Let’s start off this summary of the year with a giveaway. Until January 2nd, 2024, you can get the Kindle version of Within a Hidden Sun for free! Enjoy! 😀 (Giveaway has ended with a total of 17 copies of Within A Hidden Sun claimed. Hope everyone enjoys their books :D)
On to my summary for this year.
State Of My Books
I’ve decided to split up my next novel into two books, albeit I’m going to finish writing both before releasing them. The first book has been written and is currently at 173,000 words before editing with 49 total chapters. I’m 51,000 words into the second book. I’ve just started on chapter 10 and I expect somewhere between 36-46 chapters, with a somewhat larger total word count compared to part one.
Thematically, it takes place in the same world as Within a Hidden Sun, albeit at a much earlier point in time, and fills in some context for the mysteries within that book.
Writing this book has been taking up most of my spare time the past few months, so things have been quieter here and on the channel
State Of My Game
Progress is still going strong on the game and I’m going to start on level design in the upcoming months.
Upcoming Videos
There are so many subjects I really want to cover and it’s just a matter of getting the time to do them.
The next animation I want to do uses Unreal Engine and it’s just proving too hard to manage with my current graphics card. I’m hoping to get another graphics card in late January, so it’ll have to wait until then. I’ve already completed the models, textures, and environment, so most of the remaining tasks are the animation and lighting. I have some ideas for other animations, but with how full my schedule is, I’m not sure when I’ll be able to get around to writing and animating them. I’ve been thinking about maybe doing a few Youtube Shorts in a 3D animated style, which I might have time for. I’ll have to see.
As for other topics, here are the next ones I’m looking to cover:
The Problem With Prophets
An explanation of the problems with divine revelation and certainty. It’s mostly a response to the onslaught of religious fanaticism we see taking place in the world and how people can counter it. I’ve written a lot of this video already and I’ll hopefully have it out in January.
Divinity Examined
An examination of the different models of god and the meaning of existence, as seen in primitive societies, the proto/archaic civilizations, Greek Philosophy, Judaism, Christianity/Islam, Taoism, the Indic Religions, and modern cosmological physics.
The Mises Mafia
A video on the Mises caucus (i.e. the Lew Rockwell/Ron Paul style libertarians) and their corrupting influence on the American conservatism. I’ve partially written that piece, but I unironically have 16 word document pages of hyperlinks I could potentially use on various topics. Still, it’s a pretty important topic, especially in this current climate.
The Politics of Conspiracy Theories
I’ve partially addressed some of the issues with conspiracy theories being politicized in my series on the mythology of modern Russia. We saw that there has been an attempt to use conspiracy theories that range from associating Ukraine with “Satanic Khazars” to Russia and Iran claiming that the US is run by Nazi Tall White aliens. The problems that we’re running across is that there’s simply a massive proliferation of these things on social media, they change to whatever is popular at the time, and it’s influencing western society that has the four vices of an intellectually lazy citizenry, out of touch elites, widespread promotion and acceptance of socially degenerating ideas (specifically a form of secular asceticism), and a lack of a coherent ideology/social plan. The problem is that there’s only so much individuals can do when you’re up against mass state operations (via botting campaigns) and a lot of shady things that are going on sites like Twitter, Rumble, Tiktok, and more recently numerous mainstream media projects to promote these trashy ideas.
Western Revivalism
Or how to pull the West out of its current decline. It’s important to name the problems and it’s also important to provide a future idea of where to go. That’s a more major project which will span a number of topics like the concept of post-civilization (essentially, what comes after the states of primitivism and civilization), the hostile opposition ideology/psychological state I call “The Fourth Monotheism” (essentially the collective regressive forces that seek to subvert democracies into authoritarian systems), what religion/philosophy needs to look like, and how we need to understand humans anthropologically. A big project, but one that I think will be interesting and quite timely.
Social Media
I’ve split my Youtube channel into two parts. The Kotharian Lightning channel will be for most of my standard content. You can find that channel here:
The second channel, Archives and Compilations, will be for any compilations I produce and my older animations. Just because of the subject matter I cover in those compilations (namely a lot of nutjobs), it’s better to stick them on a second channel. I’ll be shifting the Mobiks series and the recent compilations I’ve done over to the archive channel in the near future. The propaganda busting videos will stay on the main channel. You can find the archive channel here:
www.youtube.com/@KotharianArchives
I’m currently somewhat active on Twitter, if you want to stop by. I mostly hang around NAFO and anti-disinfo channels and try to keep up with some of the more important topics of the day. I occasionally do my own threads, but I don’t have a big audience so I mostly can be found in replies. It’s one of those sites that’s useful, but also one whose current state is very much symptomatic of our current issues (mass bot issues, scams, hostile state actors, poor moderation, etc.). So it’s a somewhat useful site, it you know what you’re doing, but one that’s also inherently frustrating. If you use it, I recommend following some trustworthy people that you can share some info with and not wasting too much time on the morons (who are probably bots anyways).
I’ve also recently created an account on Blue Sky which is an alternative to Twitter founded by a number of the same people. It’s still in its beta stage, so you need an invite to get in, but it provides a very similar experience to Twitter, albeit with less people and no hostile state actors/bots that I’ve seen. Might end up going nowhere, might end up absorbing at least some people from Twitter’s decline. I know threads is probably the more popular choice, but I really can’t stomach the idea of being on a Facebook/Meta platform.
Thanks to everyone who is a part of my audience. I hope that you’ve been finding my various productions educational or amusing, and I’ll keep providing you with content in 2024.
Until we talk again, Happy New Year!
Kotharian Lightning 