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weaselandfriends · 3 years ago

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I just read Homestuck^2 again. The meat/candy dichotomy comes through in everything (Davebot's conception kinda feels like a blatant contrast to Dave's arc in Homestuck, hero's call and all). In the bonus content, Dirk even invoked the "reversal of entropy" thing that you indulged in back when you did hymnstoke. Homestuck^2 is still boring and bad, but it's a shame we may never get to see those ideas more thoroughly explored. With the way Homestuck plays meta? OH THE POSSIBILITIES, any thoughts?

They shoulda gotten me to write HS^2

I think I mentioned this in a previous ask, but my experience with HS^2 was reading the first update, finding it excruciatingly boring, and never looking at it again. I also felt like Homestuck got a perfectly fulfilling and conclusive ending with the Epilogues. All throughout Homestuck proper, there's this constant inescapable cycle of plot, literalized via the shitty circle of Paradox Space and Lord English's machinations wherein, and it's made increasingly clear that simply doing what the game expects and beating it is only what the game wants; it's not a tenable way to reach any kind of end.

After all, it was the trolls who originally "beat the game" by powergaming and bumrushing the boss, and that only led to a bigger game, and a bigger game beyond that, and a bigger game beyond that. When Karkat and crew bemoan that they fucked up by not doing the stupid frog breeding minigame, they're not talking about the stupid frog breeding minigame. They're talking about their inability to actually develop as people throughout the game. Frog breeding is the literal reason their game wasn't done right, but it's their personal stories that are the real, thematic reason.

Vriska exemplifies this theme the most. She wants to skip to the end, skip all the lore, find ways to win faster and better. And it's why she fails constantly. At least until Game Over, where a completely superfluous retcon (the Game Over timeline is perfectly salvageable given all the return-from-death horseshit Hussie had introduced by then--just give the Ring of Life to Jane and everything is honky fucking dory) brings Vriska back to life, she fixes everything during a three-year-spanning montage, everyone beats up some bad guys, et cetera et cetera. It's the ending you write if you've used up all of your life's energy during a four-year period of insane creative output and simply want the story to fucking end.

The Epilogues, where a somewhat regenerated Hussie could lean on some extra writers to handle a lot of the prose, ideologically bring Homestuck to the conclusion that makes sense for Homestuck. It doesn't matter that the Epilogues end with some dumbass new plot hook with spaceships and whatever-the-fuck. Actually, it does matter, but it matters because John is no part of it. John reaches the end of the story not by resolving some plot, but during that final scene in Candy of matrimonial reconciliation with Roxy. John has reached an ending, and yeah, there's some new adventure going on in the background, but to him, it's finally in the background. He's won his game.

Hussie logically understood this was how Homestuck had to end even during the rushed-and-gunned-it original ending. It's why the lilypad section exists, where everyone hugs it out and talks through their emotional issues and whatnot. A lot of people I know constantly bring up Hussie saying "real people don't have character arcs," but it's clear he was being facetious when he said that or babbling like he usually does, because the lilypad is just a way for him to try and tie up every character's arc in a few choice conversations. It doesn't work, because most everything said on the lilypad is predicated on three years of off-screen growth, so there's no actual throughline from point A to point B on most of the character arcs.

The Epilogues handle it a lot better. Hussie or whoever did the creative legwork said, "Wait, most of these side characters are kind of pointless and never mattered to the plot or themes," so instead of trying to give everyone satisfying arcs, he hones in particularly on John and a few other key characters while letting most of the chaff get embroiled in the latest dumbshit adventure. In both Meat and Candy, John grapples with becoming irrelevant to the "narrative." Literally in Meat, figuratively in Candy. But it's only in this irrelevance that he is finally able to come to deeper insights about himself. And that is what Homestuck has been about for a long time.

Early Homestuck is so orderly, so pattern-driven. Characters are depicted as template-based sprites in static environments and undergo the same collection of banal "life experiences"--fake names, instruments, weird parents, et cetera. John exits to get the mail and we get our first bit of thematic poignancy as he observes his suburban landscape and its bland conformity. He's the same as Dave and Rose and Jade with a different can of paint, really. Trapped inside a system that controls his every action, even though he believes himself to have individual agency. The system of the suburb is replaced by the system of Sburb, and while the stakes get bigger and the character customization options get more robust, it's still a system of control that dictates his every move. All of his actions are preordained, and if he does manage to deviate from his route it's a doomed timeline. Only one path is possible.

John in the Epilogues finally decides to just stop playing. This leads to his elimination as a viable narrative actor, but there's peace in that decision, peace in fading away and just living a life. His emotional peace is juxtaposed against the increasingly absurd narrative of the Epilogues whirling around him, and it makes that narrative seem even more juvenile by comparison. Which I think is the point. I don't think you're supposed to get excited by the narrative prospects of the rebellion against Jane "Trump Proxy" Crocker or Dirk's star trek with robot Rose. The Epilogues end on a cliffhanger, but it's not a cliffhanger where you want to know what happens next. It's a cliffhanger that makes you feel secure in the knowledge that for some, the cycle continues, but others are finally free of it.

As such, I doubt there's any possible way to make HS^2 good. You could clean up the writing, be witty and not boring, but the story will always feel ancillary. Hussie shoving it off on "the fans" is like a practical joke at the fans' expense, but given how HS^2 was cancelled abruptly, it seems most fans sniffed out the joke and, like John, were able to just step away.

Now that's the heart of Homestuck. The theme, the character, the emotional crux of it all. But on the other hand, it's telling to me how much the actual PLOT plot of the Epilogues, the one I just spent a bunch of time saying was "irrelevant" and "bad on purpose," explodes a conflict that has been simmering under the surface throughout all of Act 6; the conflict between Hussie and his readership. With Dirk as Hussie's stand-in, and Calliope as the readers', this conflict is brought to the most overt level it has ever been at throughout Homestuck--even more than when there was a literal Hussie self-insert prancing around. Seen in that light, John's decision to just... fade out of the fight, coupled with Hussie making such a big deal about "handing over the keys to the fans" for HS^2, seems like a narrative way for Hussie to cede that battle. He exited Homestuck just like John did. Sure, Dirk keeps fighting. But if Hussie's not there, Dirk is no longer Hussie. He's just some guy named Dirk.

And that's kind of the biggest conceptual problem with HS^2. Because yeah sure, John's done, he's resolved, but there are plenty of other beloved characters still mired in the horseshit who aren't resolved, and perhaps you could make something out of that, and give those characters each the finale they slogged through 1 million words to achieve. But how can you write the continuation of an author-versus-reader conflict when the author has given up? As soon as HS^2 begins, Dirk no longer functions as a proxy for Hussie. Hussie is irrelevant. So then how do you lend the metatextual elements of Homestuck^2 any value? Meta for the sake of meta is nearly always bad; what made Homestuck's meta elements so compelling was their mirror in the unique way the story was written and consumed. If the fans are now the author, an author-versus-fans plot loses its bite.

Well, maybe you could do it, but you'd need a new angle.

In 2015, shortly before I started writing Fargo on the Bavitz account, I made an account on ffnet where I pretended to be the Chinese professional League of Legends player LMQ Mor and wrote a fanfic for the children's fantasy series Redwall titled "Rot". It's not a particularly good story, I was shaking a lot of rust off after a nearly 2-year writing hiatus prior to that point, but there's a thematic undercurrent revolving around the fact that the author of the Redwall series, Brian Jacques, was dead. Redwall is a pretty ordinary black-and-white-morality series where the good guys always win in the end and everyone has a great big feast (or multiple feasts, or really they never stop feasting), and as you might imagine from my writing style that wasn't the story I was writing by any stretch. So the undercurrent of Jacques being dead is obliquely, metaphorically brought up in this sense of decay or rot, like the world itself without its benevolent creator figure is now putrefying, allowing into it decrepit elements that otherwise would not have been allowed within the series as a healthy organism.

I think for HS^2 to succeed, you'd need some metafictional angle like that, something that accounts for the absence of Hussie. If Hussie has given up and the fans now run everything, what thematic and metafictional impacts does that have on the work? What happens to this world without its original steward? Hussie handed Homestuck to the fans, and well, what value do the fans even add--or detract? What flaws of Hussie can they surpass, and what strengths of his do they fail to live up to? There's one memorable joke in the beginning of HS^2, the only memorable part of that first update, where Dirk receives the reader-provided input to "Stop writing Homestuck," which he promptly disregards. That's actually a funny joke. I think if you want HS^2 to succeed, you should lean into that angle much more. Make that angle fundamental. And answer the question: Why are we writing Homestuck?

#homestuck #homestuck epilogues #hs^2 #homestuck^2

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rametarin · 3 years ago

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Getting into the weeds of an annoying conversation I’ve had.

Casually speaking to people that believe, very strongly, very hopefully, in life-after-meat bodies. And I don’t mean dietary, I mean, “escaping death by going cyborg.”

A lot of people wish to move their, “sentience,” out of their biological bodies and into a machine, because they do not want to die. Just, whatever it is that comprises their life, their existence, their essence, their metaphoric “soul,” they want to move it out of a vulnerable, mortal meat puppet and into an immortal machine. So as to avoid non-existence, entropy and death, if only long enough to witness the heat death of the universe.

And they get REALLY mad or huffy when you poke holes in their preferred method of immortality.

So they bring up the Ship of Theseus. “If you replace all the parts of a ship, is it even still the same ship anymore? :)” And argue that even you aren’t the you of 7-10 years ago. Owing to your sort tissue constantly replacing and replenishing itself, removing old cells, replacing them piecemeal.

So, they argue, based on that, slowly replacing a human brain little by little with cybernetics, or grey goo filler, should (to their logic) mean it’s possible to continue to exist, just slowly transfer from from a meat based consciousness and existence into a mechanical one.

And again, I argue, that’s not incorporating YOU into a robotic shell. That’s supplementing an existing body with an artificial one that is subserviant to your meat body, you. One that just is convinced, more and more, that it is you.

It would be you the same way that an alien devouring your brain from the inside and slowly replacing your brain with itself becomes, “you.” You can smugly smile and go, “well it has all my memories. It has my fingerprints. It lives in my body. It thinks and says it’s me. Therefore, it must be me.”

Except, no. YOU would be dead and your life and sapience, your existence, hollowed out and replaced by another just inheriting your body. An artificial life that is not part of the original biological blueprints of you.

Arguing that that’s somehow “transferring” your consciousness simply because our soft tissue regenerates and replaces itself, therefore, “we died within 8 years after we were born” is dishonest. As a biological organism, we exist as sovereign independent beings that are designed to do that, by natural selection. Our mortal bodies were designed to replenish and replace and maintain that through the generations of cell generation, death and replacement. So even if we do technically lose consciousness and whom we are die inside to be replaced with more of us, it’s still us. Objectively.

When you add artificial elements to that, like switching out dead braincells and brain wiring until the artificial and the natural are meshed up and virtually inoperable from one another, you aren’t making yourself into a robot. You’re just dying and supplementing what you’ve lost on a wetware, hardware and software level with mechanical stuff. You’re incubating a simulacrum in your brain, like athena from the head of Zeus.

Even if you were just a collection of the longest living cells in your body with a robotic brain wrapped around them, after a certain point, you just stop being you. At best you can argue where the line is between ceasing to be you.

I’d argue that you cannot store memory artificially about whom and what you are and take that function away from your biological brain, and still consider yourself you. The brain has many functions, and all of them are components of the real you. To even replace one of those wholesale with cybernetics is to lose some of your humanity. There will never be a time when you can just piecemeal replace your neurons and braincells wholesale with a robot and continue to exist.

That won’t be you anymore. It’ll just be the slow, inevitable march towards a robot that THINKS it’s you. It’ll be a copy born from a glacial suicide. You may as well have just scanned your brain’s patterns and structure and reproduced it by every nerve ending, memory and some sort of perfect sci-fi brain scan into a simulated consciousness in a robot.

The robot won’t be YOU, it’ll be a robot with a simulacrum of you. The same way a painting is not you. The same way your ass print in the snow, is not you. Just a sophisticated shadow of you.

Folks that dream of escaping death by transferring, “consciousness” out of their body and into a robot absolutely despise this line of thinking. They really tend to not want to die. So, they argue to defend it with resorting to misanthropy. “Life is just a series of amino acids and cells!” They tell themselves. “So it doesn’t matter if the thing that thinks it’s me, is actually biological! My biology doesn’t matter on whether I’m me!”

And it’s like. Bruh. Even if you cloned yourself, and to all human relevant metrics that clone could operate as you, it wouldn’t be you. Because you are still a sovereign and independent organism. That clone, not born from your mother, but a vat as a clipping of you allowed and shaped to become like you, does not have the same origin as you. Yes, it absolutely does matter, objectively, that the clone, while it possesses a large amount of your DNA, is still not YOU. You may be arguing that, “well science and other people can’t tell. :^).” That does not change the objective reality that it is not you.

The more they defend this braindead fantasy of going from human body to a robot, the more they betray what they’re willing to believe about what being a human is and is not in order to abandon it. The more they schizophrenically divorce their biology from what and whom they are, as people, as human beings.

And when you get to the point where you ask, “Oh what is sapience and sentience and individualism, anyway?” Then that says to me you don’t care about anything. You’re just cowardly enough to not want to die. You’re just too stubborn and arrogant and egotistical to admit if you weren’t so convinced you had the intellectual and rational high ground, you’d be exactly like one of those braying sheep singing hymns in your religion of choice, praying that god or the universe itself won’t erase you from existence when you finally succumb to mortality. You damned self-deceiving coward. You self-delusional ninny. Milksop.

And this just absolutely matters, because this revelation of their value of human life, individuality and their own perception of what it means to be human, directly correlates into what they value when it comes to groups of humans relating to one another. Someone like that may speak high and mighty about humanity, compassion, but these are just egotist words and come purely from a place of faux-rational pride that they know the truth.

When the truth is, they pray at the altar of an idealized abstract, and not the reality of what a human is and does and is made of. They value the idea of all these little soulless meat robots working together as a sophisticated collective than they do the life of a single human being, seeing soul only in the net and gross, and not in the individuals or parts comprising it.

They’ll speak at length about “what people SHOULD” or “OUGHT” be doing for other people, while not giving a fuck about an individual. All their concepts of rights and privileges stem from the ideas of plurality, on the basis of being part of that set. Not based on individuals.

And after having had these conversations enough with the sorts of futurists, utopists, transhumanists, I feel confident in saying that if you also feel this way, I probably hate you. Seeing individual people as arbitrary random atoms floating around in space and time but seeing humanity, worth and relatable in groups of them? In the CONCEPT but then devaluing it by saying there’s no “real” individiaulsim that can’t be cloned, or reproduced, and be the exact same as what exists? Somehow you try to insist you see things in the macro and the minutia when you’re completely missing both and focusing on what you project onto them or what you THINK you see based on your own biases. Often based on the HOPE and idealism of what you think SHOULD be real, or what you HOPE humans become.

So the sort of person to pray for robotic physical immortality and “ascending” past the flesh, tends to just.. flow into the sort of person that loves the idea of humanity, but despises any human being that is not on board with their idealized vision of what humanity should be, and will not tolerate people that are not on board with it.

This has become a bit of an acid test for me. Maybe it’s just on the same shitty level as asking a persons horoscope to learn more about them. I don’t know. But if you think a clone of you is equally YOU, if you think a scanned reproduction of you is the equal you to the real thing, just because of the difficulty of proving the objective truth and origins of both to third parties, then you’re probably the same sort of used car salesman type that tries to sell people on “social advancement” while not giving a shit how many people it harms or how much humanity it kills in the name of said, “advancement,” or “evolution.”

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zebraslovescupcakestoo · 6 years ago

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Lucky (BBTIM AU)

This is a story about two boys named Mickey Disney and Bendy DeMon. Both who are different from each other, yet shared almost the same lives...

Early morning, he wakes up.

Knock, knock, knock on the door. (Boom boom boom!)

The first boy was woken with a smile by his early morning, blue bird friend he named Toppins who he chirped cutely from the window. They were morning buddies since he helped the little one from his fallen nest on one windy day.

The second boy was unamused by the ringing alarm clock on his night table. Yet he wasn't shy for using a hammer that he carved the 'silencer' on the handle and smashed it into pieces with rage. At least it makes his mornings feeling more 'tolerable.'

It's time for fresh up, perfect smile.

It's who they are waiting for.

After they got out of bed, they do their morning, cleaning hygiene and dress up routine.

Mickey quickly got down the stairs and went straight to the kitchen to prepare breakfast for three. Him, his big brother and Toppins. It was his turn today to make it and he was pretty good with cooking, maybe not like his brother but at least he doesn't burn the toasts or the eggs. It was a simple but a neatly well balanced breakfast with the usual lightly buttered toasts, scrambled eggs, fresh cut strawberries, blue berry muffins and his brother's favorite banana-blueberry pancakes. He even got whole grains bread and made it into crumbs for his blue little friend too!

Bendy just sluggishly dragging his knuckles on the floor into the dinning hall. Despite he wished he hasn't used a lot of energy on that alarm clock, he doesn't regret it. He sat on the dinning table and lay his head on it to catch up some shut eye. But that 'Just a few more minutes' turned 'Never mind! I can do it at my office job!' once he heard Boris coming out with a trolley filled with the 'simple' breakfast feast for today. There was monkey-bread danish, cinnamon-sugared waffles, cinnamon rolls with a delicious looking frosting, New Orleans style beignets, chocolate filled croissant and a tall glass of tomato juice. For health reasons. He was pleased that his partner was very thoughtful....

After breakfast, they went straight to work!

They go: Isn't he lucky? This Hollywood boy.

And they say...

Mickey arrived at his father animation studio for another day of animated work. He loved to draw since he was little and he was talented too. He was everybody's favorite person to talk, hang out, and even asking for help. Granted! At first, everybody thought he was going to be a brat since his father owns the business, but they were wrong. He was like the nicest guy at work like his cartoon counter part! Sometimes he even got asked if they wanted him over at lunch break to have a friendly chat. Despite he really wanted to, he politely declined since he wanted to reserved that as a little 'bro time' with Oswald.

Bendy went to work in his Joey Drew Studio the Third. He was greeted by his subordinates making a welcoming bow as their usual morning routine. Anyone who works there knew the rules when Bendy is 'in' for work. He runs a tight ship aside a really awful tyrant attitude. Despite they get pair very well, it was a literal nightmare working under him. They worked for double time cause he wanted them twelve episodes up on time in less than four days, sometimes one of them is being used as a ottoman for his feet, and sometimes he fired some people and he keeps their pay as a choice. You either live without it or die with it were the options. He was one of the perfect example of a spoiled brat. His father was the original owner and then his uncle Henry took over until he bought it from him. All they can do is try not to suck in his presence or say anything awful about him.

But to these two, it was only their 'public' image only 'they' knew.

He's so lucky, he's a star.

...Yet only the very few knew the 'real' person behind those masks they wear.

But he cry, cry, cries in his lonely heart, thinking:

If there's nothing missing in my life, then why do these tears come at night?

In the afternoon, it was a bit different for each day depending on the week. Yet they would always find time for their favorite big bros!

Mickey would make sure that he would finish all his work for today before he can go see his big brother at their amusement park his father wanted to open soon. Nobody knows much about him apart he's related to himself, but he wanted to be there for him and always make sure he gets noticed whenever he gets the chance. He always look up to him since they were little and he was the reason why he didn't became one of those spoiled rich kids and was very considerate to other people. He's also multi-talented like him, but different.

Mickey was charismatic, enthusiastic and has a very positive personality. Oswald was mysterious, serious and realistic type. But they were thick as thieves and they try their best to see in each others perspectives whenever they had a minor argument. But apart from that, Mickey knew one of his big brother's hidden talent and not so much of a secret that he never shared to anyone.

Ever since they were hearing the newest upstart singer Elvis Presley, Oswald was an instant fan! He got all of his vinyls songs up to date, he was doing those signature dance moves and best of all, he was a really good singer! Oh, did he forgot to mentioned that he can play the guitar too? He switched from piano. He was deeply touched on his birthday when Mickey got him the Elvis style jacket in his favorite color.

He arrived at the attraction and he spotted him working on those bumper cars. He wanted to greet him until he spotted a couple of his mechanical friends that beat him to it and he quickly hid behind the cotton candy machine. It's not that he didn't like them, it's just that every time he comes in his group of friends, they somewhat ignored his brother's presence for the whole conversations and that bothers him. So at the very least, he wanted to let him have some meaningful conversation in his co-working buddies without any 'huge' distraction like himself. The small talk didn't last much long but it seems like they were in good mood. After they left, he got out of his hiding spot and meet up with him.

Bendy was a bit picky on how he spends his afternoons. Depending on the week days, he was a 'busy' guy.

Today, he was going to revisit the CEO of an ice cream company named Frezzies Treatsies. He wanted to make some Bendy special treats for his promotional business tactics in the 'public' industry. He wanted those Bendy ans Boris shaped ice cream sandwiched with their best of the best they've got. He had taste tested their sample before and he paid a very good price for it too. Until that sonavagun cheated out of their deal and it tasted like icy sand with half-descent cream fillings when he received the first batch 'samples.'

When that happened, he calls his big guns and his best man, Boris Wolfenstein. He's the only person in this world that he would care from whatever he's got left in him. He was there at his worst and he deserves 'only' the best after him.

They LOVE to greet their business partners in these cases with a surprise, a friendly greeting, talking like gentlemen and find a solution to the problem...

By that I mean they kick down the door of the CEO, yelled 'F*k you, you double crossing sonavab!tch!,' beat the crap out of the guy until he's left breathing and told him to get their next year supply orders for what they've originally agreed on with half the price or they'll cut him up and fit into one of those smaller ice cream tubs!

Bendy always like to let Boris do most of the beating... it's like watching an skillful pottery artist making something out of a lump of clay but different...

Both boys love to spend their quality time with their favorite older brother.

Lost in an image, in his dream

But there's no one there to wake him up.

After work, they both had the evening to spend their time.

Mickey wished he didn't agreed to replace his father in a special interview that moment cause he wanted to help Oswald with their 'special' project, despite he said that he was alright to do it by himself for the evening. It may been a request by his father, but he still wished he could have picked a different evening, but he guessed it's all ready been done with him in his best tuxedo night and all freshen up for the shoot.

The interview went pretty well and the guy who was there was really swell. He told him all about his personal life and how's it going right now. He was even happier when he told on one of the stories about his older brother.

One time when he was ten, he was being pick on by a few kids that made fun of his unusual signature bun curls. At first he just brushes them off until they repeated the teasing everyday whenever he goes out in the public and it bothers him. His brother found that out and he told him to say to them that he was just made extra special and that they were just jealous.

However, he left out in the interview the other part that his brother told him that if they keep picking on him, he wanted him to say: 'My brother can eliminate you punks in one brawl because he's a black belt!'

Bendy's evenings is also varies depending the day.

He would have some spare time to read today's paper or watching some television. Mostly the news.

He's not really interested on events or the weather forecasts, what he's REALLY interested is BAD news. Because he's an entropy fan and he loves misery especially when it involves death.

He doesn't care about politics unless it's one of those nincompoops that's going against him, nor the news about a baby animal being born at the zoo unless it's something useful like an alligator, a lion or any meat eating animal that's going to help him dispose 'dead meats,' he wanted to see the whole world crash and burn! If it happened in THIS town he would call out to Boris and said: Let's go look for the bodies!

So far there's only the 'good' news on the television for tonight, pity. He turns it off and reads the papers instead. Which he instantly regret cause there was a picture of that ace detective rival, Felix Cat.

In THIS section and what it was told, Felix has successfully stopped one of his secret 'personal' smuggling drugs for his 'other' job and that was the third time he busted his hide out! He gritted his teeth as he crumbled the morning paper into a ball and tosses it in the fireplace.

“Stupid @$$, street cat, money loosing, ace defective, motherf#kr!” He cussed out as he took out a pack of match, light up the stick and tosses it in the fireplace to watch it burned to crisp in a matter of seconds. At least the sight of something burning lifted his mood a bit...

At least until later for tonight... he smug an idea of what to do.

And the world is spinning, when he keeps on winning.

But tell me, what happens when it stops?

At night, they were different from the public view... if they knew.

Mickey and Oswald were vigilantes for justice. They wanted to help the victims from the injustice. Since they were the future CEOs of the Disney Animations, they have access to the elites and wealthy businessmen that gave them the advantages of knowing their 'enemies' and their money safe.

On one occasion, they robbed the wealthy crooks to give back to the poor. Another was to take down a group of thugs that causes troubles for their neighborhood.

Mickey's special paints he crafted can make wondrous things. How it was possible and how he created it was his secret...

His older brother Oswald, was an inventor extraordinaire. He crafted most of their weaponry and he also just made two motorcycles just for their operations with the help of his little brother.

Their code names were Souris and Lapin. The media and the press called them the modern day Robin Hood or one of the comic book super heroes. Either way, they were very well praised by the public.

Bendy was then switched to the mafia boss.

On tonight's schedule, he was going to visit the 'mold.' A.K.A. One of the authorities of the law enforcements. He got a tip from the inside that there was some evidence against him and he decided to get rid of it.

Once that was done, he went to the abandoned docks and immediately made a bonfire to get rid of the evidence. This place was an ideal spot for getting away with almost anything, including a self-made fire pit with an old barrel. Anyone with a half of brain would be smart enough not to even go here...

Unless you have been on a hit man’s shopping list.

There was a gang of five guys... Nothing special to them aside they were armed... He had experience under his belt to tell that they are freshmen from a rival mafia. Either it was an order, a death wish, or it was just to please their bosses and go up in their ranks the 'easy' way. Pitiful.

Seems he needs to 'teach' them who's in charge and who not to mess with. Not that he planned to let them lived, it did makes him 'smile' from his mood earlier this evening...

They go: Isn't he lucky? This Hollywood boy.

And they say...

Mickey and his brother Oswald were just out on parole to look out a certain biker group that causes trouble at their favorite soda shop they liked to go when they have their day off. Not only that, it was popular among the kids and people alike. They spotted them outside of the shop, grafting the widows and walls with disturbing images...

Mickey MAY have done this in the past, but he doesn't write offensive languages and paint naked women with his art work...

“I knew this is going to bite me in the rear one day... but at least I can become a better person.” He then took out a paint grenade and tosses it at the center of the gang. One of then noticed it and just before he was going to say something, it exploded and all of the purple liquid surrounded their feet have glued them down. No matter how hard they tried, they couldn't break free of their situation.

The three guys were unable to escape from their sticky situation. Which is exactly what it was supposed to do. At least until you add water to disperse it... but he's not gonna tell that to them. Then they leaped out from their shadows with their paint guns readied and they unload a round of paint balls at them. It stung them a bit with their green and yellow colored 'bullets' but the hooligans smelled something weird from them... it didn't took them long to realized they were knock out gas as they passed out on the purple glue.

They both high five as they celebrated another peace keeping victory of the night.

Bendy have made the first move with a quick draw from his knives hidden from his left sleeves. He turned from his left side and swing his left arm to throw his knives at the group. Only four of them hit the foreheads... Leaving the last one standing. Meh! He though. He smirked at his remaining visitor with his glowing red eyes and it made the newbie petrified, even though he already had his pistol drawn.

He then rapidly launched himself forward and it made the newbie shoot him. Unfortunately for him, Bendy was trained to dodge bullets and he's showing the soon-to-be departed newbie who you should NEVER mess with without paying a heavy price. Bendy then took out his signature knife, the Red Velvet, as his finishing weapon. He sliced it upwards to take out the gun and then he quick jabbed multiple times to the abs and stomach, sending more gushing blood on his cheap outfit. At least he was the smarter one with experience AND fashion sense. He took a step back to let him drop on his right knee while he struggled to breathe.

“When you reached the gates of h3ll, say hello to my pops for me once you've met him.” He then grabbed a fist full of his back hair, pulls him back and then slowly slid deep his throat. The sound of his final blood-curling scream is his king of music to his ears... Aside from Boris' clarinet pieces.

Once he stops moving, he then lets go of his head as it hit the pavement and then watched more blood that is now coming out of his body. Such a satisfying site to see after a little work out, for him. He then noticed his loyal right hand man along with three others who were 'volunteered' as escorts, or extra security, came rushing in with some blood stains on them.

Guess that explains why these insects came to him under Boris' watchful eye, but then again like he stated, he had a swell time!

He's so lucky, he's a star.

Once they got back home to their bedrooms, they revealed their 'true' image that nobody wanted them to see.

Both of them took a huge yet quiet sigh of relief and frowned... Both of them got in their jammies... and then slid into bed.

After a long day of work, day and night, they then took out from their secret compartment that's hidden from anyone who knew them. Both of them... had an old picture frame. Of their prime teenage year at a local pizzaria.

But he cry, cry, cries in his lonely heart, thinking:

If there's nothing missing in my life, then why do these tears come at night?

Both of them stared at the picture group for quite some time.

Weather you believed it or not, both these boys were once a trio along with Oswald. Both used to be good friends from one another.

“Why did you had to be this way?” Mickey sadly whispered at Bendy's image.

“Why did you abandoned me for something I was trained to do?” Bendy angrily scoffed at the Disney brother's faces.

He is so lucky! But why does he cry?

“We used to be best of friends... We were so similar in a way and... You were like a second brother to us.” Mickey tried to find the good in him.

“I thought I could trust you two... Have someone who I can relate... At least have a backbone to do the impossibles like I could have done only better!” Bendy tried to be detached of his true feelings.

If there is nothing missing in his life, why do tears come at night?!

“Why did you do it? Why did you broke that no-kill policy under our team name? That man didn't deserved it!” Mickey then started to sob a bit.

“I was a fool to think you knew better. You both knew I was already in a mafia family! You both knew they came before you two rodents! I had to leave no witness that night! You don't know me THAT well, just like the other living miserable worms!” Bendy silently lashes out at them.

Then they had enough. They placed it back in their secret compartments before their emotions escalated more than it should.

He's so lucky, he's a star!

They then broke down in tears.

But they cry, cry cries in their lonely hearts thinking...

They were upset.

Mickey thought of many reasons why Bendy had to do it. He knew that he was part of a mafia family. He knew that he always had a sneaky yet a dark sense of humor. He used to trust him so easily, like a true friend would.

Bendy also was thinking of the reasons why they did left him alone. He knew long ago about Mickey as a child star at the age of nine until he met him and his brother personally. He was to be honest, was happy that they had a wild knack of sense of humors similar to his. He did too, used to trust them like a true friend.

If there's nothing missing in their life...

And now after that faithful night, their thrusts were shattered and their bonds were broken.

Mickey was heartbroken and was in a depressed state once they've returned to California. It took almost a week to convince himself, along side with his brother, father and some of his animation friends from their family's studio to move on.

After that incident, he was more careful of who he wanted to be friends with. He wasn't gonna turned pessimistic over everybody just for that one incident, but he will be more cautious like his brother would be on who to trust from now on.

Bendy was also heartbroken but angry instead. It took him about a week too, but he was in Boris' care after they learned what happened between them. (Because only Boris can calm him down.) He even took more jobs that's normally preferred to the other lowly members, but Bendy said that he needed to vend out his 'frustrations.' In truths, he was just finding ways to keep 'them' off his mind....

Once he was 'over with it,' he was determined not to be emotionally vulnerable like that again. He would never trust any new comers until they've proven themselves to him and also, he would never let anyone who had similar 'interests' be his 'acquaintances' on the spot. Also, they will be shot on his site if ever they did left him like they did.

Why do these tears come at night?

After they cried their eyes out, they fell asleep. They knew that nothing that they can do now can change the past. What's been done it's done. They learned their adult lessons in a hard way, but they did find a solution that fits both of them.

It's not that they took that photo out every night, but they've kept it as a memento of the good times they used to have and why they needed to be stronger as a person.

“Tomorrow's another day...” Bendy said before he sleeps.

“Maybe one day, it will be better.” Mickey cheered himself up before he too sleeps off.

He's so lucky, he's a star!

But he cry, cry, cries in their lonely hearts thinking:

If there's nothing missing in my life, then why do these tears come at night?

-----AUTHOR’S NOTES------

It’s been almost three months since I’ve started to write this one shot. Mainly due to work and lack of motivations.... And updates, youtube, and other stuff...

The Song was from an early 2000′s music era. back when they still had some good songs and one of early Britney Spears’ songs titled Lucky.

The music video depicted about how one girl despite seemingly having it all – fame, wealth, beauty – is truly lonely and unhappy on the inside. So I imagine how Bendy and Mickey would feel the same way in a manner of daily lives they live at the moment.

If I wrote it incorrectly of their characters, I’m sorry. If you had a hard time understanding the fighting situation, I’m sorry for that too cause I suck on combat explanations.

I was just as curious on the canon story line of how Bendy, Mickey and Oswald met and why are they on rocky terms at the moment. The only info I’ve gotten were from pasts question posts and arts. Maybe in the later chapters I might get a better picture of their relations.

Anyways, this is just an AU of the BBTIM AU, It’s non canon but it’s just a pass time until the next comic pages are up.

BBTIM characters like humanized Mickey and Bendy belongs to Marini4.

#bendy before the ink machine #bendy and the ink machine #humanized #bendy #mickey #Mickey Mouse #fanfiction #oswald the lucky rabbit #oswald #boris the wolf #boris #marini4

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thenwhatisbroken-blog · 6 years ago

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OOC

Writing a mechanical or disembodied character is a great way to realize how fucking WEIRD bodies are.

Honestly, I’ve been having a rolling series of those for the past few years, but having to write people whose entire mode of existence is Not Like Mine and must therefore figure out what would disgust, shock, amuse, or otherwise generate an emotional reaction has been fun.

TV helps sometimes, but it’s stuff you gotta make up for yourself sometimes.

Especially when you’re trying to figure out the weird insults they’d lob at you that would probably get all their friends to do the bodiless or machine version of that gif where the dude has clearly just said something DEVASTATING and that other dude swings in front like his face is melting because he can’t believe how the first dude just wrecked someone... but since it’s coming from a completely different way of existing, it’s a non sequitur.

“Yeah, why don’t you go secrete on something, ya sack of organs covered in ANOTHER organ.”

“Oh look at me, I’ve got a body that repairs itself over time until entropy hits it like a... a... What’s a good metaphor for something hitting something else like really really much?”

"Go exchange fluids with someone.”

“No, seriously, I only barely understand even the idiom. Why would you have a body if it was just going to start out small, grow a bunch, feel a lot of things, then slowly fail over time until a catastrophic failure? What’s even the POINT of them?”

“Oh, why don’t you just go to the store and get a replacement for that thing in you that hurts OH RIGHT YOU CAN’T BECAUSE NONE OF YOU ARE MODULAR”

Like, you wouldn’t get offended (or maybe you would, I don’t know your life) by any of that kind of thing, but the inanity of it is rather nice to me.

Imagining Inzo storming out and making a comment about how food has flavors but is also dreadfully inefficient as a fuel source while still being the best one we have and the rest of the room like

Cuz... yeah. Food as a fuel source IS really inefficient. There’s always a lot of waste. Why? Because it has to be disolved in acid in one organ, then slowly absorbed through a densely-packed maze of another organ, and then if there’s anything left...

Well, you know. Not trying to be mega-gross.

But it’s just, like, the human condition.

And sometimes it’s fun to point out the utter awful insufficiency of this awful meat by having someone be like “Who designed you ‘cuz y’all are garbage.” “Some people think it was a perfect divinity who did it.” “Because it hates you? Look how many steps it takes you to do anything! I was designed by one of you, but there was a GOD who could make you and he still made that?” “You’re being rude, Inzo.” “I notice you don’t say I’m wrong!”

#ooc //#body stuff //#i don't know how to tag this #indirect mention of poop?#our awful human meat #only better than cold unfeeling ceramics because meat repairs itself #anyway #inzo is a Shitty Teen #but it's fun to think about this stuff #for me anyway

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ocelliseii · 6 days ago

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Progress! Didn’t get to animate as much as I wanted to this week but eh, no point in beating myself up over it

#wip #oc animation #entropy! the meat machine #e!tmm

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anarchist-caravan · 6 years ago

Link

In addition to the content itself, I think this piece by Shaun Bartone is a valuable example of how to approach the genre of buddhofiction. Approach, not arrive at. Let me back up a bit.

I believe that a responsible and rigorous approach to the study of a system of thought like x-buddhism involves movement along a continuum of recognition and negation. A wholly realized engagement, I believe, requires a third move: redescription.

Recognition involves, literally, re-cognizing, thinking along with or re-thinking, the system’s postulates. This practice results in a deep and informed hermeneutic appreciation. If you stop there, you will be an apologetic scholar or a good-subject practitioner, or something along those lines.

Negation is necessary in order to draw out the covert ideological machinations at work in the system. It allows you to consider what Adorno calls the “social truth content” at work in the ostensibly culturally-transcendent unitary system. In teasing out complicity in the formation of the capitalist subject, for instance, much of the current criticism of x-buddhism, particularly of Mindfulness, operates in this manner. That is, the negation performs an unmasking of the neutral, innocent, timeless truth dogma to reveal a socially embedded and necessarily political formation.

What then? Once the unitary system is exposed for possessing an identity other than the one it means to project, how do you respond? Some people abandon it, others dig in deeper and defend it. Human beings are complex creatures, and so are their responses to the inevitable deflation of the dharmic big Other. The aim of this blog is to catalyze a third response, namely redescription.

Redescription is a creative response to this deflation. Redescription, in fact, requires deflation. For, it is only through deflation that the specular dogmatics of x-buddhism come to lie prostrate on the ground, and rendered mere raw material for the sustenance of us homo sapiens apes. It is an eminently destructive-creative task to redescribe x-buddhist postulates. As the root of the term implies, this requires it to be formed, fashioned, cut anew (from proto-Indo-European √skribh).

Another term for redescription is buddhofiction. Like science-fiction, buddhofiction simply spins its material into the tale. It has neither need nor inclination to justify itself. It precedes from the premise that it is too late for arguments. Buddhofiction is a genre of peace. It has done with the violence of sectarian sniping. Why? Partly out of futility. Partly out of boredom. But mainly because there is still work to be done. I remain confident that x-buddhism has some really good shit going on.

So, how do you create a buddhofiction? No one can say exactly. Saying exactly would be yet another deployment of the troops to storm Fortress Dharma. This piece by Shaun Bartone is highly suggestive of an approach; it makes a gesture toward the way. He lays out a problematic—the void that appears in the inevitable death of capitalism—and poses a question: “How can we use Buddhist Dialectics (as opposed to Buddhist religion) to deconstruct—counter-construct—what life is like after Capitalism?” A buddhofiction collides these problematics into one another, producing a text that is constructed from its elements—techno-dystopia, zombie economics, brute futuristic sociology, x-buddhist emptiness, nothingness, and lack—yet is none of these elements. So, toward the creation of a new cut of x-buddhist flesh and blood…

(Glenn Wallis)

Buddhist Futures: The Black Hole of Post-Capitalism By Shaun Bartone

What happens after Capitalism? What is life like? Now that Capitalism has captured and colonized, appropriated (stolen), marketed and sold back to us every facet of our own lives, our relationships, needs, desires, cultures, even our “spiritualities,” what is left to us when Capitalism dies? As Joe Brewer wrote, “the pain you feel is Capitalism dying.”

Are we left with nothing but a black hole of Emptiness? Is there nothing to replace it? What alternatives are there to fill the void left by the death of Capitalism? It is like the death of God, an existential crisis.

I question and challenge those who beg for the end of Capitalism. Yes, Capitalism will come to an end, but what it will be replaced with might be even worse. Be careful what you wish for, you might get it.

I see the end of Capitalism as a naturally occurring process of Science overtaking Capitalism, and this is from a functionalist perspective. As science and technology (STEM) grows, it begins to take over all those social functions that used to be managed by Capitalism. STEM will become the new Overlord, controlling every waking (and sleeping) moment of our lives, what we produce and consume, what we do with our bodies and our leisure time, how we identify ourselves, how we relate, how we think.

Then Capitalism will be seen for what it is in terms of Resource Allocation: a crap shoot, a wild guess, and not even—a blind shot in the dark compared to STEM. STEM will out-perform Capitalism at every level. STEM will have the capacity to allocate resources far more efficiently with greater exactitude and productivity than Capitalism ever could. Capitalism, with its “Economics,” which is nothing more than a self-reinforcing religion consisting of unnamed and untested premises (doctrines), will seem quaint and archaic, like the remnants of an old religion that one discovers between the dusty leather bindings of an ancient book in a library. We will look back and laugh at the hocus-pocus of “Economics” and how it pretended to manage the allocation of extreme complexity, how it was used to obfuscate and mystify its abject failures.

Capitalism has only been able to remain productive and profitable because STEM came to its rescue in the mid-twentieth century and began to take over many of its resource allocation functions, via computer technology and artificial intelligence. STEM will out-manage and out-perform Capitalism in every sector, but unlike Capitalism, its goal will not be profit—it will be CONTROL. The STEM-controlled world will be run not by Capitalists, but by Netocrats*, the technological elite. (See The Futurica Trilogy.) Entities (corporations?) that control resources will have access to everything they need and want, without having to buy or own anything. Stockpiling stuff (and “money another quaint Capitalist invention that will become useless and extinct) is inefficient and counter-productive, a waste, and STEM will not tolerate waste of any kind. Its sworn enemy is Entropy.

Eric Weinstein, a mathematician and investor began a recent video for BigThink.com: “We think of capitalism as being locked in an ideological battle with socialism, but we never really saw that capitalism might be defeated by its own child — technology.”

Is there any shred of evidence to support this foregoing conjecture?* We already have a perfect foreshadowing of a STEM-controlled world: China’s new “social credit system.” Communist China has figured out that people will submit to any authority, conform to any rule, if there are steep social consequences to pay for violating them. China is using social networking to note every action a person takes, every email, social media post, chat, purchase, bank transaction, phone call, every security checkpoint you pass through, how you behave in a queue, the expression on your face when you approach a clerk at a train station, every move you make is recorded and calculated to create a “social credit” ranking. If what you do is counted as cheating, stealing, lying, failing to pay debts, disobeying the rules, hostile or simply “untrustworthy,” you will receive a low social credit rating. Because of your low social credit rating, you will be denied access to jobs, apartments, credit, public transportation, and public services. China’s social credit system is the first to operationalize a totalizing system of social control using STEM.

And that’s only the beginning, because STEM technologies can be used to “produce the subject” that is engineered to meet the demands of STEM-controlled system, turning humans into a kind of raw meat robot. Robots are not taking over the world; rather, we are becoming the robotic subjects of a STEM-controlled world.

New computers could delete thoughts without your knowledge, experts warn. New human rights laws are required to protect sensitive information in a person’s mind from “unauthorised collection, storage, use or even deletion.” Now two biomedical ethicists are calling for the creation of new human rig… The Enlightenment is over; Neoliberalism is doomed. Techno-Fascism is the new fungus growing over the dried bones of Capitalism. Japan has decided that all its public universities will no longer teach arts, humanities, languages, or social sciences. Not even law or economics. Only science, engineering and technology. Why not? Because STEM doesn’t need law or languages, economics or psychology. It doesn’t need art or stories; it doesn’t need human culture. Because essentially, it doesn’t need humans. STEM is a post-humanist worldview. Capitalism, with its Enlightenment ideals of individuality, freedom, equality (cough), rights, law, and justice will seem downright romantic compared to the technological nightmare that replaces it. Surrounded by the digital flicker of a techno-dystopia, we may be nostalgic for the gilded glory that was Capitalism.

So that brings me back to the initial question: What happens after Capitalism? What is life like? Are we left with nothing but the black hole of Emptiness? Ah, Emptiness! How can we use Buddhist Dialectics (as opposed to Buddhist religion) to deconstruct—counter-construct—what life is like after Capitalism? Is it possible that what we need to do is embrace is the emptiness of chaotic change, the void of having nothing to replace Capitalism, so that we can actually let go of it and begin to create something utterly new, alternative, and totally unlike what is surely going to replace it, an uber-technological dystopia? The end of Capitalism is the end of paid labour for profit. It is the end of paid work, as John Holloway says in Crack Capitalism. Sometimes we will work for wages, sometimes for barter, but “jobs” will be scarce. Now we must fend for ourselves. What will we do with our lives without jobs? How will we survive? Can we enter the darkness of nothingness, the hunger of lack, of risking everything that is known and familiar, to search in the wilderness for some other way to live, post-capitalism?

Can we collectively work out our values, our desires, our existential imperatives, the basic ground of being, relating, communicating, cohabiting and subsisting? What kind of societies can we create while scarcely surviving on the margins of an over-developed world teetering on the brink of eco-cidal extinction post-capitalism?

Resistance involves renunciation. Will we live like feral monks, not [just] deprived of food and shelter, but renouncing and resisting cooperation with a totalizing technological system that would turn us into raw meat robots? It is not just the refusal to participate in a corrupt system, but the deployment of a critically conscious resistance to the ideology that operates the codes and programs of a system which metes out reward and punishment for [non]compliance.

Will we refuse to be vector vermin co-opted into Mindlessly reproducing the social credit system? Or will we develop a Critical Mindfulness that makes a cognitive break with a totalizing system? Will we be able to create relations of mutual pleasure and support? Of creativity and play? cultures of wild imagination? Or will it be an existence of brute survival?”

#buddhofiction #STEM #post-capitalism #surveillance #Technology #Techno-dystopia #Techno fascists #China #Japan

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mtasph · 6 years ago

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Spheres

There they are. The elements of magick itself. What separates a mage from a sorcerer. This is the stuff that makes up Reality itself.

Spheres are separated into two types: Pattern spheres and Non-Pattern spheres. Pattern spheres are the ones that belong to the physical reality aka the physical universe aka the prime material aka EARTH. Non-Pattern spheres are generally either processes that govern the pattern spheres or they are barely related to the physical reality at all. The Pattern spheres are Forces, Life and Matter and the Non-Pattern spheres are everything else. Now with that out of the way, let’s get into the spheres themselves.

You have 9 spheres and each sphere has 5 ranks.

Correspondence is the sphere of connections and spacetime. Entropy is the sphere of probability and decay. Forces is the sphere of elemental energies and reactions. Life is the sphere of biology and evolution. Matter is the sphere of inert materials and elements. Mind is the sphere of consciousness and psychic powers. Prime is the sphere of essence of things and metamagick. Spirit is the sphere of spirits and the otherworlds. Time is the sphere of timelines and timeflow.

The first rank you get in each sphere is perception. It augments your senses so that you can essentially read anything related to that sphere. The second rank you get in each sphere is manipulation. Now you can nudge the sphere a bit and even use it to slightly alter yourself. The third rank you get in each sphere is control. Now you can transform the sphere itself on minor levels and even start slightly altering other characters. The fourth rank you get in each sphere is command. Now you can do really big effects with it and transform others on a major level. The fifth rank you get in each sphere is mastery. At this point you can transform the sphere itself and other characters on almost every level the sphere allows. We don’t talk about the sixth rank and above. Not yet.

Afterwards, you are free to combine, mix and match the spheres as you please. Provided you have the ranks, the Arete and the right materials along with the right paradigm for what you are trying to do. In generally, that is all the spheres do, so if you don’t wanna see me go more indepth, just take this fact with you and move on: Mage is mostly a story game. Feel free to not stick to the rules completely and play around.

CORRESPONDENCE

Aka space magic, wards, teleportation and connections.

To understand Correspondence it helps if you stop thinking of it as bending space time and more like bending connections between things in single space. Cause to Correspondence mages, all spaces are one and distance and dimensions are defined by their relation to each other. Despite this, Correspondence sphere deals almost exclusively with pattern spheres. Correspondence 3 won’t teleport you to the spirit world. Furthermore, if you are attempting to affect a sphere at a distance, then the other spheres in the effect must not be above your Correspondence sphere in the same effect. So trying to transform a cat into a dog with Life 3 won’t work if are only using Correspondence 2. Correspondence sphere also has its own ranges and different ranges require different amount of successes. The chart for that could be found on the page 504 of the Mage20 book.

Rank 1: Spatial Perceptions - Along with essentially having eyes on your back and not needing to use a ruler ever again, you can spot spacetime anomalies. Rank 2: Sense, Touch, Thicken and Reach Space - That cop has a gun! Not anymore as you yoink it from their hands while being several meters away. By adding a pattern sphere of rank 2, you can take and put small things from distant locations. You can also extend your senses farther than before. Rank 3: Pierce Space and Gates - Now you can teleport by opening small temporary gates to other spaces. You can also see into multiple places at once. By combining this with pattern spheres, you can also move or teleport things around from a distance without touching them. Rank 4: Rend Space, Wards and Co-Locate Self - And now you can make permanent portals, tiny pocket dimensions and ward spaces against pattern spheres. You can also exist in multiple places at once by adding Mind 1. Rank 5: Spatial Mutation and Co-Location - Aka literal spacetime bullshit. Sizes, distances and connections become like putty in your hands with the right patterns. Now you can make your own proper pocket dimension.

ENTROPY

Aka fate magic, decay, chaos and order.

Entropy is depressing. The core lesson of this sphere is that everything is mortal. Almost like fate things march towards their ends. I’d say no pun intended, but that pun was inevitable. Jokes aside, this sphere is extremely fatalistic and Entropy mages tend to very dissociated from the world or even fiercely connected to the things they care about in defiance. Entropy sphere does not inflict damage until Rank 4, but even before that, Entropy deals with break down of things back into quintessence from which they came, but also the road they travel to that end. That road being probability and luck.

Rank 1: Sense Flaws, Fate and Fortune - Aka cheating at gambling by literally seeing the most probable events. As well as sensing weak spots in pattern spheres. Works good as a lie detector too. Rank 2: Control Probability - Aka cheating at gambling even more by changing the outcome of the events themselves to be beneficial towards yourself. Rank 3: Affect Predictable Patterns - Aka cheating at gambling by breaking the machine system and forcing it to spit out all the money. You can also control the luck of people and objects by controlling the probability of events around them. Rank 4: Affect Living Patterns - Aka cheating at gambling by tearing apart the health of the owner, forcing him to cough up money for a cure or die. Also can grant long term luck or misfortune. Rank 5: Affect Thought, Shape Memes, Binding Oath - Aka cheating at gambling by binding the other poker players to an oath to lose to you. Also literally control the strength of beliefs and kill energy sword sunday with a thought.

Note: A ton of players find that Entropy can be kind of an awkward sphere to use. If you feel the same way, ask your Storyteller about this take on it: http://creationsedgegames.wikidot.com/mage-the-ascension-fate

FORCES

Aka elementalism, DnD evocation, energy combat, bending from avatar.

The sphere of shooting a fireball point blank into someone’s face and having none of that fire splash on you. Hell yeah. On a more complicated level, this sphere controls not just the elemental forces, but momentum, gravity, radiation, light, sound, radio waves, you name it. This is the mastery of energy in motion and it is as vulgar as it sounds. Forces adepts end up being, well, forceful. And forces damage equals to additional successes of damage.

Rank 1: Perceive Forces - X-ray vision, bioluminescent vision, see sound like a bat and measure temperatures. Rank 2: Manipulate Forces, Elemental Touch - Now you can manipulate existing forces, shaping them, carrying them, flaring them. Combine it with other spheres and you can make magnets or fire shields. Rank 3: Transmute Minor Forces - Welcome to bending proper. You can make forces via Prime 2, erode or enhance them via Entropy 3, do telekinesis via Mind 3, transform lifeforms into forces with Life and so much more. Rank 4: Control Major Forces - Literally like previous, but better. You went from several yards to a mile of more. Welcome to being a weather wizard. Rank 5: Transmute Major Forces - One word: Nuke. Also literally doing unnatural transmutations of forces of changing sound to fire.

LIFE

Aka shapechanging, polymorph, healing, evolving.

Fauna, Flora and Biota. This is the sphere of the living things that can manipulate organic matter. Life mages are usually prettier, more well built and more physically well off than your regular person. It should be noted that Life deals with patterns that are alive enough to transplant, preserve or cultivate. If it’s inert enough to be dead, it’s Matter. So, technically organic food or even preserved sausage meat would be Life. Corpses, the wood that comprises your table and paper from which books are made would be Matter. Furthermore, lifeforms that have been altered to be more unnatural (such as, a human with spider eyes or a dog with more limbs than it had before) will slowly degenerate unless sustained with magick or given a permanent change to their body. Essentially, this is to prevent your character just increasing their physical statistics via magick. Mechanically, unless you buy more points in an attribute before changing it permanently, you will suffer pattern bleeding and probably die until you do.

Rank 1: Sense Life - You are now able to read someone’s age, health and species. Rank 2: Alter Simple Life-Forms/Heal Self - Now you can change small organisms such as viruses, insects, plants in a way that doesn’t change them into different states of being. You can also heal yourself and slightly change how you look or appear. Rank 3: Transform Simple Life-Forms/Alter Self/Heal Others - Now you can radically transform simple organisms, such as making the tree bear bees or creating them from nothing with Prime 2. You can also more radically alter yourself, growing wings, gills, etc. while remaining human. And finally, you can heal other complex organisms or tear them apart. Rank 4: Alter Complex Life-Forms/Transform Self - Your first step when it comes to playing god. Now you could change complex life-forms such as animals, humans and so forth as long as you don’t change their intrinsic nature. Meanwhile, you can turn yourself into other life-forms of a similar size and mass without generally having the special abilities. So no flight, unless you add it on yourself later on. Rank 5: Transform and Create Complex Life-Forms/Perfect Metamorphosis - Welcome to actually playing god. Not only you can transform complex life-forms the same way you transformed yourself a rank back, but you can create them from nothing with Prime 2. But without a consciousness (Mind 5) or a spirit (Spirit 3 or 5), they are just living flesh, nothing more. You can also change yourself into anything you want without limit.

MATTER

Aka alchemy, DnD transmutation, refinement, conjuration.

The static, unmoving materials. Matter sphere is the ground you stand on, the computer plastic and the basic solids, liquids, gases and plasma. No pun intended, but Matter mages are the most down to earth. They focus on quality and discipline and favour practical results. Matter works best when combined with other spheres. But if you simply wanna be the one that turns lead into gold or water to wine, Matter will do your job on its own just fine.

Rank 1: Matter Perceptions - You can look at a gold coin and see what it’s made of, its shape, structure, properties and state. Also just by looking someone over, you can find where they are hiding similar materials even if they are hidden. Rank 2: Basic Transmutation - Now you can look at said gold coin and attempt to turn it into lead or silver. But not its essential shape, temperature or state. You can’t evaporate it into a golden gas yet. Rank 2 works with simple, homogeneous, non-living substances. Rank 3: Alter Form - Now you can look at said gold coin, turn it into liquid, pour it into a bottle and leave it there. You can also fuse broken coins together or break them apart. By combing it with other spheres, you can create implants (Life), disintegrate matter (Forces or Entropy), move it with your mind (Mind), etc. Permanent changes require Matter 5 though. Rank 4: Complex Transmutation - Now you can create more of these gold coins out of thin air (Prime 2) or you can transmute a living tree into a pile of said gold coins (Life 3). You have the knowledge of complex structures such as guns, books, buildings and yes, piles of money. Provided you know how these structures are built. Rank 5: Alter Properties - Now you can take this gold coin and turn it into kryptonite. You can now make unnatural transmutations or even create radioactive material.

MIND

Aka telepathy, telekinesis, psychic abilites, DnD psions, DnD enchantment.

Really speaks for itself. Control over thoughts, emotions and consciousness itself. One might wonder, if mind creates reality, then wouldn’t Mind mages rule over all? To mentally influence somebody, you need to roll against the difficulty of their Willpower score. If you are trying to mind control another mage, night-folk or are trying to do something drastic to someone, add +3 to that difficulty. An unwilling character can attempt to resist mind control at the difficulty of 6, subtracting successes from the roll Mind mages are very aware and focused. Usually more brainy than others.

Rank 1: Sense Thoughts and Emotions/Mind Shield/Empower Self - You can now sense certain thoughts and emotions from someone, so if somebody is a dick you can smell the dickery from them. This is also how you know that I’m not a mind mage, cause if I were, I would have used empower self to figure out a way to word that better. This is also a way you can read Resonance, the residue magickal aura left behind an act. Rank 2: Read Surface Thoughts/Empathic Bond/Create Impressions/Mental Impulse - Now you can read emotional states, memories and impressions left upon objects, places and people. You can also project simple words and emotions to other people. Rank 3: Mental Link/Project Illusions/Dreamwalk/Psychic Blast - Welcome to being a psychic. Now you can engage in true telepathy, send messages through the mind, create illusions, walk through dreams and even make psychic blasts. Combined with other spheres, you can also become a psychokinetic and have your mind be over matter. Rank 4: Control Conscious Mind/Alter Consciousness/Astral Projection - Welcome to brainwashing. Now you can warp memories, sanity, hypnotize someone or even astrally project into the astral plane. Rank 5: Control Subconscious/Forge Psyche/Untether Consciousness - Welcome to being the master of the Self. Now you can completely rewrite someone’s mind, switch their mind with your body (with Life 4), change their traits or even create a new mind where one has not been before. You can also completely untether your mind and explore the worlds beyond.

PRIME

Aka DnD metamagic, creation, destruction, magical item creation, channeling mana.

The power over existential energy itself. Command over Prime lets one rule over the most essential thing in Creation: Quintessence. Prime often ends up being indispensable to most pattern sphere focused mages. Or just most mages in general. Quintessence lore wise is existence itself, while mechanically, this is the stuff that can lower the difficulty of your rolls, make stuff out of nothing, create magical items and at its highest level cancel out your Paradox points. Not to get all metagamey in here in a very story-heavy game, but I figure that a sphere that deals with the concept of you existing is pretty important, don’t you think? Prime mages are Powerful with a capital P. They leave behind unmistakable, mighty Resonance that shows them for what mages often are: more than an average human.

Rank 1: Etheric Senses/Consecration/Infuse Personal Quintessence - Reading Resonance, places and objects touched with Quintessence is something you can do easily now. You can also absorb Quintessence into yourself or infuse an object with it. Said object will now be connected with you through your essence, resonance and your nature. Rank 2: Fuel Pattern/Construct Patterns/Enchant Patterns/Body of Light - You take your hand, you put it into the magic hat and you pull out a GUN. Welcome to making stuff out of thin ether. You can create Forces, Life and Matter out of nothing or you can make existing objects deal aggravated damage as you shred someone’s essential form. You can consecrate living beings or make hologram. Rank 3: Channel Quintessence/Enchant Life/Energy Weapons/Craft Periapts and Temporary Wonders - Now you can channel existing Quintessence from Nodes, Junctures and Tass. You can enchant life-forms to inflict or endure aggravated damage or just deal said damage directly via Prime. You can drain Quintessence from objects (with Matter 2), create a Periapt (a Quintessence battery) or craft temporary wonders. Or you can, you know, make a lightsaber/lazerbeam. It costs Quintessence per turn, but still. Rank 4: Expel or Infuse Energy/Tap Wellspring/Craft Tass and Permanent Wonders - This is where Prime gets really scary as you can disintegrate objects and forces via draining them of Quintessence. You can also craft unbreakable objects and create permanent magical objects called wonders. You can tap into wellsprings and by using your Quintessence on a Periapt along with Matter 4, you can make a Soulgem, a portable Periapt. Rank 5: Infuse or Withdraw Life Force/Create Node and Soulflower/Nullify Paradox - And this is where Prime mages get terrifying as you obliterate someone by draining the Quintessence from them. Or make them blessed. By combining it with Life 5, you can make Soulflowers, living Periapts. You can create your own Node and you can nullify Paradox per Quintessence point spent.

SPIRIT

Aka true necromancy, summoning, otherworldly travel, shamanism, soul manipulation.

The things that live beyond us. The worlds that are outside ours. Spirit sphere is the one that deals with both. It’s the study of ephemera, the spirit stuff that suffuses the otherworlds. Spirit sphere is the sphere of passing beyond the veil of mundane and entering the world of unnatural. It also will be irrelevant to most mages who don’t deal with spirits or chronicles that won’t step into the otherworlds. But it also deals with the mysteries of the human soul, so there’s that to consider. To pass into the otherworlds, you need to pass the Gauntlet, the barrier between the physical world and the spirit worlds. The Gauntlet will be thicker or thinner depending on where are you trying to access it from. The Gauntlet ratings page can be found in Mage20 p.505. Spirit mages aren’t just shamans. They vary as much as their beliefs, but most carry this otherworldly air around them.

Rank 1: Spirit Sight/Spirit Sense - You see dead people. And living people’s auras. And how thick is the Gauntlet. And spirits. And ways to the spirit world. Rank 2: Touch Spirit/Manipulate Gauntlet - Now you can talk to dead people. You can also raise or lower the local Gauntlet or if you wish, you can use other spheres to affect the spirit world in some capacity. Rank 3: Pierce Gauntlet/Step Sideways/Rouse and Lull Spirit - Now you can crossover to the spirit worlds, turning yourself into ephemera. You can also read existing spirits, harm them, awaken them from slumbering places or put them back to sleep. With Matter 3 and Prime 2 you can craft temporary ephemera. Rank 4: Rend Gauntlet/Seal Breach/Bind Spirit - Now you can rip Gateways into Gauntlet, allowing many people pass through. You can seal such breaches as well. You can also now properly summon spirits, bind them to objects called fetishes or unbind a possessing spirit from its host. You can also do the same things to yourself. Rank 5: Forge Ephemera/Gilgul/Break the Dreamshell - Now you can craft permanent ephemera or even destroy it if you so wish. Which means, you can destroy spirits willy nilly including other mage’s avatars via the gilgul rite or even forcibly awakening an avatar (maybe). And you can also venture into the Horizon and fuck off from the universe. That’s cool too.

About the gilgul rite: Don’t use this lightly. The gilgul rite is meant to be used on corrupted avatars like the infernalists (in some cases) or the nephandi (in most cases). Thankfully, the actual gilgul rite is really difficult and is detailed in the book of secrets, but should you ever get this ability, BE CAREFUL WITH IT. This is the cruelest thing you can do to an innocent awakened.

TIME

Tick tock. Tick tock. Who’s that? It’s the most Paradox prone sphere of them all. The Time sphere. This sphere actually works irl by causing headaches for your Storyteller. Aside from the Time Travel abilities, the idea of stopping the flow of time locally, creating save states, seeing both into the future and the past at the same time, will be really difficult to wrap your head around. Both feats of time magick and the time sphere timelines charts are on the page 505 of Mage20. For all the good they will do you? Effects that travel backwards in time are incredibly difficult, have +3 to their difficulty, stack the effects of Paradox and are always vulgar. Traveling backwards in time give you two layers of Paradox per each interval in the time sphere timelines chart crossed. Go back 1000 years? Enjoy your 14 points of Paradox! Time mages are often dissociated from the current time. Their awareness transcends the present and instead touches upon the past, the present and the future.

Rank 1: Time Sense - You are a clock and always know what time it is. You also know where time bullshit has happened. Rank 2: Past and Future Sight/Thicken the Walls of Time - Now you can look forward or backward through time. It’s not as reliable as it seems. You can also make time effects harder to do in a certain area. Rank 3: Time Contraction or Dilation/”Bullet Time”/Rewind Time - Now you can go fast or slow or even partially rewind time. Or even stop effects in place or slow them down. You can make fist punch fast cause bullet too slow. Rank 4: Time Determinism/Trigger Effect/Time Bubble/Anchor Point - Now you can make save states or pause effects until they are unpaused by a trigger. Rank 5: Temporal Travel/Time Immunity - Welcome to time travel. Also making the Storyteller cry. Also being immune to time.

The Storyteller reserves the right to beat you up in the streets should you abuse Rank 5.

And now is the part where I get everyone here mad at me cause I mention that every single effect you’d typically want to do is catalogued and numbered in How Do You DO That? If you have the general idea or concept of your magick ready, you are free to look through that book and see what fits your character best if you are having troubles with the spheres. It can even be easier for you if you do this, cause it has all the rules for what you wanna do. The sphere effect combinations is just in case you wanna experiment with effects and make your own.

BONUS: TECHNOCRATIC VARIANTS AND OTHER VARIANTS

Technocracy has its own variants to the spheres. They are called Data for Correspondence, Dimensional Science for Spirit and Primal Utility for Prime. They function almost identically to the actual spheres they are based on, they just have a different flavour to them and focus on different things.

For example, Data is more internet based, Dimensional Science deals more with space travel and dimensional travel and Prime Utility deals with the magick of money and the concept of worth.

It’s more connected to the paradigm and practice than actually altering the spheres themselves. Other than that, they are the same.

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handstitchedcircuitboards · 7 years ago

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Okay, I am totally digging your idea of the shimada dragons being eldritch horrors. How do they work besides being total agents of destruction? Can they converse with their hosts? Do they feel affection for them? Pls tell me ur headcanons. And hanzo having two dragons, oh boy. Is this still sticking with canon or is it veering off to au territory where the clan uses hanzo as a weapon? If we stick w/ the original timeline, obvs hanzo is still alive and kicking. But hes already nearing forty...

HELLO MY NEW FAVORITE PERSON PULL UPA CHAIR. YOU’RE LOOKING LOVELY, WOULD YOU LIKE A DRINK?

So, I tried to explain some of thisin a fic about Genji getting his dragon, but it’s not done because it’s beingsuper uncooperative. Imagine that, Genji being uncooperative. Anyway.

The whole exercise was essentiallyme and my friend trying to figure out how the fuck blizzard gets off havingliteral magic dragons in their (admittedly al-dente) sci-fi universe, and yeah,I’m trying to make it not directly conflict with canon or the current timeline.Luckily canon is pretty vague about a lot, so I have a big sandbox to play in.If it becomes explicit lore that they’re literally magic, I invite Chu orKaplan to fight me behind the nearest Denny’s. I’m pretty sure I can take them, what I lack in height I make up for in sheer rage.

So, I looked at the dragons, andbeing a terrible person who loves sad things, my first thought was “Those definitelygive you cancer. That’s some high energy bullshit. These Shimada guys are turbofucked.” Next question, what the fuck do weird glowing cancer snakes care abouta random subset of the Japanese population? Well there’s something, probablygenetic because it’s only just them, about them that’s of interest, there hasto be.

Enter, two of my favorite things,multiverse and aliens! This shows up a little bit in the Hellboy comics, Tanis, and The City at the End of Time(which should have been so much better than it was). Also, uh, cough, a fandomthat I spent waaay to much time in despite the many, many problems. Anyway, ifthe dragons aren’t from this universe and need some kind of conduit to comehere for Dragon Reasons, then the Shimada clan could be that conduit. Eitherit’s something about their genetics or something about the place they’re allliving, but something about these people made them more attuned to whateverwavelength the dragons are on. So I think the Shimadas themselves representthin spots between their universe and ours, with the Well being the crossoverpoint where it’s easier for the dragon and the host to entangle, and the entanglementlasts until the host dies. (Sidebar: That all grew out of the antenna model forontological dualism) (Sidebar: I think they’re only dragons because the ancientShimadas expected dragons so that’s what they got. They could be anything, and theyinhabit more than just 3-space. This is kind of the vibe I’m thinking of. If they’d shown up in medieval europe, they’d probably look like angels or saints.) It seemed weird to me that they’re just hereto kill. They could be eating people, or some facet of people (heat, electricalimpulses in the nervous system, etc.) but that seems super inefficient. There’senergy everywhere here, once the meat people let you in, why would you let thembe your gatekeepers? But that got me thinking, what if they’re here to getsomething and the Shimadas are acting as an antenna or foothold for them? Is theirkilling for the Shimadas more of a side effect? If they do need the Shimadas tobe alive, then it makes sense they would protect them.

Circling back to multiverse for amoment, what if their universe is dying, undergoing its heat death? They seem to be beings made of energy, atleast partially, (pulling from CatEoT, there were beings there whose minds transcendedmaterial form and were fucked whenthe heat death began.) Point of interest, there are supervoids in our universethat just seems weird. Fun fact, Earthis in the largest supervoid known to science, the KBC Void. What if the dragonsare actually here to strip mine energy and entropy and take it back to theiruniverse to keep it alive longer? A heat death is just the end of alldifference in energy levels, so if they’re stealing more energy from here tomaintain differentials to keep going, that would be a reason for them to behere that isn’t a weird crush on the Shimada clan.

Okay, but, uh, they’re killing thehosts. They give them cell-degrading radiation exposure when they manifest, becausethe Shimada doing the summoning is at ground zero for a second, roasting alive.Well, I don’t think the dragons actually grok that point! They’re beings madeof energy, and I think they mostly view the Shimadas as a web of heat and electricalimpulse and chemical activity, but I think very few of them understand them asconscious creatures because the way they think is so divergent. It’s like wonderingif your car has feelings. It’s real damn complicated, but is it thatcomplicated? Maybe, but probably not. So, like when your car squeals and you dosomething to fix it, that’s kind of like what the dragons are doing when themantra is repeated. But in using your car, you are damaging it through wear andtear, and that’s what the dragons are doing through repeated summoning. TheShimadas understand this as a kind of tit-for-tat, obviously the spirits wouldwant something so their lives must be it. And if this all started in prehistory youcan’t really blame them, when the conceptual framework for talking about the multiverse scientifically is so recent.

I don’t think they communicatelike humans do, through body language, touch, and vibrating the air withspecialized organs. I think they communicate feeling and intent more directly, probablywith energetic impulses. So, the mantras that the Shimadas recite (which varyfrom person to person) act as a sort of trigger or alert. Thinking about specific thingsexcites parts of the brain in a specific way, and there is some low levelelectric current involved. If the dragons learn to recognize that, kind of inthe way we recognize our phones have low battery because the meter changes,then they manifest and attack to protect their host. If the host dies theylose their foothold in this universe, so they do what they can to keep them alive.I don’t think the Shimadas grok that this is a side effect, I think theygenuinely believe them to be spirits. (My understanding is that a thought likethat wouldn’t be out of line with Shinto. A very devout Christian would believein angelic interference, for instance.) I do think the dragons recognize otherhosts, and try not to attack them generally if they’re in the line of fire, andthat the dragons, after a while, learn to pick out what their host thinks of asfoes. So, Genji’s dragon wouldn’t attack a friend (let’s say McCree is standingbeside him, providing covering fire) because it’s learned that the kind ofattention Genji is paying McCree is good attention, but will attack the guyjust as close trying to stab Genji, because that’s bad attention. It does takea while for that to set in, and some dragons are less discerning than others.

They can, however, learn to ‘talk’.They mostly just don’t bother. It’s a pain exciting the aural nerves in theright way, learning what the right way is, and they usually misinterpretfeelings when shared directly and dump a bunch of cortisol and freak out. Imaginetrying to learn to talk to your cat. (Spoilers for a fic I may never finish, Ithink Genji’s does talk to him. I think Genji has a very close relationshipwith his dragon, and that is basically unheard of. He’s a natural adorcist andlearned more from his dragon that the clan had in hundreds of years. Genji’sdragon is enamored with him, and Genji with her. It’s part of why he’s stillalive, she shielded him from a lot of the damage Hanzo’s dragons would havedone and shunted a lot energy away from his vitals because she learned from himwhat to protect. Genji would probably have just been burnt to a crisp if she’donly been on the offensive. She also helps soothe some of the phantom pain bypulling strings in his nervous system.)

(Okay, this section is pretty dark.)

Hanzo’s dragons think there’ssomething wrong with him. He keeps hunting down other hosts, making it harderto do their work, and keeps getting damaged. I don’t think Hanzo thinks hedeserves to do the honorable thing and kill himself directly, but I do thinkonce or twice he’s thrown down his weapons to let someone kill him, right afterGenji. His dragons won’t let it happen, they come on their own and attackeverything around him. They do not trust his judgement, and they’re harder forhim to summon and sometimes come when he doesn’t want. They don’t understandthe family politics that when into attacking Genji and then attacking the others,they think he’s just a malfunctioning machine they have to put up with.

(Uh, that’s over)

So, with two dragons, I do think theclan wanted him to be their weapon. I think, in the lull after the Crisis,there had been a kind of status quo with the various yakuza clans and Sojirowas content to maintain it. Others, now that they had a WMD in their pockets, wantedto expand territory and influence. Sojiro was like “HARD FUCKING PASS” and as long as he wasalive, he prevented Hanzo from going on more assassinations than necessary, and kepthim to more administrative things, even if that meant doing more work withdragons himself and dying faster. (Sidebar, I think the assassination thing iskind of a secret. Only people in the know would ask, and they don’t take money,they take favors. Money can be tracked. Favors can’t. Only the family is involved at any stage of planning orexecution. The client families and client organizations and random mooks haveno idea, because the rest of the clan’s business is grey market brokering or smuggling.) That’s also part of the reason the elders were so adamant Genji getin line, because if Hanzo died young they needed him to take charge. Sojirokind of let Genji be a useless fuckboy because it would keep Hanzo safer if hewas the only viable heir. It broke his heart to do it, because it ruined hisrelationship with Hanzo and the brothers’ relationship with each other, but hewasn’t going to bury Hanzo. Hanzo never puts it together, he thinks his dadjust liked Genji better and he wasn’t a good enough leader to bring him in line. Genji didn’t fuckingcare, because he was a spoiled brat, but kind of kens the truth in Nepal afterhaving to sit down and actually sort through his life and his choices.

So, because Hanzo has fuckeddirectly off, he’s done less damage to himself with the dragons than he wouldhave otherwise, but he’s still getting sick. (For a long time, it was a realworry of Genji’s that Hanzo would die before he could kill him. And then, whenGenji forgave him, that’d it’d be too late.) Nobody in the clan actually doesanything to fucking TREAT the cancer, because they think it’s part of somemagic bargain. The dragons do not fucking care if you get chemo, Genji knows asmuch. So, Hanzo’s bought himself some time by running away (and killing otherShimadas by being sneaky rather than dragon fights when he can, since hisdragons are flaky, per the dark paragraph.) If Genji can bring Hanzo to Dr.Ziegler, she can absolutely get it under control. (He’s probably got someconcerning nodules, but not full blown malignant tumors in all of his him.) Hermethodologies could absolutely target and destroy cancerous cells and repair thedamage, if Hanzo will accept the treatment. So he’s not doomed, if he doesn’twant to be. (He’s trying to race liver failure and cancer on his own though, soGenji needs to get the lead out if he’s gonna put out this tire fire.)

I think I answered most of yourquestions? I love talking about this, so if you weren’t clear I’m happy toelaborate! Please forgive any spelling/grammar fuck ups, I wrote this all downkind of stream of consciousness.

#genji shimada #hanzo shimada #shimada dragons #overwatch meta #shimada meta #headcanon dump #dear anon ilu #i swear i didn't ask myself this question so i could squee #pinky swear even #ask answers

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bienready2122 · 5 years ago

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Some Random Thoughts About The Human Mind

Once in a while you have another idea, a thought, or aha minute, however it's not gutsy enough to venture into a sensible length article or paper. Thus, here's a blend of considerations on all way of angles managing all that stuff that is between your ears that is too acceptable not to record, yet with insufficient meat accessible to substance out mơ thấy bị công an đuổi bắt đánh con gì * You Then; You Now: That you that existed ten years back offer none of the basic particles, iotas, atoms, and so forth that makes up that you that truly exists at the present time. However you in the present time and place can associate with that you that existed 10 years back. You recall that you tumbled off your bike, and you may in any case have a scar of two obvious from that previous period and mishap. So what crosses over any barrier and interfaces you today with you yesterday or that you ten years prior?

* Mind: When it strikes a chord, I like the perception that we spend a lifetime attempting to make a blemish on the world when in certainty it is the world positively shaping us.

* Mind: The brain isn't an equivalent word for 'the spirit'. The psyche is a thing since it expects vitality to control it. The psyche has reality, regardless of whether it is only an indistinct piece of the cerebrum (for example - the psyche is definitely not a different structure or organ inside the mind). In the event that I wreck your cerebrum, I decimate your brain. The brain is the store of every one of those non-self-sufficient controls you have over your body; those intentional capacities (like getting your work done regardless of whether you don't feel like it) or semi willful capacities like holding your breath, driving yourself to remain alert or hold off heading off to the restroom. It's the place your recollections are; the place you think (preparing data as of now away or recently got); where you decide. The brain is frequently separated into the intuitive personality and the cognizant (mindfulness part of the) mind.

* Mind: Your psyche contains every one of that makes you, you. It is the quintessence of you. It contains and controls your recognitions, information, recollections, inventiveness, feelings, your reasoning, your comprehension or understanding or capacity to make sense of things, your character, and it houses your fantasies and fantasies. A successive theme for dialog in philosophical circles is whether the brain, explicitly your psyche, is the most important thing in the world of inestimable reality. The appropriate response IMHO is a resonating "no" in light of the fact that the psyche can't be a never-ending movement 'machine'. At the end of the day, the psyche resembles all things (expecting different things), a thing subject to disintegration after some time or subject to entropy. All things go downhill - dust amasses, work areas get jumbled, stars come up short on fuel, autos breakdown and individuals develop old. It takes a consistent stockpile of outside reality vitality and matter (same distinction) to keep entropy under control. That recharging of supply may win the fights, yet entropy at last successes the war.

* Worldviews: It struck home to me as of late how frequently we move our perspectives. We have no perspective during childbirth. Our perspective at five is one that is loaded with self, Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, the Tooth Fairy, fanciful companions, and gatherings with bunches of cakes, treats, soft drink and shows. The entirety of that surely changes, and radically in this way, when you hit the teenagers when your perspective movements to the contrary sex and sex and defiance to everything grown-up. Possibly some place there's a facilitating in period, a first stirrings, where you begin to gain a perspective of a God and paradise and heavenly attendants and everything brilliant and delightful (that is likely forced on you by guardians and social mores. At that point you get trust out (generally by decision) into the grown-up world that is brimming with bills and obligations and work as well as family life raising your very own rascals. During the entirety of this you most likely never truly think about the 'characteristic' inestimable setting you end up in. In any case, that will in general come as you pass the midway imprint and start heading downhill. The Big Questions come more to the fore and you begin to receive a perspective that bodes well away from the typical routine perspective of duties and awful managers and your children in a tough situation with the police once more. Once more, for most, that will in general rotate around God and paradise and blessed messengers, and so on. Be that as it may, a few people start thinking increasingly outside the soothing strict box and progressively about existence, and previously, then after the fact, and limited versus limitlessness and what non-strict Big Picture makes the most philosophical and coherent sound judgment. Furthermore, whatever particular you concoct can likewise move as you think about your prior reflections without end as new ideas and associations appear or center which you must consider and fit into the ace perspective jigsaw confuse you've set up.

* Consciousness: Every living thing from humble organisms to plants, jellyfish to frogs, feathered creatures to felines to primates have awareness since all react to outer improvements in manners that are not unsurprising by traditional material science (dissimilar to a stone growing and contracting as the temperature rises and falls). From origination to cerebrum demise you feel and react to boosts 60/60/every minute of every day/52, similar to gravity and temperature, and so forth. In the event that you react, in un-rock like ways, you have awareness.

* Consciousness: Consciousness is only the familiarity with your surroundings in the present time and place. You need to attract on your intuitive to recognize the idea of those environment. Mindfulness is following up on what you got mindful of, the nature of those environment and for that you additionally need to draw downward on your subliminal. You're mindful that you hear a commotion and you need your psyche (experience and memory) to distinguish it. Perhaps it's thunder; or a vehicle money; or your pooch yapping; or an entryway hammering or a fly plane flying overhead (which you at that point need to recognize as an ordinary business stream or a military warrior fly). Your mindfulness of that will at that point draw downward on your experience and recollections for the best possible approach to react to the idea of that clamor. You may need to verify the property if there's a tempest coming; or call the police/rescue vehicle on the off chance that it was an auto collision; or let your canine in, and so forth. You'll mindfulness will react contrastingly on the off chance that you smell something intentionally and that something as per those subliminal recollections you quickly draw on discloses to you it is something cooking versus something consuming. On account of the clamor or the smell, a one day old infant couldn't make that differentiation between either since it has no subliminal memory bank on which to draw however it intentionally hears the commotion and scents the smell similarly as you do.

* Consciousness, Theory of: Actually I don't believe it's such baffling; great it might be puzzling yet it's naturally widespread. Each living thing from humble organisms to plants, jellyfish to frogs, flying creatures to felines to primates have awareness since all react to outer improvements in manners that are not unsurprising by old style material science (not at all like a stone growing and contracting as the temperature rises and falls). From origination to cerebrum passing you feel and react to upgrades 60/60/day in and day out/52, similar to gravity and temperature, and so on. In the event that you react, in un-rock like ways, you are mindful or have awareness. In the event that you ought to have some unique definition at the top of the priority list, at that point maybe search for a partitioning line between that which is obviously not displaying awareness by that definition and what is. What is the distinction in natural chemistry between that which is and that which isn't? Investigate that and you're en route to an answer!

* Self-Awareness: Consciousness can be communicated as a progression of Russian dolls, which most likely doesn't really clarify what it is, however it's intriguing. We start with: "I'm mindful". At that point, "I'm mindful that I'm mindful". At that point that string is trailed by "I'm mindful that I'm mindful that I'm mindful, etc down the line unto limitlessness.

* Self-Awareness: Here's a devilish psychological study. Make two clones of yourself. Raise them to development. At that point, evacuate their minds and hurl them away (this is only a psychological study thus ethics and morals can be skirted). Presently have your mind expelled (and hurl your body away). Have one half of the globe transplanted into one clone; the other side of the equator transplanted into the subsequent clone. While the two sides of the equator of your mind have somewhat unique accentuation regarding usefulness, you can work as a sensible entire with only one half of the globe. Presently the inquiry emerges, will you act naturally mindful in two bodies at precisely the same time? You could achieve twice to such an extent and be absolutely mindful of the totality!

* Self-Awareness: Presumably your mindfulness starts at origination, and along these lines there is mindfulness even at the cell level. Presently on the off chance that you, and here 'you' could be a plant or an organism, react to upgrades (outside or inside), at that point you are mindful, yet consciousness of self comes in degrees - a well evolved creature is more mindful than a desert flora despite the fact that both can react to boosts. In the event that you react to improvements in a manner that is not unsurprising by the laws of material science then you are mindful. A stone can't be a 'you' since it doesn't react to boosts in any capacity that material science can't foresee and accordingly a stone isn't mindful.

* Self-Awareness: Fast-sending to the future, if your psyche has been downloaded into an equipment (silicon and steel) body, you can generally move up to the following and most current model. I see the generating of an automated design industry! The 2050 you wouldn't be gotten dead inside a 2045 automated model! The other repercussion is that you can 'clone' yourself (or rather your psyche) by downloading your brain the same number of times into the same number of automated equipment shapes as you wish. Maybe one mechanical structure that is intended for undersea investigation; one intended for hiking; another that is little enough that it can investigated the most claustrophobic of cavern frameworks. In the event that your mind exists at the same time in a wide range of mechanical bodies, at that point you should have something beyond a solitary mindfulness, all the while.

* Compr

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hauntinghilarity · 7 years ago

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SLRP | Storyteller Lore: Lickyface

I was a storyteller in a number of roleplay sims. One of the documents I am proud of is the concept I wrote up for my cosmic deity/entity (aka lovecraft inspired boogun). Due to some rl strangeness, I couldn’t complete my plan. SO instead, I saved it!

The picture below depicts one of the many looks I made for Lickyface in Second Life using a bunch of parts.

The following document was written ic and ooc by Doc Boots (jingy.blinker). For any further questions, please do not be afraid to IM or leave a notecard for the freaky flower. He will do his damnedest to get back to you post haste.

The parchment itself, made of an unidentified leather, holds his usual formal and delicate script. The more he jots down, however, the more tense and unsettled he seems to become, his lines becoming jagged and uneasy. As if his hand had been shaking.

Name: Given the creature's multiple mouths, as well cosmic heritage, the names written always seem illegible. I have since realized that the spelling and handwriting is correct, it is simply impossible for me to say it. I do not know how to read these runes nor how to fabricate the vocal noises the creature is said to make.

Designation: The Beast Once Imprisoned Beneath the Tree, Lickyface, The Malevolent Maw

Age: Impossible to calculate given the current information. There is a possibility it is older than the planet itself. Especially as it must have taken it quite a while to drift onto the planet.

*~*~*Preface*~*~*

Many people are under the assumption that the path of the light is the one true path. The one where karma will reward you and the masses will appreciate you. I am sorry to be the one to inform you that the nature of the universe is far less clear than that. If it is any consolation, it isn’t entirely black either. Just mostly. A dark gray, really.

For matter to be able to spread through the universe, mingle, and even become far more complex types of matter there needs to be a most catastrophic explosion. One that starts in the heart of a powerful star, before tearing its solar system apart. Considered one of the most terrifying events in the universe, there is an upside. This explosion can leave another, if not the most, terrifying object in the universe, a Black Hole. While often attributed to merely consuming all around it, that is only true up to a point. Reaching far beyond its mouth but still within its reach, a black hole swirls all the remnants of its own explosions and others, be it from those too small to create a black hole, creating multiple, or creating enough close to one enough that they fuse into a much larger black hole.

As the obliterated star systems coalesce, stirred by the vortex surrounding the black hole, stars gain a higher likelihood to be born. Even better, more unique planets are created, and more unique forms of life can be created. We can see this cycle in our own realm, on our own planet, too. My usual example being that a deer will eat grass, causing the grass to release an odor that can alert a nearby predator, that will kill the deer. The remains of the deer, be it merely blood splattered or the devoured carcass, will help the grass regrow the damage the herbivore caused. Allowing another to much on its juicy leaves, repeating the process. Of course, races follow this same aspect. Angels and demons, Humans and Orcs.

I preface my explanation of this beast explaining this so you might understand its drive. It is not motive, it is an instinct that gives this creature an urge to destroy. For it is not from our realm. Not even from our solar system. It is possibly from far beyond our very galaxy. Regardless of where it came from, it crashed onto our planet relatively early in the development of intelligent life. Just as humanity began to wonder and grow curious, this beast appeared like a plague. It is theorized this is what catches its attention.

*~*~*LEGEND*~*~*

What happens on other worlds is mere speculation. Attempts for a superstitious and war-torn world to explain the beast that tormented them, that seemed to watch them from the deepest darkness and whisper from the corners of their mind.

For, just like the entropy of the natural world, it seems sentient life needs a little darkness and madness to stir the pot of innovation. As the shamans proposed, the growth of envy and hatred lit a fire in the hearts and souls of humanity like no other. The bitter words the Malevolent peppered the population with, at first, was at it seemed interested in.

It wasn’t pleased with just this. Whether as the Chessmaster or merely another rusted gear in a machine being busted by another party, Lickyface would make certain it stayed amuse. It played smart at first, pushing events from the sidelines content to watch the factions it pitted against each other tear each other limb from limb. Depression and greed fueled it. Souls that became too entranced by the beast’s growing charisma soon found their being beings twisted by darkness, and when they finally fall to pay for their crimes they’d find themselves consumed and added to the growing collection of the broken, the twisted, and the psychotic that fueled its power.

Then, just as the rest of humanity learned of it, Lickyface tasted madness. A sensation it held as naturally as a human holds oxygen. It leapt on the chance to experiment with the broken minds it had already begun to cultivate. From here, the journals I gather my information from becomes a horrid, garbled mess. Blood, various substances, and what I can only hope is dirt coat most of the pages at this stage of the story. This period of the creature’s reign leftmost who encountered it into shells of their former selves. The journals never indicate they are ever returned to a state of sanity.

Its attempt to be kept in the dark, those who saw it far too gone into madness for any to believe the pictures were drawn or details given. Luckily, there were a few who would listen to such crazy back then. The details, of course, are quite muddy around this time. It was decided that it had to be contained and it is made very clear that the toll on the army facing is was high. As the body count rose it became clear killing the beast was not an option. So an idea was finally formed, and with only the hundred greatest left in the faction brave enough to take on the job, they were able to pool their resources, skills, and magic together to incapacitate the creature long enough for it to be imprisoned in endless, unforgiving light. This was not without its cost, the creature claiming countless chivalrous characters in its rampage to stay free.

As their numbers began to draw closer to the single digits, the remaining magic users thought quickly and gathered their energy to call towards the Astral body of the Tree of Life. A massive trunk rooted the beast into place as it finished off the last of the warriors left to keep its focus. The roots entangled around it, and the pure mixture of arcane, divine, and natural energy was cultivated by the roots to make certain the best could never escape. Trapped with the countless souls it had captured, it was left to rot in the core of the Earth.

So confident in this plan, even if it cost all but a few of the island’s remaining veterans, was the island that as the millennia passed, the tale of the Malevolent Maw was lost to time. For Lickyface had long since left its mark. The darker side of humanity had been cultivated by it, after all. Confidence warped into confusion, which warped into doubt at its very existence. Soon, the memory of the Hundred Martyrs was devoured by rage and lost to the ramblings of a few dozen madmen’s books.

*~*~*WHERE THIS LEAVES US*~*~*

For those of you who have not heard my thoughts on the matter, I apologize for what you are about to learn. It will prove to you how far humanity has fallen, and how deep the creature has dug its tongue into our minds. War after war left the races itching. A war was fought, and the Orcs won. Their prize? The Tree of Life, it seems. They chopped it down, and with every chop, The Malevolent Maw stirred. Dust and ash kicked up by the weakened and tormented beast.

To add insult to injury, and fuel the beast as the blasphemous act was made all the more horrid, the tree was fashioned into planks and turned into cabins. The physical embodiment of the penultimate nature god, depending on your beliefs and if Gaia is particularly chatty, to at least de trees. Couldn’t even keep their houses protected, because the cabins of life burned down. I am sure all this just made it easier for the beast to gather power and find a way out of the rotting roots.

There was time then. The Eldritch and I..Most I tried to warn this city. I did everything in my power, even rushed through these damned journals. I am afraid, to those of you who have gotten this far, that is maybe far too late for Vrek’mar. I hear tales of people working to regrow the Tree. That’s marvelous. It still won’t change anything. The roots are withered by now, months have passed since that fateful day. When the ash covered the sky, it was testing the waters. Fighting at the weakening roots.

I do not know where it is now. If it is still far beneath us, regaining its power so it might rise again. I do know that it is angry. Not for its prison being destroyed, it will be delighted about that. The Orcs might even get a pass. It’d just figure, wouldn’t it? It was weakened at this time. Such a long period would have left its body in a fragile state. We could have done something then. You fucks could have listened to me then.

There was time then. We could have bolstered the roots, pumped enough energy to hold it. I am no god. I did not have the ability to do it on my own. Not even a small group. This required a small amount of political grace and everyone getting along, but of course, the meat bodies only want to fight.

It has been allowed time to escape. It is surely angry. I can not even imagine the maddening boredom being locked in such a cramped, assumedly, spot for millennia. It is not that which causes my vines to with and my host-body to shake. That creature is surely bored, and when it escapes, its rage will fuel its search for 'entertainment'. Whatever it has been plotting for millennia, playing with its own little set of heroes and psychotics alike repeatedly... That is what terrifies me. From what my journals indicate, it might even seek to claim itself king. Not for any democratic purposes, but because it finds crowns amusing, especially when it is worn on the head of a tyrant.

So that leaves us here. The beast practically inches below our feet, and we are naked in the breeze. I write this... Mostly to bitch, really. So, to whoever reads this, should you be feeling distraught, broken, and on the brink of madness like your peers, and the world split like a gaping maw... Don’t blame me.

Not that such blatant disrespect for common sense deserved such, but I tried countless times. You dug this grave, humanity, I am just sorry I had to go down with you.

Bitterly,

Doc Boots

*~*~*Known Tricks(Events/Storyline Plots)*~*~*

Punishing Prosopopeia -

The Malevolent Maw has a delight in spreading despair. It has found the typical routes in doing so are a bit boring. I suppose centuries locked in a prison with the same toys would make the abnormal the only option not milked dry.

When it picks its target, be it a lone soul or an entire building, it will go one of two routes. Should it pick the form, it will begin to enchant items surrounding the person. These items will grow the same twisted maw as their master, with the countless eye of its stolen souls staring out in hopes they might be freed, but their only use is to fuel the horrid creatures with eyes peeking from every shadow they cast or house. Its tongue would drip oil and lash about. Each item will take a different route in their goal, but they will pick apart the mind of their target, searching for every little nerve that might push them into a fit. Through my best attempts to translate the horrific chicken scratch that I pulled these accounts from, I gathered countless mentions of different items speaking venom. A pepper shaker supposed using their failed career to loosen them up, while the cauldron berated them for the quality of their cooking, while the door took advantage of their recently deceased parents to drill in the fact they hadn’t spent enough love and care with them.

More distressingly, the accounts state that until Lickyface lost interest, this effect would follow them no matter where they went. Should it target a specific building, every item will take on this effect and bully whoever they set their sights on. While Lickyface has been noted to use this same ability in offensive moves, this seems merely to be a last resort should it be attacked while using this talent.

Chuckling Chasm -

The creature’s presence often is heralded by the ground splitting open in a large chasm. Rocks form themselves into mock teeth while oil bubbles up to fill the newly formed gash. A tongue made from the oil erupted from this maw, beginning to lash about, presumably to attempt to drag and drown any foolish enough to get within striking distance.

There are even accounts of it forcing the Earth to move, making the fissures ‘talk’. While some of these journals question the motives behind this, I believe it is merely for its own amusement. Though surely anything drowned in that oil will not be met with a merciful fate. There are no accounts of what happens, though accounts of creatures and minions leaking this oil lead me to assume assimilation.

Oil of Condensed Souls -

Its ‘blood’ and the liquids that drip off of it seems to be a corrupted form of crude oil. At first, I believed this to be due to it being contained in the core. I have since, upon reading this is a recent development, come to believe that instead, this is the effect of having countless souls trapped within a twisted and wretched body that was then plunged into the pressure of the center of the Earth. It has lead to, least how we perceive it, a substance created from organic matter and souls being endlessly compressed in an already confined area, in the bubbling pit the beast had become while in the depths.

This liquid hold a number of strange properties, all dependant on what Lickyface itself wants to do with it. I have yet to fully understand whether this is something Lickyface has since ‘evolved’ to convert a creature into itself, or if, like the souls themselves, Lickyface is just as much this substance was the darkness he consumed.

Even when separated from the body, the reflection will leave an unsettling sight. Like looking into a lake, the depths beyond would seem endless with countless eyes of different colors staring back. Some in pain, agony, and suffering while others seemed angry or even delighted. The longer the blood sets, it will eventually begin to grow eyes, with no clear limit on how many will grow beside the surface area. Should the blood spread across a large enough surface, a mouth will form, with the blood-forming into a tendril-like tongue to lash about.

*~*~* Possible Oil Effects *~*~*

Winking Warts -

The creature or its minions can be quite effective at spreading this near limitless source of potential. One of its favorite ways is to expel a large portion of it at someone. Normally in the form of expelling it from the mouth along its stomach. As the oil spreads along the skin, bubbles will quickly form and burst along the skin from which an eye will grow. These can appear anywhere the oil spreads a sizable portion to, and more disturbingly these blinking blemishes seem to be connected to the victim’s system. The victim sees through them and feels any pain to come to them as if they were real eyes. They are also easily infected if ruptured. Strangely, the victims that tracked them all report a number of the eyes seem not to relay signals to the victim. That doesn’t seem to keep from looking around.

Practically a Museum of Memories - ( Why I named it this, I will forever wonder)

I do not know how, or why, anyone would ingest it, but my sources have said that doing so will sometimes cause an intensely vivid memory. They say that their nights became sleepless, as when they close their eyes it is as if they open them in a new body. Until they experience the memory the condensed souls desire of them, they repeat the memory until able to fully experience it. This is no easy task. As vivid as these dreams are said to be, many . Especially once the pattern of these dreams being the final moments of the souls that Lickyface had long since consumed. Some retaining their ‘purity’, for lack of a better word, while others had long since become corrupted by madness as the soul finally relented to the beast’s will.

Some have found ways to cure themselves of the affliction, while others merely power through the dreams. They say they even feel the emotions of the departed. The soul’s mind imposed upon you in the dream, forcing you to sit as a passenger as their final moments play out. As the Malicious Maw disassembles their life before their eyes, pushing them as far into the pits of despair or bitterness as it can before fully consuming them. Some take casualties with them. Regardless, they are given a brief glimpse at the torment the consumed were subject to, before finally being free of the ancient affliction.

#fiction #lore #lickyface #horror #second life #storyteller #play-by-post event #cosmic entity

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dustedmagazine · 7 years ago

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Dusted Mid-Year 2017, Part 1

Jaimie Branch is this year’s Heron Oblivion

It feels like it’s been 2017 for roughly a decade now, given the constant barrage of news and events, but actually we’re only about halfway though. So again, for the fourth time in a row, we have created a mid-year feature in which Dusted writers review each other’s favorite records, specialized expertise be damned. That’s right, veteran free-jazz expert Bill Meyer reviews Actress, outside-punk rock fan Ben Donnelly gets Tift Merritt, trad jazz authority Derek Taylor takes on Julie Byrne, etc. We are drawing outside the lines. We are making a mess. We are discovering things to like about records that would probably never have hit our turntables otherwise. We hope you will do likewise, reading about albums that you might not ordinarily consider, listening to the audio and maybe finding one or two things that make your own year-end list. We’ll run the first half of our picks today, covering Actress through Sarah Davachi. The second will be posted tomorrow and a collection of this-year-so-far lists on the final day of our feature.

Actress — AZD (Ninja Tune)

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Who recommended it? Joseph Burnett

Did we review it? Yes. Joseph said, “(H)is tracks trace the boundaries between the dancefloor and the art gallery in ways that have rarely been achieved so successfully.”

Bill Meyer’s take:

In the video for “X22RME,” Darren Cunningham (aka Actress) conceals his face behind a welder’s mask and gesticulates in front of a crumbling concrete sound catcher that was built to amplify the sounds of advancing German bombers during WW II. The sight of these shielding devices resonates on the morning after a truck drove down the sidewalk of London Bridge, running over pedestrians, then disgorged its occupants into a restaurant district where they stabbed passersby with long knives. Cultural action vibrates within a milieu, and we live in a time where we are constantly reminded that the old fights come around again, new ones multiply, and our modes of protection will not keep us safe. Actress’s beats won’t solve that, but their adherence to dance floor functionality points to one option for working out the stress. Likewise the women’s voices that rise in multi-lingual layers above the electronic burble at the track’s end articulate connections and possibilities; people construct their lives in whatever circumstances they find themselves..

Blanck Mass — World Eater (Sacred Bones)

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Who recommended it? Ian Mathers

Did we review it? Yes, Ian’s review went up earlier today, saying it’s a record that “somehow [manages] to be both more relentlessly overwhelming and more immediately accessible” than his previous work.

Ben Donnelly’s take:

World Eater seizes the challenge of making everything loud at once, with rhythm sequences that fill up the 16th notes and every frequency. It's the same dare taken by black metal, and I daresay metal has something to do with the aesthetic, though the results of Benjamin John Power's production are brighter. When his synthetic valkyries are charging, it’s epic for sure. It's a victory gallop, not impending doom. And victorious he is. Looped waves of noise have the force of machines, and they all ring with the intent of a human somewhere behind the scenes, giddy with the godlike storm-bringing power he's discovered. So yes, "The Rat" has an industrial meat grinder beat, but it sounds like he's dropping pinball machines into the auger, not enemies. This is a dense record shot through the ribbons of darkness, but those bared fangs on the cover are smiling.

Bottle Tree — Bottle Tree (International Anthem)

Bottle Tree by Bottle Tree

Who recommended it: Eric McDowell

Did we review it? Yes, Eric covered it in a mid-May Dust, saying, “Over the cassette’s 30 minutes, the trio gets significant mileage out of contrasted layers, deft structural pivots and sudden harmonic cadences.”

Ian Mathers’ take:

Most records this year won’t pack quite as much into their running lengths as Chicago trio Bottle Tree does in a mere 32 minutes, and with fairly minimal means, too; just A.M. Frison’s smoked honey voice, Tommaso Moretti’s protean, quicksilver drum fills and the sometimes anchoring, sometimes intangible arrangements and guiding hand of Ben Lamar Gay. The trio can and does stop and go on a dime, takes switchbacks without pause, and somehow does all this in a form that’s never anything less than sublimely mellow. Whether it’s the gently clattering percussion and bass burbles behind Frison’s chanted and then crooned lyrics on “Open Secret” or the sunrise synths and steady, subway train drumming leading into the stirring chorus of “Permanent Change” (where, of course, the drumming changes up), Bottle Tree somehow twists classic song craft and the avant garde, pop and jazz, Motown and improv, into an effortless, instantly ingratiating Mobius strip. Whatever else that tree is growing, there’s lightning in some of those bottles.

Nathaniel Braddock — Quadrille and Collapse (Invertabrata)

Quadrille & Collapse by Nathaniel Braddock

Who recommended it: Eric McDowell

Did we review it: Yes, Bill Meyer covered it in Dust, writing that, “’Doesn’t Remember,’ … interrupts Philip Glass-like repetition with intricate bridging phrases, while ‘Silvering Ghosts’ sounds like Steve Reich adapted to West African and Caribbean picking techniques.”

Jennifer Kelly’s take:

Braddock is known for interspersing American Primitive-style picking with West African blues, but this pristine and radiant disc seems to lean more heavily on Fahey than Ali Farka Touré. You may intuit the dry heat of African trance blues in “The Desert Within” but elsewhere shimmering flurries of picking evoke the Appalachia-crossed-with-raga musings of Jack Rose. The title track, balancing 18th century square dancing with post-modern notions of entropy, is a glistening intricacy of notes, grounded by low plunks like a kick drum but spinning off from there in dizzying circles. Closer “Tiger Bucket” swaggers. Strong rhythm cuts through the light-and-shadow eddies of rapid notes; it’s a spring-swelled stream that looks placid on top, but spits off bubbles and froth from its tumultuous undercurrents.

Jaimie Branch — Fly or Die (International Anthem)

Fly or Die by jaimie branch

Who recommended it? Derek Taylor, but the Dusted hive was in firm agreement

Did we review it? Yes. Eric said, “The Chicagoan-turned-Brooklynite’s overdue debut is bursting with the pent-up energy of years spent cultivating an impishly bold voice and collaborating widely without the deserved reward of a reputation outside the local scene.”

Patrick Masterson’s take:

This time last year, I was giving a close listen to Babyfather in the wake of Brexit and wondering what we’d be listening to in the aftermath of a Trump election (not to say I told you so). For me, as it turns out, the answer was: Not much. I never got internet service for my new apartment and I’ve been reading a lot of books lately. I’ve enjoyed Migos, Pile, Colin Stetson, and Big Thief records, sure. I’ve indulged in long moments of peaceful repose to Young Thug’s “Safe.” The latest Overmono EP is solid. But that’s about it for 2017; my listening has been liberated from the ever-peaking insanity of the “news” cycle. It feels good, man.

And that’s how liberation should feel, shouldn’t it? You should come away empowered, relieved, unburdened. I wonder if that’s how Jaimie Branch was feeling as she wrapped up post-production last July for Fly or Die, her full-length debut. At a lean 35 minutes and two fistfuls of tracks, this record packs it in and lets it out: The swell of white noise before the count-off into “Theme 001,” a power groove of a song, shows right away that this is no free-jazz genre purist’s haven. It shouldn’t be a surprise that the album flows so well between songs like the “Themes” or “Waltzer” and the interstices of the title-track or end note “…Back at the Ranch” given Branch’s familiarity with band mates Jason Ajemian, Tomeka Reid and Chad Taylor. But despite a handle on divergent mile markers that would have lesser composers looking foolish, the deft touch she’s provided frees it only as far her leash will allow; as Eric rightly points out in his review, the glue is her voice, and she’s got a taut one here.

Nevertheless, calling Jaimie Branch a trumpeter or even bandleader feels preposterously limiting; this woman is living the art we need right now to survive. Does that seem over the top? Well, far be it for me to insist you listen. Or the overwhelming majority of us at Dusted. Or Branch’s bandmates. Or Rob Mazurek. Or Ryley Walker. Or Sarah Neufeld. Everyone hears the liberation at their own pace, after all.

The Bug vs. Earth — Concrete Desert (Ninja Tune)

&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;a href="http://thebugmusic.bandcamp.com/album/concrete-desert"&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;Concrete Desert by The Bug vs Earth&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/a&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;

Who recommended it? Mason Jones

Did we review it: Yes, Mason wrote, “As the guitars and piano are successively overwhelmed by sonic waves only to resurface with glints of beauty, it feels like an oddly peaceful, welcome drowning.”

Jennifer Kelly’s take:

Two artists that seem, on the surface, to be radically different, find austere common ground in this disc. Dylan Carlson of Earth carves out epic meditative spaces with long, widely separated chimes of guitar, while Kevin Martin, The Bug, builds masses of shivering, shimmering hum. “Gasoline” and “Snakes vs. Rats” power forward on machine-drilled, industrial beats, the brooding heaviness set to foreboding motion. The long ones, “American Dream” and “Concrete Desert” wax elegiac, the ebb and tide of static eroding melody, like the crackle of clock radio cutting through the fading images of a dream.

Julie Byrne — Not Even Happiness (BaDaBing/Grapefruit)

&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;a href="http://juliembyrne.bandcamp.com/album/not-even-happiness"&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;Not Even Happiness by Julie Byrne&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/a&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;

Who recommended it: Jennifer Kelly

Did we review it? Yes, Jennifer said, “Not Even Happiness is a work of intimate loveliness, surely one of the most flat-out beautiful songwriter albums of a year that is just getting going.”

Derek Taylor’s take:

True to the unspoken, but venerable troubadour credo, particulars of Julie Byrne’s biography bubble up in the mutable, artifice-averse economies of her songs. A life lived with openness to extempore itinerancy and an abiding adoration for the natural world are points on the artistic compass, as are the bonds of family and interpersonal consanguinity even when at odds. Acoustic finger-style guitar lies at the core of Byrne’s performance tool box along with an ethereal voice that glides from a lilting, speakers-sating croon to candid spoken-sung salience. “Morning Dove” and “All the Land Glimmered” contain convincing evocations of the former, her starkly audible fretting on each folded directly into the gentle fractals of the tunes. Electronics and other instruments/effects enhance the equation on songs like “Natural Blue” and the interstitial “Interlude”, but Byrne’s fulcrum is usually the sturdy lattice work spun simply from words and strings. Lyrics and music coexist with equal and reciprocal weight and in their mingling revert to a pleasing and restorative weightlessness. Hers is not my usual wheelhouse, but one I will agreeably spend time in, soothing libation at the ready to augment those Byrne brings forth of an aural sort.

Evan Caminiti — Toxic City Music (Dust Editions)

&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;a href="http://dust-editions.bandcamp.com/album/toxic-city-music"&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;Toxic City Music by Evan Caminiti&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/a&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;

Who recommended it? Bill Meyer

Did we review it? Yes, Brett Marion said, “Its slippery patterns [serve] as auditory snapshots of dank irradiated zones and heat realm communities quarantined in an airless isolation.”

Jennifer Kelly’s take

Guitars have receded under an ominous fug since Caminiti’s days in Barn Owl. Where slow bright arcs of tone soared over cuts from Ancestral Star and melancholic picked figures reverberated through Lost in the Glare, here the six-string sounds — sometimes Caminiti himself, sometimes augmented by Jefre Cantu-Ledesma — are ghostly wrecks, barely glimpsed through the haze. Caminiti incorporated field recordings from New York City into this apocalyptic mix, so some of the roar and hiss and rumble is just the sounds of midtown. Yet in “Joaquin,” the disc’s best, music slips under a pall of poisonous smoke, submerges in waves of material-destroying acid, goes down amid the distant hiss and clangor of machinery. Toxic City Music sets up an uneasy conflict between sound and entropy, and it seems that unmaking, rather than making, is winning.

Sarah Davachi — All My Circles Run (Students of Decay)

&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;a href="http://sarahdavachi.bandcamp.com/album/all-my-circles-run"&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;All My Circles Run by Sarah Davachi&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/a&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;

Who recommended it? Tobias Carroll

Did we review it? Yes, Eric McDowell said: “Davachi remains a composer of gently immersive and just-stable ambient textures — the kind best enjoyed in total darkness, relieved of as much extraneous sensory input as possible.”

Joseph Burnett’s take:

Even if I hadn't learned it beforehand, I would be certain that the influence of LaMonte Young hung heavy over All My Circles Run from the first note. Sarah Davachi's compositions share Young’s dutiful dedication to patience and stillness more than most, as the extended, shimmering and unwavering tones on "For Strings" make abundantly clear. But dwelling on the core tones of strings, piano, voice and organ so unflinchingly, she allows their strengths to be magnified even as her subtle sonic manipulations upset the listener's expectations. "For Voice" is the clear triumph on All My Circles Run: resisting the temptation to overplay the layers of wordless litanies, she allows each voice to glisten and shine even as it crosses paths with others. Combined, these haunting refrains form a mournful choir that hangs translucently in the air, so fragile one fears it could break apart at any second. So much "drone" music is sterile and intellectual, but Davachi's dedication to focusing solely on the essence of each sound source means All My Circles Run is as affecting an experience as it is interesting.

#dusted magazine #midyear 2017 #actress #bill meyer #blanck mass #ben donnelly #bottle tree #ian mathers #nathaniel braddock #jennifer kelly #jaimie branch #patrick masterson #the bug #earth #julie byrne #derek taylor #evan caminiti #sarah davachi #midyear

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230east · 8 years ago

Text

sinking silently in my submarine

peeking up my periscope

periodically perusing the passing

photosynthesizing plankton

pulsating plasma membranes

eight legged tentacular suction cup

Pill popping percolating

positive vibrations

shaking up foundations

rock rolling down

to the bottom again.

just out of reach

water will recede

Cyclone circling the drain

so thirsty

get thee

to a nunnery

habit forming

thot-like behavior

instant gratification

think in new ways

get in formation

Shakespeare compares thee to Beyonce

woke up flawless like a diamond

dumber we round down

to the lowest denomination

algorithm assisted living

marketing machines

suggestively shaping

what you see

programming your point of view

the screen you pass through

is a filtration system

profile picture profiles you

feed back looping

it's the sine of the times

like a wave crashing systems

conversations conspiratorial in tone

the sinking suspicion that not so fresh feeling

and douching in general is a maladaptive marketing

mechanism to make you insecure and unsure.

they planted the product in your periphery

you think its your own idea

evolutions going backwards

survival of the photoshopped.

I’d rather be a monkey.

but ive evolved past tense

see triple in 3D

I trace your trajectory

parabolic path leading back

tragic swag. so sad these days.

no surface only substrate

sound of echoing rippling water

then a gasp for air breaks the waves

reverberating ringing tingling

beat tympanic tamborine man

oscillting ossicles translate

fluent French kiss my derriere

rare special edition

one of a kind its just like mine

same old samo

saying the same thing

eat your drugs

don't do school

stay in vegetables

various variations on the theme

every verse a throw back

vintage vino veritas

theres truth in that

cliche et tu brute

wino forever never left me

so retro back in style again

stranger things have happened

Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees

still singing that song flowing through me

swinging in the breeze in fields elysian

exceptional on a hill past daffodils

narcissistic point of view image conscious

selfish gene pool self interested kin selection

consciousness superficial

on the surface floating

like a glacier melting

oblivious to the tension growing

till it bursts through the glass mirror ceiling

distorting the image in circular ripples of pixels

impressionistic audience

glitch in the system program

its all conditioned

when i ring the bell

cerberus salivates

it is fate

three bitches barking

measuring me out by string

theoretically

three weird sisters

by the cauldron bubbling

on the lyre

lyrically i am lilting

you can’t stop me

you can’t stilt me

im always growing

exponentially

Fibonacci flow

spiraling out of control

fractals follow golden ratio

chaos creating destruction

entropy at equilibrium

Here we meet

Apollo and Dionysus

combined in catharsis

pupils open to see pathways

parallel past the point

of no return to normal vision

vanishing point out of view

past pluto out the solar system

on my way to cross the river

styx

REFERENCES IN NO PARTICULAR ORDER

STRANGE FRUIT Southern trees bear a strange fruit Blood on the leaves and blood at the root Black body swinging in the southern breeze Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees Pastoral scene of the gallant south The bulging eyes and the twisted mouth Scent of magnolia sweet and fresh And the sudden smell of burning flesh! Here is a fruit for the crows to pluck For the rain to gather, for the wind to suck For the sun to rot, for a tree to drop Here is a strange and bitter crop. -- Music and lyrics by Lewis Allan, copyright 1940

HAMLET

I have heard of your paintings too, well enough. God has given you one face and you make yourselves another. You jig and amble, and you lisp, you nickname God’s creatures and make your wantonness your ignorance. Go to, I’ll no more on ’t. It hath made me mad. I say, we will have no more marriages. Those that are married already, all but one, shall live. The rest shall keep as they are. To a nunnery, go. -Shakespear

I AM A STRANGE LOOP

In the end, we are self-perceiving, self-inventing, locked-in mirages that are little miracles of self-reference.

— Douglas Hofstadter,P363

And there he, on the the stark, dark marker Atop his parents' graves, shed tears, And praised their ashes — darker, starker. Alas, life reaps too fast its years; All flesh is grass. Each generation, At heaven's hidden motivation, Arises, blooms, and falls from grace; Another quickly takes its place. And thus our race, rash and impetuous, Ascends and has its day, then raves And hastens toward ancestral graves. All too soon, death's sting will get to us; Aye, how our children's children rush And push us from this world's sweet crus

And then with verse of quickened sadness He honored too, in tears and pain, His parents' dust... their memory's gladness... Alas! Upon life's furrowed plain — A harvest brief, each generation, By fate's mysterious dispensation, Arises, ripens, and must fall; Then others too must heed the call. For thus our giddy race gains power: It waxes, stirs, turns seething wave, Then crowds its forebears toward the grave. And we as well shall face that hour When one fine day our grandsons true Straight out of life will crowd us too!

let me sing a tune up tempo to the groove in the recording turn up the gramaphone and listen bro I am the best alive aliviate the symptoms but wont cure the pain killers murdering meat cleaver cut you into filet a deux lets dosey do lets hula hoop lets lasso the moon for you betty boop bop dop dap zap zippy zippering witty whimpering sassy syllables trashy talkative locomotive combusting and composting reusing and recycling reducing so compact disc DVD player ipod 3D glasses pixilation pointelissm glitching itching for a scratched surface scar face so Miami mami papi chulo lean low dow ho and hit the floor on your knees looking up at me like asking will you marry me run away with the beat and drop it down sinking silently in my submarine peering through my periscope periodically perusing the passing photosynthesizing plankton pulsating plasma membranes eight legged tentacular suction cup overfloweth with the fluid flow so Fibonacci spiralizing spiritual feeling so free too carefule calculated in the risky behaviors bitch yap yaw yippy yay you only live uno dos tres stress the alliterative alternative alternating current events talking heads heaven is a place where nothing happens above us only sky and satelittes revolving evolving electrical signal transduction travertine stone up your nose rock the boat overboard emotional so emo what she yelling for in such a monotone drone dramatically durgical and clinically clergical sentences so sequence shimmering laser bean landing site fly a kite thunder and lightning bug chirp

on the path charted through the sky

chariots of fire Apollo s

in pediatricians

we all follow direction and its counting down from ten to scale model student pupils open to see pathways parallel past the point of no return to normal vision vanishing point of view on point the point is people like you postulate pictorially snap back to reality whomp there goes gravity I am above it all I see through all it. i saw the signs of the times so many signals overstimulating the market so similar to something the remix of ignition is cool again until its overplayed out of style so retro im coming back like vintage vines wino forever in vino veritas theres truth in that touché et tu brute brutalist

zoot suited tooted and boot leg boozer buzzer

cycle seasons

tick flick off

membrance awesome oscicles oscilation

it's the sine of the times cant you see it pay attention

double visionary view from above

The next thing I woke up still singing that song the one you hear flowing river styx Cerberus salivating salty seas soylent green is algae plants are people im a dafodill on a hill let me sing a tune up tempo to the groove in the recording turn up the gramaphone and listen bro I am the best alive aliviate the symptoms but wont cure the pain killers murdering meat cleaver cut you into filet a deux lets dosey do lets hula hoop lets lasso the moon for you betty boop bop dop dap zap zippy zippering witty whimpering sassy syllables trashy talkative locomotive combusting and composting reusing and recycling reducing so compact disc DVD player ipod 3D glasses pixilation pointelissm glitching itching for a scratched surface scar face so Miami mami papi chulo lean low dow ho and hit the floor on your knees looking up at me like asking will you marry me run away with the beat and drop it down sinking silently in my submarine peering through my periscope periodically perusing the passing photosynthesizing plankton pulsating plasma membranes eight legged tentacular suction cup overfloweth with the fluid flow so Fibonacci spiralizing spiritual feeling so free too carefule calculated in the risky behaviors bitch yap yaw yippy yay you only live uno dos tres stress the alliterative alternative alternating current events talking heads heaven is a place where nothing happens above us only sky and satelittes revolving evolving electrical signal transduction travertine stone up your nose rock the boat overboard emotional so emo what she yelling for in such a monotone drone dramatically durgical and clinically clergical sentences so sequence shimmering laser bean landing site fly a kite thunder and lightning bug chirp

The American Dream is a product.

Lassoing up that freedom and mass producing it in metal.

I grabbed the reins and hoisted up on the saddle.

Perhaps he was too dumb to run.

Perhaps he was trying to protect me.

Graffiti on the door to the private room.

He shaved his face with a hatchet.

They placed bocce on the boat

Dressed in white.

Looking up at the billboard by the highway

Trying to communicate

He ran with a baguette]

I aint going outside. she said to the dead air left lingering in the cigarette soaked airwaves still circulating

The smoky air swam circular warning skylarks illuminated by a stray sunbeam. light littered in lateral patterns.

lyrically i am lilting you can’t stop me you can’t stilt me

well I’m majoring in business administration and I’m thinking of minoring in communications

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dwestfieldblog · 5 years ago

Text

‘’A GREAT DAY FOR CIVILIZATION’‘

THE BLACKNESS OF DARKNESS FOREVER

'Verily a polluted stream is man, One must be an ocean to receive a polluted stream without becoming unclean'. Indeed...November-December '2019'...Anarchy for the UK? Looks as if Boris is working for the other side in a similar way to Trump. Ride the populist wave and spark a gathering civil war. I remember reading some years ago about how the SAS were trained in knowing exactly where to place a small amount of explosive to bring down machinery, rather than a James Bond type explosion. Just set it right and allow the machine to destroy itself through its own natural momentum. Every time these two fat blonde fools open their mouths it reminds me of this. They appear to be helping to destroy it all from the inside...will the constitutions of these two noble (arf) countries survive their egos? The education system is breeding a mass of fools and large parts of social media are indeed being weaponised to stir up emotions, working hard to pull it all down.

A looming election in Britain and a current party in power who has received millions from Russian oligarchs to encourage various unions to split apart. Hexagram 23 is thrown again. The other choices are just as dangerous. Nobody of any use whatsoever to vote for. Don't look back, good days ahead eh? Anyone remember Boris saying in 2018 that Britain was 'truly headed for the status of colony'? Yes Mr Johnson, but not a European one. Meanwhile, onwards...

Children are born with a strong sense of curiosity to explore their senses and ask questions. By the time they leave College and University this often seems to have been reduced to mere drug taking without any actual increase in perception...and the need to join a political or religious group. The leaders of such groups do not encourage the curious in nature, as individuality is less than essential to to a leader who requires obedience and the transference of energy. Stirring up righteous emotions takes the place of both rational thought and instinct...and the inquisitive rebels become fervent drones or else passive without actually being tranquil. Never forget the accurate part in Monty Python's Life of Brian where the gathered mass repeat (apart from one) 'YES, WE ARE ALL INDIVIDUALS!' Small wonder the butchers smell easy meat on a daily basis...but at least the lambs are ‘’woke’’, eh?

I recently read the long paragraph of topics NOT to be used by comedians in universities in America and Britain. Ready? 'Racism, sexism,classism, ageism, abelism, homophobia, biophobia, transphobia, xenophobia, Islamophobia, or anti-religion or anti-atheism; These topics can be 'discussed' but 'in a respectful way'. Comedy kids! The PC snowflake future of these countries will be devoid of humour, only safe jokes on the mundane...and at some point even skits on mass murderers will be banned so as not to cause offence to killers several sandwiches short of a picnic.

P.C quote...'I happen to agree with the P.C. cult about many things. (In fact I only differ with them in not liking their intolerance, their fascist tactics, their introduction of Maoist brainwashing to our groves of Academe, their utter lack of humor, their continuous violations of ordinary common sense, their evident desire to destroy our Constitution and their lack of simple human decency') Robert Anton Wilson Cosmic Trigger Three, Hilaritas Press 1995/2018. Speaking of whom...

'The secret of power and wealth? You know how dumb the average guy is? Well, by mathematical definition, half of them are even dumber than that'. RAW. And therefore simpletons to manipulate for votes, money, sex and power. Endless slogans of 'Vote for me, I appear to share the same prejudices as you and of course I believe our country should rise again'. Etc. And so things will remain, until a few more of us consciously choose to edit less and tune in more, changing reality tunnels into reality labyrinths in good humour, there is unlikely to be the fabled phase transition... but it is coming. May Be. Trust me, I am an almost fully realised lunatic. Those with twofold vision will be unable to stop the wheel of evolution. As above, so below, inward is outward. Non simultaneously apprehended events....

China, seventy years of glorious and highly successful communism, well done to the personality cult of Winnie the Pooh. Took them this long to ban South Park. ARF. Don't forget kids, 'the imposition of order=escalation of chaos. The more laws there are, the more crime there will be.' Tell that to the judge...Remember...'The party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. IT WAS THEIR FINAL,MOST ESSENTIAL COMMAND' .1984

Trump said Greta Thunberg 'seems like a very happy girl looking forward to a bright and wonderful future. So nice to see!''. She then put that as her description on her facebook page:-) Goddess bless her. Fascinating but not surprising the papers with editors connected financially with concerns that involve oil etc, are writing editorials about how she is being manipulated and that her Asbergers (which she calls a superpower) makes her a loony. Love that she rejected the environmental award. And now she is Time magazine's Person of the Year, Trump will steam all the more and twitter out yet more methane. ('Every time he sits down, his voice gets muffled'.) Eve was the first human to think for herself...and men like you have never forgotten this eh? Grimly amazed to hear his female press secretary Grisham say his former Chief of Staff 'was totally unequipped to handle the genius of our great president'. She wasn't being sarcastic just applying more brown lipstick. North Korean platitudes in the USA. Cheese Boy and the Old Dotard, coming soon to a nightmare near you...

(A day after I wrote that paragraph, Trump did indeed tweet his disgust and jealous sarcasm, whereupon she promptly took his words once more and updated her biography again to 'A teenager working on her anger management problem. Currently chilling and watching a good old fashioned movie with a friend'. Perhaps she reminds him of a similar smart girl who refused his clumsy advances when he was that age and is seeking delayed revenge. Or just trying to make his oil/resource friends laugh. His gimp master Putin certainly is. 'Condemned to eternal bullshit' to quote Mr John Lydon. Meanwhile away from the chaos, the darkness and the gate of the land of Night and entropy defined as a gradual decline into disorder, some levity is needed to slow the descent into bleakness ...)

Artificial Intelligence is to be given intellectual property rights...is this really a good idea? Discuss between yourself. Being Terminated by a robot is bad enough but being sued by a machine? Or do the Free Laws apply here? Well, when we cannot believe what we see, we see what we can believe. The state is concentric but the individual is eccentric eh? A random shuffle of cut ups, amazing how often they can make coherent sense, depending on what state the brain is in...I used to be a Libertarian but they had too many rules.

Or, as Alien Sex Fiend once said..'Everybody wants what everybody's got and everybody's got what everybody wants,soldier lies bleeding where a church once stood.' I love you cos you got green hair...Live fast, die young and leave a beautiful corpse, like Curt Cobain. I am a work in regress. Conditioned reflexes are built onto the imprints. Imprints are only changed through work or by a shock of one type or another. Bad news for the lazy cowards among us. 'Apothecary, give me something to sweeten my imagination!'

...Some days later, a new campaign slogan from Boris to 'forge a new Britain'. In the meaning of fakery and counterfeits? I spent five minutes today reading Trump's Twitter account and felt my mind shivering in horror. This man seems to be seriously mentally ill. And suddenly impeachment (albeit a long time coming) is on the table. Lurve the quote today from a Republican that 'abuse of power is not a crime'. In a democratic country? Could he be dirt on the road by next year? A smear on the wind shield, a nasty smell in the corner of a locked room? Will the Land of the Free (ARF) have a fresh awakening? Delicious to hold this thought for a while.....

One week later...

And so it was that Boris won an outright majority. And that is where we are in Britain, the other choices were so dreadful, we chose the evil of three lessers. You CAN fool most of the people all of the time. Let's keep repeatedly mentioning the millions of pounds donated to his Conservative party by oligarchs, the four jobs he lost because of lying, the children he does not pay child support to, the absolute lack of respect he commands on the world stage, his endless endless mask of buffoonery, avoidance of questions with a charade of good humour, his lack of manners, ridiculous failed projects paid for by public money, his cover ups, Brexit NHS lies and...and... and all of this happened before he was elected prime minister. THAT'S how poor the alternatives were. And his friends who are shorting stocks in order to cash in on Brexit. These businessmen, like those in the apocalyptic religions, looking forward to the End, to be raised higher in the rapture of Big Money. Nice grip on decency and morality to wish for the destruction of your country for the sake of your pockets. Mutton dressed up as a wolf in a judas goat's clothing, bleating,'This is the way, follow me and ignore the rotating knives;...

Wish and hope to be proved wrong, I have no problem whatsoever with being shown I am wrong when I am. I learn something positive about human nature then and my cynicism is overcome for a while. Not sure what we offer the world other than what we already have given and of course, weapons. Our best minds fled to America, Switzerland, New Zealand etc a long time ago. I expect Scotland to rid herself of English bullshit in no short order. Much as the USA, we became united through violence, the force of manipulation and then the desire to be stronger together. If a large part of the kingdom wishes to split in order to maintain previous relations with Europe, who seem to have behaved far better to it than did England, then go for it ye Celts. Looks as if the English really enjoy being told what to do by posh boys with a shaky grasp of morals. Pathetic. If I wasn't a Christian I'd...oh wait, I'm not...

Sick of these alpha male dumb foul-hearted swine equating power with only brute force and see those who care to evolve as weak. Those who believe respect comes only through fear will have a rude awakening, sooner...or much later. 'So this is how liberty dies, with thunderous applause'.

And once again for all you Aristotelian black and white types, no I am not a Socialist or a Communist or a Liberal. I just have a deep dislike and mistrust of poncey arrogant lying snobs whose behaviour is far worse than those with a quarter of the education and opportunities they had. Again, perhaps I am wrong and Boris will suddenly rise and show his mettle and be the exact opposite of all he has been and done before. There is a percentage of possibility. My instinct says 'Don't hold yer breath'. Or...'All things are a coincidence of opposites' Bruno of Nola. So, hope.

Peptides select the reality you experience, so get working on widening the spectra of possibilities and get neurotransmitting all ye psychonauts...at least laugh more...

I am sure it seems lazy just to dump yet another load of favourite quotes in these blogs as ballast,with which to add weight to my rather vague or ranted writings but you deserve some actual mind food during these screeds eh? So...'...brains are made of cells which are made of atoms which are made of electrons which are superimpositions of waves'. And the waves are influenced by...'The hidden variable theory of consciousness asserts (1) there is a sub-quantal level beneath the observational/theoretical structure of ordinary quantum mechanics; (2) events occurring on this sub-quantal level are the elements of sentient being.' Dr. E H Walker and N Herbert. Page 174. I need add nothing to that because it is all there, but...Imagine, if you Will...

And thus...

'We find that our consciousness controls physical events through the laws of quantum mechanics'

'The sum total of all minds is one'. Schroedinger.

'I don't ask that my opinion be made into law'.The republican's favourite hated comedian Bill Maher, speaking about prejudices on weed, sex, comedy, childbirth, books, films etc etc. 'Society runs at the speed of its slowest member'...Thus spake Jim Jeffries, explaining very clearly why various human made laws exist...and why the 'train' of evolution is scarcely moving thanks to all the dead weight it has to pull behind the engine/the first car. (Where within, all the scientists, philosophers, poets and engineers are thinking...; If I just pull out this peg and separate the cars 'Do you know how fast we would be moving?' ) Go for it lucid 3D dreamers...soon.....

An insane God burning its infinite energy on lower things, well why not? It passes eternity in the Akashic hologram eh? 'The hardware remains local, but nobody can localize the software'. Hope this is clear enough.

'Beauty is nothing but the beginning of terror which we are barely able to endue and we are so awed because it serenely disdains to annihilate us. Rainer Maria Rilke. while listening to Swans from another dimension. I have never read anything from RMR, Kahil Gibran or Rumi that wasn't as magickal as Blake or Yeats. Eternity manifested in the light of day, something infinite behind everything appeared...

Time for us to step back out and away from all the old repeating news. To pay it no mind and certainly no heart. Just let go and leave it behind, allow them to get on with their ruin as we step discreetly to one side. Play your part by standing apart.

A lot of this year has felt pretty foul for various self induced reasons but has been enlightened (literally) considerably by good friends, great books, a couple of summer months on weed, and the beauty, grace, blood and power of PJ Harvey, Thighpaulsanndra, Puscifer, Swans, Killing Joke and the immortal COIL. Readers, I wish you a healthy, good hearted 2020... See you later, perhaps in a fulgurous exhalation conglobed in a cloud by the circumfused humour...

'If you have been on the upside of luck, build longer bridges, not higher fences'

SPIRAL OUT...KEEP GOING...AND ILLUMINISE NOW )+( LOVE.

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