#degrees of entropy

[lushnightjelly]

New Fear Unlocked: Career Stagnation

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[scandalousadventures]

This is the type of chart that really puts the universe into the realistically objective yet utterly unfathomable perspective that subjective human minds can only hope to comprehend.

Good god! How can you compare this to anything? How can one hope to describe this in any way other than a series of infinitely lengthening numbers? Human language can barely suffice. We can only make do with approximations; 1.9 repeating is equivalent to 2, after all. This is what cosmic horror stems from! It's indescribable!

[femmefaggot]

entropy

[redhotarsenic]

My brain’s finally letting me watch dubbed tristamp hell YEAHHHH

[nimblermortal]

AO3 Commenter: Oh wow, you did some really interesting things with mathematics in this! Nimbler: Yes - well actually I'm visiting my uncle who's a mathematician and tossing my cookies all night, so I pulled the smallest book off his shelf to keep me occupied between tangos and it turned out to be really interesting, you should try The Mathematical Theory of Communication, come to think of it I should finish the introduction Nimbler: Omg omg omg the ENTROPY of COMMUNICATION?? *fangirling*

[geekyanglophile]

Dude heard that lobsters are “biologically immortal” because they have a little bit of telomerase going for them and thought that meant death is unnatural lol. You realize many animals have shorter lifespans than humans? In fact, for many species the norm is to live only as long as it takes to reproduce.

And really the argument about whether telomerase would ever be an effective “anti-death” solution is completely irrelevant to the original post (and even if we could be immortal… imagine how quickly we would completely overrun the planet… I mean we already are). The anti-aging argument isn’t really about whether ppl are dying or not… we are literally all dying… every last one of us. Anti-aging products are about beauty standards (which is why they are primarily marketed towards women). These products aren’t actually about stopping aging (you’ll notice none of them contain telomerase). Their only purpose is to cover up, reverse, or minimize the physical signs of aging. And by all means, if those features make you sad or uncomfortable, then use whatever products work for you. But people (and women specifically) should not be expected to use these products to cater to beauty standards. Using these products will not improve your lifespan or overall health (other than sunscreen but I don’t consider that an “anti-aging” product).

scrunching my face real hard rn

[chemblrish]

So I'm taking this class called molecular driving forces and it's something like stat mech for chemistry and it blows my mind like every week. Today the professor asked us why heat flows from warm objects to cold objects and everyone was like entropy! Temperature! Equilibrium! and he was like yeah yeah but what's it really about when you get to the bottom of it? And the answer was statistics - because the number of states in which these two bodies are in a thermal equilibrium is much (like, much) greater than the number of states in which they aren't, and so thermal equilibrium is the most probable outcome. And the thing that decks me every time is that it's always statistics, it's all statistics.

So anyway, every week I'm like WHOA THIS IS WHY I CHOSE A SCIENCE DEGREE and if you're also a science student (or used to be one) please reblog and add your moments of awe at the beautiful complexity of our universe pretty please!! I want to read your stories! Science appreciation chain!!

[azurem]

Tis one was also a request from the instagram im afraid. Hm. Okay quick yapping under cut

Okay so this rq was based on the idea of nm asking ink to marry him. However I believe the idea of marriage for Ink at least is a bit more complicated specially since marrying Nightmare means rebuilding his role

Like he'd only been fooling around with nm. At this point, their relationship has been centered around usefulness. They both use each other at a degree, and that was fine for both of them. They use each other to receive affection and to give it freely. They've been well and good. They could stay like that forever and that'd be fine.

But Nightmare still asked him to marry him. So it takes another tone. The main thing that confuses Ink is... reasons. He lives in a world where entropy doesn't exist. Creators make everything happen, there's no chaos. So everything has a reason to be. They know Nightmare likes him, they know his secrets and he knows theirs as well. But why would Nightmare make a point of marrying him when they were already a solid thing.

Was it a way to send a message? Does he want to make sure their things remain private? Is it to demonstrate love, a higher love? Maybe this was his way of tying Ink to him, to make sure that time would erode all his edges?

The idea of marrying and his role after also is complex for him because Ink is the one who'd get subjected to more change. Nm already has a solid antagonistic role while Ink goes with the flow. To be known as his husband would mean that his meta role (what the creators see when they look at him) would change. He'd have a solid bias and the role to prove it. He'd be more character than a concept for once and for all.

It's scary. Nightmare scares him because he radicalizes him. He cannot remain neutral as long as their thing remains a thing. Nightmare makes them a character and grounds them to the multiverse as a solid, warm thing and not just as an ideal they must protect.

So why did they say yes?

[lilylovestowrite]

AN ECCENTRIC'S ENTROPY ୨♡୧

PAIRING: (Dr Ratio x Professor! Reader)

WARNINGS: Suggestive

SYNOPSIS: For people who get into each other's pants a lot, you sure do know how to piss each other off...

WORD COUNT: 1k

Divider by @/cafekitsune

Entropy: The measure of the degree of disorder within a substance

“Will you stop your incessant whining?” Dr. Veritas Ratio groans, “I’d have thought spending more time with me would have caused your IQ to surpass at least a vegetable.” You roll your eyes and slam your new research paper down on your colleague's desk. 

“If you didn’t want to be surrounded by idiots, you shouldn’t have decided to teach at a university. Even if Stellaron University is prestigious, you’re still teaching barely adults.” You sigh with faux pity. “But I guess you didn’t think that far, poor Dr. Ratio.” Mockingly, you pet his head, the silky locks of violet slipping through your fingers as he grabs your wrist and forces it back on the desk. 

“I’m not reading your paper.” He shakes his head, brows furrowed and a scoff leaves his lips. Even though he looks up at you from his desk, the way he reclines on his chair so casually makes you feel small. It has always been like this. Veritas and his obnoxious attitude driving you up the walls. A prodigy yourself, the pursuit of knowledge has never been a struggle to you. Yes, it was challenging, but that was part of the fun. The thrill of tearing apart a formula and sinking your teeth in until it churns out a set of numbers that you like.  This allowed you to be the top professor at Stellaron for almost three years straight, until Veritas. Veritas, who opposes almost everything that you do, from the way you prefer to use a whiteboard and pen and him a blackboard and chalk. The way your coffee is dark and his is sweetened with milk and sugar to the point it doesn’t even look like coffee anymore. You didn’t have a problem with this until he published a scientific paper which had quoted your own paper published a month prior, and pointed out how it was not mathematically viable. You still remember the smirk he wore on his face when he emailed you the manuscript for peer review, the audacity of this man to ask you to proofread the very paper he dedicated hours to just to prove your own wrong! 

Naturally, your response is to ask him to do the same. But not with one email, but with twenty scheduled emails every other day. Sometimes, you like to add little emojis to the subject of your emails, and other times you embed links into the email that isn’t your paper, but wikihow articles. This pettiness has caused many encounters with him, some ending rather… intimately. 

Of course, Veritas has not proofread your paper, and you don’t expect him to, so he has no idea how much you’ve referenced his paper and disproved it. But you know how much it ticks him off regardless, the urge to tear through each of your arguments, even if logically speaking, arguing with you is  a waste of time. This degree of disorder is what drives him crazy. You sew chaos into his life as he does to yours, and as the entropy of a heating substance increases the entropy of its surroundings, so too does the tension-filled competitiveness from one of you, causes the other to maniacally lust to overpower the other. 

“Come on, read it. I know you want to.” You slide the paper closer to him, your hands sliding across the epoxy finish of the oak desk. “Unless… You’re scared I’m right.” He stares up at you with eyes the same hue of gold as the award trophies that line the shelves of his classroom, and cocks a brow. He stands up, leaning over the desk and moving his face closer to yours. His cologne almost overpowers your perfume, the musky scent of pinewood and berries he reserves for winter mixing with your vanilla scented perfume, and it sends you into overdrive.

“Oh? I think someone is too overconfident.” He remarks. You’ve noticed that there’s always something up his sleeve, something that he uses at the last minute to defeat you, but you’re getting better at recognising his patterns. And the way his deep voice becomes breathier, softer, akin to a snake’s sinister hiss, you understand that you’ve gotten under his skin. 

“You don’t think enough, Veritas, that’s your writing skills are bare bones and your papers hard to understand.” 

“Shut that mouth of yours.” He grits his teeth further, finally sitting on the edge of his desk and flipping over your paper. You let out a small laugh and sit at his chair. He looks down at you disapprovingly as you do so, but you pay no mind to the fact you’ve sat yourself down on his throne, because your paper will definitely take him down a peg or two. 

“In your bibliography, you spelt ‘accessed’ on your third source wrong.” He points out, taking a red pen from his desk and removing the cap with his teeth, circling the typo as you burn with humiliation. “Oh my, your spacing for the first page and last page are different. How irritating it must be for your readers to be accustomed to one layout and then switch to another.”

“It is just spacing, Veritas.”

“It’s more than that, dear, people like some organisation in their scientific papers. And your way of writing is chaotic! I should have known just by your handwriting and layout in sums.” He tuts, petting your head in faux pity just as you did to him seconds ago.  

“Read the damn paper, Dr. Ratio.” You grit your teeth, now irritated that you’ve dedicated hours and hours bashing him in the footnotes, researching just so he can get a taste of his own medicine, for you to be corrected on your formatting. 

“Patience.” There is something downright Dionysean about his voice, if it were a colour, it would be the seductive shade of red wine, and just as addictive. Addictive like the many times where you two have come too close for comfort, like the one time you two were locked in the storage closet together, and you felt his strong arms encase your body as he helped you push the door open from behind. Or this one time at a work event where he made fun of your table manners and swiped ice cream off of your lips to prove his point. It made you feel red hot, just like the colour of his voice, and the way he acts too hot around you, too excitable. And you wanted more. To make a man who is cold and reserved morph into a competitive beast  raring to go and one up you at every turn is no small feat. The dichotomy makes your head spin, and this side of him only you know wants to make you explore him more. And you know just from the way he cocks his head and slides off the desk, that he’s switching from sub-zero aloofness to scorching hot opposition. 

He grabs the arms of the chair you sit in to push it so far it hits the wall so you are cornered against the blackboard. 

“Actually.” He muses, tilting your head up and sliding your hair to one side. “I want you to read it.” He whispers, breath hot against your ear. “Read it, and I’ll give you,” he encircles your waist with one hand, “appropriate feedback.” 

He hands you the manuscript, and kisses your neck softly. His other hand, now free, unzips your skirt and you gasp as his fingers venture between your legs. 

“Start reading. You’re good at running your mouth, aren’t you? Let’s see how long that attitude lasts…”

[nimblermortal]

I'd like to see an argument for "The Thief" being Gen's Ordeal because I can't figure out how it would be. He's not up against a Lone Power; he's not becoming a wizard or a champion of Life. All he does is -

ohhhhh, you're talking about him becoming a champion of higher powers. Nah, I'd still argue it's not an Ordeal, people do that all the time without becoming wizards, that's kind of the point, isn't it? The magic is a byproduct of your commitment to the bit (betterment of the universe), it's not about gaining powers or recognition and if it were you wouldn't be a wizard in the first place.

Does “The Thief” count as Gen’s Ordeal? Or was it just an ordeal? #crossingscon

[monstrousmuse]

They released a Word Search for The Book Of Bill….and I have thoughts.

Thank you to the wonderful @trickengf for bringing this to our attention over on Twitter/X.

POTENTIAL SPOILERS BELOW THE CUT!

These keywords are…intriguing, to say the least. They seem rather broad, and give the impression of being either chapter titles, or general topics that will be covered in the book.

Right. Time for some speculation:

Global Domination - I think we were all expecting this one, since there was an overt reference to the book containing a ‘key to overthrowing the world (laid out in a handy step-by-step guide’ in its description.

Possession - will we be given insight into how possession works/the ‘mechanics’ surrounding it, and how it feels to possess a human body from the perspective of a being such as Bill? Why he finds physical sensations like pain to be ‘hilarious’, and why ‘body spasms’ are so uncomfortable for him? Maybe he’ll tell us about some of the famous historical figures he enjoyed tormenting, or how ‘itchy’ their meat suits were. 0/10, would not recommend. Will be returning to the store tomorrow. Someone forgot to cut off the tags.

Triangle - triangle anatomy…? A trigonometry lesson? Information surrounding the Second Dimension, perhaps? The book is intended for a ‘mature audience’…Show us what you look like without your exoskeleton, Bill!

Death - either this could mean that Bill will reveal what happened to him after he was ‘erased’ from Stanley’s mind and how he subsequently survived the whole ordeal (including that rather painful-looking punch to the face), or Bill joins the likes of Heidegger and Camus and philosophises for several pages straight. I would personally be happy with either, or both. Although…I still find the idea of the entire book just being some sort of postmortem soul-searching project assigned to him by The Axolotl, and Bill begrudgingly going along with it because it was in the terms of the deal he made to ensure his survival to be absolutely hilarious.

Relationships - …excuse me? Relationships? …With whom, pray tell? Platonic relationships? Romantic relationships? Filial relationships? Bill’s relationship with his family? With The Axolotl, with Time Baby? With Ford?

AXOLOTL - ah, well, there we are. So Bill is most likely going reveal more about his connection with the Big Frills and divulge some interesting bits of lore. …Or not. Does he even know about the ‘sixty degrees that come in threes’ poem?

Demons - interesting. I wonder if there will be a catalogue of the different demons that Bill is aware of/has encountered/is friends with, in a similar fashion to the section in Journal 3 on the categories of ghosts. I also hope that the whole ‘dream demon’ thing will touched upon, since this was an aspect of Bill’s nature that was never really explained in a satisfactory manner, and was arguably even retconned by the time that Weirdmageddon rolled around. Is Bill a ‘dream demon’, or is he a being from the Second Dimension who was somehow rendered both omnipotent and (nigh-)omniscient, and thus merely shares characteristics with true ‘dream demons’, but is not one himself? Neither? Both? And what about the Henchmaniacs? Bill referred to them as ‘demons and nightmares’; are they all different species of demons native to different dimensions across the multiverse, or were they born of the Nightmare Realm and its natural entropy? How is all of this connected to the Mindscape and mortal dreams? So many questions…

Codes - again, will the book include a similar set of pages to the ones that can be found in Ford’s Journal? There are most definitely going to be new ciphers and codes to crack, but for some odd reason, I highly doubt that Bill is going to make it easy for us.

Straws - Silly Straws chapter has been confirmed!!! …In all seriousness, I genuinely have no clue as to what role the illustrious Silly Straw will play in this book. Perhaps there really is going to be an entire section devoted to Bill’s apparent fascination with them, or perhaps there is simply a little throwaway comment tucked in the margins somewhere… I guess we’ll just have to wait and find out when the book is released in *checks calendar* five days.

[lushnightjelly]

En·tro·py [ˈentrəpē]

lack of order or predictability; gradual decline into disorder

Beginning | Current

[tsaomengde]

The Ones Who Found The City

Ursula K. LeGuin's "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas" is a classic short story, and obviously I knew of it, but I'd never actually read it until recently. Well, I finally got around to it, and as many timeless classics do, it got stuck in my brain. This story is my - response? homage? sequel? pale imitation? - to it. I suggest you go and read "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas" if you haven't. Not because it's actually required reading for this story - I think it stands on its own more or less okay - but because it is a classic for a reason.

---

Initially, no one is quite certain of what they’ve found when the Animus breaches the next manifold layer.  This is in and of itself expected, of course.  Exploring psychspace is by its very nature an unpredictable venture.  Each of the various infinite layers is unique and bizarre in its own way, reflecting the archetypal underpinnings of an entire species present, past, or future across an infinitude of possible realities.  The crew of the Animus, therefore, has seen things so utterly alien and inexplicable that only the rigors of their training and the care put into their psychic warding saved them from insanity.

It is somewhat disappointing, then, to find that this sub-domain is just a city.  Definitely not Terranic, certainly not, but still following the Terranic modality, with no more than a seven-degree quantum drift.

“Towers,” Thromby says into the recorder as they sit at their post at the nose of the Animus’s command center.  “Following the standard skyscrape pattern.  Unclear if they’re domiciles or business centers or both.  Coastal city, bay appears to be oceanic rather than lake.  Pleasing blend of urbanization with natural setting.”  They glance at Vigil.  “Anything on the lifescope?”

Vigil shakes his head.  “Nothing.  It’s empty.  Totally empty.”

“That’s odd,” Katrina speaks up from the helm.  “The city doesn’t show signs of decay or reclamation by nature.”

“Entropy may not work in the usual way in this sub-domain,” Teasha reminds her.  “The city itself could be the natural growth, reclaiming the artificial countryside.  We’ve seen things like that before.”

Thromby feels Katrina’s unconscious bristling at the subtle reminder that she is the newest member of the crew and thus less experienced in the vagaries of psychspace than everyone else.  Next to Vigil, who is only nineteen, she is also the youngest.  “I would expect,” Katrina says, her voice cool, “that in a sub-domain so obviously based on human archetypes, entropy and nature-versus-civilization tropes would function more or less as usual.”

“I’m certain you would,” Teasha replies, her voice equally cool.  “When you’ve been at this as long as me and Thromby, you’ll learn better.”

“Enough of that,” Thromby says before Katrina can reply.  They love Teasha, but she tends to be too harsh on new crewmembers.  A defense mechanism, they know, to insulate her from the all-too-common pain of losing them.  But Katrina has too much to prove.  The clash is natural and to be expected, and even useful at times, but now is not one of them.  “Vigil, get me readings on atmosphere, microbiome, and psychic radiation, if any.  Katrina, pick a spot on the coast and bring us down there.  I want to see if the ocean is actually an ocean or a liminality representation.  Teasha, get the Animus tuning to this sub-domain’s resonance frequency.  I don’t want any dissociation issues.”

The orders are mostly unnecessary, since everyone already knows what they’re about, but they serve their intended purpose, which is to re-focus everyone on the task at hand and redirect their nervous energies, particularly Katrina’s.  Thromby still isn’t sure she’s going to make the cut after this expedition is over, but there’s potential there.  They would be foolish to ignore someone with Katrina’s strength of identity grounding. 

There are plenty of sub-domains out there where it’s useful to be entirely certain of who you are, and not everyone can be.

---

The first day’s worth of exploration yields more questions than answers, which is normal and expected.  Thromby is indeed certain that Katrina’s initial assumption that this is a human-archetypal sub-domain is correct.  Human atmosphere, human shadow- and ontological concepts, Terranic fish in the very-real ocean.  But the iconography is sparse and mostly nonsensical.  It’s clear that the city was able to actually function as a city, but it feels purposeful, designed, in a way that actual cities outside psychspace rarely do.

“It’s a metaphor,” Vigil says as they sit around a campfire on the beach after the first day.

“Well, obviously,” Katrina agrees, and Vigil lights up – both visibly and psychically – at her concordance.  Thromby knows Vigil has been nursing burgeoning feelings for Katrina since she joined them, and has so far seen no need to make anything of it.  “But a metaphor for what?”

“We don’t have enough data,” Vigil replies.  “But I’m certain of it.  We just need to keep exploring.”

Thromby takes a bite of the fish they’ve been roasting over the fire.  It’s a pleasant change of pace to be able to eat something real, instead of the platonic nourishment suggestions dispensed by the Animus.  “Agreed.  I’m curious to see what the point of this place was.  We have five more days before we have to resurface and the expedition has been quite successful already.  I think we can spare the time.  Teasha?”

Taking a bite of her own fish, Teasha purses her lips as she chews.  “I concur, but I’m uneasy.”

Teasha is their psychometry specialist, so this makes all of them sit up a little straighter.  “Are we in danger?” Katrina asks.

“Of course we’re in danger, we’re in psychspace.  But in this particular sub-domain?  Metaphorical danger, as Vigil says.  Ideological or memetic patterning rather than physical.”

Thromby nods.  “I suspected that might be the axis of it, here.  We will need to split up to cover the necessary ground in the time we have left, so everyone stays in contact while exploring.  Mechanical and psychic.  No exceptions.”

None of them are particularly happy with this pronouncement, but they see the wisdom of it.  It’s distracting and somewhat draining to keep a four-way psychic connection going, especially over distance, but their implanted transceivers sometimes don’t function properly, depending on the sub-domain.  Electromagnetism and causality both seem to be standard here, but such things have been known to change in an instant depending on whether the sub-domain is actively malicious or not.

Thromby doesn’t feel any such malice here, though.  That doesn’t mean it isn’t present; such things are often quite good at hiding themselves.  But they’ve been exploring psychspace for seventy-eight years subjective.  They’ve learned to trust their instincts.

---

Two more days of exploration are frustratingly unrevealing.  The city is the size of a proper metropolis, and they know it will be impossible to actually explore any significant percentage of it in only a few days, but Thromby is still irritated by their lack of progress.  They find evidence of cultural signifiers, rituals, and traditions, but again, the iconography is vague and appears opaque to standard Jungian-Jingweian analysis.

Teasha spends the two days on a different investigative track than the rest of them.  “Psychometrically speaking the city is remarkably healthy,” she said on the morning of their second day.  “Most locations, metaphorical or otherwise, bear the echoes of trauma or strife, but this place seems to have been almost entirely peaceful.  Totally voluntary anarcho-communism or ordnung-socialism, perhaps, without the usual markers of systemic violence inherent to capitalistic or fascistic systems.  But there’s a thread somewhere that I keep detecting the edges of.”

“A thread of what?” Thromby asked.

“Pain, of course.”

It is on the evening of their third day in the city that Teasha calls them to her.  She uses their transceiver link rather than a psychic summons.  “To avoid contamination,” she explains.  “I’ve found the source of the thread.  Double your usual wardings and enter seclusive patterning before you come inside.”

Thromby does so, of course, though they dislike cutting themselves off from their extrasensory perception.  It feels like trying to see with only one eye.  When they arrive at Teasha’s location, however, they immediately understand why she insisted on it.  The possibility of psychic contamination here is very high.

“What is this?” Katrina asks, holding her nose in disgust.

“The point of the metaphor, of course,” Teasha replies.  She indicates the filthy cellar in which they’ve found themselves, the only part of the city so far that has seemed actively decrepit.  “I guarantee you that even if we spent the rest of our lives exploring this city we would find only this one place showing any signs of entropy.”

The cellar stinks of excrement, a combination of ammonia and fetid shit, despite the physical processes creating such smells having terminated long ago.  The floor is dirt.  There are no windows.  In one corner there are two mops, their heads stiff with drying waste, and a bucket, the metal bands around its circumference orange with rust.

“They concentrated all of the city’s entropy into a single space?” Vigil asks.

“Not entropy,” Teasha tells him.  “Cruelty.”

Katrina gapes, her hand falling away from her nose for a moment.  “Come again?”

“Something lived here,” Teasha explains to her.  “Or, more precisely, was forced to live here.  It functioned as a psychic magnet, of sorts.  The functioning of the city relied entirely upon its imprisonment and use as a scapegoat.”

“What was it?” Vigil asks.

“One of the innocence-sacrifice archetypes.  An animal or a child.  I suspect a child; an animal can feel pain and misery, certainly, but it doesn’t conceive of injustice in the same way a child does.”

Thromby feels their stomach turn a little.  “Ah.  I see.”

“See what?” Katrina demands.

“The point of the metaphor indeed,” Thromby replies.  “This entire city and all its inhabitants, predicated on the suffering on a child.  It’s a morality construct, and a good one, too.”

“A good one?” Vigil asks.  “It’s grotesque.”

“Your deontological leanings are showing,” Katrina tells him.  “From a utilitarian perspective it’s perfect.  Nothing exists without imposing an energy burden on the system in which it exists.  Even the nourishment suggestions the Animus feeds us in liminal space between manifolds is distilled from universal krill.  But this?  The concentration of all of a society’s utility burden onto a single individual.  The ultimate maximization principle.”

“And your teleological leanings are showing,” Teasha sniffs.  “You’re missing the point of the metaphor entirely, Katrina.  It isn’t about utility.  It’s about cruelty.  The cruelty is the point.”

Katrina’s nostrils flare and Thromby cuts in before she can start really arguing.  “Enough,” they say.  “A conflict here in this space could be dangerous.  We’re at the focus of the sub-domain and things have a way of rippling.  We’ve discovered the point of the metaphor, so we can go back to the Animus and leave in the morning.”

Both Katrina and Teasha look ready to argue the point with them, but then they master themselves and both nod.

“Do we have to wait until morning?” Vigil asks, looking around the cellar in transparent disgust.  “I would prefer to leave sooner rather than later.”

“You know the rules,” Thromby replies.  “We don’t transit without everyone being rested.  A tired mind is a vulnerable mind.”

Reluctantly, Vigil nods, too.  The four of them walk away from the cellar, their thoughts opaque to one another.

---

Thromby is jolted out of sleep by Teasha screaming.

They sit bolt upright and look down at Teasha in the bed next to them.  She is clutching at her head, shaking, writhing beneath the sheets.  “Teasha!” Thromby snaps.  “Focus!  Center yourself!”  They grab her by the wrists and pry her hands from her face; her nails are leaving bloody marks in her skin.

“Too much, it’s too much!” she shrieks.  “I’m lost!”

Thromby forces their way into her mind.  She previously gave them her consent for this, knowing that it might be necessary in a moment like this one.  What they see there –

“Aquinas,” they say aloud.  The implants in Teasha’s cochlear nerves pick up on the trigger word and activate, sending the kill-signal to other implants deeper within her brain.  She stops screaming and slumps, unconscious, temporarily brain-dead.  When Thromby says the word again she will be switched back on, but for the moment she is safe from the psychic contamination that was attacking her along her psychometric vector.

Which, of course, means that Thromby has to deal with this issue alone.

They dress quickly and exit the Animus into a beautiful summer day.  Pennants and banners wave atop the rigging of ships in the harbor, bells sound from the city, and people, so many people, cavort and revel on the beach, in the waves, in the streets.  There is laughter, merriment, the intoxicating psychic swell of happiness and excitement.  Thromby threads their way through the crowds in the streets – mothers carrying their infants, children running through the streets in elaborate games of some variation of Terran tag, huge parades of horse-drawn carts with animalistic balloon totems floating in the air above them.  Vendors call out to Thromby, offering delicious food, intricately made jewelry, amazing clockwork-mechanical toys, sensory-enhancing drugs, and a thousand other variegated temptations.  Street musicians play upon cunningly crafted instruments – strings, pipes, percussion, keys – and revelers cavort to the tunes.

Thromby can feel the bright sparks of all of these people in their mind.  These are real, thinking, feeling beings.  They belong to the metaphor, certainly, but Thromby could speak to them, touch them, verify their self-consciousness and interiority, even invite them to come and join them onboard the Animus and explore psychspace.  They could bring them up into the real, return home with them, have a life with them.  That is how it has to be, of course.  Thromby knows they themself may belong to a different metaphor of a different order, after all.  The real is only real because enough people agree it is.

But they do none of these things.  They just walk, stolidly, back to where they know they have to go.

Katrina is waiting for them outside the cellar, barring the way in.  Thromby has their wards up at triple strength and has been in seclusive patterning since before leaving the Animus, but they don’t need to be psychic to read her mind.  Everything she is feeling and thinking is there in plain sight – the proud and defiant way her chin is thrust out, the blaze in her eyes, the way she has her arms crossed and feet at shoulder width.  She is ready to fight.

“Let me through,” Thromby says without preamble.

“No.”

Well, that’s their respective positions, Thromby thinks, articulated clearly and easily enough.  “Why not?” they ask.

“Vigil consented.”

“Vigil is in love with you and you know as well as I do that consent is a matter of framing,” Thromby snaps.  “Move.”

“No.  I explained everything to him and he consented.  It has nothing to do with whatever feelings he might have for me.”

“That’s bullshit and you know it, but fine.  For the sake of argument, tell me how you explained it.”

Katrina hesitates, and Thromby can tell she wasn’t expecting them to actually offer her a chance to proselytize.  “The point of the metaphor is that no matter how great and beautiful the society, if it’s predicated on cruelty, it’s unjust,” she says.  “Deontological thinking, obviously, but cruelty is by definition nonconsensual.  I explained to Vigil that if he allowed it, we could collaboratively put blocks in his mind, purposefully regress him to a childlike mental state, and put him in the cellar to suffer for a specific length of time.  Then we can pull him back out, remove the blocks, and even erase the memories of the trauma.  The child-Vigil won’t, can’t, consent, but it also won’t exist for more than a day, and pragmatically speaking never will have.”

Thromby massages their temples.  “Congratulations.  Once again, you have missed the point of the metaphor.”

“Damnit, Thromby, I’m not a child!  I have the same training and grounding in theory that you and Teasha do.  Everything I’m doing is teleologically sound, and Vigil agreed that with the steps we’re taking –”

“You’re trying to outsmart it,” Thromby cuts her off.  “That’s how I know you’ve missed the point.  You can’t outsmart this, Katrina.  There is no perfect set of circumstances you can construct to get around the simple fact that this city functions, exists, because of deliberate and terrible cruelty.  That’s the entire point of it, just like Teasha said.  Teasha, who, by the way, is currently in a coma.  I had to put her into it to keep Vigil’s misery from damaging her.”

“It’s a thought experiment,” she argues, obviously not addressing the point about Teasha because she knows she won’t win that argument.  “There’s always a correct answer for them.  The trolley, the Gettier, the –”

“It’s about fucking sin,” Thromby sighs.

“Are you joking right now?  You’re going back to the religious well?”

“Yes, because that’s what’s happening right now.  The city is a sin, Katrina.  The excesses of its beauty, its wonder, its perfection, are obscene precisely because of how and why they function.  It’s rooted in the ideology of disgust and taint.  Utility, teleology, all of these justifications and rationalizations exist and have their use, but at the end of the day, answer me one question: will you trade places with Vigil?”

Katrina hesitates.

It’s only a bare moment, less than a second, even, but it’s there.  And Thromby sees it, and Katrina sees it.

“Yes,” she says, finally.

“I knew that would be your answer.  But you know that the answer doesn’t really matter, does it?”

Katrina lowers her head.  “No.”

“You know why you hesitated.”

“Yes.”  She looks back up at them.  “But – there’s no such thing as absolute morality, any more than there’s a single objective reality.”

“Of course there isn’t.  And yet, you hesitated.”

They just lock eyes for a few seconds.  Then she lowers her gaze again.  “And yet, I did.”

Thromby steps past her and opens the cellar.

[auntie-browning]

@emptyxhearted liked for a starter

The popping of burning wood filled the eternal night’s air with some much-needed ambiance as the doll tried her best to peer into the darkness surrounding her. It was all for naught however, as the darkness only seemed to remain opaque even with her rapidly adjusting optical sensors. Browning figured this was just Phi messing with her in his way, knowing well how her battlefield anxiety gets heightened when she can’t perceive anything around her.

She still seemed rather surprised that he had let her keep that memory all things considered. Perhaps the underlying dread of the truth keeps her tasty to his pallet as he drip-feeds things that work to agitate her to no end. Psychological torture of the highest degree, all so she would come running back into his arms like the defeated doll he wanted.

Of course, the doll wasn’t going to play game with that. She was harder than she looked, more so since he worked to no end to…enhance certain features she was bestowed but the point remained. She had an enduring will that kept her from collapsing into despair from traveling lost between realities by a force she didn’t understand. Hell, she has been used multiple times by these beings known as Old One’s before. And through it all, she had over come it all to at least push on through, if a little scarred. She will overcome it as always…

…And just maybe…that’s what he enjoys the most about tormenting her. Never understands when to give in.

The heat of the flame seemed to lull her into a cozy reassurance, placing her arms out to absorb all that was radiating. It almost seemed pathetic to view how oblivious she was to the presence inside the darkness peering in. Eyes of a predator lurking over their prey, yet reserved to not let such bloodlust deprive them of any sense or logic. No animalist rush of life was behind those rings that peered out of the shadows…simply ice-cold entropy that threatened to extinguish the very idea of animation itself.

This doll could only press her attention to retaining some comfort in her terrible situation she found herself. Either ignorant or terrified of what loomed out of sight around her. With unknown intentions placed upon its enigmatic form. There could only be so much that could save her.

[s0lemnhypn0s]

hello everybody im normal. Songs I think are billford

The Three-Legged Waltz by MarkH

"The two become one / In this union you see / But the two don't move freely / They're bound at the knee / To the other / To the other"

"This kind of trouble / Is not lots of fun / I suggest you don't wait / Before you run / while you can / While you can"

"Three legs are better than one / In this union / The two become one / And until that rope gets undone / They waltz"

Thermodynamic Lawyer Esq, G.F.D by Will wood

"Blood vessels drying and curling inside are / Unfurling from out of her wrists / Well, she wrings out a snake and collects all its poison / Intending on learning to hiss / Foaming at the mouth with a head full of acid / Giving some poor illness the blame / Knocking the pieces the fuck off the chessboard / Insisting that she's won the game"

"So all that I see absolute entropy / As the chemical bonds fall apart / Well, it seems she broke me / But I swear she could not break my heart / She could not break my heart! / Oh lord!"

Whose eye is it anyway??? by Jhariah

"My head is overflowing, with these thoughts / That if I return the favor you might understand / But I know, I know you could never carry the burden / You've left with me and I can't give it back / So why even try?"

"An arm and a leg, my friend, les yeux d'la tête / I never give as much as I get / This path of heart attacks is paved with folks / Who only gave their enemies what they had coming / I don't know if it's worth it"

Dopamine_machine by Ferry

"Have your barricades really decayed? / You're running lemonade at thirty six degrees centigrade / Inside your lemon veins / and your hearts a lemon grenade / You think I'm playing charades, masquerade / But this machine just needs an upgrade"

"In your dreams, you see yourself forever weaving / Holy webs, you wake up looking at the ceiling / Dopamine is coursing through your head and leaving / Emptiness, its leaving emptiness / You feel betrayed"

"Oh, this isn't the end / Hold my hand / There is no need to play these games and pretend / All is lost / Take it from me, this voice in your head / Nurture that monster under your bed / and feel the taste of lead again / My friend"

Red moon by Will Wood

"Red, red moon, keep on rising / The sunset soon indeed will bleed in my horizon / The crescent rests, tethered to the west / Waxing to the rhythm writhing in my chest / That crack between the watercolor sky and sea is the / Corner where you're born in the mist / I might deride the tide / 'Cause I'm pulled as it pools 'round my feet / Towards your stolen light / While I'm held in your slight gravity"

"Well, I walk the equator, chasing the light / Little do I know it orbits close behind / I might remember or might assume / But I only turn around every once / In a red, red moon / I said I only turn around every once in a red, red moon"

"Red, red moon / When will your shadows break? / Tell the truth: What're you hiding behind that face? / If matter's in then I might space out / Why can't I take in what you've been dishing out? / Why do I reject, while you endlessly reflect? / You're projecting, your perfection astounds / Nighttime, please hide my eyes / So the man up there won't watch me stare / Teach me to make moonshine / And we'll get drunk on the spirits in the air"

Spider on the wall by Ghost

"Found on march 15th / Transparency, this isn't me / Left out boundaries / Vicinity, this isn't me / Play pretending, should it be so / Lock the diary, so you don't know / I've been watching you"

"Found in broken shards / Those swollen hearts, I've played a part / Invalid boundaries / Keep singing, means not a thing / Can't be bothered letting go / A shrine of excess vulture bones / So burn the house down, now that you know / I've been watching you"

"Bottles broken after everytime our eyes meet / Dedicated life, oh I pray you'll never see me / Please don't think of me forever in the wrong way / Pictures of your face from the era of the recall / Hanging on the wall / Pictures of your face, oh I pray you'll never see me / Spider on the wall"

[canmom]

my first game as a real proper game dev is gonna go into alpha soon. I've worked on it more than a year now, sinking more time into it than perhaps any other project (unless 'getting a physics degree' counts). so have my colleagues, and I think we've made something legit cool. and it will be cooler still by the final release. but whether it resonates with people on the platform, whether it's coming at the right time, whether it gets buzz to reach the people who might enjoy it... all that is kind of out of my hands on some level. the caprice of the god Market.

I was looking at some assets today from a poorly reviewed game. they're quite lovely little illustrations. someone clearly worked quite hard on them. it doesn't matter, though, because the overall alchemy wasn't right, the game didn't work, and it will probably be forgotten by anyone but diehard fans of that franchise. isn't that a shame!

but that's just human existence though: all efforts come to ruin in time, all projects dissolve in the sea of entropy.