machinavellian

[machinavellian]

off kilter moon

thought from my morning trot: the moon has a half shaded way right now that looks a little off. it is not 'aesthetically pleasing' and i cant help think if someone painted it EXACT they would have buds saying 'you gonna fix your moon?' reality can be sloppy and i think some art critique misses that

theres balance between expectations of your medium and capturing reality. in writing i have seen critiques like ‘this side character did not have an arc’ and yes an arc is nice but in reality not everyone has one, despite the fact an english teacher said 'good' writing is when all characters change

so it is balance that all artists can consider. do i paint the moon with an off kilter shadow or do i give it a perfect curve? BOTH are valid expressions, but i would like to stand up for allowing the mess and complication of reality in. it can be so powerful to not let medium define expression

[machinavellian]

via tiktok + comments

[machinavellian]

[machinavellian]

concord: h-

weep:

[machinavellian]

in all timelines in all possibilities only you can show me this

[machinavellian]

[machinavellian]

Impossible

[machinavellian]

"It was like.... staring at the sky"

[machinavellian]

I was thinking about these excellent questions from @ariadne-mouse, and in particular those about what this upper Un megafauna eats most of the time, in relation not to the crew, but the Sloop:

Consider also, @utilitycaster's suggestion of a toroidal cosmos, wherein the limits do not necessarily end, but instead circle around to meet each other. We do see that the mica described at this altitude is "fresher" and "cleaner", in a sense suggesting that this mica is newly formed:

We cannot yet know what lies beyond the tunnels of mica, but if the cosmos do in fact circle back upon themselves, and we take as foundation the gravitational direction of the cosmos—i.e., that the the Un is up, and the Fold is down, and overall, everything flows from top to bottom—then the biggest question is: where does the Fold at the deepest depths go?

But when we get to the description of the Fold of the dark mica being siphoned, the idea of mica forming begins to be called into question:

Contrary to this image of inorganic, dead matter, we do know that Fold is, technically, alive, that it is not liquid but innumerable living micro-organisms, described as algal or bacterial. We also know that mica can be excreted as by-product by other beings, notably mirrorhawks:

And, as we've learned, people contain Fold, which can be siphoned from themselves, and it is fundamental to their being and life. This could explain the chemical origin of this mica secretion, if Fold is a fundamental basis of life in the cosmos:

So perhaps mica, far from being any sort of originating matter, is in fact the by-product of dead, processed, consumed Fold.

Certainly, we don't entirely know how more Fold is created, though we know it has an origin at the Font, so it must have ways of generating more, and the cosmos must have ways of balancing the amount of Fold in the sense that the universe has not become purely Fold. Of course, we do not know where Fold goes beyond the Delta, but based on this evidence, I would hypothesize that one method of keeping this balance is that the megafauna of the upper Un and the megafauna of the extreme depths of the Fold are one in the same—evolved within a toroidal cosmos to consume and process Fold where it is most abundant, and maintaining an equilibrium of Fold in the universe.

[machinavellian]

caduceus 🤝 ashton

"this is a dark mirror"

[machinavellian]

everyone hate my loquacious swag. its always "why did you make this sentence so long" and "why do you use so many commas and em dashes" and never "how did you come up with run on sentence" or "writing that run on sentence looked fun"

[machinavellian]

think that everyone has their own personal theme in life

[machinavellian]

Happy Anniversary Death Stranding!! Here is our VERY LATE second Higgs compilation in celebration 🎊

[machinavellian]

Revenge

Since you mention it, I think I will start that race war. I could’ve swung either way? But now I’m definitely spending the next 4 years converting your daughters to lesbianism; I’m gonna eat all your guns. Swallow them lock stock and barrel and spit bullet casings onto the dinner table; I’ll give birth to an army of mixed-race babies. With fathers from every continent and genders to outnumber the stars, my legion of multiracial babies will be intersectional as fuck and your swastikas will not be enough to save you, because real talk, you didn’t stop the future from coming. You just delayed our coronation. We have the same deviant haircuts we had yesterday; we are still getting gay-married like nobody’s business because it’s still nobody’s business; there’s a Muslim kid in Kansas who has already written the schematic for the robot that will steal your job in manufacturing, and that robot? Will also be gay, so get used to it: we didn’t manifest the mountain by speaking its name, the buildings here are not on your side just because you make them spray-painted accomplices. These walls do not have genders and they all think you suck. Even the earth found common cause with us the way you trample us both, oh yeah: there will be signs, and rainbow-colored drum circles, and folks arguing ideology until even I want to punch them but I won’t, because they’re my family, in that blood-of-the-covenant sense. If you’ve never loved someone like that you cannot outwaltz us, we have all the good dancers anyway. I’ll confess I don’t know if I’m alive right now; I haven’t heard my heart beat in days, I keep holding my breath for the moment the plane goes down and I have to save enough oxygen to get my friends through. But I finally found the argument against suicide and it’s us. We’re the effigies that haunt America’s nights harder the longer they spend burning us, we are scaring the shit out of people by spreading, by refusing to die: what are we but a fire? We know everything we do is so the kids after us will be able to follow something towards safety; what can I call us but lighthouse, of course I’m terrified. Of course I’m a shroud. And of course it’s not fair but rest assured, anxious America, you brought your fists to a glitter fight. This is a taco truck rally and all you have is cole slaw. You cannot deport our minds; we won’t hold funerals for our potential. We have always been what makes America great.

-e.c.c.

[machinavellian]

Grieve AND organize.

Good article by David Hunter on how to survive the Trump presidency, both on the personal and on the political plane.

[machinavellian]

if you're feeling powerless right now—and god knows I am—here's a reminder you can donate to the National Network of Abortion Funds, the Trans Law Center, Gaza Soup Kitchen, the Palestine Children's Relief Fund, and hundreds of other charities that will work to mitigate the damage that has been and will continue to be inflicted

life continues. we still have the capacity to do good, important work. that matters

[machinavellian]

really thinking about this again

please note, i entered my playthrough of datv with nothing but good faith and have in fact been ignoring all hype about it, for good or ill, as best i could prior to its release. but tonight something hit me irrevocably about the writing that might've genuinely trashed it for me, so... well, those who are invested in maintaining optimism about it probably should not read further.

with that said...

unfortunately, like four hours in i developed a suspicion that the dialogue in this game was written either partly or largely with AI, and... fuck. i cannot make myself un-believe that now. the dialogue is so rote and so flat and so glutted with cliché and so devoid of linguistic and emotional nuance that it legitimately disturbs me. it's like i'm detecting some kind of literary uncanny valley.

i don't know. maybe i'm being deeply cynical. but bioware also let all their writers go and were utterly unconcerned about that fact, so against my will i am now envisioning a room full of shitbrained game execs thinking this would be a fine way to make sure the damn thing ships by halloween and i don't like how plausible it feels.