#intentionally abstract buildings

[windvexer]

Hi, Chicken!

I hope this question won't be too basic, but I wonder how to know if I did something right - like, if I cleansed properly, or if my protection spell works. I guess if a spell is about stuff like "Some money/love/whatever would be nice, please", then I can see for myself whether it comes to me or not, but with cleansing and protection it's less obvious. Note that I'm a beginner. I think my divination/cartomancy skills are quite decent, but that's it.

Thank you for your time, have a lovely day!

You won't always be able to tell, but there are ways. Basically, build your protection and cleansing spells in such a way that when they work, something else happens to alert you to that change.

@asksecularwitch sometimes speaks of including "tells" in spellwork that indicate a spell is working as intended. The concept is the same: you have a spell give you a sign if it's working.

I usually don't assign specific tells, like, "if the protection works I'll see a speckled pigeon." I like to employ feeling. When I protect an area, does it feel safe? Do the little hairs on the back of my neck settle down?

Protection should change something about a space. This is a change you can learn to sense.

You can gain this sense with a little practice. This is where practice becomes important. You need to work with lots of little protections and cleansings to develop the sense for how they feel to be around.

You can experiment with this for yourself. Try practicing visualizations that make you feel very safe. Keenly observe yourself: how does your lived experience change when you are magically protected, versus not being protected?

You don't have to have a strong connection to your own emotional center. But what changes? Something should change.

Within a protected space, do you have less thoughts of worry, even if those thoughts are disconnected from emotion? Is it easier for you to forget about the thing you are protected against? Are you able to think about other things for longer, without being intruded upon by thoughts of the thing protected against? When you do think about that thing, are the quality of those thoughts different? Do those thoughts change from sharp and needling, to faraway and curious?

Witchcraft exists at the intersection between internal and external reality.

It is your own internal reality that provides landmarks and points of reference that allow you to see when external reality is shifting beyond its normal boundaries.

If you have not mapped the terrain of your internal reality, how will you be able to tell when subtle magic is afoot?

If you have no idea what yourself looks like when you're unprotected, then you must always rely on outside verification. If you do know what yourself looks like when you're unprotected, just watch yourself, step into a protected space, and see what changes.

If you want to get past the 101 and start figuring things out for yourself, you must know yourself.

This undertaking can be done intentionally and methodically. Knowing yourself is not an abstract notion; it is a skill that can be practiced through established techniques.

Of course, in this pursuit, it's also wise to employ protections that not only protect a thing, but make you feel safe. It's very lovely, and easy to accomplish.

When you lay down the ward, instruct it to not only protect against X, but make you feel protected.

You can tell a ward is working if you know yourself well enough to tell whether or not you are stepping into a protected space. It takes a lot of practice. There are other things you can do to test the ward itself, and your skills of warding. But if you'd like to be the sort of witch who can just tell whether or not a space is protected, that comes from self work, not spell work.

It's the same with cleansing.

What's the point in cleansing something if it feels the same both before and after?

I mean beyond just doing activities to practice, or just doing something because a spell says so.

In real life, what's the point in cleansing, if the cleansing doesn't change anything?

If an object doesn't feel "dirty" to you, then why cleanse it?

And if the cleansing didn't make it feel clean, why do it?

Cleansing should change something about a space or object, just like protection changes something about a space or object.

You can specially work with your cleansing techniques to leave an air of freshness, a metaphysical squirt of Lemon Pledge, if you will. And just like the good feelings that protection can bestow, this is a very pleasant thing to do.

Just like creating protections to know what it feels like to be protected, try understanding what it is within you that changes to reflect the difference between a cleansed and uncleansed object.

Do you feel more comfortable touching it, even if its physical cleanliness has never changed? Is it easier to look at the object, whereas before your eyes passed over it? Are you able to observe the object with a quiet mind, whereas before thoughts of distraction pulled you away from the metaphysical unpleasantness? Do you just feel differently about the object, as if its invisible grimace turned into an invisible smile?

It's nice to be able to read cards and program spells, but it's also nice to be magical yourself. Learning to sense magic is a skill, and I think it's a good one to learn.

If all that is a bit much:

An easy tarot reading to determine if a spell is working is to shuffle and draw a card until you get any pip card.

If the suit of the pip matches the type of spell, then it's a generally good omen.

If the suit of the pip doesn't match the type of the spell, it's a neutral omen.

Sit down and write out what spell type goes with what suit.

General protection spells may be pentacles or earth, for a wall or fortification.

Fiery protection that punishes or banishes may be wands or fire.

Cleansing may be cups or water.

Swords can be used as a generally bad omen for any spell outcome. Or, if you work this into a complete system, it can generally align with spells of communication and decision-making.

The edible has kicked in and no idea if I answered your question ^-^ hope this helps, though!

[mering]

design experimenting. two completely incongruent dudes

originally put this in the tags but it was getting long. having fun trying to figure out how to approach ls designs... key tenets:

1) wildly clashing styles of dress

2) costume elements. if someone is wearing historical clothing they are effectively larping like that says something about you. clown being a clown says something about him. etc. leaning into ballet costume/wrestling costume/theater/etc depending on the character in question because it's fun.

in relation to a bunch of people intentionally dressing up weird, wearing normal clothes also says something ("there is no c!mapicc he just hates you" etc). mapicc wearing whatever the fuck is also related to like, you know when he starts wearing diamond so zam will quit freaking out. sometimes he wants to look like the underdog, and it also has to do with part of mapicc and zam's conflict in season 4 being about... how do i put it. the same parts of zam's playstyle that make him a useful ally are the things he stubbornly refuses to change even when it would be tactically smarter to do something else. he hates that mapicc won't ever just build a base, but mapicc not living the way zam does is part of what keeps them from getting even for so long. mapicc doesn't need villagers because zam sets up villagers and then dies to him and that feeds him gear. zam has a set of rules for how to play fair in his head that mapicc does not ascribe to, mapicc can play "weaker" and still come out on top because he's "cheating" by zam's rulebook.

so mapicc's design is meant to starkly contrast both ro and zam in different ways. ro design choices feel self explanatory, he's always trying to dramatize and then it lands in the goofiest way possible so he needs to be a little over the top. at the same time he completely refuses to take things seriously when it's OTHER people's thing in question, so he's a mix of trying to give off a certain image some of the time but expressive and kinda mocking in body language. he has "mostly monochrome vaguely historical outfit design" in common with zam because on top of the literal monochrome skins, they both have a thing about trying the same tactics over and over again regardless of evidence against its efficacy, trying to return to something or preserve something which is impossible to preserve by nature.

3) leaning away from animal or monster elements common to mcrp character design because i wanna focus in on how someone would choose to present themselves through both clothing and...

4) how much of your human face/body you're choosing to reveal (sliding scale of abstraction; some characters appear more or less human at different moments). so you can have inhuman designs but it leans away from the organic towards the symbolic if that makes sense. this is sort of my visual shorthand for how lifesteal's roleplay works but it's hard to explain what i mean by that

[taraljc]

I love that Smithers is trying to give Alex grief about his complete and total lack of surveillance skills because he spotted him in the queue at the café but doesn't really process the part where Alex knows where and when he gets coffee on the way to work which is pretty specific.

Also that he never reported his phone stolen and Kyra has just been walking around with it for like a year. It's like oh hey there's been a massive data breach---o never mind it's Alex's girlfriend she's mostly harmless.

Meanwhile John Crawley still feels deep deep shame that he did not recognise the entire reason Kyra hugged him was so she could lift the key card to the safe house. He just thought she needed a hug and he was the closest available vaguely paternal adult. Which Jack would have immediately recognised, living day in and day out with moody teenager.

also every time I rewatch the first series I'm always shocked at how sullen and surly Alex is because I think of him as this smiling sunshine boy and he really is full of a lot of anger at first. like he breaks an MI6 agent's nose. and everybody is like oh look at the cute kid! except for presumably that agent who is like seriously why did it have to be the face.

I really wish we had gotten more of Wolf and the rest of K squad because he was clearly fascinated by the fact that Ian had intentionally or unintentionally trained his foster son/nephew to withstand enhanced interrogation and yet Alex did not seem to have processed that his training was anything out of the ordinary. and neither did his friends and family.

Like, Tom thinks it's completely normal for Alex to scale the exterior of a building and break inside to get his mobile phone. Even Kyra is like well I've watched Alex shimmy up a drain pipes clearly I can do it too and she's just really lucky she didn't fall and shatter both her ankles in Malta.

I also continue to be confused by the back garden of their terrace house because it was very clearly an actual garden first series and then by the time we hit third series it's walled in and I'm guessing it's because it's a set but if it is a set, they reproduced the location identically which you almost never see. usually we are just meant to believe that characters are blind to staircases being in different places and rooms being significantly larger all of a sudden.

but I do really love the set design in as much as the set dressing changes dramatically between series 2 and Series 3 where you can really see Jack and Alex's influence in the pictures on the wall and the furniture. It goes from being a very abstract bachelor home to a real place where real people live very quickly where is previously the only thing that sort of spoke to this is a home and not just an address were all of the photos on the fridge. and I have a lot of headcanon about those photos, because I had a friend who worked for the Security Services and as a result she wasn't allowed her to have any photographs of herself online.

I imagine Ian being meticulous about this and coming home from a business trip to suddenly find the fridge covered in photographs and Jack being like 'it's so Alex remembers what you look like since you've been gone for 4 weeks, I thought it was really important that he not forget your face and think you were a home invader'.

Meanwhile Alex is 9 and cheeky as hell.

Also I need to get better screen grabs but I do love that the actors clearly brought a bunch of their own photographs to stick to the fridge.

[fandomsandfeminism]

Yall, I gotta show you the new Lego Art set that just got announced. A lot of the "serious" Lego fans are already bagging on it as just a "parts pack" but like...

Design your own piece of abstract art There are no wrong ways to create: just experiment and have fun with the limitless possibilities. It’s impossible to make a mistake! The accompanying building instructions are not there to tell you what to do, but rather toinspire you with aspirational images and suggestions for your artistic journey.

Ok, this is *art*

My hoity toity opinion? There's an interesting tension between lego as creative free play (aimed at kids) and lego as model kits (aimed at adults), and this feels like it's in conversation with that tension.

Maybe this is the abstract art snob in me, but I feel like the way this set intentionally challenges what we imagine from an Adult Lego Art set by encouraging personal expression is, in itself, an artistic statement. Rather than just representing a famous piece of art (like the Great Wave set or the Starry Night set), it becomes art in itself.

(Yall can blame @gayskrillex for showing me this. I love it)

[gobbogoo]

What We Can Infer About TADC's Outside World:

I've been pondering The Amazing Digital Circus some more, and it's hit me that we can deduce a small amount of information about the real-life circumstances of the people trapped within.

1. Nobody's starved to death. This implies that their physical bodies are either being kept on life support, or ENTIRELY detached from their consciousnesses. The fact that we see no body at the computer in the end of the pilot implies that either Pomni's body was moved the moment she put the headset on, or her body was destroyed. Either way, not ideal...

2. Nobody is coming to save these people. This may seem obvious, but clearly the outside world is unaware of TADC and the people trapped within. Pomni appeared to have no idea what the headset was before she put it on, after all, and a single missing persons's investigation would likely uncover a long string of disappearances. Either someone on the outside is covering up these vanishings, this happens so infrequently that SOMEHOW nobody's put the pieces together, or nobody cares.

3. The building is still getting power and people are still finding the circus. The monitor hosting the circus appeared old and abandoned in that final shot, however it was still running. That means someone is paying for its upkeep, which implies intention. Likewise new people continue to get periodically trapped within it, which implies that whoever's maintaining the game is either not very diligent, or more likely actively has a hand in getting people trapped.

Theory Time!

While it's WAY too early to say, here are a few possible explanations based on the info above:

1. Nobody within the circus is actually human. Instead they're a duplicated consciousness scanned from someone who used the game and then left. This'd explain all the stuff mentioned above, from a lack of outside concern to detachment from physical bodies. As far as anyone outside is concerned the game is still working fine.

2. Leaning into this and taking it a step further, Caine could be completely alone within his world, and having not seen visitors for decades, has created these "humans" to stop himself from going mad. "Abstraction" could simply be what happens when the AI remembers what it actually is and returns to its original "all seeing eye" form.

3. Time within the circus could move at a different speed. So it feels like years when really its been like 5 minutes. The string of people showing up dispersed over years instead could be people all plugging in over a matter of seconds/minutes. To quote Stephen King's Jaunt: "It's Eternity In There"

4. C&A is actively trapping people in this game for some reason. They're covering up the disappearances and maintaining the game while ensuring nobody tries to free any of the captives. This is in my opinion the least interesting answer, but it IS an option.

5. The people "trapped" within the Digital Circus intentionally did so to escape whatever life they had outside. They actively chose to wipe their minds and live a new life in this digital world, unaware that doing so would make them continuously desire physical reality.

[jozor-johai]

Revisiting the Rat Cook, Part 1: The Best Pie, and Lord Lamprey

This is the first part of a series I've been sitting on for a while, where I'm going to examine the symbols and themes present in the "Rat Cook" story, as relayed by Bran in ASOS Bran IV, and search reappearances of those elements throughout the rest of ASOIAF.

This series is predicated on the understanding that these books are rich with intentional symbolism, metaphor, and allegory, and that the repetition of these symbols and themes adds to their meaning.

In general, the symbols that are present in ASOIAF are limited by their ability to be inserted into the plot of the story (i.e. if the symbol of a stag killing a direwolf is important, there must be a way in which the characters are able to encounter such a scene within the plot's context). However, the metadiegetic legends that exist in-world for the characters of ASOIAF are not beholden to the same restrictions, and because GRRM is able to invent these myths in their entirety without restrictions on any of the individual symbolic elements, we can trust that each separate element of these in-world myths was placed intentionally.

With that in mind, I believe we can use stories like that of the Rat Cook as a sort of "road map" when looking at the reappearance of these same symbols and themes elsewhere in the story; I believe the "Rat Cook" story is the most distilled example of these elements. I don't mean to say that every instance of "rats" references the Rat Cook directly, but that the Rat Cook story provides a place where Martin is able to use these symbols in their most abstract form and describe their relationship to each other, so that when we see them appear again elsewhere in ASOIAF we might better understand what we are being shown.

So, among other things, the Rat Cook story is about a rat which eats rats, or a cook who serves kings; The Rat Cook story is about fathers and sons, about cannibalism, about trust, about vengeance, and about damning one's legacy.

This is likely going to be a 9-part series, but ideally almost all of these parts will be able to stand on their own. Each post will inform the next as I build my analysis, but hopefully each individual post is also interesting in its own right.

RtRC Part 1: "The Best Pie You Have Ever Tasted" and "Lord Lamprey"

This opening part, for better or worse, is going to retread some well-discussed ground: the clear parallels between the "Rat Cook" story and the incident in which Lord Manderly serves certain overlarge pies in ADWD The Prince of Winterfell, a scene lovingly dubbed "Frey Pie". However, as well-established as this comparison is, I want to begin here so I can begin to introduce how a closer analysis of the Rat Cook themes are present in this uncontroversially parallel scene, and how they might add more depth to interpreting that moment.

Not only does the scene evoke the same imagery, serving pie to the Lords amidst conspicuously missing sons, but the connection becomes even more direct when Wyman Manderly looks directly to the camera and says, “Hey reader, if you’re wondering where those Freys are, think back to any scary stories you know about pie”.

Okay, he doesn’t actually say that, but it’s close enough, and as much of a nudge we’re like to get from Martin (and which still went over my head on my first read through). Instead he does the next best thing, cueing Abel to sing while staggering past our POV:

"We should have a song about the Rat Cook," he was muttering, as he staggered past Theon, leaning on his knights. "Singer, give us a song about the Rat Cook."

Manderly seems to acknowledge the similarities himself, and most have noticed as well.

However, making the comparison between the story of the Rat Cook and Manderly’s actions is particularly interesting in their differences.

There are many ways in which Manderly’s pies, as a mirror, are appropriately an inversion of certain elements in the Rat Cook myth.

Returning to the scene as we see it in ADWD The Prince of Winterfell:

“Ramsay hacked off slices with his falchion and Wyman Manderly himself served, presenting the first steaming portions to Roose Bolton and his fat Frey wife, the next to Ser Hosteen and Ser Aenys, the sons of Walder Frey. "The best pie you have ever tasted, my lords," the fat lord declared. "Wash it down with Arbor gold and savor every bite. I know I shall." “True to his word, Manderly devoured six portions, two from each of the three pies, smacking his lips and slapping his belly and stuffing himself until the front of his tunic was half-brown with gravy stains and his beard was flecked with crumbs of crust.”

Manderly takes on only some of the roles of the Rat Cook here. Despite his status as lord, he plays the role of the humble cook, personally serving Roose Bolton, Walda Bolton (née Frey), Hosteen Frey, and Aenys Frey, all standing in for the “Andal King”. In this way, the role of “Andal King” as someone who has official power and the role of “Rat Cook” as effectively powerless dissident are played out straightforwardly. Bolton and his allies are backed by their army and the authority of the crown while Manderly has no official backing of his own.

Wyman even physically resembles the Rat Cook; Wyman’s blue eyes indicate he is presumably pale, and Wyman is prodigiously large, to mimic the descriptor of “white, and almost as huge as a sow”.

However, like the “Andal King” himself, who had a “second slice” of his own son, it is Wyman Manderly, and not Bolton nor the Freys, who devours two portions from each of the pies. In this way, the roles have elements which are interchangeable.

Wyman is acting out both roles, which is especially interesting because in this comparison is a single most definitive contrast: The Rat Cook, most notably, is not punished for serving the pie, as "a man has a right to vengeance". Instead, he is punished for violating guest right.

Now, Wyman—who lost his son to the Freys at the Red Wedding—certainly has a “right to vengeance”, but betraying guest right is something which Wyman Manderly takes great pains not to do. Manderly conspicuously notes that he gave the three dead Freys guest gifts upon their parting, marking them as no longer guests under his roof, and subsequently, theoretically, freeing him to kill them. Manderly introduces the idea while Davos marks the distinction for the reader’s sake in ADWD Davos IV:

“The Freys came here by sea. They have no horses with them, so I shall present each of them with a palfrey as a guest gift. Do hosts still give guest gifts in the south?" "Some do, my lord. On the day their guest departs.”

The Freys, on the other hand, as executors of the Red Wedding, are the most notable violators of guest right, while the Boltons contributed their part as well; both are being punished for that sin by Manderly-the-Rat-Cook here, marking the inversion of the story. In this iteration, the party serving the pie seems to warrant no judgment; instead, the pie itself is the judgment, served as retribution. With that connection in mind, it's worth remembering the other importance of the Rat Cook story, based on its placement in ASOS and which I think has often been overshadowed by Manderly’s “Frey Pies” incident.

In the Rat Cook story, after the Rat Cook's punishment, he spends an immortal future forever eating his own descendants, a scenario in which Bran describes the rats of the Nightfort as “children running from their father”. That eternal, kin- and legacy- devouring doom does not just come secondary to the punishment, it is a part of the punishment following the violation of guest right, and introduces the notion of an entire family being cursed for that violation... and, for good measure, is brought up in ASOS Bran IV, chapter that occurs only a few chapters after the Red Wedding itself.

In one respect, this is just another reinforcement for the reader of the sanctity of guest right and of the laws of the old gods. Coming so soon after the Red Wedding, the Rat Cook story hints at the fall of House Frey. Walder Frey, most culpable violator of guest right, has apparently doomed the rest of his dynasty to death, punished for his actions, the way that the Rat Cook, too, is a patriarch who creates not only his own ruin but also the ruin of his progeny. Although Walder himself is not literally tying the nooses, it is Walder who has metaphorically become the father "devouring his children" indirectly through his ruthlessness. Wyman Manderly, then, is merely an agent of that doom.

On the subject of the Freys being cursed by violating guest right, only one of the named consumers of the pie, Aenys Frey, is truly mirroring the Rat Cook legend by literally eating his own son, Rhaegar Frey. Both Aenys and Hosteen Frey, on the other hand, are specifically called out in the scene as being the “sons of Walder Frey”. It’s appropriate within the mirrored Rat Cook motif to invoke Walder’s name as patriarch as well as the promise of other “sons” that might succumb to their father’s insatiable appetite for status; this sentence invokes the dynasty of the Frey household. Indeed, Walder Frey himself also has shared motifs with the Rat Cook: like the immortal Rat Cook, Walder Frey has nearly innumerable children and grandchildren, and he too seems to refuse to die.

If a named heir in Westeros is like the ASOIAF version of Chekov’s gun, then the Late Walder Frey is sitting on Chekov’s arsenal; once he becomes the late Late Lord Frey, it’s going to explode. If that happens in an upcoming book, then the Rat Cook story might be setting up the idea of how an eventual succession crisis of House Frey might further this metaphorical connection, with this doomed family turning on itself, each running from the shadow of their father’s legacy like the Rat Cook's children run from him in the Nightfort.

Lord Lamprey

Now, to push through a little more symbolic linking between the Frey Pie scene and Lord Manderly:

If we consider the “pie” element as a key part of the Rat Cook story, then seeing a “pie” specifically in the hands of Wyman Manderly prompts a connection with a noted favorite of Manderly’s: lamprey pie. As early as ACOK Bran II, we learn that:

“His own people mock him as Lord Lamprey”,

Interestingly, we see in that same chapter a telling metaphor considering Manderly and lampreys not in a pie:

“Lord Wyman attacked a steaming plate of lampreys as if they were an enemy host”.

Considering Wyman’s lampreys-as-enemy association makes for curious contrast later, in ADWD Davos IV, as Manderly is feigning allegiance with the hated Freys. Here, Manderly has just stepped away from the feast in order to secretly treat with Davos, and the food served may contain more meaning than at first appears:

“In the Merman's Court they are eating lamprey pie and venison with roasted chestnuts. Wynafryd is dancing with the Frey she is to marry. The other Freys are raising cups of wine to toast our friendship.”

The reappearance of this noted lamprey pie might take on more significance knowing that some of those eating it become a pie later on. The reminder of the association between Manderly and his lamprey pies seems even more intentional when the “Lord Lamprey” nickname conspicuously returns as Bolton’s men search for the missing Freys in ADWD Reek III:

"You did not find our missing Freys." The way Roose Bolton said it, it was more a statement than a question. "We rode back to where Lord Lamprey claims they parted ways, but the girls could not find a trail."

Invoking his nickname in this scene draws a connecting line between Manderly’s favorite pie, the “enemy host” of lampreys, the missing Freys, and “lamprey pie” being served as a symbol of the fake “friendship” between the Freys and Manderlys.

If that Frey-Manderly friendship is marked by mentions of lamprey pie, and Manderly loves to eat lamprey like he would eat an enemy, and we see in The Prince of Winterfell that Manderly apparently loves to eat his enemies, having two portions of each Frey pie, we might think that the Freys are being paralleled with Manderly’s favorite pie filling: lampreys. If that is the case, then comparing the punished Freys to lampreys is a scathingly fitting image, and I mean that literally.

Considering that carnivorous lampreys latch onto fishes to slowly eat the fish’s blood and flesh while the fish still swims, then looking at an image like this makes for some serious symbolic resonance if you consider the Tullys as fish (as they often are described) and the pie-filling Freys as pie-filling lampreys. It certainly provides a strong visual metaphor for the Frey’s “late” and half-hearted vassalage to Hoster Tully, how they dealt with Catelyn, and how they are now parasitically using Edmure—he sits in Riverrun at the end of ADWD, but with Freys latched onto him, bleeding him like they did his family.

This series is otherwise about pies and rats, not lampreys, but I will mention a few other interesting associations with lampreys that are worth looking into. The Stokeworths, when they are desperately trying to secure a match for Lollys, serve each of their prospective suitors lamprey pie, perhaps a signaling of the Stokeworth’s parasitic place at court, or the attitude towards their search for their daughter’s match. Note that in that context, Littlefinger remarks that he loves lamprey pie, perhaps fittingly for someone who has risen high by making use of his parasitic attachments to those more powerful. By contrast, when our intrepid advocate for truth and justice—Davos—is jailed after his return from the Battle of the Blackwater, he is served lamprey pie in the dungeons, but finds it “too rich” to eat. We have already seen that Davos has no stomach for the blind flattery that some of Stannis’ other lords have, and this scene describes that same character trait. I believe there are even further associations that are worth investigating, but for the sake of this essay, we must move on and end here for now.

In the next part, I'll focus on how it's relevant that the Rat Cook's pie and Manderly's pie were both allegedly "pork" pies, and where that reappears as well.

[here-there-were-dragons]

to be honest half of that shit sounds like something my mother probably already kind of believes and might accept fully if it came from the mouth of anybody other than him, and she considers herself a liberal leftist some fucking how

woke up and my dash is covered in americans going apeshit. fuck did I miss

[sunset-synthetica]

Can you explain how the immortal science of marxism-leninism relates to Turbo Overkill

I don't believe TO is trying to have a huge deep political message, but some of it was intentional and the rest stems from its inspirations, ie Blade Runner, whose political messaging WAS intentionally a critique of capitalism and/or the more specific effects it has on our lives.

The backdrop is a late capitalist- using Mandel's definition- system where the largest and most powerful company's (Teratek's) capital is generated mostly, if not entirely, by selling increasingly more dangerous and experimental products to a consumer base spanning entire solar systems at the very least.

By looking at Johnny as a member of the exploited working class - albeit a class traitor, as he's a former cop* - a disabled person, unable to earn enough to save his life in any other way than by essentially selling himself to Teratek and gradually losing parts of his own body and surrenderong agency as this job becomes more and more demanding. We see a clear anti-capitalist sentiment built directly into the foundation of the game.

We can go further though.

SYN, in short summarized as a sentient, virus-esque AI, functions as an abstracted, personified representation of Teratek itself and its ultimate goals. SYN was supposed to enhance the process of human body augmentation, and, as Johnny's mother states, having been directly involved in the making of SYN, it should have been a way to help people, had Teratek not been the intended owner.

SYN goes rogue, and, instead of disobeying Teratek's policy, takes it further, either converting augmented people into a mind controlled force, or creating entirely new beings in the pursuit of human evolution. She seeks to force the human race to evolve, or be exterminated, which relates moreso to eugenics but is a vital part of her position in the story.

So, establishing SYN as both a manifestation of Teratek/the wider market as well as its relationship to the workers, and something of a next step in the evolutionary line of their thinking, her relationship with Johnny gets easier to pick apart.

Johnny is offered a choice that, while more obvious in its immediate effect, partially reflects the experience of the worker- debase himself, be stripped of choice, free will, identity, be exploited for the rest of his life to build a future he will not see or enjoy, sell his labor for the cost of staying alive - or die. It's not a choice, not really, it's an illusion.

He chooses to stay alive, of course, and though SYN is defeated at the end, it doesn't break him out of the loop. SYN is not the root of the problem, she is not the cause for Johnny's suffering and exploitation, she's the more extreme, almost caricature-like version of his struggle.

Johnny ends the story the same as he'd began, only the illusion of a choice in the matter is shattered.

The Street Cleaners

The Street Cleaners are a mercenary-like faction, essentially fulfilling the role of the police, though on a much less regulated, official level. We don't have a lot of information about them, but from what I've been able to gather, they are generally disliked by the Regulators- police force- and work outside the law to an unknown extent, without pretending otherwise, all while fulfilling the interests of corporations.

Within the Street Cleaners, everything goes if the money is good enough, which was the incentive for Johnny to join in the first place- do the dirty work, get paid, survive.

I wanna look at Maw specifically. He's all around an interesting character, but it really shines from this angle.

All of the Street Cleaners seem to enjoy their work, including Johnny, but Maw's relationship to it is particular, in that he doesn't see his colleague or fellow people as either competition or allies on the same level, but as inherently beneath him, not worthy of his consideration.

Maw criticizes the corporations, claims them to be untrustworthy and incapable of wielding power without abusing it, and yet his solution is not the collective seizing of the means of production- SYN's platform and all its available resources, including the augmentation process in this context- but rather the accumulation of all for himself.

He plans to change the system from within by establishing himself as in control, as its driving force, instead of seeing the system as inherently flawed and needing to be dismantled. No amount of gradual change could have changed SYN, or the system for the better, and so, Maw only speeds up a process that, under SYN, might have taken longer, but would have been inevitable regardless.

Maw loses control, loses his sense of reality and objectivity, of himself, and crumbles under the weight of this process, this power.

Were SYN the one in control during the time of Maw's rampage, the process may have been more gradual, less chaotic, but the ending would have been the same - a mass extinction event, countless deaths and destruction, regardless of whether the motive was a false hope for the evolution of the human race, or profit for the bourgeoisie/market, as represented mostly by Teratek's Executive.

In short, Maw allows himself to become absorbed by the system, accelerates its negative outcome, and upon being killed, just like SYN's own death, nothing changes. Both deaths slow the progress down somewhat, hide the obvious, but result in no meaningful change.

All of this, while a reach in some parts, is not contradicted by anything in the story of Turbo Overkill, rendering it an insane, but viable analysis.

My conclusion is that Marxism-Leninism couldn't have saved Johnny Turbo, but it could have eased his suffering and made him see his struggle as founded in a material reality outside his own control, and inherent to the very system he exists within.

-----------

*the situation of the Regulator force isn't exactly clear, but Paradise- Johnny's home, and the respective Regulator force of which he was a part of- is stated to have heavy criminal activity, which necessitated the Regulator presence, and may have inspired Johnny to join in the first place.

SYN, ironically enough, directly states that Johnny's presence in the Regulator force meant he "enforced [her] goals," until he was led astray by his injury. Said goals are specifically the elimination of the weak to make place for the strong, a genocide, but it's unclear if by "her", SYN describes herself as the sentient person possessing agency, or the purpose for which Teratek utilized her prior. If we assume the latter is true, it would mean the Regulators are simply a cleaner, more widely accepted version of the Street Cleaners, as I've already stated is my belief.

[pyreneese]

The infinite rage I feel when I see a genuinely beautiful piece of art only to learn it's AI. There are a few pieces I never would've guessed are ai and it makes me so disappointed T-T. I'm not talking about pieces that rely on some sort of realism or flared lighting that have trademark ai problems, but moreso 'stylized' ai art that purposefully uses an almost more comic style or is intentionally abstract so you can't tell if the abstract nature is human or not. I'd show an example, but the video I saw it in is a musician/band that just uses ai art for the background and I don't want to send any hate their way.

And honestly? The art just makes me sad. Like "I could've seen someone pouring hours of love and labor into a piece like you but you were simply created by a machine".

Anyway, 1 am Ari is in the building hehe

[vaguelyoriginaldrivel]

RANDOM TOWN GENERATOR

My longest-running campaign ended this year. Granted, that’s not saying much - only ran 9 sessions, started last fall, but still as of yet the only real “campaign” I’ve ever ran. Was some sort of “urban fantasy” thing, players a bunch of wizards (and one giant shrimp-man) driving around some undefined region of the USA in an again undefined recent past… though near the end I think I’d decided on it being set in Pennsylvania? Definitely a learning experience in a lot of ways for me, regardless. Anyways here’s some tables I made for it

Town name (d10):

Washington

Franklin

Chester

Dover

- 10. [random - roll prefix, suffix]

Prefix (d12):

Spring

Hill

Glen

George

Kings

Green

Arling

Clay

Ash

Gold

Mill

Fair

Suffix (d6):

field

lake

hill

view

ton

-Town

Notable Feature (3d10): 1-3. Can’t be rolled on a 3d10

Ignore everything else - this isn’t an ordinary small town, it’s a neo-nazi cult compound. They have guns and they don’t like you

Historic building - Weird modern house - all pods, steel, fiberglass, and concrete, with spherical pods covered in pods. Abandoned.

Ruins - Abandoned Shopping Mal

Speed trap town - local cops lurk on the side of the highway, entire town economy based on speeding tickets. Basically operates on piracy. Absurdly low speed limits not properly demarcated

Weird art installation - field of sculptures (d4 - abstract metal, cobbled-together trash, stone statues of animals and people, monoliths with inscriptions)

Historic building - haunted mansion, old style - wood, maybe some stone

Notable dam overlooking the town, potentially vulnerable to failure

Ruins - Abandoned Factory

College town - small local college dominates the local economy, most residents are students or staff

Tourist trap - Historic house (d4- Rotting wooden mansion with a ghost story, old colonial stone fort, weird modern house of a dead eccentric rich guy/ weird cult leader )

Large immigrant population from a distant country (ie not part of the Americas- like Kazakhstan or Swahililand or Lichtenstein, not like, Colombia)

Oddly high concentration of a hyper-specific specialized type of business - an entire district of dentists or dog groomers or something

Not a full on cult compound, but much of the town’s population do follow a specific esoteric cults religion like scientology or sedevacantist mormonism or something

Birthplace of some celebrity, statue in town square proclaims as much

Tourist trap -Giant sculpture, gift shop (d4 - historic figure, giant animal, mascot of attached restaurant, dinosaur(young-earth creationist))

Historic building - old colonial fort, earthworks and stone and wood

Geography - Subterranean water (1d4 - Hot spring, bottomless pit in a lake, water-filled mine pit)

Geography- Big rock (d4 - Balancing rock, weird outcroppings (like fang ridge nevada), meteor (in far-off museum, there’s a plaque next to the crater though), butte)

Geography - Weird Cliff (1d6: columnar jointing, waterfall, petroglyphs, looks like a face, church built into it, odd color)

Retirement community, no children whatsoever and everyone is either a senior citizen or a caretaker

Odd museum - animal (1d6- snails, songbirds, butterflies, earthworms, leeches, mice)

Odd museum - human (1d6- finger, ear, spleen, tongue, nose, lip, nail)

Odd museum - local cryptid (1d6 - sasquatch, lake monster, grey alien, weird alien (ie flatwoods), hodag, giant toad, devil)

Religious - large megachurch, drawing in the faithful from across the state

Weird art installation - small grove with (d4 - dollheads hanging from the trees, extensive etchings onto the bark, geometric statues in between the trees, the trees coated in colorful yarn)

Ignore everything else - this isn’t an ordinary small town, it’s some kind of hippy commune or cult compound or something. Either pseudochristian or pseudodharmic, flip a coin

Special - roll on Supernatural table

(intentionally weighted to be biased more towards the middle but I didn’t really check the probabilities here, might be way too hard to get the ones at the further poles)

Extra: Supernatural element. (d4)

Entire town was replaced with body-snatchers a few years ago. They’ll try to keep you in town for a few days - constantly surveilling you, in order to grow a body-double - when they’re done they’ll try and kidnap you to replace you with it the next time you wander away from the group. Body snatcher type varies - (Fae-esque boogeymen cuckoo-bird shapeshifters, pseudo-plant pod people, 1979 Alien style androids, etc)

Recent sightings of some kind of cryptid or something has drawn droves of “cryptozoologists” to town. This is a problem because some of you are cryptids. Coinflip if the cryptid in question is real or not

Entire town stuck in groundhog day loop - the US military has caught on and is using the town as a testing-bed/training site. Just like groundhog day, there’s one guy somewhere in town originating the loop - kill him or put him to sleep and it resets - make him learn the error of his ways - or keep him awake til midnight - and the effect ends permanently. The feds know about this, first thing they do every loop is send their special ops guys to bag him and hide him in a van before they start the raid in earnest. Outsiders, like you and the special ops guys, can enter the loop - no matter what happens, when the loop resets you’re plopped back outside right where you entered in exactly the state you were then except for your memories - even if you died you’re revived.

Certain nights, at the witching hour (12-1), local monsters and spirits and such emerge and walk the streets openly - certain stalls and shops pop up in areas that are normally unused, catering to this strange clientele, and others who sell mundane wares during the day reveal their magical affiliations at night. Also there’s street performances, music and dances and parades - and games, dangerous ones - ones you can join. The rest slumber on, but the magic that keeps them asleep does not apply to you. As magicians and cryptids yourself, this could be a good opportunity, but not all the spirits who’ve emerged are peaceful.

this is what the map of the actual campaign ended up looking like at the end btw

[dailyanarchistposts]

Joyful militancy and emergent powers

When people come into contact with their own power—with their capacity to participate in something life-giving—they often become more militant. Militancy is a loaded word for some, evoking images of machismo and militarism. For us, militancy means combativeness and a willingness to fight, but fighting might look like a lot of different things. It might mean the struggle against internalized shame and oppression; fierce support for a friend or loved one; the courage to sit with trauma; a quiet act of sabotage; the persistence to recover subjugated traditions; drawing lines in the sand; or simply the willingness to risk. We are intentionally bringing joy and militancy together, with the aim of thinking through the connections between fierceness and love, resistance and care, combativeness and nurturance.

When people find themselves genuinely supported and cared for, they are able to extend this to others in ways that seemed impossible or terrifying before. When people find their bellies filled and their minds sharpened among communal kitchens and libraries, hatred for capitalist ways of life grows amid belonging and connection. When someone receives comfort and support from friends, they find themselves willing to confront the abuse they have been facing. When people develop or recover a connection to the places where they live, they may find themselves standing in front of bulldozers to protect that place. When people begin to meet their everyday needs through neighborhood assemblies and mutual aid, all of a sudden they are willing to fight the police, and the fight deepens bonds of trust and solidarity. Joy can be contagious and dangerous.

All over the world, there are stories of people who find themselves transformed through the creation of other forms of life: more capable, more alive, and more connected to each other, and willing to defend what they are building. In our conversations with others from a variety of currents and locations, we have become increasingly convinced that the most widespread, long-lasting, and fierce struggles are animated by strong relationships of love, care, and trust. These values are not fixed duties that can be imitated, nor do they come out of thin air. They arise from struggles through which people become powerful together. As people force Empire out of their lives, there is more space for kindness and solidarity. As people reduce their dependence on Empire’s stifling institutions, collective responsibility and autonomy can grow. As people come to trust their capacity to figure things out together rather than relying on the state and capitalism, they are less willing to submit to the fears and divisions that Empire fosters.

These emergent powers are at the core of the Spinozan lineage, of this book, and (we think) of many vibrant movements today. Drawing on Spinoza, we call them common notions. To have a common notion is to be able to participate more fully in the web of relations and affections in which we are enmeshed. They are not about controlling things, but about response-ability, capacities to remain responsive to changing situations. This is why they are a bit paradoxical: they are material ideas, accessed by tuning into the forces that compose us, inseparable from the feelings and practices that animate them. Abstract morality and ideology are barriers to this tuning-in, offering up rule-bound frameworks that close us off from the capacity to modulate the forces of the present moment.

Similarly, we have come to think that while trust is fundamental in transformative struggle, it cannot be an obligation; trust is always a gift and a risk. Common notions are inherently experimental and collective. They subsist by hanging onto uncertainty, similar to the Zapatistas’ notion preguntando caminamos: “asking, we walk.” For the same reason, common notions are always in danger of being stifled by rigid radicalism, which tends towards mistrust and fixed ways of relating that destroy the capacity to be responsive and inventive. Joyful militancy, then, is a fierce commitment to emergent forms of life in the cracks of Empire, and the values, responsibilities, and questions that sustain them.

[chrysanthemumgames]

hello!! i'm someone currently (trying) to write their first if, and i'm struggling (so much). i really really really love fields of asphodel and how it's based in something familiar but still ends up being completely new among many other things. if you don't mind me asking, how did you create such multi-dimensional characters, especially working off of existing figures from myths? hearing how you did it would help me tons, and any tips you have i would also be very very very greatful for

I always feel a little bit weird trying to give people advice, because the truth is that I'm just making this up as I go along myself. So I don't really see myself as in a position to be giving advice, at least on something as abstract as making characters that seem like real people.

But you asked, and I don't want to send you away with nothing, so here is an attempt at part of an answer, with the caveat that this is merely how I do things, sometimes, and may not work or even be good advice for anyone else.

It can really depend, but a lot of times the best place to start is actually with your world, and specifically the cultural context the character comes from. That is going to inform a lot of things about them. You almost want to start from the outer and build inwardly. So you note their demographics and their cultural context and think about ways those things influenced them, and then you kind of figure out how they present themselves to the people around them—what their life looks like to people who only get to talk to them for a few minutes or see them in the metaphorical subway car. How they dress, how they talk, and so on.

But then you also need their inner life, the way they have of thinking about their identity and relating to all those other factors. What they think about, what they feel about. Do they conform to their culture in some ways and deviate from its expectations in others? (Probably; most people do). What are the points of friction? Do they intentionally cultivate the way they seem to others or ignore it? How genuine is that first impression to who they are? What is their driving desire or goal or motivation in life (do they even know this about themself?), and how will the story trouble or change it or throw obstacles in their way, and how will they handle that? What are their little quirks and hobbies and habitual gestures?

And then honestly I think the big thing is letting those layers kind of come through in the story. Not too much too fast, but not never either. How exactly to do that, I couldn't tell you. I just try to drip bits of the characters' inner lives into interactions with the PC as they get closer. I don't think there's a science to it; it seems really more like an art to me.

[teodora-djuric]

Literally Anything: some thoughts on Sunface Maslačak

A playlist of songs that inspired me, listen while you read for the Full ExperienceTM!

Watch the film here

Hypostasis is the accumulation of blood and fluid in the body under the influence of gravity, as a result of poor circulation or death. Hypostasis is the foundational material of reality. the god particle.

I wrote this essay many months ago but never published it. It's likely that the very thing that drove me to make Sunface is the thing that’s held me back from putting this out. Old habits die hard.

The first idea of Sunface Maslačak (for whom I’ll use it/its) came from asking myself “what CAN I do? Realistically, using only the materials immediately available to me, how do I make something of some significance to me?”. I considered what was occupying me at the time: light, and the idea of a Good, Polished Product. In my small Toronto apartment, I hauled out all the battered cardboard boxes I never intended to use for art, and made some anyway. A box— like a mask—is a container. It inherits some qualities from the content inside, and it visually broadcasts valuable information to its beholder; the size and shape, the colour. The internal contents give it weight, maybe sound. I am the internal content, and Sunface is the container, and Sunface exists in a container, is made of it! From that I started building on the central theme: building something Good with what you already have. The film is about my constant failure to do so artistically as well as personally.

Light.

I was (and still am) enamoured with light depicted symbolically, like in my 2022 painting maturity /remain kind. I painted light as an invasive force that exists within the two-dimensional subject, establishing a mutual exclusivity to its and the humanoid figure’s existences, only occasionally overlapping. The Sunface mask follows this principle. It’s a symbol of light which cannot produce its own, and in fact casts stark shadows. My apartment faces west, which means hot daylight blasts through my windows before disappearing entirely into night. But, this let me have fun exploring the different ways it refracts and bounces off objects. I wanted to minimize my use of artificial light (save for my salt lamp at the end), to push my tolerance for what I could leave out of my control during the creative process. So, natural light becomes a living thing as intrusive as its symbolic form, and forces me to work with it like a partner. 

The Good work.

One thing I often hear as an artist is “you have to know the rules of something before you break them”, or “you have to paint realism before you can paint abstraction”. The reality is I was never good enough at painting for that. The reality is I'm not good enough at mask to make a ‘masterwork’. I had to force myself to believe that I couldn’t wait for the materials and experience to give me the tools to make something Good, I just had to do it anyways. I purposefully haven’t explained what I mean by Good, and hopefully you’ve realized why. Good to me has always meant polished, perfect, insightful, untouchable. Creating Sunface Maslačak has been my attempt at practicing forgiveness as a part of unlearning this, packaged in a moment of my teenage existence. The mask is by all accounts suspiciously crafted. It’s asymmetrical, and all of my measurements are visible on it. I cut the eyes ‘upside down’, and unaligned with my actual features. I plastered an elastic on the back and suddenly I had the first mask I had made since high school drama class. And I say this next thing to encourage anyone else who might suffer the same freezing indecision I do: I was elated by the creation of this shitty little thing that I made with my own hands, even if I hated its imperfection. I decided then to craft an entirely, intentionally flawed story for this character, as a journal and record of my learning to film, craft, perform, and edit. Fuck it, we half-ass everything.

Maslačak and Pinocchio.

When I was born up until I was three, my hair grew straight up and swayed in the wind, often prompting cashiers to laugh at what looked to be an electrically charged infant. A family friend nicknamed me maslačak – dandelion. I hated wearing socks and tore them off with my teeth at every opportunity; I poured juice on my feet to ‘wash’ them; and once when my father caught me eating something I shouldn’t have he asked “what do you have in your mouth?” to which I innocently replied “teeth.”. All this to say, I’m told I was a genuine child. When I was in primary school one of my favourite books was an illustrated edition of Pinocchio, and my favourite story was one where Pinocchio eats the breakfast Geppetto bought for himself. In the original stories Pinocchio is a rotten and petulant child, but through the consequences of his actions, and the guidance of the cricket, Geppetto, and the Blue Fairy, Pinocchio becomes a lovely and wise child who spits proverbs off the top of his head, which means he’s become a real (read: Good) boy.

So, in the breakfast story, Geppetto returns home from jail (it was Pinocchio’s fault) to find Pinocchio without feet (also Pinocchio’s fault) or food, crying. He crafts the puppet some new feet, and gives him the three pears Geppetto was able to afford for his own breakfast. Some whining and hesitation later, Pinnochio has eaten all the pears whole, and has learned a new lesson. Now, Pinocchio is a children’s story for a reason-- more a function of teaching obedience, less of a rule of reality. The belief that dictated this process, my life: “you already have everything you need”, is interrupted by the paradox that “it is still not enough”. intolerable, I think.

Aw man, this is about Capitalism again, isn’t it?

The process of making Sunface Maslačak has been rife with frustration: Cardboard unsticking from the walls; relying entirely on natural and inconstant light; the shoddy construction of the mask making it flip off my face at every opportunity. I think there’s a sense in live performance, since the market is so oversaturated and opportunities are so few, that every little chance you get to create has to be perfect, whole. But then, Amateur comes from the Latin for lover, friend. I questioned why I felt so much discomfort with my unpolished project, and realized I was falling victim to the idea that something good had to also appear effortless. The invisible seam, the sound-treated recording booth, a sculpture with nary a fingerprint in sight. How sad is that, that in order to appreciate or praise something, we have to divorce it from human effort? Each mistake in Sunface Maslačak is the practice of loving effort. I want you to know how hard I worked on this! I also want you to know I didn’t work that hard! My mom happened to be cooking dinner when I wanted to record the background piano! At the time of writing this (March 10, 2024), I watched an interview with Anita Rodriguez who says something that blasted me to pieces: “Capital does not want labour, capital is hostile to labour.” (23:45). Capital wants a product, and a product is an ideal and a perfect symbol, divorced from the labour it took to make,and the guilt of being aware of the labour. This is how we sustain the impersonal individual/product, the pear without the farmer. Perfectionism and burnout are epidemics because we are expected to ignore our very real human limitations in order to improve exponentially and produce More. So, Sunface is my attempt at showcasing struggle. This aspect of my existence, shared with you, but mostly shared with myself. The girl who lived it isnt dead, I'm made of the same stuff she is. And a whole lot of cardboard.

[unibrawn]

sorry if this is too open-ended, but what are some of your goals/motivations with making art? when you're satisfied with a piece, what about it is satisfying?

big question! I have thought about it for a while

the work is enjoyable to produce. I need art to be something I delight in and can make a constant part of my life. Because of this, I often make things very slowly, and without a particular end goal. Sometimes it's just picking at paintings for the pleasure of making marks

the work is figurative. I'm rarely satisfied with landscapes or purely abstract/formal work; I need a subject/character/symbol/thing to carry the image for me, even if I end up obscuring it a lot. I do a lot of intentionally generic figures since I'm not really interested in a particular world building or creating ocs or such, I just need *someone* in the image

the work experiments. I'm not satisfied with *just* the thing; if I make a portrait, I need to play with the colors too, and odd shapes and symbols, and thinking about what surface marks I can make to guide an eye around the thing

there is some sorta *density* to it. not always, but often there's just a picking at the picture until it feels full and there's something everywhere and you can sit with it satisfyingly, symbols and colors. That said, I do occasionally dip into more minimal stuff since I have a love for the unresolved too (see: the series of litho prints I did not too long ago)

texture ough.

It is funny (even in a terribly dry, formal way which does not read at all as humor. Incompletion and doing things wrong and imperceptible meaning and clashing visual languages are funny to me.)

[hellobeccabetty]

Original Content Writing - Intentionality - Module 3 #writ671mu

Grad writing requires taking on many different contexts—adapting pieces to have the desired affect on the desired audience. The work that I’ve done with The Last of Us turned into four different versions, all for different contexts/audiences and through each revision I learned or added something new. I see this process of adapting and revising particularly tied into the theme of intentionality. Some of this adaptation can be planned for (abstract schema), some of it through reflection on what work could be utilized to fill the need of a particular context (Meta-Cognition/Self-Monitoring), and often, building experience in different contexts can make it easier the next time a similar project pops up (automaticity).

[communistkenobi]

Fascism is “true” insofar as it helps fulfill the destiny of a chosen race or people or blood, locked with other peoples in a Darwinian struggle, and not in the light of some abstract and universal reason. The first fascists were entirely frank about this: We [Fascists] don’t think ideology is a problem that is resolved in such a way that truth is seated on a throne. But, in that case, does fighting for an ideology mean fighting for mere appearances? No doubt, unless one considers it according to its unique and efficacious psychological-historical value. The truth of an ideology lies in its capacity to set in motion our capacity for ideals and actions. Its truth is absolute insofar as, living within us, it suffices to exhaust those capacities. The truth was whatever permitted the new fascist man (or woman) to dominate others, and whatever made the chosen people triumph.

Paxton is lamenting here the problem with creating a single definition of fascism, and in the introductory chapter he intentionally rejects any single “essence” of fascism, but honestly like I think the above quote acts as a pretty good definition. Fascism is so deeply concerned with nationalism (the “soil” component of blood and soil) that I think you could argue that a good definition of fascism is “the purest expression of state.”

The fascist approach to truth - “the truth was whatever permitted the new fascist to dominate others” - I think mirrors the way states assert themselves. States aren’t natural things, they aren’t found in nature, but instead made - a state exists only when you have sufficient power to insist that it does. It provides proof of its own existence. Fascist “truth” does the same, and comes into being when the fascist is able to dominate others. This framework allows you to also explain why fascist rhetoric is so disconnected from reality. Its intention is to dominate, not to reflect any observed truth about the world. I think this is also where Césaire’s definition of fascism as domestic colonialism comes especially in handy vis a vis modern conceptions of state, and helps to explain the weird combination of modernist understandings of social hygiene and race (themselves produced as colonial rationales for black subjugation and indigenous genocide) that are frequently found in fascist discourse, as well as the industrial expansion of weapons manufacturing and road building that fascist regimes have engaged in, with fascist rhetorical rejections of that very same modernity. Fascism coming into existence after the First World War - the industrialisation of warfare - is probably not an accident.