#look if im already here i may as well follow my tradition of discussing game writing and my habit of digging deep into Lore

Explore tagged Tumblr posts

Visit Tumblr Blog

Explore Tumblr blogs with no restrictions, modern design and the best experience.

Last Seen Tumblr Blogs

latexnchill

Lexi Chill

2K posts

duckdotcom

Fuck Yes! Duck Gently Passing Over Wave

62K posts

philsadelphia

Phils-adelphia

498 posts

meijhana

Holding Up the Weight of Worlds

16K posts

dtfmpfleo42659

신용카드한도현금화

8 posts

Fun Fact

Users from the US are the majority of Tumblr visitors.

tratserenoyreve · 3 years ago

Text

the more i dig into the rhinedottir plotline in genshin the more im like. damn. that’s pretty messed up, actually, i would love to see the ramifications of that explored.

but then i remember how baal was handled so i then lay my expectations to rest six feet under.

(spoiler rambling under the cut)

so like. thru combining info given by albedo regarding his relationship with his master, who he reveals as Rhinedottir/Gold, and details relating to both riftwolf drop items and weapons related to Durin, it’s kind of apparent that she is flippant about creating life. where albedo looks to her as a mother figure, it’s pretty self-evident that this was one-sided and she did not actually care for him as a child. after all, we learn in the shadows amidst snowstorms questline that she fed the prototype albedo to durin, likely intending to destroy him, and then proceeded to make another. a do-over for her primordial human project. her attachment was not to the beings she was making and instead to the ideal they represented for her.

the description for the riftwolf whelps is pretty telling too, as it relates them to being like a series of carelessly made and abandoned sketches, unfinished, like they weren’t even intended to stay. albedo uses art as both a means of making blueprints for creation and for preserving memories, so the riftwolf whelps description having a connection to art is deliberate. he kind of has the same bad habit too, his character trailer shows him getting ahead of himself and creating a vishap from an unfinished drawing. it’s played off as humorous but it is concerningly parallel to behavior Rhinedottir is implied to have.

it doesn’t help that every other “birth” relative we know albedo has, the venomous dragon Durin, the Prototype, and the various Riftwolves, are all destructive entities that cannot mesh well with life on Teyvat. the riftwolves inflict corrosion, contact with them is painful, and going by the visual presence of the golden riftwolf lord, they seem to be disintegrating. the prototype is attempting to integrate himself but is caught up in this unachievable image of “perfection”, likely instilled into him by Rhinedottir who tried to kill him for not meeting her standards. Durin, possibly the most tragic among these, seems to have wished to be loved, possibly was in love with Dvalin, but was toxic to the touch and could only bring destruction with his presence.

Rhinedottir made living being after living being that was, ultimately, incompatible with the world and, rather than take responsibility, abandoned them and left them to wreak havoc on the people of Teyvat. it really shouldn’t come as any surprise tho that she is like this, this is the same alchemist who, as Gold, pursued knowledge with such single-minded blindness that it resulted in the destruction of her entire home nation, Khaenri’ah, and even with that burden on her name she continued regardless. There’s a running theme in a few stories throughout the game that people pursuing a “truth” are only rewarded with destruction.

funnily, Rhinedottir’s most kind action we’ve seen yet was her abandoning albedo and sending him to her old colleague, alice, who swiftly adopted him and encouraged him to think of her and klee as his family. but choosing to send him to mondstadt of all places, where durin’s corpse lies, doesn’t seem like it was really meant to offer him respite…

there are some parallels to be drawn too between Rhinedottir and Ei making artificial life and then abandoning it, not taking proper care or responsibility for their actions and what they have done to these newly living beings. a lot of people have started to point out how scaramouche and albedo share some themes, of being made for some purpose but then left on their own. where albedo was fortunate enough to be adopted by a community that respects and cares for him, scaramouche experienced grievous loss and was taken in by more vengeful sorts. interesting too is that, where albedo still expresses a one-sided attachment to Rhinedottir, scaramouche seems to only hold contempt for Ei and gods in general.

but, with how horribly things have been handled regarding Ei/Baal and her involvement in devastating her people (the writing tells us things like children starving and hundreds dying in the war due to her decisions but then, because she’s a playable character, backpedals and insists she’s cute and friendly) i don’t think i’ll like how Rhinedottir is handled whenever we finally actually get to meet her in game. what i want is a dive into the tragedy of albedo seeking not just recognition from her but to feel like he was a wanted child, of Rhinedottir’s careless actions causing harm to thousands of people and how her hatred of Celestia has blinded her to that fact, etc. what i think i’ll actually get tho is a pretty bad “oh but i did always care” shitty parent handwave where we’re then expected to sympathize with Rhinedottir cuz she’s pretty and made big puppy eyes about it.

there is a divide i feel between the story/setting writing that wants to explore these deeper themes with morally dark grey characters and then the unfortunate reality that the company wants to sell these same characters as playables and to do that they put foam caps on all their edges. i honestly preferred Ei/Baal when she was an unrepentant asshole who wanted the Traveler dead and was so self-assured in her ideal of eternity that she was willing to let her people continue to slice eachother’s throats. the schism between the raiden shogun who informs us she created and honed a special killing art that she has used on her own citizens, which we KNOW because it’s the driving force behind kazuha’s story, and the bs saccharine cutesy ei they have us accompany in her hangout quest is… augh.

#tratser talks about stuff #genshin impact #look if im already here i may as well follow my tradition of discussing game writing and my habit of digging deep into Lore

144 notes · View notes

loveamongthesailors · 5 years ago

Text

Well, Pathologic 2, you’re One years old! It’s as good a moment as any to reflect upon and shatter the time-lines you’ve drawn out for us. OR; Reading His-Story Against the Grain

i saw this post about pathologics incongruous timeline stuff the other day and i ended up Getting Into It.. this piece draws on stuff from patho classic but its focused on patho 2, especially on a comparison ov the Diurnal and Nocturnal “endings,” and contains spoilers for both games, probably, i guess, on varying levels ov abstraction and explicitness. i/m going to attempt to stand on a street corner and point towards Pathologic’s overall construction/presentation ov “time” as the Now-time, Exploded time, Messianic Time.

from dear daniil dankovsky, on Angels; “An angel is a nightmare. Their purpose is to instill primal, oppressive horror. I think if angels existed, they’d resemble a divine pillar of light---from the heavens to the earth. Devoid of anything remotely human.” We commend this Puppet for his drama but would like to take a slightly different approach. Even awful dreams are good dreams, if you’re doing it right.

“A Klee painting named ‘Angelus Novus’ shows an angel looking as though he is about to move away from something he is fixedly contemplating. His eyes are staring, his mouth is open, his wings are spread. This is how one pictures the angel of history. His face is turned toward the past. Where we perceive a chain of events, he sees one single catastrophe which keeps piling wreckage and hurls it in front of his feet. The angel would like to stay, awaken the dead, and make whole what has been smashed. But a storm is blowing in from Paradise; it has got caught in his wings with such a violence that the angel can no longer close them. The storm irresistibly propels him into the future to which his back is turned, while the pile of debris before him grows skyward. This storm is what we call progress.“

on the content ov patho and in a real Life context, im also going to be discussing genocide ov Indigenous people, colonial Violence, police brutality, and anti-Black violence in this piece. i’ll also be contextualizing some views on History through the writing ov Walter Benjamin, a German born Jew living in the early 20th century, and friend ov Bertolt Brecht, who you may be familiar with if yr into patho. In 1940, shortly after writing On the Concept of History (referenced here),while fleeing persecution for neutral grounds, he was trapped in catalonia by a franco government cancellation ov travel vistas and,under threat ov repatriation to nazis by the spanish police, commited suicide on the night ov september 26. His theses were passed on by surviving members ov his group who were granted “safe” passage after his suicide, being later taken under the care ov Hannah Arendt and Theodor W. Adorno. His Grave reads -in German and in Catalan, reproduced here in english-

"There is no document of culture which is not at the same time a document of barbarism"

(from section 7 ov On the Concept of History)

i will also be using sections from baedan, which has been dear to me over the years, on Benjamin’s Concepts. some songs will be dispersed throughout (featuring Laurie Anderson, Owen Pallett, and some good ol tmg), with relevant links beneath. you’ve heard that old Brecht aphorism about dark times, singing, whatever? i’m nearly sick to death ov it. these stories, in addition, will be based on a few things i know Myself. follow the threads as you see fit <3

Because History is Stories...That we half-remember... And most of them never even get written down. And so when they say things like "We're gonna do this by the book," You have to ask "What book?," Because it would make a big difference if it was Dostoyevsky or just, You know... Ivanhoe.

xxx

“Read what was never written,” runs a line in Hofmannsthal. The reader one should think of here is the true historian. ~ Walter Benjamin, omitted notes to the theses on history

//// //// //// ////

Isidor Burakh: All I wanted was for you to understand, not to follow any particular fate.

...

Isidor Burakh: The Town needs to move forward, but it doesn’t insist. Facing the Future is the the way of Love. Facing the Past is the way of Love. But the two are incompatible, and it broke my heart. //// //// //// ////

so,,, depending on who you ask within Pathologics narrative, the history ov the Town-on-Gorkhon stretches back to Time Immemorial, constitutes a few hundred years ov settlement, or only goes back about as far as You have been playing the game. You’ll hear conflicting narratives around just about everything in this Town. Simon Kain, hundred something years old, mystic, spiritual founder ov a several hundred year old settlement. an executed general’s vengeful daughter, Artemy and Rubins foggy backstories ov military service, what military?, what war? Who sent in the Military and Inquisition, how can We get at the Powers that Be? looking outside ov the narrative and towards history for these sorts ov questions will give us All and None ov the answers.

The Termitary (internment/interment/intermediate/immediate/intermittent) looms over the Home ov Isidor Burakh, Menkhu and sole Medical Practitioner ov the town(excepting disciples. consider the spread ov knowledge, what different Knowledges are at hand and how they perpetuate...we can see how Isidor himself looms from his grave Quite well!), colleague ov radical intellectuals from the Capital and serving with Simon in tandem with the Mistresses to hold the Town together by force. Everything is Happening at Once.

Look at What/Who is Moving this Story Forward. Different ruling families will give you again, different Numbers, different Stories. One can’t trust the Numbers, we say! and One can hardly trust the Stories either, mind you. This engenders an approach based on following Patterns, exploring Roots, pulling back the curtain to ascertain the shape ov things, reading the lines so to speak. one Bull or Several bulls? silly question. again, we’re trying to looking beyond the Numbers. consider Time as a Multiplicity. consider Rhythmic and Linear time, Time Stratified, Unending Time, Plague Time and Empty Time, Lived Time and Time un-Lived, if one pleases!

XVII

“Historicism rightly culminates in universal history. Materialistic historiography differs from it as to method more clearly than from any other kind. Universal history has no theoretical armature. Its method is additive; it musters a mass of data to fill the homogoneous, empty time. Materialistic historiography, on the other hand, is based on a constructive principle. Thinking involves not only the flow of thoughts, but their arrest as well. Where thinking suddenly stops in a configuration pregnant with tensions, it gives that configuration a shock, by which it crystallizes into a monad. A historical materialist approaches a historical subject only where he encounters it as a monad. In this structure he recognizes the sign of a Messianic cessation of happening, or, put differently, a revolutionary chance in the fight for the oppressed past. He takes cognizance of it in order to blast a specific era out of the homogenous course of history—blasting a specific life out of the era or a specific work out of the lifework. As a result of this method the lifework is preserved in this work and at the same time canceled*; in the lifework, the era; and in the era, the entire course of history. The nourishing fruit of the historically understood contains time as a precious but tasteless seed.”

*The Hegelian term aufheben in its threefold meaning: to preserve, to elevate, to cancel.

Everything is happening at once, already, and, for the purposes ov Our story, A plague is on. (why is there a plague on? in this Specific Case, read: Specimen, there is a plague on because infection serves as a very useful allegorical device. haha. see also dominant theories ov infectivity in russian imperial medicine, policy, and social science) Crisis as Inflammation. Violence and Control intensified along multiple vectors. Mobs, Witch Burnings, The Quarantine, districts carved up and kept under surveillance, the Town Police, Arsonists, government or Otherwise, the Military, the Inquisition, Hangings in the square, tallies ov the Dead in the Termitary... Was any ov this new? did it Crystallize from thin air? here’s an aphorism: There’s Nothing New Under the Sun. what can we find beyond the Sun’s reaches? what has the Sun given us, and what has Earth? shall we keep them apart? whose bodies are restricted in their movement over the earth, and how severely are they restricted? who is targeted? who enforces the control? is this what Crisis looks like? when did the Crisis start?

“To articulate the past historically does not mean to recognize it ‘the way it really was’ (Ranke). It means to seize hold of a memory as it flashes up at a moment of danger. Historical materialism wishes to retain that image of the past which unexpectedly appears to man singled out by history at a moment of danger. The danger effects both the content of the tradition and its receivers. The same threat hangs over both: that of becoming a tool of the ruling classes. In every era the attempt must be made anew to wrest tradition away from a conformism that is about to overpower it. The Messiah comes not only as the redeemer, he comes as the subduer of Antichrist. Only that historian will have the gift of fanning the spark of hope in the past who is firmly convinced that even the dead will not be safe from the enemy if he wins. And this enemy has not ceased to be victorious.”

//// //// //// ////

But do not be scared Surely some disaster will descend and equalize us A crisis Will unify the godless and the fearless and the righteous

...

In a certain slant of light the feeling will hit me Like a man against the waves and a violent wind Waking up in a bloody morning With the warmth of his forgiveness around me The shared dream left me shaking The memory is threatening to capsize every ship upon the sea

xxx //// //// //// ////

Pathologic, having mapped out these lines, and being a concatenation ov narrative fiction that could not have existed without the precondition ov colonial expansion and the Extermination and Assimilation ov Indigenous populations and Life ways, can be can be unwound through a conventional historical approach by investigating various moments, epidemics, and movements in The Steppe (and all Land and Living Beings subsumed by Russia’s internal colonization) and looking for similarities, sources, influences, reflections, distortions... You’ll never find quite an exact parallel to the events ov pathologic, and you will find that the Trick that the devisers have given you in fact resides in laying out what can be gleaned from the Tangled view.

“…they make the work a process of learning or experimentation, but also something total every time, where the whole of chance is affirmed in each case, renewable every time,”

— Gilles Deleuze, Difference&Repetition

//// //// //// ////

“For Benjamin, the conclusion of the movement of history through time is not some inevitable utopia—capitalist, communist, or otherwise. Rather than viewing the progression of civilization as an accumulation of gains and reforms toward freedom and justice, history can be seen as the continuous defeat of the exploited by their oppressors; the intensifying alienation of beings and their re-construction into capital. History not only serves to justify today’s rulers, but also to encode our memory with a narrative that reads historical events as a necessary chain of events along the path toward some future revolution or techno-utopia. He describes this as “a view of history that puts its faith in the infinite extent of time and thus concerns itself only with the speed, or lack of it, with which people and epochs advance along the path of progress.”

//// //// //// ////

In your Twelve Days in the town as a Healer, what did you see? piles ov wreckage, debris, bodies stacked under streetlamps flickering in the night? a town spreading across a steppe? a Utopia growing through the Earth? do you think you saved any lives, and was any-body's life yours to save in the first place? a Plague moving through living organisms? a Plague moving through non-living organisms? did you observe any Organisms, living or otherwise, over the course ov the play? do you have Mirrors in your house? have you seen a still, clear, body ov water recently? what are the waterways where you live called, and have they been called anything else in the Past or Present? did you become the Haruspex, and following what paths does becoming-haruspex entail? are you winning, son?

When the hunger turns in on itself, it begins to devour its host Who do you turn to for help? Who do you love the most? When the word comes down the wire that they're looking To make an example of you Skin and bones around a campfire beneath the stars No good end in view I dance with the ones that brought me I dance with the ones that brought me here

xxx

did you observe a Fever? can you feel a Fever? can you Imagine a great crack ov lightning striking across the Steppe, illuminating in raw detail the beauty and horror ov all that you have experienced? how would it smell afterwards? can you smell the Twyre on the air? is Twyre even a real thing? what may influence your imaginary ov its scent? Feel small, dirty hands reaching out for beetles, marbles, raisins, souls within nuts and names without people. Living on pemmican, Living on military rations. razors, fish-hooks, scalpels and syringes passing through the hands ov children as well. noticing the flows present in everything, spots where they are arrested, and the intensities they assume. we could run through the Game and Count up the Number ov Clocks present, and we could also look at how many hours we have Clocked in our Playtime, and the date ov this Play’s Production. did the Kains succeed in their mission to Produce Time? was this the Kain’s mission Alone? how is your mental Clock? We got the Body Count at the end of the day, and commentary too. cant beat that courtesy, *hem hem* but again, looking beyond the Numbers. how many Bulls did you see? when is a question also a trap?

XVIII

“‘In relation to the history of organic life on earth,’ writes a modern biologist, ‘the paltry fifty millennia of homo sapiens constitute something like two seconds at the close of a twenty-four-hour day. On this scale, the history of civilized mankind would fill one-fifth of the last second of the last hour.’ The present, which, as a model of Messianic time, comprises the entire history of mankind in an enormous abridgment, coincides exactly with the stature which the history of mankind has in the universe.”

what are the Consequences ov inserting Living Beings into a Linear Framework? where did Architecture come from? how was this Story constructed? What do you remember about the Town?

We can take the Diurnal “ending” as a fairly straightforward allegorical Byway for the Forces ov Progress. Boundaries are set, You are not the Town, the Town is your Soul-and-a-half.( wikihow to not be a cartesian dualist, consider also Spinoza if laying bare the path ov immanence was ov interest to you) What lays beneath the Sunlight? what still lays beneath the Earth? What time is it? things are weirdly cozy, in some ways. mimesis, echoes, ghosts. Are their voices still heard? grace tallies up the bodies. are You ready to Leave Artemy here? is this a comfortable future for you to imagine? how are you with uncertainty? Does the costume itch? do you ache at the seams, or are your joints sore from all the strings pulling at them? got arthritis? i’ve used stinging nettle. can a Story devour a human being? why would something with that power stop at One?

What Do You Think Will Happen Now?

One can also make the Choice to step into the Darkness. One with many names has returned to the Earth,(”One” ov many False Deaths and Smart Tricks too. love ya girl <3)... taya as mistress-ov-bulls, grace as mistress-ov-dead, changeling as mistress-ov-absolutley-whatever. Mistresses, Mist, Tresses, Bulls, Brides, Worms, Plague...the Theme/s to note here is/are Multiplicity. Is there a difference between imagining the future and the past? Where are you? Where did You come from? the Nocturnal ending already asks enough questions to make me quite happy. sitting next to the Girls now, looking out at the New Sky. same as the old sky, Full ov Magic. if we take Death ov the Author into account, we could say that the Polyhedron belongs to the Dead in more ways than one. We can see your house from here! i wouldn’t say we’ve even gotten to the Prophet yet. When did our Hero leave us? did We have any use for Heroism? the Steppe is in the Stone Yard now. The World is returning to Life. what does it mean for me?

how many angels can dance on the head ov a pin?

how many worm brides can dance in the cathedral?

....“The way in which the dead are present is as the “caress” of a “breath of… air,” as an “echo,” or as a sister who one no longer recognizes. In other words, the past is present and everywhere, touching us every moment and “in the voices we hear,” but only suggestively, in and in spite of our own inability to recognize it. But the possibility for redemption, the weak messianic power, lies in the chance that we might.

In the intimate, ever-present opportunity he describes there is a tremendous deal at stake. For, he writes in the fourth thesis, the “refined and spiritual things” that live in the class struggle “as confidence, courage, humor, cunning, and fortitude, and have effects that reach far back into the past… constantly call into question every victory, past and present, of the rulers.”

Later, turning to the historians he criticizes as tools of the ruling classes, Benjamin makes it clear in his seventh thesis that their resurrection of the past is an entirely different kind. The nature of the sadness—rooted in an indolence of heart—that Flaubert described feeling in his historical study of Carthage is clearer, Benjamin says, when we remember that the historian’s empathy is always with the victor, and thus with the present rulers. It is the kind of sadness, then, that gathers to the loyal servant or minion in knowing that it is being used for its ruler’s purposes”

“Figured another way, the task of interruption requires us to locate the clocktower that we could fire upon to stop the day. Homogenous time no longer flows through the monolithic machines in the city centers. Now, a range of technological advancements have diffused and integrated the machinery of time into our very thoughts and rhythms. Everywhere we go, we are surrounded by and permeated with devices which serve to manage the regime of time. Where once a singular apparatus mediated our relationship to time, its dictatorship is now imposed by an innumerable array. A desire for interruption must now reckon with the countless apparatuses that segment our memory and integrate our very being into capitalist time. But rather than waste time lashing out against all these clocks one after another, let us cut through to what underlies them.

History’s servants promise us a shining future. Whether by means of technological innovation, hard work and sacrifice, or the Revolution, we are assured of a heaven-on-earth of light and crystal. But all of these glimmering apparatuses can only serve to adorn the monumental pile of wreckage in which we live. All around us, the carnage and corpses of our ancestors form the architecture of our daily existence. Not only the walls and freeways and shopping centers, but the smart phones, pornography, surveillance and entertainment systems—all monuments to the same enemy that has never ceased to be victorious. Capital, Leviathan, civilization, society: so many names for the process which turns life into an assemblage of death, which would integrate us as machines into a grander machinery. Futurity is the logic that drives this regime of subjection and assimilation, but is also the science which desecrates our memory of those who also struggled; the treachery which turns their struggles into so many more ideological cadavers. Where living beings once struggled to be free from futurity’s domination of their lives, we are told that they dutifully sacrificed themselves for society’s future. We too are called upon to procreate and raise up children who might one day live better lives than we. But just as we were born into the halls of the dead, so too would our children be the stillborn janitors of these halls, breathing circuits embedded in a massive cybernetic cadaver. Ghosts call out to us: they ask that we tear apart the sutures of this Frankenstein’s monster which they’ve come to constitute. They call on us to cremate their remains and bury the ashes, to end the reign of the dead over the living.”

//// //// //// ////

"I am not afraid," ze said "Of the non-believer within me Nor delight at the pain of my enemies Nor tears for any friends I have lost" ...

I’ll never have any children I’d bear them and eat them, my children

I’m gonna change my body In the light and the shadow of suspicion I am no longer afraid The truth doesn’t terrify us, terrify us My salvation is found in discipline, in discipline

xxxx

//// //// //// ////

“It is apparent from the foregoing that all accumulation is cruel; all renunciation of the present for the sake of the future is cruel.”

— Georges Bataille, The Accursed Share, Volume III

//// //// //// ////

“The Haruspex is blood and organs... ...The Haruspex’s overarching idea is the interconnectedness of everything and restoring the connections... ...The Haruspex hears (rhythms)... ...The Haruspex: water + forward vector. „ — [from the game’s design documents]

“ The Haruspex, a butcher, a killer, one could even say a murderous psychopath, gets the warmest character arc. It’s about love. „ — [from the game’s design documents]

//// //// //// ////

Infinity Mirrored Room—All the Eternal Love I Have for the Pumpkins -

Yayoi Kusama, 2016

//// //// //// ////

A long “personal” anecdote: there’s music on the air and i hear a familiar buzzing. it isn’t twyre growing, nor it is the hum ov flies. we Keep bees here, to get honey. I should try to remember to bring some to my wife tomorrow, though making the journey on its own is a bit daunting these days. 1 hive, 2 hives, the bees build and swarm and our Keeper rearranges the frames, adds in new boxes, tries to give them enough space that they'll stay within our domain. I think about the complex roles being fulfilled within the hive, and how any egg can grow into a so called “Queen” if need be. These Hives haven’t always held the same populations, sometimes a swarm will depart and won’t be Recovered. Look around the neighborhood, find the buzzing tree, you may be able to get them back yet but... have you tried getting a swarm ov bees into a box before? good luck finding the queen! (hoping i don’t have to do this but a bit excited by the prospect at the same time.)

Our honey bees didn't originate from this region, i see them in the “yard” alongside native bees (one tries to plant for Everybody) but obviously, Our Hives are here so i’ll always see more ov the honeybees as long as they’re occupying them. Native bees to our Bioregion are leading very different lifestyles. Different threats, dynamics, and places in the ecosystem as well. Bumblebees are the most Beloved. Native Bees here- vital pollinators, ground and stem burrowers, more solitary souls than most, but are any ov us really alone? what are their favorite flowers?

I think about Bees a lot now. I’m standing here thinking about Bees, and where I’m standing is in between the entrance ov the Hive and their favorite Ceanothus (see also soap brush, red root, buckbrush, see medicinal uses...). Very precious grounds to these Bees, not somewhere where I’m welcome. I Haven’t always known as much about bees. I get stung right inbetween my pinky and index fingers, on the palm ov my hand. yeowch! Bad luck, but i could still use a shovel the next day. This was an anecdote about Paying Attention to Your Surroundings.

The Ceanothus isn’t flowering anymore, and hasn't been for a few “weeks” (i think?) The Bees have other concerns now. In fact, it was heavily damaged in a snow storm a couple years back, and half ov its branches collapsed under the weight ov the ice. Its a bit ov a twisted thing now, what remains still flowers but what remains is not so much. At some point in the future upon yr reading ov this, it will have been cut down and possibly dug out ov the earth. I wouldn't be surprised if a few more, smaller, iterations made their way to this space in remembrance/ tribute. The branches lost in it’s first wounding are still stacked up nearby, all sorts ov creatures love that stuff. Dead trees in the back that Birds still frequent stay for the birds. We never get that many plums because we’re not smart or quick enough, or as willing to take one great bite ov a fruit and let the rest fall to the soil. I didn’t really get stung by a Bee in a situation exactly like what i described up there, it’s drawing on a few different times that sort ov thing happened. I hope you’ll forgive me for my obscurantist tendencies.

Looking past the Hives and onto the Streets, I am a White Settler(family fled the reach ov the Soviet Union to integrate into America, family fled family to a different part ov land under the Reaches ov said “America”,cave fled family but stuck with the Land, recurring patterns, what would my views be if i had grown up in Czechoslovakia? geography, chronology, trick questions) living in a segment ov Town that, until 1968, was a legally a Sundown Town, see Racial Restrictive Covenants. I still don’t see than many Black ppl around my neighborhood. I do see grocery store parking lots swarming with cop cars, more cops than i can Count, at least two k9 units, all to pursue One Black Body through the rainy night, My own Body lets me move through the world without these Forces being brought upon me in this intensity, lets me Watch.

Certain alignments ov directions ov Struggle have brought me into the position ov the Other at the end ov the cudgel, a body in a crowd under the looming eye and long barrel ov the sniper, the surveillance camera. Visibility is a Trap. Any ability i have to Get Off The Hook is based not on Luck or Fate, but due to the way the color ov my skin is reflected in the eyes ov Those in Power. what can i do from inside This Skin, and what can i do with the veil ov a mask obliterating my “selfhood”? How are we to heal? If you didnt read this into my Musical choices already- im a bit ov a flaming/smoldering queer. sitting in the planned parenthood lobby, one among many, gripped by recollections ov the devastating history ov HIV/AIDS and a cluster ov other Crises, memories ov beloved souls lost to policies and hegemony ov extermination and neglect. blood in vials, piss in jars. how does the time spent waiting for results feel?(how long? weeks months?)

I have more free condoms on hand than i’ll ever get through. A veritable theoretical eternity ov Safer Sex. There are Reasons why Queer Institutions give access to free condoms. But i’ve gotten them from some delightful Quakers as well. on another squeamish, libidinal subject, administering self injections isnt so daunting when you’ve seen it done a Million times before. It’s like watching somebody sneeze, or pinching yourself. HRT as potions, mechanical intrusion to will a slow transformation. getting into the fat is easy, some other avenues less so. “This requires the Gentle Hand of a Surgeon, step aside!” i know a lot about what Doctors Don’t Know. (veins and arteries as streets- easy. nerves as streets - you hear this a bit less. streets as eyes, the opening ov your mouth with a railroad track running down it, eyes as streets, whose streets? fuck streets! tear up the concrete)

The aforementioned streets are closed to Traffic due to the Quarantine, and i hear folks and families from the neighborhood walking/hoverboarding/skateboarding/biking down the street,(mostly the new work from home yuppie class and their spawn respectively, but there's some real ones around here too. all ages. have yet to live anywhere that people don't ask me for cigarettes) chattering away, masks or no masks. If i take a long walk down past the cemetery, I’ll find myself passing by a Native American Youth Home, created to provide support for a population that is currently disproportionately represented in this Town’s already Massive Homeless population. (their covid19 resources and donation info) Even with the Plague on, New Condos are built and Old Condos stay empty. Who do the bones in the soil beneath my feet belong to? When did all ov this Start, and how Long will it go on? why does the Map look the way it does? I would rather listen carefully than dig. This Story is not the only Story, nor should any be.

do i remember how the damp asphalt smells Here after Lightning Strikes? do i remember the feeling ov my body thrown to the concrete and the chaos and disorientation ov Crowds mobbing over me, slick with rain and sweat? who saw, and how many hands reached out to lift me up, who saved who? is that my blood trickling down the sidewalk? Flashbangs and Flashes ov Lightning, take yr pick. you can get similar experiential learning in the moshpit. this is an anecdote about Paying Attention to Your Surroundings.

i’ll try to bring us nearer to the point with baedan’s conclusion, a reflection on the First thesis from On the Concept of History. I will leave it up to You to investigate the original text if you are so Inclined.

//// //// //// ////

“For every pretty theory that presents itself, study it only in the way that a cat studies its prey: for the enjoyment of the hunt, to be sure, but also so as to seize upon whatever unique revolutionary chance may appear as in a flash of lightning. So that when that narrow gate opens, you pounce without a moment’s hesitation. In the meantime, by all means, enjoy the diversion of the theory’s lines and moves, but if you are to avoid becoming its tool you must ever have in mind to shatter the system of mirrors and confront the dwarf that has been pulling the strings all along. Faced with this ugly little creature behind all the lines of play you’ve enjoyed and suffered, able at last to read the lines of its face and the dark of its eyes, as time stands still and the entirety of the past falls to you, you will have to make a deeply ethical decision that nothing in all the games before could prepare you for. The only decision that truly matters.”

//// //// //// ////

Artemy Burakh: Any Choice is Right as long as it’s Willed.

//// //// /// ////

Hansel and Gretel are alive and well And they're living in Berlin She is a cocktail waitress He had a part in a Fassbinder film And they sit around at night now Drinking schnapps and gin And she says: Hansel, you're really bringing me down And he says: Gretel, you can really be a bitch He says: I've wasted my life on our stupid legend When my one and only love Was the wicked witch

She said: what is history? And he said: history is an angel being blown backwards into the future He said: history is a pile of debris And the angel wants to go back and fix things To repair the things that have been broken But there is a storm blowing from paradise And the storm keeps blowing the angel backwards into the future And this storm, this storm is called progress

xxx

TLDR; pathologics shitty timeline is cool because it fosters a metagame where the imperative is to make history explode in real life.

specific thanx to: every1 included above, my local subversive lit dealers, Whoever gave the talk last ABF about Queer Wanderings in the anti-nazi Underworld, have not stopped carrying those stories with me since. thanks to the Dear Listener, thanks 2 my wife for pragmatic and personal encouragements <3

a personal acknowledgement to the lives and legacies ov the dxʷdəwʔabš (Duwamish) people, past and present, First People ov the Land i currently Occupy, alongside the entire City ov so-called “Seattle.”

#pathologic #pathologic 2 #pathologic 2 spoilers #long post /#patho tag

38 notes · View notes

blindkarakul · 6 years ago

Text

LFRP/Contact - M’yhe Tia

(Art by Beansnake)

Hey there! I’m Griffin, and this is my bastard trash goblin. With the datacenter merges getting close, I wanted to reach out again! I’m not necessarily in a drought of RP or RP partners, but I’m always open to more where I can fit them! I really love meeting new people, and I’ll be excited to have a few friends to chill with come the day of the datacenter merges!

M’yhe likes to be slippery. Subjects with a 🔒 next to them are tidbits of information only attainable through RP!

BASICS ––––

AGE: 25 Summers

RACE: Miqo’te; Seeker of the Sun? (🔒)

GENDER: Male

SEXUALITY: 🌈

MARITAL STATUS: In a Relationship; Polyamorous

SERVER: Coeurl - Crystal / Siren - Aether

PHYSICAL APPEARANCE ––––

HAIR: A sandstone blonde, fluffed and tufted wildly. Longer hair tied into braids dyed scarlet, tips of tail and ears spotted with a sable hue.

EYES: Clouded blue eyes; clearly blind

HEIGHT: Five Fulms and Three Ilms

BUILD: Slightly underweight, though well-toned. Lithe frame, built for hunting.

DISTINGUISHING MARKS: Fangs. Various white tattoos, and chalky face paints of the same hue. Seer’s tattoos.

COMMON ACCESSORIES: Mask // Walking Stick // Trophy Necklace

PERSONAL –––-

PROFESSION: Seer and Diviner, Transient, Prostitute (Occasional), Mark Hunter (Occasional)

HOBBIES: Divination // Brawling // Bad Jokes // Drinking // Dancing // Travel // Hunting

LANGUAGES: Common Eorzean, Hunterspeak, Hingan (Broken)

RESIDENCE: None

FEARS: 🔒 Some

RELATIONSHIPS –––-

LOVER: Ninka'ir Tayuun

CHILDREN: None

PARENTS: 🔒 A Hot Mess

SIBLINGS: None… That he knows of

OTHER RELATIVES: 🔒 Catastrophic

BEST FRIEND(S): Marcella Thorsen, Ninka'ir Tayuun, Selahkiir Tyl'vyr, Tetsuro Wulf, Kina Wilhelm, Sarya, Vishumo Gerdhardt, Mi’ke Tia

PETS: N/A

TRAITS –––-

Extroverted ○○✸○○○○○○○ Introverted

Disorganized ○○○○✸○○○○○ Organized

Close minded ○○○○○○✸○○○ Open-minded

Calm ○○○○○✸○○○○ Anxious

Disagreeable ○○○○✸○○○○○ Agreeable

Cautious ○○○○○○○✸○○ Reckless

Patient ○○○○○○✸○○○ Impatient

Outspoken ○✸○○○○○○○○ Reserved

Leader ○✸○○○○○○○○ Follower

Empathetic ○○○✸○○○○○○ Unemphatic

Optimistic ○○○○○○✸○○○ Pessimistic

Traditional ○○○○✸○○○○○ Modern

Hard-Working ○○✸○○○○○○○ Lazy

Cultured ○○○○✸○○○○○ Uncultured

Loyal ○✸○○○○○○○○ Disloyal

Faithful ○○✸○○○○○○○ Unfaithful

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION –––-

SMOKING HABIT: Occasionally

DRUGS: Occasionally

ALCOHOL: Frequently

POSSIBLE HOOKS –––-

LIBERTY OR DEATH // M’yhe is very Gyr Abanian– he served the Resistance for a short stint, and may be easy to remember from his time there. That, or he may be memorable from his tribe’s nomadic days.

WELL-TRAVELED // This miqo’te has seen his fair share of the world. While he can be tight-lipped about a good majority of his past (🔒), he may be recognizable from places like Kugane, La Noscea, Gridania, and Thanalan; especially the latter two. May especially be recognizable for the trouble he causes, too…

DANCE WITH THE STARS OF YOUR FATE // M’yhe makes claim that he’s a particularly skilled diviner, often willing to read Sharlayan Tarot, or perform other methods of divination to scry for answers to any question. While he wanders the sands of Thanalan frequently, oftentimes he may set up shop within Gridania or Ul’dah, scraping by with fortunes for coin.

🔒 ECHO: OMENS // M’yhe unknowingly possesses the echo, though particularly weak and underdeveloped. His echo manifests in omens that can affect any of his five senses; symbolic hints of what may be to come, or what may have already happened. He still struggles to comprehend languages he hasn’t studied, and his ability to be tempered by a primal is likely still in question. If you’d like to set something up regarding this, let me know! [I’d like to stress that I do not use this to God-Mod or Metagame. Everything is discussed.]

CONTACT INFORMATION –––-

Heya!! My name is Griffin, I use He/Him, and this is jackass.

I usually like to schedule my RPs to make sure I’m not overlapping responsibilities, and so I can prepare for them, so feel free to message me and I’ll work something out! I have a lot of free-time, and I stay up late, so I’m pretty damn open.

I typically RP on Discord or In-Game! Until the datacenter merges, we can RP in instances, or through Discord/Tumblr IM! I am also totally open to threads on here, or other websites, but I can’t make any guarantees to how on-my-game I’ll be with em.

Discord: Ala Mhigan Thunderfuck#6149 , just tell me who you are when you add me!

Tumblr: @blindkarakul is my RP blog for Yhe, but @spririte is my personal and it’s full of shit. DM me, send an Ask, write a post and tag me! Whatever you want.

In-Game: M’yhe Tia! Gimme a friend request, and we can figure out what we wanna do!

DO’s and DON’Ts

I’m fine with all types of RP, and mun is 18+ so it’s really where we both draw boundaries!

I know up there it says that M’yhe occasionally takes up prostitution stints, but I’m not looking for him to be a sole ERP character. I’m always willing to set up a pre-established relationship and that’s definitely able to be apart of it, but honestly I’m looking for a bit more out of an RP partner than just dicking down. If RP events lead there, then great! That’s all good by me! But please don’t just come knocking on my door cause you wanna bang. There’s plenty of other catboys willing to do that.

Same goes for romance too. I'm not looking for other romance partners for M'yhe at this time, so don't expect that either. If we RP and its something you'd really like to see, we can talk about it, but I don't want to stack my plate too high with responsibility I can't handle.

Honestly I’m fine with taking IC consequences for things like fights and dumb shit. I also operate by IC =/= OOC so if that’s something you can’t separate then there are probably going to be problems! M’yhe can be a shithead sometimes, but I TRY TO NOT BE.

Things I am not okay with are: Non-Con, Character Death, and probably a lot of other things that I’m currently forgetting. This is deffo subject to change, so honestly just feel free to ask about anything you’re not sure about, and we can communicate like living human persons do my dude.

(Post Formatting Ideas from x and x)

#lfrp #crystal data center #crystal rp #aether rp #coeurl rp #siren rp #coeurl #siren #balmung #balmung rp #balmung lfrp #mateus rp #mateus #mateus lfrp #ffxiv #ffxiv rp #ffxiv roleplay #yes excuse me while i load this with all these tags #long post

97 notes · View notes

alanajacksontx · 7 years ago

Text

How to use Google Trends for SEO

Google Trends, first launched in 2006, provides marketers with invaluable insights into how people search on the world’s most popular search engine.

In its earlier guises, Trends (or Insights for Search, as it was previously known) was a rather static resource, updated only on an infrequent basis with fresh data.

Over time, the power of this service has been tapped in new and enlightening ways.

For example, a study undertaken using Trends data by Seth Stephens-Davidowitz and written up in the New York Times in 2014 found, “Parents are two and a half times more likely to ask “Is my son gifted?” than “Is my daughter gifted?””

Such newsworthy incidents revealed the richness of Google Trends as a data source to the wider public. People’s underlying attitudes, desires, and beliefs start to come to the fore when they communicate with a search engine.

As the megalomaniac founder of a fictional search engine puts it, while discussing the data at his disposal, in the 2015 science-fiction movie Ex Machina:

You see, my competitors, they were fixated on sucking it up and monetizing via shopping and social media. They thought that search engines were a map of what people were thinking. But actually they were a map of how people were thinking.

Both of these examples – one real, one imagined – highlight exactly why Google Trends is so valuable for search marketers.

It is the closest we have to a synthesis of market research and SEO data. With its ability to segment trends by geography, product category, content topic, and date, it allows us to go much broader in our analysis than traditional SEO tools ever could.

With Trends’ recent expansion into News, Shopping, Images, and YouTube, it seems the perfect time to revisit and refresh the many ways in which this powerful tool can help your SEO efforts.

First, some housekeeping

If you are relatively new to Google Trends, there are a couple of things to bear in mind when you look at the data visualizations.

First of all, Google Trends data is adjusted to make visual comparisons between different data sets easier for users. Google offers the following to explain for its methodology:

“Search results are proportionate to the time and location of a query:

Each data point is divided by the total searches of the geography and time range it represents, to compare relative popularity. Otherwise places with the most search volume would always be ranked highest.

The resulting numbers are then scaled on a range of 0 to 100 based on a topic’s proportion to all searches on all topics.

Different regions that show the same number of searches for a term will not always have the same total search volumes.”

In practice, this means that we end up with graphs like the below, showing trended data on a scale from 0 to 100:

Furthermore, a note is applied to all graphs that look back to before 2016, as Google made a significant update to the collection of data at this point. This can cause some unexpected jumps in graphs at the beginning of 2016, but the overall trends still provide a good guide to the historical demand for a topic.

Now, onto the tips.

How you can use Google Trends for SEO

Keyword research

Keyword research seems the most obvious SEO-based use for Trends, but it is often overlooked in favor of Keyword Planner and the other industry-standard tools.

In fact, it serves as the perfect complement to these platforms, bringing to light patterns that they cannot reveal.

Trends will suggest new keywords based on different criteria to those employed in Keyword Planner. For example, it highlights related search queries (using the example of “dogs” again) that have very recently risen in popularity, as we can see in the screenshot below:

Clearly, these will require a sense check before you add them straight to your keyword list. As stated before, we really can learn something about the human condition from Google Trends.

There will also be some outliers (in this case, the Watch Dogs video game), as Google groups together a lot of related sub-topics under the aegis of the main categories.

Nonetheless, these examples do show how frequently this tool can provide unexpected ideas.

It is also reflective of how the readily available nature of fresh data on Trends can add vital, new elements to a keyword list.

This is significant as we move beyond simple keyword matching and into an age of semantic relevance. Building out a keyword list that contains the spectrum of audience demand for your products is no longer a luxury; it is a pre-requisite for performing well.

Moreover, if SEOs can target trending queries before they peak, competition will be lower and potential rewards will be greater.

For those that would like to examine the data outside of the platform, there are numerous R and Python packages that can make calls via the Google Trends API.

This allows users to download queries in order to manipulate and visualize the data. One such package for R, (gtrendsR), is explained in more detail in this handy blog post.

Combined with a versatile plotting package like ggplot2, this approach opens up a new level of functionality to Google Trends data for SEO research.

Compare search trends across Google search engines

The addition of filters for News, Shopping, Images, and YouTube to Google Trends has opened up a wide range of new SEO research opportunities.

These can be accessed from a drop-down menu at the top of the results page.

Image search data in available from 2008 to the present day and it should prove a very valuable source of inspiration for SEOs.

Not only is image search responsible for a huge amount of queries already, but it is also an area of focus for Google as it aims to fend off threats from the likes of Facebook, Amazon, and Pinterest.

Once more, we can segment the data by sub-region or city and there are suggestions for related image search queries too:

It is also possible to compare these search trends across two different queries, due to the manner in which Google processes and displays the data. In the example below, I have set the filter to show the trends for “cats” in the US and for “dogs” in the UK:

We can therefore say that image searches for dogs in the UK are more popular than image searches for cats in the US, in relative terms, even though this would likely not be the case in absolute terms.

On YouTube, the eternal cats versus dogs battle lives up to its fiery reputation, with a much narrower gap between the two search topics:

Trending queries are highlighted here too, which should give us even more reason to keep visiting Google Trends for our research:

Assess and predict seasonal peaks

Perhaps the most common use of Google Trends for SEO is the analysis of peaks and troughs in consumer demand.

To cite a simple, but illustrative, example of how this works, we can look at the search query [olympics]:

We see significant worldwide peaks every four years for the summer Olympics, with the winter equivalent attracting another (if smaller) increase two years later each time.

In this example, history tells us that we are about to see another peak in demand for [olympics] very soon, but that insight alone does not translate into much.

Firstly, we don’t know the size of the opportunity in absolute terms, as Trends provides only relative values.

However, if we cross-reference what we see in Trends with the data we have from Keyword Planner, we can start to understand what a value of 100 on this chart means in real terms.

Admittedly, Keyword Planner data is indicative at best, but we may also have data from AdWords campaigns. This can at least guide us towards a predicted search volume for the upcoming Olympics.

Of course, it seems very intuitive that a major event will lead to more searches for the event’s name. Nonetheless, if we take this same approach and apply it to less predictable industries, such as fashion for example, Trends can help you to identify keywords before the competition does so.

This is supplemented by Trends’ use of real-time data to suggest new topics.