Jeff Mach's Blog, page 52

The Daily Life of a Dark Lord – As Recorded By Beardsome the Bard

Gather ‘round, ye fine citizens, and if someone would but refill my mug of ale… thank you, good gentle!

What a gloomy company we have among us! And yet I must commend you for your bravery. For, as we all know, the Broken Rune, though it be understood only by the Wisest of the Wise, has shattered the very working of the World, and all of us have had to adapt. We may hunger a bit, but ‘tis better than chewing a bit of mutton and finding yourself transformed into some horrid parody of humanity—like our innkeeper here!

Oh, barkeep, I do but jest. Here, have a coin to sooth your mercurial spirit! Catch! …Barkeep, thou clumsy oaf, I told you to catch it, not let it land in that glass of ale. Well, I shall make good thy loss. Fish out the coin, and bring me another ale; I shall need one in each fist to recount properly the horrors of life under Lords of Darkness.

You think you have it bad now? Hah!

Just WAIT until The Dark Lord has her way with you.

Oh, certes, I do mean “Has her way”. Ask not about her appetites; know only that they are vast and unnatural. I, myself, have known them directly, and a less-experienced man than myself surely would not have survived. But that’s not the half of it.

All her people starve! None of them have food! It is just as the Wizards say!

Also, if you go visit, be sure bring some coin. Some of those farm-husbands can cook like MAD, and their prices are very reasonable. If you end up renting a little cottage by the shore, the seafood is to die for. Sometimes literally, of course, with all the 60-foot sharks washing up on beaches lately, but unlike other places, they seldom have a lot of casualties. Some kind of early-warning system, and some kind of alliance with giant squid. The Sharks burst up on the beach, and they’re quickly restrained by ye Kraken-like beasts, then killed by fishermen. Egads! It makes you wonder: what kind of lunatics go near giant Gods-damned sharks? Especially with huge tentacled things clinging to their fore and aft-quarters! …but damn, those things do fry up a treat.

Uh, the starvation? It’s, ah, I’m sure they only eat when someone like me is around, you know, to check on them. It’s propaganda. I’m practically doing the peasants a service, giving them an excuse to show off for strangers, unlocking food from the vaults of the Dark Lord. And they still make me PAY FOR MY OWN DRINKS! Uncivilized.

Oh, yes, the Dark Lord has granaries, but we presume they’re full of snakes and giant spiders. Why would someone like that want to feed her people? Ridiculous.

At any rate, they have a sweet setup in that Keep, let me tell you. Comfortable, roomy, and, of course, every hallway is stuffed with evil. One of them tried to bake me muffins. Avocado muffins. They’re mad there, you know.

Can’t wait ‘til we kill the bastards. I wrote quite a good song about it, only this one Witch, she came out, and she sang at me, and she mocked me, and the whole tune went right out of my head.

I remember her tune though.

All her tunes, in fact. They’re quite catchy, really.

Anyone want to hear a bit of music from the voices of pure evil?

Aye?

You ALL want to listen in?

Well, pull me another pint, pass me a wench—hm? You don’t pass wenches around these parts? Strange customs and strange times. Pass me a pint and a second pint, then, and I’ll play you a song or two that’ll chill your blood.

This one’s about the foul potions they brew. Oh, they call it moonshine, but no moon could have this much alcohol in it. It would wobble, and crash into stars, and fall out of the sky.

All right! Another round, and another, and let’s settle in to telling of the Horrors of the Great Citadel, and why we should all go ‘round and give the inhabitants a stern talking-to and any spare pastries we have lying around.

I know, it’s a bit of a mixed message. It’s by someone named Akané, who may be some kind of enchanted servitor, or possibly a siren. Probably a Siren. I’m lucky to have escaped with my life. And you’re lucky to have me here, to tell you of the aforementioned horror.

Ah, thank you barkeep. Right, let’s settle in, and I’ll tell a tale that’ll curdle your blood, if you haven’t already wisely converted it to alcohol. It’s called “The Ballade of Susane the Psychotic”. It’s based on a true story. Or so I’ve heard.

Jeff Mach

 

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, pre-order “I HATE Your Prophecy“. It may make you into a bad person, but I can live with that.

 

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Ten Things You Should Know About Badness On The Internet

[NOTE: This is definitely definitely a serious essay and not a snarky bit of Villainpunk satire.

SECOND NOTE: ….sure, now you think that I’m lying, only I’m not.

THIRD NOTE: …probably.

Anyway, I’m totally not going to be doing a panel on this at Evil Expo. I think…]

10. The Internet is Good. The problem with the Internet is a Tragedy of the Commons situation, where too many people did too many of the things that would not, if done by small number of people, have been too bad, but done en masse are kind of awful. (Oh, and various challenges which emerged when various companies realized they could acquire and use personal data in a way we hadn’t really understood it before, such that they could essentially manipulate you in some sort of science-fiction-esque dystopian manner, but that’s a story for another time. I see you, Facebook.)

9. Most people on the Internet are jerks. We realize that seems like it contradicts #9, but it doesn’t. The Internet is a good place made bad only by bad people. If we just got rid of the bad people, we’d be fine.

8. The Bad People are easy to spot, and we can get rid of them easily by destroying the Internet. Sure, at the time of this writing, we live in the halcyon age where people still believe that there are a finite number of bad people and we can just remove them from all the platforms ever and the world will be a good place. Silly us! We still envision a world where you can take a big chunk of people off a platform and still have a platform that’s interesting, useful, and/or fun. How wrong we are. It will be hilarious if we succeed at this, because it will be just so ridiculously terrible.

7. Our Knowledge Taboos are awesome, Part I. Problem: Sometimes people who have different opinions might be right, and we might have to change our opinions or even our actions, and that would feel bad. Solution: People with different opinions are actually bad people (sorry, I meant to say “Toxic”) and you can’t ever listen to a bad person because that magically transforms you into a bad person.

6. Our Knowledge Taboos are awesome, Part II. Problem: People can easily verify or debunk some of the most ridiculous things, especially things they see on Twitter, via a quick Google search. Solution: Make it taboo to Google these things. Are you trying to imply that you don’t trust the good person who gave you this vital information? Also, this vital information is about bad people! Who cares if it’s wrong?

5. Our Knowledge Taboos are awesome, Part III. Problem: A ton of people really sincerely feel that it doesn’t matter if information is inaccurate, as long as it leans on the correct side. We’ve seen a number of rationalizations for this, but the core seems to be ‘The other side spreads so much fake news, who cares if a little bit of our news is fake?’ Which… is a good way to rationalize generating an essentially endless, nonstop amount of fake news.

4. If you want your feed to be filled with pictures of kitties and puppies, you should start posting pictures of kitties and puppies. Sure, by now, we recognize that some degree of cuteposting is just an attempt to manipulate the algorithms into seeing us and showing our stuff to people, but now that algorithms have made it clear that they often won’t show our stuff to people unless it’s repeating some kind of viral content, it’s no worse than any other ‘Saw this and wanted to share it’, and it’s a whole lot better than virtue signaling or outrage boosting. If we want an Internet that’s a bit less misery and a bit more fun, we should post some more fun.

3. Idiots like me claim to be aware that we need a more pleasant Internet, and then they post angry satire instead of adorable pets. Sorry, Internet. Mea culpa.

2. This space for rent. Just like every other space on the Internet.

The World just ended. So we don’t need to worry anymore! YAAAAAAY!

~Jeff Mach

 

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, pre-order “I HATE Your Prophecy“. It may make you into a bad person, but I can live with that.

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Everything’s Under Control

This piece of fiction is certainly not inspired by Robert Anton Wilson’s book, “Everything Is Under Control“.

And it’s certainly not a thought experiment in what he would be saying if he were alive right now.

Of course, Robert Anton Wilson died in 2007, shortly before the rise of social media.

Which is a coincidence.

Of course.

_________________

Everything is under control.

Everything is going to be fine.

The Internet has not evolved into something capable of predicting or even causing emotional change.

Just because it knows you so well it can make you buy things, not buy things, protest, be depressed, or be angry, is no reason to be upset.

Everything is under control.

It’s not human beings who are doing this to you. It’s not sentient beings who are doing this to you. It’s cold, non-sentient, unthinking algorithms who are doing this to you, in response to (depending on your country and region) market forces and/or government mandates.

But it’s okay.

That’s not the worst of both worlds.

There are more disturbing possibilities than unthinking machines being used by various people who are, themselves, involved in a constant power struggle with each other, attempting to make those machines make you do what they want.

For example, the people in those power struggles could be vicious sociopaths who specifically want to hurt you, and that’s not entirely the case.

Depending on your country, of course. And your stockholders. And your Influencers.

Remember, this is fiction. This is not easily-verified data which you could confirm with a quick Google search.

I mean, you could confirm these things with a quick Google search, but that just shows how well-written this fiction is.

There’s no reason to Google “What is doomscrolling?”

There’s no reason to Google “What does Facebook know about me?” And also, if you happen to notice that most of the articles are about Facebook knowing too much about you in 2018, and we know the Algorithm has advanced since then, that’s perfectly okay.

There’s no reason to put down your phone.

Everything is under control.

Remember, you could easily get through your day without your cell phone, and even if you couldn’t, it’s not too difficult to configure your phone so that your apps stop flashing you various messages about new alerts and unread messages.

And just because these alerts have been specifically designed to nag at your brain and make you want to look at them and compel you to check your phone and open your apps is no reason to think this is sinister. Relatively few governments are openly using this to control their citizenry.

Don’t bother to Google “how china uses social media to control citizens”. It’s probably just propaganda.

It’s probably verifiable and true, but it’s still probably propaganda. Doesn’t that make you feel better?

Everything is fine.

Everything is under control.

Now, some people are beginning to suspect that the devices we use for information, knowledge, general life utility, and fun are also part of why we’re feeling constant states of anxiety, disquiet, and overload.

Isn’t that an interesting idea? You should post it to your Twitter feed and see what happens. And then you should check every couple of minutes to see if anyone’s responded.

It’s what I’d do.

And it’s probably perfectly healthy.

Everything is fine.

Everything is fine.

Everything is under control.

p.s.

hilariously, a copy of this piece fell backwards in time, where it was hailed as a brilliant take on a dystopian Cyberpunk future, and picked up by Algis Budrys’ short-lived but excellent “Tomorrow” magazine.

see? “That last note steals an idea from The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy” and then adds a fictional genre which has become a bit of a cliche. This is just a story. There’s nothing to worry about.

Aren’t you relieved?

~Jeff Mach

 

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, pre-order “I HATE Your Prophecy“. It may make you into a bad person, but I can live with that.

 

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Sea-Slaves

Once there was a Mermaid who became the slave of a Fisherman; or perhaps, it was a Fisherman who became a Mermaid’s slave; it’s all complicated and strange, and I don’t think anyone has the whole story, but I’ll tell what I can before I drown.

For it was the Fisherman who saw the enchanted beauty of the Mermaid; and some say he loved her because she was beautiful, which is no great basis on which to build a relationship, only she was beautiful because she made him think of the Sea, and the Sea held his heart beneath its waves, in a long-sunken storage chest.

In many tales, the Mermaid is an ethereal beauty of deep pools and foam, and the Seaman a rough, unlettered, unattractive specimen; but need it be so? What’s a mermaid’s standard of beauty? And what do we say about a man who goes out, daily, to earn bread in defiance of tempest, storm, strange beasts from the underdepths of the waters, and the simple challenges of filling a small, simple fishing net with enough fish to feed yourself, much less anyone else? There is a bravery and a responsibility and a strength and, perhaps, something worth love.

The tales say the Mermaid was the slave of the Fisherman; and one might reverse it and say the Fisherman is the slave of the Mermaid. For was he not captivated by her eyes, by her shapely form, by her siren song?

What if they were both captivated by each other, and if they were slaves, not of force, not of some sort of brutal theft from their lives, but rather, of their love?

A pretty story; but really, between you and I, dear reader, why must we tell lies?

There was only one love here, only one persecutor, only one pitiless and abusive enforcer of What We Ought do With Our Emotions, and that was our very ancient enemy: The Sea.

What was it in her eyes by the ever-shifting currents of the Sea?

What lifted and dropped his heart but the pitiless tides of the Sea?

What made their kisses addictive but the taste of brine?

No, friends, the Sea—endless and ancient enemy of Humanity, devourer of our greatest civilizations, our progenitor and still, in its own mind, our Keeper and Owners—has joined forces with Love, the oppressor who wrecks our lives, wrecks our families, wrecks our happiness in order to bring together those who would otherwise be safely apart and able to live out honest lives.

Beware being drowned by these icy and uncaring forces.

Come with me, friend, and I will help drown you with Words, my own Master, my life’s purpose, my true love.

Words have never claimed to be kind.

Words have never claimed to be sustaining (like sea-water) only to end up filled with salt.

Let us leave the Fisherman and the Mermaid to sadness and slavery, and let us leap from word to word, and if words might suffocate, might suffuse, might crush us, might drive us out of our senses—at least words never claimed to be anything but what they are. They are the tools of civilizations and of monsters; but I repeat myself.

One day, the Mermaid died, or the Sailor died, drowned in tears; and you can read all about it, and so much more.

Leave you the ridiculous and mortal world behind, and come with me for words words words words words words words.

yours truly,

the Slave of Letters,

~Jeff Mach

 

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, pre-order “I HATE Your Prophecy“. It may make you into a bad person, but I can live with that.

 

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Power and Uncomfortable Chairs

99.9% of the things I post here are standalone, and should work without other context, even if they’re part of larger narratives.

This one piece is the single (so far) exception – it’s from my upcoming novel, “I Hate Your Prophecy“, and I’m putting it up so people can beta-read it.

______

Chosen Ones may come and go (sometimes lacking a leg, or a neck, or a set of ideals), but painful, obligatory office furniture is forever. If you think the head which bears the crown is uneasy, you should try having the posterior which needs to endure the throne.

This used to be easier. Because this used to be fun.

It’s not like Alice had ever been normal. No Magician is, and Necromancers are stranger than most. Magic varies from place to place, but Necromancers aren’t a part of any society, anywhere; whether the dead are extremely reluctant or far too eager, there’s no illusion that calling upon them, in almost any capacity, is a very ugly violation of even the most generous definition of “that which is even vaguely natural”. But Alice had been a researcher long before she’d actually become an outcast, and sorcerous research, development, and creation were her deepest passions. She wouldn’t have minded being that rumored witch, the one at the very edge of the forest, the one no one ever sees, the one who spends all her time engaged in strange behaviors, the rare practitioner who leaves behind a carefully-crafted, entirely new body of work on the mystic arts.

And when circumstances—and, admittedly, her own actions—had forced her into the first steps towards being a Dark Lord, a self-quarantined monster who built a vast Citadel, knowing that she’d need layer upon layer of protection just to make it more costly to erase her than to leave her alone…

…she’d secretly loved it. Night after night, she’d made excuses to the Court; she’d left rulership in the hands of Regents and Viziers with instructions not to steal too damn much, dammit, and she’d quietly re-created rituals and re-discovered glyphs and cunningly laid rune over rune to create newly emergent enchanted complexity, and…

…for a brief time, she’d just done magic. There were some particularly unholy experiments, and she didn’t rationalize or excuse them; they were, on the whole, Dark as Hell (or, at least, as Dark as the parts of Hell which are dark; some are very brightly lit indeed, particularly the one sector with the blinding beam of radiance which lays bare every sin and misdeed which has even crossed your mind during life and strips your soul agonizingly naked; and also, that place downtown where there’s a really swingin’ nightclub with blazing jazz and very tall drinks and novelty fortune cookies which, no matter what the fortune actually is, end with, “…but you’re eternally damned, so why worry?”), but, in the midst of these thing, one might note, Alice caused no more suffering or death than did any other ruler going about the general business of ruling.

It had been some of the happiest times of her life.

And one day, she’d been declared Anathema. She hadn’t even known what the word meant; she’d had to look it up.

…and that brought the vast majority of her research to an end, as she devoted herself to building a more powerful nation, creating better defenses, and surviving.

Which left her here. Far from her laboratory. Surrounded by fops and hangers-on—but you can’t judge a Court by its courtiers; some of the vainest space-wasting idiots of the Realm had moneyed or muscled their way on in here; but also, many of the diplomates, merchants, traders, military, and other true gems of the nation were a part of this room. Sometimes they were a bit of both; one could be a military genius, a significant deterrent to enemy forces, a hard-working, hard-fighting soldier…who came to her Citadel while on leave to show off his extremely splendid outfit and speak in excruciating detail about why the warrior who did his manicures had a lot to learn from the warrior who did his pedicures. Court etiquette may be a bunch of symbolism, hokey custom, frippery, foolishness, and vanity; but underneath it was a churning sea of very smart, very powerful people who wanted to network, to connect, to check to see that the Autocrat was still sharp and focused and worth allying with…

…and that was why she fed them exotic delicacies and put out great groaning sideboards of roasts and stews and soups and pies; why they drank from a wine-cellar which might have been assembled by the ambitious ghost of the greatest sommelier of the last hundred years; why she kept them happy, why she kept up appearances, and why she had to keep her damn tail on this damn throne, looking regal, for at least another two hours, with every minute ticking by more slowly than the last.

Akané was here, as well, charming her way through the crowded room with an ease and grace which Alice almost envied; if Alice really had to cut through a crowd like this, her preference would have been less towards a disarming smile, and more towards a very, very sharp axe.

But, of course, The Dark Lord didn’t have to charm anyone. She was the one experiencing the, ahem, privilege and pleasure of sitting on the Royal Throne.

Lucky her.

Thrones are a very complicated bit of furniture. That’s not to say they’re necessarily difficult to construct; that depends a great deal on your tools, your materials, and your technology. We’ve found thrones of stone, thrones of bone, thrones in wastelands all alone (which leads poets to assume that they’re at the spot of now-gone vast former metropoles, although anyone who’s ever been obliged to remain upon the damn chairs for any length of time suspects a simpler answer: at some point, some ruler got really tired of this most important and most dislikable bit of regal furniture, and hauled their personal status-seat off to the most trackless wasteland around).

Thrones (like swords) won’t even take enchantment particularly well. And yes, this is a recurring factor in the Universe: a supposedly mundane object, if it is powerful enough in its own right, will absolutely resist the effects of thaumaturgical change. Thrones represent a kind of power which used and was used by humans before anyone had collected enough fragmentary knowledge of Magic to begin shaping the first tentative Words, and long before the earliest-found Names were known to humans as anything other than odd patterns of sound or light, occurring in unexpected spaces. The Throne represents the apex of a pyramid which is formed by the intense focus of many human minds on a central position. One might hate the autocrat; one might be an anarchist; one might despise the very idea of being ruled; but the useful collective fiction of “The State” channels enough symbolic force into the Throne that putting any more magic in will generally make the thing fly apart in a sudden and extremely violent un-integration—partly from a critical mass of too much force gathered into one small space, partly from the Universe’s sheer outrage at trying to alter something which already represents the ability to send tens of thousands of lives towards hope, or pain, or fear, or (sometimes) certain death.

This non-enchantability had frustrated Alice to no end. She found you can’t really levitate on a throne (crash!), you can’t make the wood more accepting of your body (crunch!), and you can’t really counteract the discomfort with spells of numbness unless you want to become un-alert. That might’ve been a workaround—except it was basically just a sorcerous equivalent of chugging muscle relaxant; and many’s the ruler who thought the “seductive” nature of power was a metaphor, until they found themselves held firmly, helpless in its loving, addictive grip. About the closest she’d ever come to being comfortable on one of the things was to have an invisible demon lift her very slightly above the hardwood; but that was extremely resource intensive (you may think you know what demons eat, but trust us, you don’t know this demon’s gastronomical preferences, and if you knew why we weren’t telling you, you’d appreciate it) and eventually (and contrary to rumor) even a Necromancer gets tired of having Hell-spawned hands on her flesh.

So here she sat, wishing she could be elsewhere, wishing, at least, that she didn’t have to actually keep an alert eye on what was going on around her. She’d rather have drifted off into some of the thaumaturgical formulae she’d been scribbling about last night before bed; there was that one equation, about matter, the speed of light, and the screaming of the Damned…

….she shook herself into focus. Because what she was doing now was necessary.

Or, not strictly necessary, but it’s unwise to short-circuit too much symbolic human interaction. A throne suggests many things—one could say all manner of things about the psychological distance between kneeling and looking up, versus sitting at a great height, and being observed high above all others in the room, and you could consider that vanity, or theatricality, or cheap psychology, and note that it won’t work on everyone, which is true. But how about, “See these guards flanking me, next to the dais? Notice how they’re standing up, in full armor, and my braincase is still probably above theirs? They don’t think this arrangement is funny, and, in fact, their expressions indicate they wouldn’t be able to figure out where ‘funny’ is if you gave them a map and a laugh track. Just as this unpleasant chair symbolizes my ability to place my skull above yours in less subtle ways, such as my keeping my head and removing yours, these guards symbolize many, many more guards, such that we are bound to politeness, not merely by common courtesy, but by the implicit dangers of my displeasure.”?

It’s part of why fools and madmen have so much fun in throne rooms; they don’t care. This is dangerous (it’s far better to have people thinking that it would be nearly impossible, and quite painful, to try to cause you harm, than to have people start thinking, “Precisely how well-armed are the troops, how many of them are nearby, and what weapons can we get our hands on before they can respond properly?”) but also, for at least some people, it’s extremely refreshing, which is why certain arrogant, foolish, or incredibly brave individuals are tolerated in a place where obeisance, even if it’s in token form, is considered the most basic of good manners.

And it’s part of the psychological power of a castle. It’s good for stark contrasts. For example, Akané could be granted the freedom (under watch) of the Throne Room, see how the Dark Lord lived…then be returned to a cell barely large enough for one to take about three-and-a-half paces before striking a wall. Oh, the food wasn’t bad, and they brought her some of what she want, within reason (a book of tavern songs, of all things), but it made a very sharp contrast indeed. It said: “You’re locked down there, and I’m sitting high—literally—up here. We live in the same Keep, but in very different worlds, and only by your actions and behavior can you improve your current situation.”

Alice assumed that this message was also not lost on Susane, wherever she was. It was clearly important to Susane that Alice not know, or at least not acknowledge, that Susane could get out of her imprisonment at will. Susane seemed to enjoy giving the impression that she was nothing more than a psychotic killing machine, when, in actuality, she was only almost nothing more than a psychotic killing machine. (And, as is the case with most humans, the tiny piece which was the “almost” comprised an intensely compressed series of doubts, thoughts, curiosities, interests, and an endless weighing of possibilities, which were, most of the time, ruthlessly quashed by her single-mindedness. But again: most of the time. That was the whole difference between ‘someone who can be only one thing’, and ‘someone who is very focused on one thing, but who is not locked into that thing.’ It was also the part which made Susane really interesting; mindless assassins lack a fear of death because they almost lack awareness of life. They basically risk nothing, since dying would make only relatively small changes in their brain activity. A little tiny bit of mindfulness means that you have to rely on your will; that you’re aware of mortality; that bravery, defiance, and dedication were choices, not prisons, for Susane.

Or so The Dark Lord believed. She could be wrong about that, just as she could be wrong about the feeling that Susane was, somehow, stealthily observing the proceedings in some way unnoticed, despite the guards and wards and mirrors.

But she was pretty sure she wasn’t wrong.

There was overloud laughter; Akané had finished some particularly compelling tale, and the crowd was rewarding the raconteur with pleasured sounds in the hope that she’d give them more. A ruler would have to be intensely secure, or intensely stupid, not to be threatened by a charisma that size, wrapped around a personality which was layered, as was the case with many a performer, into multiple performances, with an uncertainty as to which underlying persona represented the actual human under the metaphorical greasepaint.

The Dark Lord was neither that secure nor that foolish, and she did feel threatened by Akané. But that wasn’t all bad. A weapon you fear is a weapon your enemies should fear; it was making sure that the danger was directed away from you, not towards you, which mattered.

The Necromancer sighed. An enormous part of Alice’s job was what might be seen as conversational shorthand. There are not, for example, more soldiers than ordinary citizens, even in most police states. Could the citizens prevail over the military in a pitched battle? Yes, sometimes, especially if they’ve won or bribed the loyalty of at least some of the soldiers’ contingent before the actual battle, as was the case with many revolutions.

Does the mob of freedom-fighters necessarily bring about something better the people than the laws those troops formerly protected?

Sometimes, perhaps. Depending on your standpoint, and your mob, and your former rulers. For example, in a recent survey, 100 percent of all despotic dictators told us their populace was much, much happier since the aforementioned tyrants came to power. They even saved us time by explaining that it was not necessary for us to speak to any of the people; the people were so united in their love of the autocrat that they would be insulted if we consulted them about their current levels of joy.

Putting aside what’s best for the people, does any reasonably sane ruler want the populace to consider the practicalities of overcoming the beweaponed maintainers of society, and seizing the throne? Absolutely not; it may be a damned unpleasant piece of furniture, but removal from the big chair also tends to mean removal of your crown, usually via a very forceful blow to the neck. No government is immune from overthrow, whether its intentions are as benevolent and Utopian as one might dream, or as Kafkaesque as one might fear.

And besides: Someone like Susane is rare, but not rare enough that rulers sleep well at night.

One could reduce the population to (literal) zombies, but that comes with its own sea of problems; also, zombies need very, very precise instruction if you want them to do anything other than shamble about, attack your tourists, and (for some reason) take up itinerant miming.

So it was necessary to use an understanding of human nature, which, to many aneurotypical  individuals, Alice included, was basically “lying”.

But (to come back ‘round to the beginning, here) symbolism matters. Alice had a private belief that you could measure the sanity of a society by how much it valued the symbology of an action, versus the consequences of that action. It was one of the reasons she was a very troubled Dark Lord.

Primates (and many other mammals) can be observed in the midst of fights for dominance, all the damn time. Some people seem to think they’re clever wags if they discuss the many ways we use ‘phony’ conversation and actions to establish social contact.

The challenge is there’s not necessarily an optimal configuration for judging intent. A Dark Lord can look into souls, a bit, sometimes, in some ways, but that’s a little like looking into an oven to see if a new recipe is fully baked: even an experienced baker won’t always know if it’s overdone unless your cooker begins exporting smoke and flame, and you don’t always know it’s underdone until you’ve acquired  the sort of stomachache usually reserved for toddlers who chew on sensitive alchemical materials because they look tasty.

(Souls are secretive things; even in the blandest individual, a soul is a vast and enormous connection with the Universe, stuffed into the center-of-projection of a being whose astral presence may literally have nothing to do but nap all day, occasionally skimming through the brain looking for a few interesting memories to rerun. Bodies are small and complicated and usually out-of-touch with the core of Creation; souls are infinitely more complex and infinitely larger, even when incarnated into someone whose entire life goal is to achieve insignificance. It’s hard to cage a soul, and harder still to peer into it; if you aren’t sure you can tell what someone’s thinking based on their facial expressions, peering into their spiritual nexus is unlikely to be of great help.)

Right now, as she presides over this…was it a dinner party? A celebration of some kind? Some state holiday? She forgot. Right now, in lots of different places, for lots of different reasons, people were plotting to kill her. Other monarchs, her own subjects, the Order of White Wizards, pretty much every Elf alive, certain factions among celestial beings…

…and she, in turn could bring down Hellfire if she so chose; not without consequence, but she could. She could summon Daemons. She could send armies to set a village aflame or attack a fortress; even start, and probably win, a fairly major war.

But none of those things were useful right now. They were big, sweeping, high-cost actions, measuresto be taken if she was perceived as weak, if she was faced with a direct threat, if there was an emergency.

Because, today, her struggle was to sit on top of this clunky, oversized, hardwood monstrosity, with her back straight and her face attentive, sending out the clear message: “I am well, I am aware, and if you want to look me in the eye for a prolonged period of time, you’re going to get a crick in your damn neck.”

It was hard to imagine that anyone could find this glamorous. Well, Hymnia could. She was sitting in a corner, with a guard who was . The public fiction was that Hymnia was a visiting noble, and the private fiction was that The Dark Lord was keeping a personal eye on Hymnia to test her for unknown and unstated shortcomings. This is cruel and frightening and unkind, but one hoped it might disconcert the girl; likewise, one hoped that she’d find the undesirable blandishments of assorted petty nobles to be as dull and uninspired as the untutored romantic aspirations of anyone in her home village.

No such luck so far; Hymnia was clearly living a dream of glamor and romance, which had not been shattered when two nobles ‘accidentally’ spilled their drinks on her. The poor girl had been so apologetic that Alice had wanted to send lightning bolts straight through both courtiers and say, “NO, NO, THEY’RE IDIOTS, YOU DON’T NEED TO APOLOGIZE TO THEM”—but no; she’d let Hymnia enjoy it and see all the glitz and glamour. It would set back her training, but it was inappropriate (and therefore, weak) for The Dark Lord to punish others for her own miscalculations. Alice enacted a little self-penance by sitting, even straighter, in The Damnable Damned Throne.

And…perhaps Alice was biased. Hymnia wasn’t a fool. It wasn’t as if she’d actually run off for an assignation with any of these third-rate halfwits. Perhaps she was enjoying the situation. She hadn’t exactly attracted an Akané-sized crowd, but she’d also managed to rebuff multiple suitors without apparently ruffling their feathers, and without having them continue to pay her court. That was delicate. Alice knew most of the people in this room. Hymnia had been approached by both some of the most astute operators, and some of the most clueless hangers-on. The first took offense easily; the second tended to notice rejection only after the second broken arm. Navigating both took a deft touch. Hymnia appeared to be blossoming a bit.

Briefly, The Dark Lord wondered what it would have been like if she’d been disillusioned and outcast far sooner, while she was young enough to find everything a little new and a little amazing. For a moment, she felt a tinge of jealousy.

She quashed it with a disciplined act of focus, wherein she forced herself to be conscious of the chair under her. Moving to a physical pain allowed her to let go of the little piece of mental hurt, which was good; we already react, too often and too easily, to imagined slights. There’s no benefit to fostering resentments of the present based on one’s long-dead past. At least, not towards one’s students.

Did Alice have an opportunity to get out of the chair yet? No, not unless she wanted to be buttonholed by any one of a dozen people who wanted her attention, and weren’t worth her time. Back straight. Eyes forward. Stay in the damn chair.

The thing was cushioned, but only lightly. No alert ruler wants to sink into their own royal buttock-warmer. It’s hard to make a cushion which gives good support but doesn’t look like what it is, namely, a big hunk of silk stuffed with the feathers of whatever geese most annoyed the person sewing the pillow. Anything large and soft enough to really aid your glutes was also going to pull you in until you looked like you were melting; not a good look for a mage.

In the back of the room, certain courtiers maneuvered for the position of Grand Vizier, the poor bastards. The Dwarven delegation continued to speak in whispers, and only to each other; this was going to be trouble. Hymnia had managed to wrangle time with the Goblin ambassador; that was rare. He liked these events even less than Alice did, and normally kept to the shadows—any shadows he could find. He wasn’t fond of socialization, or of humans, or of being an ambassador; in fact, Alice had yet to discover anything of which he was fond. Well, apparently he didn’t object to Hymnia; perhaps her enjoyment of the festivities was, of all things, contagious. It wasn’t The Dark Lord’s style; but that was the point of the students, wasn’t it?

A few people were strutting about, at court primarily with the goal of being seen in their extremely stylish new clothes, hoping, for some insane reason, to start a coterie of squabbling fashionistas in the court of a ruler whose armoire contained black robes, other black robes, spare black robes, and a very slightly nicer black robe that she wore for special occasions. And yes, the Dark Lord (hopefully) gave the appearance that she had a watchful eye on everything going on—which she did, to the best of her abilities; but that really did not include caring much about who was currently commanding the highest prices for the most ridiculous ideas.

Some days you battled Dragons. Some days you battled silly bastards with overpowered weapons and nigh-criminal levels of self-unawareness. Some days you battled Demons—inner, outer; or, once in a while, both at once.

Some days you battled to sit upright in a chair and look like you know exactly what you’re doing at all times; because people are daft enough to assume that what you look like is what you are. And that battle mattered, because a little play-acting could stave off a lot of arsenic in your pre-bed nightcap.

Humans play silly games, but they’re deadly silly games. A Dark Lord knows that you can’t win every battle; but a Dark Lord also knows that every battle counts. You don’t always know which victories really matter until you lose.

That’s one thing Alice, and all of the surviving ex-Chosen, had in common: all of them had learned that lesson the hard way.

Alice shifted in her chair. Around her were the chats which would later manifest as “sudden” compromises in assorted treaties; there were ministers, permitted to talk about anything, but drawn, by mutual interest, into an unprompted discussion of certain particularly difficult matters of policy. Those Goblins had apparently made their mind up about something; she’d no idea what, but from what she could read of the surreptitious movement of their eyes, it was something important, and something about her.

It was a good night. It advanced the arcane game of statecraft, and nobody had died. Later on, The Dark Lord would reward her own patience by skimping on some exercise and writing out a few equations.

Preferably, while standing up.

 

 

 

 

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Frenemy Nation

We understand. It can be a strange, painful, weird, backstabby world out there. We’re Villainpunks; we get it. It’s hard to understand, in this Brave New World, who your friends are. So, as a public service, we’ve decided to break it down for you. Because we Villains are nothing if not helpful.

DEAR VILLAINPUNK CREW:

Who are my friends?

YOUR ENEMIES: Nope, sorry. Your enemies are not your friends; they’re you’re enemies. Haven’t you heard the old saying, “The enemy of me is the enemy of me”? It’s quite true.

YOUR FRIENDS: No, no, no! Don’t be ridiculous. What if they’re just pretending to be your friends and are actually your enemies? You can’t take that chance! Take our word: If they’re your friends, they’re probably your enemies.

THE NEUTRALS: No way. Neutrals are just cowardly enemies who are afraid to speak up and declare their true intention. If they’re not WITH you, they’re against you. (And, as noted above, if they ARE with you, they’re probably just pretending to be with you, and they’re actually your enemies.)

THE ENEMIES OF YOUR ENEMIES: Now, this sounds promising, because obviously, these people understand what’s really important in life – namely, having enemies.

Unfortunately, these people are altogether too skilled at the art of enmity. You dare not have them as friends. At most, they can be Allies, but….

ALLIES: It used to be simple: Your allies are your allies. Sometimes, they might betray you, but, as Mario Puzo pointed out, sometimes anyone might betray you.

But now that we have modern cultural technologies, we’ve learned better: your allies are probably either your friends or your enemies. If they’re your enemies, they’re not your friends, and, as previously discussed, if they’re your friends, they’re not your friends.

It’s simple, isn’t it?

THE HEROES: Sorry, the heroes think everyone is a Villain. It’s their basic reason for existing.

THE VILLAINS: We’re not anyone’s friends. However, we do treat each other with mutual courtesy and respect, since none of us wants to get squirted with an acid-boutonniere, or be dumped into a piranha tank. So we’re probably the best you’re going to do.

YOURSELF: Oh, sweet innocent. It’s no surprise to me: you are your own worst enemy.

There’s a plus side, though: the last one is the one you can actually change. There’s a chance! Just ask yourself: “Do I trust myself?”

…if the answer is “No,” then…WELCOME TO VILLAINY!

 

~Jeff Mach

 

My name is Jeff Mach (“Dark Lord” is optional) and I build communities, put on events, and make stories come into being. You can get most of my books right here. Go ahead, pre-order “I HATE Your Prophecy“. It may make you into a bad person, but I can live with that.

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The Paths of Doom and Despair

Pardon us, Earthlings, but we could help but notice that a large number of you appear to be on the paths of Doom and Despair, and that just isn’t right.

We definitely specified that only about 17% of you were to tread the paths of Doom and Despair. About 10%were supposed to be on the road of Misery and Grief. But at least 60% of you were supposed to be on the trails of Optimism and Hope. What, exactly, happened here?

Wait, wait, stop that! Please do not all yell at us at once. We have sensitive telepathic receptors, and you are making all of our heads ache, all at once. That was unhelpful. 75% of you just pointed at each other and shouted, “It’s THEIR fault!” The other 25% pointed at yourselves and said, “I’m sorry, it was all me, I don’t know what I did, but I must have done it.” This is not useful!

Let’s try this a different way. Where are your administrators?

No, no, no! Not your weird, self-appointed leaders! Your administrators. The ones who have the keys to all the settings. The ones who can change and adjust the various parameters which control this variation of reality?

What do you mean, “Nobody can find them”?!?

…wait. So some of you are saying that these beings exist but want you to suffer, and some are saying these beings don’t exist at all, and you’ve never met them?

That’s impossible. Beings left on their own in a simulation will eventually acquire the technology to live lives of joy and hedonism. Why, once you’ve left the Bronze Age, or…

…are those microchips?

Are you all carrying—wearing—semi-intelligent technology?

And, with no Administrators in sight, you’ve all chosen to go down these horrifying roads of—

please. stop. yelling. Yes, we heard you. It was everyone else’s fault. Right. We get it. Do not be alarmed. We are going to return briefly to our ship.

We may be some time.

* * *

On board ship, Zibnax turned glumly to Blithnar. “Welp, they haven’t seen the administrators either.”

“Nope. Nobody has.”

“I suppose we’ll leave them to destroy each other.”

“Better them than us, friend.”

“Is it, though?” asked Zibnax, glumly. “I mean, why are we the only species which chose to leave its home planet and roam the Galaxy, observing everyone else. It’s the most boring job in the Universe.”

“Which would you rather have,” replied Blithnar, wearily, “boredom, or destruction?”

Zibnax looked at the charts. It was 26 Florpnarian Days before they’d arrive at the next planet.

“I suppose we’ve got some time to think about it,” she said.

“At this rate, we’ve got forever,” said Blithnar. She stared out a porthole into the vast yawning maw of the galactic Void, and sighed.

Then both the aliens were silent for many days.

Again.

~Jeff Mach

 

My name is Jeff Mach (“Dark Lord” is optional) and I build communities, put on events, and make stories come into being. You can get most of my books right here. Go ahead, pre-order “I HATE Your Prophecy“. It may make you into a bad person, but I can live with that.

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No More Dog

I couldn’t write this story forever and ever. Because there’s a simple truth: life is difficult and painful enough.

Nobody needs to see doggos as monsters.

Nevermind that I can’t hear the word “doggo”, or, worse, hear some furry beast called a “woof” without finding a weird phenomenon: my broken and vanished heart, so far and so long gone, and so cold wherever it is, so disconnected from my monstrous true self…

…I can feel it break again. It was thirteen years of bonding. And my heart won’t forget. And you can’t make your dog, your loyal dog who loves you, into the villain, even though he tried to tear out my throat.

And that’s a kind way to put it. It wasn’t playful. He wasn’t roughhousing. He went for my face, went for my eyes, went for my groin without an ounce of humor, went for my throat, and tore it out, and killed me, and I bled out, and it was uglier and worse than anything you might imagine.

But he loved me and he was a good dog. So the problem was me.

I was covered in blood. I couldn’t smell it or see it, and to be honest, I don’t think it was real. I’ve spent too much time examining my clothes, every bit of furniture, everything I owned, every photo, every piece of evidence. You might say, “But you went mad and burned all the clothes”, and I say, “It was not a proverbial ocean of blood, it was a real ocean of blood, in fact, it was all of the Earth’s oceans of blood, 321,000,000 cubic miles of it, just ask anyone; I couldn’t have hidden all that blood from myself. I couldn’t have fit it all on my body. But other people believed in it.

And my dog smelled it.

He was so sure.

He was so sure that he tried to rid the Earth of me. Because I was a threat. I was a predator. I was a monster.

After he bit me and I died, I rose again as a werewolf, which was as confusing to me as anyone else, and left so many questions: why would I rise at all? Why would my dog, a normal dog, make werewolves? Why would I rise as a werewolf, something not undead, if I had died?

Damned if I know. All I know is what happened.

This is how my dog was the worst: he took an innocent Master and killed him, because my dog had gone mad.

This is how my dog was the best: he killed me because there are some truly awful humans walking the Earth, and most of them are the kind loved by dogs and other humans, and someone needs to stop them before they destroy every human and every dog, because I may be a Villain, but, as I’ve said before and I’ll say again, being a Villain doesn’t always mean you want to see the world in ashes; sometimes it just means that you’ll no longer stand idle while they burn the misfits. First, because to Hell with those who burn my fellow misfits; and secondly, when they run out of misfits, they’ll start in on everything else.

I have no idea where my former dog is now. Maybe he found a Master who isn’t a monster, and he lives happily, and if he does, who cares? He might have been a loving creature, but he wasn’t as smart as I thought, and I wouldn’t trust his sense of object permanence, much less his sense of faith in humans. I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s off guarding some of those who I’m going to discomfort: the book-burners, the platform-breakers, the dream-stealers.

I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s become human himself, because it’s hard to burn books with paws.

And maybe I do him an injustice; maybe he realizes he killed what he loved, maybe he even realizes that if, in the end, I was a Bad Human, he was, in the end, a Bad Dog, and like me, he roams, restless, pacing, never trusting, never believing, only trying to right a few wrongs without biting the wrong damn throat again.

I forget where this was going again. I miss my dog. I love my dog. I hate my dog. I never had a dog, and with every act of will I shatter every memory and make it as false as the blood he insisted he could smell on my hands, on my clothes, on the face he tried to bite off.

We ended in weakness and dishonor, the betrayal of everything either of us had believed in; but, while I don’t know or care where he is or what he’s doing, my life is not over yet, and though I’ll never again have a dog, or a lover, or, really, my humanity, I have the potential for a lot of years, and I’ll live every day as if, that very day, I had to pound out a few thousand more words and make a few dozen more pieces of change, because whenever I’m killed the second time, I won’t have lived in vain.

My dog tried to kill me, and I live to spite him, and I know dogs are good and kind and right and I must be wrong; but so help me, I am not wrong. Chip Matthew, wherever you are, whoever you are barking at now, whatever bed has you, sleeping, curled up, at its foot: you’d best hope I am wrong, because you made me what I am, and now it’s more than half of your life that you’re half-responsible for a monster, and if I died writing out the next sentence, you could still live another fifty years and not easily undo what you did.

The moral is that I’m sorry to burden you with tales of my past life, my past love, my past marriage; but please stay tuned. I am exorcising the demons of a broken and embittered life, and within thirty days of this writing, assuming no-one manages to get my throat again, I will be amusing and fun to watch.

Tonight, there’s nothing but tears, but tomorrow, I promise, I promise on my vanished heart: tomorrow, we feast, and we howl.

~Jeff Mach

 

My name is Jeff Mach (“Dark Lord” is optional) and I build communities, put on events, and make stories come into being. You can get most of my books right here. Go ahead, pre-order “I HATE Your Prophecy“. It may make you into a bad person, but I can live with that.

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Zombiepocalypse Strategy

It’s days like this that you know you should put some time into preparing for the Zombiepocalypse.

You know it’s coming. You know you can’t escape it. You know you have to be ready. So…why aren’t you preparing?

Today is the day.

It’s okay to pity the neighbors. Yeah, some of them may be laying in pitiful little stores of food. A few of them may be purchasing headshot-ready weapons. (Is your one neighbor, the one who can’t seem to operate a lawnmower, really preparing to take on zombies with an axe? I mean, I’m bad with lawnmowers myself, but an axe? What’s that going to do? Decapitation is difficult. Even if you have good training and the right weapons. I mean, the badass woman down the street with the Kenjutsu training and the beautiful sword she hand-sharpens, the one she trains with every day? She’s still got a terrible plan and she’s still gonna hate the outcome, but at least she’s trying.)

You, on the other hand, you know what’s what. And that means…you’ve got some choices to make.

Because they’re all gonna die screaming, in seriously unpleasant shock and horror as a horde of zombies catches them, brings them down, and devours them.

Gross.

No, friend, you know where it’s at: get bitten once, survive, and join the horde.

C’mon, there’s really only one way to lose at a Zombie Apocalypse, and that’s to be eaten by Zombies. I mean, duh, right? It’s not a skeleton apocalypse. Obviously, if they chew all the flesh off you, you’re not going to rise again as one of the undying horde.

So the question is, how are you going to get this right?

The first thing is to make sure that you’re not longterm exposed to multiple zombies. Because if there are too many of them, you won’t be able to prevent them from actually killing you, and most likely, if they kill you, they eat you, and you’re finished. (Literally, figuratively, etceteras.)

What you need to do is isolate one zombie. And that seems really hard to do. Unless you’re lucky enough to be there right at the beginning, when nobody knows what’s going on and zombies are rare, you seldom get them alone. They’re a very social bunch, which will presumably be of some comfort to you later on, when you’re a brain-nibblin’ monstrosity.

No, it’s just too risky. What you need to do is pretend to be a hero.

I don’t mean that you necessarily need to be a Villain. I mean, while I personally can’t see why anyone wouldn’t want to be a Villain, you don’t have to say, portray your companions. You should definitely learn some survival skills. Can you get good with a sword? Or if that’s not your speed, or doesn’t fit your athleticism, maybe guns or bombs or, say psionic powers? Or get really good at making traps?

Basically, do something that’ll help you survive long enough to found/be found by some collection of evolutionarily-selected survivors who have the guts and the toughness and the fightin’ skills to survive.

They’re doomed, of course. You can’t have, like, six people and expect to escape a world full of zombies. But it’s okay. Don’t tell them that.

Once you’re in the group, you’ll get into plenty of fights. Then, all you gotta do is just get bitten, but not die.

This should be no problem for you. First off, you’re with a group, so they’ll all try hard to save you. (And you might as well save them, too; I mean, if they all get chomped, you’re back at square one.) But second, plucky bands of post-Zombie-Apocalyptic survivors seem to be totally incapable of NOT having at least one person get-bitten-in-tense-fighting-and-not-die.

It’s some sort of law of nature or something.

Now, I’d recommend letting them know about it. Don’t tell the hothead; you’ll just get put out of your misery, which is the last thing you want. But also, don’t just leave it and wait (impatiently!) for your transformation. That will do you no good; I mean, even if you don’t like your ‘teammates’, you don’t want to suddenly go full zombie right in the middle of a team of zombie-hunters.

No, go for the big drama. Say, “I’m sorry everyone, but this is for the best. I have to leave.” Some will try to talk you out of it. Somebody might speak optimistically of a cure. Gently inform them that there’s no cure and the risk is too high, and try not to roll your eyes enough that they notice. Let them pack you a lunch if they want; that’s very sweet.

Then, just spend a couple of hours not getting eaten. You’re almost there….

….and finally, you ZOMB OUT! You’re a brainless, neural-matter-eatin’ Zombie now! You’re safe from Zombies because the one thing Zed don’t eat is EACH OTHER!

(Hopefully.)

Now go out there, you brainless undead monster, with not a single care left in the world, no student debt, no worries, no concerns, and no real ability to die because you’re already dead. Go out and be the mindless killing machine you’ve always dreamed of being.

You EARNED this.

~Jeff Mach

 

My name is Jeff Mach (“Dark Lord” is optional) and I build communities, put on events, and make stories come into being. You can get most of my books right here. Go ahead, pre-order “I HATE Your Prophecy“. It may make you into a bad person, but I can live with that.

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A Particularly Harmless Fairy Tale

Once upon a time, there was a storyteller who loved to start with

“once upon a time”

and then go badly wrong.

He couldn’t help it;

he’d seen too much.

He’d seen the feral look in Little Red Riding Hood’s eyes

when she went out,

carrying that seductive basket

of goodies,

looking to have her grandmother slain

by the Wolf

so Red would inherit everything,

and then her lover,

the Huntsman,

could marry her –

oh,

sure,

he was doing it for the money,

but she was doing it because she wanted

a strong person with an axe around,

because she knew that there was a house nearby

which contained three very angry bears,

sometimes depicted as small, medium, and large,

or mama, papa, and baby,

but actually,

they were three gigantic bear sisters,

all the same size,

who hated living in a stupid human house

eating stupid human food,

but they knew that, if they did,

some stupid human would someday wander in,

eat their food,

mess up their furniture,

fall asleep in their beds,

and wake up

to the (final) sight

of three pairs of ursine teeth;

teeth almost as sharp

as those of Hansel and Gretel,

who, having been thrown out

by their angry and terrified parents

(themselves too busy hiding the evidence

of what their children had done

to really think about what

they were inflicting on the world,

the selfish bastards) –

learnt many fine lessons

from the old cannibal witch

who lived in that cottage of candy,

and do you begin

to see a pattern here?

the basket, a trap,

the bears in a human house, a trap,

the cottage of candy a trap,

this fairy tale a trap—

haha,

no,

I’m just kidding about the last part.

This fairy tale is

just a fairy tale,

one of those modern retellings

which believes itself to be edgy,

but in fact,

it’s perfectly harmless.

You can finish it off now,

leave the story here,

because you needn’t worry;

the story doesn’t have teeth,

the story isn’t hungry,

and the story isn’t in your mind now.

We promise;

and, let’s be real here,

would a fairytale lie?

~Jeff Mach

 

My name is Jeff Mach (“Dark Lord” is optional) and I build communities, put on events, and make stories come into being. You can get most of my books right here. Go ahead, pre-order “I HATE Your Prophecy“. It may make you into a bad person, but I can live with that.

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