#how twitter caused the collapse of a world power

[thetimeicansee]

[mariacallous]

For more than three weeks, Gaza has faced an almost total internet blackout. The cables, cell towers, and infrastructure needed to keep people online have been damaged or destroyed as Israel launched thousands of missiles in response to Hamas attacking Israel and taking hundreds of hostages on October 7. Then, this evening, amid reports of heavy bombing in Gaza, some of the last remaining connectivity disappeared.

In the days after October 7, people living in Gaza have been unable to communicate with family or friends, leaving them unsure whether loved ones are alive. Finding reliable news about events has become harder. Rescue workers have not been able to connect to mobile networks, hampering recovery efforts. And information flowing out of Gaza, showing the conditions on the ground, has been stymied.

As the Israel Defense Forces said it was expanding its ground operations in Gaza this evening, internet connectivity fell further. Paltel, the main Palestinian communications company, has been able to keep some of its services online during Israel’s military response to Hamas’ attack. However, at around 7:30 pm local time today, internet monitoring firm NetBlocks confirmed a “collapse” in connectivity in the Gaza Strip, mostly impacting remaining Paltel services.

“We regret to announce a complete interruption of all communications and internet services within the Gaza Strip,” Paltel posted in a post on its Facebook page. The company claimed that bombing had “caused the destruction of all remaining international routes.” An identical post was made on the Facebook page of Jawwal, the region’s biggest mobile provider, which is owned by Paltel. Separately, Palestinian Red Crescent, a humanitarian organization, said on X (formerly Twitter) that it had lost contact with its operation room in Gaza and is “deeply concerned” about its ability to keep caring for people, with landline, cell, and internet connections being inaccessible.

“This is a terrifying development,” Marwa Fatafta, a policy manager focusing on the Middle East and North Africa at the digital rights group Access Now, tells WIRED. “Taking Gaza completely off the grid while launching an unprecedented bombardment campaign only means something atrocious is about to happen.”

A WIRED review of internet analysis data, social media posts, and Palestinian internet and telecom company statements shows how connectivity in the Gaza Strip drastically plummeted after October 7 and how some buildings linked to internet firms have been damaged in attacks. Photos and videos show sites that house various internet and telecom firms have been damaged, while reports from official organizations, including the United Nations, describe the impact of people being offline.

Damaged Lines

Around the world, the internet and telecoms networks that typically give web users access to international video calls, online banking, and endless social media are a complicated, sprawling mix of hardware and software. Networks of networks, combining data centers, servers, switches, and reams of cables, communicate with each other and send data globally. Local internet access is provided by a mix of companies with no clear public documentation of their infrastructure, making it difficult to monitor the overall status of the system as a whole. In Gaza, experts say, internet connectivity is heavily reliant on Israeli infrastructure to connect to the outside world.

Amid Israel’s intense bombing of Gaza, physical systems powering the internet have been destroyed. On October 10, the United Nations’ Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), which oversees emergency responses, said air strikes “targeted several telecommunication installations” and had destroyed two of the three main lines of communications going into Gaza.

Prior to tonight’s blackout, internet connectivity remained but was “extremely slow and limited,” Access Now’s Fatafta says. People she has spoken to from Gaza say it could take a day to upload and send a few photos. “They have to send like 20 messages in order for one to go through,” Fatafta says. “They are desperately—especially for Gazans that live outside—trying to get through to their families.”

“Every time I try to call someone from family or friends, I try to call between seven to 10 times,” says Ramadan Al-Agha, a digital marketer who lives in Khan Yunis, a city in the south of the Gaza Strip. “The call may be cut off two or three times,” he told WIRED in a WhatsApp message before the latest outages. “We cannot access news quickly and clearly.” People in the region have simultaneously faced electricity blackouts, dwindling supplies of fuel used to power generators, and a lack of clean water, food, and medical supplies. “It is a humanitarian disaster,” Al-Agha says.

Connectivity in Gaza started to drop not long after Israel responded to the October 7 Hamas attack. Rene Wilhelm, a senior R&D engineer at the nonprofit internet infrastructure organization Ripe Network Coordination Center, says based on an analysis of internet routing data it collects that 11 Palestinian networks, which may operate both in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, began to experience disruption after October 7. Eight of the networks were no longer visible to the global internet as of October 23, Wilhelm says. Ahead of this evening’s blackout, there was around 15 percent of normal connectivity, according to data from Georgia Tech’s Internet Outage Detection and Analysis project. That dropped to around 7 percent as reports of the blackout circulated.

One office belonging to Paltel in the Al Rimal neighborhood of Gaza City has been destroyed in the attacks, photos and videos show. Floors have been destroyed and windows blown away in the multistory building, and piles of rubble surround the entrances. (It is unclear what equipment the building housed or how many floors Paltel occupied.) Another internet provider, AlfaNet, is listed as being based in the Al-Watan Tower. The company posted to its Facebook page on October 8 that the tower had been destroyed and its services have stopped, with other online posts also saying the tower has been destroyed.

Multiple Palestinian internet and telecoms firms have said their services have been disrupted during the war, mostly posting to social media. Internet provider Fusion initially said its engineers were trying to repair its infrastructure, although it has since said this is not continuing. “The network was destroyed, and the cables and poles were badly damaged by the bombing,” it wrote on Facebook. JetNet said there had been a “sudden disruption” to access points. SpeedClick posted that the situation was out of its control. And HiNet posted that it has “no more to offer to ensure” people could stay online following “the attacks and destruction our internet servers have suffered.”

Across Paltel’s network on October 19, according to an update shared by the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, 83 percent of fixed line users had been disconnected, with 53 percent of sites providing fixed line connections also being offline. Half of the company’s fiber optic internet lines in Gaza weren’t operational, the update says. The connectivity disappeared this evening, according to Paltel’s Facebook post, which says there has been a “complete interruption” of all its services. Paltel, AlfaNet, Fusion, and SpeedClick could not be reached or did not respond to requests for comment.

Lost Connections

In recent years, governments and authoritarian regimes have frequently turned to shutting down the internet for millions of people in attempts to suppress protests and curtail free speech. Targeting the communications networks is common during conflicts. During Russia's war in Ukraine, its forces have decimated communications networks, tried to take over the internet, and set up new mobile companies to control information flows. When Hamas first attacked Israel on October 7, it used drones to bomb communications equipment at surveillance posts along the borders of the Gaza Strip.

Monika Gehner, the head of corporate communications at the International Telecommunication Union, says the body is always “alarmed” by damage inflicted on any telecommunications infrastructure during conflicts. The ITU, the United Nations’ primary internet governance body, believes “efficient telecommunication services” are crucial to peace and international cooperation, and its secretary-general has called for respecting infrastructure in the Middle East, Gehner says.

Officials in Israel have consistently claimed they are targeting Hamas militants within Gaza, not civilians, while responding to the Hamas attacks, which killed more than 1,400 people in Israel. The Hamas-run Health Ministry within Gaza has said more than 7,000 people have been killed there and released a list of names. A spokesperson for the Israel Defense Forces did not respond to WIRED’s questions about internet disruptions within Gaza.

Hanna Kreitem, a senior adviser for internet technology and development in the Middle East and North Africa at the Internet Society, an open internet advocacy nonprofit, says Palestinian firms have a “big reliance” on Israeli internet firms. “Palestinians are not controlling any of the ICT infrastructure,” says Mona Shtaya, a non-resident fellow at the Tahrir Institute for Middle East Policy. Mobile networks in the Gaza Strip rely on 2G technologies. Al-Agha, the digital marketer, shared a screenshot showing mobile internet speeds of 7.18 kilobytes per second; average mobile speeds in the US in 2022 were 24 megabits per second, according to mobile analytics firm Statista.

“The internet is vital in times of war in crises,” says Fatafta, the Access Now policy manager, who adds that there can be “terrible consequences” linked to connectivity blackouts. The UN’s OCHA said rescue workers have had a harder time “carrying out their mission” partly due to the “limited or no connection to mobile networks.” Al-Agha says he has lost some clients due to the disruptions. The lack of connectivity can obscure events that are happening on the ground, Fatafta says. News crews have told WIRED they have footage from the ground but are “losing the story because of the internet.”

Kreitem says that a lack of electricity and access to the equipment will have made an impact on top of any physical damage to communications networks. “We don't know how many of the people that actually operate these networks are still alive,” Kreitem says. “The network operators are part of the world there, there's no place for them to run. They are as affected as any other person.”

[jimintomystery]

MOASS

The Mother Of All Short Squeezes, or MOASS, refers to a fringe theory about the stock market. The general idea is that the GameStop short squeeze in Janaury 2021 can be reproduced with even more dramatic profits for memestock investors. Under this theory, it is possible to sustain a short squeeze indefinitely, with the share price of the affected companies rising to, um, infinity dollars.

[Above: A typical MOASS influencer explaining why it would happen soon. This was two years ago.]

True believers in MOASS have awaited this windfall for over three years--Dan Olson called it "Reddit's version of the Rapture." There was a false alarm last week, when the dormant Twitter account of Keith Gill (one of the big names from the 2021 squeeze) suddenly came to life, posting a bunch of hype videos. The price briefly shot up to $64 on May 15, but drifted back down to the low 20s within a few days. Nevertheless, as with failed Rapture predictions, the faithful are undeterred, and continue looking for new signs and evidence that MOASS is coming soon.

[Above: In the 2015 movie The Big Short, Margot Robbie explains how short selling works while sitting in a bubble bath. I figured this picture was close enough.]

In a normal short squeeze, investors who go "short" on a company get caught by an unanticipated rise in the share price. Short investors bet against the company, selling borrowed shares at today's prices, with the assumption that it'll be cheaper to buy back those shares later to reimburse the lender. If the price instead goes up, the short investor is left scrambling to close their position as soon as possible, to minimize their losses. But that scramble creates more demand to buy, driving the price up even higher, applying more pressure to more short sellers.

MOASS is based on the assumption that this cascade effect can go on forever, under the right circumstances. For this to work, you need to believe the financial world is run by evil hedge funds that have built up absurdly risky short positions on companies like GameStop or AMC Theaters. These evildoers, or "hedgies," expect this short attack to drive the targeted companies into bankruptcy, so they can afford to do illegal things like shorting shares that don't actually exist. What the hedgies could not have foreseen, however, is the rise of r/WallStreetBets (and related subreddits), which made a meme out of building absurdly risky long positions on failing companies.

As the 2021 short squeeze played out, memestock investors latched onto catchphrase "apes together strong." That is, much like the simians in Rise of the Planet of the Apes, they had the power to band together and drive their enemies to their knees. As long as the "Apes" keep buying and holding (against all conventional wisdom and common sense), then the hedgies can't control the share price. Eventually the hedgies have to start closing short positions that they can't afford to cover. Since the Apes refuse to sell, and since the hedgies allegedly owe more shares than there are to buy, the price would skyrocket and never come back down. The hedgies go bankrupt, and yadda yadda yadda, the Apes become rich beyond their wildest dreams.

[Above: In principle, achieving MOASS with GameStop's share price would potentially cause the collapse of the stock market, if not the entire global economy. As far as Apes are concerned, this would be a good thing.]

You may have some questions at this point! I know I certainly do. For one thing, after taking a beating in 2021, why would hedge funds go short on GameStop for three more years, instead of switching to some other, less volatile target? If the hedgies can't cover their naked shorts without paying millions per share, wouldn't it become easier to declare bankruptcy than pay a dime to the Apes? And since MOASS relies on ever-increasing demand for a fixed supply of floating shares, what happens if GameStop decides to issue, say, 45 million new shares, whenever they feel like it?

I'm not sure Apes have ever addressed these questions, or that they ever will. At this point, they're so committed to their crusade against Wall Street that they're suspicious of anyone who interrogates it. If you don't understand their cause, or their strategy, then you're either blind to what's really going on, or you're a fifth columnist sowing disinformation.

In this regard, the Apes aren't too different from Gamergate and QAnon. All three movements revolve around a Big Lie, and use Reddit/4chan culture to create a decentralized campaign to promote that lie. That campaign rests upon a populist mythology about how the establishment and the elites underestimated the resourcefulness of "anons," "gamers," "deplorables," "bakers," and/or "weaponized autism." When these groups think they're winning, it's undeniable proof that the Big Lie is true. When it looks like they're losing, it's because a vast conspiracy is desperate enough to stoop to any level to keep you from learning the Big Lie is true. So one way or another, they're constantly reassuring themselves that they're winning, and seeking that reassurance becomes their primary activity. This in turn enables grifters to shape these movements by finding creative ways to tell them what they want to hear.

Unfortunately we're probably going to be seeing more of this stuff going forward, not less. Since going public in March, Trump Media & Technology Group has behaved like a meme stock, pumped up by retail investors who are less interested in financial planning than in signaling their allegiance to Donald Trump. When the stock fell off, CEO Devin Nunes seemed to take a page from the apes' playbook, blaming the decline on naked short selling.

[Above: Brainworms recognize brainworms]

And yet, this does not make Donald Trump the most delusional idiot running for president of the United States and getting in on grifting Apes. Just this afternoon, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. declared his allegiance to the Apes, and claimed to have invest $24,000 in GameStop. One way or another, the Apes' message of standing up to Wall Street corruption is going to gain traction, even if their investment strategy can't.

[foreverlogical]

Well, Twitter owner Elon Musk is being vile again. That's a frequent enough occurrence that it usually doesn't rise to the level of news, since Musk spends most of his day looking for affirmation in the mentions of far-right sh-tposters and memelords, but Musk remains one of the richest people on the planet and whenever a man willing to blow $44 billion on a website just so that he could rig it up to give himself a louder voice than anyone else, it becomes news when the very rich cultivator of far-right adulation keeps promoting antisemitism, neo-Nazi themes, and attacks on democracy itself.

So yeah, apparently we have to do this again. As per usual it started with Musk putting his two cents in in the replies of another anti-Muslim tweet by notorious far-right conspiracy promoter and fascism-booster Amy Mek, because—again—Musk appears to crave the attention of every fascist and protofascist on the internet. Mak promoted a video allegedly from an imam vowing France will "become an Islamic country through Jihad," upon which some other ultracreep piped up with "Thanks to the white female vote," which caused allegedly richest person in the world to himself reply that "The childless have little stake in the future."

That's already about five kinds of creepy and weird but we'll set that aside for the moment, because it's yet another of Musk's blue check weirdos who set the ball rolling toward its natural Worst Possible Take.

"Democracy is probably unworkable long term without limiting suffrage to parents. Helps solve the procreation problem, too," mused blue-check user "fentasyl".

"Yup," replied Elon.

All right, so here's where we're at. Musk is poking around in the replies of one of the most notorious anti-Muslim boosters of neo-Nazis and white supremacists, as he so often does, sees Some Dude opine that "the white female vote" are the reason that France will supposedly fall to jihad, elaborates with his own belief that "the childless have little stake in the future" and are the real problem here—because the imaginary white females are apparently childless, too?—and by the end is agreeing that democracy itself is "probably unworkable" unless we bar non-parents from voting at all. Just another normal day.

Incidentally, while all of this was going on, Twitter itself was going belly up, with engineers having to hastily put together a new Elon scheme to put new caps on how many tweets you're allowed to read, possibly because Musk's previous decision to not pay his damn bills was now reaching the "find out" end stage.

You can understand, then, why the man would need to relax by yet again questioning the usefulness of democracy. It's that or do his damn day job, and he's terrible at his day job.

The reason all of this matters is that Musk is again diving into some very, very sketchy stuff. Musk is perhaps one of the most famous figures in the small and bizarre "natalist" movement, people who believe that society will collapse if human population growth isn't maintained. If you think that sounds suspiciously close to the neo-Nazi belief that it's "white" humanity that is in danger of dwindling, or to the arguments of eugenicists in general, you're right: The movement is almost entirely white and is clogged with just those sorts of people.

"It would be so easy to dismiss this as yet another unhinged comment, except for the deep intersections between natalism and fascism. These ideas are dangerous, and when we start to see them spread casually by people in power, we shouldn't stand idly by," tweets Dr. Jacquelyn Gill, and that is the problem. Musk's $44 billion purchase of Twitter, a struggling company not likely to be worth half of that, was initially portrayed by Musk as some sort of grand plan to improve society. On taking over, it became evident that Musk's "improvements" consisted of rigging the algorithm to give himself virtual site omnipresence, while using that to boost pandemic conspiracy theories, delegitimize government, and repeatedly call into question whether democracy itself was sustainable.

Musk keeps wallowing through far-right hate accounts and coming up with his own theories of how the world should work. His inability to not share those pearls of wisdom with the rest of us has, however, fully laid to rest any notion that Musk's "genius" consists of anything but relentless narcissism. Most of the billionaire's critiques for society fall somewhere between bizarre and malevolent.

What does it mean, that the "childless have little stake in the future?" That's just crank talk. So children themselves have no stake in the future, until they've either impregnated someone or been impregnated? How does adoption play into this? Do you have a stake in the future if you adopt a child, or is it only the genetic parents who have this stake? When limiting "democracy" to bar everyone but parents from electing 

the United States government, would voting certificates be transferred along with the child during an adoption?

What if a child dies? Would the parent, again childless, be again barred from voting? How in the artisanal ketamine-tinted hell would any of this work, and do the people making crank suggestions like this even listen to themselves, or is it all pumped out for shock value, unmolested by such trivialities as common sense?

The notion that "white females" in particular are valueless to democracy until and unless they give birth is some deeply creepy Aryan shit, but Musk keeps diving right in to support it, over and over. The man has a fetish for fascism, and he's certainly not shy about showing it off.

[iced-cofi]

Holy shit I've been freed.

I can say my thoughts that I yearned to say on Twitter about Elon and every other fuck ass billionaire without being banned twice.

Holy shit.

Uh, ok some quick ones.

I hope Elon gets comically flattened beneath an Acme anvil.

I hope the conservatives have better aim for Trump.

I think it'd be funny if we collected every billionaire, put them in a sub, sent it to the Mariana Trench, and had a live feed of them the whole time. How quickly do you think the wolves would begin tearing each other apart? How quickly do you think the claws they wielded to keep the defenceless and poor down would turn on their own? Would they feast on each other in the eye of oblivion? Would the weaker cower the same way they forced us to? Would they cry, and beg? Would monetary value matter then? Would regret fill the cavernous voids inside them, spilling out of their eyes and hands and mouths in rage and hatred, the same rage and hatred they held like a sword to the neck of those less fortunate, now turned against their once friends and allies? Would they barter? Beg? Scream? Cry?...

Would they kill? What purpose would that even serve? Do they need a purpose? Or would they try to grasp at the scraps of what was once their finitely infinite power, and watch as it slips and flutters and fades away into the wind?

The rich are savages. Cavemen who claim to be bringers of civilization upon the world. Colonists and slavers, who mold the world to allow for this ravenous cruelty. Whose satisfaction can never be found, cup never filled, souls never complete. They are evil, lifeless, shambling tyrants, who wear the masks of the same inventors and artists they crushed beneath their heels on the journey to the top.

The top.

It's lonely. At the top. Once all the world is left in ruin, and the powerful stand atop their mountains of lies and lives, and they breath in the smoke and smog and ash and dust of a destroyed world, will they rejoice? Will it be worth it? Or will they hunger for more? Will their greed rumble for something, anything more to feast upon, bursting at the seams? Will it be painful to find no power, money, control amongst the embers of the planet they wrecked in their hubris?

I hope it is.

I hope the hunger pangs tear. Rip. Burn.

I hope they feel the pain they've caused. Writhe in agony as they fall apart from the inside out. And as they shutter, stumble, and collapse to the ground, their vision hazy, I hope they look up. And see the downtrodden standing taller, together, United and strong. And in that moment, of true, unadulterated loss, I hope they die. I hope they pass knowing all they "created", "innovated", "invented", was their own demise.

We will win. Stay together, and they cannot defeat us.

And finally, I hope bezos stubs his toe!

Feels so good!

Here's a silly pic to show how excited I am about being able to say this!

Eat the fucking rich!

I feel like someone is standing next to me talking about how I'm dead

[ailtrahq]

Amazon will invest $1.25 billion in artificial intelligence (AI) safety-focused startup Anthropic as it seeks to boost its presence in the battle for AI supremacy. The deal could expand to $4 billion if certain conditions are met, according to people familiar with the matter. The move will give engineers at the world’s largest on-demand storage provider access to large language models similar to ChatGPT. Amazon also gave customers access to various learning models recently through its Bedrock platform. Amazon to Focus on Corporate Use Cases If it reaches $4 billion, the deal would mark Amazon’s biggest investment directly related to its cloud infrastructure provider, Amazon Web Services (AWS). By comparison, Microsoft invested $10 billion in OpenAI, the company responsible for the development of ChatGPT, in return for a 49% stake. Earlier this year, AWS CEO Adam Selipsky said the company wanted customers to choose the models they wanted to use. “We firmly believe there will not be one model to rule them all.” Anthropic also secured $300 million from its AI rival, Google, and additional funding from customer relations conglomerate Salesforce. Anthropic’s Claude 2 AI assistant competes with advanced AI models like ChatGPT and Google’s Bard. Are you interested in learning more about alternatives to ChatGPT? Find out more here. Anthropic Links to Sam Bankman-Fried Anthropic’s founders, siblings Dario and Daniela Amodei, left OpenAI in 2021 over concerns the company had become too commercial. After studying the potential of models used at OpenAI, the pair started the company to focus on advancing AI safety. Claude processes requests according to a set of principles known as Constitutional AI, while a second model evaluates how the first model follows the rules. The result is an AI assistant whose propensity for abuse is lowered, the company argues. Anthropic’s approach to improving AI safety | Source: TechCrunch The company’s emphasis on safety stems from its early focus on effective altruism, a data-driven approach to charitable causes. Arguably, its most famous proponent was former FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried, whose crypto empire invested $500 million in Anthropic. Read more about the collapse of FTX and the fall of Sam Bankman-Fried here. Anthropic reportedly has ties to FTX’s bankruptcy estate and has since distanced itself from the effective altruism movement. Anthropic critics argue the company should stop making more powerful AI models that could cause the AI disaster they are trying to prevent. Do you have something to say about the recent investment by Amazon in Anthropic, its commitment to AI safety, or anything else? Please write to us or join the discussion on our Telegram channel. You can also catch us on TikTok, Facebook, or X (Twitter). Source

[unquestionably-questionable]

One time I asked a coworker ‘what superpower could you have that would encourage you to be a super villain’ and he said ‘the ability to look at someone and immediately know all of their credentials to every online account they’ve ever had in perpetuity’ and I was like ‘damn, that’s a good answer’ so I wrote some shit about it.

The livestream began at 2:58 AM, on a Youtube channel created earlier that day simply called “The Fall”.

The Alliance was in top form at the beginning of the fight for the moon. The Roman, a time traveling gladiator, led the initial charge. He rushed into the Viscount’s lair, The Spear of Destiny, which he’d gotten from Jesus Christ himself after battling the Legion of the Nine Hells, held high above his head. Monster was right behind him, spitting acid at any bots that got too close before ripping out their mechanical innards with her razor sharp claws. Turbo came next, she sped through the lair with the young hero Lucky on her back. The two of them raced through and then past the enemy, scouting the best path ahead so they could alert the rest of the team to any dangers they might come up against.

And finally, calling shots and plays from the back, were the heroes everyone was waiting for. Ms Mystic floated into frame, her eyes shining with gold and purple light. Fractals and equations and archaic looking runes drifted around her hands as she waved them through the air at a group of oncoming mechs, who simply collapsed into their component parts at her gesture. Then there was StarBright, the last member of an ancient alien race. He ran into the room, jumped 10 feet in the air and, with the weight of a sun, pile drived a robot that was about to decapitate Monster. She hissed in thanks and leaped back into the fray.

And it went like this for a while; the team knew what was coming, thanks to Turbo and Lucky. They were coordinated, balanced, running like the well oiled machine they’d been for years. The people watched them back on Earth and relaxed. To them, there was nothing to be worried about. There was nothing the Alliance, especially at full force, could not handle.

Then they reached the Viscount himself.

It’s hard to say what happened exactly, and hard to tell what caused it. Maybe they were tired. They’d been fighting henchpersons and robots of various sizes for the past half hour or so. Heroes run out of juice. Maybe the Viscount had some sort of power dampener, maybe one of the Alliance turned a traitor. None of the million and one theories ravaging Twitter at the time changed the horror of what the world at large was witnessing.

The Roman was pinned to the wall, the Spear shoved deep into his belly. The Monster lay on the ground in a crumpled heap, a pool of viscous steaming blood widened around her. Both of Turbo’s legs were broken, but that hadn’t stopped her from crawling towards the still form of Lucky. She couldn’t tell if he was breathing. Ms. Mystic screamed silently from the other side of a mirror. She banged on the glass until her fists bled, tears streaming from her eyes.

And StarBright-

StarBright knew that if he was to die, his body would become the black hole the dying star he’d been born from was always meant to be. He did his best to steady his breathing, to keep himself clear eyed and awake. It was a losing battle. And losing meant the end of this solar system.

“Viscount,” he’d said, his lips dribbling silvery star stuff blood. “Y- you can’t”.

And then for everyone in the world watching, the feed cut.

The panic and terror and anguish were immediate. The UN declared a world-wide state of emergency. World rulers across the globe were rushed to their seats of power to plan for damage control and to plan exactly how they were going to give the Viscount half of all wealth in the world to stop him from exploding the moon.

Back at the lair though-

“Umm, I think I just did it, actually,” said the Viscount, grinning too wide. He ran a blood slicked hand through his hair and laughed. “I built a secret moon base, put a bomb there, ransomed it, and then defeated literally the only people capable of stopping me. I’m either gonna blow up the moon and functionally end the world, or get super duper rich. I can’t -- I mean, in my wildest and most evil dreams this isn’t something I thought I’d be able to accomplish in my early 40’s. I’m so proud of myself right now. This is amazing.”

The Viscount walked over to the console at the far right of the room. “Who wants to start a countdown? I feel like starting a countdown. Congress really could use a fire underneath them you know, they move so slow,”. He pushed a few buttons on the console and an electronic keyboard popped up on his screen with a password prompt. He entered his mother’s name, as she was the only person he’d ever really loved, and waited for his home screen to pop up.

“INCORRECT,” a pleasant, if electronic, voice said very loudly.

Oh, well, he was a little giddy. The Viscount assumed he’d mistyped and entered his mother’s name, Meredith, again.

“INCORRECT,” said the voice once more.

The Viscount paused a moment, thinking. He was absolutely sure he’d made the password for his doomsday system his mother’s name. She would have certainly approved of all he was doing, having been an accomplished super villain herself. He carefully and cautiously entered her name one more time.

“INCORRECT. ACCOUNT LOCKED,” said the pleasantly grating robot voice.

“What? What the-” the Viscount huffed and looked out at the assembled and incapacitated heroes before him. “Just, okay, I’m gonna go in the other room for a second, you guys hang out, don’t touch anything, I’ll be right back,” he said, turning on his heel and walking into the hallway.

The Viscount pulled his phone from his pocket and called his IT guy. “Andrew, what the fuck is going on? I can’t get into the doomsday clock”.

“Uhh-- uhh- umm, yes, yes sir, we noticed that-- um- uhh yah, that is a thing I am working on right at this very moment,”.

“Okay, good, it shouldn’t have not worked in the first place Andrew, I told you what the password to that system should be set as a long time ago. What happened?”

“W- well- well sir, ss- sir did you not…. umm , did you change the password, uhh recently sir? In the last seven minutes?”

The Viscount pinched the bridge of his nose and noted another employee who needed to be thrown out of the airlock.

“No. No Andrew I did not change the password seven minutes ago”.

“Oh, okay cool. That’s, umm, that’s fine. Uhh, it just-- some-- uhhh, we can change it back! It looks like, umm uhmm , there are some security questions to answer though.”

“What are the questions, Andrew?”

“Okay, question #1 - Who is your favorite Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle?”

“...what did you just ask me Andrew?”

“Umm…. who… who is your favorite-”

“I DON’T LIKE TURTLES ANDREW! I THROW THOSE PLASTIC CAN RINGS INTO THE OCEAN INTACT FOR FUN! WHY ON EARTH WOULD HAVE A FAVORITE CARTOON TURTLE??!!”

“oOOHkay Sir, sorry about that umm--- uhh- o-o-okay, here’s another security question. Uhh, what is the best Glee cover?” Andrew asked.

The Viscount hung up the phone.

He walked back to the courtyard full of various dying heroes and towards StarBright in particular. He was just about to start a witty tirade, when his phone rang.

The Viscount looked and saw that the call was coming from his bank. He gestured, “just a second” to the wheezing StarBright and took the call.

“Hello?” he said.

“Hello, this is Jeanie from Marauders Mutual! I was calling to speak with the Viscount of Viciousness"?

“This is he”.

“Hi! I was just calling to confirm some unusual online activity. Recently, have you attempted to log onto your online banking in the area of Springfield, MO?” asked Jeanie.

“Umm, no. I’m in space.” said the Viscount.

“That’s what we thought, we had you noted as being in space until 17th. Okay, so, this login attempt was successful, which means that unfortunately, you’re going to need to close this account and re-open it with a new number,” said Jeanie.

“What? No!” said the Viscount. “I can’t do that, I’m expecting a wire transfer of half of the world’s wealth from the UN in the next hour, I can’t close my account”.

“Sir, in these types of situations, we really do need to have the account closed. Imagine if you got that transfer and then whoever has access to your accounts takes all of those funds. We’re only trying to act in your best interests”.

“I don’t-- you know what, I can’t deal with this right now. I’m gonna call you back, don’t freeze my accounts,” the Viscount hung up before the representative could get a word in edgewise. He turned around to find StarBright...laughing at him?

“You’ve really gone overboard if you pissed him off,” said StarBright.

“What are you talking about?” asked the Viscount. As he said this, his phone buzzed. A text alert from Transunion, his password had been changed.

“He doesn’t usually butt it. And he’s just as likely to be on our team as he is to be against it. I guess he just doesn’t like you,” said StarBright, shrugging.

The Viscount’s phone buzzed again. His Netflix password had been changed. “Who?” he asked. “Who did I piss off? What’s happening?”

The Viscount’s phone buzzed again. It was Hulu this time. Then HBO. Then his Gmail. His V(illain)mail. His electric company. His gas. His antivirus software. His Amazon. His XBox Live. His Twitter. His Youtube. His Reddit. His internet. The remote access panels in his space lair. His doomsday device. Eventually he couldn’t even unlock his phone anymore.

“Password Man,” said StarBright. “You went too far, and Password Man decided it was time to stop you,”

[informysite35]

ECONOMIC CRISIS： Ray Dalio's Warning For The Banking Collapse, US Dollar

Full Episodes of Impact Theory RESTART your life in 7 days: http://bit.ly/42KM8OR Click here to download your FREE guide to 100x YOUR EFFICIENCY IN 10 EASY STEPS: https://bit.ly/3F8qOJL On Today's Episode: If you’re one that avoids economic news, politics, and global matters you may want to pause and lean into this conversation as an objective view of reality with historical context. These are scary uncertain times we’re living through with an entire banking system failing, politics with one agenda to divide the country, and the battle for global power. With the economic crisis unfolding before us, you have a decision to make on how you respond in this moment. No one can tell you what is best for you, but as Ray Dalio puts it, he wants you to at least understand the mechanics of what is happening so you can do your own analysis of what’s best for you. Ray Dalio, the founder of the world’s largest hedge fund, Bridgewater, a billionaire investor, and bestselling author, joins Tom for a sobering conversation about the obvious problems with banking causing its collapse and the moment in time we’re facing with global conflicts on the rise. The emphasis is on understanding the mechanics and knowing what to look for and how you’ll respond. Ray shares valuable insights on the way banking works, why the collapse of SVB was obvious, the 6 cycle trend that sees the rise and fall of empires, and 3 tiers of security you can put in place for yourself. Ray Dalio has decades of experience, knowledge, and learnings he’s put together his books, Principles: Life and Work, Principles for Dealing with the Changing World Order, and video content he’s made freely available on his YouTube channel for everyone that values truth and radical honesty. Check out Ray’s video mentioned in this episode, Principles for Dealing with the Changing World Order: • Principles for De... QUOTES: “One man’s debts are another man’s assets.” “It’s not safe because I’m losing money to inflation.” “We know we’re going to have financial problems and economic problems at the same time that we have this internal fighting and this external risky situation.” “When we think about safety we have to think about that as purchasing power.” “You as an individual should think about the total safety, including maybe that terrible scenario doesn’t happen, and if you do that you will come to a better balance decision.” “To be financially strong requires you to not spend more than you earn.” You can follow me at: Website: Facebook : https://www.facebook.com/Informysite353 Twitter : https://twitter.com/informysite35 Instagram : https://www.instagram.com/informysite53 Tumblr : https://www.tumblr.com/blog/informysi... Mix : https://mix.com/informysite35 Tiktok : https://www.tiktok.com/@informysite35 Blogger : https://informysite35.blogspot.com/ Social Media Platfoam: 🔹 Youtube: / @alexandraarnas ➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖

⭕ Thank You for Visiting.

Keep Growing!

Have a great day!

[kayechanted]

I want to add this thread from twitter. You all need to understand that this climate change can and will cause utter collapse in our society and it is NOT some far off event. It's happening now.

Regions will start to become completely uninhabitable. There's so much damage done that the climate will become very unpredictable; because this isn't NATURAL. "Safe" places won't be safe forever; only safe TODAY.

There will come a crisis where people will start to try and move to cooler places if they have the means. It will be another kind of refugee crisis. Borders will be enforced with militant violence.

All this coincides with the rise in facism globally.

If you feel overwhelmed reading this; GOOD. No more escapism. The comfort you, a person in the imperial core, live in is an illusion and it is BREAKING. Let it radicalize you.

STOP playing tame with facists. Stop trying you "peaceful protest" your way out of capitalism. You all need to come together and learn how to fight by THIS WINTER before the weather once again gets too hot to try anything, and mind you IT WILL BE USED AS LEVERAGE AGAINST YOU.

That has been done already; they were cutting down trees removing shade for the Writer's Strike protests last year - and all they were demanding was fair pay.

Like I don't know what else to say. Be tame and do your job as the warhungry politicians tell you to do and go to your death by working yourself to the bone under extreme heat - or watch it happen to others - or withhold your labour and fight back.

And most of all; CHANGE YOUR DEFINITION OF PROGRESS. Cutting down trees to pave roads with asphalt further increasing heat IS NOT PROGRESS. THIS PICTURE IS NOT PROGRESS. It's KILLING THE EARTH.

CHANGE YOUR OUTLOOK IN WHAT YOU CONSIDER PROGRESS. TECHNOLOGICAL PROGRESS IS 9 TIMES OUT OF 10 NEVER PROGRESS. AI IS USING UP SO MUCH POWER there's places in the world RUNNING OUT OF ENERGY SUPPLY. THIS IS NOT PROGRESS. Open your eyes!! Change your mindset!! Or just let us all die!

We all know minimum wage workers will be the first to take the hit from climate change but it's still soul crushing to read about it regardless

I'm so upset man I know for sure in 10 years northern India will be uninhabitable.

Link to the article. Please read and let it set in how awful it is in Delhi. And how this is only the beginning.

[cloudycera]

I posted 396 times in 2022

That's 173 more posts than 2021!

268 posts created (68%)

128 posts reblogged (32%)

Blogs I reblogged the most:

@jasontoddsguns

@cloudycera

@079soren

@rillette

@penny-anna

I tagged 308 of my posts in 2022

Only 22% of my posts had no tags

#dc dcomics - 206 posts

#billy batson - 202 posts

#dc heroes - 197 posts

#justice league - 188 posts

#shazam - 168 posts

#captain marvel - 157 posts

#fanart - 84 posts

#art - 83 posts

#doodle - 66 posts

#mybillybatsonart - 61 posts

Longest Tag: 101 characters

#it turns out that the quickest ways to make me care about a ship are a) parallels and b)making it bad

My Top Posts in 2022:

#5

Superman: Maybe it's better if we leave you out if certain missions.

Billy: Why?

Superman: *Sigh* Son, You might not be handle it.

Billy: Maybe not but i can handle your mom.

Superman: Excuse me.

Billy: You're right, You're mom's a lovely lady why go to space when I hang out with her.

Superman: Billy-

Billy: Maybe after that we can talk about how you're the strongest man on earth but you disappoint your wife at every turn.

Superman: What does tha-

Billy: Welp have fun let's talk more once you get back.

786 notes - Posted March 29, 2022

#4

Do you like being a hero?

805 notes - Posted April 10, 2022

#3

Ya ever think about the sheer collapse of the Captain Marvel Stans in the DC universe if they ever found out he was a child, like the amount of people about to delete their thirst traps and simp posts would shatter the Internet.

The fighting would be crazy.

And Meanwhile the guy in question has had his phone on silent since 2016 and doesn't know how to download twitter.

880 notes - Posted October 29, 2022

#2

A little treat for traumatising yall.

The Billy Gremlin and Batfam interactions, Billy's like a year younger than Tim and a couple years older than Damian.

*Justice league mission where Billy is just exploring the Batcave.*

Billy: I never noticed the Giant Coin. You'd think I'd notice the Giant coin, me of all people.

Flash: Why does Billy get to be in the Batcave but not me?

Batman: The energy surges happening all over the country have hospitals in critical state, I need you to stand by incase of emergency.

Billy: That means "Cause you're annoying."

Flash: Brat.

Batman: No, it doesn't, why are you here Captain?

Billy: Hmmm...why am I here?

Damian: You came in ecstatic about something till Alfred offered you cookies.

Billy: Kid when you're old enough you'll understand the importance of a good cookie when the world is in danger.

Damian: You are 2 years older than me.

Billy: And?

Batman: Get to the Point.

Billy: Oh yeah I have a lead on the energy surges thing, the leylines are being fucked with.

Batman: How can you tell?

Billy: Anyone with a connection to magic is also connected to The Leylines, their like magic radio towers, the signal naturally fluctuates every century that way everything stays in tune and doesn't clash.

Batman: What does this have to do with the Power?

Billy: That means the election magnetic waves electricity has clashes with the Laylines signals as well, Captain Marvel has a natural electrical field around him so I noticed it really quick.

Batman: So if we find the interference we fix the problem.

Billy: Yup.

Batman: Why did you come all the way here to tell me this?

Billy: I wanted to see my favourite little Robin.

Damian: I'M 2 YEARS YOUNGER THAN YOU DON'T TREAT ME LIKE A CHILD PEASEANT.

Billy: In your dreams, I'm here to see Tim.

Tim: Me why?

Billy: I need to borrow you for something since you're the smartest person I know.

Batman:.......

Dick: I think you hurt his feelings.

See the full post

1,257 notes - Posted April 12, 2022

My #1 post of 2022

Hot Take: Superman and Billy batson wouldn't like each other for a long time but after a while they become good friends, they'd fight a lot more than you'd expect cause Clark is like the only functional parent in the league and Billy doesn't vibe well with functional.

Billy wouldn't understand that Clark isn't undermining him but is only concerned for his wellbeing.

And Clark wouldn't understand that enough people have made it impossible for Billy to trust that narrative and the way he goes about it makes it worse.

1,955 notes - Posted March 20, 2022

Get your Tumblr 2022 Year in Review →

[plan-d-to-i]

Wait, Im wondering where does it say in the novel that Jiang Cheng didnt have power after the war because while I dont remember where do they talk about the new disciples arriving to Lotus Pier Im pretty sure they would of gotten some one the wen's treasure

It says it in the hopes and dreams and twitter feeds and tumblr asks of jiang cheng stans of course. jiang cheng's 'tale of woe' isn't that he lacked the power to pay off his life debt and help Wei Wuxian save the innocent Wens, it's that he let Jin Guangshan play him like a fiddle & use his existing resentment against Wei Wuxian, his envy and the daddy issues he so dearly clutches to his bosom, to turn against the guy he'd known for half of his life. A guy he knew was only adamant about doing the right thing & the last person who would seek to grasp power from him. But in a way jc also used JGS to justify it to himself.

The book goes into this. It tracks jc's building resentment towards WWX and the growing divide in their world views from as early on as their time in the Wen indoctrination camp (arguably even earlier). Later it shows how jc overhears all the credit WWX is getting for what he did during the war & night hunt and for reestablishing the Sect. Then it shows how JGS plays on those things. (Not to be misunderstood with 'forced jc'. jc certainly felt some measure of satisfaction to have all his twisted, hateful feelings and resentments towards WWX validated by someone in power, socially & politically) Then lastly it has JGY summarize and confirm the whole thing. JGY doesn't whip this out of nowhere in the temple at the end. mxtx doesn't make it up on the spot, it's woven into the narrative.

salt up here, substance/quotes etc under the cut:

On his way, [jiang cheng] could manage to catch the whispers of chatter coming from behind him...

One of the sect leaders spoke in a sour tone, “This time, Lotus Pier is really the center of the show. Almost all of the spirits and corpses were summoned to the YunmengJiang Sect’s grounds. There’d definitely be a number of cultivators interested in them.” Sect Leader Yao, “What could we do about it? “Whose fault is it that our sects don’t have Wei WuXian’s?” “It’s not necessarily a good thing to have Wei WuXian. I don’t want there to be someone in my sect always stirring up trouble for me.” “Wei WuXian, he really is too bold… Anyways, from now on, I won’t attend any night-hunts that he’s going to.” Someone sneered, “Huh? Interested in them? I don’t think so. To put it simply, they’re interested in Wei WuXian, aren’t they? Didn’t the YunmengJiang Sect grow in fame during the Sunshot Campaign only because of Wei WuXian?”

Jiang Cheng felt his entire body weigh down on him. It was as though something cast a haunting shadow on both his face and in his heart.”

And before jc stans are like omg see he was causing trouble, the next chapter:

“After the QishanWen Sect collapsed, the city that used to be the most flourishing of all cities evaporated into thin air in just one night, falling into ruins. A large number of cultivators searched for new locations of activity, diverging into multiple new cities. Among them, Lanling, Yunmeng, Gusu, and Qinghe received the greatest influx of cultivators.”

so Yunmeng got cultivators. And we even get to know they did thanks to WWX & his fame during the war in the previous section. So no YunmengJiang was not just jc and a couple of buildings 🥺. Also I see this all the time 'rebuilt it from rubble' - Cloud Recesses got burned down and had to be rebuilt not Lotus Pier. YunmengJiang just had to re-collect the cultivators that had escaped and add new ones which they did.

jc unwilling to clarify he owes WQ & WN a life debt:

“Nie MingJue, “You owe them gratitude? Isn’t the QishanWen Sect the ones who caused the YunmengJiang Sect’s annihilation?”

Within these few years, Jiang Cheng insisted on working late into the night every day. That day, just as he decided to rest early, he had to rush to Koi Tower overnight because of the thundering news. He’d been suppressing some anger under his fatigue since the beginning. With his natural competitiveness, he was already quite agitated since he had to apologize to other people. When he heard Nie MingJue mention the incident of his sect again, hatred sprouted within him. The hatred was directed at not only everyone who was seated in this room, but also Wei WuXian.

even when LXC speaks up for them :

Lan XiChen responded a moment later, “I have heard of Wen Qing’s name a few of times. I do not remember her having participated in any of the Sunshot Campaign’s crimes.”

jc : .... . Then JGS (w JGY providing support) launches his manipulation shtick playing on all of jc's envies:

“Jin GuangShan turned to Jiang Cheng, “He’s been plotting for a while to go to Burial Mound, hasn’t he? After all, with his skills, it wouldn’t be too hard to set up a sect of his own. And so, he used this as a chance to leave the Jiang Sect, intending to do whatever he pleases in the bright skies outside. You rebuilt the YunmengJiang Sect with so much work. He’s got a few controversial traits in him to begin with, and still he doesn’t restrain himself, stirring up so much trouble for you. He doesn’t care about you at all.”

Jiang Cheng pretended to stand his ground, “That probably isn’t that case. Wei WuXian has been like this ever since he was young. Even my father couldn’t do anything about him.”

Jin GuangShan, “Even FengMian-xiong couldn’t do anything about him, huh?” He chuckled a few times, “FengMian-xiong just favors him.”

Hearing the words ‘favors him’, the muscles beside the corners of Jiang Cheng’s mouth twitched.”

“Jin GuangShan continued, “Sect Leader Jiang, you’re not like your father. It’s just been a couple of years since the reestablishment of the YunmengJiang Sect, precisely when you should be displaying your power. And he doesn’t even know to avoid suspicions. What would the Jiang Sect’s new disciples think if they saw him? Don’t tell me you’d let them see him as their role model and look down on you?” He spoke one sentence after another, striking the iron while it was still hot.

So it's not: Yunmeng Jiang is weak and we're gonna burn it down if you stand by WWX >:-/. It's: jiang cheng, that servant's son WWX is stealing your shine.

“Behind the sea of Sparks Amidst Snow, the Venerated Trio gathered. Lan XiChen spoke, “Brother, you have worked hard.”

Jin GuangYao grinned, “It wasn’t hard work. Who had to work hard was Sect Leader Jiang’s table. He clenched a few of its parts to crumbles. Looks like he really was angered.”

Nie MingJue walked over, “All clever talk—hard work indeed.”

Jin Guangyao gloating, in knowing that what he and his father were doing playing off each other worked out- wasn't even hard work. Because jc was already envious and resentful and threatened by WWX and wanting to ensure he would always remain his subordinate /under his control. People like him are very easy to manipulate. Lastly, the cherry on the cake, we have JGY's confirmation in the end that this is exactly what happened. The reason his words here are effective is bc they're true. JGY knows it and jc knows it.

“Sect Leader Jiang, calm down a bit, won’t you? I understand what you’re feeling right now. You’re in such a terrible mood only because you know the truth behind your golden core. When you think back on what you did all these years, your proud heart feels a tinge of guilt, and so you’re anxious to find a culprit for what happened to Young Master Wei in his past life, a villain onto whom you can push all liability. Then, you’d lash out at him, both in vengeance for Young Master Wei and to ease some of your burden.”

“If being determined that everything from the Hundred Holes curse to the attack at the Qiongqi Path was part of my singlehanded scheme would ease your troubles, then feel free to think whatever you please. But what you have to understand is that, for what happened to Young Master Wei in the end, you are responsible too and in fact, you are very much so… Back then, the LanlingJin Sect, the QingheNie Sect, and the GusuLan Sect had already finished fighting over the biggest share. The rest could only get some small shrimps. You, on the other hand, had just rebuilt Lotus Pier and behind you was the YiLing Patriarch, Wei WuXian, the danger of whom was immeasurable. Do you think the other sects would like to see a young sect leader who was so advantaged? Luckily, you didn’t seem to be on good terms with your shixiong, and since everyone thought there was an opportunity, of course they’d add fuels to your fire if they could. No matter what, to weaken the YunmengJiang Sect was to strengthen themselves. Sect Leader Jiang, if only your attitude towards your shixiong was just a bit better, showing everyone that your bond was too strong to be broken for them to have a chance, or if you exhibited just a bit more tolerance after what happened, things wouldn’t have become what they were. Oh, speaking of it, you were also a main force of the siege at Burial Mound…”

jc stans : but buT bUTtttt this is just jgy trying to hurt jc's fEEls!! >:-/

YES FUCKING DUH BUT THAT DOESN'T MEAN IT'S ANY LESS TRUE ♪♬♫. DON'T YOU KNOW THE ADAGE THE TRUTH HURTS.

Ofc the person who saw the biggest opportunity in the strained relationship between WWX & jc was JGS (& JGY). So no jc was not a wee baby with no power and influence who couldn't help WWX.

[theburningsunset]

I can't get over how, even on things where I see people trying to "fix" endgame, I've not seen anyone give a shit about the blip. It's the one thing that (imo) you just can't keep in the story. "Oh yeah we'll just make half the universe pop back into existence after being dead five years. The end." Thousands of civilizations will have crumbled from the snap, some maybe having somewhat started to rebuild a society in five years when the population doubles out of thin air. It would cause so much chaos. It could cause mass panic and societies once again collapse under the sheer inability for most worlds to logistically handle that kind of overnight change. I know the MCU almost exclusively focuses on Earth, but this all applies there, too! Most governments would be crippled in seconds from the gaps in power and function. How many world leaders are left? What about the people that keep the power grids functioning? There wouldn't be a goddamn economy, people wouldn't be cracking jokes about it on twitter six years later. Saying that civilization retains some form of structure and cohesion is one thing, but for things to "basically be normal again" is the most ridiculous stretch. As a writer, you can't dick around with events that irreperably alter the whole world and then refuse to follow through with its impact. It's hollow, cheap, and aside the disservice to writing itself, it sets the groundwork for consistency problems with your world and any future plots. So either you need to commit to the consequences of that plot, change the bloody plot, or change the fucking solution!

I don't super know how to do that and make it feel like a solid story. The only real option I'd see is something like going back in time to make sure Thor split open Thanos' skull in Wakanda. "In the end, nothing technically happened" isn't super exciting, and maybe having the events of the whole movie now be undone might make the merits of that timeline feel cheap, but it's the least damaging way I see to resolve the story without fucking everything up. I dunno, man, I just got lotsa thoughts.

[nevermindirah]

I've been drafting and redrafting this meta post for weeks now. It's about to be 5781 and my country that was founded on settler colonial genocide and slavery and a deeply flawed but fierce attachment to democracy might go full dictatorship in about 6 weeks and it's time for me to post this thing.

All our immortals are warriors, all have been traumatized by war. But only three of them died their first deaths as soldiers in imperial armies. This fandom has already produced gallons of meta on Nicky dealing with his shit, because Joe would not fuck with an unapologetic Crusader. But there's very rich stuff in Booker and Nile's experiences and the parallels and distinctions between them.

Nile was 11 when her dad was killed in action - that was 2005, meaning she and her dad both died in the same war that George W Bush started in very tenuous response to 9/11. Sure, Nile's dad could have died in either Iraq or Afghanistan, or in a training accident or in an off-the-books mission we won't know about for a hundred more years, but he died in the War on Terror all the same. I had to look it up to be sure because Obama "drew down" the Afghanistan war in his second term, but nope, we're still in this fucking thing that never should've happened in the first place. The US war in Afghanistan just turned 19 years old. A lot of real-life Americans have experiences like the Freemans, parents and children both dying in the same war we shouldn't be in.

I know a lot of people like Nile who join the US military not just because it's the only realistic way for them to pay for college or afford decent healthcare, but also because they have a family history of military service that's a genuine source of pride. Military service has been a way for Americans of color to be accepted by white Americans as "true Americans" - from today's Dreamers who Obama promised would earn protection from deportation by enlisting, to Filipino veterans of WW2 earning US citizenship that Congress then denied them for several decades, to slaves "earning" their freedom through service in the Union Army and in the Continental Army before it. As if freedom is a thing one should have to earn. Lots of Black Americans have the last name Freeman for lots of different escaping-slavery reasons, but it's possible that this specific reason is how Nile got her last name.

Dying in a war you know your country chose to instigate unnecessarily and that maybe you believe it shouldn't be waging is a very particular kind of trauma. It is a much deeper trauma when your military service, and your father's, and maybe generations of your ancestors', is a source of pride and access to resources for you but your sacrifice is nearly meaningless to the white supremacist system that deploys you. That kind of cognitive dissonance encourages a person to ignore their own feelings just so they can function. How do you wake up in the morning, how do you risk your life every day, how do you *kill other people* in a war that shouldn't be happening and that you shouldn't have to serve in just so that your country sees you as human?

We see Nile do her best to be a kind and well-mannered invader. Depending on your experience with US imperialism, Nile giving candy to kids and reminding her squad to be respectful is either heartwarming or very disturbing propaganda. We also see Nile clutching her cross necklace and praying. From the second Christianity arrived on this land it's been a tool of white supremacist assimilation and control, but like military service, it's a fucked-up but genuine source of pride and access to resources for many Americans whose pre-Columbian ancestors were not Christian, and it's a powerful source of comfort and resilience. This Jew who's had a lot of Spanish Inquisition nightmares would like to say for the record that it's not Jesus's fault that his big name fans are such shitty people.

Nile is a good person trying to do her best in a fucked-up world. "Her best" just radically changed. Her access to information on just how fucked up the world is has also just radically changed, because everything's so fucked up a person needs a lot of time to learn about it all and not only does she have centuries but she won't have to spend that time worrying about rent and healthcare and taxes, and because she now has Joe and Nicky and Andy's stories, and because she now has Copley's inside scoop on just what the fuck the CIA has been up to. Like, I want a fic where Copley tells Nile what was really behind the brass's decisions that led to her experiences on the ground in Afghanistan, that led to her father's death, but also I Do Not Want That.

Nile was 19 when Alicia Garza posted on Facebook that Black Lives Matter. She grew up in Chicago well before white people on Twitter were saying maybe police violence against Black people is a problem. She knows this is a deeply fucked up country, and she put on her Marine uniform and deployed with her team of mostly fellow women of color, and maybe she and Dizzy and Jay marched in the streets between deployments, maybe they texted each other when a white manarchist at a protest sneered at one of them for being a Marine. Nile's been busy surviving, and she knows some shit and she's seen some shit but she hasn't had much time to think about what it all means. Now she's got time. And Joe, Nicky, and Andy are willing to listen. (Is Copley willing to listen? I could see that going either way.)

Booker might also be willing to listen. The brilliant idea of cleaning up the rat Frenchman so that Nile can have millennia of emotional support and orgasms sent me down a Wikipedia rabbit hole, and holy shit do Booker and Nile have a lot of shared life experience as pawns of imperial wars. Obviously Booker is white and a man and that makes a very big difference. (Though G-d help me, Booker could be Jewish and France was knocking its Jews around like ping-pong balls in the 18th-19th centuries. Jewish Booker wouldn't make him any less white but it does add a shit ton of depth of common experience: military service as a way for your country to see you as a full member of society who matters, because who you are means that's not guaranteed.)

Booker was hanged for desertion from the army Napoleon sent to invade Russia as part of his quest to control all of Europe. We learn in the comics / this YouTube video that Booker was on his way to prison for forgery when he was offered military service instead of jail time. While we don't know how he felt about the choice beyond that he did choose soldier over inmate, it's unlikely he thought invading Russia was a great idea, given he tried to desert because Napoleon like a true imperialist dumbass didn't plan for how he was going to feed his army or keep them from freezing to death in fucking Russian winter.

I find it very interesting that the French Empire was at its largest right before invading Russia and fell apart completely within a few years. My country has been falling the fuck apart for a while now - see aforementioned War on Terror, growing extremes of economic stratification in the richest country in the world, abject refusal to meaningfully deal with climate change that US-based corporations hold the lion's share of blame for - but between Trump's abject refusal to meaningfully deal with the coronavirus and strong likelihood that he'll refuse to leave office even if a certain pathetic moderate I will hold my nose and vote for does manage to earn a majority of votes, ~y~i~k~e~s.

Our only immortals who have never known a world before modernity and nationalism happen to have been born of wars that were the beginning of the end for the imperialist democracies that raised them, and I think in the centuries to come that's going to give them some very interesting shit to talk about.

Nile's a Young Millennial, a digital native born in the United States after the collapse of the USSR left her country as the world's only superpower. She's used to a pace of technological change that human brains are not evolved to handle.

Napoleon trying to make all of Europe into the French Empire was a leading cause of the growth of European nationalism and the establishment of liberal democracies both in Europe and in many places that Europeans had colonized. Booker's first war produced the only geopolitical world order Nile has ever known and I just have so many feelings ok. Nile the art history nerd is probably not aware of this, and why would she be? This humble meta author is, like Nile, a product of US public schools, and all they taught me about world history was Ancient Greece/Rome/Egypt/Mesopotamia and then World War 2. Being raised in The World's Only Superpower is WEIRD.

Nile the Young Millennial is used to the devastating volume of bad news the internet makes possible. But she has absolutely no concept of a world where the United States of America is not The World's Only Superpower. In order to get up in the morning and put on her gear and point guns at civilians in Afghanistan, she can only let herself think so much about whether that American exceptionalism thing is a good idea.

She's about to spend many, many years where the only people who she can truly trust are people who are older than not only her country but the IDEA of countries.

She's got time, and she's got a lot of new information at her disposal. But there comes a point where my obsession with her friendship and eventual very hot sex life with Booker just isn't about sex at all. Nile needs someone to talk to about the United States who Gets It. Booker the rat Frenchman coerced into Napoleon's army, and Copley the Black dual citizen of the US and UK who's retired from a CIA career that he half understands as deeply problematic but half still believes in hence his mind-bogglingly stupid partnership with Merrick, are the only people on the planet Nile can talk to honestly about, and really be understood in, all the thoughts and feelings and fears and hopes of her experience as a US Marine.

And one more thing before I go get ready for Rosh Hashanah: Orientalism was a defining element of the Crusades and that legacy is painfully clear in current US-led Western military activity in Afghanistan, Syria, Israel/Palestine, you name it. Turns out memoirs by French veterans of the Napoleonic Wars are full of Orientalist language about Russia as well. I am maybe/definitely writing a fic where Booker spends his exile reading critical race theory and decolonial feminism and trauma studies monographs because he can't be honest with a therapist but maybe he can heal this way and become the team therapist his own damn self. I just really need him to read Edward Said and Gloria Anzaldúa and then go down on Nile, ok?

[mybg3notebook]

Lore: Details about the “Orb”

Disclaimer Game Version: All these analyses were written up to the game version v4.1.104.3536 (Early access). As long as new content is added, and as long as I have free time for that, I will try to keep updating this information. Written in June 2021.

Let's start with the context, because everything related to Gale is packed heavily with Forgotten Realms lore, and since the game is not fully released, whatever extra information that the game could provide to help us understand this is not there yet. Also, it's always important to keep in mind this post about "Context, persuasion, and manipulation" to be sure we are talking in the same terms. 

The lore

I'm going to enumerate some objects or elements related to Forgotten Realms lore that I personally see worth checking out in addition to other “orbs” that I've seen the fandom put attention on. All this information can be expanded using the references and sometimes wiki, even though I personally distrust forgotten realm wiki, unless I can check that info from the original sources.

Shadow Weave

The Shadow Weave is the space between the strands of the Weave. If the Weave is a spider's web, the gaps in between are the Shadow Weave. Shadow Weave reaches everywhere the Weave does, and more. It is not subject to Mystra’s laws or state of well being. If Mystra were to die and the Weave collapses, the Shadow Weave would persist. [Magic of Faerûn 3e. Personal Comment: Yes. It explicitly says in the book that it’s independent of Mystra’s well being. Clearly this has been modified in 4e since the Shadow Weave needs the structure of the Weave to be somehow stable. It collapsed when the Weave did so, so we can see this begins a series of inconsistencies]

Shadow Weave is a dark and distorted copy of the Weave created by Shar, more suited for spells that drag life or confuse the mind (necromancy, control, illusion schools), and gives more difficulty to cast spells that manipulate energy or matter (evocation or transmutation schools). It can't sustain spells that produce light. Both Weave and Shadow Weave are means to use Raw Magic (see at the end of the post). The more familiar a mortal becomes with the secrets of the Shadow Weave, the more detached they become from the Weave. Shadow Weave is NOT a part of Mystra, so Mystra can't block people from accessing magic via Shadow Weave. 

It’s a common mistake to make the analogy that the Shadow Weave is to Shar the same way the Weave is to Mystra. No. Shadow Weave is NOT Shar, while the Weave is Mystra. Shar never developed that level of commitment, making herself one with the Shadow Weave. This is one of the reasons why she could not sustain the Weave during the Spellplague when she tried to corrupt it completely into Shadow Weave. 

All this information belongs to Magic of Faerûn 3e and the Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting 3e and novels of 4e. There is nothing about Shadow Weave in 5e. If it weren't for Ed Greenwood's twitter, we should have guessed it disappeared from the lore. So far we know it's slowly recovering in the same way the Weave is. And the Shadow Weave doesn't feed on Weave. For some mysterious reason, fandom started to think so due to BG3.

Death moon orb

This artefact belongs to the 3rd edition, created by a Netheril wizard. From him, it passed to the hands of Szass Tam, who saw it destroyed when the Spellplague corrupted the magic in it. I won't give more details about this object because it looks so unrelated to what Gale has in his chest. Not only is its shape inconsistent with what we see in-game, its powers and properties are unrelated to what is explained in EA. The object is cursed, compelling its owner to cause greater acts of evil; it has a size that changes and looks like a violet-black sphere. In my opinion, the only detail in common with Gale's “orb” is the name "orb". Which is a fallacy, since Gale says explicitly that he uses the word "orb" for the lack of a better one, because clearly what Gale has in his chest is not an orb, but a mass of Black Weave. 

Netherese orbs

These objects are found in Neverwinter MMO in the quest Whisper in Darkness:

The Netherese are foul plague upon this world, corrupting everything they touch. They have cursed the Gray Wolf Tribe, turning them into bloodthirsty monsters. We must find what the Netherese intend to do with their werewolf slaves. The Shadovar Emissaries use the Netherese Orbs powered by Soul Shards to communicate orders from the Prince of Shadow.

This is all the information we have of this object. That's all. It comes from a Neverwinter MMO game which belongs to 4th edition. Once more, the concept that Gale's “orb” is not an orb but a black mass of untamed magic makes me believe that these objects don't apply either. The nature of their magic is compatible though: Netherese orbs are made from shadow magic by Shadovar, descendant of Netheril stuck in the Plane of Shadow (called Shadowfell later on, read more in the post of "The Netherese in 1492DR"). This plane is the source of Shadow Magic, they don't use Raw Magic. Ethel explicitly said in BG3 that Shadow Magic is Netherese Magic, so maybe we can consider this object filled with Netherese magic? In any case, these Netherese orbs are used for communication... which has nothing to do with Gale's “orb”'s properties. There is also no reference of consuming Weave to remain stable.

Devastation orb

The mention of a "devastation orb" happens only in Yartar in Princes of the Apocalypse (related to the god Tharizdun, the mad god): 

In page 5 we have some context: Four elemental cults grow in power in the Sumber Hills, claiming abandoned keeps that connect to an underground fortress once part of an ancient dwarven kingdom. The leaders use elemental magic to create devastation orbs capable of ravaging the countryside. They’ve been testing these magic weapons, bolstering the cults’ ranks, and infiltrating various communities, all directed by visions the prophets receive from the Elder Elemental Eye (Tharizdun). These orbs are plainly described as: essentially bombs of elemental energy to unleash natural disasters.

In page 222 we have a more detailed explanation of what these elements are: 

Devastation Orb: (Wondrous item, very rare) A devastation orb is an elemental bomb that can be created at the site of an elemental node by performing a ritual with an elemental weapon. The type of orb created depends on the node used. For example, an air node creates a devastation orb of air. A devastation orb measures 12 inches in diameter, weighs 10 pounds, and has a solid outer shell. The orb detonates 1d100 hours after its creation, releasing the elemental energy it contains. The orb gives no outward sign of how much time remains before it will detonate. Regardless of the type of orb, its effect is contained within a sphere with a 1 mile radius. The orb is the sphere’s point of origin. The orb is destroyed after one use.

Again, I don't see a real connection with Gale's “orb”. These devastation orbs are not netherese-based, they have elemental energy, and despite the explosion, they don't have any mechanics that resemble the consumption of Weave to remain stable. However, I do find a link between these devastation orbs, their process of construction, and the book that Gale found out. The remotest concept I can scratch here is that, whoever crafted the book with that piece of blackest Weave, could have used the knowledge of the construction of these devastation orbs. Instead of filling them with elemental magic, they filled it with a blackest weave of netherese magic. A procedure that could have been applied to the netherese tadpoles as well.

That's all the information I could gather that remotely is called “orb” or has some vague chance to be that blackest weave.

The Game BG3

In the game, all the info that Gale provides in EA about the “orb” is given before his revelation. The what it is, the how it works and the how it feels. In the revelation scene we only learn the details that are personal and intimate for Gale: the why he ended up with the orb, and potential solutions he can guess so far. To show proofs:

During the meeting:

Tav [Wisdom/tadpole] Try peering into his mind. If he won't open up, you'll sneak in.  [Success] Narrator: For a split second you see a swirl of untamed magic – then his defences drop like a portcullis. 

During the Protocol:

Tav: I simply want to know what it is you're keeping from me Gale: I'm dangerous. Not because I want to be, but because of... an error I made in the past.  [before Gale speaks of his loss] It makes me dangerous – even in death. [after Gale speaks of his loss/tadpole intrusion] I told you how I sought to win the favour of Mystra. I did this by trying to control a form of magic only one wizard ever could. I failed to control it. Instead it infested me. It makes me dangerous... even in death. […] Tav: The darkness inside you, what is it? Gale: It's magic from another time and another place. It is something that is beyond me, yet inside me. That makes me dangerous... even in death. 

During the stew scene or the ask for artefacts in neutral or lower approval

Tav: [Wisdom/tadpole] you sense secrecy and danger. Use your tadpole to probe Gale's thoughts. [Success] Narrator: you become one with Gale's mind and you can feel something sinister oppressing you. It's... inside of you, a mighty darkness radiating from your chest. You could try to push further, but your hold over Gale feels brittle. It won't be easy delving deeper without him noticing. Delve deeper: [Success] Narrator: “ you see through gale's eye, staring down the corridor of a dread memory. A book, bound, then suddenly opened. Inside there are no pages, only a swirling mass of blackest Weave that pounces. It's teeth, it's claws, it's unstoppable as it digs through you and becomes part of you. And gods, is it ever-hungry.

Gale: The only way to “appease” said condition is for me to take powerful magical artefact and absorb the Weave inside. [...]Tav: What happens if you don't consume any artefact? Gale: Catastrophe. [...] Think of it as... tribute. The kind a king might pay to a more powerful neighbour to avoid invasion. As long as I pay there will be peace. But should I ever stop, along comes a war. I can assure the battlefield would extend well beyond the borders of my body alone. [...] I will consume the magic inside. What was a powerful artefact will be rendered no more than a trinket. But it will save my life- even if only temporarily.

Tav: That condition of yours is a very expensive one. Gale: I obtained it in Waterdeep. Nothing there comes cheap.

Artefacts scenes:

Gale: I can feel the storm abating. [...] I will feel it stir again – like a distant thunder sending tremors through the soul. I will need to consume another artefact before the lightning strikes. There's no choice but to find more. [...] It's good to perceive this constant fear repressed into a quiet scare. Let's hope it will last a good long while.

During Revelation scene:

Gale: The gist of it is that he sought to usurp the goddess of magic so that he could become a god himself. He almost managed but not quite, and his entire empire – Netheril – came crashing down around him as he turned to stone. The magic unleashed that day was phenomenal, rolling like the prime chaos that outdates creation. A fragment of it was caught and sealed away in a book. No ordinary book, mind you; a tome of gateways that contained within it a bubble of Astral Plane. It was a fragment of primal Weave locked out of time – locked away from Mystra herself. ‘What if’, the silly wizard thought. ‘What if after all this time, I could return this lost part of herself to the Goddess?”

Narrator: You feel the tadpole quiver as you realise Gale is letting you in. Into the dark. You see through Gale’s eyes, staring down the corridors of a dread memory. A book, bound, then suddenly opened. Inside there are no pages, only a swirling mass of blackest Weave that pounces. It’s teeth, it’s claws, it’s unstoppable as it digs through you and becomes part of you. And gods, is it ever hungry… [...] This Netherese taint.. this orb, for lack of a better word, is balled up inside my chest. And it needs to be fed. As long as it absorbs Weave it remains stable – to an extent. The moment it becomes unstable, however.. [...] It will erupt. I don’t know the exact magnitude of the eruption, but given my studies of Netherese magic, I’d say even a fragment as small as the one I carry…. It’d level a city the size of Waterdeep

Tav : I should godsdamned kill you GALE: Perhaps that is what I deserve, but you deserve no such thing. To kill me is to unleash the orb. 

So far, if we don't use the tadpole, we learn from Gale that he is unwillingly dangerous, there is an ancient magic stuck in his chest—acquired in Waterdeep—that he never could control and it inspires a dreadful state of mind (constant fear). It requires Weave to stay stable, and if it is not fed, a catastrophe will happen that will extend past his body. 

With the Tadpole we learn, in addition, part of the details we can learn during the revelation scene: it's a swirl of untamed/chaotic magic which is an ever-hungry "blackest weave". 

During the Revelation Scene all the information acquired by the tadpole intrusion is given, in addition to describing this mass of magic as an "orb" despite its inaccuracy. We also learn that killing Gale will only unleash the orb instead of putting an end to the problem. 

Gale said everything that is important related to the orb before the party scene, excluding only the personal information since he is a private person. This was exactly the boundary he set when he promised during the stew scene that he was going to explain the what, not the why. With the use of the tadpole we only learn details, simple extra descriptions; all information that Gale will willingly share during the revelation scene anyway.

We can learn a bit more of the “orb”'s function if we explore the goblin party. There, Gale explains part of the mechanism of the “orb” in a "poetic" way, that may or may not be taken exactly as such:

Gale: Two shadows are darkening my soul.The shadow within and the shadow without: you. You led me down this path. [...] I don't know myself anymore. All this... It's not who I am. Around you, I'm not who I want to be. I should leave. 

Tav: [Insight] Stay. We make each other stronger. We make each other survive. /OR/ [Deception] You don't stand a chance alone. You're free to go. I dare you. 

[Success][DC15] Gale: [...]. Few things are more powerful than the will to live. But carnage such as this.... the shadow within is spreading like poison, corrupting kindness and compassion. [...]. Tonight I need to wash my hands of blood and my mind of shattering memories. 

This shows that when playing an Evil Tav who sides with the Goblins, we have an extra description for this “orb”. Again, I ponder every bit of information with its context: Gale is a poet, and he tends to speak with metaphors specially when it comes to emotional painful states of mind or when it comes to the “orb” (which puts him in a very emotional state that even the tadpole doesn't), so these lines can perfectly be understood as a poetic way to describe his deep regret for participating in massacring the Tieflings. However, there is this detail that I can't overlook: the shadow within, understood as the blackest Weave, is spreading across his body, corrupting his good essence. As we saw in the post of "Extensive list of Gale's approvals", compassion and kindness are key elements in Gale's personality. This scene shows a potential that is not explored in EA: the “orb” seems to set a path in which it will corrupt Gale. 

Now this could be considered as a potential beginning of a shift of alignment, but it goes against what Sven said several times in interviews and presentations: he stated that they were not considering to change alignments in the companions (if you can imagine all the extra branches that it opens up, it makes sense not to allow it given the already colossal proportions of the game), so it's hard to suspect how Gale would evolve from here, or if this situation will give him reasons to attempt to kill this Evil Tav eventually (which is my personal guess). Sven suggested many times that companions could potentially kill Tav or other companions during their sleep. We saw this happening in EA with Astarion. Using datamining content, we saw the same with Lae'Zel and Shadowheart. I don't see why not to give in-character reasons to make this mechanism work with Gale as well.

As an extra (datamining) detail, we have Ethel's vicious mockery line emphasising the concept of "the shadow within":

Ethel: I can smell what's under those bandages wizard, you're all rot and ruin.

Putting aside the unnerving detail that Gale's concept art has bandages on one of his hands while the game is oblivious to this, the idea of Gale's “orb” as a source of rot and ruin, in combination with that necrotic aura when he dies, gives us a sure idea that there is a “disease” spreading in Gale's body as a consequence of this blackest weave stuck in his chest.

All the in-game information was presented, so now let's drag conclusions: Comparing all the information extracted from the scenes, we can now consider how much potential has the lore object named before:

Shadow Weave: Could Gale's “orb” be a fragment of Shadow Weave?

Strengths of the argument: Gale's “orb” is described as "blackest weave". It could barely be a hint, even though the Shadow weave has no canon colour nor physical description in the corebooks. So this is a very weak strength.

Weaknesses of the argument: Shadow Weave doesn't feed on Weave (this is a fallacy so far I've checked. It would make no sense to feed on the same object that it needs to exist.) Shadow Weave doesn't explode nor is chaotic. 

Death moon orb:

Strengths: It's called an "orb". And it was made by a netherese arcanist, so it must contain “netherese magic”.

Weaknesses: This object was destroyed during the Spellplague. It's a physical orb which changes size, but it's not an "amorphous mass" of magic. It doesn't consume Weave.

Netherese Orb:

Strengths: It's called an "orb". It's made of shadow magic (which is not netherse magic in corebooks but in game Ethel used both denominations as synonymous). We know Shadovar are masters of Shadow Magic. Read more in the post "The Netherese in 1492DR".

Weaknesses: This object doesn't appear in the corebooks. It's used for communication. It doesn't seem to have any explosive properties nor consumes Weave.

Devastation orb:

Strengths: It's called an "orb". They explode with the intensity to destroy a city. 

Weaknesses: It's made of elemental magic (not netherese magic). It's a solid object, a bomb (not an amorphous mass). It doesn't consume weave.

Personal speculation

I don't think any of these canon objects are or inspired Gale's “orb”. If we take the descriptions in-game as they are, and considering the importance that Karsus and his folly have been given in the whole game (to the point that Larian added ingame books explaining part of it) I support two hypothesis that, by now, they must be obvious for lorists since I want to work with what the game (and datamining) gives me: 

1- The concept that this is a piece of corrupted Weave that Karsus' Avatar allowed to have access to when he disrupted the Weave. Gale calls it “primal weave” as well, which is a concept that doesn't exist so far in the corebooks, and one could relate, very barely, with raw magic. Maybe.

2- Heavy magic (key concept during 2e)

To understand this we need MORE lore (I know, this has no end; this is why I think a lot of misunderstandings with Gale’s character come from the big holes of lore that EA leaves, which is obvious, it's EA) So, allow me to clear out the concepts: 

Karsus' Avatar is the name of the spell that caused Karsus' folly and made him a god for just an ephemeral moment. The notes regarding the spell’s essence were nowhere to be found. It’s believed that Mystra, the reincarnated form of Mystryl, snatched the spell information from the ruins of Karsus’s enclave and sent it “on an eternal journey to the ends of the universe” (who knows what this means). Besides, as if this were not enough precaution, Mystra changed the rules of magic on the material plane making it impossible to cast spells over 10th level. Karsus' Avatar was a 12th level spell.

Raw Magic is “the stuff of creation, the mute and mindless will of existence, permeating every bit of matter and present in every manifestation of energy throughout the multiverse. Mortals can't directly shape this raw magic. Instead, they make use of a fabric of magic, a kind of interface between the will of a spellcaster and the stuff of raw magic. The spellcasters of the Forgotten Realms call it the Weave and recognize its essence as the goddess Mystra.” [Player's Handbook 5e]

The creation of the Weave allowed all mortals to have access to magic through study. The Weave works like a barrier and an interpreter to use the real source of magic: Raw Magic. For more information on this, check the wiki (otherwise each of these posts will be mini books of lore). Few mortals can tap magic from the raw magic. Spells like silver fire are part of the raw magic. Some wild mages can tap into it as well, but at the cost of making their spells very random. Only Weave-disruptive events can allow an uncontrolled influx of raw magic into the world (which can be considered what happened during Karsus' folly)

Mythalars are immense artefacts that work like intermediates of the Raw Magic. They don't use the Weave, they have direct access to Raw Magic and were used to power up magical artefacts around them (thanks to these objects the Netheril cities floated in the air). Touching a mythalar causes instant death since Raw magic is harmful for most mortals.

So the first hypothesis (corrupted Weave) means that when Karsus cast this spell and became the Weave itself for a brief moment, he may have access to Raw magic directly. His spell Karsus' avatar started using common Weave, but in the second he connected deeply with the Weave and with Mystryl's powers, he had access to Raw magic as a god. His spell may have changed the source of its power from the Weave to Raw Magic, adding the latter's randomness and chaos to the spell itself and therefore, corrupting the Weave. The transition, so violent like the whole event, may have corrupted part of the Weave that was being used while casting the spell. According to Gale's description, the “orb” stuck in his chest is a piece of Weave with the active effect of Karsus' Avatar (the spell), but the Narrator gives us the extra information that it's corrupted. Apparently Gale never realised this object was corrupted, or may have known it and he tried to cleanse it so he could return it to Mystra. Either way, the source of the corruption may have been the sudden transition to Raw Magic during the casting. My main problem with this hypothesis is how a spell can be stuck in a piece of Weave, since Gale's “orb” maintains Karsus's avatar's effect. 

On one hand, Karsus' Avatar main effect is “to absorb god-like powers”. In that moment of history, this spell was aimed at Mystryl, and therefore to the Weave. The disruption of the event “stuck” the effect of “absorbing weave” in a piece of Weave, while the chaotic nature of this “orb” could be attributed to the direct presence of Raw Magic, also stuck in it. Now, another weakness of this hypothesis is that nothing of this causes a "corruption disease" as Gale implies it (we only know that the failure of the spell turned Karsus into stone). So we don't have a good argument for this effect beyond the one “I believe that since the moment was disruptive, it must have corrupted something, and that corruption is quite unhealthy in a mortal body”. Which it's not of my liking, but this is what we get up to this point in EA.

The second hypothesis I talked about is another lore concept intimately related to Karsus in 2e: Heavy Magic (which I personally prefer over the first hypothesis). 

Heavy magic is physical, tangible magic, usually presented as a viscous mass of chaotic nature. It can crawl, entering into cracks of a wall or a body, for example. Karsus created a distilled version of this magic called super heavy magic, and experimented with people. The subject eating a bit of this magic will have heavy magic spread on all the inner walls of their body and will kill them (it's not a disease, but it spreads inside and kills). The usual effect of the stable super heavy magic was to magnify the powers of a spell or enchantment (it allowed spells to be stuck in it), however it could be used for everything. 

Karsus used this element to enhance enchantments on walls, for example projecting illusions endlessly. This means that this product has the ability of keeping a spell functioning in it (as we see that this black weave keeps the function of the Karsus' avatar). [Dangerous Games, 2e]

Naturally, heavy magic absorbs life energies (maybe another characteristic fitting the concept of disease and necrotic effects). There is an event (2e) related to this aspect in which the renegade arcanist Wulgreth became a lich after heavy magic overflew him [Power and Pantheons, 2e]

As it is easy to see, this concept shares a lot of similarities with the object stuck in Gale's chest. But there is still more:

In the novel Dangerous Games (2e), strongly focused on how Karsus experimented with Heavy Magic, it is explicitly said that Karsus infused himself with super heavy magic before casting Karsus' avatar (probably to magnify the spell power but we also know that heavy magic can get spells stuck in it). He grew taller, and glowed in a white-silver radiance. Babbling arcane chants, the super heavy magic raged within him until he came into a state of being between a man and deity. Then it followed his folly. Karsus “died”, turning his body into red-hued stone, bound in eternal torment to relieve repeatedly the moment he became aware of his folly. 

So there exists a chance that a pieces of super heavy magic (in which Karsus was infused when all this happened) may have kept Karsus' Avatar effect stuck in them. One of these pieces could have been recovered later around the red stone where Karsus is now. This could potentially be the object or, at least, in what it had inspired Gale's “orb”. It's also worth noticing that one of the main characters in this novel Dangerous Games was looking for ways to safely contain heavy magic and avoid its damaging effect, so there is extra lore information about vessels that could justify the sealed book that Gale found in Waterdeep. 

As an extra detail on this matter, we know that the runes of teleportation may have been made with heavy magic: "Gale: See that rune? Netherese, I think. Weave's so thick on it, it's almost viscous." 

Since Gale is calling "Weave" to the element attached to the teleport runes, it makes me wonder if this was a slight variation that Larian made of the canon concept of Heavy Magic to not add new concepts to the already complex world of Forgotten Realms. Maybe, in the end, both hypotheses are the same: the second one is strictly more canon-related than the first one, which is more or less the same but simplified in terms and concepts. 

As a last conclusion from my personal point of view, I see no much sense in calling this thing “orb”. In game it's clearly described as an amorphous black mass, not an orb. And it made me remember Gale's original description, when the EA was not released yet: it's the only way where I can see its nonsensical origin, which was done in a completely different context. 

Gale has one ambition: to become the greatest wizard Faerûn has ever known. Yet his thirst for magic led to disaster. A Netherese Destruction Orb beats in his chest, counting down to an explosion that can level a city. Gale is confident he'll overcome it, but time is not on his side.

After the game was released in EA, Gale's description changed radically, and therefore his current description has a different approach entirely, removing the concept of "orb" for what we know in the game: “ancient chaotic magic”. 

Wizard prodigy: Gale is a wizard prodigy whose love for a goddess made him attempt a dread feat no mortal should. Blighted by the forbidden magic of ancient Netheril, Gale strives to undo the corruption that is overtaking him and win back his goddess’ favour before he becomes a destroyer of worlds.

This is one of the many details that make me believe that Gale's original concept/character was changed significantly before the EA release. But this is a mere personal speculation. For more details on netherese magic, read the post of "The Netherese in 1492DR".

Source: 

2nd edition: Powers and Pantheons, Netheril: Empire of Magic, Dangerous Games by Emery Clayton. 3rd Edition: Faith and Pantheon, Magic of Faerûn 4th edition Player's Handbook 5th edition: Player's Handbook, Sword Coast Adventurer's Guide

This post was written in May 2021. → For more Gale: Analysis Series Index

[blueiscoool]

Two Polished 5,500-Year-Old Stone Balls Found in Neolithic Scottish Tomb

The rare artifacts were probably used as both weapons and symbols of power

Archaeologists excavating a tomb at one of Scotland’s oldest known monuments have discovered two polished, 5,500-year-old stone balls, reports Alison Campsie for the Scotsman.

The team made the find at Tresness, a chambered cairn on the Orkney island of Sanday that dates to around 3500 B.C.E.

“A cracking find from the tomb!” wrote Hugo Anderson-Whymark, senior curator of prehistory at the National Museum of Scotland, on Twitter after the first ball’s discovery. “Only 20 or so Neolithic polished stone balls have been found in Orkney and few have been recovered from secure contexts.”

Anderson-Whymark later posted that the second ball was “the size of a cricket ball, perfectly spherical and beautifully finished. It’s split along bedding in the banded sandstone but will be amazing when conserved.”

Researchers have previously found plain stone balls at other sites in Orkney, including the Neolithic village of Skara Brae and the complex of buildings known as the Ness of Brodgar, reports the Press and Journal’s Ellie Milne. Archaeologists have also unearthed more than 500 carved stone balls, some in Orkney but most elsewhere.

Aberdeenshire, located on the Scottish mainland more than 100 miles south of Orkney, is particularly rich in these artifacts. One, known as the Towie ball, is carved into four knobs, three of which are decorated with intricate spiral patterns. Other examples found in the region feature distinctive patterns of spikes and ridges.

Researchers say the stones were probably used as both weapons and symbols of power. Remains of people of different ages and genders found in Orkney show signs of blunt force skull injuries possibly caused by such tools. But the discovery of polished balls in a burial is unusual.

The tomb at Tresness is split into several chambers. Vicki Cummings, an archaeologist at the University of Central Lancaster, tells the Scotsman that the tomb was probably connected to a Neolithic settlement at Cata Sand, about a mile and a half away.

“We have got the tomb and the settlement where people are living and they are more or less contemporary, so it seems very likely that the people building this monument were the people living at the settlement at Cata Sands,” she says.

Cummings adds that the landscape of the area was very different during the Neolithic period. Sea levels were lower, meaning the coast was farther from the tomb and the settlement, and the area was covered in trees.

Archaeological sites on the Scottish archipelago form a Unesco World Heritage site known as the Heart of Neolithic Orkney. Monuments, residential areas and artifacts found in the area testify to the farming practices of people who lived in northwest Europe before 4000 B.C.E.

In addition to the balls, notes the team on its blog, excavation of the cairn has uncovered fragments of pottery, knives and the antler of a Roe deer. As Cummings writes in a blog post, this season’s dig revealed how Bronze Age people altered the monument, removing stones and adding a new outer wall made up of large stones brought in from elsewhere.

“The Bronze Age cairn would have been really impressive,” she writes.

Archaeologists first explored the tomb in the 1980s. In 2017, a new series of excavations began “with an added sense of urgency,” according to Gizmodo’s George Dvorsky. The site faces erosion and the collapse of the cliff where it stands, so researchers are attempting to document the site and collect as many artifacts as possible before it’s too late. They have created 3-D models of the cairn that highlight sections constructed during the Neolithic period and the Bronze Age.

“At the end of the day, sadly this is a site that is disappearing into the sea so we are extracting this information before it is basically lost forever,” Cummings said.

By Livia Gershon.

[toaarcan]

Ken Penders doesn’t *want* to make The Lara-Su Chronicles.

So Penders has been stupid on Twitter again. Normally not worth talking about unless what he’s saying is especially heinous or stupid, but this time it was followed reasonably closely by Matt McMuscles posting an episode of What Happened? about Sonic Chronicles: The Dark Brotherhood.

Unlike most discussions about Sonic Chronicles sucking, this video included a segment voiced by SomecallmeJohnny talking about Ken Penders’ role in the game never being continued and all of its ideas being dropped from SEGA’s canon. 

Naturally, the comments contain plenty of people talking about how the game was what got Penders angry enough to finally kill the Archie Sonic comic by collapsing the house of cards of incompetence that Archie had built for him to topple.

But I think there’s a misconception here. Because I don’t think Penders wanted Archie Sonic to die.

No, Penders didn’t want to kill Archie Sonic. Why on Earth would he want to kill something he wanted to be the head writer of?

Penders knew that he’d contributed an enormous amount of the lore of Archie Sonic. Not just characters, but settings, concepts, ideas, the whole world was largely defined by him. Other writers were certainly better, but they were playing in the house that Penders built. It was rotten and riddled with woodworm, but he made it. 

Just like Ian Flynn, whose dedication to this comic allowed it to stumble on while bleeding out, and enjoy a quasi-resurrection under IDW, Penders has an undeniable passion for Archie Sonic, and refused to let go of it.

Yes, it’s a version of Sonic warped by Penders’ own ego, incompetence, confusing political views, ego, lack of self awareness, ego, absence of talent, sexism, ego, enormous daddy issues and of course, ego. But it’s passion nonetheless. It would be admirable if that dedication didn’t just kill it for everyone else, but, y’know, points where they’re due.

I think Penders believed that if he gained ownership of all those characters and concepts, they’d have no choice but to hire him back. The Archie Sonic universe couldn’t exist without what he had made, and if they wanted to continue in that form, they’d need to give him a seat at the table.

When he issued his statement on the restrictions he was placing on further use of his ideas by Archie, I don’t think he was making intentionally unreasonable demands. I don’t think he wanted to be a third executive that Ian had to please, after SEGA and Archie themselves. He wanted to supplant Ian entirely. He wanted Ian’s job.

Why else would he talk so much about what he’d do if given the job again? Why else would he keep posting about things he wanted to do with Archie but never got the chance to? Why else would he not involve anybody else, like Scott Fulop, say, until after the reboot had happened and he already had what he wanted?

That’s the smoking gun, for me. If this was really about giving back authors what they were owed by the evil company that had been making money off their hard work, he would’ve done much better as just one writer among many, all aiming for the same goal. 

Fulop’s later litigation, which probably finished Archie off, proves that, at the very least, Penders was able to get others to take up his cause. At most, that other writers had genuine grievances with Archie’s actions.

So why did he wait? Why make himself the sole enemy of the very fandom he’d be intending to sell his own comic to?

Because The Lara-Su Chronicles was never the goal.

He wanted to be in control of Archie Sonic, and if he’d achieved that, Fulop taking ownership of Mogul and everything else he did wouldn’t have helped Penders. It would’ve outright hindered him, taking away things that he would’ve wanted access to in his new role as head writer. He knew he was integral to the continued survival of the original Archie universe, and he was expecting that to give him power over the comic. He wasn’t expecting Archie to turn around and delete everything not made by SEGA, DIC, or one of their then-current employees.

He thought they needed him to survive. And then they found a way to do it without him. And that pissed him off something fierce. And when the reboot of Archie tanked after three short years, of course he celebrated. Because as far as he could see, they’d refused to do things his way, and perished. They had rejected him, and failed without him.

And that’s why he turned his sights on IDW as soon as they got the license with Ian at the helm. Because he cannot stand not being the man at the helm of the Sonic comics. It’s got to be him, it can only be Ken Penders. 

That’s why he posted his own idea for what he’d do with IDW, and it mainly consists of trying to turn IDW entirely into a revival of Archie.

And that’s why The Lara-Su Chronicles has never materialised. Because he didn’t want to make it. He still doesn’t. He wants to be writing Archie Sonic. And that’s why his lore for Lara-Su is a confusing mess of concepts stolen blatantly from SEGA and Archie. Why he’s had the legal rights to do whatever he wants with those characters for almost seven years, and has done nothing. 

He’s made one page. And it was posted online a few months after the lawsuit ended, and since then, nothing.

It’s almost tragic, really. He had a genuine passion for this work, but because of his own ego, he couldn’t allow it to survive without him. And so he killed it, and now all he can do is sit about online and hope against all sanity that it will one day return to him. And only to him.