming specialist should care more about aesthetics.

There’s the juice. As far as worldbuilding goes, cheating spouses do better every day. But there’s nothing awful here. Odds are it only gets lighter as this article goes on. Maybe I’m bullying a reformed man for the crispy churches of his youth. What kind of people fled the Ettins?

Perfection. I came ready for all black people to be magic gorillas or whatever. Fine. That’s what I get for pirating paying lots of money for Dungeons & Darkies. But all black people being pirates or land pirates? That’s fucking awesome. I’m in. Hoist the black(er) flag.

I’m never using real slurs again. Going forward, friends are my Darklings. My drinking anthem is Real Darkling Role Call. Fistfights between grandpas and blind men are Darkling Moments. And no, Thulêans can’t say it.

If the combat didn’t suck, I’d run a blaxploitation campaign instead of writing this. The villain would be the square root of Shaft, Killmonger, and Blackbeard. Sadly, two rounds of MYFAROG take longer than writing and pitching that movie. Wish me luck.

As for Weaklings, the texture’s less fun. While Darklings have a bonus to spear-throwing–which my local gym records confirm–Weaklings have a bonus to…trickery. According to my 5th Edition Monstrous Manual, that’s a +3 dogwhistle for–

There it is.

For the aspiring hatemonger, anti-semitism’s like dribbling. You drill it to a reflex, early and often. MYFAROG wants to give youth a real shot at pro fascism, instead of languishing on the bench like Varg. It’s his way of paying it forward to the next generation. If this metaphor seems odd, my brother’s a big fan of Kyrie Irving. And can’t take a punch.

Eagle-eyed readers might notice Khemetian instead of Weakling. Jewish stereotypes are split between the two. While Weaklings are the cartoony Putty Patrol, defeated en masse by the White Power Rangers, Khemetians are closer to the shadowy coalition your brother tweets about. Okay, my brother, but you know what I meant.

There’s a version of Christianity in here too, which is confusing if you only track Murdoch-brand reactionaries. On the metal isles, some resent Christianity displacing local flavors of theocrat. Fair enough. This is Varg’s chance to win me over, and he botches it by channeling everything I hated about Baptists.

That said, Varg’s worldbuilding isn’t all about race. He covers finance as well.

Varg’s tenth-biggest problem is staying focused. MYFAROG is, in theory, a game. This tidbit of redundant anti-semitism doesn’t help players fight black pirates, or add flavor to their band of identical heroes. The entire point of making Blondes & Barbarians is brainwashing me with mechanics, not getting mad at fictional subprime loans. Gamers and antisemites hate one thing: reading. Spend your words more carefully.

That’s better. This character generator gently encourages you to only play native Thulêans. In fact, it’s physically impossible to roll an untermensch. D&D may have rules for playing giants, talking trees, lobbyists, content-starved podcasters, and endless dwarf subspecies, but MYFAROG lets you choose between five shades of white.

In case it’s not obvious: Thulêans are perfect. They’re honorable sons of Odin from which all honor and guitar solos flow. They have serfs, but they’re cool about it. Every time a Thulêan sneezes, a darkling sees the error of his breathing ways and dives into the sea. The swimming table is a page long, so I’m guessing they can’t.

According to the website, Thulêan greatness is MYFAROG’s best selling point. From the “Why MYFAROG?” page:

Festive. I’ll honor my i-Mockery heritage with some close reading. Note the term “Native European.” It has a certain flavor. Some readers may check their bugout bags by reflex. Your grandfather might ask if “the Krauts are acting up again.” Because some phrases, while technically bland, inspire instinctive panic. Carbon monoxide. Tectonic friction. Native Europeans.

It fits: Varg’s not a literal Nazi in the white nationalist Pokedex. He’s an electric-type worshiper of the Æsir, who most of you know as “Thor and character actors.” Hence the myth in “mythic fantasy.” If those subgenre distinctions seem meaningless, keep in mind he’s a metalhead. Never confuse Post-Blackened Slamcore for Pre-Slam Blackcore. See: the comment below calling Behemoth blackened death metal.

Anyway, that’s enough education from Varg. Who’s ready for mythic action?

Fuck.

God, I could be recapping Oriental Adventures. A stellar HotDogger even sent me a clean copy. That game’s dated in a fun, admiring kind of way. It’s like a stoned cosplayer described Japan to Gary Gygax in a third language. Which, in Gary’s defense, is the history of cultural exchange.

Instead we’re stuck with action-adventure hate speech. And Varg forgot the action.

“It’s a society where leeches are healthcare, what’s wrong with feeding Baldur a few deviants?” There’s a world between Varg’s mythic fantasy—where the traits of noble society are sweet and good—and fantasy where society sucks the normal amount. Lurid or not, Cersei Lannister’s naked jog comes with a tone of “this is sub-ideal.” Varg is a hundred percent on board with every pre-Charlemagne hate crime. For him, Vinland Saga is a fun guy’s devolution into a spoilsport.

It comes through more clearly on polygamy, which is very important for fighting orcs:

The overlap of Akon, church arsonists, and Mormons is small, but extant. You might wonder how this helps you fight skeletons, but Varg can’t hold your hand through everything. Except prostitution. There’s plenty of time for the history of prostitution.

There’s been one society without prostitutes, and it was made of tiny blue Native Europeans. Even they toed the line with Sugar Baby Smurf and Paypig Smurf.

Alright, maybe I’m addicted to wedge issues. Here’s some less loaded nostalgia wank:

We have a new standard for optimism: seeing the lack of toothaches or allergies in cave paintings, and not assuming everyone with them just fucking died. For all the edge Varg built a career on, that is a gumdrops and sugarplums version of Earth. After three years of madness, I’ve never seen vaccines blamed for love handles.

These mythically pointless asides might seem like filler. That’s because of vaccination. Uncuck your immune system and embrace premodern science:

I’m experimenting with subtlety, so I hope MYFAROG’s first twist is coming across. The propaganda game by a convicted Nazi rockstar murderer is somehow fucking boring. Not leftie subtweet “I can’t admit I’m offended” boring. Six-hour mycology seminar boring. Wherever the line between studying and fetishizing the past lies, MYFAROG sprints past it like a darkling at a Burzum show. 

Forget basic morals for a bit, and consider tone. Chasing realism (or its edgy understudy) undermines MYFAROG’s mission. The title makes two simple promises: mythic and farog. “Mythic” plays poorly with reminders that your heroes wipe with moss.

I don’t think there’s a Blind Guardian song about that. 

It creeps into the combat too. All the prose poems about blonde greatness go for an Arthurian vibe. But you roll to avoid fleeing every turn you take damage. That’s fine for big-picture strategy games, where a teenager’s self-esteem isn’t invested in Space Marine #482. But in this hero simulator, your mythic champion’s favorite spell is Summon Urine IV.

Still, avoid thinking of Varg as a stupid fuck. MYFAROG hits its only real goal: a whites-only table at the RPG club.

In the lore brick, rampaging ettins pushed godless outsiders into holy Thulê. E.g.: global instability sparked tense migration into Europe. Varg melted fantasy cliches into a National Front PSA.

More proof his brain exists: this bit of careful cover. Heroes can battle the Thulêan Klan:

“See? I hate bigotry. You can fight whatever you think bigots are. Run an all-inclusive dungeon crawl with your half-breed friends, while the rest of us fight white genocide.” The same section has four Khemetian “trickster” cults plotting from the shadows.

I’m extra skeptical because the lore’s thin by MYFAROG standards. I know what color spear a darkling carries to steal Thulêan brides on Wednesday (purple), but I don’t know who runs The Gardeners.

That half-assed deflection has a quarter-assed layout. While Varg’s not a stupid fuck, he’s a verified lazy fuck. His moss trivia has zero presentation. That stands out in a game manual, which is basically a vision board for wizards.

Fantasy visuals aren’t free, since even AI art costs dignity. So Varg gives each page plenty of Lebensraum, and fills white space in MYFAROG with cliches. I don’t mean fantasy tropes. I mean literal stock phrases, reprinted without context or purpose in every blank corner of the book:

That’s the first quote, and closest to fucking relevance. Most are pointless enough to make me appreciate on-message xenophobia.

Here’s a few of the non-thoughts filling gaps in MYFAROG:

I cherry-picked for hilarity. It’s mostly shit like “If you fear death, you are already dead” and “Why won’t my son talk to me?” It reflects vast reading and negative literacy.

We have a “book dumb” stereotype of bigots, because it makes us feel smarter. Well, that and well-read bigots bought their way out of Pickett’s Charge. But let’s focus on ego.

Varg’s not book-dumb. He’s memorized heaps of white history month articles, and condensed them into the skeleton of a game. There’s more research and intent behind MYFAROG than any good game you’ll ever enjoy or purchase. Thank Satan he never finished it.

Despite everything I say, think, do, or experience, I’m a silver linings guy. MYFAROG has an interesting idea!

It’s vanilla-flavored karma, passing traits on from dead player characters to properly min-maxed murder machines. You can think of it as the struggle up the ladder of reincarnation, or Rogue Legacy for nazis. Dealer’s choice.

That lone creative spark? Steal the fuck out of it. It’s a tabletop game, no one will stop you. Netflix churns out six World of Darkness shows a year. D&D movies never work out because Hollywood already made them without Beholder puns. My next book is Dark Sun, Plus Headspins. Take Varg’s idea and run to the bank.

Or use the name for medication. Baphomet knows it fits.

…

This article was brought to you by our fine sponsor and Hot Dog Supreme: Neku104, who would play a Mystical Canadian if they played MYFAROG, which they don’t.

If these images are borked, you can read this article and every other one on the much better in every way 1900HOTDOG.COM.

Categories
FUCKING DAY

Fucking Day: Naked Attraction 🌭

“Dating in reverse” sounds like meeting in divorce court and breaking up on a blind date. Or breaking up at a single’s mixer and meeting because they want white kids. It’s also the slogan of Naked Attraction, the outer limit of primate-on-primate violence.

The internet lied to me. The finest reality TV cruelty doesn’t come from America, Japan, or even the Russian fight pits. England’s the uncontested king of Milgram reenactments. All thanks to Channel 4: a suffering-powered machine intended to take us all to Avalon.

Britain approaches reality television with the same empathy and restraint as real estate. But their signature food supply pranks will be forgiven and forgotten long before Naked Attraction. This show starts with hate for human flesh and ends with hate for human souls.

Despite the name, Naked Attraction isn’t a nudist colony thriller. It’s a game about exposing your soul. The contestants also have no clothes, but that barely matters. The star is the misshapen wraith hiding behind civility.

But that’s just my take. Like any modern crime, Naked Attraction has promo copy.

There’s at least one intact brain behind Naked Attraction, because “dating in reverse” does twice the work without the cliches. Whenever a dating show makes apps the Great Enemy, they’re liquefying at least one human soul per ad break.

In case you also skim pictures when you’re hung over: on Naked Attraction, six people line up to be judged, limb by limb, like a Virginia fire sale. Despite representing a different triangle trade vertex entirely, players jump in with a Jefferson’s enthusiasm. Cultural diffusion at its finest.

I’ll skip whether or not this would work. No one cares if dating show guests find love, including the guests. But of all the rituals for Instagram followers, this is the darkest since Age Gap Love. Which is real, exactly what it sounds like, with the first problem you thought of, and also British. Gladiators are next.

I smelled pain after finding ten seasons with no local knockoff. Networks love rushing hits to the syndication money-printer. Ten uncashed checks isn’t oversight. It’s a cover-up. They’re hiding the kingdom’s 539th greatest crime.

That, or their spinoff empire can’t process nudity without burying Janet Jackson/Katie Hill/[free space]. It takes work to out-prude the people that coined Victorianism, but children strive to surpass their parents. I lashed myself twice for every testicle in this show, and three times for every lash I enjoyed. The NBC set would look a little different..

Before we dissect the frog, two Flash Facts. One: The behavior in this torture chamber and my godless sense of humor don’t reflect the reality of dating. They reflect lonely souls judging desperate souls on national television. Body dysmorphia is as common as having a body, so keep that in mind. Two: everything’s censored, but if you read this at work you’ll end today less employed than you began it.

Naked Attraction spirals, but not far. We’ll warm up with the pilot, before deadlifting the heavy despair.

Our host is sideshow veteran Anna Richardson, not that you’d know from watching. Her name appears less often than pierced perineums. The penalty for self-promotion in her contract likely involves a cyanide tooth, or an episode as a contestant.

A shame, since her job takes flexibility. When the guest’s an escaped nun exploring rumors of muscular apes, Anna makes three jokes about balls. When the guest is a cult leader recruiting brides before The Ascension, Anna makes three jokes about vulvas. I’m not saying she’s bad. Just that she’ll be replaced by HarassGPT.

She hosted Secret Eaters, which did for eating disorders what Naked Attraction does for body dysmorphia. Anna opened episodes with “Britain has got a big fat secret,” a sentence tied with CCP propaganda for the cruelest words I’ve quoted. Secret Eaters played the oboe over it, alongside footage of people eating against their will. Cooler heads softened it to “Britain has a big problem” in season two, but by then mankind was ready to stream slap fights to the death.

Her first victim’s Aina, a London musician and perfect mark. She’s one of twelve fools to sign up for a reality show’s first season, before anyone knows how many MXCs of humiliation get added in post. The Great British Bake-Off and Big Brother pull from the same species on the same island. Adobe Premiere decides whether you get depravity or Big Brother.

She parties too hard for most guys, so Aina’s here to find one that also doesn’t get consequences. Love means more to her than exposure, unless someone would lie to be famous.

The host parrots Aina’s intro, and then the dick auction begins.

One of the dicks has this tattoo.

The match is over. In ads, the “unique value proposition” is something only your product offers, and a lie. Agencies invent the magic separating Pepsi from a theoretical alternative. This man has a real one, in plain sight, with two floppy ears. Every trait that leads someone to S1E1 of Naked Attraction leads to Elephant Dick.

The appeal may be lost on you, because you read. But writing workshops gave me some insight into people that don’t. For ennui’s horniest victims, elephant ears have all the charm spellcheck lacks.

You’ll get both, because the next phase is lying. We’re pretending the game isn’t over. Aina still has to evaluate five other dicks, and send someone home for one of two possible reasons. Followed by four more rounds of live mendacity.

“Cheap Thrills” plays while Aina eliminates the smallest penis. Per Aina, it’s because of “Something in the stance.” Before your brain can reject that, we learn the face a human makes during a Genital Walk of Shame.

I get it. He’s the first man out in a public dick-measuring contest. Only a select group of fraternity rejects know his pain. Afterwards, comfort and mockery will sound and feel identical. The only thing I know about Yellow Pod is that he deserves better.

Yellow Pod’s a computer science student, and education can’t prepare you for that moment. The class is too hard to pitch: more of us would get mileage out of Advanced Dirty Bomb Defusal than Intro to Televised Dick-Shame. All you can do is brush yourself off, hold your head high, and plot revenge from Monte Cristo.

I could say that the other players aren’t eliminated in girth order. That a round answering “What’s your favorite body part?” puts the game in the air. That the oceans are retreating and Vince McMahon is going to jail. But Naked Attraction bought ten seasons with one truth: we never stop lying. Players eliminate overweight people for their voice, short people for their elbows, and black people for their fixation on Chinese Emperors. But like Zhao Gao’s usurpation of Qin Er Shi’s court, everyone can see what’s happening.

Aina gets naked for the finals. And after revealing her id, she takes her clothes off too.

This theoretically reverses the dynamic, as the host feeds contestants leading questions about Aina’s body. But Aina’s still scheduled to humiliate one of them afterwards, so it’s a compliment contest. The man on the left knows he’s lost, and calls her “presentable” twice. Meanwhile, as Elephant Man wobbles towards victory, he shows more confidence. His enthusiasm becomes apparent. He gets an erection.

Perfect power move. They leave together.

A cynic might call this premise an incel factory. Yup. That, if nothing else, isn’t Naked Attraction’s fault. I don’t double-check trending terror motives when I write, except I do because I’m a lunatic. But I don’t expect others to.

“That’s a lot of incel jokes for one dating show,” says the strawman. “But I trust Dennard. Surely he knows consensus reality can’t survive an incel episode of Naked Attraction.”

Got you again, Comedy Strawman. When will you learn?

By season 7, Naked Attraction is done with standard human isolation. The spark is dead. It’s heard all of isolation’s stories, tried every position isolation likes from porn, and rerolled sex dice with isolation until their usual came up. Buying a couple’s cruise only made the divorce bells louder.

Thus begins the stunt casting.

The season premiere has the Christian. I retired from jabs at the Abrahamic expanded universe, after learning I was an “asshole” who was “not helping” at multiple “weddings.” Naked Attraction skips that lesson, and sets up the softest target it can find for a direct collision with the zeitgeist.

We meet Brian in a jarring cutscene. It has the grace and subtlety of an unprotected chair shot. We’re a long way past Season One’s underground charm, which didn’t exist. Naked Attraction can feel The Masked Singer breathing down their neck, and they don’t have Chris Jericho’s number.

Brian explains “If I was a wine, I’d be a well-aged Californian Cabernet Sauvignon with lots of elegance and flavor, paired with all kinds of big, bold, beefy dishes.” Screenwriting books call that the lie your hero believes. This gentleman will elegantly call three women fat and pair with no one.

Brian’s never had a girlfriend, kiss, or full explanation of reality TV. I don’t know why his Tory friends didn’t warn him. Or at least tell him not to say “I don’t know where all the parts of the vagina are.” It robs comedy writers of fun paraphrases.

He likes taking things slow, the way a political prisoner likes free housing. Abstinent people are all over the place, but they’re not charging onto Naked Attraction. And Brian’s hornier than someone ordering wings at a strip club. An editor he should never forgive included this shot:

Then the game begins. Anna’s more dialed-in than usual, which is never good for the players. She hits Brian with five variations of “How much not-fucking have you done?” seconds after showing a short film with the answer. Brian’s too direct and evasive at the same time, explaining he’s had “half a lapdance” and “avoided looking at the bottom part.”

Anna smells blood. They roll out six bottom parts.

Brian struggles with the concept.

And bails.

Once again, the match is over. Brian’s still here for love, but the pods are here for airtime. Whoever wins, the date ends in untouched wallet condoms and Jordan Peterson retweets. Anna and Unseen Producer feign concern before gently and supportively getting Brian back to work.

To his credit, he rallies. Genetic memory helps Brian spring into human shopping, and discard idolaters with piercings and makeup. But first, he eliminates Blue Pod for being his “usual type.” I will now cash in my one free virgin joke. I’m tearing out the coupon, handing it to the cashier, and going back to bored Emperors afterwards.

Brian’s “usual type” doesn’t matter because he can’t have a usual type. I don’t have a usual type of private jet. Reagan doesn’t have a usual part of Heaven. Naked Attraction knows Brian can’t see himself, so it’s set him up to fail. Brian’s dick is an afterthought; his brain’s naked.

Then Green Pod, a gothy gym resident, helpfully identifies key areas of the vagina. And it’s a lock. Three minutes after saying “I think sex should be sacred,” Brian decides Suicide Girls are sacred. We’re now playing for silver.

Seven seasons in, that means dancing while Brian plays piano.

The logic? Brian needs a classy girl that can wall-twerk to Bach. The truth? They’re dead and Anna Richardson’s the devil. She barks improv comedy at the pods, while Brian avoids tritones in front of bodies he’ll never touch. Green Pod and Pink Pod sway in confusion, which I get. Yellow Pod refuses and Red Pod sends it, both earning my eternal respect.

Strong showings all around, but Brian’s fully committed to Elvira’s torso. He’s planned their wedding reception, down to the wine and Bible translation on each table. Which is a shame, since Blue Pod looked willing to take that deal.

Each trial ends with a time skip and post-date autopsy. I didn’t show you Aina’s, because you know what happened. Some say they’re still going. But did Brian connect with the Morticia stunt double of his dreams?

Look at that gap. The couch has a demilitarized zone.

This should be the only censored image. It’s graphic. The couch is Naked Attraction’s cruelest character, and Anna Richardson tries. Failed couples sit across a force field, with eyes that say “I miss the pod.” It’s like the Penance Stare: I feel every rejection I’ve received or given at once. Homecoming and divorce court, combined on one couch cushion.

It happens a lot.

See, in the NakedVerse humiliation isn’t punishment for thirst, prudishness, desperation, aloofness, low ELO, dropping dumbbells, cruelty, or naivete. It’s punishment for breathing.

Brian slips into playing hall monitor again, but I’m done needling him. Let’s tap into something I normally avoid: new ants. Noo-aunts. Nu-wants. Fuck. I can do this. Clap your hands and believe in Jamaican Tinkerbell. Nuance. Someone can be a reactionary dork and get done dirty by Channel 4 at the same time. The latter isn’t justified until they load up on Tren and become dating coaches.

Naked Attraction bugs me because it wears constructive clothes. If it was called The Lonely Torture Hour or Fuck You, I’d be talking about chokeslams right now. Instead, Channel 4 made a sex-positive venus fly trap. Brian doesn’t need Naked Attraction. He needs two years of constructive failure and a sex-ed pamphlet. Now he’s the U.K.’s most humiliated non-prime minister.

And yes, it’s worse than swiping. Comedians hate online dating and new material. Yet Naked Attraction effortlessly defends the concept. OKHingeMeetsFish, if nothing else, puts some distance between you and live judgment of your pores. For many, that inch of comfort separates romance and Romanian law enforcement. The industry’s an antitrust suit waiting to happen, but so is water.

As for self-promotion? I get it. I really do. Half my career is walking by klan rallies with a “kick me” sign. Here’s a handy rule. Write down the craziest shit you’d do to double your following. Not your reach, sales, respect, or fanbase: just passerby on Mark Z’s lawn. Take a photo. If anything more humiliating than that comes along, say no.

…

This article was brought to you by our fine sponsor and Hot Dog Supreme: Neku104, voted best Red Pod for Crotch Only on Seasons 1-17 of Hot Dog Attraction.

Categories
UPSETTING DAY

Upsetting Day: The CCP Rap 🌭

The birth, sterilization, and death of slang is a fun cycle. According to my staff, “banger” has about two weeks left. I’m proud to bring you the last banger.

Wait, what’s that at the bottom?

I’m in.

Hip-hop and government go together like ice cream and rat poison: perfectly. My party playlist has two songs. The first is Streyer campaign anthem “Back Dat Azz Up,” a drowning candidate’s call to black lifeguards. If courting black voters with a twerk anthem sounds like a bad idea, you missed the peak of history. Juvenile rang in the American Empire’s retirement. The other song is “The Trailblazer,” which celebrates the job opening.

Granted, I’m as biased as any Amnesty International donor. I’m still on a list for telling Dick Cheney to go hunting alone. So I’ll let CGTN introduce their work:

You might not be familiar with CGTN, since it’s banned in touchier countries. It’s a great channel for human interest stories and forced confessions. As an apocalypse junkie, finding a CGTN rap video is like combining Christmas and labor camp parole into one holiday.

First, note the gentle offer to install a state media app on your personal device. Privacy isn’t the issue– domestic tycoons harvested your SSN, nudes, and blood type ten years ago. We’re all ants on the world stage, beneath the notice of the giants wrestling overhead. But now you’re on an NSA list titled “Dangerous Morons.” You’ll never get another job more important than scarecrow.

The copy marries cutesy marketing and ultranationalism. I’ll never find “meteoric rise” and “groove to the beat” in the same sentence again. Alone, marketing drones would say “Bored? Check out this fire command economics bop!” Alone, ultranationalists would say “你們的时代已結束了，汉堡瘾君子們。你們现在變成杰克斯派洛电影的工厂。”* Together, they say we’re in for an amazing time.

*Your time is over, burger addicts. You are now a factory for Jack Sparrow films.

That said, the title gets a rose. “The Trailblazer” is killer branding. Difficult to promote in 32 second-language bars, but it has the right tone. Fans and critics of single-party surveillance states agree on one thing: it’s where we’re all headed. Let’s meet our stars:

Our first state poet is Forster Asare-Yeboah, a Ghana-born, U.K.-raised, Chengdu-enriched rapper. He’s internet-famous enough for 1.8 million Weibo followers, and normal-famous enough to rap in clubs. If that makes his presence here confusing, your soul is intact. Flee these benighted lands and return on Punching Day.

Forster’s the black part of our “Sino-African rap song,” and way too mediocre for propaganda. You should be either too inept to take seriously (Rambo III) or too majestic to reject (Rambo: First Blood Part II). The American Sniper zone is dangerous. Audiences start asking which wars were officially declared, and what uranium cake was imaginary. You’ll never see a C+ Saudi drama about Jamal Khashoggi.

As you’ll soon see, free education is the luckiest card Forster could have drawn. It’s a natural 20. “There were less schools, and now there are more” requires zero spin or disappearing actresses. So it’s odd that he whiffs it. I’ve heard more energetic eulogies. Forster makes the most absolute truth in this song sound like bullshit, before losing interest and skimming over surveillance-friendly tech.

As for motive, I get it. Forster likes life with a pool and without a cellmate. I’d cheerlead most despots for a PS4. That’s not a typo, I want to replay Bloodborne.

On to The Trailblazer’s thesis:

I love “China Made It” on three levels. It’s not a total reversal, so it feels incomplete. I end up staring at the phrase like a punchline without a setup or nouns. It’s also a comeback to a dead joke, ten years too late to parry blonde pundits. We know that subpar imports start with nonexistent American budgets. Finally, it treats total manufacturing dominance like an old shame. Imagine a defiant German freestyle called “Printing Press These Nuts.”

The delivery here’s extra stilted, which fits a pet theory of mine. It’s pure conjecture, but I’m fucking right. There’s a lyrical quirk you’ll often find among low-tier black rappers on clean songs: awkward two-beat pauses or ad-libs. That’s withdrawal from using rap’s favorite filler.

It pops up here. Call me a madman. But somewhere on a CGTN hard drive, “The Trailblazer: Drill Mix” exists. When they release it, the future is theirs.

I’ve waited thirty years for this moment. The exact second the word “hater” entered international relations. There’s no undoing this. The seal is broken. Before the first bomb falls, an Indian diplomat will call a Pakistani general a dickrider. The CIA will contest the authenticity of Putin’s shoes. Mauritania will tell the world to “emancipate some bitches.”

Don’t fight the spiral. Embrace it. President Curtis Jackson III is the right man to lead us into the new world. Diss diplomacy can’t be stopped, but it can be perfected. A man that won’t stop tormenting Ja Rule won’t stop fighting for you.

Enough of the first verse. That’s not why I’m here.

In 1999, Forgot About Dre introduced Eminem to black people, creating a crossover star. The Trailblazer does that for Saina, the world’s best propaganda rapper named Saina. We are living in her moment.

Listing ethnicity after every name is odd, but I’m sure that won’t matter later. We’re here for 16 bars of party dominance.

Breathe it in. Figuratively, especially if you’re in Beijing. Meet our generation’s Nas.

This woman is my fucking hero. She raps the way a twelve-year-old heelflips off a roof. You know she’ll shatter every bone in her body, and so does she. It changes nothing. She doesn’t give a shit. She has three seconds of midair footage before losing both knees forever, and she’s milking all of them.

Look into her eyes. I don’t have the social skills to tell you if she believes in this message. But she’s burning life force to sell it. The Minitrue agent directing asked her to take it down to twelve, and she called him a traitor. If Saina isn’t promoted to Head Rap Inquisitor, there’s no justice in the Jinping administration.

Why does she suck? Does she know she sucks? These are the questions of a hater. The party is creating a utopia where all bars have value. In The People’s Source, every album is Food & Liquor.

Take notes, Forster. That’s the electric enthusiasm I want to see when you lie to my face.

I’m sitting in Mother Nature’s greatest enemy, writing about her second greatest enemy. Quick question for everyone outside the arms race: when an American or Chinese outlet mentions climate change, do you want to choke us with our own plastic? It’s the old Eric Andre joke, only Hannibal Buress is “every island nation.”

Because of my backwards hater education, I’d worry about what historians would say. Saina knows there won’t be any. That lets her throw every ounce of nontalent in her body into each line.

Though I do wonder where a state media channel found a rap genius. Did they black-bag someone at a karaoke bar, or recruit internally?

I forgot that Hotdog jokes warp reality. Let’s try a little harder: It’d be hilarious if she did uncensored rap covers on her personal channel.

I’m definitely using this power for evil. My next article’s about the gut-busting time an overeducated shitposter became president, saved the biosphere, and reignited a lost love. And then Saina rapped about it. 

The cover is perfection itself, by the way. Like Tyshawn Jones, she throws her whole body into it and drops n-bombs at will. She’s also a fan of Saweetie, which she saves for the real heads on Facebook:

Those lyrics require a certain presence. Namely “Not Saina.” She delivers “Low carbon China is real” and “slide over my panties” with the same blank energy. And yes, the bombs keep falling:

I complain, but I love this era. Think of all the visionaries that made a Chinese reporter dropping American slurs for international paypigs possible. Archimedes. Cai Lun. Alan Turing. Saweetie. Shame about the Arctic, but this is an age of miracles.

Nothing could ruin this channel for me, except a propaganda tour through Xinjiang or WAIT NO FUCK–

That’s enough. Let’s get this under control. Otherwise we’ll end up with an Uyghur rapper blinking “torture” at the camera. I refuse to speak that evil into the garden of reality.

They wouldn’t. No one has the balls.

I’m back in. Let’s go to hell together, Sardar.

Our state-sponsored rap group has a confident mumbler and a loud lunatic. Meaning it’s time for a propaganda technician. That’s right, Sardar knows you’re allowed to rhyme two syllables. Strap in for the GZA of ethnic cleansing.

Oh man.

Lyrical spiritual miracles thrive with twisty language, engaging flows, and a hardcore antiestablishment ethos. This is a half-speed Dr. Seuss audiobook about loving the government. I’m glad he knows assonance exists, but rapwashing your own genocide needs a flow switch or two. Even the most Xanax’d preteen on BandCamp can churn out triplets. You have to go harder to convince me the cameraman’s unarmed.

Maybe I’m biased. Let’s try the Socratic method: Sardar, can nothing in Xinjiang stop anyone from being who they want to be? At this moment? In every U.N. report? Good propaganda appeals to and redirects reason. Bluntly saying two and two equal five leads to marching and aerodynamic bricks.

Maybe I should go easy on Sardar. When you’re invited to record a propaganda rap, the only answers are “I’d love to” and “Sic Semper Tyrannis.” Like Forster, he simply wants to eat nice food with solid fingers. But there’s an old French word for enablers of a purge: fuckface.

Beyond the body bags in the background? These lines still suck. “Benefits from new policy” tastes like boot in every genre. Gojira could scream it backwards in 4/11 time and my brain would still reject it. 

If you pay attention, “The Trailblazer” has a few first draft mistakes. They’re tucked in the margins of the lyrics, beat production, shot selection, video editing, ethnic labels, the credits only listing Saina, leaving the comments open to American trolls, and concept. That’s the beauty of this genre: OpressionCore upgrades bugs from features to homegrown innovations. The Censorate is a lifetime appointment for fuckups.

Imagine revision in a propaganda studio. You can’t tell your manager “Fun idea, but the best rapper sounds like Ice Spice’s hostage tape. I know we flanked her with fluent English speakers, but what they have in adverbs they lose in corpse-like dispassion and youth ministry flow.” You’ll do the reshoots in a labor camp, with your race on the corner of the screen.

Editing matters. Backspace separates 2002 and 2022 Rowling. My drafts are half Gundam jokes before my shock collar goes off. Worse yet, this track review had three pages about my dad. Thanks to revision, that love of authority is now graceful subtext.

Treasure your delete key. It’s a privilege, like your former Miranda Rights.

Shoutout to the party for letting me groove to the beat of their meteoric rise in street cred. Not that they needed it. Nothing’s more authentic than wanton violence, and the sterilization of Xinjiang Muslims is still–

image credit: Mo & Robots

…

This article was brought to you by our fine sponsor and Hot Dog Supreme: Sarcophski, who to our knowledge has almost never rapped propaganda for an authoritarian regime.

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UPSETTING DAY

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NERDING DAY

Nerding Day: Incarnate 🌭

If you love your kids, consider failing. Superstars’ children put out comics like Incarnate.

Incarnate is the literary premiere of Nick Simmons, son of Hollywood’s longest tongue. If you don’t know Gene Simmons, he was the frontman for Kiss and patient zero for treatment-resistant gonorrhea. As for Kiss, they made the Spotify suggestions your dad skips after Van Halen II. Presentation-wise, they walked so that Violent J could run.

I’m not saying that glam rock, pop metal, or other rock for people that smile sucks. I’m saying that Kiss, specifically, sucks. When “Strutter” makes your Top 3, you’re in deep shit. Kurt Cobain was a Terminator sent back to destroy the Resistance’s worst music. To survive, Kiss turned the enemy’s own weapon against them:

It didn’t work out. Grunge was like the ring: you could try to wield it, but it only obeyed the depressed.

Incarnate emerged in 2009, two VH1 humiliations later. Nick Simmons took on script and pencil duties, debuting as a double threat. He seized a chance to sprint out of his father’s short creative shadow and spread his own breed of crabs. Challenging commercially, less so critically.

Shame that the result’s stitched together from Hellsing, Bleach, and everything else on Zumiez tank tops. Allegedly. You can’t believe everything you read. For example, the media claims water is a human right, but Nestle says to kneel. Nick might be another victim of U.N. misinformation.

Let’s give Incarnate a fair shake. It starts in an unnamed city haunted by shadowy predators– presumably Jersey City and developers, respectively. One slumlord laments his ways:

That’s Mot. He likes blood and talking about blood. Mot’s named after/is the Canaanite god of death, which doesn’t count towards today’s plagiarism charge. Tolkein reinvented a genre by swiping Beowulf’s wallet. This could be the next Return of the King! Or one of those bleak novellas edited by his son, where broken heroes overdose in elven alleyways.

The weebiest among you may feel an itch of familiarity. Ignore it, and focus on the horrorcore slam poetry above. “Sopping scarlet treats” is a sentence you get to read once in life (twice counting brilliant recaps). Soak that in, and bury any memories of better sequential art. Nick deserves a chance to be the least shameful Simmons.

“Wait,” say the other attendees of the anime event hidden behind Comic-Con like a malformed/predatory/black royal. “Isn’t that Hellsing’s Alucard, the character I dressed like until the second amendment ruined trench coats?”

No. That’s a serious accusation. Alucard’s much harder to draw:

See? Incarnate’s design is simply Dracula backwards. I should know the name for that, but Columbia’s been demoted to a preppy kindergarten. Now I teach finger painting, and keep rainbow stickers away from clichés like smiley-face suns. It sounds harsh, but they usually stop crying by naptime. When you nurture hackwork, you end up with a Simmons.

I’ll grant that Nick took a few design cues. But he put his own spin on it.

Narrative spin. Mot’s not a vampire forced to hunt other vampires. More specifically, he’s not trapped in a vampire-hunting organization, alongside a louder and less experienced vampire, under the bondage-y control of a blonde heiress with attitude. New character, new IP, new profit margins. Nick can still get this shit into theaters before executives remember that they hate nerds.

I cave. We’re in a place beyond plagiarism. Most of these panels look like webcomic drafts, and those are the forgivable ones. The rest are photocopied from the Little Free Library outside a GameStop.

For example, the dominatrix above:

That’s a direct lift from Bleach, which was a hit among conscientious prom objectors. I’ve broken the Great Anime Week Detente for good reason: Incarnate cribbed from the era’s most visible train wreck and hoped obsessives wouldn’t notice. That’s like saying you came up with trafficking migrants for votes. Someone in Texas with endless ammunition and impotent rage now knows you by name.

Perhaps I seem paranoid.

As you can see, Incarnate also has shades of a troubled relationship. While my demon brain does spawn jokes about domestic violence, I’m not publishing them. Otherwise, I’d be writing about Mötley Crüe instead.

Alright, so our faces come from the “Ctrl+C, Ctrl+V” school of art. Maybe Nick has more passion for his heels. After all, he’s drawn to darkness. Let’s check in on the ancient vampire cult that runs the world or some shit.

“There is no room on Olympus for a reluctant god.” That’s a dungeon master’s first draft, and I love it. I don’t think a meaningless line has ever meant so much to me. If Incarnate had two original panels, I’d call it mandatory reading.

This dialogue gives me a mile-wide nostalgia grin. Certain strains of garbage are contained to an era, like Kiss. It’s not just trash: it’s trash that can only exist at a specific cocaine-to-edge ratio. Incarnate is a perfect fossil, preserved in another fossil’s stolen amber. This cutscene just needs a final boss describing the main character’s girth to make me forget I’m on a melting planet.

Thank you, Nick. I couldn’t ask for a better birthday gift. “The language of battle” is everything pop culture lost when nothing happened over six perfect years.

I see my best years in every poorly-colored panel. The first time I flirted with alcohol poisoning, writing like this was acceptable. The first time someone accepted an IHOP date with an unpublished satirist, only half of these lines were clichés. I could even say “vampire urban fantasy” without an editor groaning or an IHOP date leaving me with the check. If Nick didn’t have creative kleptomania, we’d be friends.

Anyway, all these designs are traced. Check it:

Yes, even antelope-head. I’m at least a third as disappointed as Gene. Maybe half. My tongue hangs at half-length in mourning.

I don’t know Gene Simmons, or what he’s like as a father. Maybe horny sobriety helped him raise a kid right, and this is all Nick. But it’s fun to cast this desperate plagiarism as the result of eighteen years of rockin’ neglect. Gene’s take on file sharing was, and I quote: “Sue everybody. Take their homes, their cars.” Making open theft the perfect rebellion.

Consider this nonsense:

That’s history’s least metal filing. Metal has a spotty court record after all the Napster hunting, attempted spousal murders, and crispy churches. Gene topped it all by hunting for quarters under Ronnie James Dio’s casket. Incarnate may be a biblical curse for patent trolling.

Either way, the Xerox Illuminati battle the not-Hellsing Foundation, while Mot and his domme/victim battle puberty. But that doesn’t matter. Delete that data from your mind. What matters is my favorite trace. I’ve been holding out on you: Mot’s stock rival is a direct lift of Bleach’s only good idea. Kenpachi, the face that launched a thousand t-shirts.

Context matters. Follow me into the mind of an anime club survivor.

Pretend, for a moment, that you don’t know who Dave Bautista is. The HOTDOG defense system would detonate your device if that were true, but let’s make-believe. You live through hollow, Batista Bomb-less days, searching for something to fill the Animal-shaped hole in your heart. As if anything could.

Then, CSI introduces a man in a rubber Bautista mask named Bave Dautista. Bave dominates criminals with the Dautista Dunk, argues with his sergeant Double H, and ditches the show to star in a James Gunn flick. And you clap along like a seal with cable.

That’s what it would take for the audience to miss this trace. In simpler terms, it’s like making a comedy sketch about a blind black klansman: we all know Clarence Thomas.

Anime fans are a meticulous bunch. I mispronounced a ninja clan on one podcast, and my inbox still gets slurs in kanji. They didn’t take long to unearth Bave Dautista.

Embarrassing. More importantly to a Simmons, financially abortive. The publisher, Radical Comics, specialized in stealth movie pitches. Oblivion became a film without ever even making it to print. Nick didn’t have to make great art to win, or even art that sold well. It just had to exist, and he cocked it up.

Nick Simmons apologized, once the lawyers and pitchforks got intense enough. Sort of.

This was 2010, making Nick an early innovator in non-apologies. We hadn’t quite mastered the “I’m sorry you’re a mitch-bade pussy, and hope you suck less in the future” press release. In fact, this tone may be his best original thought. It’s quite the legacy. Creators as diffuse as Ted Nugent and Roseanne Barr have paid homage to Nick Simmons.

Bleach’s author had a more surprising reaction. After learning a sentient being willingly plagiarized Bleach, Tite Kubo tweeted the following:

That’s a professional. He looked past the low-hanging fruit of anger, right into the absurd vortex of Gene Simmons’s son publishing comic books. After mocking him twice, I can confirm that Kubo has more Hotdog spirit in his sunglasses than I do in my soul. I’d cover his glorious spiral into madness, but the Great Anime Week Detente says I’d have to smother myself with a body pillow.

Incarnate lasted three issues, two longer than any breathing lawyer should’ve allowed. Gene’s personal Saul Goodman slipped up. When your client claims to have fucked six Civil War regiments, you spend the rest of your career on high alert.

Two genres of people burn polaroids: future defendants and current defendants. Legitimate perverts dump them in the recycling, to rest comfortably in a local landfill or become 1/25th of a handbag. This is legal malpractice.

Recall Rambo in First Blood: a desperate man hiding in the frozen wild, knife in hand, waiting for the first unlucky cop to inherit his trauma. One false move, and they’ll kill him faster than a Jamaican teenager minding his business. Every day as a Simmons family lawyer should be that tense.

Don’t confuse that for an accusation, defense, or even hyperbole. It’s the simple reality of working for someone the rest of a glam rock band called a sex addict. That’s insane. That’s like getting kicked out of early Metallica for drinking.

Nick deserves a break. Armchair generals can criticize, but he’s the man in the arena. In fact, Nick should take that speech from Roosevelt. He has an inspiring ability to take inspiration, and it’s the spark I’ve been missing. I’m excited to take my next book in a new direction. Here’s a preview:

One Cray-zy Summer is a young adult romcom with a killer ending. It features a new writing style I call “ten-steppin’,” and should be a movie by 2024. Keep an eye out for it.

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This article was brought to you by our fine sponsor and Hot Dog Supreme: Jeff Orasky, who was shamelessly traced from Boris Vallejo art.