#guide to analogue consciousness

[shaperaverse-brainrot]

YOU'RE ALL I WANT AND YOU'RE ALL I NEED AND YOU'RE ALL I HOPE AND YOU'RE ALL I DREAM AND I LOVE YOU LOVE YOU SO FAR GONE!

Matching pfps for me and who?

[fayzart136]

Behold! Every Single Lineup I made for the Shaperaverse! The first was made in early 2019. The more recent was made last week. So thats half a decade... Jesus christ lol.

Apologies for the long post. I literally put exactly 30 images in here! It's turned into Do You Love The Color Of The Art Progress, but I can't bear to put a readmore in there.

[pagliaccis-clown]

I've been in a New Albion mood for a while and came up with a rough timeline of the tetralogy, which very quickly lead to character designs

Close ups below!

[art-o-gant]

spare just one second for me

[jaedoesart]

brain is mush, take some shaperaverse funnies

[inscrutablyrenamed]

The shopagopolis has the slogan "if it exists, it's here for less". Do you reckon they have to deal with customers being all annoying about them not having certain items in stock? Would it be one of those things people say to the cashier to be funny, but just makes you wanna die inside?

[mightydyke]

imagine if your dad and your boyfriend's mum used to date and they had a kid together, so that kid was your half sibling and your boyfriend's half sibling, but then that child got turned into an iPad by the cult you're part of and then you pretend to be possessed so your dad lets you and your boyfriend go to another dimension with your cult but the dimension is full of monsters and your boyfriend dies trying to get back so you broadcast love songs on the radio in the hope that he might somehow hear it but then this girl shows up and she's the reincarnation on your boyfriend only you don't see him in her and you can't bring yourself to love her and then she tells you your dad wants to upload your consciousness into an iPad so he can see you once more and you agree but then you get killed by the monsters. Wouldn't that be fucked up or what

[ceaseless-rambler]

What happens in the new Albion Guide to Analogue consciousness then?

A lot of alive people go to the land of the dead, find out it sucks there, and die trying to leave. Luckily, an ipad baby can save them! Also sometimes your boyfriend dies and reincarnates as your father, you know how it is

[jewishdainix]

You ever reincarnate as the father of your boyfriend and your half sibling

[slime-enby]

Rachael and Holding Onto the Past and Abuse and Themes

hey cw up front on this one: there's gonna be discussion of abuse n grooming in here

I have been plagued by thinking about the themes of An Atompunk Opera, the New Albion Guide to Analogue Consciousness. It really was a struggle for me and i think mostly that difficulty came down to the character Rachael. As much as i loved her, jokes about her just "being a taxi" for the True Real story kinda kept me from thinking about her story and her writing and giving it proper weight and thought. And that isn't to say that she isn't a passive protagonist for much of the story, she very much is. From the moment she escapes the asylum she was kept in until she runs out on Lee into the arms of Elysium's angels, the narrative mostly happens to and around her. She very much reacts to it.

I think this fits into what I've come to understand as a big theme of An Atompunk Opera, the New Albion Guide to Analogue Consciousness, of holding on too tight to an ideal past to the detriment of seeing, let alone making a new future to be happy in. The most obvious character to point to for this theme is Connor, who was so focused on saving Lee to the detriment of his relationship with zip (mascot 3000) that zip just calls Conner "the madman" instead of dad. and in the end instead of forging a new future with the kid he does have with him, instead he's left with neither one. We see this in Lee's last moments as well, he wants to hold onto and mend a relationship with the woman he thinks is the reincarnated soul of his long dead love, and clinging onto it ends up killing him.

Rachael doesn't seem to be outwardly holding onto something from her past though, does she? I mean all she does after escaping the asylum she was put in after she wanted to keep the pregnancy from a guy who groomed her was follow the instructions of this man older than her because she's lost alone and disoriented- oh hm.

Up front i am not comparing Connor to the man that abused Rachael. This isn't a "Connor is secretly this even worse thing" kind of post. This is a discussion of reaction TO years of abuse and cycles. And Themes. Love a theme.

Rachael is a character who as we meet her in her song details being wooed by a man much older than her n whom demands respect from her life. I have been in similar situations to this. Being made small n to listen to directions leaves a huge impact n even after moments of sticking up for oneself it is very easy to still slip into those patterns. Rachael, i believe, is still subconsciously clinging to a past or more accurately trauma of needing to look for instruction and approval. And as a more active role, is holding on to ideas of soul mates and romance to get her through her life. She's holding on to the love song just for her on the radio. She's the character who's holding on with two gripped fists to something that wasn't good in the first place. Her story is so, so necessarily about being able to let her past go.

So she is a taxi in the story as she's told to be. She goes to elysium because she doesn't have much better to do and as she thinks its where her promised love will be waiting. She steps into elysium greeted by a welcome party!

Then it comes crashing down when Lee tells her that she doesn't feel like Adrian, the he cannot love her in the way she wants. So she runs, and she cries and she wants to die.

And then she lives, and then she chooses to keep living, not chasing after acceptance or recognition or her destined love. Rachael chooses to carve out something new with her acceptance into elysium, and with Zip. She gets to have a happy (after?)life because she's the character who finally stopped clinging to a past that she shouldn't return to

[granma-sweetie]

hi i am making a lee morgan shaperaverse patch jacket and i need ideas for patches :-) um this is a call for help basically. if anyone has any ideas i Will credit you on the jacket (if you want) but um yeah please help basically

[shaperaverse-brainrot]

"I wonder if my dad will even know I'm gone" Lee buddy your dad would become a time travelling serial killer for you. Quite literally.

[the-lightless-flame]

imagine being annabel watching all this. u try to bring back the dead ONE TIME and about a century later the reincarnated form of your granddaughter is saving a cult (that formed around your method of resurrection) from the afterlife with the help of her ai bestie by giving the cultists the choice to either be reincarnated or turned into ais

[projectproductions]

Whenever I imagine the Voodoopunks (New Albion Tetralogy) I kind of always imagine them being representative of different groups within each instalment.

During The Dolls of New Albion (DONA) the Voodoopunks are first being invented and are still feeling out what they are as a group. Since it's primarily composed of teenagers and young adults the Voodoopunks are foundationally a sub-culture within New Albion born from the cultural installation of necromancy as an everyday standard consumer's commodity. However I would like to argue that they are specifically a counter-culture within New Albion. It's stated that most people treat Dolls as accessories or objects of projection rather than as real people but - while the Voodoopunks aren't much better - the Voodoopunks seem to take an almost opposite stand to this. Instead of objectifying the Dolls to the point of dehumanisation, the Voodoopunks objectify the Dolls to a point of reverence or deification. Most people would begin to think of death as trivial in the face of being able to reverse it, but the Voodoopunks instead revere death more than they appreciate their lives - they revolve themselves around death rather than trivialising it. They're countering the cultural perception of the Dolls. This idea of them being analogous to a counter culture is also supported by their political motivations. Most sub cultures - especially counter cultures - have some ideological or political motivation within them which ran against the popular zeitgeist of the time (grunge came from the rejection of the idea that poverty produced only undesirable things, emo from the rejection of the idea that negative emotions should be hidden away from public view, etc). The Voodoopunks are an anti-establishment group, and essentially voting for them would have been a vote to get rid of the establishment of the DONA-era New Albion government (something which was known to be corrupt and unforgiving as seen throughout the tetralogy). What sets them apart from most anti-establishment groups within media however is their emphasis on spirituality born from the change in culture around death in New Albion. The society of DONA-era New Albion is very scientifically- and economically-centred, they prioritise the advancement of science and enterprise over civilians wellbeing or connection. The Voodoopunks counter this cultural president by embracing the inherent spirituality of spirit summoning and co-existence - spirituality being something often seen as antithetical to science. They're basically a youth counter-culture, young political ideological group, and a rising religion all wrapped into one born from the birth of an economic enterprise and the culture surrounding it. Each aspect runs both parallel to each other and intertwined with each other, one aspect never dominating the others - although it all stems from the inherent counter- culture of the Voodoopunks.

Compare this to the Voodoopunks of The New Albion Radio Hour (NARH). Due to a prolonged sense of isolation from the larger connection of New Albion society for around a decade (most likely longer), the Voodoopunks have all but basically lost their counter-cultural roots since they've been disconnected from the culture they were countering. Additionally the ideological aspect of the Voodoopunks seemed to have seeped and been absorbed into the now more religious fanaticism aspects of the Voodoopunks. This isn't to say that they aren't a significant political and ideological force - they are literally the face of the residents against the New Albion government after all - but their ideological aspects have some second to their spiritual religious ones. They're basically a cult now (not in the exploitative way, but in the collective of concentrated religious activity kind of way). They have their own religious wrights and rituals, they have self proclaimed hymns and chants and prophets. Thomas is literally able to recognise them by their sound of their singing alone. The Voodoopunks in NARH are identified by their religious aspects, with other aspects of them being second to their fanaticism.

Both previous installations of the Voodoopunks have been similar in the fact that they aren't the status queo, they were in fact counter to the status queo and actively against the establishment of New Albion. However in The New Albion Guide To Analogue Consciousness (NAGAC) they are the establishment, or at least they run the establishment. Something noticeable is that in NAGAC the only time the Voodoopunks are referred to as the Voodoopunks are in reference to the people, while in previous narratives the title Voodoopunks referred both to the people and what they represented as a group. No, in NAGAC whenever the Voodoopunks are referred to as a collective outside of its people they are referred to as Arcadia Corp. I think this is indicative of the fact that the Voodoopunks as a group have lost almost all of their back bone in the sense of counter-culturalism and ideological individuality. What are the Voodoopunks in NAGAC except for just being the people who run Arcadia Corp? A religious group? Not really, they've lost almost all of their fanaticism as they became more mainstream and palatable from the population of New Albion. The religious aspects they have left are all watered down, music sounding like it's been Christian Rock-ed and sanitised. Heck there isn't even a song called The Voodoopunks in NAGAC! There's "The Voodoopunks Ascension" but that isn't even the Voodoopunks main/signature song in this album - Kyrie is! Essentially in the shuffle of becoming the mainstream and publicly acceptable norm for the pursuit of power, the Voodoopunks as a group lost what made them themselves - ending up with the people being only the Voodoopunks in name until they too die out.

I find the development of the Voodoopunks so interesting. They're never truly all good or all bad, but they are a significant driving force in New Albion throughout the years in the pursuit of their own goals and desires until eventually they drive them into extermination.

It's a really good representation of how ideology, government and politics, economics and innovation, and culture all interact with and influence each other within history and the real world. Also on how as years go by often sub-cultures and counter-cultures will lose their connection to their original purpose and become almost bastardization of themselves as they become sanitized and stripped of their essence as they enter the view of the socially accepted public eyes.

[art-o-gant]

THE AFTERLIFE IS FULL OF DEATH

[jaedoesart]

Doggo hugs <3