#I am painting mathematical functions

[elkement]

On my mission to combine traditional art, digital paintings, and code art in new ways!

I am using my code-generated art (real and imaginary part of 1/z) as a reference image!

First ever test with acrylics on canvas 🙈

Work in progress!

[motherfactorin-pi-face]

In which I describe the maths of how to attack and dethrone God (per Minamimoto)

So in my evergrowing post thread (which I know I'm already gonna have to add to that essay fml) I did make ref to...well, a thing that literally has made my jaw drop since when I played TWEWY the first time (and keeping in mind this was a game friends forcefully insisted I play because "there's a char Sho Minamimoto who's just like you fr", and after I'd nodded "yup" re the SI unit obsessions and the compsci refs to Heaps and Crunching (and later, as I found out, "crashing" in JP), and the aesthetic, and, and...)

Namely: Sho Minamimoto literally uses (or tries to use) a very famous maths formula called Euler's Identity to take out the Composer as an example of Forcefully Applied Mathematics. :D (This may have also been the moment when I was like "Yup, he just like me FR")

So. First off. Euler's Identity.

It's kind of difficult to explain why this particular equation is considered one of the true Chef's Kisses of Mathematics to non-mathematicians, but part of it is elegance, and part of it is that it includes five of the foundational variables that show up in mathematics all the time (and really even more functions if you break it apart): a) the natural logarithm e or Euler's number which is roughly 2.71828182845... and which is zetta important in a lot of fields including finance, biology, medicine, and calculus functions, and (as we'll get into) antennas and field strength measurements and pretty much a Shitload of functions related to growth b) the imaginary unit i or the square root of -1 (which turns out to be extremely useful in a lot of contexts, including electronics (seriously; AC electricity and functions relating to that are *heavily* dependent on the imaginary unit) and graphing and arguably how Cartesian graphs work especially once you get into calculus c) Pi (π), everyone's favourite circle ratio of 3.141592653589793238462643393279 (is pulled away from keyboard before I can draw a Taboo Noise Refinery Sigil in Paint) and which is Important in many, many contexts d) 1 (yes, 1 is considered a constant! Specifically "A quantity exists") , and

e) 0 (yes, 0 is considered a constant too, specifically "a quantity does not exist", and reducing Euler's Identity results in e^(i*pi)+1=0) To make it even more Minamimoto-esque, you can technically also express Euler's Identity as a reduction of "e^(i*x) = cos(pi) + (i * (sin(pi)) (aka Euler's Formula), and cos(pi) =-1 and sin(pi)=0.

And really it's kind of a beautiful way of how things all fit together in a lovely function that is almost a kiss from the Math Gods and if plotted traces a lovely circle.

So after that little tangent, here's how this all relates to W2D7 of TWEWY, and Minamimoto's forcefully applied mathematics. * * * So, first we end up at Pork City (Mark City if you're watching the anime; Tokyu Group liked the TWEWY tourism and by the time the anime and NEO came around decided to take advantage of the advertising), and...Joshua and Neku start having a very interesting conversation on why there's So Much Damn Noise at Pork City anyways:

Neku asks if this is the work of Pi-Face, Joshua notes "Probably" and then goes on to note that it might not all be JUST Minamimoto:

In other words: Pork City is effectively acting as an amplifier or at least an antenna for Noise. (I am not the only one to have noticed it and not even the only one on Tunglr, for that matter; Voice From The Corner also picked up on this as well though I'll freely admit I'm diving a bit more into the STEM portions of this.) TWEWY:tA is even more blatant about this imagery in ep 6, where Joshua explicitly notes that all the emotion in Shibuya collects at Mark City (remember, the animation uses the RL name) and then "crashes into Mark City and shoots up into the sky. That emotion flows back down and keeps building up here." (Shortly afterwards, Joshua also mentions the Imaginary Noise Plane as the inside of Mark City warps, similarly to a sine wave flow--or the flow of energy into, or out of, an antenna. (You do not know how loudly I screamed seeing this, as an aside) So, this is where we get into piece one, e (and where a healthy interest in radio and electronics hobbies helps!)

So antennas, interestingly, have how well they pick up a frequency measured in a logarithmic scale, and basic field strength measurements (and a lot of other "wavey" things, including earthquakes, including, well, literal background noise) get measured on logarithmic scales too. It's rather more common with antennas and earthquakes for this to be measured on log-10 scales (hence the Richter scale for quakes, or decibels for antennas and sound). There's a particular group of measurements (physical field and power measurements), however, that actually uses log-e, aka the natural logarithm, and especially for voltage or current and "root power quantities"--the neper. And, in Euler's Identity, e is taken to powers...and Pork City is basically acting as a huge antenna. Also in info engineering aspects, there's another aspect--the nat, which is considered a unit of information or info entropy...also based on e. (I told you Euler's number comes up a lot of places!)

Let's continue... So now we come to i, the imaginary unit, and that's called out blatantly by Joshua:

This, too, is based on math--from Final Fantasy II, specifically, and how the Flare spell worked. Flare is an area-effect spell and it hit based on (Enemy's HP/Flare level), i.e. enemies that had HP divisible by 2 could be hit by a Flare level 2 spell and could deliver damage based on that spell's level, etc. So a level i Flare, based on how complex numbers work, could hit just about anything (assuming, of course, that the Composer is not a Fractal Bastard and promptly yeets himself into a PokeYugiBeyBladeVerse). But...that's not the ONLY part where things imaginary come into play. So, one of the interesting bits of lore that came out in (of all things) the NEO:TWEWY Field Walk RPG (alas, JP only, but a delightful source of lore, and thankfully the fan community preserved almost all of it) is actual canon on how Tin Pins and Psychs work including the actual formula on how they work in a convo between Minamimoto and Fret:

Fret: Soooo, these psychs and pins and stuff… how does it all work? Minamimoto: The pin is charged by the Imagination of the user. Fret: Uh huuuh. Minamimoto: The pin itself is just a medium. Fret: Mm-hmm. Minamimoto: “Power” is calculated from the numerical limit of the pin, using your will as a coefficient. Fret: Yeah. Minamimoto: But that formula alone means nothing to me!

(Emphasis mine: props to Pavaal on the Dead Bird App for initial translation, and to multiple others for confirmation from the FWRPG script.) So basically how Psychs work is functionally as an athame, using formula Psych=Limit^Imaginatio. (Secret Report 1 in TWEWY also confirms Imagination is important in making a Psych work to begin with; the formula) Of note, Minamimoto also has a canonically high Imagination, as detailed in the Secret Reports. To even become a Reaper to begin with (as noted in SR7) those who survive the week who have enough Imagination become Reapers, and even among Reapers Minamimoto tends to stand out (he is canonically the youngest Reaper Officer ever, and apparently had quite the rapid rise to power). SR15 in TWEWY notes (even keeping in mind that in this instance Hanekoma is being a bit of an Unreliable Narrator in covering his own butt regarding the Taboo Thing):

The sigil Minamimoto drew was one of the undecodable types. Was that a mistake on the Fallen Angel's part? Or was it a transcription error by Minamimoto? Either way, with that design, he stands little chance of reviving himself. However, Minamimoto is driven, and his Imagination strong. Perhaps strong enough to make a Taboo sigil work, even in the Underground... If so, the specific result would be impossible to predict.

And in SR19 (again, covering up just a bit for his own helping hand):

I've detected an energy spike here. It would seem Minamimoto has returned. I judged his revival unlikely after spotting his Taboo refinery sigil on the first day, but it appears Minamimoto's Imagination is much stronger than I'd anticipated. The Fallen Angel must have completed the array for him. A troubling thought. Who can say what impact this will have on the Composer and Conductor's Game?

And even in the NEO Secret Reports it's noted his second trip through Coco's version of the Sigil actually ramped up his Imagination even more (in NEO SR 7):

Minamimoto, on the other hand has all but vanished from the proxy’s side. His Noise refinery sigil drastically heightens his Imagination, which may be why he can clearly recognize the proxy’s abilities. I have an idea of what he’s planning. It’s dangerous, but I have no way of stopping him.

And again, TWEWY:tA also makes it more blunt that Minamimoto was selected explicitly because of his Imagination and his connections to Shibuya as Hanekoma's Plan B. So there's imaginary units (in the sense of literal level i flare), and imaginary units (in a Reaper whose Imagination is already in the stratosphere). And in regards to pi? Well, Pi-Face, he has very much a rep of being....numbers- and math-obsessed even BEFORE he throws 156 digits of pi in the Composer's face:

But pi (as a number) is actually meaningful as HELL to Minamimoto, he engages in saying pi to himself drawing the Taboo Noise Refinery Sigil (goroawase in Japanese which relates to literally an obstetrician going to a foreign country and a woman giving birth at night as insects make a lot of noise which can almost be seen as a minor ritual to Make It Work, a little happy pi rhythmic thing in English in the game, actual spoopy sounding pimetry in the anime that sounds very sorcery-y). Looking (for far too long) at the Taboo Noise Refinery Sigil, pi is encoded in it in at least four or five places (multiple times as functionally a magic binding circle, at least once where he draws the symbol for pi in such a way that when it's turned upside down it literally spells "pi"). It's important. It's meaningful. It's His Number and transcedential and irrational and beautiful and unrestrained :D So now y'all are wondering, "OK, smartass, where's the -1 at?" As I noted, another way you can write Euler's Identity is specifically as "e^(i*pi)+1=0", so that can be expressed as a way to null the Composer (who is probably the 1 in question). Euler's Identity would be used to subtract 1 from the equation, in other words (as Minamimoto was intending to come back from Erasure by literally integrating himself via Taboo Noise Refinery Sigil). There's one other interesting bit of symbolism, one that's deep enough that I'm not even sure the writers of TWEWY intended, but if so...it's such a chef's kiss that I have deepest admiration.

So Euler's Identity can be expressed in terms of a formula, and as a reduction of sine and cosines involving pi and i, but it can also be mapped as motion--specifically as how a function evolves. (I tend to be a pretty visual thinker, and there's an extremely good discussion on Euler's Identity here that goes into the whole "mapping the function" aspect to show how Euler's Identity works in practice.)

So typically when you're doing a non-negative function or a zero function, generally there's an assumption of "right-hand" rotation or movement. Complex functions, you get into fun things like circles, and curves, and even some very beautiful fractals (like with the Mandelbrot set) with the right iterative formulas. Euler's Identity...is literally a left-hand-path function:

(And those of you who were writing about the Cyclic Nature of Minamimoto are probably all screaming right now) Anyways, wanted to share in full one of the things that was a jawdropper for me in TWEWY back when I found the game at a glorified skateshop that sold games in 2011. Thank you for coming to my TED talk, zeptograms :3

[agentbilliard]

saint senyoyi, better known as agent biliard has been with cerberus corp as an eo since 2023 and is LEVEL III. BEING CRUSHED BY A VENDING MACHINE has gifted them telekinesis, though PHYSICAL INFLUENCE WEAKENING WITH DISTANCE, DISTRACTIONS, AND LARGER WEIGHTS has also been noted. when they aren’t protecting the tri-state area, they are fond of playing rounds of fischer random by his lonesome and are never seen without A LEATHERBOUND JOURNAL. civilians think they are meticulous & benevolent, but some of the other agents see them as NEUROTIC & COWARDLY. cerberus corp should consider the fact that their last mission status was successful, although unsuccessfully cleaning up local garbage might have been more impressive when giving out the next one.

001.  GENERAL

name  saint senyoyi

nicknames  agent billiard, vender bender, any saint under the canonized sun courtesy of agent jester

age  thirty-four

date of birth  march 9, 1989

zodiac  answer

place of birth  harefield, hillingdon, london

current residence  brooklyn, new york city, new york

gender  cis man

pronouns  he/him

orientation  bisexual, biromantic

occupations  level iii agent at cerberus corp, mathematics teacher and head custodian at brooklyn academy of ostentatiously pubescent pricks

faceclaim  daniel kaluuya

height  5’8

tattoos  none (he does, however, have the divine patience and dearth of dignity required to doodle and calculate all over his forearms daily)

piercings  none (he does, however, have a fake nose ring from his stint in a school-sponsored production of annie wherein mr warbucks and his servants made liberal yet incorrect use of african-american vernacular english to teach middle schoolers about the cold war)

distinguishing features  there are few features of saint’s corporeal form that function as evidence of him being a good person, but at a minimum he has good grooming. his collars are pressed to perfection, his trousers are steamed to sublimity, his hair both facial and scalp-al is combed and clipped as much as possible. nonetheless, a good portion of his shirts are stained with presumably non-toxic paint or crumbs of a graphite muffin. the backs of his blazers are often adorned with sticky notes with adorable titles such as ‘YOUNGEST SENIOR CITIZEN’ and ‘NOBODY LIKES MATH’ and ‘MY FAVE FUNCTION IS =3’ from his students. what can he say? he’s sentimental to a fault. and far too broke to go to the laundromat every week.

positive traits  altruistic, diligent, humble, observant, organized, polite, pragmatic

negative traits  craven, cynical, deceitful, insecure, perfectionistic, pessimistic, unyielding

labels / tropes  absent-minded professor, bad liar, beware the quiet ones, stern teacher, the fettered

likes  alphabetical lists, dish washing, libraries, origami (he cannot do it whatsoever), pranks (if they’re done right), summer, students at brooklyn academy of ostentatiously pubescent pricks (at least they’re funny pricks)

dislikes  art museums, astronomy girlies (if he learns that he has pisces energy one more time he will lose it), drinking (hypocritical), level iii agents, living conditions in nyc (no relation to previous item), rollercoasters, the subway

fears  blood, cockroaches, crowds, death, disappointing his family, his family period, smooth peanut butter, snakes, spiders, vending machines

hobbies  assigning homework, billiards (surprising who?), playing chess, solving crosswords, scrabble, sudoku — only the coolest activities for him, obviously

habits  bites pencils when deep in thought, cracks back against chairs, gestures to whiteboards that simply don’t exist, writes with said pencils on imaginary paper

002.  EXTRA ORDINARY

near death experience…  

“you two! i swear on my non-denominational god that i am not forcing you to believe in, if i see you trying to axe deodorant the animals into making a little baby leopard in front of you, i’m calling your mums and telling them to pick you up this instant.”

the two snicker in response. saint isn’t sure how to respond if not with a wave of his hand, a pinch of his brow, a tour-guide-induced plug of his ear for when half his salary goes to dealing with the legal repercussions of incident number graham. this is his first field trip sitting in as a supervisor, and between the bloody boring itinerary his class has been breaking for the past few million hours and the boorish colleague he’s been paired up with he reckons that it will be his last. good riddance, he will say. good riddance, the class will say. really, the people of new york pay high enough taxes for their final destination to be more than a borough away. yet, here he stands in the densest stench he’s known since ap calculus was moved to seventh period.

this is not what he signed up for. you know what he said, when teachers asked what superpower he wanted to have? his voice would crack and his face would be lightning-split open into a barely-toothed grin and he would say he wanted to be a teacher because wow! they did so much for so little! and the teacher’s voice would crack and their face would be thundering with the truth and they would move on with their days because saint senyoyi had parents who hated him and peers who tolerated him and the guidance counsellor could deal with all that when she got back from happy hour.

he knows what he wants. something cold to drink. stupid brooklyn uniforms have gotten dark enough to hide period stains but continue displaying the effects axe deodorant has on his physiology with pure crystal. he excuses himself temporarily, tells the tour guide he’s off to the bathroom and that all the kids have do not resuscitates somewhere between their baggy pockets and knockoff gucci fanny packs, and gets to a vending machine. it’s bad, he knows, to continue to support capitalism and pollution after all the public service announcements from the lions of lying-about-admissions-policies colleges but it’s all he can afford and all that he wants and you know what superpower he did not wish for? guilt tripping. it’s a part of the faculty welcome package, but he’s never liked gifts.

no diet options. not like he cares. he hasn’t had much time to go to the gym lately. he just needs energy. a temporary fix.

the vending machine, he finds on a note far too small to be in compliance with the the occupational safety and health administration’s latest spicy issue, is temporarily unserviceable. not like he cares. he’s already annihilated the rules by leaving his class to their own devices, shiny and beepy and blackmail-filled as they are. this is just the narcotizing nightcap on the mushroom cloud. he slips a coin through the slot and waits.

and waits.

and waits.

and waits.

bloody hell. tommy j’s probably got his arse stuck between an alligator and a hard place by now, assuming sophie m’s greasy ipad hasn’t liquidated underneath the september sun. and assuming they haven’t broken up again, which is a flimsy variable by itself considering the seating arrangement’s got tommy j next to jason m and in front of jayson w and the three of them were exchanging notes yesterday like their lives depended on it. saint knocks on the glass. his parents never bothered to knock, but his sister had in the tune of an old ugandan choir song about welcoming and stars, so he does the same. welcome, cold coca-cola into his hands. welcome, please.

next he’s seeing stars. this is getting ridiculous. the machine is burping, whirring, choking, doing what saint should be doing as he details how the penguin populace has plummeted because of plastic straws and whatnot. he groans. only one thing left to do. he shakes.

and shakes.

and shakes.

and shakes.

next he’s seeing stars and blood and bone and you’re going to be a star saint because sophie m is taking a video of the entire ordeal as russell p drops his forged permission slip between sobs call 911 what’s the british version of 911 he’s english jayson same thing crapface pay attention in geology that’s geography jayson CALL 911 SCREAM CRY IS IT LUNCH IS HE DEAD SCREAM CRY I’M GETTING A REFUND CALL 911. there is glass everywhere. the ringing in his head is louder than the cries, the screams. pain is piercing yet heavy, paperwork that acts like a cactus to his poor eyes. that’s what he’s going to die as? the idiot who got crushed under a vending machine? no. he just needs to move. get out of the geysers and into a hospital that won’t charge him several billion dollars to get in.

he just needs to move.

he is not going to die before getting his one dollar bonus from the state exams.

SAINTS DO NOT DIE where did you come from father ABSOLUTE DISSOLUTION an inch towards the snake enclosure could save me SAVE YOURSELF swimming around nana’s lake house i wonder if i would taste good right now i wonder if a hot emt will try and save me SAVE YOURSELF you taught me how to swim by throwing me in the lake SAVE YOURSELF

he comes back with a massive headache, three exams to grade, and the power to move things with his mind. and a viral remix of his death, but he still hasn’t watched that in full. he’s told the chorus is incredibly vulgar.

power…  

“i wasn’t cheating!”

saint is making a scene for the first time since the tender age of five years old for bragging rights and a lukewarm beer. he hasn’t been accused of cheating since his preliminary foray into the cutthroat world of primary school mathletes, and that situation had the excuse of being started by a bespectacled potato sack no older than five years old herself. he’s kicked out for a myriad of reasons, none of which he believes are based on truth: he had fixed the game, he had fixed the bets, he had fixed his life and therefore had no business being with his friends. honestly? he thinks they just can’t look at him the same after seeing his broken body in a bed of glass, and he can’t blame them for that. he blames them for what happens, next, though.

he retreats to his apartment in shame, exile. daedalus has lost his son, he has lost his place on the top ten trivia masters. then he learns that he can fix everything in his apartment with nothing more than a mathematical buttload of attention and his mind. which, yeah, sounds boring when he puts it like that, but it’s telekinesis. objects already within arm’s reach require little to no effort to move towards him, while materials any farther than that require great concentration and a clear view to be moved. saint and telekinesis have a relationship comparable to a coparenting strategy on the verge of collapse, and none of it is particularly empowering. if he desires to take control of a stack of papers he has to focus on those papers, get an unobstructed path to those papers, stare at those papers for a solid few seconds wherein a hostile could stab him in the back. if he decides that he does not want to touch those papers, they have about a 50-50 chance of coming at him in an effortless tornado anyhow. it makes thinking inconvenient, which makes his life inconvenient. still, they’re something. he can lift roughly as much as he can with his arms, which is around the hundred-fifty pound mark with oscar-worthy thanks to a premium gym membership he passive-aggressively received from his mother some years back, although he has limits. many of them, in fact.

drawbacks / vulnerabilities…  

“shitterdoodle cookies.”

saint is on the same ground level of pathetic as his choice in curse words, for someone who has access to the school twitter account and all the bots that spam it for engagement. the heavier the object, the harder it is to move in manners that do not sound like nails on a chalkboard. the more he uses his ability, the more he is exhausted, liable to ramble about sensitive industry secrets or his feelings. neither will stop, neither will leave the conversational partner with any semblance of sanity. he has to be careful with how long he spends looking at anything, too, lest he drag some family heirloom other than his own through new york mud. also, everything he moves seems to really like his face. his pockets are nothing but bandaid collections by now.

cerberus corp…  

“and i am auditioning for the part of…”

that’s not quite right, is it? he clears his throat. a decade of teaching under his overly tight belt and there persists a lump in his throat whenever it must open. saint’s feelings on cerberus corp are complicated in the way that proving 1 + 1 = 2 is complicated. it’s a fact of life to most, easy to accept for some, but it’s also something that gets the smart alecks of the yearbook salivating and thus something he does not want to be involved in. well, strike that out and rewrite it in the past tense, his teachers would demand, for he now desires a status in american society that does not amount to school/fast food slander scene packs or graves with no return policy. his audition video was enough to get him invited for an in-person appointment, but he suspects that the possibility of him using lights and strings to get the effect of telekinesis pulled along a hundred-pound weight in comparison to his ounce of charisma.

he gets accepted, anyways, by some miracle. maybe it’s merely a seasonal investment in the marketability of a man who can soon hurl snowballs at unprecedented heights and velocities if he manages to concentrate. concentration is harder these days, however, and that descriptor of his career prospects comes with a near-overdose of pressure. he’s been with cerberus for roughly a month now, though the days blur with the hustle and bustle of extraordinarily tedious tasks assigned by the big bosses. saint is a worker bee to his core, though, and understands ranks, roles, and professional hierarchies better than breathing, so he questions nothing. as long as management of his powers is a possibility, the probability of him becoming a manger who has to do zero practical saving is above zero.

saint isn’t the best partner to have around, per se. his abilities are useful, but his personality isn’t much of an asset unless the mission involves stationary store espionage, and his desperation for a guide to everything is everlasting. nonetheless, he is nothing if not nice and accommodating to those he respects (ie everyone except agent jester. dishes can only go unwashed for so many days before his conscience is wiped clean of sanitary scruples) and aims for perfection. which isn’t the best philosophy to have around, per se, but at least he’ll do all the paperwork for you with zero prompting.

codename…  

“vender bender? i would rather die again than be called that for the rest of my life.”

it’s a joke, but saint’s never been proficient with making those. his comedy is a dependent variable, a misshapen animal lump coagulating to the back of circumstances that prove truth is stranger than fiction. proof: here, now, as his branding is being discussed in a manner far too formal for the setting they find themselves in. he has no idea how he got here, honestly. how he got with cerberus, how his card didn’t turn red at the door of the bar. he supposes it’s something like the pythagorean theorem, if the hypotenuse was meant to be the shortest side. he’s not the shortest level iii agent, thank the non-denominational god that he is not forcing anyone to believe in, but there is a nagging feeling that he does not belong, that however many lives he saves he will always be the guy stuck under the vending machine traumatising upwards of infinity children.

he’ll stick with something short and sweet, thank you very much. occam’s razor has never cut murphy’s law while shaving at three in the morning. it is time to show the party how real english billiards is played. he’s set up his own cushions at the left and right ends, shown off his custom snooker spectacles, let everyone know what a genius he is. this is his element, the art of arithmetic gambling. one shot and he’s set for the night, getting his drinks paid by everyone in a fifteen foot radius.

he takes the shot and gets his nose broken by the ball going straight to the hard, wooden edge and bouncing straight to his hard, idiotic face.

agent billiard. that’s a joke for the ages. it’s short, sweet, and a math pun. saint hates puns. cerberus loves the name. saint then decides he loves it, too, changing his social media handles accordingly.

(this is me begging for someone to have their agent suggest billiard after seeing saint smack himself in the face with a cue stick pls and thank you)

003.  EXTRA

tl;dr of backstory while i make it all nice and fancy: the middling middle child of a blackjack dealer for one of the most corrupt casinos in london and a professional sports gambler, saint has always wanted to help people. he’s just never liked people. he’s always liked math, though, and upon moving to the us of a for the sake of his older sister’s career in medicine, he made sure that, if he was to be ignored by his beloved parents, he would be ignored and rich. flash forward to getting his first job at his alma mater which has improved in much the same way that milk improves by growing curds and the lowest college admissions rate in the city, getting crushed by a vending machine, getting kicked out of his favourite bar for cheating at billiards with superpowers, and getting his cool agent nickname his cool agent roomie and his uncool first few missions; if you need a reluctant ass-kicker/incredible ass-kisser/high school math tutor, this is your guy. his mission suit is 100% an actual suit. it doesn’t look cool whatsoever tho it’s the same getup he got into for seventh grade winter formal <3 also he's a faithful reddit user. thats his biggest character flaw i think but he's addicted to r/billiards and does not intend on quitting ever

wanted connections page here!!

[jonathankatwhatever]

It’s the end of 19 Oct 2024, and I’m identifying a process by which I run through observations and tentative short scenarios about you until they achieve a distance and the shift from actor perspective to observer occurs.

I just got distracted by a short excursion into why 12 and the answer comes now so swiftly that I immediately saw me you me and you me you is 6, and 12 from the other direction, and thus 24 if you start the whole process from the other end or side. You can see the 60 as that me you me, you me you magnified within any count of that 24, meaning you’re blowing up each count by pausing the me you me stuff so between each step is one of those SBE2 chains which has the commutative identity in which SBE2 maps b10 and b10 maps SBE2. That means in the first case that we take each count of SBE2, each me you or you me step, is a count of b10, which is SBE3+1, which is visible here because it’s necessary to have this relationship in which that SBE counts along the szK, and so the concept of Start, Between and End can act, operate and thus exist.

When I started typing, my intent, if I had one, was to say I had nothing much on my mind because I’ve been worrying over painting walls. I like what I’ve done. It’s highly suggestive, like clouds forming images, and the colors are natural, reaching back to cave paintings and to 60’s appliance colors and thus to the natural world outside. I really want this to be special, which is a lot of pressure. I’ve decided to use sample sizes for more accent colors to add depth to the images, and to give the sense of a more completed image which is still highly suggestive. I want to avoid removing suggestions. I’d like to increase their depth while retaining their mutability. I’m up to 6 colors so far: background is linen, with light brown, soft watercolor-like green, a light tan, and now today a gold and a red called dragon’s blood which looks a bit like fall leaves but which smudges into a sort of blossom. I’m thinking of finishing the room with something simpler, like bigger smudges of color but I’m very unsure how that would work. That gives me anxiety.

I’m also anxious because I think the best usage in here is to flip the living room and dining room. Two reasons. One is to reduce the truck noise. Other is to create space for plants and a sort of work area for Debbie to access plants outside. Have to take down chandelier, which was going to do anyway because it’s not needed given there are 4 can lights in that space plus another in the hall portion. And I’m anxious about having a bit too much furniture, and am noticing how beat up everything is (and how little I care).

I’ll have to do what I’m going to do anyway, but I hope to do it with fewer errors. The problem I have with that is also mathematical: the two main sources are errors caused by me watching me, observer, and that gap working as doubt or delay or confusion in what I’m doing. That classic stutter in motion people develop is a terrific example: they’re not processing the choices properly and that’s a higher level function failure or inability to focus, sometimes because distracted, sometimes because unsure, and typically when there’s an o-role happening, and that o-role can pick examples which go to the ++ or which go to the negative image of that path.

I think that last part is highly confusing: the pairing of Ends over this form of Triangular is visible through the pairing of the Pathways, and the 1-0Segment connecting those Ends directly is through 0Space, is though and across a grid square and thus a grid box. One of the things I love about that idea is the grid box means the grid square has to occupy the 6 states required to map to SBE2. That is when this regularizes, when each grid square state, here a face, can be mapped the same as any other. That’s the idea of Regularization, that it fits to ideals to pass through to the next ideal states.

Look at Hexagonal: it breaks into 2 D3’s, and these rotate so each combination is the same. That’s required for 3-4 dimensional space to exist. You can see how D4-3 works as well: D6 reduces to D4 by the removal of a pair, which rotates to invisible in the projection, and that happens through D6-5 in each hand, and thus D5-4 through both methods, just as D6 goes directly to D3 and counts down through the other D’s. We can deem the transitions to be seamless, which relates to continuity of functions and their derivatives.

How does that work at D3? In isolation? Or as part of a structure, because a structure counts not only iterations of perspectives but the consequences of them? In isolation, please. A Hexagon or maybe the 3 of the basic level structure around a bT. First note you can count 3 in 4 ways, which we also translate as the IC of SBE, meaning each SBE is treated as the existence 1 relative to any of the others non-specified and against any of the others specified. This generates the basic CM64 Thing as 1 relative to each of the specified others.

Have I ever managed to connect D-structure to fCM like this before? I don’t think the words have come out this well. That’s fantastic. Thanks.

Joined a gym. Looking forward to lifting again. Suddenly tired.

[gacorley]

Learning to make synths is amazing, man.

Let me paint you a sound. I can imitate a sound or Ii can go abstract. I can make it mellow and soft or harsh and buzzy. I can make the pluck of a string or the gentle swell of the ocean waves.

Tell me the sound and I will paint it for you with mathematical functions. The square, the sine, the sawtooth. These are the colors I paint with. I can mix them or modulate them. I can filter the highs and bring up the bass. I can add the overtones. I can distort and phase and flange. I am the maker of this sound, and it can sound however I like.

All I need is my computer.

[thesinglesjukebox]

21 SAVAGE - "REDRUM"

Maybe we're just bigger fans of Whiteclaw...

[5.38]

Taylor Alatorre: It feels five or six years too late to label 21 Savage the antithesis of mumble rap. So instead, let's get a few millennia out of date and say he's the most Apollonian of New Atlanta's largely Dionysian cast. The metrically precise diction, the immovable stoic delivery, even the ad-libs, so famously predictable they should really be called something else — all of these paint him as someone who's here to impose order on these rough streets, to make some sense out of this "American carnage." "Redrum," like the title of 21's second album, is as air-tight and legible as a mathematical formula. The sumptuous yet vaguely foreboding sample is given room to unfurl itself in the clearly set-apart intro, before being made to serve as a compliant captive of the song's mood-setting requirements. From there, it's a simple foot-tapping journey from A to B, with nary a peak or valley along the way — something that might be a complaint if not for London on da Track's locked-in, nose-to-the-grindstone production. The abstraction of gang violence into a pulpy Kubrick reference is mirrored by perhaps the most playfully gratuitous "pussy" recitation in 21's discography. These are soothing mantras, for those who prefer their New Age tunes to come with NC-17 ratings. [7]

Katherine St. Asaph: Opera trap! Outstanding! To be clear, the song objectively is ass, paced like a try-not-to-laugh compilation from the sample to "I got big cojones!" to a Three Little Pigs skit. 21 Savage seizes the top 16 slots on the hypothetical leaderboard for least convincing intonation of "pussy" (one for each bar). I don't even think it's supposed to be a joke, despite being a great one. But let's be real: there was no chance I was ever going to dislike this. [7]

Joshua Minsoo Kim: I am far more affected by 21 Savage calling someone a pussy multiple times than the constant repetition of “Redrum,” which I guess is meant to have a flip, childlike silliness to it given the Three Little Pigs outro. The Elza Laranjeira loop is already phenomenal, and the gunshots sound pretty momentous, but he keeps undercutting the production. [5]

Will Adams: London on da Track's beat is great, flipping a soprano sample into an eerie trap arrangement befitting the Stephen King reference. 21 Savage can't match it, unfortunately; instead he opts for some half-baked lines and repeating the title approximately five hundred times (and "pussy" approximately five thousand times). [5]

Jacob Satter: Another one that would do well to read past the second sentence of Jasper John's famous maxim. London on da Track's hook is exhilarating on the initial cycle but Savage, who I generally have significant patience for, wears it down to monotone with monotone. Enjoyable enough in dollops, just wouldn't want to leave it on repeat. [5]

Jacob Sujin Kuppermann: A half decade on from "A Lot" and I feel like I'm in the same place as I've always been with 21 Savage: equally impressed by the stylistic aspects of his music (That gorgeously wrought sample from London on da Track! His finely honed monotone! Bars that are pretty funny!) and let down by the laziness with which he yields them. He's better here than he has been in recent years as Drake's Mase, but there's a maddening quality with which he half-asses his work here, like he's figured out exactly the degree of effort with which to exert in order to create premium mediocre trap. I turn this up every time I play it in the car, but I'm not, like, happy about it. [7]

Harlan Talib Ockey: 21 Savage lives and dies on the hook and the beat. This hook is no “A Lot”, but it's functional. The beat is fine for about twenty seconds, until you realize it’s not going anywhere and its value is almost all in the sample. If you compare it to 21 Savage’s work with Metro Boomin, for example, the difference in depth and progression is clear. (Even this “London Bridge” mashup is an improvement?) There are some witty, quotable lines in here (see: “he stood on business, now he laying on his back”), but the second verse is much more specific and interesting than the first.  [5]

Nortey Dowuona: 21 Savage’s whole schtick was being raw and unfiltered — at least to the first hosannahs of his arrival. He was making Trap Muzik — a form of explicitly hard, unapologetic street rap that both effortlessly combined paths of gleeful smugness and repentant thoughtfulness, he managed to create a whole pathway for his type of rappers until his essential smoothness turned to bland — wait. That’s TI.

Ok, 21 Savage’s whole schtick was being raw and unfiltered — at least to the first hosannahs of his arrival. He was making Thug Motivation — powerful, imposing avalanches of pride and success, baked in through his gruff, raspy voice and had kids wearing his shirts all throughout schools — wait. That’s Jeezy.

Ok, one more time. 21 Savage’s whole schtick was being raw and unfiltered — at least to the first hosannahs of his arrival. He was making Chicken Talk — ok, even I know this is Gucci. What is it about him? 

Ok, here we go. 21 Savage is TI without the dexterity, Jeezy without the bass, Gucci without the love for language. He combines all of them to make accessible pop rap with a dangerous edge but never moved out of his range — just rapped the same but with the bare minimum of quality. He didn’t actually change or improve, he just got accepted by folks for who Kodak, Uzi and Yachty were too much of a challenge. He was always what his now disappointed fans say he is now: he’s just doing his job. It’s no “Rubberband Man." Or “Hypnotize.” Or “First Day Out." Or — [5]

Alfred Soto: What's the point of this? That monotone? The grubbiness? "I don't go through TSA to get on planes" — what?  [4]

Leah Isobel: "Redrum" is terse and darkly hypnotic, yes, but 21's sly, unexpected jolts of celebration and humor ("I don't go through TSA to get on planes," "Smack n***** then I get on Live and sing") bring dimension and a loose, subtle playfulness. It's precisely the kind of rap record I loved when I was in elementary school — in function, if not in form. [7]

Ian Mathers: Really, really enjoy the tweak/loop of the sample here, the kind of thing that's going to make practically any material on top of it feel more awesome. 21 Savage gets some good lines in, but whether it's Kubrick/King fandom or wanting to avoid TikTok censorship... the best thing I can say about the refrain is: at least it's not called "Unalive." [7]

Isabel Cole: I actually love everything about the sample — the songs chosen, the use of it as an introduction that feels almost like a framing device in a movie, the way it gets appropriated into the beat, which feels dark and sinister and brings to mind (appropriately enough, given the title word’s most famous appearance) a haunted house, creepy and cool. Too bad about the rest of it! [3]

Oliver Maier: Who the fuck picked this lil sorry ass beat. [3]

[Read, comment and vote on The Singles Jukebox ]

[c0rns0ph5]

Art is everything

Hi everyone, I am Sophia, you can call me Soph/Sophie. For today's blog, my topic will be all about Art.

The history of art focuses on objects made by humans for any number of spiritual, narrative, philosophical, symbolic, conceptual, documentary, decorative, and even functional and other purposes, but with a primary emphasis on its aesthetic visual form. Visual art can be classified in diverse ways, such as separating fine arts from applied arts; inclusively focusing on human creativity; or focusing on different media such as architecture, sculpture, painting, film, photography, and graphic arts. In recent years, technological advances have led to video art, computer art, performance art, animation, television, and videogames. Below here is an example of art.

The art is called "Katsushika Hokusai". The art was made by Hokusai known as a Japanese ukiyo-e artist of the Edo Period.

One of my Favorite Artists is Leonardo da Vinci

Leonardo da Vinci was an Italian polymath of the Renaissance period, born on April 15, 1452, in Vinci, Italy, and he died on May 2, 1519, in Amboise, France. He is widely recognized as one of the most versatile and talented individuals in history, excelling in various fields such as art, science, mathematics, engineering, anatomy. My second favorite Artist is Bob Ross. Robert Norman Ross (October 29, 1942 – July 4, 1995) was an American painter, art instructor, and television host. I wanted to become a Artist because I want to capture the beauty of Nature and I want to express myself through arts. I want to become one of the best Artist in the future.

[not-that-blog]

I'm stubborn, angry, hurt and very heartbroken so the diary style posts will be continuing for a while.

Especially because irl I can't complain or work this stuff out without accidentally creating fucked up consequences for one of both of us and neither of us deserve to be punished socially for trying to heal from an amicable breakup that was just human flaws meets human nature and shit just ends.

Not dramatically or easily, but enough that it's an end and that hurts.

Anyway this is one of those dramatic diary style posts.

I have become stubbornly self care obsessed a little.

Learning how to love my body when I have hated it for two deca because I wasn't the 'beautiful child' to anyone and that was exploited by a child predator.

So I am now an adult working through trauma and trying to tell myself that every part of me is loveable just by existence.

And the parts of me that are hard to love are probably not what people expect.

I have no issues with the stretch marks or the scars (bio oil was amazing for the few faint self harm scars I had left and most people, let alone the people who've seen me naked in the last handful of years will never know where or what scars I once inflicted. I personally can see the slight discolouration in my skin, but no one else has ever seen or commented on it) and I have no issue with my stomach or thighs and the dysphoria from my boobs is minimal.

My actual self image issues are like my ass or the way my neck is floppy when I have seizures and that my joints never really fit in place and that I have anxiety about if I can see my ribcage because that was such a thing on eating disorder forums that the fear or seeing my own bones is real and the idea of someone tracing my collarbones and 'dipping their tongue into that well' makes me feel sick and weirded out (if you know the posts, you know what I mean).

And like; I don't actively think of those things often anymore. Usually just in mild rage or laughing at how we romanticised something so fucked up because accepting that we were dying an ugly and painful death was way too traumatic and we painted it as something else and were way to gothic romantic about it. I can't think of a worse way to die for honour, because it was sickening what we did to ourselves.

Being afraid of numbers and food, upping our mathematical ability while killing the brain cells needed to do it. Hiding secrets like we were doing something right for it, cheering each other on by tearing each other's bodies apart with insults and yelling praises at every bone and thigh gap.

White panties with pokadot hearts in red and a red ribbon, laying down and breathing in and feeling hip bones…

I didn't consider myself recovered until I had a layer of fat over every bone I had sent photos of in proana kiks; my hips especially.

And I am now obsessed with my oral hygiene for my own health and wellbeing, not to try and hide the effects of when my ed slipped into the other side and binge-purge became a thing.

And then just cycling between eating disorders for years.

And now I have a lot of fucked up health problems and a heartbreak that isn't being met by starvation but by actual looking after myself and trying not to hate my own guts.

It's kinda weird when self harm isn't your first instinct anymore. But it's kinda nice to when it starts to feel less familiar and less like home.

It's always there; but it's not the road most travelled anymore and choosing it wouldn't feel like strength it would feel like the ultimate failure.

It didn't feel like that at 16.

At 16 it felt like this fucked up hope.

Hope someone would love me, but not want me, that I would be so boring to fuck that no one would want to. I would be nothing.

And now as an adult, I don't care who wants to fuck me or why. I care about having a body that might actually function. I care about living past 35 and making a sustainable and loved life.

That's it. I just want to love life.

[urdadthinksimfine]

Being in a bad place was letting them down. Always was and still is. I dont want them to see me, because it would let them down, how I am, what I do.

What really is, is not what they liked. I had to be better. but I couldnt really fake it, could I? They were disappointed rather than being sad. and they didnt need to be any of that. why was it so painful for them.. Because they werent loved and appreciated, when they were in a bad place?

Rejected for who you really are...

The freedom, to feel, see and say, what really is there.

the only way to not follow their rules, their footsteps, is to accept what is, radically.

but what is?

what is?

what?

is?

Now? is what is while i do it, what is? No "im this way" "I am this kind of person", no connotation of what i did and do. Just the.. feelings of.. right now? the thoughts that haunt me? the stress and comfort in the body? my tendencies that are just there, in the moment, nothing i can think of before or after?

just... right now?

.

The freedom to see and hear what is here, instead of what “should” be, was, or will be. The freedom to say what you feel and think, instead of what you “should” feel and think. The freedom to feel what you feel, instead of what you “ought” to feel. The freedom to ask for what you want, instead of always waiting for permission. The freedom to take risks on you own behalf, instead of choosing to be only “secure”. (Five Freedoms, Dr. Virginia Satir)

.

My parents werent free. And they took our freedom. I dont want to take my freedom.

I have the freedom to fuck up, to suffer the consequences, to love bad things and to hate the good, i have the freedom to want more, i have the freedom to be brave now and timid later. I have the freedom to try to make it right, only to realize theres only half good later. I have the freedom be scared of the haters and do it nevertheless.

I have the freedom to fuck up.

I have the freedom to be fucked up.

I have the freedom to see and feel it and love it.

Dont I?

.

I am always trying to make it right.. to cope the right way, be wise, cuz getting better is the right thing to want.

I always.. try to make it right.. never really sure.. if in only want that, because they taught me to not trust my own instincts.

Im scared, because they taught me the way i feel is "bad", "wrong". But it was just what is. nothings more, nothing less.

...there is no saying what way is the right one, no formula, mathematic function. "If i feel fear, do I just have to ignore it, because its what they taught me and its actually what i should do?"

there is no such thing. no such thing.

the only things that is.. is now.. and what that means, i cant tell.

i cant tell and im lost and ... i like that, dont i? The word "delicious" is flooding my mind, painting it with its pink connotation. Is delicious what is?

if i started to love the fear that is? the lostness, the confusion, the absence of right and wrong?

.. no answer once again.

.

Guitar and writing.

Guitar and writing and what is, within those moments.

maybe.

[different-names]

.///////3.26.23

<!searchDIRECTORY: ..////[10.08.22][10.13.22]

../me and my cats are all missing hair.

we are all losing our hair. it is falling out in chunks.

we are moving around, moving through. we are all battered and bruised and missing you.

me and our cats are all sitting here quietly in the dark.

we are lying down bathed in red light.

../invalid command. please reenter.

something i keep calling you rhymes with your name but two of the letters are different, and i don't think your name has any apostrophes, at least none that i'm aware of.

me and our cats recognize your name and your voice.

i don't know if we call enough. i do not think we are calling you enough.

on our next birthday i want to name a star after you but i'm not sure which name i should use. maybe it would be too silly and meta to name a star night but maybe it would be worse to name it sister, lover, friend.

../invalid directory path. this file is missing.

i don't know. i'm not the philosopher. i'm the nurse.

../describe me a god and in vivid detail i will show you how it bleeds.

../describe me a god and i will slow and mathematically show you how to debride and sterilize and suture its wounds. there is no longer space in my brain for magic.

i closed it down and am not painting my bedroom walls any colors. i am for now strictly interested in the color of my nail beds and traffic lights. i am now strictly interested in the color of your nail beds.

i am meeting god and she is human and she is telling me how she got sober in a dark living room over the course of a week with a breathalyzer on 3 hours of sleep pacing around the kitchen sobbing down the line of a telephone walking into that room knowing i would hear you say you don't want to be here is the hardest thing i've ever done.

i want to tell her you weren't alone then. i was there too.

../[she is telling me she woke up in a hospital bed on valium and drove to florida with her mom. she is forcing me to stop talking until i have at least one bite of pizza. she is in finals week and hates that she can't fly out to be here. she is serving me a venti passion tea lemonade as we walk shivering back out into the sunlight.]

she is certain only that she was not relieved you were not lucid enough to say it. she is certain only that she was not relieved that you recognized her face but not her hand on your knee.

../chekhov's step one.

[i have done it, ad infinitum. full stop.]

if you are in a play and life is unmanageable then invariably inevitably eventually the gun will go off.

i am moving by around and through and i am being battered and bruised.

there's a fishhook in your skin and you're sweating. there are rotting hot dog slices in the tackle box and you are sweating. there is lake water dripping from our clothes onto the floor and you are sweating and we don't have any ceiling fans. i've never seen you come so hard and at first i think i hurt you.

me (yours) and our cats are missing hair and i tell you, and you tell me you're missing hair too. i don't know if you know exactly what i mean.

i can't stop thinking about the fishhook, about you sweating. [you kicked the blankets off and you're shivering and i don't know why i think it looks so christlike. i think that's my name. do we have the same name too?].

../the data has been corrupted. unable to parse. command function not found. system shutdown will occur in 1 second(s) unless cancelled. shutting down system hard drives. please wait.

../

../unable to perform system startup. please wait a few seconds before retrying.

../

../

../error 404: file not found file not found file not found file not found file not found

../

../i think maybe i'm not complete yet. that maybe it's too soon.

but i do know now that i need to come home and i need to be beside you.

../does that mean the same thing? ["i look forward to getting to meet you [again]"].

[god! it's happening again, that it's you, and you're someone else, and this time it isn't grief! god. god! there's no one to miss, nothing to grieve!]

[until when? until when?...]

and being complete is when i can accept that it's a choice you'll have to make, and accept what you choose.

<!--for all the time i spent longing for you to get better, for us to get better. for all the time i spent trying to keep things from falling apart. for all the time i spent flat on my back praying something out there keeps you from falling off the roof. [is that my 'in' to 'get god'?] scrubbing blood from the cut on your face off the railing off the bathroom floor and failing to fully remove the stain.--/>

three months later you ask me to help shave your face and you're frustrated, don't understand why i'm too careful, why i'm too scared to press hard enough, why my hands are shaking so hard. "i'm drunk. are you surprised?" "no."

there's some small part of me that could be bitter but i honestly can't be upset. there's no ethic in the concept of debt, no exchange plan, as romantic as it sounds in someone else's mouth.

there's no one who knows what this is between us except us, maybe not even us.

me and my cats are all missing. we have gone missing and are seeking towards home.

[bonesbuckleup]

Do you have any advice on how to learn from writers you love? I've read a few books recently that are absolutely spell binding but not in a way I'm currently capable of mimicking. Do you think there's a way to pick out what it is we love and then practice it in our own stories?

Oh, bud. Oh, bud. OH, BUD. The way this ask has been making me positively rabid all day with wanting to answer it. Fun fact--this is a hill I have died on, am currently dying on, and will continue to die on for my entire existence.

Short answer: Yes. Yes, yes, a thousand times yes. What you're describing is the oldest model on earth for learning how to do any artistic undertaking: you look at what the masters are doing; you think that you would like to do that thing; you learn the rules; you replicate, replicate, replicate, replicate; once you've mastered the rules, you break those rules to create your own style. Painting, writing, musical instruments, woodworking...this is the most classic of classic ways to learn a craft.

Long answer: Number one, anyone doing anything remotely creative should listen to what Ira Glass has to say about the creative gap. I kept trying to type up an answer to this ask, and he says in 2 minutes what I was taking thousands of words to try and describe.

Under a cut! And I'm sorry, it's very rambley, but I really think I could teach an entire semester class based on this concept.

The thing is, the way you go about picking out what you love and figuring out how to do it yourself will vary widely depending on what you want to replicate in your work. Dialogue, general plotting, vibes, mood, setting, character...all of these have slightly different ways you can go about them. I could probably write a book on this topic. I tried to boil it down to a few ideas:

Identify what it is EXACTLY that is drawing you to that particular book, short story, writer, etc. There is no room here for "I don't know, I just love it!" It might be the overall mood of the story. It might be the way characters are depicted. It might be the way the writer puts a sentence together. It might be how they use really plain language and then just SMACK YOU IN THE FACE with a sudden lyrical sentence. It can be anything. It might be small, like a specific 3 lines of dialogue. It might be big, like the way the plot is put together. I had a professor who called this the "gravitational pull," which is a part of the story you are drawn to the most. There can be multiple of these in a single work, of course, but the important part is to be explicit and direct in pinpointing what they are.

Rip apart the thing you love. Violent? Yes. Necessary? Also yes. Once you've identified what it is that's your gravitational pull in a story (and it's okay if there's more than one, just work through them one at a time), it's time to figure out how they work. I tend to be fascinated by how plots fit together, the if-then of storytelling, so I end up spending a lot of time making outlines of other people's books. (Fun fact: using a classic three act structure, Twilight is an almost mathematically perfect plot). Figuring out how things work can take a while, depending on what aspect you're looking at. If it's a character arc, you might plot out the main scenes and shifts that character goes through, then identifying the specific moves the writer made to take them from Point A to B to C to D. If it's something like style, such as the way a sentence is phrased or the way the language works, write down your favorite bits and figure out what, exactly, it is that you like about them. What's the draw? How is it functioning as one piece in a whole?

(One warning for ripping apart the thing you love--once you start reading like this, it's really hard to turn it off. You'll be perpetually diagnosing and dissecting everything you read. It takes a really good book to make me not do this, but even then, once I realize my analytical brain was quiet for a while? It gets kicked into overdrive, because a book that makes Analytic Brain shut up is a really fucking good book, and I want to know what makes it tick. ANYWAY. Be warned.)

Read a metric fuckton. Read the kind of thing you would like to write. Read the opposite of the thing you would like to write. Read fiction and non-fiction and fanfiction, and figure out how they're similar or different and what the rules are for each. My favorite books all combine bits and bobs from different genres (Legendborn by Tracy Deonn is such a banger of a book, and it's basically if Arthurian Legend met Beloved by Toni Morrison and took place on a college campus which is a bizarre premise but it WORKS SO WELL).

Write "In the Style Of" Pieces. Another professor of mine had us read several stories by the same writer all in a row. We identified the things that made them That Writer's style. So, for instance, JD Salinger: he has short sentences, very plain language, tends to have a page break/vibe shift approximately halfway through his short fiction, and often has some kind of shift at the ending. I think. It's been 10+ years since I read one of his. THE POINT IS: we identified the things that made a JD Salinger short story a JD Salinger Short Story. We looked at them and figured out how they worked. Then our assignment was to write a JD Salinger Short Story using the themes and style ticks that he used. We also did this with Denis Johnson (lyrical prose about very un-lyrical situations), Flannery O'Connor (Catholicism and people being shady), Raymond Carver (a rant for another time lmao), and a few others who are escaping me.

Were my pieces anything like the greats? NOPE. Not at all. I definitely fell short. But! There were a few things I learned from each of them, including things I didn't want to do. I think knowing what you don't want to do in writing is almost more valuable than what you do want to do, but I'm getting off topic. By forcing myself to write in a style completely alien from my own, whether or not it was good writing, I started to figure out what my aesthetics are, what I want my voice/writing/style to look like, how I wanted to structure stories, and I learned that from taking bits and pieces from some of the masters. This is an exercise I still sometimes do: what would this story look like if Neil Gaiman wrote it? Leigh Bardugo? Karen Russell? Tamora Pierce? How is a story by CL Polk different than one by Kazuo Ishiguro or Douglas Adams or Cornelia Funke?

Steal Widely and Mercilessly. Fiction is stealing. Anyone who tells you differently is lying. I got into grad school with a story that boiled down to "what if Leonard McCoy was drafted into the Vietnam War and had to decide to dodge or not?" My grandma had a saying about babies--hope for a girl and love what you get--which is more or less the basis of a major character in the novel I'm finishing up. We all steal. We're all thieves. There's a difference between stealing and plagiarism, obviously, but like...I love the way Rory Power balances dialogue and action, and sometimes I read and use her stuff as a structure model. I used the plot breakdown of Hunger Games for that same novel I'm finishing up--it is nothing like HG, but the pacing was relevant, which is learning while running. Whenever I'm about to write a garden scene, I reread bits of Practical Magic by Alice Hoffman. Like. Steal. Do it. We all do. Fiction's a grab bag and we're all out here grasping at straws. We're not stealing things verbatim, because again, plagiarism, but like...you like Zuko from atla a lot? Cool, grab his general character and put him on a space ship. You think the concept of Bruce Wayne is fun? Neat, what's he look like on spring break and broke and named Carl? You heard someone say something truly unhinged on the bus? That happened to a friend of mine, and her book came out from Simon and Schuster a couple years ago and the unhinged thing is still in it.

Make writer friends. I don't necessarily mean accomplished writer friends, though that's fine too! But the most valuable writer relationships and critique partnerships are with people and who are on an even-ish level to your current writing status, whatever that is. Because sometimes it's really, really hard to articulate what you love about a thing that's working well, especially if you're new to this practice. However, it can be much easier to recognize what isn't working well. That's the true secret of writing critique: it's not always to make your writing better, but to teach you how to talk about what you like, don't like, is working, or isn't working in any particular piece of writing. Plus, then you have a buddy to commiserate with, and that's always a necessary component of writing.

Write a metric fuck ton. Once again, I reference Ira Glass on the creative gap. You churn through enough words, and eventually you look up and realize your words have gotten better. I know a bunch of writers, and you want to know the difference between the truly talented and "gifted" ones and the ones who hustle and grind? Over the years, the ones who work really fucking hard and put a bunch of words out (versus being precious and going after perfection) have published more widely and are producing more interesting, compelling work than the "talented" ones. Almost every time.

One final thing: the moments I hate my writing the most are almost always just before a level up occurs. It's like a boiling point. So those times you really, really hate everything you do? You might be close to a break through, so do not give up. Keep going.

And, actually, I lied. I'm going to end this with a few of my favorite books about writing. None of them I love 100% all the way through, but the all had bits and bobs that I've found useful in how to dissect stories and diagnose what you like or don't like about them:

Story Genius by Lisa Cron

Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott

Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert (very woo woo but honestly a feel-good favorite)

Story by Robert McKee (A BRICK. Technically about screenwriting, but it's useful for classic structures like the 3 act, a hero's journey, etc)

Steering the Craft by Ursula K LeGuin (when I say that I would die for any word UKLG says about writing...ugh...love her.)

I hope something somewhere in this answered your question, and honestly, thank you for giving me an opening to scream about this specific thing, because it's one of my favorite rants to have.

[elkement]

Perspective Study - contour lines, mathematical function

The journey continues! This is my latest freehand perspective drawing - work in progress!

I am painting my mathematical function as if they were made from stained glass!

Freehand perspective drawing of contour lines on a "tower" with a clover-leaf shaped base. The clover-leaf is infinitely large at the base and shrinks reciprocally with height. Top view, front view, and drawing in perspective constructed from them.

I constructing the contour lines on this tower-shaped surface traditionally, using the techniques of descriptive geometry - just without ruler or compass. Then I am adding colors in several layers, using different kinds of pencils and pens.

This has been the beginning - test sketch, then pencil lines

This was how it looked after the drawing was done and I had added a first layer of color:

[neonun-au]

wips im never going to finish #1

that time for a collab where i was going to write first person taeil mad scientist au through journal format like dracula lmao

ummm i dont think there are any warnings below its just.....the beginning of something fkdlsahfdas

30 August, 1817

I am on the train heading north. Father has seen fit to pull me from my studies, at such a time when I am making exceptional progress, in order to meet the woman who is to be my bride. He has given me an ultimatum--marry or there will be no inheritance. As I am reliant on his support and his wealth for the continuation of my studies, I must acquiesce. 

Though it is entirely against my will, I see no reasonable way out of the arrangement. 

The air up here is bleak. What little sunshine we have in the south only dissolves further into grey clouds the longer the journey goes on. I feel as though I am heading towards the end of my life as I know it to be. That the grey clouds overhead are an omen of sorts, sent to mimic the certainty and acuity of misery I am bound to endure as a husband. To be forced to share my life with one I do not know. With one who certainly will have no interest in my life’s pursuit and will instead desire me to accompany her to dull function after dull function--conversing with the wealthy yet ignorant masses. Caring more about fancy dress than the contemplation of philosophical questions. 

Again, I see no reasonable way out. So I will submit to this future, but I will not give up the pursuit of eternal life. Perhaps if I am able to unlock these secrets despite the burdens and responsibilities of marriage, I can then do as I please with both the time and money that will come as a result. 

Perhaps also there will be some small comfort in having a wife. There is a chance, however  small, that she will be clever. For that I pray even more so than for a wife of beauty. 

31 August, 1817

I have alighted in town. The train journey was wearying and endless, but finally I have arrived. The North is as bleak and as depressing as my colleagues at the university had warned me they would be. The inn I am staying in is old. The wallpaper is peeling at the corners, the floorboards creak at ungodly hours. But I am here, and it is at the very least a blessing to no longer be in transit. 

Tomorrow I meet my fiance. I am trying my hardest not to fatalize the encounter. To not paint her in such a way in my brain that my preconceived notions will bleed into our first impression. But as I have nothing to do except think in the dark of the inn room, this is proving to be a rather fruitless venture. 

Instead I sit here pondering my thesis in an attempt to distract my wandering mind. How to solve the problem of aging? Of death. Is it really an inevitable end? Or can God be defied. I do not believe in God, but I do believe in science. As such, I am of the mind that this problem of death can be overcome. Science will find a way. I will find a way through science. I think it is a matter of alchemy rather than biology. As of late I have been reading the works of Copernicus and Boyle and they each present some interesting theories on the subject. I have found Boyle’s experiments to be especially illuminating as he takes more of a chemical approach. 

It is difficult to speculate on this further as I left my notes and texts back at home in my study, so I suppose I will conclude my musings for the evening. As it stands, I can only theorize about the concept as I have no practical or indeed legal way of testing it out currently. 

All I know currently, is that if tomorrow’s meeting goes as I fear it shall, my interest in the subject of death may become a wholly self-serving matter. 

2 September, 1817

I am in love. This is not by design of my Father, as the woman he would have me marry is as an abysmal a spinster as I had feared. Dull of face and dull of mind. No, but her sister, by some small miracle, is an angel. Clever, beautiful, and highly capable. We discussed literature and mathematics at some length while Edith, my to-be wife, was out for the shopping. 

She is perfect. 

Her name is ______ and she is perfect and yet it is hopeless. How can I possibly convince my Father, as stubborn as he is, that he has made a mistake. That he is planning for my future with the wrong sister. Perhaps this is some small joke of his, some spiteful act of revenge for me squandering his money with my “useless academics”, as he so fondly puts it. 

My mind is torn in two, as is my heart. Her face has made permanent home in my mind, her delicate laugh resounds through my ears even as I sit in silence. It is a wonderous thing to find someone so perfect in such an imperfect place. To think she was absent from my life only mere days ago, and already I cannot fathom a world without her.  

We discussed briefly my academic work and she seemed highly interested. This was an unexpected and wholly welcome delight to me and only increased my fondness. She sat enraptured as I detailed the work of my professors and the advances I hope to make in the world of medicinal science, she even posed a few questions on the matter. I wish to speak with her more on these matters.

Alas, she was born of the fairer sex in a world that is rigid and unkind to those women that might otherwise be excellent scholars. It is endlessly tiring and silly that we must perpetuate this idea that women are not clever. Perhaps after we are married I shall take her into the college myself and watch the old men’s jaws drop in shock and horror. 

But I am getting ahead of myself, for I do not know if it is even possible for us to be married. I must speak with my father, I will write a letter forthwith and await his reply. Surely, in his eyes, one wife is as good as another--he cannot hope to deny me this one small happiness. 

3 September, 1817

I have received a letter from my colleagues at the college. They discuss at length the happenings in the department of Science and Medicine and it makes me ache to return to my studies. How can it be that they are of my same age and yet share so few of the troubles plaguing me at length? Instead they are free to be young and unattached from any arranged marriages, only living for their studies and for their evening games. One such fellow, Paul, a man whom I have had very little to do since he all but burned off my hair in a failed lab experiment years ago, has apparently caused himself some great bodily harm. 

It’s a bittersweet thought. My friend, no doubt, sent me the news in an effort to offer me some humour but the thought only turns the bile in my stomach. That they are there, working on their endeavours in good company, and I am here in the bleak north, waiting on my father to cast his sentence. 

Will I be man or martyr? 

[milf-harrington]

HIIIIIIIIIIII i am sat in bed trying to sike myself up to do demand functions but my cat is purring so fucking loudly right next to me and if that's not an excuse to procrastinate idk what is. hope you're having a good day <3

wait oh my god did we just send each other an ask at the same time?? bc i'd just clicked out of your blog when i saw this djkfskj

but hiiii, i had to google what a demand function is and i got as far as "mathematical" before closing the tab so i'd defs be procrastinating doing that too <3 also it's against pet law to get up when your cat is sat next to you purring sooo

i had an alright day, it was pretty uneventful - i've got two paintings to finish by tomorrow though so im seeing a sleepless night in my very near future dfkjs

[jonathankatwhatever]

Continuing on 19 Mar 2023. I’m the cat in the box. It won’t be until tomorrow morning that the box is opened and we discover if I’m alive or dead. It’s like being readied for execution when you don’t know if it is going to happen or not. That level of uncertainty generated out of and fills the space, the existential space, the sword of Damocles, that End where all these dimensions come together.

I just had a banal conversation that wasn’t at all banal except on the surface. That’s where the dimensions come together. You can see them 0, and the shape of the 0’s is what presents to us. That’s the paintings I made in college of words like Nervous drawn nervously but with creative expression. And it was the most soothing green.

Everything really does fit, which is why this End is so sharp, so much like a cusp, which means this is where the complexity 0’s along the real line, which means a boundary and a vertical tangent, and a singular point or End. I hope the idea is coming across.

While walking, I heard an objection that I only have recreated a minimal understanding of various realms within mathematics, to which I’ve attached trivial nonsense. It was clearly stated, and I paid attention. Within a few moments, I heard: look at what you just did; you reiterated from the bluntest of basics the creation of grid squares, with even more depth and clarity, while showing yet again what the zeta function is, that it Injects at the Bip, which is now even more interesting, so for example, a count of primes now literally translates into the size of the gs processing associated with that prime. That is why the value is in the imaginary part at the rather obvious ½ pole. The imaginary part now directly stands for the gs processing which has been 0’d out.

Need to take a break.

——————-

That was easy and difficult at the same time.

This is easy and difficult at the same time.

All the work is 0’ing, meaning it’s reducing to its simple, efficient gs translation, which I finally can understand, which makes it simple after astonishing difficulty.

I read a piece that gets concert pricing wrong: all the typical complaints. I paid $4 to sit on the lawn at Pine Knob to see big acts like James Taylor and Fleetwood Mac and The Eagles. But a concert then was a bunch of people standing on stage playing music, often through the house PA. To compare that to an Olympic scaled event like Eras is absurd.

I stopped after that to look at elliptics and suddenly could translate them so I could see the concept in gs terms. I have been inching toward this for a while. They literally do exactly what we’ve described, and I’m not sure how to say that. Maybe try: apply a specific gs process to 1 or more (but often 1) rational point, meaning I//I, meaning the gs process associated with that particularly I//I result. That’s lovely and extremely simple.

Now I’m going to get back to the storyline, which has developed a bit since. As I remember, I was walking along the river when it hit me that I was enacting a version of a song, specifically this is me trying, because I was and am in that box in which delusion, in which the mental illness, can be on either side. I think I saw that before, but I’m not sure. It is familiar. The argument has always been that the math works so that is the sane side, meaning the insane side is to be normal, to be the 0Space me instead of the 1Space me, to care about now instead of eternity.

Wait a second. I just was able to phrase elliptic curves so I can explain them to others. And the zeta function, which now you can actually see translate into the gs process, meaning we can say ‘this is what analytic means’ in a way that many more people can grasp. This stuff actually works!

I hope tomorrow is not my last day on this earth. There have been many days over this life where I was unsure if I could make it here. The math finally makes sense.

Here’s an example. Earlier today, I described how orthogonal develops as fD’s transform into gs. A hidden point in that is that each Irreducible thus orients itself to the flip of the other, as we described over the past few days. So what this generates is an internal and external Triangular and gs. I think I can find the words. When the End in an fD inverts to the other End, we ‘simply’ draw that inversion internally, within the boundary. This obviously fits to basis points, vector spaces, etc.

OK so far. And the reason is? Must be something very basic, like the creation of gs which are less than ideal, which means all those angles to the boundary, all the flips on this side of the inversion line, meaning we got it because we’re crossing 1Space boundaries and that does invokes gs.

Oh, the other thing we can suddenly explain is O-notation. That becomes much easier to grasp when you see the gs process.

And the gs invoked is that doubling of the 1Segments, meaning when the fD’s overlay as they adjust to the I//I holding the shared space. That’s the mechanics. It’s simple and beautiful.

—————

I remember writing earlier today that a 13 was appearing out of the Triangular to grid squares connection in the T-function. In the T-function, each 1-0Segment is bisected and that is the midpoint line of a triangle which fits to Triangular in one spot and to grid squares in another. These must be symmetries of the underlying object. That grid squares and Triangular represent different aspects of the same underlying object makes sense, but what is that object? If they’re invariant to that group, then we have all the variance on this side, which fits I//I, meaning that these would represent Irreducibles, meaning orthogonal in gs. Is this sensible? These are obvious Irreducible, so if they’re linked, then what they represent is the Irreducible to the flipped bit of that representation, that weaving together of the layers (which introduces anti-, which becomes anti-matter, as the flipped bit of). That’s deep but it’s not what I was looking for.

How is it possible to explain to people what non-binary means? That applying non-binary means non-binary solutions as well. Oh right, we never wrote down a gender conception, at least not explicitly. We’ve identified that there is an inner ‘echo’ chamber in which one processes to the limit of one’s perceptions (idealized). The work we did years back now fits to the conceptions of this same mechanism repeating. That is, any internal processing has to follow the same mathematics, so that makes an internal world, like over an HG, which invokes Hexagons. One consequence is that there is an external and internal gender identity: you are male or female, in nearly all cases, externally and that processes to and from an internal gender identity, which may or may not match. You see the same things externally: some are very much physically that gender, others less so.

I doubt I could have reached this material if not for this strange and terrifying experience. Amazing.

We separated sexual from gender identity because that’s obviously true: men like men, women like women. That enabled the 1-0Segments. Can I set this up as a 13? OK. Start with the center Bip. Label each corner in turn O, meaning Observer of what happens in the other 3, which are labeled M-W-M and W-M-W. That actually counts 12 and 13 by the act of these labels, simply 4 times 3, but it also counts 24 and 26 in the literal 2 layers which directly correspond to 1-0-1 and 0-1-0. Literal construction of I//I by attaching labels for Triangular in gs.

It comes together like we sat down and made it up together.

That was cool. Another approach is to say we have the same thing when we make a Triangular of these internal identities and connect them to the center of the HG or Hexagon. Then if you look at Hexagonal, you can see we construct or invert so the labels work like above with the center as Observer. That mirrors the inversion of Regularized gs polygons, that the 0 or the Observer expands and contracts to that center over the 1 to the boundary 0.

Note how that takes the Bip and projects it differently. I’m trying to say that in gs we have that neat intersection of 1-0Segments, but in Triangular that intersection is an End connected to other Ends so this image of the intersection roots in not only this image of Triangular but in others as well.

And since we have Hex, then we have the 3-6-4 or 6-3-4 or 4-6-3 or 6-4-3 or 4-3-6 or 3-4-6. Which is 18, and hello the symbol for life. And 24 when you add in the 0bserver to each Triangular. Which is a complete Hexagon with that 13th point. And you see 14 by 1-0Segmenting 13.

What does this mean? It makes D24 out of combinations of D, treating each version within as a dimension. That makes sense because it follows that log log discussion we have earlier today in which we identified the gs process inherent in log log.

But what does it mean? These are state arrangements: from Tri to Hex to gs or gs to Tri to Hex. Look at Hex to gs to Tri: that is a Triangular, and that is a Winding so the Observer, the 4th label for the gs transition, is in Triangular, and is specifically in the End just before we count over the Start 1-0Segment. Winding.

This is an actual gender and sexual identity model which relates the internal to the external. There are many ways, I think, to express this, including balls made up of half-planes, meaning the 1-0Segment flip. Remember the HourGlass image and that in projection. The proof is

The way this would work is that there are other internal identities, so they all together and in part - and in specific circumstances - define a personality. This fits to the larger description of Pathways and the methods developed with those.

As an aside, I’m extending more and more up on my bad toe and foot. It no longer hurts much to do that. The statistical method for easing pain works by using the idea that there are Pathways which don’t involve pain, or as much pain, and that you develop those, meaning you take the positives and construct so that fits the positive Dimensional Reduction which places these choices in front of you as you live. That uses D4-3 threads and you can see the iObjects, meaning the intangible states which connect to capability in the moment versus ideal, which is an intangible Thing, an iThing. That iThing is sort of a template, meaning it’s available to nearly all users.

[realm-sweet-realm]

Repeating the Cycle

I thought I’d write a little story about ink infection, as well as Sammy’s role after he was transformed. It’s inspired by Shazzbaa’s theories (I’d say which, but we don’t want spoilers, now do we?)!

I’ll tell you guys later tonight about the future writing projects I have planned.

---

Sammy awoke in his sanctuary, as he had many times before. He hadn’t been to his apartment in... well, days anyhow. He felt better when he was near the ink. He tried the door to exit his private sanctuary, and it was locked. “Is this a sign?” he asked his lord. “Is it time?”

Yes, his lord spoke back.

Sammy smiled- smiled rather weakly, as the pain from his ink infection had been wearing on him heavily. “Finally.”

All the waiting. All the sickness. All the fear. It was time to see what it was all for. And his lord had assured him, with the comforting voice of a father to a young son, that it would be worth it.

Sammy dragged himself over to the leaking pipe that hung from the ceiling of his sanctuary and turned on the ink supply. Ink sputtered down onto Sammy’s face and clothes, and he fell to his knees, hands outstretched and mouth open as though he was staring into heaven itself. His heart was pounding. He was shaking from adrenaline, and not even being surrounded with, covered in, and consuming the ink that normally numbed his symptoms seemed to be helping. This had to be fear instead of withdrawal.

Do not be afraid, the voice comforted, you will have ascended in mere hours. I promise, you will be safe and healthy. I promise, it will be better than anything you’ve ever experienced.

“Thank you! Bendy, hear my praise! I want what you have for me! I crave your embrace!”

Sammy took a long suck of ink from the pipe, then laid down on the floor. He was weak. so weak.

That’s it. You’ve made it. You need only wait now.

Sammy trusted Bendy. Bendy told him that everything he’d done and experienced in his life- even the nightmarish last few years- was leading to something. It told him that everything was okay.

Sammy didn’t know how much time had passed when he felt Joey tying up his ankles. With some struggle, he sat up and tried to push Joey off of him, but it had little effect. Before long, Joey had finished on Sammy’s ankles and was straddling his chest to tie up his hands. The last thing he saw with his biological eyes was Joey’s knife slitting his throat.

When Sammy woke up, the voice of his lord was gone. By trying to make a toon out of him, Joey had robbed him of his ascension and severed his connection to him.

---

Grant awoke in his office to the horrid ticking of his Bendy clock and the array of whispering voices that had plagued him since early in his infection. The clock’s small hand pointed to six, but Grant had no idea whether it was morning or evening. Months of ink infection had ruined his sense of time. He tried the door to his office and found that it had been locked from the outside by chain and padlock. Grant laughed at the absurdity of it all- his life had spiralled into a nightmarish fever dream.

“Does this mean it’s time?” Grant asked.

Yes. Your time is almost up, the voice answered, and for once, Grant trusted it. He felt almost too tired from illness to care.

“I’ll do anything you ask to stop it.”

No response, except for those muttered voices. Grant hadn’t expected one- the voice rarely had his best interests in mind. He shuffled over to his desk and pushed aside some papers to go back to sleep- possibly for the last time.

And then he saw it- a report from Joey that he’d received mere days before his symptoms had started- ending with the words “Fix this or I’ll have your head!” angrily scrawled at the bottom.

That was it. Joey had done this to motivate him. He just had to figure out how to keep the studio from bankruptcy and he’d be cured!

Yes! Yes! You’re right. Fix it! the voice yelled.

Adrenaline flooded Grant’s system as he jerked open his filing cabinet with shaking hands in search of the necessary files to fix the budget. This was his one chance to survive. The muttering voices were screaming in his head- ear-piercing. His head felt ready to explode.

“Shut up and let me focus!” he screamed.

Ink will soothe your symptoms.

That was something that the voice had told him frequently. He hadn’t given in to it yet- not much, anyhow- because common sense told him that ink was inedible. It was also his sincere belief that the voice wanted to kill him. The voice had told him, back before the physical symptoms had become obvious, that he was merely losing his mind and needed to hide it from everyone, lest he be institutionalized. Then, as soon as the physical symptoms had taken root, it had changed its tune- he was losing his mind, because he was ill with an incurable, supernatural disease, and no hospital could help him, and going to one would only guarantee that he would be a test subject for the limited time he had left. Listening to it then had gotten him into this position, and he wasn’t eager to listen to it again.

But this was life or death. He opened the supply on the ink pipe that Thomas- for some reason he didn’t understand- had installed in his office, and drank deeply.

The voice- the muttering- the headache- it all stopped. Silence. Finally.

Grant’s hands were covered in ink now, and were sure to soak any paper he used. I can’t let that stop me. He dropped to his knees and started painting calculations on the floor.

The numbers didn’t add up. Not a single one. Was his mind was too frayed to do basic mathematical functions?! How could he fix anything, let alone this insurmountable debt, while he could barely think straight?! Calm down. Stay calm. Try again. Life or death. Time is money. What will Joey say?!

From the cracks within the wall, Sammy watched as Grant spiralled into panic and tears, and turned his office inside out trying to find anything that could help, expressing his fears through wall-writing, and attempting escape the room. Poor thing, Sammy thought, remembering the pain and uncertainty of his own ink infection, but soon I’ll be able to teach him the truth.

It had been years since Sammy’s sacrifice. Not only did Sammy still work for Joey now that he was a failed toon, Joey had him on a schedule. Every day at 11:00 AM, Sammy would ooze through the walls of Joey’s office for their morning meeting. Sammy wasn’t particularly happy about doing anything for the man who had turned him into a failed Boris just as he was about to fulfill a higher destiny, but the voice had once told him that to follow Joey was to follow his lord, and now those previous words (which Sammy had recorded and studied every day) were all he had left as a doctrine to follow. Sammy hoped that with enough obedience and service, his lord would see past his ruined body and grant him his destiny.

Joey’s demands were often difficult, but they were simple: sacrificing specific people into specific toons, and looking after the infected. Joey rarely sacrificed people on his own anymore, and instead relied on Sammy to do the dirty work of knocking people out, killing them on pentagrams, and then dealing with the resulting dead body, blood and ink-stains on the floor, and whatever abomination came out of the ink machine. Looking after the ink-infected was easier: keep an eye on them, and once they become too infected to be useful, lock them in their offices or in infirmary rooms and take them to their prison in the basement come night. Sammy had overseen the infection of nearly thirty people by now and had sacrificed dozens.

Thankfully, Joey’s demands were not very time-intensive, and he had plenty of time for his passion: teaching the lost ones about their lord and saviour, Bendy.

The lost ones lived in a prison in the very basement of Joey Drew Studios, along with the failed toons. Sammy’s sermons were some of the only times they were allowed out of their cages, and so they were always happy to see him.

Some agreed with him. Often, these were the same ones who had heard a comforting voice as they were infected- generally those with a religious background. Others thought him insane. Their voice had been different- wrong- hallucinatory- and quite often threatening. Sammy had these lost ones do penance in order to find their way to Bendy. Some found him, leaving Sammy feeling accomplished, but also jealous that he could never have what they had. Hopefully, his lord would see the wonderful work he was doing and one day ascend him along with the rest of them- because surely, that was not their final form.

Today’s meeting was like any other. Sammy waited in the walls until Joey’s 10:30 client left, and then slithered out before him.

“Anything to report?” Joey asked casually, as he looked over some paperwork. These meetings were usually uneventful.

“Two people are currently under quarantine. Three more are infected but still able to work for now. Everything is fine- except for one small detail. One of the people under quarantine is destroying his office out of fear. If you’d like, I could tie him up snug until he transforms, or force-feed him ink to speed the process along.”

Joey considered this. "Hmm... well, I do need an Edgar. He would work as well as any. Are you sure he’s close to transforming?” All ink-infected people had strange beliefs and delusions (except for Sammy, of course- his visions were absolute truth), but by this point in their infection, they were generally too tired to do anything destructive- especially ones like this one, who had increased the duration of their infection by resisting the urge to drink ink.

“It will be a matter of hours,” Sammy assured.

“Well, that’s not convenient, but I do have lunch right after this. I’ll get the Charley down to the basement, and you get the Barley and Edgar. The Barley’s name is Lacie Benton, and I’d suggest you knock her out before taking her anywhere- she’s a tough one. But the Edgar shouldn’t be a problem, right?”

“No... I suppose not.” Severely ink-infected people were, without exception, very weak, and Sammy was stronger now than he’d ever been as a human.

“Alright! See you down there as soon as possible.”

Sammy nodded, slunk back into the walls, and cursed everything, especially his order to obey Joey Drew. A severely ink infected person had never, and would never, produce a good toon- part of their souls had already been connected to the other lost ones. Joey must have known that, but he still insisted on stealing the people that were meant to be Sammy’s to guide, probably because in Joey’s mind, killing a person was murder but killing a lost one (or someone who soon would be a lost one) was not. Joey didn’t see his people as equally human, and it sickened Sammy. Nonetheless, he slithered through the walls until he came upon Grant’s office.

The office looked like a madhouse. The floors and walls were coated with repetitive writing. Furniture had been strewn about. Grant himself was curled against the ink pipe in his office, covered in so much ink that Sammy had thought he was already transformed before he realized he still had hair. The poor thing had tried so hard, while so sick, at something so futile. Sammy had his orders, but he wasn’t going to lay a hand on his sheep-that-wouldn’t-be until he had to.

Sammy slithered out of the wall- slowly, so as not to scare him.

“Who are you?” Grant asked. He sounded so tired of all the supernatural surprises that he barely cared.

“I’m here on behalf of Joey Drew,” Sammy began.

“I’m so sorry. I tried... but I couldn’t. I suppose you’re here to kill me, aren’t you?”

“No. I’m here to give you congratulations. The others in your department were able to use these brilliant calculations,” Sammy gestured widely at the messily scrawled gibberish on a wall, “to make a plan. The studio is going to avoid bankruptcy, and you’re going to be cured. Come with me.” Sammy offered Grant his hand. Grant took it, and Sammy helped him up.

“I-I don’t understand. I don’t understand how-” All of those calculations... Grant would have guessed that they were worthless.

“Shh... you’ll be clearer-headed soon. Just come with me, now. I can’t be out there where everyone can see me, but go to the elevator, go to the bottom floor, and I will be there. I promise- you will be fine.”

“Thank you so much. But, my door-”

Sammy slithered back into the wall. Grant heard the click of a door unlocking, followed by the clink of chains falling limp. His office door was unlocked. Do I trust him? Grant asked himself. This day kept getting stranger. If I don’t, I’m guaranteed to die. I have nothing to lose.

Sammy slithered into the wooden floor of the elevator and only reappeared once the elevator hit the very bottom.

“I’m sorry,” Sammy lamented “I want to lead you to Bendy. I want you to find peace as one of my followers. But it is not in the cards.”

The two made brief eye contact- or would have, if Sammy’s face weren’t covered in mask. Grant, obviously, had no idea what Sammy was talking about. Then, Sammy grabbed Grant’s hair, slammed his head against the wall a few times to knock him out, tied him up for sacrifice, and left to find Lacie Benton.