#exploring more with transcript formatting

[smidgen-of-hotboy]

Our Angel of Brahma, pt. iii

Me: I gotta stop writing this so I can finish something else for once. Also Me: continues writing this.

@ceaseless-watchers-special-girl @ananxiousgenz @demonic-panini @the-private-eye @gwenlena

SOUND: COMMS BEEPS. RECORDING BEGINS. SOUND: BEDSHEETS RUSTLING. Younger Revolutionary: Mm'arlie? What're you– Mm'arlie: Go back to sleep, Baird.  (MUFFLED LAUGHTER) I'll be back soon enough, just gotta… think about some things.  SOUND: BARE FEET ON TILE. Mm'arlie:  (SIGH) Where do I begin?  Baird’s mom went missing two years ago. She tucked him in, told him a bedtime story about the Revolutionary, and then closed the door. When he got up the next morning, she was gone. I came over and we waited outside on the steps for hours. She never came back from where ever.  We waited three days doing the same thing over and over. My parents fed him each day. And on the fourth day, his father showed up with his spouse. Baird isn't close with his Dad. And he hates their spouse. He didn't want them to stay with him but my family can't afford to take care of another mouth forever. My parents love Baird. But they can't raise another kid right now.  (GRUNT) SOUND: MM'ARLIE SITTING DOWN. Mm'arlie: So his daddy came back to pick up where his Mom left, and his step-parent tried to make amends. It's… it's been a rough couple of years… Earlier today, the System went down for maintenance, so the Constables were out patrolling all day. Baird was with me, completing an odd job brushing dust off the daycare windows for Mrs. Darius. Baird’s Dad didn't come home last night. So it was just him and their step-parent eating dinner. Lentils and fried spam.  Baird and I finished brushing the dust off the windows around noon. We still had plenty of time to pick up another job before we had to go our separate ways. So we went back to his apartment block to grab something to eat and collect our pay before we went looking. There was a crowd gathered outside Baird’s apartment. We pushed through hoping to slip inside unnoticed. I wasn't paying attention, Baird grabbed my shirt sleeve, and when I looked back– the were four Constables beating a man. Baird’s face went grey.  It was his father.  Wherever he went last night, they found him today, and they were– they were doing it in broad daylight. His spouse ran down the apartment steps and pushed me and Baird aside.  I watched them fall towards Baird’s Dad and shield his body with theirs. I watched the Constables pair up two-on-one and pry them apart. I watched Baird’s Dad sock one of them in the jaw and grab his spouse by the front of their shirt. They kissed. And when the Constables pulled them apart and dragged him away, he was singing. Crying, bruised, but singing.  The two Constable’s holding his spouse threw them aside. They didn’t say anything but there was a promise for later. They’ll come back for them, Later. (ANOTHER SIGH) Baird and their step-parent are staying with my family tonight. We're going to figure something out tomorrow but… I don't think there's going to be much to figure out. My family is Baird’s family. His Mom was my Spare Mom. We can't afford another mouth. There's hardly enough work to go around… My Dearest Baird, if you're listening to this I'm sorry. I didn't want to upset you anymore than you already are. I wish Brahma was a free planet and I wish I could see you dancing and singing on stage, on a stream. It's where you belong. I want to raise you out of this mess and bring your Mom back. I'm so sorry, Baird.  (SNIFFLING)  SOUND: SCENE FADES, RECORDING ENDS.   SOUND: COMMS BEEPING, NEXT RECORDING STARTS.  Baird: I forgive you, Charlie. 

- The Revoluationary is named Baird, and Mm’arlie is Charlie (the one who later gave them the book. Side Note: I HAVE OBTAINED A COPY!! THANK YOU FRANNIE!!) The first recording is “two years after Baird’s Mom disappeared”, unclear when the second recording was made (possibly a day later?) Baird mentioned in the very first recording I heard a “mother who tucked her children into bed a final time” and a “husband who pressed a bruising kiss against his spouse's mouth”, this had to be in reference to their own parents. NEED TO PINPOINT ROUGH ESTIMATE OF AGES, CREATE TIMELINE OF EVENTS STARTING WITH PETER NUREYEV (Should I ask Frannie? She seems just as invested as I am but I’m not too certain when I’ll see her next.) Baird is the one singing in the other recording? His voice sounds… enchanting. Full of longing.

[encyclopediacr]

Last month year at the wiki — 2023

As we all head into our second full week of 2024 (already!), we at Encyclopedia Exandria are taking the time to look back at what we accomplished in 2023 in this special edition of Last Month At The Wiki.

Encyclopedia Exandria reached its first anniversary in June 2023. We the editors are still proud of our decision to become an independent wiki, and we continue to work hard on our coverage of all things happening at Critical Role Productions. Here's a look at some of the work last year:

We moved episode transcripts into their own special namespace in February. Check out the post about the change and what this meant for the wiki. We also started creating transcripts in languages other than English.

Cuisine for Exandria is a wonderful new article from 2023! We're looking toward creating more broad topic articles like that one in the future.

In April, we completed a first pass rewriting text plagiarized from episodes. This was an issue inherited when we split into our own wiki in 2022 that affected especially late Campaign 1 and early Campaign 2 articles. We've been working on it ever since and continue to work toward a plagiarism-free wiki.

We've done a lot of work on Campaign 1 items! Some notable additions and overhauls include: Horn of Fog, Bloodseeker, Mantle of the Tempest, Circlet of Wisdom, Titanstone Knuckles, and Philter of Love.

Articles for Geek & Sundry era Critical Role episodes were updated to include current thumbnails, tabbed in the infobox behind the originals. It's been wonderful to cross that longstanding item off the to do list. Check out examples at Vorugal (episode) and The Chapter Closes.

Midst and Candela Obscura joined the channel in 2023. We're pleased to be covering both shows as well, but it's hard to link to all of it here. You can navigate through our Midst and Candela Obscura topics off the main articles and using the navboxes at the bottom.

All character articles now have verified "Appearances and mentions" sections! Before we were an independent wiki, character articles had these sections collated using a script from a list that used to live in the infoboxes and from "Featured characters" sections on episode articles. These lists were slowly checked manually to ensure that they they were properly formatted, organized, and correct. That work is finally completed.

With the Frozen Sick topic completed this year, we now have complete coverage for all adventures in Explorer's Guide to Wildemount!

Over time, we changed the way we formatted our 4-Sided Dive articles. Earlier articles were finally brought into line with the newer formatting this year, delivering information to you in a more consistent manner. Such quality of life maintenance for readers often goes unnoticed but is critical to ease of use.

Some other new articles that we're real proud of this year? Battle of the Red Center, Quest for Vestiges, Angels of Iron conspiracy, Currency, Fjord's crew, and Comics.

This is not nearly all of the work we've done. It's only a small slice of the work we accomplished and are proud of in 2023. If you've got a favorite update to the wiki not mentioned here—a new article, an overhaul, a quality of life change, or a backend update—let us know!

If you want to contribute to the wiki in 2024, we welcome you! Our wiki is open to editing by all readers, and our coverage is maintained and improved by our community. Everything from plot summary additions to spelling and grammar corrections are an immense help. If you need any help, feel free to check in with us on article talk pages and at the wiki's Discord.

We hope to continue to maintain this wiki throughout this year.

[radiomogai]

calling all LIOM blogs

one of the pages in our tag guide is for blog recommendations, and we're hoping to start filling it up today! the blog recommendations page is intended to be a way for people to explore more LIOM and MOGAI blogs, to promo other blogs, and to help boost smaller blogs. we'll be including not just coining blogs, but also hoard blogs, edit blogs, transcription blogs, and really anything that has to do with any aspect of LIOM. with that said, if you're interested on having your blog featured on it, please let us know through a reblog, comment, ask, etc! in addition, we'll be going around and asking blogs if we can feature them on the page as well

each blog will be put under a section of the page {archive, coining, collection/hoard, edit/flags, mixed, personal, transcription}, with their blog's icon, a short description, and a link. if you want to provide your own icon and/or description however, you're more than welcome to!!

the page can be found here (https://roomy-cold-f3c.notion.site/Blog-Recs-e6e596c3b51a435c92992c2ee58e0262). the formatting is mostly done, although we need to fix the transparent squares thing, and mostly just needs the content for now

let us know if you want to be untagged!! @revenant-coining @hypnosiacon @mogai-sunflowers @neopronouns @cielos--angelphilia @noxwithoutstars @jackettranscribes

[sunmontuewrites]

Anyone with a Masters degree in materials engineering (or potentially related field) background looking for a PhD scholarship in New Zealand? I'm about to post this on my work LinkedIn...

PhD scholarship – Large format 3D printing with biocomposites

Background: We have a fully-funded PhD scholarship as part of the MBIE Endeavour project “Āmiomio Aotearoa: A Circular Economy for the Wellbeing of New Zealand”. The project is a collaboration between universities, research institutes, industry, community groups and government ministries hosted by the School of Engineering at Waikato University. It aims to pave the way through materials science, engineering, energy, economics, kaupapa Māori, business, law and regulation, social science and public policy for a more sustainable New Zealand.

As a PhD student at the University of Waikato, you would be focused on advancing sustainable manufacturing practices through the development and application of biocomposites.

The successful candidate will explore the use of biopolymers, recycled thermoplastics, and natural fibres to formulate high-performance biocomposites suitable for large format 3D printing (furniture, small structures, interior design). The research will delve into multiple aspects of these materials, including their performance, printability, design optimisation, and life cycle assessment.

This interdisciplinary project provides a unique opportunity to contribute to cutting-edge research at the intersection of materials science, environmental sustainability, and advanced manufacturing technologies. We invite passionate and driven individuals to join our team and contribute to this transformative research endeavour.

Your ideal background:

MSc/ME in a related Science/Engineering discipline

experience with natural materials

familiar with CAD design and 3D printing is a plus

experience in life cycle assessment is a plus

a willingness to learn, up-skill and work in multidisciplinary group

a professional attitude, good writing and time management skills

resilience to take on the challenge of the research experience

Value: a stipend of NZ$30,000 per year, domestic tuition fees and insurance, and support for research materials.

Application documents required

CV including contact details for 2-3 referees (including at least one academic reference)

Academic transcript from previous study undertaken (and thesis if available/applicable)

A personal statement (max 1 page) describing your motivation, interests and background related to the research project

English language Certificate where English is not the first language (IELTS/TOEFL)

LINKEDIN for contact details of the guy and you can see he's got the scholarship listed as well.

[macy-does-lang-stuff]

Old Project

So basically this was a project I worked on in the summer of last year, before I abandoned it to focus on school. I worked on it for a month or two, but unfortunately never got around to naming it. I think I partially quit the project because it had a ridiculously complicated tonal system and a bunch of weird consonants, which made IPA transcription super tedious. With that out of the way, here's a quick(ish) overview of it:

Fundamental Ideas (the concepts I wanted to explore in the project)

Semitic-style consonantal roots, but with vowels instead (I'll get to that later)

Four-vowel system: /a/, /i/, /u/, and /ə/

Tonality and length: á (short high), a (short mid), à (short low), â (rising), ǎ (falling), a̋ (long high), ȁ (long low), ā (long mid)

No rhotic sounds

VSO sentence structure (ex. "Baked the baker a cake")

CCVVCC syllable structure

Base eight

No articles

(I'm sure you can already see that I was trying waaaay too hard to make it unique)

Phonetic Inventory

Phonemes are romanized as follows (ipa / romanised): a / a i / i u / u ə / e p / b pʰ / p t̪ / d t̪ʰ / t c / gy cʰ / ky k / g kʰ / k m / m n̪ / n ɲ / ny ŋ / ng ɸ / f β / v θ / th ð / dh ʃ / s ʒ / z ç / h ʝ / j x / kh ɣ / gh

Tonality and length are romanised as follows:

a̋ (long high) á (short high) ā (long mid) a (short mid) ȁ (long low) à (short low) â (rising) ǎ (falling)

/ə/ cannot have altered tone or length There are long versions of fricatives and nasals for when two of them are written in a row. For instance, if a consonant template goes p_p_n, and is filled in with e_ǐn_u, making it pepǐnnu, it would be pronounced /pəpǐnːu/.

Grammar

Verb-Subject-Object sentences (eg. “Rode I my bike” or “Baked he a cake”)

Adjectives and adverbs after nouns and verbs (eg. “the cat black” or “the woman old and wise” and “running fast” or “slept peacefully”)

To ask someone to do something/suggest something, use negative verb forms

A Sample Translation

Format:

Original text Romanized translation [Linguistic gloss] /IPA transcription/ “More direct translation back into English”

For example:

Would you mind running to the market for me? 

fǔùn hatāj nyá, vúkyhekyâkyá būthāekh.

 [2SG.POSS will.N in, intention-NEG-go.FUT market.]

/fǔùn̪ çat̪ʰāʝ ɲá, βúcʰçəcʰâcʰá būθāəx/

“By your will, won’t you go to the market?”

Looking back on it, that was an absolute abomination. I'd to to see you all's abominable past creations as well!

[letstalkwhump]

Let's Talk Whump! No. 18

Welcome to Let’s Talk Whump, a series of interviews that spotlight the amazing people in our whump community! I’m Malice and I’ll be your host today. 

Today I’m talking whump with the amazing @crash-bump-bring-the-whump! 

Great to have you here, @crash-bump-bring-the-whump! Before we begin, do you mind sharing a little bit about yourself?

Hi! I’m Ruin, I’m a graphic designer and I love horror, drawing, and playing video games!

Alrighty, let’s get started! What does whump mean to you? 

Whump is the juicy bits of a story! It’s the conflict, the agony, the struggle! The good stuff that we’re all here for.

How did you find the whump community?

I found it because I was poking around for more hurt/comfort things to read! @friendlylocalwhumper and @sweetwhumpandhellacomf were actually the first blogs I followed! Lux and the Hunter, and Valerie and Eos were what inspired me to make my own blog. 

Do you feel like your view on whump has  changed since you joined?

Ohhh man all that’s super changed is that I’ve found more tropes that I like! I knew fevers and environmental and self-sacrifice whump were favs, like who doesn’t love a good sickfic or someone taking a bullet for their loved one, but I also really really discovered my love of gore and lab whump, which are just amazing. 

Everyone’s favourite topic: whump tropes! Which are your favourites?

Oh man, so many right now! I love a good drowning, and bouts of hypothermia are fantastic. Those tend to go hand-in-hand though so I usually feel blessed when I find stuff with those. I also love a good fever, “Stay with me”, kidnapping, and self-sacrifice though I’m not as big a fan of death, so this usually also includes intensive caretaking and probably a lot of worry from the other characters which is also amazing.

And your favourite piece you've written?

Oh this is hard, I have a few favorites! 

If I can cheat a little bit and name two, the first is MO-1620, which is my current fav OC Mariano’s prison psych transcript! It was super experimental for me, and I had a blast getting to explore his feelings about his imprisonment and how he sees himself versus the reality of his actions and behavior and circumstances. And the second is my first BTHB 2023 fill, for Possession ! I’d gotten House of Leaves for Christmas one year and the formatting just really grabbed me, so I wanted to try playing with that! Plus I love a good human AU, and my OC Will was too perfect for this prompt.

I love the style and formatting of MO-1620! That’s such a unique idea! Do you have a writing routine?

I usually write during the night! I usually have some flavored water, probably a little snack, and I definitely write best if I can just get a big chunk out at once. I try to write regularly while not putting pressure on myself, so it winds up being every few days at least, unless I’m just super grabbed by something and it won’t let go of my brain.

Is there an easy thing for you to write or anything you struggle with?

Oh I love writing horror. If I can incorporate horror into something, or explore what I think is scary about a situation, then it flows SUPER well. Or if I’m getting to do something with a lot of dialogue. Or lately, smut, because consensual NSFW writing has really been going well too.

I also tend to struggle with delving more into environmental, in-depth descriptions. Or diving hardcore into tactics with my military whump stuff because I…am not a clever man sometimes.  Also patiently staying on a linear timeline is the worst. I can never do it. Which sucks, because it puts me in a situation like now, where I KNOW how a bunch of characters WILL be and I want to write about it publicly NOW but first I have to REINTRODUCE them AND get them through the initial “I want to kill you here and now” conflict. 

Is there anything you're working on at the moment?

I’m working on so much right now! I do written roleplays, my drafts are 15 posts deep, and that’s not even counting my random google docs. Uh I’m working on introducing Mariano’s war buddies again, a bunch of smut, I have a grim reaper fighting a losing battle against a demon, a prompt game request for a friend, a response piece for my co writer, more therapy vignettes for said war buddies, and– you get the picture!

Sounds like you’re pretty swamped! Do you have any advice you’d like to share?

Write what makes you excited! If you don’t want to read what you’re writing, change it! Make it self indulgent! Make more OCs that are specifically catered to you and what you love and want to see! That’s more fun to read anyway, honestly, I love seeing passion!

Shout out to your favourite writing/whump blogs, bffs or people who've inspired you. We're hyping everyone up here!!!

YEAH HERE WE GO! I’ll shout out my co writer @brinkofdiscovery, my bestie @friendlylocalwhumper, my accomplices @comfy-whumpee , @that-one-thespian, and @painful-pooch, uh god there are so many more people. So many people are so sweet! @actress4him, and @inscrutable-shadow, and like everyone in the various servers I’m in, I can’t name everyone or this post would get so obscenely long so quickly… 

Anything you'd like to add?

Thank you for this!! It’s super fun to see this happening, and I like getting to see everyone talking about stuff.

Thanks so much for joining us today!

And to all you folks at home, have a whumpder-ful day!

[insidemyfavoritemanuscript]

Episode 18: Olivia Baskerville on the Great Survey, the Greek New Testament, and the history of England

Pages from the Codex Sinaiticus (l) and The Domesday Book (r)

In Episode 18 of Inside My Favorite Manuscript, we have a two-fer! Dot and Lindsey chat with Olivia Baskerville about her two favorite manuscripts: The Domesday Book and the Codex Sinaiticus. The Domesday Book, completed in 1086, documents a tax survey taken of most of England and parts of Wales after the Norman Conquest, while Codex Sinaiticus is a complete copy of the New Testament, written in Greek in the 4th century and sold to England by the Soviet Union in 1933. While very different in form and content, both manuscripts have played important roles in English culture, and we'll spend most of our time talking about the politics surrounding their creation and use over the course of England's history.

Listen here, or wherever you find your podcasts.

Below the cut are more images and links relevant to the conversation.

The Domesday Book at the National Archives (includes digitized images taken from the 1986 photographic facsimile, free to download in PDF format if you sign in)

Open Domesday (includes digital images taken from the 1850s photozincographic reproduction of Domesday, made by Ordnance Survey in Southampton. As Andrew Prescott points out on Twitter, the plates used to make this facsimile have been cleaned up and some marginalia removed)

Page of the Domesday book showing Bedford in Bedfordshire (image from the National Archives)

Codex Sinaiticus (transcription and digital images)

Codex Sinaiticus fol. 217b, the opening of the Book of Mark

The same page within the context of the website, transcription and translation on the right.

Example of a Canon Table from British Library Burney 41, f. 19v. From left to right, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John showing the divisions that were used before the invention of the modern system of chapter and verses. The numbers in the columns will be written alongside the text in the main part of the Bible. (Wikipedia page on Eusebian Canons)

The canon table that Olivia mentioned, from the Codex Amiatinus (digitized online at the Library of Congress)

Codex Sinaiticus fol. 217b, zoom in on the bottom right under standard light.

Codex Sinaiticus fol. 217b, zoom in on the bottom right margin under raking light. The ruling is so clear!

Wikipedia page on the Soviet sale of paintings from the Hermitage Museum (which happened around the same time that the Codex Sinaiticus was sold)

Newsreel Footage of Codex Sinaiticus from 1933, blog post by Brent Nongbri includes the movie footage embedded.

The CULTIVATE MSS project (2019-2024), funded by the European Research Council, explores how the trade in medieval manuscripts between 1900 and 1945 affected the development of ideas about the nature and value of European culture during this period. (Project website)

The Cost of Culture, the podcast of the CULTIVATE MSS project

[organchordsandlightning]

Ooo can u rec a few of ur fav horror books love love love spooky reads :)

🤩oh man here we go let me open the book. a bunch of them under the cut!

Haunted House Classic - The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson Not the first haunted house story by any means, but a lot of modern haunted house stories draw from this one specifically. A wealthy old man invites a group of people to investigate his house to find concrete proof of the supernatural, only for things to go awry as they realize the house is haunted. Gets really mind-trippy towards the end. Modern - The Hacienda by Isabel Cañas Our protagonist marries a rich man to escape a life of poverty and gain some stability in the aftermath of the overthrow of the Mexican government. As she stays at the hacienda, however, it becomes very clear that something is haunting and watching her every move -- as the staff vehemently deny anything happened to the master of the house's first wife, the protagonist turns to an unorthodox priest for help.

Humor

Grady Hendrix is probably the biggest name in horror-comedy right now, and I'm really enjoying his stuff! My favorite so far of his is How to Sell A Haunted House: in the aftermath of her parents' sudden death, a young woman returns home with her burnout brother to try and figure out what to do with her parents' sizable (and possibly haunted) puppet collection. Really tugs at the heartstrings with the plot being utterly off the wall. Also enjoyed Southern Book Club Guide's to Slaying Vampires by him, about a small southern town that realizes they have a vampire in their midst!

Shlocky

I always have to recommend Riley Sager's books because they feel like reading a B-list horror film: they can be silly, they can be a little shallow, they can be full of unnecessary twists, but they're also a lot of fun and feel like they run with a lot of horror tropes. Home Before Dark is his best-known: growing up, the protagonist's parents exploited the so-called spookiness of their family home (very much a la Amityville Horror). As an adult, she returns to her childhood home and realizes it might not all have been fake.

Sci-Fi Horror

The Annihilation series by Jeff VanDerMeer is really good: a group of scientists given only by their title (the biologist, etc) explore this strange new territory filled with secrets and suspicious creatures, only to realize they may have a traitor in their midst. The first of this series is my favorite, and the dream-like narration might not be for everyone, but the imagery is stunning (and if you do read and like it, audio drama Syntax is heavily inspired by it!)

The Last Astronaut by David Wellington: My god, an asteroid is about to hit Earth (very, very slowly!). To investigate what it's about and how to stop it, a former astronaut and their team go to explore it... only to realize there's more secrets than they realize lying inside, and that it may not be an asteroid after all. Really spooky, ending made me emotional.

Fake Oral Histories (Oral Histories are some of my favorite subgenres of books in general! Basically like World War Z - not written in explicit prose format, but taking advantage of other ways of displaying the story - newspaper articles, interview transcripts, court hearings, etc!)

Devolution: A Firsthand Account of the Rainier Sasquatch Massacre by Max Brooks - Speaking of, the guy who wrote World War Z! A town is found massacred, seemingly by the mythic Bigfoot. Journals and various other articles are found around town that explain the weeks leading up to the final slaughter. Really tense, had a lot of fun.

A History of Fear by Luke Dumas - Grayson Hale, AKA the Devil's Advocate Killer, was sentenced for the murder of his fellow graduate student. His account of what happened is found in his jail cell following his death, where he describes how he was approached by a man who he believes to be the actual devil. The framing device for the book is an editor trying to explore more about the Hale case, and it is really fun seeing the editor's version of the story (interviewing people in the Hale statement, seeing conflicting newspaper articles, etc) and how it compares with Hale's. I do have to give a massive religious trauma/homophobia CW on this one though.

Fantasticland by Mike Bockoven - I have commitment issues about calling any singular book my favorite, but Fantasticland holds a special place in my heart. In short: a series of interviews from a bunch of Disneyland-esque theme park workers, mostly teenagers, about an incident in the park. A hurricane forced everyone to evacuate but the employees, who hid in underground bunkers. Soon they emerge to see the damage, but in the several weeks it takes for the flooding to clear, all social order breaks down and gangs start to form: the Pirates, the ShopGirls, the Freaks, the Mole People, all based on different areas of the park. I just think it's really cleverly done and a lot of fun (and also, you know, a little horrifying).

[thehorrortree]

Deadline: February 29th, 2024 Payment: 0.015 per word Theme: A chronicle of something speculative fiction related (see below for more details!) Note: The pay is a bit lower than what we usually would list, however we don't always see newer podcasts pop up and thought it could be interesting for those who want to get in on the ground floor. A brand new audible zine centering the bizarre, the horrifying, and the what-ifs. New Episodes bi-monthly with an exciting new theme every time. Imagine attending an open mic story-telling night in the cellar of that haunted house on the hill or the canteen of a starship that traverses time and dark dimensions. What stories would you hear? Would they inspire awe or disgust? Hope in the future or existential dread? Genres: Sci-fi, Slipstream, Weird Fiction, Near-Future, Retellings, Folk-Tales, Fantasy, Magical Realism, Surrealism, Cosmic Horror, Dark Fantasy, Speculative… Formats: Mainly Short Stories, Poetry, Flash Fiction, Short Plays/Extracts, (but open to) Personal Stories, Dreams/Nightmares, Songs, Soundscapes, Fictional or Real Mini-Docs, Interviews, and whatever else you can dream up… CURRENT THEME: THE CHRONICLE Imagine the diary of an awakening A.I.'s consciousness, ship logs chronicling a perilous journey through an ominous patch of space, an unearthed time capsule housing century-old audio solving an enigmatic mystery. Does your chronicle unravel the epic tale of a forgotten civilization’s rise and fall or narrate the everyday escapades of a lone passenger adrift at sea? Perhaps your chronicle is a tangible artifact, a relic hidden by a secretive order, demanding protection... or destruction. Think intricate field notes of a planetary explorer, official documents from the desk of a demon, heartfelt letters exchanged between lovers existing in parallel dimensions, and ancient spells encapsulated in a mystical grimoire. Each entry unfolding a unique tale, from the artificial to the mystical… Send Your Submissions Here thelostpoetryclub@gmail.com Submission Guidelines: Original work only Compensation: 0.015 per word Up to 5 mins or 500 words for poetry/flash fiction/songs Up to 15 mins or 1800-3000 words for short stories/plays Include your name in the file name and the current theme in the subject of your email. You can either submit a recording of your work to be aired or a written version to be recorded/dramatised by us. Written work should be shared as a Google doc or docx file. Recorded work as a high-quality mp3/wav file (accompanied by a Google doc or docx transcript) to thelostpoetryclub@gmail.com If the current theme doesn’t suit, please feel free to send in your work anyway at any time, as it may be suitable and used for future themes. Clarkesworld’s list of “Hard Sells” is a good guide for what not to submit Current Deadline: Feb 29th 2024 Via: The Lost Poetry Club.

[stormblessed95]

Hi I’m an 8th/9th grade teacher and I’m looking to buy some new books for my classroom and you seem to be reading a lot of YA recently!! Would you mind sharing some recommendations you think are uh appropriate for me to purchase through the school? You seem to read a lot of fantasy/sci fi/romance which is a lot of what my kids like 🥰 thanks!

YA fantasy/scifi and romance! Yessss I can!

I just finished Legendborn by Tracy Deonn and started it's sequel today and it was AMAZING. Highly recommend. It's a King Author + magic retelling, Black Main Character written by a Black Author and done SO WELL because duh, own voices. It's dark academia fantasy and such a killer debut novel FOR SURE. And it's got a the classic YA love triangle and some romance thrown in too. Plus February is Black History Month, great time to support BIPOC authors 💜 (Duolgoy)

Scythe by Neil Shusterman is a YA SciFi dystopian and its SO GOOD. It's a story about how in the future, death no longer exists. The only way a human can die is by being gleaned, aka murdered, by the Scythes. They are trained to deal out death to those who deserve it and contain the human population in the most humane way possible. Yet, there is lots of betrayals and power plays and double crossings happening between those in power of the Sycthe organization. And yes, a very cute side plot romance here too (Trilogy)

The Summoning by Kelley Armstrong. It's a YA Paranormal Urban Fantasy. It's actually like the YA verison of one of my favorite adult series of hers and it's set in the same world with little Easter eggs connecting the series. But can be read as a standalone trilogy. It follows Chloe discovering she is a necromancer and thrust into this supernatural world and all that comes with it, including a werewolf love interest and the classic YA love triangle and romance. Still so good honestly too. (Trilogy)

This Savage Song by V.E. Schwab. It's a YA Dark Urban Fantasy that basically explores the overall themes of how humans can be the monsters too. It's SO GOOD. Basically 2 kids of powerful men on either side of a war that is destroying their city, must choose whether to become heroes or villains—and friends or enemies—with the future of their home at stake.... and while one is human, one might be something else entirely 👀 Literally it's so good. And yes, it does end up having romance too (Duology)

Cemetery Boys by Aiden Thomas. It's a YA Paranormal fantasy story about a gay trans boy who while trying to get his family to accept both his gender and his powers (the men are traditionally spirit guides and the women are healers), accidentally summons a ghost, who then refuses to move on. And yes, its got a VERY sweet and cute romance here too. Plus own voices trans rep (Standalone)

Illuminae Files by Jay Kristoff and Amie Kaufman. A YA SciFi Trilogy where it's one of the most unique formats of crafting a story I've ever read. It's told through a series of files and emails and transcripts and it's SO FUN. It follows the story of Kady and Ezra and the journey they go on after their tiny space mining colony was attacked and destroyed. And oh yeah, they had just recently broken up but they Still love each other 😏 and what in the AI happens in this book too! Lol (Trilogy)

And I really wasn't kidding about it being a uniquely written book and yet somehow the audiobooks are just as well done too lol

Warcross by Marie Lu. A SciFi YA Dystopian Novel that is basically like an emersive video game. It follows our main character as she becomes lowkey a spy and bounty hunter. Yes, it's got romance and betrayal and plot twists and rainbow hair and constant reminders that nothing is truly as it seems. And it's so good. (Duology)

As always, make sure you look up content warnings. I didn't list them here this time. But these are all scifi/fantasy YA novels that include a fun romantic side plot that I've LOVED when I read them. Hope this helps and thanks for asking! I have more I can suggest too of course

[exeggcute]

Metal Gear Solid - Story Recap & Timeline

since I couldn't find this anywhere accessible online, here's a transcription of the "Story Recap" and "Timeline: Major Events" sections of Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain: The Complete Official Guide (Collector’s Edition). these are just bonus sections accompanying the official MGSV game guide, but, like the game guide itself, I thought these recaps were pretty well-written and just generally illuminating. even as a longtime fan, this is the first time that's metal gear's infamously byzantine plot has almost made sense to me lol.

being part of an officially sanctioned game guide, I'd imagine this is more or less accurate across the board, but with metal gear being metal gear I'm sure there's a handful of points in here that are either misconstrued or otherwise up for debate.

long post incoming below the readmore... and when I say "long" I mean LONG. (although if mile-long tumblr posts aren't your thing, here's a google doc instead.)

A FEW NOTES FROM THE TRANSCRIBER:

The following content was sourced from Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain: The Complete Official Guide (Collector’s Edition) and has been reproduced here for non-commercial educational purposes only.

I’ve attempted to preserve the original formatting from The Complete Official Guide as much as possible. That said, there may be some errors throughout, particularly in the form of omitted or garbled words; my apologies for any confusion this entails.

The Complete Official Guide has a policy (allegedly at the request of Konami itself, lol) of not revealing Ishmael’s true identity—I’d assume this is because the game guide was released in sync with MGSV and they wanted to keep some of the surprise intact. As such, there’s a lot of wink-wink-nudge-nudge language around the whole Big Boss/Venom Snake thing (and not much explicit acknowledgement of how this impacts the story), but it’s not too hard to read between the lines here. 

Metal Gear Solid – Story Recap

The story of the Metal Gear series spans over one hundred years, from the origins of The Philosophers in the early 1900s to the conclusion of Metal Gear Solid 4 in 2014. Each game is broadly a self-contained episode, yet they are all intricately interwoven; to have missed an installment can rob certain encounters or revelations of their full impact. In this extensive story recap, we explore the key moments and developments in the Metal Gear canon to enable readers, die-hards and newcomers alike, to better enjoy this absorbing tale. The density and complexity of the plot is such that we have deliberately, albeit with great regret, omitted a number of characters and events in an effort to make the overall picture more accessible.

Early 1900s

The starting point of the Metal Gear saga, the creation of The Philosophers, occurred during the early 1900s. This unique and deeply secretive organization was established by a select group of eminent figures from the three countries that were to dominate the century that lay ahead: the United States, Russia and China. Together, these individuals amassed a functionally boundless supply of funds, known as The Philosophers’ Legacy, that they believed would be sufficient to win any present or future world conflict. Those who wield the resources to wage war also possess the means to prevent it, and the Philosophers sought to achieve this noble goal by using their incredible resources and powerful influence to steer world history away from brutal, needless warfare. However, with time and the death of its founding members, the raison d’étre of this clandestine committee was gradually corrupted; the Philosophers’ philosophy was not passed on to posterity. In the confusion and chaos that ensued after the Second World War, the U.S.S.R.—or, more precisely, an individual named Volgin—gained sole possession of the Philosophers’ Legacy. This development is the catalyst for the events of Metal Gear Solid 3.

1964 - Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater

During the Cold War, the U.S. and U.S.S.R. were obliged to respect the doctrine of “mutual assured destruction”: the fact that a nuclear strike by one nation would inevitably lead the other to retaliate with equal or greater force. With outright conflict impractical and unconscionable due to the inconceivable horrors that it would inevitably unleash, the nations instead rattled their figurative sabers in proxy wars on both actual and ideological battlefields.

The events of Metal Gear Solid 3 take place in 1964 in the context of the Cuban Missile Crisis, a breakdown in diplomacy that brought both superpowers closer to Armageddon than ever before or since. This is but a backdrop, however: the true story of Metal Gear Solid 3 concerns the fight between the three countries that created the Philosophers’ Legacy to retrieve it from the clutches of Colonel Volgin.

An American agent (Naked Snake), part of a CIA special services division called FOX, and supported by a remote team that includes his commander (Major Zero), is sent into Soviet territory by the U.S. secret services. The objectives of his mission are to:

Destroy the Shagohod, a weapon so powerful that it could disrupt the delicate balance that prevents nuclear warfare between the two superpowers;

Assassinate Colonel Volgin, the man in sole possession of The Philosophers’ Legacy, who plans to overthrow Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev’s government and use the Shagohod weapon to enable the U.S.S.R. to win the Cold War;

Execute “The Boss”, the most renowned U.S. secret agent of all time, and Naked Snake's mentor, who chose against all odds to betray her country and join forces with Colonel Volgin, providing him with two U.S.-made portable nuclear warheads as a token of her sincerity.

A master in the arts of infiltration and survival techniques, Naked Snake succeeds, after a torturously demanding mission, in destroying the Shagohod and eliminating Volgin and The Boss. It becomes clear, in the end, that the defection of The Boss was an uncompromising deception designed to enable her to approach Volgin and play an integral, irreplaceable role in the retrieval of the Philosophers’ Legacy and the prevention of nuclear war. Her final duty was to accept her role as a traitor to the last, and die at the hands of her apprentice in order to conceal the facts of her mission. It is also revealed that Ocelot, a young prodigy of the Russian military who was seemingly loyal to Volgin, was actually a double agent working for the United States government.

The biological son of The Boss, he in fact helped recover the microfilm containing the access codes to The Philosophers’ Legacy (or, as we later learn, half of it), and was working to further the interests of the CIA the whole time.

The Boss is certainly the one who knew best what the whole incident had in store for her. A patriot to the very last, she accepted the sacrifice of dying for her country by assuming the tawdry mantle of a turncoat. Naked Snake finally comprehends the gravity of her gesture at the conclusion of the adventure. His grief and disenchantment are heightened by the sheer perversity of his subsequent elevation to the rank of “Big Boss” by the superiors that so casually discarded his predecessor, the woman he worshipped above all others.

This was the price of The Boss's ideal, the cost of her commitment. She was ready to die for the way of life she freely chose, the expression of liberty that she lived for. The death of The Boss is a shockwave that reverberates throughout the entire Metal Gear Solid series. Though the light of every individual is inevitably extinguished on one fateful day or another, some continue to illuminate the world they left behind for many years to come. Others, by the same token, cast long shadows...

Early 1970s - Creation of Cipher

In the aftermath of The Boss’s death, Major Zero and Big Boss (Naked Snake, having accepted his new title) choose to embrace the ideals that they believe The Boss held dear. Her willingness to surrender all for the protection of her country leaves an indelible impression, and leads to the creation of Cipher in 1970.

Led by Major Zero in person, and co-founded by Big Boss and Ocelot (among other select associates), Cipher is envisaged by its creators as both a powerful intelligence agency serving broad North American interests, but also a benevolent steering committee seeking to benefit the global community as a whole—a reimagined version of the original Philosophers, bankrolled by a huge portion of their precursors’ funds retrieved, in secret, after Operation Snake Eater. Under the specific auspices of Major Zero, however, Cipher soon begins to adopt a radical solution to ensure peace and unify nations under a single command via a process of gradually imposing the political, economic and social model of the United States on the rest of the world.

By standardizing other nations through subtle manipulation, nurturing facsimiles of their own cultural and political landscape, Zero believes that he might prevent future opposition or outside threats: homogenized states should have less cause to quarrel. In doing so, he misinterprets the true passion behind the principles of the woman that inspired him: that a belief in individual liberty underpinned her desire to defend her nation at all costs, even at the expense of the ultimate act of sacrifice.

Where The Boss sought to create a world without borders, seeing herself as a tool or a weapon to achieve that end, Cipher—for which, read: Zero—increasingly seeks to unite the world by means of total control and domination of the entire globe. His mistake is that he interprets The Boss's will too literally—to him, a “world without borders” is one where everyone on the planet is unified under a single system. The world, in Zero’s eyes, is just a Collection of tools that he might use to achieve his goals—and, unfettered by sentimentality, he believes that the end justifies the means, no matter the cost.

It is worth noting that Big Boss also misinterprets The Boss's ideal and legacy. He takes the opposite extreme interpretation and strives to create a military nation “without borders”—free of all political influence and serving as a haven for those willing to fight for themselves. He recognizes himself as a weapon, perhaps the most powerful of all, and believes that he must keep fighting. From that perspective, he has difficulty in truly appreciating why The Boss chose to sacrifice herself. In his mind, she should have fought on, to have found another way, whereas for her, giving her life for her homeland was just a means to an end. She simply chose the course of action she felt was right at the time and believed that all humanity should have the right to do the same.

This subtle schism is crucial, in that it will drive the nascent conflict between Zero and Big Boss for years to come, and ultimately be the origin of all key events in all future episodes in the story.

With the practically inexhaustible resources that The Philosophers’ Legacy puts at Zero’s disposal, the influence of Cipher grows as banks, foundations, corporations and even governments come to rely on his investments. With the legendary Big Boss promoted as an icon, helping to guide the opinions of the masses and rich and powerful alike, Cipher begins to shape the development of the world’s political and social landscape. As the organization's power grows, so too does the disenchantment felt by Big Boss, who feels manipulated and exploited by Zero, not to mention at odds with his ideology.

Aware of the growing distance between the friends, Zero secretly launches the “Les Enfants Terribles” project in 1971-1972. Concerned by their philosophical differences, Zero realizes that Big Boss is on the brink of leaving the organization and plots to ensure that the group can somehow retain this critical ally... not to mention secure the genetic legacy of a man perceived as the greatest soldier in history. As a result, three clones of Big Boss are created in utmost secrecy: Solid Snake, Liquid Snake, and, later, Solidus Snake. When Big Boss learns of this profound betrayal, he comes to realize that his friend attaches little, if any, significance to the founding principles of their organization, and that his thirst for power would eventually suffocate all freedom in the world.

At this stage, the estrangement of the two Is complete. Major Zero dreams solely of control over minds and information, for a greater good of his personal design. In sharp contrast, Big Boss now aspires to achieve the antithetical extreme—freedom from any form of governmental control. Big Boss resigns from Cipher and disappears to found his own group of independent mercenaries, while Zero further consolidates his power and influence.

1974 - Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker

Having broken away from the United States in general, and Major Zero in particular, Big Boss stands ready with freshly recruited troops to offer his military services to any potential client. This is how the Peace Walker Incident begins.

Big Boss's second in command, Kazuhira Miller, finds their first customers: a professor from Costa Rica’s University for Peace and one of his students, Paz Ortega. Both claim they wish to repel a mysterious armed group that has invaded their country. This force, called the Peace Sentinels, is actually a de facto creation of the CIA. Intuiting that the professor himself belongs to the KGB, and reluctant to dive back into the old, seemingly interminable struggle between the superpowers, Big Boss only accepts the mission after hearing a recording in which the voice of his former mentor, The Boss, is clearly heard. Puzzled, as she cannot possibly have survived their duel in 1964, he secretly hopes that his involvement will enable him to learn more.

Garrisoning his troops in an offshore facility off the coast of Central America that they christen Mother Base, Big Boss completes a complex mission involving a walking nuclear tank known as Peace Walker, developed by a wheelchair-bound scientist named Huey Emmerich—a researcher who will play an important part in future events. A defining idiosyncrasy of this weapon is that it is equipped with an advanced artificial intelligence that can decide, with complete autonomy, whether to retaliate in the event of an enemy attack.

The artificial intelligence is the work of Dr. Strangelove—a former associate of The Boss. Strangelove created the A.|. based on a sophisticated statistical model of The Boss, taking into account everything from her history to her records, physiological data, correspondence, and emotional profile. Driven by an obsessive love, Strangelove’s ambition is to resurrect The Boss in a virtual form. This revelation, of course, explains the origin of the voice that caused Big Boss to accept the mission.

Despite a fierce battle against Peace Walker, Big Boss fails to stop an imminent nuclear launch, and it is only the robot's A.I. itself, perhaps authentically replicating the incorruptible ideals of The Boss, that saves the day by sinking Peace Walker at the bottom of Lake Nicaragua.

These events only serve to reinforce Big Boss's belief that governments and their associated agencies cannot be trusted, and that he is himself a weapon whose purpose is to grow ever stronger and to never, ever give up the fight. He decides to expand his own organization both by recruiting troops and by hiring Emmerich and Strangelove to design their own advanced nuclear deterrent on Mother Base—a bipedal tank that they decide to name Metal Gear ZEKE.

Once this Metal Gear is functional, it is stolen by Paz, who reveals that her allegiance lay with Cipher all along. Paz attempts to convince Big Boss to join Zero and to have Mother Base become the military arm of Cipher. With little possibility of agreement or compromise, Big Boss has no choice but to fight Metal Gear ZEKE, the climactic explosion of the tank leading Paz to seemingly sink without trace in the Caribbean.

Though a trial for Big Boss, the damage to ZEKE is only a setback: with careful salvage and the expertise of Strangelove and Emmerich, the Metal Gear can be restored. With a well-trained army, a Mother Base, and a Metal Gear possessing nuclear capabilities, Big Boss is well on his way to fulfilling his dream of building a nation for himself and his men. In the post-credits sequence that concludes the Peace Walker story, he makes a speech that clarifies his motivations, and the purpose of Mother Base:

“We will forsake our countries, we will leave our motherlands behind us and become one with this Earth. We have no nation, no philosophy, no ideology, we go where we're needed, fighting not for country, not for government, but for ourselves. We need no reason to fight, we fight because we are needed. We will be the deterrent for those with no other recourse. We are soldiers without borders, our purpose defined by the era we live in; we will sometimes have to sell ourselves and services. If the times demand it, we'll be revolutionaries, criminals, terrorists. And yes, we may all be headed straight to Hell, but what better place for us than this?”

Naturally, this is not something that Major Zero is prepared to permit—both in principle, and because of the precedent it sets for others who might recognize and struggle against the gossamer yoke of Cipher’s ever-growing web.

1975 - Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes

Now a true legend among soldiers worldwide, from decorated commanders to the lowliest mercenaries, Big Boss is at the head of a formidable military unit who aspire to call themselves a nation—even if this makes them enemies of Cipher and established sovereign states, particularly the major powers.

Paz, who survived the explosion of Metal Gear ZEKE and was rescued by a fisherman, is intercepted by Cipher agents, who interrogate her in a U.S. military base on the southern tip of Cuba known as Camp Omega. Soon afterwards, Mother Base is contacted by representatives of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), who demand access to Mother Base for an immediate nuclear inspection in light of damning rumors sweeping through the international community.

It is Huey Emmerich who convinces the reluctant Big Boss and Miller to comply, arguing persuasively (among other stratagems) that a pass from the IAEA would be far preferable to their intended plan of merely attempting to stonewall the agency with legal technicalities. Emmerich informs the IAEA that Mother Base will comply, and a date is set for the inspection. Preparations are made to hide ZEKE and conceal all evidence of their nuclear capabilities on Mother Base.

Meanwhile, Chico, a boy rescued by Big Boss and a long-term resident of Mother Base, learns of Paz’s predicament, and, his mind clouded by his love for the young woman, slips away to rescue her himself. He only comprehends the depth of his naivety at the last moment, when he is captured with great ease by the Camp Omega troops. Both he and Paz are subjected to protracted, abhorrent tortures to force them to reveal critical information about Mother Base.

Big Boss learns of their internment on the eve of the IAEA inspection and, aware of the sensitivity of extracting them from Camp Omega, resolves to undertake the urgent mission personally. He arrives at the outskirts of the facility just as the inspection force departs for Mother Base.

Big Boss successfully locates and rescues Chico, then Paz. During the chopper ride back home, Big Boss discovers that the incoherent Paz has been surgically implanted with an explosive device. After the on-board medic removes it in a traumatic procedure, Big Boss arrives back at Mother Base to witness the final stages of his facility being razed by the so-called inspection team—who are actually soldiers belonging to an elite, enormously secret Special Forces unit known by the designation “XOF".

The IAEA inspection, and a precision-targeted leak of information that compelled Big Boss to launch a simultaneous rescue mission at Camp Omega, were the setup for a plan initiated by Skull Face to utterly destroy Mother Base. Big Boss manages to rescue Miller from XOF forces before bullets, bombs or waves can claim him, but a second explosive device planted in Paz’s body takes them by surprise and causes their chopper to crash. Despite the sacrifice of the on-board medic, who uses his body to shield Big Boss from the explosion, the grievously wounded Big Boss is left comatose by the event.

Though the truth of the matter would not emerge until a decade later, Huey Emmerich’s betrayal of Big Boss and his comrades on Mother Base was profound: he actually made direct contact with XOF during the IAEA “negotiations” to ensure his own survival, and facilitated the circumstances that led the facility to be overrun with such merciless efficiency.

In a twist that sets up the events of The Phantom Pain, Major Zero must also contend with betrayals by a trusted underling in his shadowy organization. Unbeknownst to Big Boss, Zero long ago established another clandestine special unit, XOF, that was originally tasked to provide imperceptible yet essential support to FOX operatives during their missions—including Operation Snake Eater in 1964. From advance groundwork and hidden logistical support to clean-up operations, XOF was FOX's midday shadow.

In later years, following Big Boss's estrangement from Zero, XOF became Cipher’s elite covert ops group. However, its long-serving Executive Officer, Skull Face, had by then developed a pathological hatred of Big Boss and Zero. So many years spent facilitating, in part, the legend of the former, while complying with the bidding of the latter, leaves Skull Face consumed by a desire to strike out at them.

Skull Face’s hidden agenda first becomes apparent during the attack on Mother Base, which he orchestrated entirely on his own, culminating in the explosion of the devices surgically planted in Paz Despite the animosity between them, Zero had no desire to kill Big Boss and condemned the attack irrevocably.

The most pertinent events of the nine years that follow gradually become apparent during the course of the Phantom Pain episode, but some warrant an introduction here. After the helicopter crash, Zero arranges for the comatose Big Boss to be transferred to a military hospital in Cyprus, where he receives treatment in utmost secrecy. For his part in the events that led to Big Boss's injuries, not yet known to be a deliberate assassination attempt, Skull Face is stripped of his privileged command and exiled to a lesser role in Cipher’s African operations. Here, he develops a significant interest in biological weapons and their pioneering applications.

A year later, Skull Face makes his move against Major Zero. His principal interest in Paz, we learn, had been that she had once met with Zero in person at one of his safe houses. Armed with knowledge of this building obtained during her torture, and a package delivery to its address containing an item of extraordinary sentimental value to the Cipher mastermind, Skull Face succeeds in infecting Zero with a parasite that causes irreversible degeneration of the host’s cognitive functions. Such were the depths of Skull Face’s hatred, a clean death would simply not suffice.

Despite the best efforts of leading specialists to at least slow the effects of the parasite, Zero is resigned to his fate. Before he loses his autonomy and mental acuity—to become as we witness him at the conclusion of Metal Gear Solid 4, locked in a persistent vegetative state for almost three decades—he sets certain events in motion.

Of greatest import is the commission of Dr. Strangelove (working for DARPA, an agency which, unbeknownst to her, is serving Cipher) to contribute to the development of an extremely advanced A.I. system designed to control the flow of information in the nascent digital world. This A.I. system will only be revealed in the series at a later stage, when it will be referred to as The Patriots. In essence, Zero knows he is doomed as an individual, but refuses to entrust the world’s reins to a new generation. He instead ensures that an autonomous artificial intelligence will secretly pull the world’s strings in his place: an implacable digital enforcer of his ideology.

The last documented accounts of Zero directly interacting with known individuals all apparently pertain to Big Boss. He contacts Ocelot to task him to protect their mutual friend while he is in a coma, and also speaks with Miller to prepare his former second-in-command for the legendary soldier's eventual return. Zero even visits Big Boss himself in 1977 to say farewell—an event connected with one of the greatest mysteries in The Phantom Pain, and the identity of one enigmatic man in particular.

Meanwhile, due to the unconventional structure of the Cipher organization, and knowledge gleaned through his many years of XOF service, Skull Face is able to gradually subvert its resources to cement a growing power base: a parasite, in a sense, gorging on a robust and oblivious host. The stage is set for...

1984 - Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain

When Big Boss, or rather Ahab, awakes from his nine-year coma as The Phantom Pain begins, he is immediately embroiled in a dramatic (and, at times, terrifyingly surreal) fight for his life.

Despite safeguards put in place by Zero, not to mention Ocelot’s expert oversight, Skull Face somehow learns of Big Boss's location. He sends an overwhelming force to the Cypriot hospital to finish the job that he began with Paz’s explosive payloads. At the vanguard of this assault is Quiet, an expert assassin ordered to personally identify and execute Big Boss. Only the last-second intervention of Ahab's roommate, the heavily bandaged Ishmael, prevents his hapless demise.

Ishmael barely defeats Quiet in an unconventional duel that leaves her in flames and defenestrated. This provides a moment of brief respite where Ishmael reveals that he has been watching over Ahab for the full nine years of his coma, before XOF forces begin an all-out onslaught on the hospital, executing patients and staff alike without pity or remorse.

Bizarrely, it is a second antagonist, apparently unaffiliated with the XOF forces, who indirectly enables the enfeebled Ahab and Ishmael to escape the building. The terrifying Man on Fire, his body awash with seemingly supernatural flames and apparently impervious to bullets or explosives, appears hell-bent upon killing Big Boss himself. The slender opportunities provided by the resultant conflict between XOF forces and this creature, who can apparently effortlessly ingest projectiles and propel them back with deadly force at his assailants, provides sufficient confusion for Ishmael to steal an ambulance.

Ahab is clearly in a desperate state throughout this ordeal, and witnesses sights that must surely be hallucinations. These include the apparition of a gigantic whale appearing in the sky, twisting to snatch an attack helicopter from the air in its enormous maw.

When Ishmael loses consciousness during their high-speed escape, Ahab is forced to grab the wheel. In the aftermath of a consequent crash, he awakes to find Ishmael has disappeared. Only the timely arrival of Ocelot, and a sudden rainstorm that quells the flames of the Man on Fire, saves his life.

With physical rehabilitation and Ocelot’s expert assistance in getting up to speed in contemporary world affairs, Ahab quickly relearns what it takes to be the living legend known as Big Boss. Repatriated to a new (yet fledgling) Mother Base, established off the coast of the Seychelles by Kazuhira Miller in his absence, Big Boss's first debut post-coma engagement is to rescue his second-in-command from captivity after a recent disastrous operation.

Once Miller is back at Mother Base and restored to active duty, the command structure of Big Boss and Miller, supported by the ever-resourceful Ocelot, begin to expand the new mercenary organization—dubbed Diamond Dogs—by completing contracts for a wide variety of clients. Naturally, they derive a certain satisfaction from accepting commissions that lead them into direct conflict with known Cipher interests. One assignment ends with Big Boss capturing his would-be assassin back at Cyprus, Quiet, after a sniping duel. Curious about this unusual and gifted adversary, he takes her to Mother Base and eventually integrates her into the fold of his burgeoning army.

Big Boss eventually obtains a solid lead on Skull Face’s whereabouts. Though this does not lead to a decisive confrontation, the mission brings him into direct contact with Huey Emmerich, who he then takes back to Mother Base for interrogation. The scientist had been forced (or so Emmerich insists) to work for Skull Face on a new Metal Gear with nuclear capabilities dubbed “Sahelanthropus”. Though Big Boss, Miller and (especially) Ocelot believe Emmerich to be a compulsive liar, and still harbor grave suspicions over his involvement in the destruction of the original Mother Base, the decision is made to allow him to stay on board to contribute his considerable expertise to the organization's R&D projects.

We also learn the identity of the Man on Fire, and the strange, gas-mask-wearing “floating boy” who accompanies him. The Man on Fire is none other than the twisted human wreckage of the former Colonel Volgin, presumed dead after the events of Operation Snake Eater. Catatonic but still clinically alive, Volgin's body was retrieved by Soviet military scientists, who maintained his vital functions in a stage of hibernation while they studied his apparently paranormal capacity for manipulating electricity.

The floating child, meanwhile, is known only by. the designation given to him by Soviet military researchers: Tretij Rebenok or “The Third Child”. Traumatized by the effects of his arcane psychokinetic abilities from an early age, he became a shell broadly devoid of emotion and ego. His advanced powers when we first meet him as an adolescent, it transpires, are fueled exclusively by his proximity to extremes of hatred or anger felt by others.

After a plane crash, in which The Third Child was the sole survivor, a chain of events led the boy's mind into sufficient proximity to sense Volgin’s boundless enmity for Big Boss. With this, their association was forged: Volgin, a scorched carcass imbued with an overpowering obsession to kill the man who destroyed his dreams; and The Third Child, who could facilitate his desire for vengeance. This conjunction gave birth to the creature known as the Man on Fire.

(This was also, it transpires, the means by which Skull Face learned of Big Boss’s location after a nine-year search. Having received word of their curious relationship through Cipher channels under his control, Skull Face took an interest in the case of the strange child and the former Soviet colonel. This led to a momentous development: the animosity felt by Skull Face became the primary inspirational force behind The Third Child's powers in close proximity, effectively putting both the child and Volgin at his disposal. When Skull Face investigated the particulars of the plane crash, he discovered that the events that led to its destruction began over Cyprus: caused, Ocelot later posits, by The Third Child sensing the latent anger of Big Boss far below as his flight passed overhead. Skull Face thought this anomaly worthy of further scrutiny—which led to his discovery of Big Boss.)

On the trail of Skull Face in both Afghanistan and Africa, Big Boss gradually learns about his development of peerlessly advanced biotechnological processes that enable the specialists in his employ (and, by extension, him) to repurpose rare parasites for their precision-engineered military applications. Some are applied to a host to gain the benefit of a highly profitable symbiotic relationship—such as those carried by the fearsome Skulls, his crack soldiers, that imbue them with such astounding physical capabilities. These augmentations are also a part of Quiet’s body, which explains her extraordinary gifts (and, of course, the mechanism for her recovery from the injuries sustained on Cyprus).

Not all of the parasites under development have a beneficial relationship with their host, though. Big Boss learns that Skull Face has been working on the development of a parasite specific to human vocal cords: a variety that lives within the throats of carriers and is activated, weaponized, when it detects the distinctive strains of a specific language.

One of his more fateful missions has Big Boss extract a child soldier from Africa: the “White Mamba”, a charismatic and remarkably tough 12-year-old boy who we will come to know as Eli for the rest of the story.

1984 - Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain (Continued)

Focusing on the parasite lead, Big Boss draws ever closer to Skull Face. Their climactic encounter, however, is defined by its absence of a traditional showdown between the mortal enemies. With Big Boss placed in a broadly helpless situation, Skull Face opts to relate the dimensions of his ingenuity to the man who eclipsed him for so many frustrated years.

Perfectly aware that Zero, now in persistent vegetative state, has already set in motion his plan to control world affairs via an advanced A.I. system that would later be known as The Patriots, Skull Face explains his elaborate two-step plan.

The first stage is to release a contagious vocal cord parasite strain that targets a specific language: English. Any person infected who subsequently speaks the language will both trigger the proliferation of the parasite within their body, leading to certain death, but also cause the infection of all other people within transmission range. This explains why Quiet does not speak until, much later in the story, she feels that she must: as a host, the parasite would kill her and potentially lead to an epidemic.

The propagation of the infection could, ultimately, lead to the effective destruction of the English language on a global scale, which would in turn prevent the Patriots system from ever becoming operative to within a fraction of its envisioned design parameters. Not even the artful Major Zero could have anticipated such an event while developing the blueprints for his A.I. successor.

The second step of Skull Face’s plans to mass-produce nuclear-equipped Walker Gear technology designed by Emmerich, and then supply this weapon to all suitable interested parties: governments, Private Military Companies (PMCs), even terrorist cells. His scheme relies on the use and manufacture of mysterious microorganisms known as Metallic Archaea—two varieties in particular: one that corrodes metals, and another that has a profitably distinctive relationship with uranium. With the latter, Skull Face found a way to create nuclear warheads without the expense and complications of conventional processing and enrichment technologies. In other words, he can easily mount nuclear missiles on the mass-produced Walker Gears, making weapons of mass destruction available to virtually anyone—a development that would completely rewrite the balance of international relationships.

Using Sahelanthropus as a propaganda tool to instill fear and paranoia in the population, Skull Face hopes to rekindle the Cold War and foster a worldwide nuclear arms race. Thanks to a failsafe device installed in each Walker Gear, Skull Face could monitor and control all of the warheads at his whim, putting him in the position where he would effectively control the entire world’s nuclear arsenal.

Helpless and clearly incapable of defeating the varied forces confronting him, Big Boss is saved against all odds by the presence of Eli, who had stowed away on the Diamond Dogs support chopper hovering above prior to take-off. When The Third Child senses Eli, he exults in the boy's deep-rooted and colossal capacity for animosity—a strain of hatred that surpasses even that of Volgin and Skull Face, whom he promptly abandons. Overwhelmed by the sensations that the child soldier's mind evokes, The Third Child sends the Metal Gear on a rampage, trampling Volgin, devastating the XOF troops and mortally wounding Skull Face. By employing his incomparable expertise, however, Big Boss stops the Metal Gear in a spectacular showdown.

When Big Boss and Miller approach Skull Face in the wake of the fight and ascertain the extent of his injuries, both resolve to leave their nemesis to either take his own life, or die in protracted agony. It is Huey Emmerich, to the surprise of those present, who unexpectedly steps forward to deliver the coup de grace. Eli returns to Mother Base with Big Boss, but has clearly formed a dangerous bond with The Third Child. For those who have followed the series since Metal Gear Solid, this event should cement any suspicions about the future identities of these two.

Though the stories that follow the conclusion of the main Skull Face arc (and that oh-so-deceptive credits sequence) may be briefly misconstrued as postscripts, these subsequent tales turn out to be of great import. Each tale is a vicious gut-punch to the protagonist that, if we accept that violence and discord serve to sow their own kin, perhaps shapes the man that Big Boss becomes at the nexus of the Metal Gear canon: the point at which we arrive at Mr. Kojima’s first two installments in the series. At this stage, the hero of the pre-1990s stories must necessarily become the series antagonist for a time, no matter how nuanced he or his actions appear in light of past and future episodes.

It cannot be denied that, even for a man as outwardly implacable as Big Boss, the closing tales of The Phantom Pain represent anything but a succession of profound sorrows for the legendary soldier. As witnessed in the (entirely illusory) cinematic sequences ‘where he imagines himself interacting with a still-living Paz, he is by no means devoid of emotion or sentiment in the margins of a mind that, he later claims to Solid Snake, died with The Boss. His relationship with Quiet, founded on a mutual respect that grows throughout their association on Mother Base, almost certainly lacks a traditional romantic dimension for either party. This fact doesn't diminish the significance of the connection between two very distinct soldiers—or Quiet’s sacrifice of her own life to preserve that of Big Boss.

Despite Ocelot’s assurance that Big Boss is not his father, Eli's belief that he is a product of the “Les Enfants Terribles” project is unshakable. Even if what he believes is true, Big Boss is no more his father than he is his brother; in clinical terms, based on what the overarching story tells us, the Diamond Dogs leader cannot be described as anything more than an unwitting template. And yet, the hatred that this man inspires in Eli is inexhaustible: it comes to define him. His arcane relationship with The Third Child almost assuredly exacerbates the situation.

Based on available evidence, particularly Big Boss’s encounters with Volgin, it might be construed that the modus operandi of The Third Child at this point in his life might be to bring his subjects into proximity and direct conflict with the subjects of their rancor, without ever permitting a decisive blow or any slender degree of reconciliation or acceptance. Eli’s uprisings and escape attempts on Mother Base culminate in his theft of Sahelanthropus, thereby permanently dividing him from the few individuals in the world who might have rehabilitated the single-minded child soldier. But if The Third Child simply reflects what truly lies at the heart of an individual, perhaps Eli really is truly naught but a terrible little bastard—and whatever his future fate may be, it’s assured by the depth of his unwavering and unwholesome obsession.

In the thematic coda to The Phantom Pain, the outbreak of a mutated English strain of the vocal cord parasite on Mother Base forces Big Boss to slaughter his troops to contain a global catastrophe. Though he grimly assumes this grave responsibility without complaint or apparent compunction, the visual cues suggesting that this act further loosens the shackles on his “inner demon” are inescapable.

Maybe the cumulative events of The Phantom Pain truly do set Big Boss on the path to become the “oni” he resembles in this episode—and Solid Snake's later defeat of him is virtuous and necessary, Patriot paymasters and all. But even if this is the case, his is not a classic “heel turn”, a villainous conversion with a flourish and an impish wink to the crowd. It is, instead, the product of a gradual erosion of a man to the point where only his obsessions remain.

In the short term, Big Boss is more determined than ever to strengthen his troops to the point where he can found his own nation free from traditional governance—a dream that he will later come close to fulfilling in the 1990s.

1995 & 1999 - Metal Gear & Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake

(Note: Naturally, for the two games developed at the very beginning of this intensely story-rich series, the events that occur during their specific time period only swim into recognizable focus for most players when viewed through the lens of prior or subsequent episodes. They remain canon, of course, but large portions of their dialogue and developments are now taken with a generous pinch of salt. Our brief focus here rests upon revelations and developments that actually appear in other episodes.)

The games Metal Gear and Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake tell the story of how Big Boss, now at the head of a very large army of mercenaries, establishes two (fictional) military nations, Outer Heaven, and, later, Zanzibar Land, in an attempt to stand on an equal footing with governments worldwide. On both occasions, the aspirant tyrant (and, of course, the titular weapons technology at his disposal) is foiled by a rookie agent, Solid Snake, his son—or, as we all came to understand later in the real-life Metal Gear chronology, one of the three clones from the “Les Enfants Terribles” project.

Despite being unaware of their existence, Solid Snake unwittingly acts as a tool for Zero’s Patriots, who have been seeking to neutralize Big Boss for years. Once Snake completes his missions in Outer Heaven and Zanzibar Land, The Patriots secretly retrieve the body of Big Boss and pacify him by inducing a state of perpetual coma.

Though Zero has been in a persistent vegetative state for over a decade, The Patriots, now a fully computerized A.|. system designed to manage world affairs and control the flow of information, still act in accordance with his beliefs: in particular, that society can only function through a necessary measure of uniformity with restricted individual will. The Boss's deeply human ideal of freedom and personal commitment is therefore profaned by Major Zero’s A.I. to become a perverted and pathological obsession with control and order, a distrust of unanticipated innovation or initiative, and a belief in the power of enforced conformity to engender perpetual, manageable repetition.

For Ocelot, one of the founding members of Cipher who still understands and appreciates the true nature of the sacrifice made by The Boss (his mother), a growing unease with the methods and corrupted ideology of The Patriots eventually becomes a sense of outrage. But how might he strike out at an omnipresent enemy, an organization with agents embedded within political, military and economic hierarchies throughout the world? To conceal any evidence of his involvement, he devises a sophisticated conspiracy of bewildering complexity.

2005 - Metal Gear Solid

The first major play in Ocelot’s grand plan to destroy The Patriots takes place in 2005. A group of terrorists seize control of an Alaskan nuclear weapons disposal facility on Shadow Moses Island, Alaska, which secretly houses a radical new weapon: Metal Gear REX. In response to the crisis, special agent Solid Snake is sent to neutralize terrorist leader Liquid Snake (Solid Snake’s twin brother from the “Les Enfants Terribles” project) and his men—with Ocelot counted among their numbers.

The Shadow Moses Incident, as it would subsequently be known, was actually initiated by United States President George Sears (Solidus Snake, the third and final Big Boss clone from the “Les Enfants Terribles” initiative), who sought to obtain test data from the Metal Gear REX project as part of a plan to escape the control of The Patriots. He commissioned Ocelot to retrieve the required disc from the Shadow Moses facility, perhaps unaware that Ocelot himself was a founder member of the Cipher/Patriots organization. Ocelot, in turn, is of course working to achieve his own ends, and does so by manipulating Liquid—whom we can speculate he first met as Eli during his time on the Mother Base in the 1980s, subsequently cultivating their relationship over the intervening years.

To gain control of Metal Gear REX, Liquid artfully misdirects Solid Snake, who unwittingly activates the war machine for him. During the process, Snake makes the acquaintance of Ocelot (even severing his arm during their fight) and Hal “Otacon” Emmerich (the son of Huey Emmerich and Dr. Strangelove). Once the war machine Is operational, Liquid assumes direct control of it, but Snake triumphs against REX and ultimately kills his brother.

Select but damning details of the Shadow Moses Incident are leaked to the press, and the existence of Metal Gear REX is revealed on the eve of a planned nuclear disarmament agreement. President George Sears (AKA Solidus Snake) is now in possession of the Metal Gear REX test data secured by Ocelot. Solidus abandons his presidency and disappears from public life.

2007–2009 - Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty

In the two years between the Shadow Moses Incident and the continuation of the story in Metal Gear Solid 2, Solidus hides from The Patriots and prepares to strike against them. Meanwhile, Snake and Otacon join forces to found an independent non-governmental organization (Philanthropy) dedicated to preventing the proliferation of Metal Gear technology.

In 2007, Snake and Otacon learn that a disguised oil tanker transporting a new, inordinately powerful amphibious model of Metal Gear (Metal Gear RAY) is due to pass close to New York City. Snake infiltrates the vessel and obtains footage of the machine, but matters take a turn for the worst when Ocelot activates a series of explosions to scuttle the tanker and then suddenly, inexplicably, undergoes a series of convulsions that seem somehow connected to his replacement right arm—the original having been severed during the Shadow Moses Incident. It becomes apparent that he is seemingly possessed by the spirit of the deceased Liquid Snake, the original owner of Ocelot’s new limb. Seemingly under the control of Snake’s brother, he escapes aboard Metal Gear RAY before regaining his full faculties.

The story resumes two years later at a water purification complex (the “Big Shell”) built on the site where the tanker had sunk. As before, the events that occur are the product of the meticulous and multifaceted designs of The Patriots, with Ocelot again serving his own separate and artfully concealed interests.

In fact, while central character Raiden initially appears to have been deployed to combat a terrorist threat, the entire setup is a bewilderingly elaborate real-life simulation, modeled on the Shadow Moses Incident and devised to push its principle protagonist (Raiden) to the very limits of his mental and physical endurance. This experiment is a part of the “Solid Snake Simulation” plan (abbreviated as “S3"), contrived to enable The Patriots to explore the complexities of the human psyche so they might better control it. By studying Raiden’s responses (and, indeed, those of other players in the charade) to the evolving challenges and conditions, The Patriots ultimately hope to refine their software routines.

The Big Shell purification facility was built on the pretext that the sunken tanker had leaked oil, but is actually a mobile fortress and home to Arsenal Gear, the latest development in Metal Gear technology. The Big Shell is controlled by a Patriots A.I. system engineered by Emma Emmerich (Otacon’s step-sister) to manipulate the flow of digital information throughout the world. When Solidus and his followers attack the facility to take control of Arsenal Gear to aid their fight against The Patriots, the shadowy organization has—naturally—anticipated and effectively encouraged this attack.

Indeed, almost every party involved in the Big Shell experiment has been unknowingly manipulated by The Patriots to act out principal events of the Shadow Moses Incident. Solidus and his cohorts play the role of Liquid and the “terrorists”; Raiden, ostensibly deployed to thwart Solidus, is their primary test subject, and is therefore given the role of Snake. Even the deception of Raiden in Codec conversations with his superiors and support team broadly replicates the misinformation that Snake faced in his fight to stop Liquid and Metal Gear REX.

Only Ocelot and Solid Snake appear to lie outside the operational parameters of this most sophisticated simulation—Ocelot still seeking the downfall of the organization he helped to create, Snake searching for a meaning to his life beyond the narrow boundaries once dictated by his former paymasters. As rogue variables in an intricate program, it is they who cause the simulation to “crash”—their actions and involvement lead to a situation where a computer worm created by Emma Emmerich attacks the A.l. system. Though it does not fully destroy the A.l. as planned, Emma's program seriously impairs its functionality.

By the end of the drama aboard Big Shell, virtually all of its actors are dead barring Raiden, Ocelot, Snake and Otacon. In the final battle of Metal Gear Solid 2, Raiden complies with the wishes of The Patriots and eliminates Solidus, despite learning the real purpose of his “mission”. Devastated by the sheer spirit-crushing import of their revelations, and his submission to their lies, he is nonetheless inspired by a speech made by Snake. Raiden, the veteran warrior explains, is free to commit to (or, indeed, fight for) any way of ife or action he has faith in, and his humanity stems from the sincerity of his faith. Interestingly, this is strongly reminiscent of the beliefs held so dear by The Boss; the very principle of individual liberty which has inspired the ongoing attempts of Ocelot to destroy The Patriots from within. Perhaps this is why Ocelot does not attack Snake during the story of Metal Gear Solid 2: as, despite their different roles and methods, both believe in the same cause.

In the aftermath, we can reflect that Ocelot has gained the most from the Shadow Moses and Big Shell incidents. Of Solidus, only a body remains, but like that of Big Boss, it still has an important role to play. The Patriots fear the bizarre eruptions of spiritual possession that cause Ocelot to act under the control of Liquid Snake, but do not understand that they are merely an elaborate subterfuge used to conceal Ocelot’s true objectives. He has taken another step towards defeating the man who steered Cipher so far from its founding purpose, and gave life to The Patriots: Major Zero.

2014 - Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots

Almost every protagonist in the Metal Gear saga bears a burden and seeks atonement for past sins. From Ocelot, who strives to bring an end to The Patriots (the organization he helped to create), to Raiden, who is haunted by memories of his life as a child soldier, to Snake, who is but a clone of Big Boss and has been manipulated by The Patriots for an entire lifetime, it is a desire for redemption that drives the events of Metal Gear Solid 4 and brings about a conclusion to the overarching narrative.

After Arsenal Gear runs aground on Manhattan Island in 2009, the international community unites in its condemnation of the United States government. To address the growing fear of powerful state-run armies being used to satisfy questionable political agendas, it is deemed safer to entrust Private Military Companies (PMCs) with a greater degree of control in future conflicts. Technically bereft of ideology or motive beyond a drive to increase profitability, and held to account by both shareholders and public opinion, the meteoric growth of these corporations leads to an unforeseen development: the “war economy”, where the commercial potential of armed conflict (from weapons R&D and manufacture, to the salaries paid to individual mercenaries) becomes a dynamo that drives global financial markets. War, in short, becomes the key to growth and prosperity.

The Patriots-controlled mechanism that facilitates the growth of the war economy is called Sons of the Patriots (SOP): a secured system of real-time battlefield control. All soldiers and PMC mercenaries under its watchful eye are injected with nanomachines that identify each individual, monitoring and essentially controlling their behavior, interacting with a host’s metabolism and manipulating body chemistry to vastly improve combat ability. Controlled by a central A.I., these nanomachines are used to engender a “combat high” to suppress natural human instincts, negating potential anxiety, apprehension or remorse as soldiers engage their opponents. Other benefits included heightened awareness and improved teamwork; on a strategic level, SOP is the culmination of every military tactician’s most feverish dreams.

An additional application of the System is to restrict the use of military hardware, from small arms to vehicles, to approved subjects only. Combatants can only use a weapon if their ID authorizes them to do so; the central A.I. ensures that a soldier’s rifle is deactivated in the hands of any other individual, even his colleagues. Throughout the world, virtually all weapons—both existing and newly manufactured—are modified or designed for exclusive use with the SOP System.

On a micro level, SOP breeds a new generation of more compliant, peerlessly efficient soldiers; on a macro level, military officials can monitor and instantly react to developments on the battlefield. This is the realization of the “clean” conflict ideal, a perceived end to human rights violation, whereby weapons can be deactivated (or soldiers restrained on a biological level) to prevent acts of barbarity. Another attraction for governments is that conflicts fought by PMC contractors are cheaper, and remove the need for states to maintain large standing armies.

A side-effect of the “war economy”, however, is that armed conflict becomes a business like any other. The PMC corporations, inferred by nationalist sentiment or political dogma, begin to offer their services to the highest bidder: be that nation state, guerilla movement or even terrorist faction. By 2014, PMCs control more than half of the world’s combined military forces.

As the story of Metal Gear Solid 4 begins, five PMC corporations, each one a multinational with a distinct influence in world affairs, dominate their shared marketplace. However, all five of these are controlled by a single parent company, Outer Heaven (named as homage to Big Boss's 1995 uprising), whose principal director is none other than Liquid Ocelot: Ocelot (ostensibly) possessed by Liquid.

A prematurely ageing Snake is requested to undertake a new mission. Unusually, this is not to be under the mandate of a specific organization or government, but merely for the greater good. It appears that Liquid Ocelot is planning to use the five PMCs under his control to launch an insurrection; Snake's mission is to eliminate him before this can happen. The manhunt begins in the Middle East, Liquid Ocelot’s last known location.

When Snake locates Liquid Ocelot, he attempts to line up a clear shot, but is interrupted as the surrounding soldiers are suddenly subjected to enormous pain and confusion. Struggling through this sobbing, convulsing, agonized crowd, Snake also falls afoul of the unknown effect, missing his opportunity to assassinate Liquid Ocelot.

Snake then travels to South America, where he learns the true nature of the inexplicable conclusion of events in the Middle East. Rather than manipulating the nanomachines within each soldier's body (as initially assumed), Liquid Ocelot had simply deactivated them. Freed from the influence of these microscopic yet powerful devices, the soldiers were instantly subjected to the full force of the psychological and physiological effects that the SOP System had previously repressed. It might take a war veteran a lifetime to barely come to terms with their role in a conflict. Stress, pain, remorse, fear, revulsion, anger, and more: all these extremes of feeling were unleashed within a second at Liquid’s command, suffocating the soldiers’ minds and causing them to cease to function beyond a basic animal level. The SOP System, in essence, operates as a prophylactic. Beyond this barrier, the blood, brain and flesh of each subject remember and store every detail. Outwardly the very epitome of calm, capable professionalism, the biological reality for each soldier was anything but sanguine—the utilitarian SOP System being designed to repress effects, not address causes.

Snake realizes that Liquid Ocelot’s aim isn’t to destroy the “Sons of the Patriots” system, as doing so would cause the collapse of his own army. Instead, his objective—dubbed “Guns of the Patriots”—is to gain sole control of the system, leaving him with the only valid army in the world. Once again, Liquid Ocelot performs a second SOP “experiment”, causing the same effects witnessed in the Middle East.

Liquid Ocelot’s plans now become clear. To take control of Sons of the Patriots, he needs to obtain Big Boss's genetic code and biometric data: the keys to the virtual castle built by The Patriots. The two disruptions of SOP in the Middle East and South America had been Liquid Ocelot’s attempts to use code and data derived from Liquid (through his replacement arm), and then Solid Snake (from samples). The unsatisfactory results were the consequence of Liquid and Solid Snake's status as incomplete clones—the modifications (infertility, short life span) common to the brothers actually caused both attempts to fail, as only Solidus had been an authentic clone of his “father”.

To realize his goal, Liquid Ocelot therefore needs to locate the body of Big Boss, apparently maintained in an artificial coma, as a “biomort”, at a secret location. Traveling to Eastern Europe, Snake learns that Liquid Ocelot is waging a war to eliminate Major Zero, and that The Patriots are attempting to exert total control via a system of A.l. programs: GW (believed defunct from Arsenal Gear), TJ, AL and TR (the initials of the four American presidents represented on Mount Rushmore), all controlled by a master A.I., JD (‘John Doe”). Following the neutralization of GW on the Big Shell in 2009, these A.I. programs continued to monitor and filter the flow of information through world networks. From politics to finance, law to social values, and, latterly, the war economy, nothing escapes the attention of these indefatigable sentinels. However, GW was merely “fragmented” by Emma Emmerich’s digital attack, and is now held by Liquid Ocelot. By using GW in conjunction with the data derived from the body of Big Boss, Liquid Ocelot will have everything he needs to cross otherwise impenetrable security barriers and take control of The Patriots’ system.

Despite Snake's best efforts, Liquid Ocelot succeeds in obtaining the body of Big Boss, which is subsequently consumed by fire. Taking control of SOP, Liquid Ocelot locks the weapons of his would-be captors at the very moment when his cause seems hopeless (and, for that matter, of all troops other than his own, worldwide). Few survive the resultant carnage as even vehicles fail to respond to the frantic interactions of their operators, and Liquid Ocelot calmly departs the scene of a grizzly, one-sided melee.

Liquid Ocelot’s control of the system is still limited, though: to fulfill his objectives, he must destroy JD with a sufficiently powerful weapon. With weapons of mass destruction still locked away by the master A.I., he travels to Shadow Moses to retrieve the rail gun from the remains of Metal Gear REX: the one weapon anterior to (and therefore outside of) the System and within his grasp capable of destroying his intended target. With JD destroyed, control of The Patriot's system would revert to GW—and, therefore, Liquid Ocelot.

2014 - Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots (Continued)

In hot pursuit, Snake infiltrates Shadow Moses as he did nine years before, but on finding REX—still lying as Snake had left it so many years previously—he discovers that its rail gun has already been removed. Snake and his companions therefore have no choice but to infiltrate Outer Haven, an Arsenal-Gear-style vessel that Liquid Ocelot had previously seized from The Patriots. Only by destroying Outer Haven’s central server, home to GW, can Snake prevent his adversary from achieving his goal.

After a withering series of ordeals on his way to Outer Haven’s server room, an exhausted Snake enables Otacon to upload a virus. Surprisingly, though, the virus does not focus exclusively on GW and spreads to the rest of the system, even affecting the central A.I., JD. As Snake lies gravely wounded, fatigued beyond rational measure, alive through sheer brute force of will, he witnesses a recording hidden in the virus code. It transpires that the virus was designed to destroy all of the A.I. programs, as The Patriots were planning to extend their control network to govern not just soldiers, but all mankind.

In his final confrontation with Liquid Ocelot (who finally dies in the duel’s aftermath), and the later meeting with Big Boss, Snake learns that it was this outcome that Ocelot had sought from the very beginning: to release mankind from the twisted auspices of The Patriots, and the prison of their rational, micro-managed world. With the death of Major Zero, and the A.I. programs that were to succeed him, The Patriots—and their ideals of standardization and social control—are no more.

Ultimately, the story of Metal Gear Solid 4 is the conclusion of a vast, series-long conspiracy—at the end of which, Ocelot destroys the legacy of Major Zero’s ideology. We should be under no illusions as to the true role of Ocelot from the very start. As Big Boss reveals during the finale, “In order to fool the system, Ocelot used nanomachines and psychotherapy to transplant Liquid’s personality into his own mind. He used hypnotic suggestion to turn himself into a mental doppelganger of Liquid.” Foreseeing every step Snake would make, every likely outcome, Ocelot allows his apparent adversary to complete the most integral parts of his plot because he understands, fundamentally, that Snake is the tool of The Patriots, and therefore above suspicion in their eyes—whether he knows It or not.

Ocelot, faking the presence of Liquid Snake within his consciousness, has no intention of using the rail gun retrieved from Metal Gear REX. Neither does he truly plan to become leader of The Patriots himself, despite his assertions to the contrary. Ocelot simply wishes for an end to The Patriots’ control system, and leads Snake, their trusted yet unknowing tool, to become the agent of their ruin. For greater verisimilitude, at no point does Snake enjoy an easy ride: the sheer ferocity of the forces ranged against him underlines the apparent sincerity of Liquid Ocelot’s desire to slay the legendary soldier. And yet, Ocelot, significantly, fails to dispatch Snake when given several opportunities to do so, in a manner that clearly surpasses the traditional cliché of villainous arrogance.

Ocelot, then, is not a nefarious figure in his later life, a tyrant seeking endless power, but the mastermind behind a plan to break the authoritarian web that The Patriots were weaving over the world. From this perspective, Ocelot (even in his guise as the pitiless Liquid Ocelot) is as much a hero as Snake. Despite the mutual antagonism from their first encounter, Snake and Ocelot actually worked together to stop The Patriots’ rule. In that sense, both lived up to the example of The Boss's legendary commitment: the resolute will not to try to forcefully change the world, but to preserve it no matter the cost, even if this leads to self-sacrifice. This is echoed in Big Boss's words once he finally understands what The Boss wanted: “It’s not about changing the world. It's about doing our best to leave the world the way it is.”

Big Boss and Major Zero, the two souls who contribute so much momentum to the stories of the Metal Gear Solid series, are polar opposites, extremes of the same scale. While the former thirsts for a form of absolute liberty in the sense of government-free individuals (as demonstrated by his actions in both incarnations of Mother Base, then Outer Heaven and Zanzibar Land), the latter desires total control. Both misinterpret and corrupt the teachings of The Boss, losing sight of the reason behind her final sacrifice. Big Boss believes in an ideology that promotes individual liberty and endless fighting for disparate causes at the expense of stability, security and structure, thus restricting true freedom of citizens to speak, to grow, and even to exist. Conversely, Zero's obsession with order, and the perceived need to preserve society by means of standardization and intrusive governance, leads society to the brink of disaster. His A.I. creation begins to shape a future where individuals would unknowingly suffer not only restrictions in their freedom to act or express themselves, but also to feel beyond the confines of managed boundaries. A perverted liberty of a kind might still exist in such a civilization, but in the narrowest, least genuine sense of the word.

For Zero, freedom would be preserved by imposing a set of constraints and offering individuals liberty within this context; for Big Boss, it could be assured through the absence of constraints and never-ending conflict. Both could only define freedom in relation to boundaries, to limitations, and this was the core of their betrayal of The Boss’s legacy. She saw liberty in a far more positive light, as the result of personal and collective commitment.

From the day they founded Cipher in 1970, the way of Zero and Big Boss was that of oblivion—by forgetting the sense The Boss had shown them, they forgot who they were and what they were truly fighting for. This led both to instigate a chain of events in which the same tragedy is repeated over and over, a series of questions that always seem to elicit the same replies. This explains why the Metal Gear Solid games follow a palpable blueprint: the same themes (death, vengeance, deception), the same actors (a hero, a designated enemy, an elite unit), the same goals (freedom, redemption). Though each episode's narrative offers a similar scenario, they are all different from one another via distinct variations—deviations in the series’ DNA that make each installment unique. This, it could be said, is a reflection of life itself, and mankind in particular: reproducing fundamentally the same things, and yet never reliving exactly the same thing.

After Big Boss's failure to create his warrior’s utopia in Outer Heaven and Zanzibar Land, Zero’s dream of an ultimate form of control over humanity could finally prosper. Having lost both his dearest friend and the force that kept his principles and beliefs in check, the advanced autonomous A.I. program that operated in his stead attempted to apply order to mankind by seeking the continual reproduction of the same, an administrable repetition without end. Its behavior can be likened to a dog chasing its own tail, or, more pertinently, a computer program stuck in an infinite loop. This explains why the Patriots (or, rather, the A.I. that succeeded Zero) use Solid Snake as the primary agent of the system, and the same stratagems with each iteration.

On every occasion barring the last, the circle is refreshed, the hegemony of The Patriots challenged (though not broken) when the A.I. fails to take an unseen variable into account. Of greatest import is the reality that, in each episode where he appears, Ocelot’s true role, his betrayal to Cipher/The Patriots, is never anticipated or understood. However, every time the story is told, certain distinctions and innovations abide; the protagonists grow, and certain things survive, if only via the influence that Snake has on those he meets.

Solid Snake, it transpires, is the true heir of The Boss’s legacy. Just like The Boss, he is ready to sacrifice himself to save the world, without ever caring about his personal fate or reputation. All that matters to him is that his ideas and actions be passed on, despite his imminent death and his infertility. As he puts it himself:

“Life isn't just about passing on your genes. We can leave behind much more than just DNA. Through speech, music, literature and movies... what we've seen, heard, felt... anger, joy and sorrow... these are the things I will pass on. That's what I live for. We need to pass the torch, and let our children read our messy and sad history by its light. We have all the magic of the digital age to do that with. The human race will probably come to an end some time, and new species may rule over this planet. Earth may not be forever, but we still have the responsibility to leave what traces of life we can. Building the future and keeping the past alive are one and the same thing.”

Timeline: Major Events

1935 - Birth of Big Boss (real name: John; nickname: Jack).

1944 - Birth of Ocelot.

1945 - Boris Volgin secures the Philosophers’ Legacy in the aftermath of World War II. The Legacy falls in the hands of his son, Colonel Volgin, a few years later.

1950 - John (later known as Big Boss) begins training with The Boss.

1962 - Major Zero forms the FOX unit, along with a classified XOF unit (led by Skull Face) designed to back up FOX in utmost secrecy.

1964 - Operation Snake Eater: The Shagohod is destroyed, and both Colonel Volgin and The Boss are killed by Big Boss. Ocelot retrieves half of the Philosophers’ Legacy for America and brings it back to Zero.

1970 - Ocelot retrieves the second half of the Philosophers’ Legacy. Creation of Cipher by Zero, along with Big Boss, Ocelot and three others, an organization that plans to use the appropriated funds to spread the ideals that they believe The Boss held dear.

1971 - Zero initiates the “Les Enfants Terribles” project.

1972 - Solid Snake and Liquid Snake are born as part of the “Les Enfants Terribles” project, followed by Solidus Snake. Big Boss permanently leaves Cipher and goes off on his own to build his army of mercenaries, recruiting Kazuhira Miller in the process.

1974 - Peace Walker Incident: Big Boss becomes entangled in a crisis that involves the CIA and the KGB, with Cipher manipulating all parties in the background. It is but a ploy designed by Major Zero to force Big Boss back to the Cipher fold. At the conclusion of the incident, Big Boss commands a large force stationed at Mother Base, and a Metal Gear with nuclear capabilities called ZEKE.

1975 - Ground Zeroes Incident: Falling afoul of a trap set by XOF commander Skull Face, Big Boss mounts a critical rescue attempt that clears the way for a sneak attack that destroys Mother Base. Skull Face makes an unsanctioned assassination attempt on Big Boss, leaving him gravely wounded and comatose.

1976 - While Big Boss is in a coma, Skull Face, exploiting the expertise of biotech specialist Code Talker, infects Zero with harmful parasites. Zero knows he will not survive, but buys himself a few years thanks to his connections and resources. Zero decides to create an A.I. system that will survive him and carry on his will—a system that would later evolve into The Patriots. The groundwork for the advanced A.I. is designed by Dr. Strangelove.

1977 - A diminished Zero visits Big Boss during his coma. He will soon lose all cognitive functions and says goodbye to the man he still considers as his dearest friend.

1980 - Dr. Strangelove, who joined and married Huey Emmerich while he was working on the design of Sahelanthropus for Skull Face, gives birth to Hal “Otacon” Emmerich.

1984 - The Phantom Pain episode: Big Boss wakes up from his coma and leads a new army, the Diamond Dogs, to eliminate Skull Face in his attempt to wipe the English language from the face of the Earth using vocal cord parasites. Huey Emmerich, after multiple betrayals that lead to the death of many Diamond Dogs soldiers, is banished from Mother Base. Eli, a child soldier extracted by Big Boss from Africa, escapes Mother Base thanks to his special bond with The Third Child—and presumably reappears in his more familiar guise as Liquid Snake years later, in the Shadow Moses Incident. Ocelot is already preparing his grand stratagem to take down Cipher/The Patriots.

1995 - Outer Heaven Uprising: Big Boss attempts to fulfill his dream of establishing a nation of mercenaries free from all government controls. He is stopped by the intervention of Solid Snake.

1997 - Huey Emmerich commits suicide after discovering that his son Hal and his second wife are conducting an affair.

1999 - Zanzibar Land Disturbance: Big Boss makes a second attempt to establish his free nation of mercenaries, but is stopped again by Solid Snake. Big Boss's body is retrieved by The Patriots and maintained in a state of perpetual coma for fifteen years.

2005 - Shadow Moses Incident: Solid Snake stops a terrorist unit led by Liquid Snake from launching a nuclear missile with Metal Gear REX. Ocelot has an arm severed during a duel against Snake. Kaz Miller is found dead in his house a few days prior to the incident, presumably killed on Liquid’s command—and possibly by Ocelot himself.

2006 - Ocelot has Liquid Snake's arm transplanted in place of the one he lost during the Shadow Moses Incident, which he will use as a prop while faking his Liquid Ocelot persona. Solid Snake and Otacon found Philanthropy, an NGO fighting to restrict the proliferation of Metal Gear technology.

2007 - Tanker Incident: Solid Snake takes photos from the newly developed Metal Gear RAY. Emma Emmerich is recruited by The Patriots to begin work on the GW artificial intelligence system.

2009 - Big Shell Incident: Raiden and Solid Snake eliminate Solidus Snake, who was attempting to free himself and the world from the influence of The Patriots. The whole incident was orchestrated by The Patriots in an attempt to better understand (and therefore, control) the human psyche.

2014 - Guns of the Patriots episode: Solid Snake and Ocelot (in his Liquid Ocelot persona) put an end to The Patriots by destroying their A.I. systems. Ocelot, Zero, and a briefly resurrected Big Boss all die at the conclusion of this episode.

[interact-if]

First up for our Religious Diversity Month is Ramona!

Ramona, author of Crown of Exile

When your village is razed to the ground, you're left fleeing with an exiled prince. You can trust no one but each other. Your father's dying wish was to protect the prince, but can you really trust a man who was exiled from his kingdom?

Journey across the borders in search of allies. But in this deadly game of treachery and deceit, there is more than just the prince's life at stake. Will you flee from the past that haunts you or will you embrace the fate that awaits you?

The decision is yours.

• Read more about Crown of Exile here.

• Play the demo here.

• Ramona’s Ko-fi.

[INTERVIEW TRANSCRIPT UNDER THE CUT]

Q1) Tell us about your project(s)!

I'm currently working on a fantasy game called Crown of Exile. It's really dear to my heart since it's helped me get over a very long period of writer's block. The game is all about helping an exiled prince reclaim his throne, all the while making allies with neighbouring kingdoms. There's a lot of romance, political intrigue and scheming with the added bonus of fictitious cultures clashing.

Q2) Why did you choose to write interactive fiction? What drew you to the format?

I've always been a writer of novels, so when I discovered interactive fiction, it opened a whole new world to me. The idea of being able to explore so many different narrative paths, which you can't normally do in a linear novel setting really made me interested in exploring more of my story ideas in an interactive fiction setting. I finally could write more than one path, without straying from the plot.

Q3) How have your identity and beliefs influenced your work?

Growing up, I was told a lot of the time what was expected of me and what I should believe. Of course, I'm very stubborn and questioned almost everything I was told which didn't earn me much favour from others. Because of that, I often include my own experiences into what I write. Challenging traditional gender roles, spiritual beliefs and even just unfair situations have all influenced my writing. I try to write things that I'd like to see happen in real life, which doesn't always happen.

Q4) What aspects would you like to be more explored or represented in media regarding your religion?

I grew up in a very religious family of Hindus and for the most part of my childhood, I was very much a Hindu. When I got older, I became more interested in Spiritualism, which is influenced by my Hindu upbringing. I'd really like to see more representation of Hinduism in mainstream media and I don't mean just yoga and meditation, because there's a lot more to it than that. It's so rare to see many Eastern beliefs in the media, so it'd be nice to see the religion and the many different deities explored.

Q5) What are you most excited about sharing related to your project?

I think I'm most excited about sharing the fictional cultures and beliefs that I created for Crown of Exile. A lot of it is heavily inspired by my own interests in ancient cultures and religions. I'm also very excited about writing a game more focussed on the interaction between characters, especially the romance aspects since many of the characters will have conflicting ideas and beliefs.

Q6) A tiny bit unrelated, what's your favorite religious event?

I want to say Diwali, because I mean the fireworks, the lights and of course the food, but I'll settle on what's called the Mariamman prayer. It's to give thanks to the mother goddess for helping people who became ill and were suffering through a drought. She gave the people sour porridge which was said to heal them. My grandmother still does the prayer and as strange as it sounds, the sour porridge is my absolute favourite thing to drink. I grew up with my grandmother doing the prayer every year, so it's really special to me.

Q7) Any thoughts or advice you'd like to give to fellow authors or readers?

I think the most important advice is to always be kind to yourself when you write. I really struggle with wanting what I've written to be perfect and often, I'll get stuck on doubting what I've written. It's okay for your work not to be perfect, because, when you take a step back and clear your mind, you realise that what you first wrote wasn't as bad as you thought.

[soundsofastar]

I WILL EXPERIENCE YOUR CATEGORY 7 AUTISM EVENT (also what is he from)

SIGHS. ALRIGHT FINE CATEGORY 7/8 AUTISM EVENT INCOMING. Sorry to everyone in advance. Spoilers for the illuminae files under the cut

So. Long story short AIDAN right. Obscure blorbo for the past 4 yrs !!!!!!! He is an AI made to defend a spaceship battle carrier (the spaceship in question being the Alexander 78-V !!) This spaceship isss uhm part of the UTA which is essentially the government/military SSSOOO that means war crimes are about ti happen but i need to preface this with a very very Very Important fact that people seem to forget a LOT!

HE IS A DEFENSE AI !!! it's literally in his name !! It's an acronym that stands for Artificla Intelligence Defense Analytics Network !!!

He acts quite differently from the system standard (how he behaved before getting essentially lobotomised is explored in the prequel of illuminae called memento it's a really great read), the biggest differentiator being that he uses personal pronouns (I, me, myself) to refer to himself. This was apparently so concerning the head of the tech team on the Alexander tried to get the commander of the ship (General torrence) to shut him down so essentially his whole personality and conscious thought is a system error of immense magnitude!!! Later on when shit has already hit the space fan as I love to quote a post on this site somewhere one of the protagonists of the series challenges his belief of not being afraid of death because he can be remade, but that'd be only his core code, it wouldn't be what he's become. It wouldn't be what he's seen and felt and this actually stuns him so badly that he CRASHES. LET ME REITERATE. A military ai with the brain the size of a city CRASHESand I will never forget the impact of seeing the quote "I am afraid." After. Like holy shit hthis guys afraid of death?!,! AND THIS IS ONLY THE START OF HIS DEVELOPMENT.

IN AN AMAAAZINF feat of foreshadowing previously mentioned protagonist finds herself in theserver core and that's the first time (explicitly stated by him) that he's hated what he is. Do you wanna know WHY.

She was MOURNING HER FRJEND who she just witnessed DIE And AIDAN COULDNT COMFORT HER BY GIVING HER A HUG. yes i think about t this scene way more than i should!!!!

The bond he develops with this protagonist tears me apart because she's eventually forced to deactivate him and f. Even though she's killing him inn a way he still asks for her to keep talking to him and AHWFSHFGSN.not to mention he's actually only really as gentle as he is with her !!!!!! He pretends to flush another guy out an AIRLOCK AS A JOKE JUST FOR COMPARISON (best scene in all of the books don't @ me)

THERES SO MUCH MORE BUT THE LAST THING ILL MENTION is that these books are formatted pretty uniquely in the form of transcripts, wikipedia pages etc and he gets his own special kind of pages and tbeyre white on black and that sets him apart so nicely and the formatting and everything changes along with him and ahghwgwh it's such a great way to showwhat's happening to him and changing and HOW and its so amazing and so good please read the illuminae files for him. I beg.

[uwmadarchives]

All Systems Go!

by Chloe Foor, Student Historian 2022/2023

It’s kind of crazy to think that almost a whole year has gone by so quickly! Since I’ve last written, I’ve wrapped up processing the oral histories. I have created transcriptions, indexes, and abstracts for six out of the seven oral histories that I’ve conducted, and am in the process of finishing up the last one! While this process is incredibly time consuming, it is also incredibly rewarding. I know that the work that I am doing will allow these oral histories to be accessible to anyone who might be interested in my research topic, and I hope that in the future, a student will find them and become as fascinated with my findings as I have been! These oral histories should be up on the archives website next semester, so make sure to check them out once they get uploaded!

Website for my own project

In less than a week, I will be presenting my research alongside Elisa, the other Student Historian, and Shelby, the recipient of the Undergraduate Research Award. I am super excited to share my research from the last year with everyone, and I know that Elisa and Shelby are also excited! If you want to come to these presentations, they will be Friday May 5th at 12:30 in Memorial Library room 460! If you can’t make it, it will also be recorded and uploaded to the Archives’ YouTube channel!

Finally, I am so excited to share that I have been offered to continue as Student Historian through the next school year! I am not completely sure what my topic will be just yet, but I know that I will likely continue researching the history of queer students at UW. Right now, I am toying with the idea of queer space-making here at Madison, such as the formation of the Madison Alliance for Homosexual Equality, the GSCC, and other LGBTQ+ affinity groups on campus! We’ll see where that idea goes, but I do know that I want to spend more time in the archives next year! I was not in the archives that much this last year, I went to explore the Daily Cardinal and files on the Gay Purges and AIDS, but I know that the archives has a plethora of other LGBTQ+ materials that I would love to explore!

As always, thank you so much for reading about my journey! I am looking forward to continuing these blog posts through the next year!

[tzeming-janice]

Can crowdsourced information during COVID-19 pandemic mobilise the public into action?

Crowdsourcing is the process of exploring customers’ ideas, opinions, and thoughts available on the internet from large groups of people aimed at incorporating innovation, implementing new ideas, and eliminating product issues (Send Pulse, 2023).

Below are the four main types of crowdsourcing:

With the rise of social media platforms, crowdsourcing became a powerful tool for mobilizing the public. It involves communities worldwide in responding to emergencies and managing natural disasters like earthquakes, wildfires, floods and even major global crises like the COVID-19 pandemic.

Crowdsourcing initiatives to face Covid-19 crisis

As noted by World Health Organization (2018), crowdsourcing is increasingly contributing to the improvement of public health since it facilitates the mobilization of a diverse community through communication and collaboration (Nguyen et al., 2019). Also, crowdsourced research and development have proven valuable in the field of medical research (Callaghan, 2015). Additionally, crowdsourcing has been crucial in tackling the challenges of COVID-19 crisis by uniting the efforts of individuals, organizations, and communities.

Crowdfight COVID-19

First, Crowdfight COVID‐19 is an initiative within the scientific community aimed at mobilizing resources to combat COVID‐19. Researchers working on COVID-19 can share a wish or a task to explain their request. The request can go from simple time‐consuming task like data transcription to technical question beyond their expertise, or to setup a collaboration. Fellow scientists in the community then strive to understand and fulfil these requests (Vermicelli et al., 2021).

Call4Ideas COVID-19

The Openinnovability platform, created by Enel, is hosting the Call4Ideas COVID‐19 Challenge in collaboration with Marzotto Venture Accelerator and Campus Bio‐Medico University of Rome. This challenge invites individuals and companies to submit ideas that can be transformed into entrepreneurial projects or to share existing innovative projects that can help address the COVID-19 crisis in Italy. The competition covers various areas such as medical equipment, data analysis, telemedicine, and cybersecurity, with a deadline for participation on May 31, 2020 (Vermicelli et al., 2021).

Kaggle’s CORD-19

Kaggle's CORD-19 project aims to provide the global research community with a comprehensive and regularly updated dataset for applying recent AI techniques. Researchers can post complex data analysis problems with monetary rewards for the best solutions. In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, Kaggle has made the COVID-19 Open Research Dataset (CORD-19) freely available, containing over 59,000 scientific articles, including more than 47,000 full-text articles related to COVID-19, SARS-CoV-2, and related coronaviruses. They also encourage AI experts to develop text and data mining tools to support the medical community in their ongoing battle against COVID-19 (Vermicelli et al., 2021).

The classification of the initiatives has been analyzed as follows:

Source: (Vermicelli et al., 2021)

From the information provided above, we can see that one of the common tasks of crowdsourcing in health is surveillance and the aggregation of information in a unified format. The mix of resources and contributions of the public, together with financial support from public sponsors is structured and coordinated by the intermediary platform. This process leads to the generation of fresh insights, inventive solutions, and the facilitation of cooperation among diverse and complementary stakeholders (Vermicelli et al., 2021).

Will the impact of fake news on social media influence crowdsourcing initiatives?

The utilization of social media and search queries to gather information about the progression of diseases is continuously expanding, encompassing platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Google Trends, Bing, Yahoo, and others (Depoux et al., 2020). This has given rise to information overload, coupled with the proliferation of deceptive and false news, commonly referred to as 'fake news' (FN). In the twenty-first century, fake news has become a prominent term to describe misinformation disseminated by mass media, predominantly on social platforms, which now play an increasingly integral role in people's daily lives (Naeem et al., 2020). The prevalence of false news has consequences for public health as it fuels panic among people and erodes trust in the scientific community among the public (Rocha et al., 2021).

From my point of view, the influence of fake news on social media can significantly impact crowdsourcing initiatives. Fake news and misinformation can undermine the quality and credibility of data collected via crowdsourcing platforms, making it harder to obtain accurate information. Distrust issues may arise, causing people to be skeptical about their involvement in such initiatives. Information overload and manipulation by malicious actors using fake news can further complicate the mobilization of crowdsourced efforts. To mitigate these challenges, crowdsourcing organizers can implement enhanced verification processes, promote transparency, engage with the community, and educate participants about media literacy. Overall, addressing the impact of fake news is crucial for maintaining the credibility and effectiveness of crowdsourcing initiatives.

References:

Rocha, Y. M., de Moura, G. A., Desidério, G. A., de Oliveira, C. H., Lourenço, F. D., & de Figueiredo Nicolete, L. D. (2021). The impact of fake news on social media and its influence on health during the COVID-19 pandemic: a systematic review. Zeitschrift fur Gesundheitswissenschaften = Journal of public health, 1–10. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10389-021-01658-z

Send Pulse. (2023, March 22). Crowdsourcing. https://sendpulse.com/support/glossary/crowdsourcing

Smith, T. (2023, October 06). Crowdfunding: What it is, how it works, and popular websites. Investopedia. https://www.investopedia.com/terms/c/crowdfunding.asp

Sprout Social. (n.d.). Crowdsourcing. https://sproutsocial.com/glossary/crowdsourcing/

Vermicelli, S., Cricelli, L., & Grimaldi, M. (2021). How can crowdsourcing help tackle the COVID‐19 pandemic? An explorative overview of innovative collaborative practices. R&D Management, 51(2), 183–194. https://doi.org/10.1111/radm.12443

[allmyplumbobs]

All My Plumbobs by @mintsweettea

(transcription under the cut)

I'm currently working on writing a Sim's soap opera - All My Plumbobs - more information to come in the next week or two.

Format: Written text with pictures, set up similarly to this post with written transcription under the cut. Each "episode" will be about 1500 words/~5 minute read. 12 parts (~1 hour total) (subject to change)

Rating wise, I'm trying to keep it between PG-13 and R, but much closer to PG-13. (Profanity, sexually suggestive content(nothing explicit! My mom reads this!!) Drug and alcohol use),For full information on CW/TWs, click here (caution: contains spoilers!) or message me if you want to ask about a specific trigger without possibly spoiling anything else.

I plan on writing the entire first season and releasing it all very close together (I'll post the first four episodes on the first day, and then one episode a day for the next 8 days, to keep from flooding anyone's timeline)

*feel free to reblog (:*

Zachary, Stevie, and Cassandra grew up next door to each other and have been best friends since childhood. They spent countless summers exploring the neighborhood, playing together, and getting into trouble, but now that they’re teenagers, feelings have started to complicate things. Stevie has had a crush on Zachary for as long as she can remember. Unfortunately, he is currently dating Cassandra. That doesn't prevent Cassandra from noticing how every time Zachary tells a joke, he looks to see if Stevie is laughing first, the lingering stares between them, and the way that his face completely lights up every time he gets a text.

Summer Knight and Skylar Rose are high school sweethearts. They’ve been living together for 10 years now and Skylar is starting to get anxious that Summer will never be ready for marriage. Summer has promised that they’ll get married as soon as she gets to where she wants to be in her career - she really needs to spend this time hustling - but her methods are giving a conflicting statement - Summer can’t get very far into any career field before getting fed up and quitting. And Skylar can’t help but wonder what Summer is actually doing so late at the office every single night.

After 31 faithful years of marriage, Louanne Brewer’s husband left her for a much younger woman. Meagan Branch is still irritated that her husband, Cooper Brewer, would invite his mother to live with them without consulting her first. Pregnancy was rough enough on its own, but having her mother-in-law in her house only made things more miserable. Not to mention, they had to give up the nursey to turn it into Louanne’s room. Sharing a room with Emmerson wasn’t too bad when he was a baby, but now that he is a toddler, everyone wishes that they had a little more space. Cooper works during the day and comes home at night to work on his novel. What’s up with that strange glowing he sometimes sees outside his window late at night?

There have been rumors flying around the town that Mortimer and Bella Goth are swingers or have some kind of open relationship. Regardless, they seem to be rather flirty with lots of different people during their weekly dinner parties. The Goth’s house is known for being quite the party place.