acomposerofdreams-blog

[acomposerofdreams-blog]

GROND!

inspired by the legendary grond post

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Sadly, it's not hard to convince people a faction is evil when the starting point for most Syndicate characters is "They're like Elon Musk, but somehow much worse".

In Mage the Ascension one of the most interesting conflicts for me is between the Technocratic conventions of the Syndicate and the NWO. To quickly summarize both, the Syndicate are the money wizards who provide the funding and materials for the other conventions to use, they control economics and the private sector. The NWO meanwhile charged itself with controlling culture, human thought, psychology and the development of new ideas.

They hate eachother, and seeing the ways their conflict plays out is so so so fun.

If you asked the Syndicate, the NWO is a bloated convention that needs to be reorganized, split apart between its disparate elements and have its authority redistributed and refocused. The Syndicate book makes it clear that they see themselves as essential, they are constantly playing up their own value, their own necessity to the whole union, and phrasing the actions of the NWO as an attack on their territory. But in doing so, they belie an anxiety undercutting everything, their convention is only useful so long as they are providing a service. It behooves them then to monopolize that service, the production of funding, Prime energy, and material goods, even at the expense of other conventions. They even admit that their applications of Primal Utility aren't the only possible ones, but they refuse to engage with those because they would fall under other conventions territory and thus lose their monopoly.

The NWO on the other hand don't even fight on the same level. Small aside, the NWO book is one of the best pieces of in universe propaganda and psychological manipulation written in all of Mage the Ascension, befitting the House of Mind. The NWO do not acknowledge the conflict between them and the Syndicate as a conflict, they only point out the Syndicates repeated failings and screw ups. The NWO doesn't need to fight the Syndicate, all they need to do is control the battlefield, control how people think about the conflict in the first place. They never mention their necessity to the Union, they don't state it directly but instead continuously imply it repeatedly, it's not a question, it's not something that could be replaced. It's a fact, and you agree with it.

[acomposerofdreams-blog]

My friend Sam, in middle and early high school, was the kid of a cop. Went to church with him, went to school with him. I think the only time I ever saw the man smile was when he marched me, Sam, and some of our friends out into the woods with airport gear and showed us how much the pellets could hurt by shooting each of us several times in the stomach. Basically, I'm not surprised.

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The terf hurt themself in their confusion...

owned

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Every DS9 plot, sorted by which character is the focus:

-O'Brien believes there is something which cannot be taken away from him. It is taken away from him.

-Dr. Bashir believes he won't fuck something up. He deals with the consequences of fucking it up.

-Odo believes he has no feelings about something. Everyone around him deals with the consequences of how strong his feelings are.

-Dax believes that the bad decisions she made in the past won't blow up in her face. They blow up in her face.

-Kira believes that she can no longer be disappointed by the people around her. She is.

-Sisko believes that he can solve something in the normal, intended way and not a horrible, fucked up way. He solves it in a horrible, fucked up way.

-Worf believes that he has finally found a problem which can be solved with force rather than feelings. He solves it using his feelings.

-Quark believes that he has a remaining shred of dignity. He loses it.

[acomposerofdreams-blog]

One of the things I enjoyed seeing as a preschool teacher was how a kids language changes over time. In my Pre-K class I had a girl who referred to every non-Indian man (her family were immigrants) as John. Because her preschool teacher was Mr. John, her Pediatrician was Dr. John, and her Dad had a coworker named John, and they had a cashier named John one time. She was able to recognize THAT name.

So every guy was just John.

It was adorable.

our friend's daughter is at the age where she is extremely chatty and speaking in full sentences, and i love kids' use of language.

apparently all strangers used to be "ladies," but now they are "neighbors." since they speak english exclusively at home, "neighbors" speak german; it was very distressing to hear her mom speak german once, because, in her words, "you're not a doctor or a neighbor!"

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Never underestimate the will and spite that fills every angry child care worker who loves every child that enters their lives.

the way sesame street, a pbs puppet show for literal babies, is pressing on with pride content despite vitriolic monsters descending on every post to insinuate they're pedophiles or demons while some of the biggest companies on the planet who could swim in olympic swimming pools of money like scrooge mcduck on steroids buckle and cave just emphasizes how completely and utterly pathetic these corporations are. they'd butcher a baby if it meant saving a penny.

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Who knew that Tumblr would eventually become a beacon of stability and sound business practices. God we're so fucked.

Made a new poster! :)

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Tolkien:"It is not your place to deny the Return of The King."

King George VI: "The rule of Britan is MINE and mine alone!"

I have a very rough idea in my head that I don't think I can clearly articulate beyond "And that concludes tonight's reports on German air forc—WHAT'S THIS? IT'S KING ARTHUR WITH A STEEL CHAIR"

[acomposerofdreams-blog]

There is, hopefully, only one conspiracy I ever bought into enough that could have been worrying. I distinctly remember the what, when, and how. The what: That the fluoride in our water supply allows for government mind control at worst, and makes us more docile at best. The when, 14 if I’m being kind to myself. Back when I believed I was significantly smarter and cleverer than I actually am. A CNN article I read on a high school computer because I thought that made me smarter than my fellow students who played games or tried to look up porn. Not much of a reason to feel superior, but I needed that feeling. Back when I was far more afraid about confronting what I actually am. Just average, maybe less so.

The article was fairly simple in its scope, the writer wanted to go into the subject with an open enough mind to listen to some of these conspiracy theorists. Quite respectable actually, I don’t think I have the patience for that. And one thing that the writer admitted… that he, and by extension I, had no idea what went into the process of preparing the water that comes out of our tap.What is the government doing to that water? What are companies doing to that water? And to the writer's credit he or she went into a fair bit of the details of that subject.

How water treatment plants remove pollution from industrial waste run off, how it removes our own excrement and piss before putting that water back into fresh water supplies or the ocean. It's quite an interesting process that is crucial to stopping diseases such as cholera. But again… I was 14 and in desperate need of an ego boost.  So through the little bit of reading I actually paid attention to, a shame or I might have remembered the person’s name or the article title, I discovered a tiny bit of fluoride is added to the water heading into our tap. How much? Well until 2015 it was 1.2 grams per fluid liter of water. According to myself, who is not great at math, there is at most 1.2 parts fluoride for every thousand parts water. Which then went down in 2015 to .7 parts per thousand parts of water.

To illustrate that as best as I can, the average beer bottle is at most 385ml or 13 fluid ounces. So… if you took that beer bottle, filled it with water (I know, to many of you a travesty), you’d have a total of .27 ml of fluoride or .0091 fluid ounces in that bottle. To help you visualize that, half a raindrop of fluoride is in that beer bottle. One half of one raindrop.

Again, I was 14, and too afraid of being seen as common, or average, or worse… less than average . So I ignored the facts. I didn’t care, I felt smart, I was slightly more powerful than my fellow students to know that fluoride was added to the water before it entered my kitchen sink. I didn’t know what it was either, or at least I didn’t think I did. Thankfully I never dug deep enough into that rabbit hole to become completely immune to sense. So when I asked my parents what Fluoride was… they answered me seriously. It was the stuff the dentist used to finish cleaning my teeth, teeth that had no cavities in it because I regularly brushed my teeth with toothpaste that also contained fluoride.

From there the whole thing started to fall apart. If Fluoride was being used to make me more docile, why after regularly dosing myself with far more effective quantities than what was in tap water for my whole life… was I ready to “fight the power” over it? If it was really controlling my mind it wasn’t doing a very good job of it. I did take it a step farther, I went a week without brushing my teeth and for an entire day chose not to drink liquids of any kind. Cause maybe if I got it all out of my system it’d make sense to me, that I’d see behind the curtain and realize that I was right to believe this. I don’t know if my parents noticed that, but what I did notice… was that nothing changed. I was still… me, still myself, not as clever or smart as I thought I was. My eyes were open though, I could see myself as… average, maybe even less at the time.

It wasn’t until four years later that I came across the darker side of conspiracy theories, the abandonment of logic, often by people whom you would think have the intelligence to discern the truth.

My grandfather was a physicist, one with enough knowledge and skill in studying the world that he was part of the team that developed radar technology for America during the Cold War. The systems that are used to guide the missiles that could end the world at any moment was part of his resume. The man had a Marine bodyguard with him whenever he was out of the country, whose sole duty was to kill my grandfather in case the Soviets or Chinese wanted to steal the secrets to America’s radar detection network at the time. He is probably still the second smartest person I have ever met, and that’s of course admitting that I’m more biased towards his daughter, my mother. And he believed with absolute surety that now Former President Barack Obama wasn’t an American citizen and maybe a Muslim plant to destroy the nation. And I was too afraid to ask him why.

I don’t need to go into how that former President Obama is in fact a natural born citizen. Or at least I hope I shouldn’t have to? His father was an American citizen, who married a Keyan woman, who then gave birth to now former President Obama in Hawaii. These are… facts. As factual as the knowledge that your body needs water to live. That’s how deep the discussion had to go and there are still people who think that Obama was a Musilm immigrant who stole the Presidency away from Christianity, dealing a blow against the Christ loving people of America.

And my Grandfather might have been one of them. A man who I have admired for his wisdom and raw intelligence. Whom in spite of his coarse attitude from having a childhood that saw the Depression, World War 2, and had to raise children through the Cold War. Is a kind, and empathetic person that only now do I have the sense to see. Yet when this topic of conversation came up, I couldn’t tell you what my grandfather feared about then presidential candidate Barack Obama.

I could tell you what I was afraid of as an 18 year old fresh out of high school, I had a strong belief that those in the News media need to be brave enough to ask powerful people questions that challenge their points and beliefs of their viewers and those they talk to. I believe that even more so now. So as I watched so many journalists and people get swept up in the charisma, intelligence, and hype of Obama. I was afraid of what might happen if he could keep the level of control over the news during his presidency. An ultimately pointless fear, that was basically blown away after the first hundred or so days in office.

But for my Grandfather. That… wasn’t it, during the whole eight years I think at times he believed that President Obama was a secret Muslim agent, or incompetent, or hated the “American way”, but I don’t know. I know he was frustrated by some of the more absurd “scandals” of the Obama Presidency. Such as the Tan Suit incident, one of several fistbump incidents, the political “travesty” that was the Date Night scandal, and the death of the presidency because of ordering Di-jon mustard for his burger. But… he seemed to believe that all of that was a calculated distraction, to keep people from thinking about how dangerous Obama really was. And I have no idea why?

I’ll never get to know the reason either. He passed away while battling brain cancer a while ago. Leaving that question unanswerable.

That kind of fear I’ve come across again and again. Either in person or through observation. One of the most chilling ones was watching on the news thousands of angry, afraid, men chanting in Charlottesville Virginia “Jews will not replace us.” As of Writing this… that was almost seven years ago. Yet I still feel like I need to state that about .16% of the world population is Jewish. There are actually a million more Mormons in the world than Jews and I don’t see anyone stating the Mormons are going to replace us all. Yet fear would ignore that, fear has ignored that and likely still will. I wish I could sit some with some of these people and talk about why they choose to fear others. What is it that they’re afraid of themselves? That maybe their own feelings of inadequacy have everything to do with themselves and not others? That the failings in their life are in fact their own failings, or failings of people like them?

Fear given an easy out will always become hatred, and to give credit to my Grandfather. His fear never became that. Hatred was not something that came naturally to him. But were his fears about Obama hiding something else? Because my fear of Fluoride in the water was hiding my own insecurities about myself. Because at the end of the day… I, and you, and my Grandfather, are just themselves. I’m just me. Not as smart, not as special, as I think I am. I’m just… average. And isn’t that terrifying?

(Because this one requires some sources. Here’s the link to the google doc I wrote it all on with the sources attached. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1DBiWEkxlCczxnIzXsfhu1txdklJJauMHW0inX17Zpdw/edit?usp=sharing

Enjoy!)

[acomposerofdreams-blog]

Or, and here me out, move Pompeii into the volcano.

me @22:00 pm: What if in Dwarf Fortress, I built the entire of Pompeii and Oplontis and then...

flooded it with magma

[acomposerofdreams-blog]

Why I’m afriad of Red, Yellow, and Blue

It is deceptively simple, a sheet of red boarded by a line of dark blue on the left, and a bright cheerful line of yellow on the right. The colors just pop out at you and linger in your mind, it is easy to picture, simple to recreate in your imagination, and utterly haunting in its simple context. Cause yes, there is no denying that the painting itself is… simple, that’s the point. There is nothing that gets in between you and connecting to those colors the terrifying question it asks so blatantly. Why are you afraid of Red, Yellow, and Blue?

Such is Barnett Newman’s first iteration of his series of paintings titled, “Who’s Afraid of Red, Yellow, and Blue”. A story of a man whose life begins as the child of Immigrants from Poland, a childhood spent watching the First World War who turned into a young man that graduated art school right before the Great Depression, who then saw the horrors of the Second World War unfold only to then be faced with what seemed like at the time… imminent nuclear extinction. The story of his life and how it affected his art should be an essay in its own right, however that is not the point today. It is a more personalized look at what might be considered his most beloved and reviled work. Today I’d prefer to talk about why I am afraid of “Red, Yellow, and Blue”.

My family has a history of rage, of lashing out in anger against those we love the most, especially on my father’s side. My own father struggled with controlling his emotions as a frustrated man with three sons that he always had a hard time understanding. To which I’m not saying that he was abusive or hurtful towards myself, my brothers, or my mother, just that he was open with that struggle. I can remember him having to remove himself from situations when he was angry, cause he could feel that surge of adrenaline that could lead to him losing control. I can remember times when his voice rose and I could hear him rant through the walls of our home as he told my mom about all the things that weighed down on his mind and shoulders. 

 I never learned to fear his anger, just my own.

One of the memories that sticks out most is when I was twelve, with all the mess that comes with being a pre-teen who feels lost, alone, and scared whenever he steps outside of the house because of his own anxieties. The moment was with my younger brother, I can’t remember what we were arguing about, but I remember I just had the urge to strangle him cause I was so angry. I didn’t though, I knew enough about my own father’s struggle that what I needed was space, though I didn’t know how that would help. So I left, I stomped down the hallway as he badgered me about the “thing” and just as I passed by his bedroom, the youngest brother stuck his head out cause he was worried about what was going on. 

I punched my six year old brother right across the jaw. 

Cause I could… he wasn’t in my way, he wasn’t doing anything, he was just worried about his oldest brother. I had just wanted to hurt someone, he was the easiest person to hurt.

I’ve never lived that moment down, through a great deal of effort and time I learned that moment was forgiven, along with others like it that I still can’t quite forgive myself for, even though forgiveness was given. I do not like the person I am when I’m angry, that person who takes joy in hurting others as a way to deal with his own hurt. Though I have been told repeatedly that I’m no longer that person, I can still feel him deep within me, gnawing at the bars, hoping to get out. That part of me isn’t gone, it’s just controlled, cause anger doesn’t just go away… you just get better at handling it.

I still fear that anger, I still am very much afraid about what kind of person I am with when rage can so easily be my chief motivator. What kind of Father could I be? What does that mean for me as a Husband? How does that affect my wife? My friends?

So what else am I supposed to see when I look at “Red, Yellow, and Blue”? 

The whole point of it is to ask that question, then put it on those colors so that you have to examine them. That is the brilliance and terror of such a piece of art. Perhaps that’s why when the series of four paintings have been displayed, there have been protests, threats made to staff members, and people boycotting the places that chose to display these four simple paintings. And I can understand that desire, when I look at these paintings I feel… fear. I want to reach out and throw these paintings in a fire, dump them in a river, or shoot them into the sun so that they never have to make me confront that which I fear again. But it’d be in vain, that picture in my head is far more haunting than any physical painting, forcing me to confront the question again and again… 

I have changed though, for the better even. Change that has come with a great deal of understanding from my Father. I remember much of his own thoughts on anger, and I remember most that he wasn’t angry with me after such a moment. Just sad that his own family tendencies had passed so easily to his children. I remember one day I had locked myself in my room because I was furious at, again, my brothers. I had at the time an old walking stick  that was something of a family heirloom, it was heavy, strong, with a thick metal tip. My door never stood a chance as I punched holes through it, to the point that about a quarter of it probably couldn’t be considered part of the door anymore. 

I was so ashamed. I had terrified everyone in my family. Our dog wouldn’t go near me for days, the cats wouldn’t enter my room for another week, and those holes in the wall only got repaired when we eventually moved out of that house some four years later. Yet in counter to that… I remember my dad sitting on my bed right afterwards. Telling me that he understood how much anger must have been in me, cause he had felt that before, and still felt it. He told me that, for now, I was right to remove myself till I learned how to control myself better. We talked about how good anger felt, and what bad things could happen because of it. I like to think that my door was never replaced because my parents wanted me to keep a reminder of how dangerous uncontrolled anger could be.

This would be the part where I’d also talk about kind and understanding therapists, but that wasn’t in the cards. We didn’t have the kind of money for a child to spend several hours a week meeting with someone to help work out all of their problems, something that is likely still needed. But even without that source of help, I became better at not being ruled by my anger through the help of a family that loved and supported me. First from my parents, then from my brothers, and finally from my loving partner. 

I have changed for the better by confronting what scares me, and learning to not let it rule me. By taking that fear, that anger, to understand that it is wholly my own. 

I hope to continue doing so.

[acomposerofdreams-blog]

Honestly I think that's the dwarfiest thing a person can do. Start a mega project that is essentially your own little mad idea. Like setting up an in game clock that keeps track of time passing in the game as it happens.

It's pointless, redundant, requires an insane amount of work, yet if somehow it DOES work you're now the coolest dwarf on the block.

I almost feel sorry for the admin of the Dwarf Fortress wiki on Fandom.com. Like they're trying to build a fully functional wiki when one already exists and it's just them alone.

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Well fuck. Let's do this!

TTRPGs for Trans Rights in Florida

y'all there is an absolutely bonkers deal going on at itch.io right now

You can get over 500 rpgs for only *five dollars* right now. That's right, over $2000 worth of games for only five fucking dollars. It's insane. It's unreal. It's totally worth more than any dollar amount you're going to throw at it. And it's all going towards charities that work with trans folx on the ground: specifically Zebra Youth and Transinclusive Group. If you donate more than $10 you get a special bonus - the creators of Action Fiction will send you a PDF copy of the 5E supplement "Monsters of Murka: Chromatic Gamut." Go check it out now!!! Offer lasts until April 6!

[acomposerofdreams-blog]

I mean this with all sincerity. Don't do it. Unicorns are NOT creatures that frolic around all cheerfully bringing joy and delight to all who see them. They are monsters who feast on dwarf flesh and the cries of murdered children. I lost an entire fort slowly to agitated unicorns spawning in and immediately choosing violence. They BODIED my war grizzlies, torn apart my military, and never stopped coming.

Embark at your own risk!

I have just found the coolest possible embark location I have found in a while.

Serene grasslands full of unicorns to the north and a sinister swamp to the south.

[acomposerofdreams-blog]

Dwarf Fortress won the 2023 DICE award for best Simulation/Strategy Game. Congrats to Toady and Threetoe!

[acomposerofdreams-blog]

Stunning doesn't seem like the right word.