Jeff Mach's Blog, page 44

Some Fantasy Drinking Etiquette

On Drinking With Dwarves

Did you ever have that one friend who, after a couple of drinks, began hitting the karaoke machine real hard and singing nothing but songs about love fading, the one that got away, and how “I hope she’s happy, because one of us gotta be, and I guess the one who deserves it, I guess it just ain’t me”?

That’s Dwarves, only there’s no such thing as Karaoke in this Universe; just a table full of bass-singing enablers who, after about pint number three, will find a real deep note and start harmonizing about the only thing they really care about: the gold mine that got away.

Note that they are speaking entirely of literal gold mines. If you attempt to interject some sort of anthropomorphism into the proceedings and ask if they’re sad about some kind of sentient companionship, they will assume you are some kind of gold-hoarding Dragon and mayhem will ensue.

On Drinking With Puck

This is simply a great idea for anyone who loves a good story, or enjoys having their pockets emptied. It’s particularly useful if you’ve just given up drinking, because all you need to do is turn your head just a fraction of an inch away from your beverage, and Puck will drain your glass, order a new one on your tab, and drain that, too.

On Drinking With Werewolves

Werewolves, in direct contrast with Puck, will buy every damn round. (They will not, however, pay in silver coins under any circumstances.) They will, rather unfortunately, insist that you drink every round with them. This can lead to unfortunate consequences, of which death is, we can assure you, significantly the most pleasant.

On Drinking With Leviathan

Never try to out-drink a Leviathan. That would take more whiskey than can be held in all the Seven Seas. This, in turn, leaves the Seas completely dry, which is the prelude to ecological catastrophe.

On Drinking With Dark Lords

“Bartender, bring two glasses and a bottle of whiskey. Every couple of minutes, bring a new bottle of whiskey. You seem like a perfectly nice fellow, but I’m warning you now, if I don’t have a three-story stack of bottles by the time I leave here tonight, I’m going to transmogrify your blood to Everclear and consume you with a lime. Consider yourself warned.”

~Jeff Mach

The preceding essay was brought to you by Dark Lords For Azathoth, and may not necessarily reflect the views of the being who wrote, edited, posted, and marketed this document.

My name is Jeff Mach (“Dark Lord” is optional) and I build communities and create things. Every year, I put on Evil Expo, the Greatest Place in the World to be a Villain. I also write a lot of fantasy and science fiction. You can get most of my books right here. Go ahead, order “I HATE Your Prophecy“ It may make you into a bad person, but I can live with that.

The post Some Fantasy Drinking Etiquette appeared first on Worlds of Villainy.

Curating Your User Experience I – On Catharsis

Core Beliefs of Transgression

If we’re pursuing something that truly hits us on a bone-deep level, then some of our shit will offend, alarm, and frighten people. Some of what we do will have unintended consequences. That doesn’t mean it’s out of our control; it means that the scope of what we create, when doing consensual experience, is very large. It’s cathartic. It’s transformative, and that’s something I’ll talk about a lot, the idea that we use experience to shape and forge ourselves, to become newer, better, stronger versions of ourselves

So working with the physical, mental, and emotional tools of experience includes dealing with pain, aversion, damage, catharsis, and joy. We don’t just diminish experience if we try to take only the easy parts or the “positive” parts; we cut it up into something too small, too constrained, too boxed-in, to make a difference. Shoving your experience in a tiny little container and wrapping it in a cute bow so that it looks nonthreatening on the outside…that might help your image. In some places, and with some people. But when you open up the package, what’s inside may not be worth having at all.

And if, in doing experience, you always go in as one thing, and always, always emerge exactly the same, with no growth or change or new knowledge or even meaningful catharsis–then why do experience? There are a thousand other activities which don’t involve the hazards of what we do. I

And if your response is that experience is something you want, perhaps something you need, then ask yourself: Do you really want a experience that passes through you as if you were a ghost?

Here’s a rule of thumb: getting hurt is sometimes the price of admission for doing what we do.

“Scars” says that we create growth through experience when we have that are meaningful enough to hit us hard. And the nature of self-change is we can’t always control, much less always like, the way we change. What we can do is think about what we want to become, what we want to have, what defines us—and then think about what we’ll have to go through to get there. And again, that’s because going through hard things isn’t an accident—it’s that the process itself is part of what makes change happen. Lifting weights tears your muscle, and when done properly, the muscle grows back able to lift more than before. Learning to play guitar means building calloused fingers and slowly developing an ear for the sounds you want to make. Maybe you love the process, maybe you hate the process and only like the result. But you can’t skip out the hard things without leaving a big, gaping hole in your experience.

~Jeff Mach

The preceding essay was brought to you by Dark Lords For Azathoth, and may not necessarily reflect the views of the being who wrote, edited, posted, and marketed this document.

My name is Jeff Mach (“Dark Lord” is optional) and I build communities and create things. Every year, I put on Evil Expo, the Greatest Place in the World to be a Villain. I also write a lot of fantasy and science fiction. You can get most of my books right here. Go ahead, order “I HATE Your Prophecy“ It may make you into a bad person, but I can live with that.

The post Curating Your User Experience I – On Catharsis appeared first on Worlds of Villainy.

On Dark Lord Cloaks

We’d now like to enhance your reading experience with some words from our sponsor. We have no idea how that would make anything better, but since we are actually our own sponsor, we’re going to include this anyway.

Tell us: Do YOU experience brief but worrisome moments of clarity wherein you realize that the world appears to be going to Hell in a handbasket, and it’s not even a very good handbasket?

Have you ever been going about your day-to-day life, living in appropriately unbelievable levels of spiking anxiety and concern that you’ll accidentally stare at some screen or another and be sucked into whatever personal drama, politics, or clickbait atrocities which will attract your attention and engage your horrified attention, even if a moment of logical thought would tell you that what you’re seeing is probably not entirely true?

(We don’t blame you for being unable to summon that thought; as far as we can tell, Logic fled this plane of existence years ago, and not even the most reliable instrumentation can tell us where it went.)

And furthermore: Yes, of course you have.

That’s why we recommend alcohol and cookies!

But since we don’t personally sell those, we strongly suggest….Dark Lord Cloaks!

(We don’t sell those either, at the time of this writing. But it’s the sort of thing we WOULD sell, if we weren’t busy bamboozling you into the idea that you might want to subsidize our horrible writing habit with some of your hard-earned lucre.)

Dark Lord Cloaks come in a variety of shapes and sizes, so long as by “a variety of”, you mean “amorphous and greyish-black”. Though, to be fair (why would we be fair, though?) – some of the shades of grey are slightly darker than others. They are 100% made out of material; you have our word on that.. And from the simplest DIY “basically-a-very-dirty-bathrobe-with-a-hood-“ to the most costly bespoke tailored-by-Sauron’s second-favorite hairdresser’s wardrobe mistress and bespoke Hobbit strangler, they all have one very important thing in common: You look like a JERK if you check your phone too often while wearing something of that nature.

And while, yes, cloaks can conceal your true form, hide your nature, and disguise your identity; and while some of them are enchanted to protect you from attacks; really, there’s only one thing that’s important, if you want to maintain your sanity or, in your case, your villainously wild insanity: do not let electronic distraction-devices mess up your thoughts. You’ll never be able to cast a proper death-spell or destroy someone’s warp drive with sophisticated weaponry if you’re busy letting some damn screen hypnotize you.

Dark Lord Cloaks: Because they look cool, and they remind you to focus on destroying your enemies, and not, necessarily, yourself.

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Revenge or Mercy

There’s a place we like to go;

to sit in the back and sip cold souls and sweet tea,

a place where everyone wears a smile,

and some of those smiles are even original to the faces

we currently wear.

What is more enjoyable than considering the beauty of the sunfall, the cosmic augury of the constellations, the various lush segments of cool oasis in a desert landscape, and the doom and downfall of your attackers?

Take a comfortable seat; that throne of iron or skulls you have in your castle, it’s quite impressive, truly, totally, but THESE chairs have a peculiar technology oft-unknown in the Halls of Power. It’s called “cushions”.

All action takes place in the present moment, and thinking about the past is a little like being stuck there. Don’t do that, especially if you try to pull it into your future. It never makes its way through the portal unchanged, and you certainly don’t want to be the one responsible for your own gritty reboot.

But by the same token, the art of carefully considering your dreadful upcoming moves is an unparalleled pleasure; or at least, if we DO spot anything running parallel to the aforementioned joy, we hammer it mercilessly into a ploughshare, even if it was ALREADY a ploughshare.

Why do we so oft see archfiends engaged in planning, rather than enjoying the spoils of their horrible plans?

Epicurus taught us: pleasures which are brief, which are quickly consumed and then gone, are oft inferiors pleasures; in fact, they might not count at all, in that regard. Is it really the chewing up of your enemies which is your prime, core, and singular joy? For most of us, certainly not! Even those of us who chew really slowly.

The instant of victory is indescribibable. It’s also, literally, just an instant, unless you’re somehow frozen in a time-loop, and while there’s some philosophical argument for the idea that if you were in an eternally-persistent positive moment, that might be lovely; but it seldom happens, and besides, it doesn’t do your free will any good.

And this is the core argument for dissatisfaction. Because, like almost any feeling, it’s not pure, and that’s appropriate for any sentient being in a physical world. Any pure joy is like pure maple syrup: incredible for the first sip, cloying for the second, death-by-sugar for the last.

Likewise, dissatisfaction does not mean having no satisfaction at all. It means avoidance of attempts at full and total “satisfaction”, because to be in such a place is to be limited–we cannot sustain such a thing in the longterm and, I argue, we would not desire to do so.

And this is why we grant at least some of our enemies mercy. Certainly, they might return to kill us; but if we can’t defend ourselves against them, we potentially should take this as our cue to step out of the gene pool. It’s important to deliver meaningful and crushing defeats which advance your cause; but you should not utterly destroy your opponents every single time.

If you want the true satisfaction of being a monster, hurt them a little now…

…so you can hurt the more, later.

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The Green Fairy’s Cure-All

What ails you, my darlings?

 

Do you have bilious humours?

 

Do you have the misfortune of knowing what “humours” are?

 

Has your doctor, who is clearly a fool, proselytized against the dangers of good, modern, 19th century medicine, like arsenic wafers and cocaine?

Never fear!

We have something that is precisely the tonic for that which ails you, the semi-universal solvent, I mean, er, oops, panacea.

Yes! Consider: My friends, do you feel sad, tired, oddly happy, listless, bored, boring, vague, brillig, slithy, ill-tempered, centennial, heliotropic, opalescent, obsequious, purple, Hobbitlike, or otherwise devoid of the most precious of gifts – raving and delusional vivid waking dreams ?  Worry not!

We have the cure for all your troubles; the end to all distress!  We have Absinthe!

Yes! It’s got herbs in it, and therefore, you can be sure it’s good for you. There are certainly no herbs which cause harm, and if there were, we would have already lobbied the House of Lords to rule that everything bad for you is good for you, because we know upon which side our bread is buttered (it’s the side that always points downwards.)

O bibs! O fortuna! O rapture!

Yes, The Green Fairy is well-known to promote healthy lungs (even better than smoking!), better eyesight, more hirsute shoulders, little tentacles growing out of your skull, more attractive elbows, and the ability to do “The Robot” in any major dance-oriented situation.

Surely you don’t want to be left out of this critical innovation in the health sciences, and be forced to die a rapid and unfortunate death of old age at 21, eh?

Hurry!  Hurry!  Hurry!  Head down and drink your daily allotment of absinthe! Your doctor will thank you!  Your bartender will thank you!  And your hallucinations will thank you!

~Jeff Mach

The preceding essay was brought to you by Dark Lords For Azathoth, and may not necessarily reflect the views of the being who wrote, edited, posted, and marketed this document.

My name is Jeff Mach (“Dark Lord” is optional) and I build communities and create things. Every year, I put on Evil Expo, the Greatest Place in the World to be a Villain. I also write a lot of fantasy and science fiction. You can get most of my books right here. Go ahead, order “I HATE Your Prophecy“ It may make you into a bad person, but I can live with that.

The post The Green Fairy’s Cure-All appeared first on Worlds of Villainy.

A Simple Disclaimer

If you’ve considered buying liability insurance for a business lately, you’ve probably realized that sleep is one of those many-splendored joys whose pleasures only become fully explicable to our thought process after we have gazed upon something so breathtakingly misfortunate that we will never, ever slumber again.

To counter this, it is important that one create simple waivers of liability. Ours is quite old-fashioned—I mean, real waivers, these days, are usually contained in a ‘click-wrap agreement’, which means that you need merely click a button to agree to a given set of terms of service. Or, in other words, legally, you can be bound by pages and pages of material with less energy and thought than would normally be required to pick out a particular fast-food eatery from an online map.

(It is, if you like legal trivia, descended from the ‘shrink wrap agreement’, which said that the opening of certain kinds of packaging, such as that containing software, was, in and of itself, a legally-binding act on part with having read, reviewed, agreed-to, and signed, a physical document. Isn’t evolution of law in a technological age just fascinating?

At any rate, our Villainpunk works contain significant amounts of thoughtcrime, and so we’d like to announce, in a formal way, that anyone who visits our website, or thinks about our website, or even conceives the possibility that we might have a website, or, in fact, anyone who knows what a ‘website’ is, up to and including those persons who believe that the only website in existence is “Myspace”, are hereby understood to be bound by the following disclamation:

Management will not be held responsible for:

Confusion and bedazzlement, disturbances in the Force, love potions, hate potions,Ragnarok, the end of the world, spontaneous pointy-ear syndrome, Puck, vanishing Faerie gold, increasing Faerie alcohol tolerance, unmanaged mischief, TARDIS malfunctions, Puck, the Return of the King, the Jedi, or the weird box you bought at that strange shop which inexplicably vanished when you turned your back on it, what happens when you give coffee to mythological beings, what happens when you believe in mythological beings, what happens when mythological beings believe in you, Puck, gluten tolerance, golden apples marked ‘Kallisti’, acts of Gods, acts of Goths, Thursdays, losing the One Ring, finding the One Ring, inexplicably comparing George R. R. Martin to Tolkien, Puck, lack of gluten intolerance, butterscotch, chaos, calamity, throne-meltings, the highly illogical, crossroads deals, Magick ascendant, the illusion of Reality, buttergin, rebellion against the Capital, Puck, or tulips.

~Jeff Mach

The preceding essay was brought to you by Dark Lords For Azathoth, and may not necessarily reflect the views of the being who wrote, edited, posted, and marketed this document.

My name is Jeff Mach (“Dark Lord” is optional) and I build communities and create things. Every year, I put on Evil Expo, the Greatest Place in the World to be a Villain. I also write a lot of fantasy and science fiction. You can get most of my books right here. Go ahead, order “I HATE Your Prophecy“ It may make you into a bad person, but I can live with that.

The post A Simple Disclaimer appeared first on Worlds of Villainy.

The Watcher Problem

While alchemists were certainly quite concerned with the transformation of lead into gold, they also engaged in certain other pursuits which might prove the dominion of Science and Magick over the world, most notably attempts to create life, especially sentient life. Little did we recognize the import of that work in the modern world. In this brief series, we’ll discuss some of the tools you need in order to create a Fact Checker.

We’ll start with water.

Now, first principles. Ask yourself: What might challenge us about “fact-checking”, if we did not live in a perfect world full of blameless persons, as, of course, we do? One grave problem might be the ancient conundrum: “Who watches the watchers?”

This is quite a large subject in and of itself, but I speak of the sort of fact-checking which is prevalent these days, that is, the one in which private companies alter our normal access to their informational and discussion services in order to critique the information we’re about to see. To put it more concretely, when I pop by social media, and someone’s written a message about certain topics, the platform’s quite likely to change my access. They might hide the information from me unless I opt into it; they might bury it; or, best of all, they might stop me before I can see the thing to give me a fact-check.

(Now, it’s entirely possible that, say, a search engine might engage in the business of information without ever becoming aware that changing context makes fundamental alterations in how we receive that information. That is to say, it’s possible that Google is unaware that if it gives us a “fact-check” before we see certain search results, it will change how we perceive that information. It’s possible. It’s just unlikely. I’d say that the probability that Google is unaware of this is approximately the same as the likelihood that Google hasn’t actually been searching the web all this time; it’s just been giving randomized results to all of our searches, and by sheer coincidence, most of those results are relevant.)

Thus we have a core challenge of what we call “fact-checking”: the act of intercepting our awareness with a “fact-check” changes how we perceive something, and thus it relies on the independence of those doing the checking.

After all, while Plato asserted the famed concept of “self-evident truths”, we have not found them. In fact, we have found reality to be quite difficult to pin down. Is a given corporation “successful”, for example? That’s a good question. Unsuccessful companies will often show, on their tax forms, that they have made no profits, and, indeed, have taken a loss, because they wish to pay less in taxes; whereas successful companies will often show, on their tax forms, that they have made no profits, and, indeed, have taken a loss, because they wish to pay less in taxes. One must have quite a broad view in order to weigh multiple factors with an unjaundiced eye and make a reasonable pronouncement of corporate rise or fall.

We therefore require someone who has a vast breadth and depth of knowledge and understanding, who is yet unswayed by any particular side. You might argue that such a thing seems impossible; but I’d reply that we deserve it, and therefore, it doesn’t matter what’s possible or not. It should be ours, and that’s all there is to it. Go make it so.

The task is complicated a bit by the fiduciary side. If one side or another pays your fact-checker, the fact-checker is likely to be biased in that direction. One could, of course, attempt to pay one’s checker without announcing one’s own biases; but who, exactly, is quite so entirely public-spirited that they’d put hard-earned money into someone who’s likely to make it harder for them to earn money? If I, say, purveyed encyclopedias door to door, I’d be completely broke, but that’s not my point. Even if I didn’t tell the fact-checker my identity, the knowledge would eventually filter into society, as the fact-checks began making themselves known. Would I want a fact-checker who would conscientiously speak what that checker believes to be true, even if it might hurt the encyclopedia industry? Probably not. But if I did, wouldn’t I potentially be destroying myself? That is, unless I could trust others to also fund truthfinding efforts which might damage them, I’d be in an uncomfortable position. I’d be paying to put myself at a disadvantage.

You might argue that it’s the right thing to do; but if my business opponents were out there telling people that encyclopedias make your brain melt, whereas Wikipedia, they claim, raises your IQ, I might run out of money and be unable to fund my fact-checking.

(Can we simply trust others to act in an honest, upright fashion? Well, no. If we had that sort of belief in others, we would specifically have no need for fact-checkers.)

We can’t speak for OTHER gigantic faceless corporations, but here at Dark Lord MegaEvilVillainCorp, we have a simple solution:

We go and hire the very-best fact-checkers we can, at a very reasonable wage.

We tell them we want them to ferret out the Truth, as best they can, as disinterestedly as they can.

Then we feed them large draughts from the River Lethe, so they don’t remember a damn thing. And that’s when we turn them loose.

You’d think it would be a problem, having fact-checkers with constant memory loss. But they don’t seem to mind at all, and neither does the public.

Or if they do mind, they’ve forgotten.

~Jeff Mach

The preceding essay was brought to you by Dark Lords For Azathoth, and may not necessarily reflect the views of the being who wrote, edited, posted, and marketed this document.

My name is Jeff Mach (“Dark Lord” is optional) and I build communities and create things. Every year, I put on Evil Expo, the Greatest Place in the World to be a Villain. I also write a lot of fantasy and science fiction. You can get most of my books right here. Go ahead, order “I HATE Your Prophecy“ It may make you into a bad person, but I can live with that.

 

 

 

 

The post The Watcher Problem appeared first on Worlds of Villainy.

Better Dungeonkeeping

Amateur dungeon keepers will often put what seems like a very random selection of traps into their places of business. Much of this is necessity; you only have so much budget, and so many resources. You’re often fortunate if you can keep what you do reasonably on-message. (For example, what do dancing skeletons, cave-ins, and manticores have in common? Nothing, except a common desire to kill adventurers, and who doesn’t desire that? I mean, have you met any adventurers?)

I can sympathize. It’s hard to furnish things well, especially when a bunch of fools are going to come through with the intention of ending your current incarnation and taking your stuff.

And certainly, function matters more than theme. Given the choice between a clumsy slaughter of your enemies, and a stylish failure, I’d go with the clumsy slaughter three times out of five. What good is having harmonious fittings if you’re not going to be on a plane of existence where you can enjoy them?

Yet appropriately-stocked dungeoning is central to both our philosophies and our experiences. Consider: how many villains actually go away forever? Even Heroes, idiots though they are, rely on the knowledge that you’ll return. The vast majority of those idiots would never enjoy any commercial success whatsoever…were it not for the preponderance of sequels. And for sequels, one either needs very original ideas, or returning Villains.

That’s you, bucko.Is the purpose of your trapology merely to slay the Adventurers? Certainly not; at least, not initially. Nor is it to provide a steadily sloping set of challenges which advance in harmonious accompaniment to the rise of the Heroes. Dungeons which train the Heroes up, helping them advance in experience and puissance, that they may more easily knock over the rest of your defenses? Why would we do THAT? That’s a terrible idea. And sure, that’s what the Heroes think is happening; but, you know, they’re Heroes; if they’d been even half-bright, they’d have gone into accounting or one of the other reasonably-useful trades. Likewise, if they want valuable combat experience, they can damn well get into tavern brawls.

No, a wise dungeonkeeper knows that one’s dungeon is a fertile field to be sewn with the eventual-corpses of fools. Dungeonbuilding can be an expensive and even difficult process, but in the end, it’s just how things work: someiimes, you need to SPEND ill-gotten gains to GET ill-gotten gains. Or, as the phrase is more commonly expressed, sometimes you eat the adventurers, and sometimes, they loot your corpse.

It’s all about risk management. A smart Keeper knows it’s not about the conflict between Hero and Villain, but rather, wise and strategic choices and utilization of both capital outlay and opportunity cost.

Now, Adventurers will likely never change. They perpetually have this peculiar need to show up in person. They suggest this is courage, because why would they attribute their failures to stupidity? Such self-knowledge maketh not for happy protagonists.

You, on the other hand, ought not be there at all.

If Adventurers come to batter down your doors or walls, activate the Golems and Gargoyles, bring down the portcullis behind the invaders, and disappear off to somewhere with a lovely Moon and no stars at all.

Let your minions and machinations destroy them all. Yes, one time in three or four, they’ll win, but that’s at least a 66.6% likelihood of victory for you, and all you need is just a small profit margin to make a great deal of coinage, especially if you have artificially expanded your lifespan through some appropriately horrifying means.

So worry less, slay more, and relax. Let the Heroes come, and let them leave their corpses scattered throughout your demesne.  Then, at your leisure, retrieve their gear and goods, reap their treasure, and go invest in sharper teeth.

~Jeff Mach

The preceding essay was brought to you by Dark Lords For Azathoth, and may not necessarily reflect the views of the being who wrote, edited, posted, and marketed this document.

My name is Jeff Mach (“Dark Lord” is optional) and I build communities and create things. Every year, I put on Evil Expo, the Greatest Place in the World to be a Villain. I also write a lot of fantasy and science fiction. You can get most of my books right here. Go ahead, order “I HATE Your Prophecy“ It may make you into a bad person, but I can live with that.

 

 

 

As a longtime bargain hunter, I can certainly understand the desire to scour rummage sales and flea markets for

 

~Jeff Mach

The preceding essay was brought to you by Dark Lords For Azathoth, and may not necessarily reflect the views of the being who wrote, edited, posted, and marketed this document.

My name is Jeff Mach (“Dark Lord” is optional) and I build communities and create things. Every year, I put on Evil Expo, the Greatest Place in the World to be a Villain. I also write a lot of fantasy and science fiction. You can get most of my books right here. Go ahead, order “I HATE Your Prophecy“ It may make you into a bad person, but I can live with that.

The post Better Dungeonkeeping appeared first on Worlds of Villainy.

Caffeine Crew Interview 2015

And Here’s An Ancient Jeff Mach Interview With The Caffeine Crew (September 2014)

Rob: First off, I have to say thank you! Not just for sitting down with me to do this interview, but for all the work that has gone in to each of the events you have created. Without question, some of the most memorable moments over the last few years for me have been at Jeff Mach events. Every time is a unique experience, and I always feel like they are one place where you can really open up and be yourself without question. When you get to do that it’s incredibly freeing, and it’s amazing to see how many people you connect with just from doing so.

So what gave you the idea to create these massive gatherings in the first place? Was it just for the love of the culture, or was it something more?

Jeff Mach:

In the beginning, it was absolutely just about pure love of the culture.  In the late 1990s, I found myself working a fairly normal job, and living a fairly “normal” life, whatever that might mean, and I realized I felt empty.  I didn’t have a home.  I didn’t have a place where I could be with other people like me.  So I wanted to create one.

Rob: To anyone who has attended one of these events, it’s pretty clear that there is a heavy geek slant present at all times. So I have to ask, where does your geekdom stem from? Did you have a group growing up that totally got you and helped you embrace this, if not when did you find that connection?

Jeff Mach:

My family assuredly isn’t social enough to have associated with, really, anyone when I was growing up.  I gained a love of science fiction from my father, and I simply read it for years and years.  When every other geeky thing began to surface – home computers, BBSes, gaming – I realized that I was fascinated at how they connected to that first love, scifi, and I pretty much fell for all of them.  Hard.

Rob: I know personally for me was going back to the around ’96 when I found Rocky Horror at a local cinema. It didn’t take too long for me to get hooked, and before you know it I was buying my first pair of fishnets and diving in headfirst to a really amazing culture. It’s a hard feeling to replicate, and I have to say the first time I went to a Wicked Faire it was like seeing those huge red lips on the screen for the first time.

Jeff Mach: I once did an interview with Amy from the Indigo Girls, and I asked her what she thought of The Rocky Horror Picture Show.  She instantly replied, “It’s revolutionary.”

Rocky Horror changed everything for me.  I was a solo geek.  All I knew was that normal social rules applied to me differently because I had different interests from most of my classmates and peers.  I never knew you could CHANGE the rules until I went to Rocky for the first time.

Rob: Now The Wicked Winter Renaissance Faire has been running since 2006, did you ever expect it would continue for 12 years and that it would continue to grow as much as it has?

Jeff Mach:   Ten years, actually!

Expected?  Heck no.  Wanted?  Oh, with all of my hairy heart.

Rob: It actually grown so large you have had to change venues heading in to the 2015 event. Has it been stressful moving the event, as it has been rooted at the same location for such a long time?

Jeff Mach:  Absolutely!  But that’s okay.  You need to do stressful things if you’re going to make big huge improvements in something.  Almost nothing gets better without lots of hard work, rethinking, planning, and did I mention lots of work?

Rob: Wicked is also just one of the many of your events. You also run not one but two “Geeky Kink Events”, Voltaire’s Necrocomicon, and Steampunk Worlds Fair. I know there are more shows in between all of them, but it seems like every time I go through my Facebook feed there is a new show starting up. It’s getting hard to keep track of them all. Can you give us a little information to what is right around the corner, and what guests can expect?

Jeff Mach: The Steampunk World’s Fair is coming right up!  The world’s largest, most unique Steampunk event!  It’s a gigantic joy ride for geeks!  It’s so amazing!

Voltaire’s Wicked NecroComiCon seeks to be the first event which is not just about spooky ideas and discussions, but about creating a place where people who love Halloween will feel like they’ve come home.

 

 

Rob: I will most definitely provide links for our readers, so they can look it to each of these on their own as well.

Rob: I have to imagine that each one of these shows brings with it a very different challenge. What has been the hardest show for you to create, and then ultimately deliver? Did any not meet your expectations, or did any just absolutely blow your expectations out of the water?

Jeff Mach:

The hardest show to create is pretty much always the next one.  We always try to top ourselves.  So to some extent, it doesn’t matter if it’s a new event or one we’ve never done before, in terms of challenge.  They’re all a challenge.  Of course, when you have a runaway hit like The Geeky Kink Event, or a tremendous flop like The Psychotic Music Festival, you have very different challenges.

Rob: I’ve met and become friends with numerous performers from the shows over the years, and I have to say one of the best things I have ever heard was from my interview with Azkadelia. She went on to say that it was you who pushed her to get involved with the community, and now she is vending with The Madinarium, has an Aerial Silk Show, and is a performer at the NY Renaissance Faire. How does it feel to know you helped impact someone as greatly as you have?

Jeff Mach:

I guess that’s what we’re all looking to do, isn’t it?  Help other unusual people feel like their dreams have a shot?  I know it’s what got me to where I am – all the people who helped me, have given me advice, have in some way been kind or there for me when I needed it.

 

Rob: Now not only are you responsible for creating these fantastic shows, but you are also a performer as well. How long have you been playing music now? Who were your inspirations, or more specifically what album do you find is your constant go to?

Jeff Mach:

Rob: If I recall, you also recently released your rock opera Absinthe Heroes. What was that process like? I know you studied at Rutgers as a playwright, but I have to imagine that it has to be quite maddening to not only have to script out a compelling story, but then carefully select the right musical accompaniment.

Jeff Mach:

Actually, I write songs in a whirlwind.  I was writing both plays and songs long before I ever thought I might be a good performer myself – so I pretty much always figured that I would create the words and someone else would do the rest.  Something like Elton John and Bernie Taupin.  Of course, if you’re Bernie Taupin, it makes a world of difference to have an Elton John.  My Elton John was Psyche Corporation, and she’s spectacular.

 

Rob: Are there any plans on bringing the show out to a wider audience at this point in time and when is the next planned performance scheduled for?

Jeff Mach:

Ah!  Force me to dig into my dark secrets, eh?  Very well…

There aren’t plans for an Absinthe Heroes production right now.  But I DO plan to write a series of short songs and scenes and then try to offer them to some of the great performers I know and see if they’ll do some quick live videos.  But…. that’s a dream which needs to wait until the other side of Faire happens.

 

Rob: Before we finish up here today, I have to say that looking over your list of accomplishments over the past 10 years is frankly quite staggering. Over that time is there a moment that you reflect on more than others, or are you more the type that prefers to look more toward the future? What are your goals for the next chapters of your life as your company Widdershins continues to evolve?

Jeff Mach:

Create great events with my partners.  Walk on Mars unaided.  Co-own a Unicorn factory.  And drink a lot of coffee.

…heck, I don’t know.  I have a lot of hopes and aspirations, but I’m taking everything one day at a time right now.  I don’t want to whisper my dreams aloud, lest they not come to pass.

Rob: Thank you so much for your time today and it has been a great pleasure getting the chance to talk with you. I still can’t even find the right words to again thank you for all of your hard work in helping to create such a fantastic environment that has become such a wonderful part of my life. I greatly look forward to seeing you at 2015’s Wicked Faire, and I wish you all the luck in the world as you continue in all of your works on the horizon!

Jeff Mach:

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Of Map and Territory

The Map is not the Territory,

and if the two disagree,

we will take this insult,

this egregious injustic,

to be the fault of the malice of the Map,

and we’ll work with a will.

if the Territory conformeth not

to that which we see, marked on

our maps,

plain as day used to be,

before we got rid of it—

if it lacks that level of sheer decency,

it deserves what it gets.

hammers,

pick-axes,

shovels,

earth-movers,

sonic displacement,

dynamite;

that which exists,

the shape and features of the Land,

they exist on sufference,

whether or not they are aware.

The Land was here before,

and now it’s ours,

and none may take it from us,

and it is to behave,

behave, do you hear me?

We trust those who made our maps.

We trust those who sold us our maps.

We trust those whose maps we revere.

The Maps tell us what is there;

the actual territory,

the ground we tread,

the soil we plant,

the roads we build,

these things are not real.

If they’re not on the Map,

they’re hallucinations.

Surely the worst hallucinations are those

you can see, hear, feel, fall into, climb

out of, touch, smell, sense, understand.

What would happen if we believed

that which we experience

instead of that

which we were told?

There would be contradiction,

cognitive dissonance,

challenge.

We might not know what to do.

But if we believe the Maps,

we know,

we know what to do.

We turn where they turn. We cross bridges

where they tell us to cross bridges.

If there’s no bridge, we curse

the bridgemaker,

order that village disappeared,

change the Maps ourselves.

Or we just

leave the village

off the Maps,

and it is

no more.

If anyone tells us

that they’ve seen people,

livelihood,

even a whole village

somewhere

where the Map

shows none,

we take them off the Map,

as well.

The rough ways will be

made smooth,

or removed,

whichever comes first.

In fact,

eventually,

one can save a lot of effort,

and valuable time, time, time

if one no longer partakes in

the treacherous world

of the Territory.

What is there, out in the Territory?

The Maps describe the World;

we need see it not.

the Maps can be altered, changed,

with a few strokes of the quill;

and if one sometimes need have them re-drawn

altogether,

does that not make one a Patron of the Arts?

Why go out into the World,

the wicked World,

to measure What Is against what is described?

Think on it, and you’ll realize

that they physical world is blasphemy.

Does not all sin arise from the physical

tempting the spiritual?

How, too, then,

must the so-called “real” World

find its apex of temptation

when it asks you to weigh its so-called

‘truth’, what you think you experience

with your treacherous senses,

versus the stark and beautiful

actuality

of that

which is

on

the

Map?

The Map is not the Territory;

there is no Territory,

it’s all Map,

and to say otherwise

is death.

And so, none question the Map,

and the Map is accurate,

and any discrepancies

are the fault of

traitors.

We’re surrounded by

traitors,

monsters,

for how else could the World ever

seem,

even for a moment,

unlike how we describe it?

But slowly,

we will erase the traitors,

erase the monsters,

remove everything

which disagrees

from the Truth

as we know it,

and then,

nothing will challenge

our Truth,

our Map,

our certainty

of how the World

Is.

The Territory is dead;

long live the Map.

~Jeff Mach

The preceding essay was brought to you by Dark Lords For Azathoth, and may not necessarily reflect the views of the being who wrote, edited, posted, and marketed this document.

My name is Jeff Mach (“Dark Lord” is optional) and I build communities and create things. Every year, I put on Evil Expo, the Greatest Place in the World to be a Villain. I also write a lot of fantasy and science fiction. You can get most of my books right here. Go ahead, order “I HATE Your Prophecy“ It may make you into a bad person, but I can live with that.

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