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 Opera Vita Aeterna[sic] by Vox Day

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Nerdanel
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Opera Vita Aeterna[sic] by Vox Day Empty
PostSubject: Opera Vita Aeterna[sic] by Vox Day   Opera Vita Aeterna[sic] by Vox Day EmptyThu May 01, 2014 4:44 am

Recently the infamous extreme misogynist, racist, and all-around horrible person Vox Day won a Hugo nomination in the novella category. The link is a good summary about the situation, though the author didn't know that the bloc voting that got Vox Day (real name Theodore Beale) on the list of nominees wasn't just his doing but rather a wider organized effort to get right-wingers on the list of nominees orchestrated by another author named Larry Corneia (who also got himself a Hugo nominee in the novel category). I hear the nominated work is Vox's least offensive one to date, largely because none of the characters are women.

The novella in question is Opera Vita Aeterna and it's free to download if you don't mind that it's only available in an ereader format instead of something more comfortable for computer screens. In an unsurprising move, I'm going to go through the novella and provide some comments.

Apparently "Opera Vita Aeterna" is totally ungrammatical in Latin. I didn't notice any spelling errors in the story itself, but really, having errors like that in the title is bad enough. People who know anything about Latin should know that it's an inflected language and therefore those inflections should be paid attention to if a grammatical result is desired. I don't know if Vox is really that ignorant or if he just doesn't care.

Then to the epub file...

Opera Vita Aeterna has a cover page. On it is a 3d-render of an ominous castle, probably meant to be the good guy monastery in the story. When you look closely, several interesting features appear. For one thing, the castle seems to have been carved from rock as a single piece. They should have used a stone texture that had cracks in it to simulate the castle having been constructed from hewn blocks, assuming that was what had happened. Then, the castle itself is terribly designed. The architect must have been incompetent beyond belief. The castle is incredibly impractical while at the same time being really ugly. I don't know how those side towers in particular got okayed or whether the explanation for the disparate window sizes is that the perspective is all off or if those lower windows are just unreasonably huge. Also, it looks like the designers had heard that castles have crenelated fortifications but don't know what they're for or what they should look like.

The lighting is really weird too. It looks like the inhabitants of the castle like to point multiple searchlights (not pictured) at the clouds. They also have other light sources (also not pictured) pointed at the castle. The light looks cold and artificial, so the universe in which the castle is situated must have at least 20th Century technology or else magic to spare on frivolous things. Neither is exactly consistent with the story.

But enough about the cover. What comes next is a series of praise blurbs for another book by Vox, A Throne of Bones.

The esteemed sources providing the blurbs:
- Two self-published authors I had never heard of, giving faint praise
- Three unpopular blogs ideologically close to Vox, one of which currently has a post on the front page talking about how Vox's racist statements totally aren't racist
- Two anonymous Amazon reviews that could have been written by just anyone

Some of the more notable contents in the blurbs:
- Putting Vox on a level with Tolkien (x1)
- Putting Vox on a level with Martin (x2)
- Saying that Vox is better than Martin (x2)

You can judge for yourself how accurate those are.

This was pretty long, so let's call this post an introduction and move to the novella itself in the next post.
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Nerdanel
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Opera Vita Aeterna[sic] by Vox Day Empty
PostSubject: Re: Opera Vita Aeterna[sic] by Vox Day   Opera Vita Aeterna[sic] by Vox Day EmptyFri May 02, 2014 6:44 am

The story begins in what in this world is called "853 Anno Salutis Humanae", "in the Year of the Human(e) Salvation" according to my research. The term should probably be "Anno Salutis Hominum", "in the Year of the Salvation of Humans", but apparently looking that up was too difficult. "Humanus" is an adjective, not a noun. Well, trying to be gracious here, perhaps the author was trying to imply that some unspecified but important salvation had been a humane thing to do or done by humans or that Not-Jesus had been all man and zero God. I think there's no chance of that though.

You see, Vox Day is a Christian apologist. It would be heretical to have his Not-Jesus not be fully man and fully God as the real-world doctrine has it. Also, now that I pay attention to it, I see that the story has a lot of questionable Latin in it.

And by the way, speaking of potential heresy, I think it's worth mentioning that Vox Day's name can be translated as "Voice of Godde". Vox Day is in English pronounced the same as "Vox Dei", which is Latin for "Voice of God". That sounds just a tad arrogant. I wonder what the Inquisition would have thought of it. It's like Vox is implying that all of his opinions are God's opinions. But more than that, Vox is making it sound like he is channeling God and Vox's writings are holy scripture. I thought humility was an important Christian virtue.

We finally get to the first paragraph, and it contains some really "good" material.

Quote :
The pallid sun was descending, its ineffective rays no longer sufficient to hold it up in the sky or to penetrate the northern winds that gathered strength with the whispered promises of the incipient dark.

Apparently in this world suns are held up by radiation pressure. It also sounds like it should be dark. Electromagnetic radiation being unable to somehow get through thin air should have that effect, at least in a logical world.

Also, I wonder if the winds whisper different things during different times of the day or if the winds' verbal communication is limited to always repeating things like "Daaaark... Whooooosh... Daaaark..." Winds shouldn't have a brain, after all.

Quote :
The first of the two moons was already visible high above the mountains. Soon Arbhadis, Night's Mistress, would unveil herself as well.

Apparently moon rays are more effectual than sun rays.

I don't know if Arbhadis is the second moon or what. We're never told. In case it is, I wonder what the first moon is called. Is it Night's Wife, Night's Other Mistress, or what? Anyway, apparently Arbhadis is already on the scene, just hidden by clouds, unless you think those mountains qualify as a metaphorical, overly thick veil. Any of this is however doesn't matter one little bit as far as the story goes. We'll never hear of Arbhadis again. After this point the author largely stops his efforts to write in an evocative language. Too bad for the lost humor value.

A monk is keeping watch at a monastery that we soon learn belongs to the Order of St. Dioscurus, because it's such an imaginative thing suited to secondary-world fantasy literature to recycle the names of real-world Catholic saints. As nothing is happening at the moment, it's a great time for the author to indulge in some infodumping about the world. Eventually, after a big block of infodump, our still-unnamed monk spots a visitor on the road.

The monk, who clearly has a keen eye for fashion, recognizes from a distance that the visitor's robe is made from extraordinary expensive wool. The cut and the decorations in the stranger's green cloak and grey robe apparently aren't that special, but the wool is somehow the height of highly visible ostentatiousness. The monk is wearing wool too, so it's not like commoners in this world wear straw clothes either, unless all the previous infodump about the Dioscurines not being a rich order was a filthy lie.

In case you wonder, the monk isn't supposed to have a Half-Eagle template. He suspects that the visitor might be an elf but doesn't get that visually confirmed until the stranger gets a good bit closer.

The monk and the elf exchange greetings. The monk's name is Sperarus. We don't learn the name of the elf.

Quote :
He did not ask the traveler's name. It was the foremost rule of the order to give succor to all who asked it.

This is probably meant to raise suspense. It doesn't work.

There is a bit of description of the monastery. The garden includes

Quote :
fruit trees mostly denuded of their leaves

It's like Vox channeled Stephen Donaldson for a while there (or used a thesaurus) but soon the vocabulary level of the story returns to what it used to be. Maybe Vox doesn't want to use naughty words like "stripped", even to describe trees.

In a shocking revelation, the elf's name is Bessarias, a name that the monk has never heard. Moreover, the elf comes from the city of Elebrion. This means that the elf is not a wood elf but a high elf! You'd have never known it from the ridiculously expensive wool.

The abbot, Father Waleran, goes to talk with Bessarias in the guest quarters. Bessarias is slender with long hair. Nevertheless doesn't look feminine but instead projects "a powerful aura of strength and confidence", as if women, at least feminine ones, couldn't do that. We had to get some misogyny in this story after all. Waleran also notes that Bessarias looks "truly beautiful", adding a little bit of gay subtext that I'm certain to say was unintended by the homophobic author.

Eventually the chit-chat leads to us learning the cause for the elf being there. He came seeking God because of a missionary to the elves. The missionary was from the Tertullian order that was probably in-universe founded by someone named along the lines of Tertull instead of referring to Tertullian. Maybe "Tertullianian" sounded too stupid, even if the author does like explicitly using real historical characters or at least characters whose names just happen to be coincidentally identical with their historical models.

And talking about the missionary, who seems to be named after a Medieval bishop...

Quote :
"Oh no," the elf said, shaking his head. "He is dead. I killed him ten years ago."

The above is just a bit of manufactured tension though. It turns out that what our elf did was just a mercy killing.

Quote :
"By the power of his god, he defeated our Magister Daimonae, thus inspiring a certain amount of fear among the magisters. They were unaccustomed to fearing anyone or anything, so they naturally decided to kill him. The problem was that they were torturing him to death, and I did not wish him to suffer."

Christians love their martyrs.

We also learn that the elf is a sorcerer, the best sorcerer in fact. In this world arcane magic is demonic though, just like the Christian dogma has it.

Quote :
The winter was a cruel one. The snow fell relentlessly for what felt like months

Snow shouldn't have the ability to fall relentlessly like rain, but on the other hand, natural phenomena in this world keep doing weird stuff, so maybe the snow is like that too.

Bessarias stays in the monastery and gets into theology.

Quote :
He even contributed an illumination to the one hundred fifteenth Psalm, a beautiful silver-and-purple letter N that featured an orc, a goblin, a troll, and an elf all but hidden in the design.

The above quote is the one sentence in the story that I feel capsulizes its feel the most: religion, religion, and religion with some generic fantasy stuff awkwardly tacked on top.

Bessarias and Waleran engage in pseudo-profound discussion. Bessarias wants to copy by hand the entire Bible, I mean the Sacred Script, to really learn it. He also argues, as if we are interested, that the world must have always existed because it contains things that must have always existed, such as souls. Waleran in turn says that things like souls must have been created by God. This story has so much talking.

The discussion is finally interrupted by the appearance of a guest at the door. It's a chicken that's not a chicken but evil manifest - I mean, a fox that's not a fox but evil manifest. It's a demonic talking fox that asks Bessarias to return home (obviously so that he won't convert to Not-Christianity and get his soul saved). He refuses. In the following years the demon returns, and we have a squirrel that's not a squirrel but evil manifest and a rabbit that's not a rabbit but evil manifest, but Bessarias doesn't want to see them. The demon even tries to sneak in as a human, but is too incompetent at that human thing to get itself allowed through the gate. For some reason the demon can't just take the form of a bird and fly over the wall to find Bessarias. Our demon is the worst demon ever.

Ten years pass and Bessarias's manuscript is 87% finished even though he is somehow up to Apocalypsis. He must not have been doing the books in order, assuming Apocalypsis is at the end of the Not-Bible like it is in the real Bible. At that he needs to leave the monastery and go shopping for the first time in years. For some reason they can't send out less important people for wine and paint ingredients, but the plot needs Bessarias out of the way and out of the way he goes.

Incidentally, on the trip we get a mention of "the insipid sun". Poor sun gets no love in this story.

When Bessarias and his companions return to the monastery they find that it doesn't show signs of life. Bessarias orders his companions to hide in the woods and they vanish from the story, never to return.

Quote :
Brother Sperarus, no longer young, lay dead in the snow, his face frozen in the rictus of violent death. Beside him lay his staff with dark green ice encasing one end of it.

I had to stop where when I first read that bit to wonder where the green ice had come from. Luckily the offhand mystery - intentional or not - gets solved a little later. It turns out that goblin blood is green in this world, like in the Warhammer RPG. They were attacked by goblins, you see.

Also, Sperarus's, who hasn't had the slightest career advancement in ten years, face is in a figure of speech frozen in a rictus but it is also should be frozen solid from the cold. I have no idea if this thing is Vox's idea of a joke or not, just like I don't know if the green ice thing is meant to be mysterious or if the author just forgot he hadn't talked about goblin blood yet. The casualness of the reference makes me think it's just a mistake.

In short, everyone is dead, including a few goblins. Some of the monks somehow look like they're praying even when they've been killed violently, because they're so pious and holy they can manage feats like that. Presumably the ones who were torn, mutilated, and/or partially devoured didn't look like they were praying, but you never know.

Bessarias notices that for some reason nothing has been stolen and the place hasn't been set on fire. The whole thing had been intended only as a cold and calculated mass murder by the demon, with no other objectives. You'd think the goblins, being goblins, would at least set the place on fire just because, but for some reason they didn't want to. Of course, the real reason is that Vox wanted to have his designated plot, even if it meant characters acting out of character. Bessarias's manuscript needs to survive, you see.

Even if the demon wanted to send a message to Bessarias, a simple note attached to the massacre would have worked. Unless, of course, the pathetic excuse for a demon couldn't write with animal paws or couldn't write period.

Bessarias gets angry when he sees that the abbot, too, has been killed.

Quote :
He wanted to turn this temple to an useless, ineffectual god into a lake of glowing crystal glass.

From that quote we learn that "all the fires of Hell" are sufficient to melt stained glass windows (though it's suspect if the process would produce nice lead glass), but insufficient to melt the (granite? gneiss?) rock floor and walls. I suppose that makes sense, as it would be kind of inconvenient if Hell melted down its own walls inside the Earth's crust (not mantle or core, as the walls would be already molten), possibly getting itself even more destroyed in an eventual volcanic eruption.

Anyway, Bessarias suppresses his impressively glowing magic aura SFX and prays for Waleran's soul.

After that we skip to the future, to a place we can only assume is the Not-Rome of this world, as the building is the main library of the Church. We aren't privileged to learn the exact year. People there have unimaginative real-world Roman names like Aurelius, Gnaeus Avidius Libanius, and Marcus Valerius, the last of whom is a boy who would like to join the Order of the Saints of the Pamphlet (translated) one day, but is born to the upper classes so he'll have to be content with being an archbishop instead. No standing on street corners for him.

The library has a really fancy and popular manuscript on display that everyone wants to see. Nearly a hundred people men are gathered around the manuscript, trying to get a look. But the library has a better manuscript too, and it's being largely ignored by the crowds. Like Vox Day, except he's not actually good even if he thinks himself brilliant.

Aurelius takes Marcus to see the superior manuscript. In an entirely predictable twist it will later turn out that the best illustrated manuscript in the entire library and likely the entire world was the one made by Bessarias.

Bessarias has drawn people's faces on the title pages of his manuscript. The manuscript is open on the opening page of "Liber I Paralipomenon", meaning that the Not-Bible has not only a book of the Psalms and the Revelation (of John?) but also the Chronicles like the real-world Bible and that Greek also exists in the world in addition to the widespread bad Latin. I wonder if the version of the Not-Bible Bessarias copied is called the Vulgate and if its original translator's name is St. Jerome. That just might be the case. The religion in this story makes Tad Williams's Not-Catholicism in Memory, Sorrow and Thorn seem thoroughly obscured.

To the characters in this scene Bessarias's identity is unknown. Somehow that means that it is time for some gratuitous name dropping on the part of the author when they try to figure who he his. Aurelius thinks the inscriber of the manuscript must have been mentioned in "the Summa". Said book turns out to have significant similarities with Summa Theologica but Vox Day has also written something called Summa Elvetica. The following sequence about names mentioned in the Summa is Vox in his most blatant and gratuitous self-aggrandizing show off mode.

Quote :
"We know the identity of the Philosopher - "

"Aristoteles."

"The Theologian."

"Augustinus."

"The Poet and the Master."

"Vergilius Maro and Petrus Lombardus."

"The Doctor and the Expert."

"Aelius Galenus and Domitius Annius Ulpianus."

With this Marcus figures out that the hand behind the manuscript must be... "The Wayfarer!" Because someone who spends years making an illuminated manuscript must be important enough to be mentioned in a theological treatise even if he lived in the same monastery at approximately the same time. Marcus and Aurelius are apparently psychics. Meanwhile the Islamic and Jewish luminaries in Summa Theologica just go without mention. Maybe Vox wants to forget they existed and exclude them from his fantasy world because they weren't white men.

We get one final title drop: the Angelic Doctor because Vox just has this urge to show everyone his mastery of theological trivia.

And about that Not-Bible manuscript, the face in the chapter heading currently open is... wait for it... Father Waleran whom you may remember! Now that's some dramatic final revelation. Not.


Last edited by Nerdanel on Fri May 02, 2014 12:47 pm; edited 1 time in total
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Denethor




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Opera Vita Aeterna[sic] by Vox Day Empty
PostSubject: Re: Opera Vita Aeterna[sic] by Vox Day   Opera Vita Aeterna[sic] by Vox Day EmptyFri May 02, 2014 12:16 pm

Nerdanel wrote:

Quote :
He even contributed an illumination to the one hundred fifteenth Psalm, a beautiful silver-and-purple letter N that featured an orc, a goblin, a troll, and an elf all but hidden in the design.

The above quote is the one sentence in the story that I feel capsulizes its feel the most: religion, religion, and religion with some generic fantasy stuff awkwardly tacked on top. By the way, Psalm 150 in the real Bible is all about "Praise the Lord" and how absolutely everyone should be doing it. Based on the illumination, the fantasy version of Psalm 150 probably has much the same content too. It doesn't start with "Hallelujah" though, as can be seen from the N.

It's Psalm 115 you're after, and that one indeed starts with an N ("Not unto us, O Lord..."). So fantasy Psalm 115 is probably real-world Psalm 115, which just shows the author is even less imaginative.
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Nerdanel
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Opera Vita Aeterna[sic] by Vox Day Empty
PostSubject: Re: Opera Vita Aeterna[sic] by Vox Day   Opera Vita Aeterna[sic] by Vox Day EmptyFri May 02, 2014 12:59 pm

Denethor wrote:
It's Psalm 115 you're after, and that one indeed starts with an N ("Not unto us, O Lord..."). So fantasy Psalm 115 is probably real-world Psalm 115, which just shows the author is even less imaginative.

Thank you for noticing that. I don't know how I made that mistake. Maybe it's due to how well the multi-racial illustration fits with Psalm 150.

The psalm being number 115 instead of 150 changes dramatically the symbolic meaning of the illustration and the passage. Instead of "Everyone praise the Lord", the single psalm featured in the story is about "We have the right god and those others don't" - exclusivist rather than inclusivist.
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Denethor




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Opera Vita Aeterna[sic] by Vox Day Empty
PostSubject: Re: Opera Vita Aeterna[sic] by Vox Day   Opera Vita Aeterna[sic] by Vox Day EmptySat May 03, 2014 1:43 am

Perhaps for some reason the Demon could only take the form of a mammal (fox/squirrel/rabbit/human)? Not only can't it turn into a bird, it can't turn into a (symbolically more appropriate) snake either. Though the mammal theory still leaves the option for turning into a bat. That'd have the additional advantage of bringing in sinister vampire symbolism, except that the author's understanding of symbolism seems limited to name-dropping medieval religious figures.

And speaking of heresy: there's an instance on his blog where he denies the Trinity. If anything, the guy seems to be an Evangelical Southern Baptist, not a Catholic.
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Nerdanel
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Opera Vita Aeterna[sic] by Vox Day Empty
PostSubject: Re: Opera Vita Aeterna[sic] by Vox Day   Opera Vita Aeterna[sic] by Vox Day EmptySun May 04, 2014 12:50 pm

Southern Baptists believe in the Trinity too. Nontrinitarianism is very much the minority position, restricted to the likes of Jehovah's Witnesses and Oneness Pentecostals. I looked around a bit and found that Vox's description of his beliefs is that he is an "evangelical Christian". Maybe he belongs to a denomination of one.

Anyway, I think I should post some general comments about Opera Vita Aeterna that I was too fatigued to think about including in the main post. In particular, I'm worried that I made the story sound more exciting and interesting than it really is. A lot of space is taken by boring discussions and shallow attempts at worldbuilding. For example, we learn that near the monastery there are places such as the elvenwood, which doesn't even have enough originality in its name to merit a capital letter, and the unsubtly-named Waste of Kurs-magog, which is inhabited by orcs and goblins.

Terry Goodkind's evil chicken is a figure of genuine, unironic terror compared to the demon in this story. I'm sorry if I implied otherwise. A fox with an annoying personality just doesn't have the same threatening aura as a murder chicken. For one thing, Kahlan couldn't use her magic against the chicken, while the demon in this story is completely vulnerable to both divine and arcane magic and in fact willing to go away when asked. If the good guys had actually exorcised it, perhaps it would have been sent to Hell with no way to return. We'll never know.

The fact that the demon somehow managed to get some goblins to do its will doesn't make the demon more impressive but rather the goblins less impressive. Goblins are CR 1/3 (that is, having a Challenge Rating of one third - one step above an ordinary house cat which is CR 1/4) in D&D and something really pathetic in Warhammer anyway, but in this story they nevertheless manage to look worse than that, following the orders of some talking rabbit and not having even the imagination or intelligence to, say, grab some free loot or set the enemy stronghold on fire when given the chance.

Vox Day says he doesn't write Christian fiction, but nevertheless the story is all about a character struggling to find God and the portrayal of arcane magic is what you might find in the sort of Christian fiction that makes C. S. Lewis seem like a bastion of secularism.

I probably showed pretty well the self-congratulating self-indulgence of the ending part, but it's worth mentioning again.

In conclusion, I've read much worse stories on fanfiction.net. I've also read others, also on fanfiction.net, that were vastly superior, including one story that was also titled in bad Latin. As far as published fiction goes, I have read worse things than Opera Vita Aeterna. The first 50 pages of Shadow Moon by Chris Claremont are far worse. On the other hand, beating Shadow Moon is not exactly a sign of distinction. Comparing Vox's effort to the short story by Orson Scott Card in which Ender does his taxes for the first time (yes, it really exists and is about as interesting as you'd expect), I'm not sure which contestant would come out on top, not that winning this battle would be a sign of distinction either. Things that are good or half-decent are on another level altogether.

If Opera Vita Aeterna was a fanfic it would be those that aren't good enough to read but nevertheless aren't epic enough to be prime snarking material and so get passed over in favor of worse examples. I hope I was entertaining nevertheless. Remember: This story is a Hugo nominee. Hugo nominees are supposed to be among the best stories published in all year.
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Opera Vita Aeterna[sic] by Vox Day Empty
PostSubject: Re: Opera Vita Aeterna[sic] by Vox Day   Opera Vita Aeterna[sic] by Vox Day EmptyThu May 08, 2014 11:19 pm

I suppose irony is lost on even the most esteemed authors now days. *Sigh* This could have been a great occasion for flipping real world religion on it's head or to take a look at it from a different angle. But no... this is just the hundredth occurrence of the same old still life painted in the same old colors with the same old brushes and looked at the same old way.
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Nerdanel
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Opera Vita Aeterna[sic] by Vox Day Empty
PostSubject: Re: Opera Vita Aeterna[sic] by Vox Day   Opera Vita Aeterna[sic] by Vox Day EmptySun May 11, 2014 1:57 am

Braigwen wrote:
I suppose irony is lost on even the most esteemed authors now days. *Sigh* This could have been a great occasion for flipping real world religion on it's head or to take a look at it from a different angle. But no... this is just the hundredth occurrence of the same old still life painted in the same old colors with the same old brushes and looked at the same old way.

Theodore Beale a.k.a. Vox Day isn't remotely an esteemed author, either for his writing skills or his personality and opinions. Among his many repugnant writings was defending the Taliban for trying to murder Malala Yousafzai, a girl who had spoken for education for girls.

Quote :
Ironically, in light of the strong correlation between female education and demographic decline, a purely empirical perspective on Malala Yousafzai, the poster girl for global female education, may indicate that the Taliban's attempt to silence her was perfectly rational and scientifically justifiable.

Or this comment about what women want from men:

Quote :
I don't believe I could recommend this as a strategy for most men, but it is surely educational to learn that raping and killing a woman is demonstrably more attractive to women than behaving like a gentleman. And women, before all the inevitable snowflaking commences, please note that there is absolutely nothing to argue about here. It is an established empirical fact.

Before the Hugo nomination, Vox Day's greatest accomplishment was getting kicked out from the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America - a feat that no one had managed to do before him - for using the official SFWA twitter feed as a vessel for his virulently racist attacks about his fellow (black, female) author N. K. Jemisin.

This made Vox a martyr in certain circles who saw him as a victim of those evil liberals. Result: Organized bloc voting for his least offensive story despite any artistic merits or more accurately lack of them.
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Opera Vita Aeterna[sic] by Vox Day Empty
PostSubject: Re: Opera Vita Aeterna[sic] by Vox Day   Opera Vita Aeterna[sic] by Vox Day EmptyMon May 12, 2014 12:10 pm

Quote :
The pallid sun was descending, its ineffective rays no longer sufficient to hold it up in the sky or to penetrate the northern winds that gathered strength with the whispered promises of the incipient dark.

In golf, the first thing to have to tell a n00b is to hit down on the ball to get it airborne.  You then spend the rest of his career trying to get him to stop hacking directly down on top of the ball.

Likewise, it seems that after you teach the 8 year old in Babby's First Writing Class to use more than the same dozen words over and over again, the rest of his life is people trying to get him to stop using so many superfluous, asinine, verbose, unnecessary words.

Quote :
He did not ask the traveler's name. It was the foremost rule of the order to give succor to all who asked it.

1.) Ask him his name while you give him "succor."  Unless succor means what it sounds like it means instead of what it actually means and your mouth is kind of full.
2.) Aid, food, assistance, help.  Is there some benefit to picking the most pretentious possible word?
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