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heliosthegriffin · 1 year

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Shadow Knight, and Girls of Light Chp II

Beacon Upper Vale High School was in chaos, to say the least.

Ruby Rose, the unofficial mascot of the school, had dragged Jaune Arc, the semi-official public image of terror (As he was voted in a online poll by the students and teachers, not that Jaune knew), to her friends table during free period.

It should not go unstated about how clashing this image was.

Ruby Rose, adorable, short, shy, but bursting with life and cheerfulness. There was not a room that did not rise in happiness simply from being there.

She may be shy, but that did not stop her from raising to the top of the schools track and field team, and could be unstoppable excited and talkative once her interests were brought up.

She had was also very, very cute, and glowed with health, with a certain contradictory cuteness, of being both sporty, shy, and gothic in the way she dressed, making it no wonder she was one of the most desirable girls in the school.

Ruby also had a very beautiful sister, Yang, and very beautiful friends. Her mother was also very well liked as a teacher, and her father was a very well-respected member of the community, and taught self-defense.

She did well in class, took good notes, was helpful to everyone and anyone. There was nobody in the school who could think of a meaningful insult against the small girl. Both faculty and students loved her being here.

Jaune Arc, intimidating, looming, suffocating, and looking at him for too long was like putting a razor blade to one eyes. Simply being in the same room as him put one at risk of losing minutes off they're life-span due to the sheer stress of his presence.

He was quiet, and dressed like a bum in dirty, greasy, and torn clothes. He made no effort to talk to anyone, was in a perpetual state of sleeping in the corner of the room, and ignored anyone that wasn't Lie Ren or, Nora Valkyrie (Even then, from a outsider's perspective he didn't even seem to acknowledge them half the time).

He remained just a hair above flunking out of school, or being expelled, with a sudden history of violence that appeared just into his sophomore year, attacking his long time bully with a brutality that was expected from death-row prisoner, not a regular schoolboy. When Cardin returned the favor, it resulted in one of the biggest incidents in the schools history.

Any friends Jaune had before then went up in smoke, beside Lie Ren and Nora Valkyrie, and theory's ran wild as to what had changed the formerly nice and sweet, if clumsy boy who asked Weiss Schnee out with a guitar in junior high.

His new appearance hadn't helped either, as stated his clothes are mess, but so is the rest of him. His skin looked so pale that it was almost chalky white, his eyes had perpetually dark purple-black bags, eyes bloodshot, hair uncut, messy, and tangled, he looked like a dead man walking half the time, and there was tangible fear in the air around that he might drop dead any moment. He had also bulked up considerably looking like he could drop a grown bull with a punch, and grown closer to six and half feet then just six foot.

Theory's ran wild when he wasn't around, with all kind of ideas to what made him this way. From getting hooked on drugs and steroids, to having developed a fatal disease and this was his way of rebelling against society in his final days, to being a secret agents, or even him fighting a one-man shadow war against some ancient evil.

The last one was a lot peoples favorites, including Nora, though considering Nora was rumor-mill it's entirely possible she was the one who made up to get him some good publicity.

Thus, when the 5'4 girl was enthusiastically pulling the hand of the pale 6'4 giant, who seemed half-asleep and moving like a glacier, to the table of the most desirable girls in the school, it created shock-waves through the rumor mill.

-----

Jaune felt the tension in the air as hundreds of pairs of eyes stalked him. He kept his head up though, his shoulders wide, and steps confident, like he belonged here. Even if he didn't, but he wasn't about to show any weakness.

Still, he really didn't want to be here. Truthfully, he thought about just brushing Ruby off and just going to take a nap somewhere. But, somewhere inside him, there was a vulnerable part of him that thought it might be fun to hang out with her.

He scowled at the unbidden thought, that was naive and childish to think. He didn't have the luxury to play teenager with her. He looked down at her little hand that was nearly hidden under his, he could break it so easily, like breathing.

A cold-shock went through him, what was he thinking? Where had that come from? Unforunately, these thoughts were becoming more frequent over the past year. It seemed his lifestyle of nightly death-battles was not good for his mental health, who could have guessed.

All the more reason to ditch her, the last thing he needed was to accidentally hurt a good person like Ruby. He who fights monsters and all that.

"And here, we are!" What? How'd they get here so fast, and where had they been going? "Ladies, introducing my new bff, Jaune Arc!" Jaune suddenly realized he was standing in front of the most valued girls in the school.

Crap. This was the last thing he wanted.

Ruby who was holding his hand, which he tried to slide away from, but she had a surprising strong grip.

A white-haired girl looked at him coldly.

"Weiss Schnee, charmed."

Just looking at her brought back embarrassing memories. Not that he thought for a second that she would remember him, Weiss was the heiress of the Schnee fortune, and a budding musical diva.

She also topped the charts of the schools grades, and might actually be a genius.

"Same." Jaune muttered tiredly, which bought him a sharp stared from her.

What did she expect him to make a effort, with that attitude? Ha. No. Any feelings he had toward romance died when he saw the true danger of the dark. How could hold a love together, when Jaune barely kept his body together. He almost scowled as he felt his stitch burn.

"Yo, it's the big bad boy of Beacon!" The blonde of the table smiled at him like a old-friend, which was weird since Jaune couldn't even remember being in the same room as her for more than five seconds. "Yang Xiao-Long, this brats cool older sis!"

That she is. The blonde bombshell of the school with the only thing matching her heat is her temper, the amount of guys that had been nut-checked by her was nearly triple digits. Which wasn't helped by her being the champion of the girls boxing team.

"Yang!" He heard Ruby say, but Jaune paid her little mind, as the blonds eyes made contact with him, and Jaune saw through her act, there was no warmth in them. She did not like him, and taking a guess, she didn't want him around her sister. That was fine, he wasn't sticking around.

He also realized he was in striking range of her, and angled his pelvis away from any 'accidental' nut checks.

She noticed him noticing, and her eyes expressed disappointment.

"Cool. I got sisters too." Jaune said offhandedly. "Parents too." She waited for a second to seem if he had anything else to say.

"Yeah, uh, most people do." She added lamely.

"Not everyone, though." He added, thinking of Nora who lived with foster parents.

"Yeah, that's true. Anyway, welcome over, come sit down." She said patting next to her. It was the end of the table, with space for only one.

Jaune nodded, sitting down next to her, as Ruby sat on her other side.

Across him was a dark-haired girl, with a bow on her head, eyebrow deep into a book. She didn't seem to realize that he was here, that was fine with Jaune, though.

He felt Yang move under the table, and he almost dodge on reflex, till he realized that he was not her target. The dark-haired girl yelped and jump up.

"What was that for, Yang?" She had kicked her, Jaune realized her, why would she do that?

"What ever could you mean?" Yang asked innocently.

The book-girl narrowed on him. "Who is this,-" She paused. "Wait, no, why is here?"

"He's my new best friend forever, and yours too!" Ruby told her bluntly. Yang chuckling, while Weiss sighed, and a yet to be introduced Red-head inspected him.

Book girl looked at him with amber eyes, they did not look friendly.

"Blake Belladonna."

"Jaune Arc."

"I know that."

"I was introducing myself."

"I know that, too."

"Then, I guess, you know that you're being an ass, too?" Jaune said bluntly.

The table sat in shock.

Blake scowled at him, and then dove back into her book. Looks like she didn't know that.

Yang fell over laughing over herself.

"Jaune! Blake!" Ruby yelled at both of them, unsure of who to scold, looking between like a angry puppy.

Weiss briefly giggled, then hastily killed any evidence that it had ever happened.

With the red-head smiling good-naturally, Jaune didn't trust a smile that fake looking.

Blake scowled at him, and for second, he thought he heard hissing, shadows darkening around her. Then she huffed, diving back into her book.

Blake Belladona was an enigma, she showed up last year out of nowhere, and nobody knew where she came from, or who she was related too, but she was important somehow. She was pretty, and her mysterious air brought her plenty of attention, from those looking to find out what she was about.

Jaune ignored her for now, focusing on the last girl.

"Do I need to introduce myself, again?" He asked, not with annoyance, but curiously.

The red-head giggled. "No, you don't have too. Pyrrha Nikos." She said simply, with the same fake smile, but her eyes looked anxious and expectant.

"Cool. Anyway," He turned to Ruby. "Mind if I leave, I got stuff to do."

Jaune didn't see it, but he practically felt Pyrrha's eyes burrow into his head.

"Uh, Jaune. Do you not know who Pyrrha is?" Ruby said nudging her head unsubtly towards her.

Jaune shrugged. A bit, some hot-shot from Argus, but that was it. When she transferred over last year, he had been busy with important things like hunting Shadow Monster. So, he hadn't exactly been busy with the rumor mill.

"Should I?" She wasn't some goddess in the flesh was she? That would be awkward.

He turned to Pyrrha, and noticed her smile was gone, but her eyes seemed brighter. "I'm not buying any religion your selling, I'm content knowing the Brothers have my soul."

The table was once again silent, and Jaune got up. "Bye." Leaving to find a place to go take a nap.

-----

"I can't believe that ruffian would just leave us like that! Does he know how many boys would die just to have one of us look at us?"

"Hey! He's not bad! He's just a bit shy is all!"

"Eh. I could take him or leave him, he gives off bad vibes, I think."

"He should stay far away, if he knows what good for him."

The girls were talking, but Pyrrha was lost in thought. Jaune was an anomaly to her now. She had known he was different before, but now she knew he was unique.

Was he playing dumb, or was he just not interested? She didn't like the attention her celebrity status brought, but paradoxically it was a good indicator of a person when she first met them, to help gauge a reaction.

But, she didn't think the local outcast would think she was a cultist! How humorous.

"What do you think, P-Money?" Yang asked, trying to see if they could tip the balance on they're opinion of the newcomer, hopefully to deter Ruby from inviting him again.

Pyrrha hummed thoughtfully. "Interesting, I think he's interesting."

"Well, I guess that's a good enough, for a vote of confidence." Yang announced blandly.

"How'd you meet him Ruby?" Pyrrha asked curiously.

"Oh! You girls should have seen it! He was so awesome, like a warlord out of legend! Cardin was trying to ask me out again, and wouldn't let me leave!"

"What?" Yang asked dangerously. "Did you, you have to?"

Ruby shook her head. "No, Jaune saw me. I didn't have to use any... stuff."

Pyrrha raised a brow. "He did? Cardin never goes without his little gang, how'd he get pasted him?"

"Well, Cardin was like oh, you're so pretty, we should kiss, and Jaune just comes up from behind him, and knocks his goons down like bowling pins, and then grabs Cardin by the shoulder, and I think I might have heard bone break, and Jaune said, hey that's my bff! You let go, so we can go hang out! So, Cardin said, please don't kill me, I think, and we left."

Blake looked at Yang, asking for a translation, who shrugged. "Seems like it's mostly accurate, not like we're going to get the other two sides of the story."

Pyrrha listened with interest. So, not just a outcast, but a warrior too?

My, my, he was growing more interesting my the moment. Pyrrha thought to herself.

Weiss flipped her hair dismissively. "Let me guess, and he said the best way to pay him back was to introduce him to us?"

Ruby blushed. "Actually, I might have exaggerated a bit, I was the one that said we should be bff's. He just told Cardin what's what, and then pulled me away, and asked if I was ok, and tried to leave."

The table listened intently. "He actually is very kind, his eyes looked so concerned when he was helping me, just looking inside, I know he's a big softie. So, I told him we're going to be bff's from now on, 'cause, he might be big and strong, but he look so lonely, all the time. So, from now on, I'm going to work at making him a the good guy, I know he is!"

Weiss looked away. "Hmm. I guess, he might not be a terrible addition to the group. Could keep the unwanted guests away."

"Well, if you say he's a good guy, I'll believe in you, Sis."

Blake was still looking at her book. "Well see if he's really as good as you believe he is."

Pyrrha said nothing, nodding contently, but internally, she couldn't help but feel excited for the future in the first in years. First the Shadow Knight, and now? They had a project to work on at school, too.

How wonderful.

----

Jaune watched his guts spill out of his abdomen, pale and shiny ropes falling out of him.

His hands touched his them unbelieving, still warm.

Surprisingly, he noticed was still standing up. He was in the woods, the full moon shining down on him, something in the darkness looked at him, evil eyes staring at him.

It was faster than human could react.

The last thing he saw was his body still standing, but with blood spurting out of his headless neck.

With a sigh, Jaune rubbed his eyes, getting up. He had another death-dream, which wasn't the worse one he could have.

They came along every couple of days, or hours, he wasn't sure anymore. He only slept for a couple hours at most, so his sense of time was gone.

Getting up, he went to his drawer, pulling out the notebook and opened it.

It was full to the brim full of his neat, compact hand writing. It also had no more space to write in.

So, he titled it vol. 15, put it away in a trunk at the end of his bed, and started a new book, recording his experiences from the last night, reflecting on what he could have done better and how he'd improve for tonight.

Going over battle after battle in his head, thinking of how he was going to improve, and erase the mistakes for his next encounter with something like the Wolf-Monster.

He only had one life, and he would not surrender it cheaply.

But, he also thought back to the those Flying Girls. They were an enemy now, but also so far out of his weight-class it wasn't even funny.

How was he even going to compete with them if they want him dead? Why would they want him dead, also? Weren't they on the same side, more or less? Had he crossed some unseen line?

Maybe, his theory about them being goverment weapons were right? Were they Black-Site Projects, maybe, he had killed too many Shadow-Monsters, and was interfering with an experiment?

What ever the case, they were a problem now, and that meant he was screwed if he didn't think how to counter them, no doubt, they were already thinking of how to improve against him, and wouldn't fall for the same trick, twice.

But, that didn't mean he couldn't exploit the weaknesses he noticed.

Writing in the note book, he started a list.

No sense of unity. They very much fight as champions rather than as a team.

Still weak to sensory damage, so probably need to breath too.

Invulnerable to conventional damage, seemingly. But, can't see in the dark? Or weak to sudden change in environment?

Don't seem used to fighting humans, or ones that fight dirty, or are skilled.

Unskilled fighters, it seems. Cocky, too. Possibly easily baited?

Still need light to see.

If they still need to breath, and are sensitive to chemicals to the sense's, they probably won't react well to chemical weapons, smoke inhaliation, or injesting poison.

Jaune nodded to himself, that was all he could think of at the moment. It wasn't time to hunt yet, but it was getting dark. He'd need to prepare before he went hunting tonight, so locking away his new notebook, he slips out into the night, heading to his workshop.

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camilliar · 4 years

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hi sorry to bother u but i saw u reference 4.19 in check please and just realized it’s ? not on the website? do u know why bc i’ve managed to miss it and not see anything lol

Hi, don’t be sorry to bother me. I’m here to be bothered. Bother me.

You’re right; 4.19 is not on the website. It had only been released within the second First Second volume, Sticks & Scones, and on Ngozi’s Patreon. It has also been disseminated pretty widely within the fandom because it leaked in February, along with the rest of the comic’s conclusion, as an Amazon “look inside” preview. If you wanted to find it, a good place to look might be a search in the fail-fandomanon archives – or you could e-mail someone who still supports Ngozi’s Patreon but doesn’t mind sharing this strip under the table if they have a copy they could send you.

The comic hasn’t been posted online (at least, not yet) because it’s about Kent Parson coming to the Haus to talk to Bitty, and apparently whenever Kent appears in the comic there’s a lot of drama surrounding him and Ngozi doesn’t want to have to deal with it. I am sure that’s at least partly true, but there’s also something contradictory, to me, about claiming you’re hurt by the negative energy around this character as you performatively tease the existence of this strip, setting it into the narrative and the strip sequence and then demonstratively removing it.

I hesitate to suggest that an author would be disingenuous about the stress they’ve experienced from fans who are vocally invested in a story, and since I’ve spent time hanging out in various OMGCP-critical and Parse-positive spaces and chatting with people who inhabit them, I can definitely attest to the fact that some fans (or maybe they’re just anti-fans) seem pretty strident and petty. If nothing else, there are people who are pretty uncharitable. (In their defense, I think it’s because they’re grieving and angry.) In my experience this isn’t the majority of people, but I do know that Ngozi’s a visible figure in the fandom, so I’d guess that means she encounters displeasure with her choices pretty often, and that’s unpleasant, maybe really traumatic at times. Of course, the flip side to this is that some criticisms and comments are really well-intended, and even if they’re not well-intended, so long as they don’t cross the line over into, like, nastiness, I dunno, when you put artwork into the world as a commodity the exchange you’re making, regardless of whether the content has been accessed for free, is that consumers get to have thoughts and feelings on it, then and they can talk about their thoughts and feelings with other consumers.

It feels like what’s happened with 4.19 is that Ngozi is frustrated that she can’t control some aspects of this process, and so she’s decided to withhold this particular strip from a space where it’s likely to be commented on. I think she’s bet, correctly, that the people who are most disposed to hate what she’s done with this installment are also the people least likely to pay for the book. And so long as it’s behind a paywall, it’s pretty much declasse to talk about it openly. Despite some comments on Patreon that are effusively complimentary about how Parse has eaten some crow – I mean, pie – this strip is a goddamned mess with a really depressing moral lurking behind it, and I am completely positive that if this thing were posted online for free like a normal episode of OMGCP it would resulted in yet more commentary and we all would have felt really bad about it. I mean, more than usual.

In keeping with Jack’s comments in 3.7 about his relationship with Parse, the dialogue in 4.19 is in many senses unspecific and doesn’t give us much more about what actually happened between them. Kent says, “I was shit to him,” and it’s entirely unclear if he means at Epikegster or “at 18, as a rookie in the league,” or before that. (Kent would have been a rookie at 19, of course, but let’s ignore that, I guess.) An interesting point about this is that we all found out Parse would be apologizing in this strip in January 2019, and the comic was posted for Patrons without dialogue for Parse’s birthday in July 2019. So there’s been plenty of time for everyone to comment on the idea that Parse was going to show up and apologize to Bitty. It seems to be a rebuke to readers who pointed out that Jack previously told Bitty he and Kent “owe each other a lot of apologies”; in 4.19 Parse says, “If he thinks he owe me an apology for that, he doesn’t.” The “that” in question here is “The shit I was doing at 18, as a rookie in the league … wasn’t good for him.” What does any of this fucking mean?

For a long time – I mean, not for a while now, but for the first couple of years I was in OMGCP fandom, I really did believe that many of these exchanges were purposely muddled and vague because they were going to be clarified later. Which apologies did Kent and Jack owe each other? What did Jack mean when he said “it takes a lot of growing up to realize someone wasn’t good for you”? What happened between them that wasn’t good for Jack? I really, seriously thought we were going to find out what dynamic or precipitating incident caused all of this. In 2.16: “Can we please know what happened at the draft?” And then, “How about Shitty tells us his first name!”

We now know Shitty’s first name, but I guess whatever the fuck it was that happened between Kent and Jack is just going to keep being Shroedinger’s fandom wank until some later date, or maybe forever.

#meta

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prepare4trouble · 5 years

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Good Omens Fanfic - Looking Like this (2)

So it looks like I am, after all, continuing this. The previous part is here, if you’re interested.

Food, it turned out, was just as enjoyable in Crowley’s body as it was in his own. Some of the flavours seemed a little… off. Not bad, in fact in some cases quite the opposite, just not exactly as he had expected them to be. He wasn’t sure whether that was a result of the body he was currently inhabiting, or a new chef at the Ritz. Either way, the meal was very enjoyable. This came as a huge relief to Aziraphale for two reasons.

The first was that until he had being able to sink into the familiar pleasure of a good meal — although admittedly the wine had probably helped a great deal too — he had been on the verge of a full-blown panic attack the likes of which he hadn’t experienced since the very early days on Earth, when he had given away a flaming sword and then convinced himself that he might have accidentally done the wrong thing.

The second reason had to do with a certain lie that Crowley had told him a couple of millennia after that.

Aziraphale realised, in a distracted kind of way, that Crowley was talking. In fact, he seemed to be halfway through talking about something, and Aziraphale had absolutely no idea what he might have missed. He blinked, then tried to concentrate.

“… don’t you think?” Crowley finished, then looked at him expectantly, waiting for a reply.

Oh dear. Aziraphale cleared his throat to buy himself some time. There were only two ways to answer that; either yes, or no. Unfortunately, given the events of the past few days, as well as their current situation, subjects of conversation would be unpredictable.

He wished he had some idea what he would potentially be agreeing with…

“Are you okay?” Crowley was leaning forward slightly, across the table, peering at Aziraphale with obvious concern.

That, at least, was a question he knew the answer to. Aziraphale looked up from his lunch, into his own face, and then down at his plate again. It was disconcerting, seeing himself looking back at him. He wasn’t sure he liked it. Playing at being one another had been okay for a while, maybe even fun, but when faced with the potential of an eternity wearing the wrong face, things were starting to feel a little different.

He took another long sip of his wine. “I’m fine,” he lied.

Crowley peered a little harder, if such a thing was possible.

Aziraphale tried to look away, but it was difficult to ignore him. Wherever he looked, he could see the demon out of the corner of his eye, and almost feel the concern radiating from him. “Stop it!” he said. “Really, Crowley, that’s not helping.”

Crowley sat back a little and stopped with the peering. “Right, so you’re fine. Totally believable, that. So what were you thinking about just then? Don’t think I didn’t notice that look of panic when you realised you had no idea what I was talking about.”

So, he hadn’t been as subtle as he had thought. Well, that or Crowley knew him too well. Aziraphale stuffed a forkful of pasta into his mouth. “Nothing,” he insisted. “Well, other than this whole situation, of course.” He indicated his… or rather Crowley’s… body with a wave of his hand, just in case there was any confusion as to the situation he was referring to.

“Nuh-uh.” Crowley shook his head. “At one point you were smiling. I doubt you’d be smiling if you were thinking about our little problem.”

Aziraphale sighed. Crowley definitely knew him too well. Or maybe just the right amount… “Fine,” he said. “If you must know, I was feeling relieved. If you remember, sometime around 203 AD you told me that food rotted the moment it touched a demon’s lips. I’d always kind of assumed you were lying, you suggest going out for dinner far to often for it to be true, but it’s just a relief to know. I’d been worried about you, that you were being denied one of life’s simple pleasures.”

A grin spread slowly across Crowley’s face, one that looked so distinctly Crowley that it was instantly recognisable even in the wrong body. “Oh yeah, I did say that, didn’t I? Yeah, I was messing with you. In fact, I’m pretty sure I told you I’d been messing with you. Like right after.”

“Yes, but making two contradictory statements only confirmed that you were a liar. There was no real way for me to know which statement was the lie and which was the truth.”

“So you’ve been worrying about me?”

Aziraphale nodded.

“For two thousand years?”

“Give or take.”

“You’re ridiculous. You know that, right?”

Of course did knew that. He had known it for centuries. Longer, actually. There was something inherently ridiculous about an angel and a demon even talking civilly to one another, let alone being friends, going out to lunch together. Going up against the joint forces of Heaven and Hell and saving the world together.

For all he might have denied it in the past, Aziraphale really did consider Crowley a friend. A good friend. His only friend, even. After all that time, it would have been impossible not to. Which was why he had been worrying about him.

“It wouldn’t make any difference, you know.” Crowley said.

“Hmm?”

“If I had been telling the truth back then, it wouldn’t make any difference to you right now. You’re not a demon, you just happen to look like one. If you were, you wouldn’t have survived that holy bubblebath you just took.”

Oh. Crowley was right, of course. That had been the essence of their whole plan. It wasn’t the body they were wearing that was angelic, or demonic, it was the being inside it. He was no more a demon now than he had been last week.

He nodded. “Just to check, you’re not trying to tell me that food really does…”

“No, of course not.” As though to prove a point, Crowley picked up his fork and finished the last of his lunch with a flourish. “I mean you’re not a demon, angel. Nothing more, nothing less.”

“Oh. Well, no. I did know that of course.” And he had. But certain things are inherent to the body, and others to the soul. He had wondered, before the swap, whether Crowley’s eyes might be linked to his demonic nature and might follow him into Aziraphale’s body. He had been relieved to find that they had not; it would have made their plan much more difficult to pull off.

Crowley smirked. He put down his knife and fork on the plate and sat back, waiting for Aziraphale to finish. Aziraphale frowned, he was normally the one perusing the dessert menu while he waited for Crowley to slowly clear his plate.

“Well that’s definitely for the best,” he said as he pushed his own, unfinished, plate away. Crowley’s stomach just didn’t have the capacity that his own did. “I might not be a particularly good angel, but I’m quite certain I’d make a much worse demon. Even if I have picked up a few of the necessary skills thanks to our little Arrangement.”

“Ah you’d be fine,” Crowley told him. “Tell you what, if you ever fall, I’ll show you the ropes.”

Aziraphale supposed he should be insulted by that, but after the events of the past week, he couldn’t bring himself to care. He wasn’t going to fall. After everything that had happened, both Heaven and Hell were suitably freaked out about the two of them and he was quite sure that they were going to be left alone for some time. But if he did ever fall, Crowley was right; he would be fine. If they couldn’t swap back into the correct bodies he would be fine. Whatever happened to either of them from here on out was going to be okay, because they had each other.

He raised his wine glass to Crowley, who frowned, confused, but raised his own in response. Aziraphale was feeling oddly good right now. He had a feeling that was going to change when he needed to sober up, but that could wait until he got home.

He wondered which home that would be. He longed for the comfort of his books, but for the sake of keeping up appearances, he was probably going to have to go back to Crowley’s place. Well, on the positive side, maybe he could do something to help the poor, terrified houseplants while he was there.

“What are you smiling about now?” Crowley asked.

“Oh, I’m just thinking about what to have for dessert,” he lied. “What do you think, can I tempt you?”

Crowley gave him a disapproving look. “You’re not funny,” he said. He shrugged, “But yeah, go on then.”

Aziraphale’s smile widened as he called the waiter over. “Last time I was here they did a meringue that was absolutely…”  “You’d better not,” Crowley said.

“Why?”

The demon shrugged. “I just can’t stand the stuff, the texture, the flavour, it’s just…bleh.” He shuddered theatrically.

“I love meringue,” Aziraphale said.

Crowley slung an arm over the back of his chair in a way that Aziraphale would never. How he managed to look so relaxed was a mystery. “You did,” he said, “and when we sort this out I’m sure you will again, but you’re in my body right now, so…”

“Bleh.”

“Bleh,” Crowley confirmed with a nod.

“Oh.” Aziraphale frowned. He didn’t know whether it worked that way, but he didn’t want to take the risk. Not right now. He had achieved the correct level of intoxication to keep him from worrying about their… situation for the time being. Not enjoying something that he usually did, would remind him of the more uncomfortable implications of the situation, and he didn’t want to risk that. Not yet. There would be time for that later. “Well, that’s disappointing. Anything else I should know?”

Crowley smiled widely. “Oh, plenty. But sticking to the subject of desserts… I dunno. Custard’s pretty gross too.”

“Well, that’s something we can both agree on at least. As for you, very little is off limits when it comes to food, but given the circumstances I strongly suggest the meringue.”

“Bleh.” Crowley said again as he accepted the dessert menu from the waiter, who looked a little confused by the conversation that had been taking place as he had cleared their plates.

The chances of the information getting back to Heaven or Hell via their waiter was slim, but just in case, Aziraphale quickly performed a little miraculous memory alteration. It wasn’t strictly allowed; messing with memories dangerously skirted the edges of playing with free will, but it was such a minor change it wasn’t going to hurt. They would have to be more careful what they said in public in future.

In future… He was already thinking like this was going to last.

He took another sip of his wine and turned his attention to the desserts.

(part 3)

#good omens #good omens fanfic #azirapahle #crowley

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trpg-dingusmaster · 5 years

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+ 2 new DMs

The .... 13yo? Kid in the group wanted to try being dm. This is the second time.

The actual first time I’ve only heard about, but I guess it was very bad and honestly I’m not surprised because he was taking bad contradictory advice from the worst sources. Some of the advice was like... not even at all anything those guys even do? Like. “I give my players absolute freedom! I plan nothing!” Honey.... honey no you don’t. You plenty often rewrite every persons character backstory and then railroad us for 3 1/2 hours to accomplish what could have just been a 5 minute explanation.

Stuff like that.

So, you know. He followed this shit advice and the shit advice of overly complicated home brew mechanics and rules and nonsense and world building even though the game already has rules that mostly work. They were tested at least by people and not just a few dice roll generators.

He made up a complicated world and weird rules but didn’t plan anything and was shocked and frustrated when the players did what players do without direction (hell even if they do have direction??? Honestly???) and nobody ended up having any fun. Everyone was confused and annoyed and obviously it was a bad time.

He was actually banned from dming again until he had a solid plan of action and accepted that players will always make a mess SOMEHOW. Which is weird to me because that doesn’t sound anything different than some of the other games that have gone on and nobody stopped those guys from running games without planning or practice communicating. But whatever I guess.

For a couple weeks this kid was made fun of and bothered about this fiasco which.... I mean was only partially his fault. Like. He did exactly what he was told and surprise surprise it didn’t work out just like it doesn’t work for the guys who told him that shit but they do it anyway.

Then he comes in last week and says: I have a plan. I want to run this pregenerated adventure but you can make your own characters but only use stuff from the core 3 books for now. It’s an official wotc adventure made for learning how to play and I think it’ll be a good way for me to learn how these things work.

The response?

Largely negative. Though the one who initiated the ban of course allowed the game to happen and supported it. The guys who gave him the shitty advice though? Kept giving him shitty advice and were not understanding that: wotc content does not equal AL play. Like. They couldn’t grasp this at all for a weirdly long time.

While they puzzled this I pulled the kid aside and tried to assure him he was making a good choice with the premade content and to not listen to those idiots because what works (or “works”) for them isn’t going to work for everyone and sometimes different people just enjoy things differently and it doesn’t match up nice all the time “just take your time and try your best, figure out what works for you and whats important for building your style”

I think he appreciated it? I guess? I dunno. I really just wanted him to know that like, I was ready to support his creative growth. I think that’s important.

Eventually we get started and I have who is probably my most favorite character I’ve had, though I might scale back his stats because the stat rolling system he picked was very generous and I rolled very well on top of that. But I think some lower stats would be more fun to role play and more interesting to roll play instead of the almost obnoxiously high stats my sweet boy has. Almost obnoxiously high because that honor goes to the guy who usually has suspiciously high stats all the time. Oh?? You have a 19 str in this character too? For the 8th character in a row that that hasn’t been forced to use the standard array? .... interesting..... but it’s fine, it makes him happy I guess and it doesn’t really take away fun from other people so whatever.

And I know how this adventure is supposed to go, I think a few people at the table have at least skimmed through it- the lost mine of Phandelver. He’s played it pretty straight, though it was weird a bit because I was playing an aarakocra and really playing up the bird business. though of course I did my best to try and make sure things moved along but it wasn’t really needed because with clear directions and objectives like? Things just? moved along? On their own? It felt like that anyway to me. Which was a great change of pace. I don’t mind being left to my own devices of course but some kinda direction is be nice now and then. Often the games I get involved in feel like: sit here for 3 hours while I tell you a story and pretend you’re playing a game with me or sit here for three hours and find out something to do on your own I’m not giving you shit to play off of. Or there is shit to play off of but the group actively ignores it or the dm put it there but.... doesn’t want us to play with it? It’s just a one time talking point we are Supposed to then forget about?

Over all, I think he did a good job. He did get frustrated and a little overwhelmed in a few instances but in similar situations I have ALSO been overwhelmed and I wasn’t even the dm at those times. I think his biggest issue is he, being the 13 yo he is, has a curfew more strict than the other teens so he gets very annoyed when side conversation and silliness take time away from play, but rather than say: I have a time limit please pay more attention. He just gets angry. Apparently he did a lot of yelling the first time but has since figured out some restraint from then. Also doesn’t ever throw things or hit people like some of the other teen DMs have done.

He does have some things that need work of course but it’s hard to know what’s a technical issue with using a pdf on a phone instead of a book and what’s he just needs practice but I’m sure he has some ideas on this and I think werewolf dm surely would have given him her thoughts on the subject.

There’s another chick, she wants to try dming and she told me a bit about her ideas, she explained they were still kinda rough but she had a clear goal in mind of what the end results would be. They seem pretty straightforward, clear objectives but a bit of room to roam around in between, which is a great way to start. I told her I thought it would be great and she should absolutely give it a try when she’s ready. I also gave her the same caution I’d give anyone who wants to gm for this group, and some examples of weird shit my other groups have done (investigation of street lights for a weirdly long time even though they were literally just street lights). I’d hate for her first try to go super bad like the 13yos did because she thought the group would play differently than they usually do or because of bad advice that some of the guys like to give that they may or may not know is bad advice.

She told another person in the group about her ideas. It didn’t go so well. He gave her lots of bad advice and would not listen to what she was saying. “These things you are telling me are not helpful and detract from the core of the adventure.” ; “You don’t know that! I’m being very helpful and smart!” ; “I do know that because I’m writing it??? No you aren’t?”

#phandelver game #new gms #anthro curse game #dnd #bee the bird pigeon paladin

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thinkingcraft-dianne · 4 years

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Literature Reflection (Bridle & AI bias)

I found the podcasts by James Bridle in combination with the literature review on gender, race and power in AI give more in-depth information on topics that I have theoretically (as well as in person) touched the surface on before. Both works illustrate why it is important we mindfully use and design technology.Something that stuck with me is how less visible important institutions have become; my local bank has closed and is now almost fully operating digitally and many municipality cases can I handle online. What does this mean for societies' grip and understanding of them? Visibility and transparency are ground principles for and of our liberal and democratic system, so why not here? Visibility = responsibility: this ranges from the power relations visible in the internet cables that run under the oceans to tech companies making diversity reports publicly available.

I never realized how John Berger's theories on seeing art can be applied to modern day technology. Especially the radio analogy I find interesting; the same can be said for social media nowadays, where only a small percentage of its users produces content that is viewed by millions. it is often a one-way conversation which leaves its participants feeling isolated instead of conencted. This has become even more apparent during covid-19, where online friday drinks have not felt the same as in real life. Also, the power of tech companies have increased even more now more and more people are dependent on them. I have a feeling that the increase of living in this digital period will have a huge impact on the mental health of people. On the other hand, the digital realm has democratized information and discussions on this information, as there is a variety of free webinars, festivals and conferences available online, from the comfort of people's homes. This will in the end also democratize new tools and how we perceive the world around us. The way James Bridle described our relation to technology was in line with Donna Haraway's idea about living in the terrestrial. If we would see and care for technology as how we do certain animals, we would be able to re-evaluate what we can get from it. Bridle mentions that artificial intelligence can help us escape the Anthropocene and to reconnect ourselves to nature. Though he does not mention how. However, I thought of how our living world is progressively supplied with sensors and with the resulting data, and how we can gain insights into the complexity of the interdependencies between living organisms. For instance, sensors and the datafication of forests have laid bare the complex web of communications between trees. When researching I came across this TED Talk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pvBlSFVmoaw.

This mention of changing the way we connect to our technologies reminded me of the term automation bias; the urge of humans to favour suggestions from automated systems and to ignore contradictory information made without automation, even if it is correct. Especially in covid times, people have this idea of a 'technofix', which is based on a combination of trust in technology and limited trust in the ability, and the willingness, of humans to adapt their behaviour. We are looking for the fastest solution which will cause us to make the least amount of sacrifices; technology will fix our problem and we do not have to think about it any longer. A “quick fix” for the corona crisis, in the form of a vaccine, would quickly silence the debate on the structural causes of the pandemic and allow us to revert to our pre-corona practices in a heartbeat. Comparable to the way medication often takes away the necessity of aspiring to a healthier lifestyle. Because of this apparent lack of any human sacrifice, the idea of the techno-fix goes hand in hand with a feeling of guilt, as if, like in the myth of Prometheus, we really don’t deserve to use technology.

The crisis is slowly taking away our illusion of the tech fix. The essence of these (false) solutions is the illusion they create that we can “save” the climate without having to change our lifestyle. The underlying belief is that we’re not willing to make a sacrifice such as travelling less, for example, or reducing our total energy use. In fact, the main notion seems to be that human beings are not or barely able to adjust their behavior at all without the clear prospect of a reward. It would be interesting to make the climate crisis sensed evenly as immediately as current pandemic. This circles back to the notion that visibility calls for understanding, thus responsibility. As it is talked about in the Bridle podcasts: technological agency and climate change are both visual problems, or rather the lack of visibility. An artwork that succeeds in visually raising awareness for this is terra0, a forest that can autonomously sell its trees and eventually, using the accumulated capital, buy itself and become a self-owned economic unit. For now, it remains an artistic experiment designed to raise awareness, but in theory you could build such a program on the blockchain to make a forest represent itself.

For me, as a woman enrolled in a technologically-focused minor in a class in which the majority of the people identify as male, the text on gender, race and power in AI was really interesting and had contained some familiar frustrations. By connecting the unequal representation of women in the tech industry to and bias systems in AI, the author suggests two versions of the same problem. I find data violence, which enacts forms of administrative power which affects some of us more than others, a relevant modern day problem. In a world in which data and facts reign and where systems are trained upon existing data sets, representation is of uttermost importance. The authors stresses that, because AI systems play a important role in our political institutions (like healthcare), we need to re-asses the relationship between workplace diversity crisis and the problems with bias and discrimination in AI. In a future and ideal world, a supervising board would examine the politics of the design of such a system. It would check how a system was constructed and whose interests shaped the metrics for success or failure.

Understanding 'bias' in data requires accounting of the social context through which the data was produced: how humans make data in context. It is also interesting to note that companies also use data violence to shape reports on diversity to their wishes. Only accounting the 80% of the full-time workforce is data manipulations with major implications and should in my eyes therefore be considered a crime or at least punished. Again, transparency is the only way for people to know what is going on inside a company and enables the to hold them accountable and to make knowledgeable (consumer) decisions. To say that women are inherently less confident in their computing skills, is to totally ignore the male-dominated and therefore male-designed social institutions in which many obstacles have to be overcome. This week, I found a poc female on youtube talking about her career in coding and who recommended many resourced while talking about it in a transparent and non-elite way. This made me much more interested in it, and most importantly made me feel as if I could also find my place in male-dominated sectors. Also, talking two girls who participated in a summer residency of V2_Lab for Unstable Media and seeing their work made me feel more comfortable in that area already. Seeing yourself being represented certainly boosts your confidence in your own abilities. As stated in the article, "the inclusion of women becomes the solution for all gender problems, not just those of exclusion or absence. .. their mere presence builds the table they sit at in the first place." The ultimate goal is cognitive diversity, and cognitive diversity is correlated with identity diversity. That means it's not just about women in tech. It is about broad voices, broad representation.

I have been thinking about my internship lately, which was unpaid and in a male-led studio. I worked really hard and participated in many interesting projects. But by giving me the feeling I should already feel rewarded and appreciated by this mere participation felt empty in the end. I have been thinking about students who might not have done the internship because they could not pay their rent that way and how this influences the diversity within a studio. I believe that if you appreciate an intern, care for quality of work and giving everyone an equal chance to grow as a designer, you would pay them. This would in the end contribute greatly of cognitive diversity in the field of design, which is also has been male-dominated in the recent past.Biological determinism, as mention by the authors, is also something that is interesting during these times inn which the political landscape is under pressure. There is more unrest and focus on the pandemic, both reasons for governments to 'silently' change important laws within a country. Example of this is the current situation in Poland, were abortion rights have been almost entirely taken away from women. Former Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk also criticised the judgement. "Throwing the topic of abortion and a ruling by a pseudo-court into the middle of a raging pandemic is more than cynical". The coronavirus crisis will be global and long-lasting, economic as well as medical. However, it also offers an opportunity. This could be the first outbreak where gender and sex differences are recorded, and taken into account by researchers and policy makers. Also for too long, politicians have assumed that child care and elderly care can be “soaked up” by private citizens—mostly women—effectively providing a huge subsidy to the paid economy. This pandemic should remind us of the true scale of that distortion and how balancing unpaid work out between all genders can lead to more diversity in fields such as tech and design as well.

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gosmelters · 7 years

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Hello to [the] Your First Video Game: A Personal Reflection on My Scholarly Beginnings

I’m finding the writing process for this blog harder than other platforms because of one issue I hadn’t considered when making it: my audience.

How much do those reading this know about me? How much will I insult my instructor if I copy-and-paste the syllabus goals with every post? I am simultaneously overconfident about my plans for this blog and hitting backspace every time I try to post on it.

I figure it might be easier to be explicitly clear about my research from the jump. Every week, I’ll be responding to this course’s assigned readings by connecting them to games of analytic interest -- specifically Night in the Woods and Doki Doki Literature Club -- to further hone my feminist and queer perspectives on game mechanics, games as cultural artifacts and close-reading conduits, and, ultimately, what games studies mean to me.

The latter question has been especially pressing as this course begins, as its importance surpasses any other project I’ve undertaken in my academic career. When I was young, about fifteen or so, I knew I would one day have an opportunity like this one. I had no idea how, but I was destined to figure it out. My dreams of entering the games studies circuit were fostered by countless presenters at the late Games+Learning+Society conference in Madison, Wisconsin; modeled by the research of colleagues and close friends Kyrie Eleison Caldwell and Sean Seyler; and thrown into overdrive by the classic work of Tom Bissell and his adventures in virtuality. And here, now, listening to the instrumental of “Your Reality” and pondering ever so lightly how mine reached this point, I begin to understand what Caldwell and co. told me just a few years ago as I failed to find an undergraduate program at which I felt at home: “you just kind of make it up as you go along.”

Sebastian Deterding's "The Pyrrhic Victory of Game Studies: Assessing the Past, Present, and Future of Interdisciplinary Game Research" concludes with the thought that games studies are “increasingly coalescing into a relatively closed community within it, composed of humanities and cultural studies scholars with homogenous epistemic cultures.” The split between “games studies scholars,” mostly comprised of film studies, comparative literature, and art and design scholars, and the vocationally focused game design programs have created “more of a narrow multidiscipline than the broad interdiscipline [games studies scholars] set out to become.” The quantification of interdisciplinary, multidisciplinary, and economically validated game studies fields reminded me of those early days of college searching: without a holistic understanding of what games studies was or even did, I picked a new keyword every week (”comparative literature!” “COMMUNICATIONS.” “narrotology, maybe.” “lu...dology?”) and sought out a (usually liberal arts) school that could foster that keyword the best. Yes, foster the keyword: the dream I had was so undefined, as if faded over months of sleep and never recorded in the bedside journal, that I was gambling my future on whatever “theory/method coupling” seemed right to me at the moment. I wonder if seeing these issues from the academic bird’s-eye view of Deterding would have given me any insight into Caldwell’s suggestion to MacGyver my future rather than reverse-engineer it, but I doubt it. I would have seen Deterding’s conclusion, his call to coalesce sociology, media philosophy, and the vocational education of game design to dissolve that “closed community,” and would have asked my inspirations the easiest way to guarantee a spot at that table.

Therein lies a self-referential issue I have with the problem of interdisciplinary identification: on the most practical level, one that I experienced in my early days of higher education, there is no solution to the problem that is the proposed solution. In an ideal world, I would have liked a solid understanding of these game studies components because I saw them in action. I asked myself (and others) at Well-Played sessions how I could get paid by close-reading games (I’m so glad, if extremely surprised, no one responded with a snappy “you don’t”) -- because what is an interdisciplinary field if you cannot in some way categorize its facets and pedagogical inspirations? It’s hard to reconcile how much “easier” it would be to go into “games studies” when even that moniker made little to no sense to me. This article (or at least its evidence; it is clear that Deterding’s desire for cohesiveness [figure A] is contrary to my next claim) is a fascinating example of how the breakdown of scholarship at the highest of higher educations facilitates no understanding of how to break into its world at the freshman level. In other words, if I had read this in the keyword-obsessive summer before my senior year of high school, I know I would have ultimately picked one of the article’s own buzzwords (”OMG THERE’S LUDOLOGY AGAIN! WE’RE GOING WITH THAT!”) and defeated the article’s call for homogeneity -- as what constituted “games studies” was still too far beyond what I academically understood at the time to feel comfortable going into it.

(Figure A) The above, for example, are solutions to the problem that would have made my break into academia much smoother, and less reliant on right-place-right-time philosophies. From “The Pyrrhic Victory of Game Studies: Assessing the Past, Present, and Future of Interdisciplinary Game Research.” Sebastian Deterding. Games and Culture Vol 12, Issue 6, pp. 521 - 543. First published September 1, 2016.

This sounds like a simple non-argument without a proper point of comparison, and I’ll concede that my issue could have been solved with proper (and simple) designation of what games studies actually is. Yet I found a perfect point of retroactive validation in the first chapter of Jonas Heide Smith,‎ Susana Pajares Tosca's textbook Understanding Video Games: The Essential Introduction. Their four-point breakdown of video game study -- the game, the players, the culture, and "ontology" -- which correspond to four different types of analysis (figure B) made a still-extant insecure part of my sixteen-year-old self feel reassured by his desire to learn all of them.

Figure B - “Four Major Types of Analysis.” From Egenfeldt Nielsen, S.., J. Heide Smith, and S. Pajares Tosca. Understanding Video Games: The Essential Introduction. Routledge, 2008.

It seems I’ve covered a lot of contradictory points in a few short paragraphs, but my reasoning is rather simple. I’m hyper-aware of the fact that there could be kids still struggling to understand how they might break into games studies, and need the most basic intellectual foundation upon which they may rest a future. To this end, I can say that studying what has interested me -- the visual arts, gender, feminist, and queer theory, and history of all kinds -- has provided me with a more-than-appropriate framework for studying video games. And I hope that on some level, our definition of “games studies” does not radically dissolve individual humanities identities. This “closed community” of humanities scholars that Deterding critiques may be borne of those four major types of analysis, but I didn’t know the latter even existed when I was trying to find the former. The knowledge I now possess of how to MacGyver this field is a privilege only in contrast to how ill-defined “games studies” as an “interdisciplinary field” was to me at the time. The closed communities must be open to visibility, especially at that aforementioned “freshman” level, but they should not lose their identities as interlocking methodologies that are available outside of a Platonic form of games scholarship. I wanted a path, so I made my own, but the structure to do so should have been clearer to me earlier.

Sounds like a lot, huh? Of course it is! And that’s why I’m kicking off my blog with these deep-running contradictions and this confused psycho-scrubbing: to show that this blog is the end result of years of worry, anxiety, and, well, making it up as I go along. To have this kind of platform, to showcase my theoretical side in a space upon which my name is attached? That’s progress.

And, hey: if you were just like me (I’m sorry, ‘cause I wouldn’t wish that on anyone), struggling with what games studies is or what it means, I hope that this little corner of analysis, self-reflection, and citation does you as much good as it does for me.

Now, about those video games...

#video games #games studies #games scholarship #queer theory #queer games studies #feminist games #video game analysis #weekly analyses #intro post #analysis

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kyuu-rereads-umineko · 7 years

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Ep6, Chapter 5 & 6 (Part 1)

So, yeah, the Steam version of Chiru’s out, but for the time being, I’m gonna stick to making my posts off of the original Witch Hunt/UmiTweak release, the main reason being that I’m already partway through Ep6. There’s also the voice acting, which I think adds a great deal to the story.

Once I get to Ep7, I’ll probably switch to the Steam release. Hopefully that doesn’t take too long, especially since I want to keep up with Rokkenjima’s Chiru Tea Parties alongside this, but... We’ll see, I guess!

Anyways. If I recall correctly, these chapters feature Erika wasting her time arguing with a 9-year-old and being even more dense than Battler used to be? Fun times inbound!

The chapter opens with Shannon talking about how she used to be “a bit of a klutz” “back then” - forgetting where she left something, or forgetting to lock a door/cabinet/whatever. It’s funny - despite how relatively insignificant this information is (especially since we’ve seen Shannon being a bit clumsy in earlier Eps), it’s good at strengthening the connection between Yasu in her story in Ep7 and what Shannon was like when she was younger.

that sentence was kind of a mess but i hope you understand what i mean

Battler asks her how she got over her forgetfulness, and Shannon explains that she got in the habit of taking notes about where she put things and such. Again, pretty minor, but it brings to mind Yasu tying a string around her keyring...

Erika interrupts, asking flat-out if she’s seen Beatrice or not. Shannon says, “I didn’t see her directly, but... umm... some very strange things did happen...”

The narrative mentions that she’s thinking of “a certain summer night,” and then jumps to the two Beatos wandering the mansion at night. “From Shannon’s perspective, it was a ghost story. From the witch’s perspective... it was just the story of a little summer’s night prank...”

Elder explains the concept of “anti-magic toxin” to Chick. She says something interesting here, and I’m not entirely sure how to parse it - “One thing we do have in our favour is the fact that our existence is still extremely weak. Because of that, the toxin does not affect us greatly.”

In magic terms, I think what she means is that it can’t cause the two of them as much pain as it’s shown to cause for, say, characters like the Stakes or Sakutarou in Ep4. In mundane terms... hmm. Maybe that, since the ghost stories about the witch haven’t really taken hold yet, people are less desperate to argue against them? I’m really not sure.

“[Chick] had thought that she wasn’t a witch because she couldn’t use magic, but apparently, she was still a witch nonetheless.”

Elder mentions that not only being seen, but “being heard or sensed can also result in contact with the toxin.” Basically, any cause for suspicion that “the witch’s actions” have a “human culprit” is damaging.

Chick wonders internally why she wasn’t burnt by Battler’s toxin. Meta gonna meta? The anti-magic toxin’s never really seemed to be “a thing” in the Meta-World - it’s more of a gameboard construct.

“Simply put, as we are now, we can only exist when humans aren’t around...”

Elder is awestruck at the idea of being able to appear openly in front of humans. “Is that what we will eventually become?”

Pretty reflective of how Yasu would’ve felt, I imagine. When she started with her little witch pranks, I doubt she could’ve imagined them growing to encompass the entire island the way they did.

“Hmmm, how inspiring. If that is our future, it means that all of our hard work will have been worth the effort.” okay that one hurts

And then Chick asks how those efforts relate to what they’re currently doing - unlocking windows behind the mansion’s servants, lol. Elder explains that the fact the window was unlocked even though “there’s no one in the hallway” is proof of their existence, and of their magic.

“Of course, it wasn’t just small pranks like opening a window. She could also smash windows and vases, or leave behind strange fires and mysterious scribbles.” YASU WHAT ARE YOU DOING

“One day, I will... no, we will become a single witch and control all of Rokkenjima... When that time comes, we will gain complete freedom and will be capable of stretching our wings as we please.”

And Chick realizes the reason she could appear in front of Battler so openly is because at this point, he fully believes in the witch’s existence and doesn’t have any anti-magic toxin to speak of. HOW THE TABLES HAVE TURNED

In Featherine’s study, meanwhile, Ange and Featherine discuss the Beatos’ logic. It basically comes down to the fact that they’ve - Yasu’s - created an atmosphere where anything strange happening on the island is blamed on the witch.

“The servants might have forgotten to lock [the window], or one of the family might have opened it after the servants had locked up and forgotten to shut it again, or maybe someone had played a prank. In the same way that none of those possibilities could be denied... it was also impossible to deny the possibility that a witch really had opened a window to enjoy the night breeze...”

“That’s one of the foundations of magic. Decorating... the process.”

Ange acknowledges that “good magic” really does exist. Featherine says, “The power to repel evil magic may be necessary for a child of man. However, it is the nature of love in the human world that it does not burn away and defile love-filled magic.”

Ange concludes that “Beatrice” isn’t a person’s name, but the name of a phenomenon - that anything strange that happens at night is blamed on the witch. “That all piles up until we reach 1986... This is the veil that the true culprit is hiding behind. And the person hiding behind it is, without a doubt, a human.”

Featherine contends that she can’t stick to that argument “to fight all the way through 1986,” and Ange doesn’t have a response. The narrative jumps back to the gameboard, where presumably Shannon’s just detailed the window being unlocked on that night.

...And Erika, being Erika, says that it was just because someone forgot to lock the window.

Shannon mentions that it happened many times over (which she’d know, of course), and Erika calls her an idiot. I really can’t stand her in this episode, I’m sorry...

Everyone else chimes in to support Shannon, but Erika turns to pointing the finger at the servants as a group. THE IRONY......

She concludes with, “Of course there’s no way Beatrice exists,” and “This delusion of a Golden Witch Beatrice [...] is completely impossible,” which angers Maria. here we fuckin go

Maria states that she’s met Beato (which she has), and that Beato shows her magic all the time. Erika asks her to explain in detail. Seriously, this girl...

The other cousins try calming the situation down, but Erika throws out all pretenses of being polite (again) to challenge Maria. Meta breaks in, and Maria appears in her witch outfit.

Erika invites her to reproduce the magic, and Dlanor appears to tell her, “This battle is not worth FIGHTING.” AT LEAST ONE OF YOU HAS A GOOD HEAD ON YOUR SHOULDERS

At any rate, ridiculous red/blue truth battle ensues. I really don’t have a lot to say about this and formatting the text colours is a pain, so...

During it, though, Erika says, “All truths are nothing more than claims! So, I’ll make a claim separate from yours and smash right through yours!! That is the detective’s duty, and the time we shine the mooooost!!” I think this is a good line to use to reflect on why I don’t like Erika in this episode.

In Episode 5, she has very apparent narrative functions - she’s a detective like Battler is, but ultimately, she’s very much an antithesis of him. She’s a ruthless deconstruction of the mystery/detective fiction genre in general, and she’s a guide on “what not to do” to solve the mystery. She’s also, ultimately, the metaphorical kick in the pants Battler needs to really try solving Beato’s riddle properly, and a parody of the Mary Sue character, by way of literally being Bern’s self-insert. She fulfills all of these purposes quite well, while being an entertaining character at the same time.

In Ep6, though? True, she still functions as a deconstruction of the genre, and as an example of how ignoring the heart of the story leaves you unable to solve it, but... I feel like the former’s kinda old hat at this point, and the latter isn’t done particularly well? Ryukishi (and Battler, I suppose) kinda smack us over the head with that point in this episode, with Erika just shrugging off the love duel getting so much attention and Battler flat-out asking her what her problem is.

On top of that, we’ve got the contrast between her being an absolutely horrible person like she was in Ep5 with an attempt at humanizing her by giving her some sort of tragic backstory involving a cheating boyfriend (that doesn’t really make much sense for a 14-year-old girl, but I digress). I realize the two sides of her match with Umineko’s theme of contradictory options both being true (the culprit being a witch or a human, for instance), but in this case, they don’t mesh well for me at all. Her cruelty is too dramatically overblown for me to take her seriously as anything but either Bern’s self-insert or a parody of the genre, but Ep6 tries using her as a character to convey an important point - her spiel about love making people “see things that aren’t there.”

On top of that, she’s painted as being a “rival” to Battler, when... I never really felt like that was the case? Sure, in Ep5, they do kinda feel that way, but ultimately, Beato is still his rival, and strictly speaking, Erika’s not his “main enemy,” either - Bernkastel and Lambdadelta are. Even though Erika’s given a focus, I don’t feel like that changes in Ep6, either - Bern is the one throwing a fit about losing, while Erika is just kinda going “Yes, master!” the whole time. She feels... more like a device than a character to me, sometimes, y’know?

That’s not to say that her presence is meritless, though. She provides some top quality humour and memeing, and the ending of the episode is phenomenal. Just, overall, I don’t really care for her here.

Anyways. Erika and Maria continue yelling at each other, yada yada yada.

“Let it be known that this fight has no point...” gertrude is on point

Erika does the magic, screeches about how Maria’s a moron, etc. etc.

“...Sheesh!! Just one more step and I’d have been able to take a heart as innocent as the smooth sand just after a wave has pulled back and tear it to bits. ...What a shame. This isn’t fun anymore.” She also gives the most insincere apology ever for “tearing a kid’s dreams apart.”

Back on the board, she gives another “apology” of “I’m still just a kid.” Maybe I’m guilty of not looking at her with love, but fucking hell this girl.

Maria stops crying and starts cackling instead, proclaiming herself as Beatrice’s apprentice. Erika says, “Let’s fight in a more satisfying game next time.” Maria says sure.

The cousins and Shannon leave, heading upstairs to play cards, and then Kumasawa enters. Erika asks her about the stories of Akujikishima and the witch of the forest, offering to get her a drink as well. With that, the chapter ends.

The next chapter opens on George and Shannon in the rose garden arbour, where George comments that he “can’t seem to get along well with kids these days,” about Erika. don’t worry jooji you are not the only one

“I think kids around Erika-san’s age have a really hard time accepting themselves,” says Shannon. This is... oddly painful, considering that Shannon’s given age is 16, meaning she “would’ve been 14” when Yasu solved the epitaph...

George comments that when he was around that age, “I was a weak, deplorable man who didn’t deserve any respect.” ouch

Y’know, I think it’s fair to say that my opinion of George has changed a lot in the 2 years or so since I started this blog. I think he genuinely tries to be a good person, even if he’s passive-aggressive and self-centred - I honestly don’t think he realizes it a lot of the time. To be clear, I don’t mean his twisting of the knife when young Yasu was in tears over Battler leaving - that was intentional and pretty fucking gross on his part. I mean his behaviour in/around 1986 - his focus on what his relationship with Shannon does for him, him shrugging off her concerns and talk about magic... I don’t think there’s any “intent” there (though whether or not that makes it better or worse is debatable) - I think the effects of it just slip right under his radar.

It still makes me kind of ill to see how he responds to Shannon’s furniture complex, but, again - I don’t think it’s because he “doesn’t care” or anything like that; I think his thinking is that if it were something really, truly serious, Shannon would be up-front about it.

That’s absolutely not to put the onus on Yasu for not explaining her situation to him - considering the weight of everything she had on her shoulders, from her identity issues to her body to her blood, I don’t feel comfortable at all with blaming her for not speaking up. It’s been a while since I read the Ep8 manga scans, but I seem to recall that George and Jessica express that sentiment at one point in the Golden Land, too.

I think, ultimately, George’s chief sin is the same as Battler’s - he just doesn’t really think about how what he says or does is impacting the woman closest to him. The key differences are that 1) since we follow Meta-Battler throughout the series, we’re able to see his character develop, from angrily refusing to see things from Beato’s perspective to eventually throwing his life away for her, whereas with George, we... don’t, and 2) even on first read-through, Beato is a lot more... inscrutable, if you will, than Shannon is. Even if we don’t know the depth of what Shannon’s trouble about, it’s easy to tell that something about George’s family talk bothers her, whereas with Beato (in part because the story’s usually told from Battler’s perspective), a lot of her reactions only really make sense in hindsight, even when she’s clearly upset (e.g. Battler rejecting her presentation of Beatrice II’s story in Ep3, and her reaction to Battler’s failed confession in Ep4).

Maybe I’m just stating the obvious here, who knows! Point is, while George definitely grates on my nerves at times, I don’t really hate the guy. He’s just as human as the rest of the cast, and as one of Yasu’s main male love interests, his flaws are often quite visible.

Anyways! At Shannon’s questioning, George admits that the reason he resolved to grow up and become a “splendid adult” wasn’t just because of love for Shannon. He starts going into some of his insecurities, about how he used to be “afraid” of “interacting with women,” and how he didn’t even recognize them at the time.

Huh, Shannon’s oddly confident during this exchange again. She makes a comment about understanding how George felt when it comes to trying to get noticed by the opposite sex, and when he prods her for details, instead of clamming up and blushing like we’d expect, she smiles and says “Of course.” I’m not quite sure how to word it beyond this, but I can really feel Tohya’s love for Yasu coming through here... quite strongly, at that.

And George admits that the turning point for him was how envious he was of Battler and how close he was to Shannon. George prepares to confess...

...And Ange breaks in to throw a jab at Featherine for watching the two of them. lol

“Stories of love are truly timeless. I never tire of them... However, I do find that expression of virgin disgust on your face even more charming...” LOL

At any rate, George admits to looking down on Battler and Jessica when they were younger, and thinking that they’d never be able to find a partner because of how brash they are, as well as using that thinking to distract himself from his own inability to find a girlfriend. Featherine cuts in, commenting that Battler and Jessica “have the power to interact without worrying about their sexes.”

Ange says, “People like Onii-chan and Jessica onee-chan can get along with anyone whether that person’s a boy or a girl... I hate to say it, but I find guys who act too polite... a bit creepy. It’s like they’re virgins trying too hard or something...” ange has 0 chill

George says that at one of the family conferences, he realized that the servant girls - particularly Shannon - were getting along with Battler and Jessica a lot better than with him. “Sickening, isn’t it? ...I just assumed that you liked me, and even had some childish fantasy that we might end up dating. I felt as though my girlfriend had been stolen from me and let myself feel hurt.”

He admits to trying to emulate Battler and Jessica by "joking around and speaking rudely.” That’s... an interesting mental image, and Shannon says as much!

“The reason I had no charm was because of my cowardice. Under the pretense of respecting people and acting to fit in with the general atmosphere... I was always running away. [...] ...I made an oath. This time, I would really make you take notice of me, and I would be reflected in your eyes... Actually, that’s the first thing I felt when I fell in love with you.”

I have to give George credit here - confessing to something like that takes a lot of guts. I don’t think it’s something many people could do very easily, even in private like this. Having said that, and I hate to be critical of him now of all times, I think that this is really the core of most of his problems.

He was so dedicated to “being reborn,” and takes such pride in “succeeding,” that I don’t think he’s capable of taking a look at himself and realizing he’s still got a lot of growing to do on his own. I don’t think that’s something specific to him, either - I think just about everyone has a period like that at some point. The unfortunate thing about George, though, is that he’s surrounded by people who don’t encourage him to take a critical look at himself - Eva and Hideyoshi, I think, are too close to him and too proud of him to realize it, while Shannon, if anything, usually ends up enabling him to keep acting the way he does. The result is that he never really gets a chance to move past that.

“...Sounds pretty... complicated.” lol shannon

“On that day, my desire for revenge against the two of you who ignored me and played together... no, against you alone... suddenly transformed into true love.” Even already knowing how he really felt about Battler leaving the family six years ago, George admitting to resenting Shannon like that sends a shiver down my spine - not because of how gross of an emotion that is (I think, while it’s certainly not pretty, it’s a very human response, in a way), but because he’s able to confess to it. Again, even if he’s pretty rough around the edges at times... George really is strong, in his own way.

“However, I swear this to God. Even though that was the reason I first started to take you seriously... there are no lies in the way I feel about you now. I swear to love you for all my life. I will not lie about that for anyone or anything. And I am prepared to take you as my wife, even if it means having the entire world as my enemy.”

I can only imagine how precious hearing that must be for Yasu...

George starts to say something about how he lied about Shannon being his “first love,” and she forcefully interrupts him. “Is there some rule saying that people can’t get together just because they weren’t each other’s first love? Is it betrayal to forget the first person you fell in love with...?”

“Love... isn’t that simple. Well... it might be simple... After all, love is easy. ...Always, whatever you feel now... only the honest feelings you feel now can tell you the right answer. So, things of the past or how our relationship started aren’t important at all.”

George thanks her, saying, “I was only able to become who I am because of you.” Shannon replies likewise, and asks him to describe the “kind of future we will build together.”

He starts out talking about how he wants to succeed as a businessman, then says it right-out: “Let’s have some kids.”

Shannon’s reaction here is markedly different from any other episode - she laughs, and says, “Yes, my husband.” He paints a vivid picture of a big family, “surrounded by many children and grandchildren.”

I hate to say it, but... I really can’t parse this scene from the perspective of something that actually happened on the board. Even if Battler gave her a new lease on life like I speculated, the weight of everything Yasu was dealing with... I can’t see her responding so readily to George’s family talk like this. I mean, I guess Shannon as a character might, but any other time it’s brought up, Yasu’s terrified of what might happen when George finds out the truth.

At any rate, George gives her the ring... and says, “I swear to resolutely stand against any fate which may attempt to get in the way of our future.”

He talks about how he’s ready to leave the family if worst comes to worst, and Shannon repeats his sentiments about standing against fate. Hmmm...

And then meta breaks in again, and Erika asks Battler when the murders are going to start. He just tells her to shut up and watch. lmao

Really though, right now she’s even worse than Battler used to be in the first four Episodes. While he might’ve shrugged off a lot of Beato’s fantasy scenes in a similar manner, he was rarely this rudely dismissive of them, and he at least recognized that he’d upset Beato somehow when he was (Beatrice II’s backstory in Ep3). erika is a 0/10 detective

Erika realizes that Battler’s pitying her for whatever reason, and asks him to shut the fuck up when he calls her “sad”.

“I can’t understand you at all right now. What on Earth did you figure out? Weren’t you and Beato always insulting and trying to kill each other? ...What kind of truth could you have reached to make you change your emotions regarding her? ...Please don’t tell me that feelings of true love have sprouted from your murderous rivalry or anything like that, okay?”

As much as I still can’t stand Erika in this episode, I can’t help but read her as a standin for some readers here. Battler’s sudden shift in attitude at the end of Ep5 was incredibly baffling on first read-through, and I found myself wondering the same thing as she is here (though not as coldly as this).

Back on the board, Shannon returns to the servant room in the guesthouse. Kanon immediately notices the ring on her finger.

“...So, it’s my turn next.” ooooo

#kyuutext #umineko #umineko no naku koro ni chiru #dawn of the golden witch

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rat-foot · 7 years

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The art of measuring a manager

Are supporters and football pundits good at evaluating other managers? Often I think we're terrible at it.

We seem to horrendously over-estimate short-term results. 11 games ago Ronald Koeman was considered one of the hottest managerial prospects in World football, a sort-of candidate in waiting for the next Barcelona vacancy. Now his reputation seems to be in tatters. Has he changed pretty much overnight, or are we over-estimating short-term results? Is it reasonable to think that actually he's probably somewhere inbetween the management God he was previously assumed to be, and the disaster he is seen as now? Where is he actually on that scale? I have no idea. - that’s the truth.

The thing with managers is that they go in at clubs and have to respond to a huge variety of situations and requirements. Some managers are expected to run the whole squad and the transfer policy, others are just a first-team coach who cannot change an existing infrastructure around them. The circumstances are basically totally different each time. But the way in which these circumstances will be interpreted by others is very polarised - either you get results or you don't. I can understand it in a way - it's a results business as they always say. It's actually quite easy to work out if a manager has ultimately succeeded or failed at a club - what is much more difficult is to work out what their suitability for another job might be, or what their objective state of being is as an individual.

Let's face it, any manager needs luck. They might do things that improve their chances of having good luck or capitalising on it. I think a lot of what managers do is connected to risk assessment - they make decisions that they hope give them a better chance of success, rather than there being an objective right or wrong answer. Sometimes a club is in a position to be high-risk, sometimes not - different managers would suit different levels of risk. There's an awful lot of game theory in managing a club in my opinion - it's a topic that is very complicated and barely understood by many within the sport, let alone outside it. I don’t think we have much of a handle on this area at this stage of the sport’s evolution. There’s so much we don’t know.

Three hot managers in the premiership mid-table right now seem to be David Wagner, Marco Silva and Sean Dyche - all three are said to have been on West Ham’s wishlist for a replacement for Bilic. Here are some random thoughts on them. There are statistical models that suggest Huddersfield and Burnley may have underlying problems with their approach that might catch up with them. If Dyche and Wagner ended up relegated that doesn't mean they've done a bad job of course - we might conclude that's a par for them weighing up the strength of various squads. Silva is very hot right now, but my personal interpretation is that Watford have been an aggressively well-run club for a good few years and it's a good time to be their manager. Silva seems to have escaped criticism for Hull's relegation last season - I’m not quite sure why. Wagner is associated with a high-pressing style from his friend Klopp, but his Huddersfield side have at times seemed hopelessly defensive. Wagner's promotion squad was partly built by Stuart Webber, the sporting director who is now at Norwich. Dyche has been linked with jobs at Everton and West Ham, but his approach is absolutely singular in terms of its focus on defence, which is a style neither of those clubs seem particularly keen on over their history.

I'm just throwing points out in that last paragraph, but I’m trying to illustrate the confusion I feel about evaluating other managers. As a sort of side-project/hobby I have spent a good deal of the last five years trying to work out how to evaluate teams, players, managers. I feel I know how difficult it can be in comparison. There is no single or combinatory statistic that I know of that measures managers effectiveness, because it is so tied into so many other factors at a club. If a goalkeeper saves a shot, you can evaluate that in isolation - you cannot as easily evaluate the coaching that improved the chances of that save, or the likelihood of the tactical decisions that led to the goalkeeper having to face that shot. It's simply very complicated and there are no easy answers.

I think of managers I’ve seen over longer periods from game to game - the West Ham managers of recent decades. How much do I feel I can assess even them? Someone like Roeder had a really good season followed by a bad one (and a major health issue) - I still don’t know quite what I made of him, but I do know he was horrendously undermined on transfers in his second season. Zola also had a good followed by a bad season, but the club was on its knees financially in that period. Allardyce I thought I knew when he joined, but it still really took me 18 months before I felt I really knew what his mode of operation was as a tactician. Bilic had great results at first, but it was many months before my misgivings turned into a more bold negative appraisal. Like every human, managers are a mixed and often contradictory bag.

If I was at a club looking for a new manager, there's a few simpler heuristics you could use to narrow the field a bit, but ultimately I think the only way to really work out who to hire from the shortlist is to really research the candidates and evaluate them in detail. By which I mean I think you need a long interview with them - you need to work out what makes them tick. You need to really look at all the circumstances of their previous record in relation to the situations they found themselves in. You need to look at how much they fit what you want at the club, and whether they fit the squad you've already got. It's as much about what you feel about the state of your club as much as it is the ability of the manager coming in. There's a lot to think about, basically. I think so, anyway.

As a supporter, or a follower of football, or a pundit, there is no access to much of this, and nor is there a chance to have that sort of detailed first-hand experience with each manager. This is why I think most of us defer to very simplistic assessment of the personality and record of managers. I think we should accept that our own opinions on this sort of assessment are going to be very subjective.

I suppose what I'm trying to say is that I take a lot of opinions about managers with a major pinch of salt. Because to take them seriously it requires a level of trust of who gave that opinion that is hard to justify. There are too many pitfalls in terms of having that opinion. I don't really trust my own opinion about managers, so I'm unlikely to trust anybody else's.

And do I think Moyes is a good manager, or a good fit for West Ham? Hmm maybe..?

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kremlin · 7 years

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what does a kernel do? how far could you get without one?

hoo boy i’ve been waiting for this question. this’ll be a doozy. so many people are gonna angrily scroll and scroll and scroll past this, it’ll be awesome

WHAT IS A KERNEL?

the answer to your question doesn’t exist in the way you’d like. there is simply no way to easily explain what a kernel is in a reasonable number of words. an understanding of the kernel stems from both a prior understanding of what a computer is juxtaposed with what a computer appears to be. the kernel exists in the baffling, contradictory space between the two

i will try to answer this question in so, so many words. i’ve thought about how to do this very carefully and explicitly beforehand, moreso than any other answer i’ve given in this series before. stick with me and i promise you’ll walk away with the proper understanding of what a kernel is and how a kernel works

open your computer case or laptop chassis and take a look at what is inside. google an image if you absolutely must, but take a good long look at the machine in front of you. notice the numerous circuit boards, discrete circuit components, integrated circuits, ports, etc.

what you are looking at is a considerably large network of electric circuits. just like a light switch, a blender, a television, a radio, etc, your computer is an amalgamation of conductive wire interspliced with simple components through which electricity will flow in exactly the same way every single time just as the laws of physics describes. you can rely on this fact more than you can rely on anything else in your life

you are looking at computer hardware. hardware is defined here as the real-life circuitry constituting the building blocks for the logic that makes a computer. computer is defined as a very simple but important combination that i will reference many times throughout this post. it’s very important.

a computer is a processor and memory

that’s it. a processor, CPU, central processing unit, whatever you want to call it, hooked up to memory, RAM, random access memory, whatever you want to call it. everything else is just extra fluff. a computer doesn’t necessarily involve a hard drive, a keyboard, a monitor, etc.

a computer is a processor and memory

the processor, memory, and everything else in front of you constitutes one of a countless trillion combination of existing hardware that “works”. maybe you’re using an unmodified laptop, in which case many completely similar configurations exist. maybe you are one of those bright-eyed windbags who built their own computer and run a configuration of hardware that is more or less unique. in all cases, different pieces of hardware hooked together in different ways all seem to have the same end result: a computer (your idea of what a computer is)

now stop looking at your computer’s hardware and look at your monitor

you’ll see the same set of windows styled on the same desktop you’ve come to expect. if you’re using windows or OSX, you’re looking at exactly the same system, more or less, that you’d expect to find on a library computer, or your friend’s computer, or some stranger’s computer. you open up the same programs, the same web browsers, and everything works the same

don’t you find it a little strange how all of this can seem the same despite running on different hardware? you certainly should, or else you wouldn’t have asked this question

you are looking at computer software. software is defined here as the compiled result of code written in a programming language. it’s the ineffable, abstract entity that manifests itself on computer hardware. computer is a term i’ve already defined

let’s look at an immediate example of computer software, specifically a kind of software that runs in an operating system environment:

#include int main(int argc, char *argv[]) { printf("hello, world\n"); return 0;}

you very well might have seen the above code before, somewhere, sometime. it’s clear what the above accomplishes regardless of your programming proficiency. it prints the words “hello, world”. it prints “hello world” in all of one line. one function, just north of a dozen keystrokes

running the above program will print those words in the correct manner according to the context in which the program was run. maybe you run the program in a terminal window emulator in which case the words “hello, world” are rendered in front of you in a style consist with your terminal. maybe it’s 1950 and the words “hello, world” are automatically slapped out in ink on a sheet of paper in a teletype typewriter. maybe you are dialed in to a computer remotely, from another computer, and the words “hello, world” appear on your computer, somehow

in any case, the correct output method is chosen correctly. it’s chosen with zero help or suggestion from the printf() function, as it clearly doesn’t state how or where or when to print the words “hello, world”, nor provide the underlying subroutines needed to manipulate the electric circuits in your computer as to show the words “hello, world”

isn’t that interesting?

let’s take this concept to the next level. i mentioned windows and OSX earlier. these are two operating systems. operating systems are large bodies of software. not hardware. there is one windows 10, one OSX 10.11, and so on. one body of code that, somehow, when put on a computer of indeterminate hardware configuration, will result in the same operating system. are you starting to notice a trend?

i’m trying to get you to understand two related points here: software that a shortsighted person might consider to be the “most central and fundamental part of a computer”, software that calls printf() and assumes that content will be printed in the right place (somehow, magically) is actually not at all fundamental, and that huge amounts of logic and effort are needed to turn that printf() into the right pixels in front of you. and secondly, that this huge amount of logic and effort has to happen on indeterminate configurations of hardware, of which there are hundreds of trillions. so!

what sits between this fanciful, assumptive software and the cold hard copper and silicon of the hardware? the kernel

the kernel is a very special piece of software. the kernel is doubtlessly the most intricate, complex, nuanced, and error-free software entity in a computer. it comes as part of an operating system, which is also software. programs like notepad.exe or iTunes are also part of the operating system, but they aren’t the kernel nor are parts of the kernel. the kernel is its own thing, and it exists outside the realm of these “programs”. read the next paragraph very, very carefully

the kernel sits between all the programs you directly deal with (perhaps write yourself) on your computer. the kernel’s job is to take the abstract, context-sensitive requests of software running in the operating system (hereafter referred to as “userspace software”) and interpret, then actualize, them correctly on the hardware, which implicates controlling the hardware directly. the kernel’s job is to provide a consistent interface with the hardware, one that is “hardware agnostic” or “implementation nonspecific”, one that any (windows/osx/bsd/linux) program, written anywhere, can rely upon. the kernel achievs this by having authoritative, complete, and sole control of the computer’s hardware which it gains by being the first, last, and only code executed by hardware boot routines (BIOS/UEFI/etc)

i started this answer stating that there’s no easy and direct way to explain what a kernel is. the above paragraph is no exception – “handling requests from userspace software” doesn’t tell you anything about what a kernel does. the kernel does a whole lot of things, and i’ve categorized them as coherently as possible into the handful of topics below, which i’ll explain individually:

the scheduler - supreme authority manipulating the processor, controls when and which processes are executed

virtual memory manager - controls logistics, distribution and management of virtual memory + page tables/directories

the filesystem - anything and everything involving any and every kind of file

device drivers - device-specific drivers running specific devices

attachment drivers - device-independent drivers coalescing device-specific functionality into unified routines

interrupt subsystem - handles events as the occur, both hard and soft

let’s start with the scheduler. the scheduler is perhaps the most complicated part of the kernel alongside the virtual memory subsystem

learn about the sceduler and other fun topics in upcoming ‘part 2′ post

only very recently (~10 years) has it become the norm for computers to have more than one core in their processors. previously, most computers could only execute at most one sequence of linear instructions at a time. then there were computers with two cores, e.g. core2duo, then quadcores, then quadcores with split logical/physical cores. in the eyes of this discussion it isn’t important whether a computer has one or multiple cores, i just mention this so people don’t get confused or pedantic

on a busy day, you might be running a web browser with many tabs open, a video game, playing a movie, typing in a word processor, connected to a remote computer, sending/receiving email in your mail client and downloading a torrent. in front of you, you witness many programs appearing to run simultaneously which seems to conflict with the fact you only have 1 or 2 or 4 cores.

#frequently questioned answers

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onlinemarketinghelp · 5 years

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The Ultimate List of The Most Popular Online Business Ideas http://bit.ly/2InEVNO

It seems that there’s no shortage of great online business ideas. According to hostingfacts.com, there are 966 million websites in the world today and WordPress alone is responsible for over 76.5 million blogs.

Although there’s no one accurate figure, some studies suggest that over 100 million freelancers around the world are successfully running small online businesses from their homes.

The perks of being your own boss seem so great that many are willing to quit their stable jobs to embark on this entrepreneurial journey to start making your own money

So if you’re quietly contemplating the idea of starting something of your own, here’s a list of the most popular online business ideas that are within the reach of almost anyone who’s willing to take the plunge. From social media manager, to public speaking coach, to interior design consultant the options are endless.

This monster list of 53 internet business ideas below is awesome, but you may also be interested in watching our new video “10 Online Business Ideas to Make You Money.”

Best Online Business Ideas You Can Start Tomorrow

Here is the list of the top 53 online business ideas to get you started instantly. If you are looking for online business ideas for 2019 this is the only list you will need.

Best Online Business Ideas

1. Relationship Coach

Some people just seem to intuitively know more than others – they don’t get involved in destructive relationships or suffer from loss of self-knowledge. If you can relate to that description and feel your relationships have been fairly happy and stable, then maybe you’re one of them. You’ll need to invest in relevant workshops and books, get knowledgeable and certified before you can start coaching others, but it’s a fascinating business idea that will reward you both financially and morally.

Relationship Coach Sam Owen

2. Interior Design Consultants

Do you like finding interesting ways to decorate and want to share those ideas with others? Do you sift through magazines, clipping images, sorting them into make-believe rooms in your scrapbook wanting desperately to see these rooms for real? Become an interior design consultant and have people send you pictures, ideas, and dimensions to their rooms for you to decorate digitally for them. You can use the likes of a VR tool to pick furniture from real stores and choose a color scheme that suits the owner. The sky’s the limit with this role and creativity is in full flow.

3. Travel Consultant

Do you spend more time packing and unpacking your luggage than most of the people you know? Then you might be onto something! Travelling is one of the greatest passions of this age – the crazier and more nomadic, the better! If you have a knack for organizing memorable, authentic trips and enjoy the process of creating exciting day-to-day plans, why not do it for money? Become a travel consultant to help adventure-seekers plan their unforgettable holidays from A to Z and enjoy every second of your working day.

4. Nutritionist

The trend of healthy eating is here to say. Yet with so much contradictory advice online about what is good for us and what is not, more and more people turn to professional nutritionists for specialist tips and guidance. You can easily find free online courses to learn the fundamentals of this profession and start offering personalized nutrition plans online.

5. Yoga Instructor

Selling yoga classes online is a great source of income. There are hundreds of sites like Reflexion Yoga or Yogaia that offer these services but they all have one thing in common – the classes are taught by pros. To capitalize on this huge trend you’ll either have to team up with a great yoga teacher or be one yourself.

yogaia.com – live online yoga classes that fit around your life.

6. Public Speaking Coach

Naturally, the next one on the list is coaching people how to deliver great speeches. Public speaking is the number one fear on most people’s list – some fear it more than death! This skill can prove to be handy in many areas – from pitching to investors, to delivering key messages at global conferences. If you’re a natural on stage, help entrepreneurs rediscover their in-born ability to communicate by selling effective presentation templates and online coaching classes.

7. Business Consultant

Running a business consulting company is a great option for those who’ve been involved in the process of building a business before. Whether you’ve gained your experience through working with a number of different startups or learned the secrets of business management in a more corporate environment, helping other entrepreneurs achieve great results can include everything from business planning and forecasting to liaising with banks and institutions.

8. Accountant

Pick your niche (tax accounting, personal finance, bookkeeping, financial reports, etc.) and establish a good online presence by creating and promoting your website. Most of the solo traders and small businesses look for professional help with their accounts, so this is a huge area for potential work.

9. Investment Advisor

A lot of people with middle-class income would like to create a robust investment portfolio to secure a financially stable future but simply have no clue where to start. If you have professional experience as an investment analyst or do a lot of investment yourself, then offering investment advice for middle-class investors is a natural move for you.

10. Dating Coach

Online and mobile dating are booming. Thousands of people around the world are looking for love online and, unfortunately, many are unsuccessful in their quest. As a dating coach, you’d be responsible for helping your clients to organize and prepare for a perfect date, to refine their flirting skills and to advise on the do’s and don’ts of a dating life.

Johnny Cassel Dating Advice

Most Popular Online Service-Based Businesses

1. Wedding Planner

If spending hours pinning images of gorgeous table arrangements and bouquets ideas on Pinterest is your definition of a perfect job, then you will make an exceptional wedding planner. Sharp project management skills and an eye for detail are pretty much the most important requirements for this job – no fancy diplomas to stop you from breaking into this industry! You can sell your consulting services, wedding decorations, game packages, personalized gifts – the list of possibilities is endless (well, almost).

2. Party/Corporate Events Planner

Event planning is a bit like wedding planning, just on steroids. The scope of this idea is so large that it includes everything from cheesy stag and hen do parties to sophisticated product launches. Again, the entry barriers are rather low, but a flush work portfolio and a few glowing testimonials are something you need to consider to get a good head start in this field.

3. Get Baking!

From freshly baked butter croissants to colorful macaroons and pillow-soft morning bagels – the world of the great bake-off is a rich and ever-growing place. The beautiful thing about the online world is that a great passion can be turned into a great business almost overnight.

Tasty Bakery

4. Foreign Language Teacher

Everyone knows that the quickest way to learn a new language is to mingle with native speakers. If you were lucky enough to be born in an English, French, Spanish (insert any of the world’s main languages) speaking country, then missing out on the opportunity to cash in on the skills you take for granted is exactly that – missing out! Use online communication tools, such as Skype or Google Hangouts, to connect with learners and leverage your privileges. Time is money, so package your hours into teaching sessions and you’re good to go.

5. Kickstarter/Indiegogo Advisor

Grabbing the attention of curious browsers on the most popular crowdsourcing platforms like Kickstarter and Indiegogo is a tough job. If you’re inventive and know how to tap into human emotion, then this is a niche worth exploring. Many aspiring entrepreneurs look for personalized advice to carry their campaigns to the finish line, so try offering action-oriented eBooks or online courses targeted at this particular audience.

6. SEO Expert

One of the online world’s hottest professions at the moment, this business is a gold mine for the tech-savvy entrepreneurs. While everyone’s slightly obsessed with getting their sites SEO optimized, not many people can actually wrap their heads around this topic. If you decide to go into this field, you can think about offering link building, content creation, on-page SEO optimization, and similar one-off packages.

7. Selling Online Courses

Derek Halpern has built a really strong personal brand. He’s the founder of a software and business training company called Social Triggers and makes a LOT of money teaching people how to sell what they know best. And what he knows best is how to sell. If you’ve got some serious expertise, start making money out of it by selling online courses or simply teaching online.

Derek Halpern, Social Triggers

8. Mystery Shopper

Okay, it can be rather difficult to make a living solely from this but it’s a great place to start if you’re planning to build your own mystery shoppers’ army. Customer experience is one of the biggest obsessions of online and offline retailers, so there’s great potential here! Take a look at some of the existing platforms like Mystery Shopper and Secret Shopping.

9. Selling Professional Photos

The number of websites and blogs operating online demand a constant stream of high-quality, beautiful photographs that can help businesses attract and convert more customers. If you are a photographer who likes to try new things, supplying professional photos to businesses in this capacity can be a the most popular business idea for you. You can scale easily by setting up a stock photo library. This is a great business idea as it targets virtually every industry regardless of a company’s size. Check out sites like SmugMug, Photoshelter and iStockPhoto for more information.

10. Bug Testing

Bug testing is a service that no software company can ignore. If you can build a platform to crowdsource expert skills and resources to tackle this area, then you have solid chances of turning a profit. To learn more about this model, look into BugFinders and CrowdSourceTesting.

11. Video Producer

YouTube is the third largest site in the world, so there’s no surprise that video is becoming one of the main communication mediums for businesses of all types and sizes. If you have video filming or editing knowledge, it won’t take you long to build your clientele. Everything from video production workshops and video editing services to soundtrack libraries and DIY tutorials can appeal to the business world. Producing a video might be one of the most attractive online business ideas with lots of creativity and challenges.

12. Graphic Designer

Graphic designers are always in demand from small businesses to large multinationals. Starting a graphic design business can allow you to tap into this online business opportunity. Showcasing your experience with your past portfolio can help you gain customers without aggressive outreach.

13. Website Developer

In the same vein as an app developer, website development is in constant demand as businesses are always trying to upgrade and improve their websites to get more sales. This means that you can work on new and existing websites concurrently, and get to try new things all the time. If being constantly challenged is what you are looking for, a business venture into website development is the online business idea for you.

14. App Development

If you are an app developer with amazing skills why not try your hand at an internet business in app development. Apps are an amazing lucrative market so it is not surprising that more and more companies are investing in them. This means that there is a rising need for app developers to create their applications. Being an app developer is a great online business opportunity as you can work on vastly different applications on a daily basis.

15. Theme Designer

Just like a website developer, a theme designer is working with websites but in a different way. Choosing theme designer as your online business idea means building new website themes for business to use for their website. This could mean researching popular themes, identifying their pain points, and creating a theme that solves these pain points while remaining true to the popularity of the previous theme. If you are an expert in a certain industry, creating themes for this industry could see you reap much success.

Most Profitable People Based Businesses

1. Translator

If you are gifted with a more than one language but have no interest in teaching others, try translating. Many companies need their website and collateral translated when they move into a different market. You can help them achieve it, while also keeping active in more than one language. Keep in mind the most common way of billing is cost per word so price wise to make smart money from this great online business idea.

2. Social Media Manager

Social media is an integral part of any business but it’s time-consuming and ever-changing – so really quite difficult to keep up with and, more importantly, capitalize on. Many business owners are willing to outsource this time-intensive task, so it’s a great opportunity for social media fanatics. Bundle together a few interesting offers, such as “Startup social media kit” or “Small Business Social Media Starter Kit” that encompass everything from social media graphics to analytics reports and the seamless experience will bring you more clients than you expect.

Aggressive Growth Marketing

3. Remote Customer Service Agent

If you enjoy helping people but don’t want to be stuck in a call center or office all day, become a remote customer service agent and help people from the comfort of your own home. Choose between helping people via chat, email, phone, video, or other ways and save the day for people every day. This may not make you your first million, but it feels great to help people.

4. Virtual Assistant

Similar to a remote customer service agent you can do a role that would traditionally be done in an office but you can do it at home. A virtual assistant can mean anything from a data entry person to a researcher so don’t limit yourself with this role, be open to try new things and uncover new skills while getting paid.

5. Makeup Artist

Lots of successful makeup artists started their career on YouTube. All you need is a strong portfolio and a professional-looking website to get this gig going. Offer a couple of free makeup sessions to build your reputation and use content marketing to spread the word online. When you feel that you’ve got enough momentum going, start selling makeup tutorials, makeup products, and personalized tips.

6. Music Teacher

Can you play a musical instrument? Chances are someone is looking for a teacher right now. You can build a subscription-based online business or use your website to generate leads and teach via Skype or in person. Browse GuitarTricks and JustinGuitar for some inspiration.

7. Personal Trainer

Kayla Itsines is probably one of the best success stories of this industry. She’s built a whole Kayla Fitness empire and grown her services from simply writing personal training plans to selling official fitness apps and books. You can jumpstart your career by offering free taster video classes and personal tips on your website and harvesting social media sites like Instagram and Facebook to promote your services.

Personal Trainer Kayla Itsines

8. Remote Sales Team

As more and more companies take on the lean, mean approach to business, outsourcing cold calling and telesales functions becomes a sort of standard in the startup and small business environment. Whether you want to sell highly-targeted sales pitches or customer data, such as phone numbers and email addresses, the potential is vast.

9. Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing is where a person promotes a product that another merchant sells. Using advertising, social media, blogging and more, an affiliate marketer can attract customers to their landing page. When customers click a link to buy the product they will then be brought to the merchant’s store to buy the product. As an internet business idea, this is great for another no matter their previous experience.

10. Lead Generation Service Provider

Most businesses are chasing conversions and looking for ways to increase conversion rates. This means investing in sales activities like lead generation that could be time-consuming. Because of this many companies outsource this to a lead generation service provider. If you are good on the phone and enjoy researching and doing outreach to strangers then this is your calling!

11. Become an Influencer

An influencer is someone with a large follower base on social media who is seen as an expert in a particular area, like makeup or fitness. These people keep busy by posting regularly about their lives and promote products which they feel are good to possess. Sarah Phillips is a world-renowned food and nutrition influencer who posts about food creations she has made to her 10.9k (and growing) following. What is great about this internet business idea is that you can get paid to promote a business to your following, similar to affiliate marketing. Influencer marketing is a huge online business trend right now that you can capitalize on. Try your hand at Vlogging and starting a Podcast which are under-utilized channels of communication for influencers right now.

Online Business Opportunity Ideas

1. Handmade Goods Shop

It can take you less than a day to build a storefront to showcase your work and connect with customers on platforms like Amazon and Etsy. If you’re into crafts and DIY, it’s definitely a viable business option to consider.

2. Become a Private Chef

If cooking is one of your personal passions, there are dozens of opportunities to turn it into a decent business venture. You can start by setting up a catering website, experimenting with pop-up food stalls and local food markets, or joining platforms that encourage cooking enthusiasts to squeeze some money out of their passion. And if you’re not camera-shy, you can teach people how to cook special meals by selling online classes.

3. Dropshipping

Dropshipping is the easiest option to start an ecommerce business without having to buy any products in advance. Sell a variety of products to customers across the world, while setting your own process, building and promoting your own brand, all without needing to invest in warehousing or manufacturing costs. You don’t need to pay for inventory until it’s sold to an actual customer. Check out our guide to mastering dropshipping to learn more about this great business opportunity.

4. Fresh Produce Delivery

Organic, fresh food is somewhat of a modern craze. Fruit and vegetable deliveries, local farm boxes, and freshly-made goodies from local producers can help you kick off a business that not only encourages a healthier lifestyle but also supports the local economy.

5. Open a T-Shirt Online Shop

Platforms like Spreadshirt and Shopify have made it insanely simple to start an online t-shirt business for anyone with a speck of imagination and an eye for design. But it doesn’t need to be an online t-shirt shop you set up you can start an ecommerce shop selling anything.

TruffleShuffle

6. Natural & Organic Beauty Shop

Online shoppers are getting more and more conscientious about their choices, and especially so when it comes to beauty products. Running a beauty shop that’s built on strong ethos and values that resonate with nature and animal lovers is one of the hottest online business ideas right now. Tropic Skin Care seems to be doing a great job connecting with these shoppers.

7. Women Sportswear

With LuluLemon spearheading the way, online sportswear shops for women are quickly climbing to the top of the most popular online business ideas amongst ecommerce entrepreneurs. Since yoga pants are clearly here to stay, it’s safe to say that the athleisure trend is one of the best and, perhaps, the least explored niches in ecommerce right now.

8. 3D-Printed Products

One of the biggest technological breakthroughs of this age, 3D printing is dictating a new strategy in the ecommerce world. Some of the best selling 3D-printed products include jewelry, home accessories, bicycle parts, tech accessories and more. For some beautiful examples check out 3DigitalCooks, and DanitPeleg.

9. Ethical Fashion Brand

One thing is clear – clothes and accessories will always be one of the super-profitable online business ideas for an ecommerce site. However, with so many boutiques and brands already online, rising above the noise is extremely difficult. Yet, one promising idea that savvy entrepreneurs have probably already noticed is the booming trend of ��ethical fashion”. Brands, such as Pachacuti, People Tree, Sea Salt, and Matt & Nat have successfully crafted their brands around the concept of organic, ethical production of fashion items and are riding the trend to the top of the strongest brands list.

10. Mystery Objects Shop

If you have an eye for quirky stuff, maybe running a mystery object shop could help you combine the thirst for curious things with a steady source of income.

Muddy Creatures are nailing the concept of a surprise purchase that taps into the explorer instinct many of us possess. There’s no exact science or skill fueling this business idea – let your imagination go wild…

Muddy Creatures

Successful Online Business Ideas

1. Online Researcher

Although it sounds like a too-good-to-be-true idea, some people are successfully earning a living off their skill to find information online. From data research for infographics to market research for budding startups, talented researchers know that you can put a price tag on knowledge.

2. Proofreader

If, on the other hand, you love reading but not so much writing, becoming a proofreader could be your calling. Have other people send you their manuscripts for books, research papers, or whatever else you are interested in reading about, and give them honest feedback before they publish their works of art. This job requires attention to detail and expertise in the area to ensure that everything is ready to print.

3. CV Writing

Banging out a winning CV is a mission impossible for many. If you’re good with words and know how to highlight people’s best qualities, CV writing could be a pretty sweet place to start a business. Additionally, you can sell slick CV templates that will help job hunters to get noticed faster and yield better results.

4. Speechwriting

Giving speeches is a terrifying experience. Giving bad speeches… Well, no one wants to be in that situation. Wordsmiths have a hugely valuable skill to win people over using nothing else but the power of well-strung sentences. If you can write, cash in on this skill by crafting speeches that make birthdays, weddings, award ceremonies, or political debates a more memorable experience.

5. Self-Published Author

If you have the next Harry Potter manuscript sitting in your drawer and the publishing industry hasn’t been kind to you, try self-publishing. Using tools like Amazon’s direct publishing or working with dedicated consultants like I_Am, you not only get the satisfaction of pushing your work out there but also retain 100% of your royalties! Don’t think you can write a good novel? Then stick to what you know – self-help is a money-making genre!

6. Ghostwriter

If writing is your thing but you are lacking a topic to write about become a ghostwriter for someone else. If normally requires you to write about someone or something in a lot of detail. It can take time and much research to finish this type of project so be sure to have a few months free to give to it.

7. Content Curation

The German Economist Schumpeter once said that there are “no original ideas”, only new combinations of old ones. Curation of curiosity-fueling content is an intriguing and little-known business model. One of the best success stories out there is Brainpickings – a platform that describes itself as “an inventory of cross-disciplinary interestingness, spanning art, science, design, history, philosophy, and more”. The subscription-based model and successful utilization of affiliate links have turned the blog into a self-sustaining business.

Brainpickings.com – An inventory of the meaningful life.

How to Start an Online Business

Starting an online business, no matter how small you aim to have it can take time and money. It can also involve legal research and some accounting knowledge so you may find there is some upskilling involved in many different areas. Have no fear though because once you get the wheels moving on your adventure starting an online business will be fun and motivating. As a great source of income, online business opportunities are abundant as you don’t need to be located next to a customer in order to provide the goods or services to them.

The most important first step in how to start an online business is to:

Decide Your Business

This is the most important step as without it you don’t have a business. Check out our above list of the most popular online business ideas and choose which one suits you best.

Research Your Industry

Get to know what your industry is like. Maybe there is a pricing structure most of your competitor follow that will be good for you. Or maybe once you discover your competitors you will decide that your industry is over-saturated and you need to change your business idea slightly to compete.

Create Your Brand

With every good business comes a good brand and if you figure this out at the start you can become a more successful online business in the beginning. This includes having an amazing website, and social media (if your customers are there), killer logo creation, engaging in some PR, and some more outreach and marketing activities.

Begin Getting Customers

The final step to starting an online business is actually getting your first customer. You cannot have the best online business without having great customers behind you. This involves discovering how to get in front of your audience, sending out the right message to entice customers, and devising a pricing structure that works for the majority of customers to effectively give customers what they need.

Conclusion

Online business ideas are endless and all-inclusive. Most office-based jobs can now be done online through freelancing or remote working. The beauty of technology means that profitable online businesses will keep growing and growing, making the world a truly global marketplace. If you are considering moving away from the traditional career path and want to start your own business, read through our list of business ideas a few times and contemplate the many ways you can start a successful online business today.

Want to Learn More?

Free Business Name Generator

The One-Product Business: This Entrepreneur’s Simple Formula for Success

Business Ideas That Will Make You Money

What Should You Sell Online

Is there anything else you’d like to know more about and wish was included in this article? Let us know in the comments below!

The post The Ultimate List of The Most Popular Online Business Ideas appeared first on Oberlo.

from Oberlo

Although there’s no one accurate figure, some studies suggest that over 100 million freelancers around the world are successfully running small online businesses from their homes.

The perks of being your own boss seem so great that many are willing to quit their stable jobs to embark on this entrepreneurial journey to start making your own money

This monster list of 53 internet business ideas below is awesome, but you may also be interested in watching our new video “10 Online Business Ideas to Make You Money.”

Best Online Business Ideas You Can Start Tomorrow

Here is the list of the top 53 online business ideas to get you started instantly. If you are looking for online business ideas for 2019 this is the only list you will need.

Best Online Business Ideas

1. Relationship Coach

Relationship Coach Sam Owen

2. Interior Design Consultants

3. Travel Consultant

4. Nutritionist

5. Yoga Instructor

yogaia.com – live online yoga classes that fit around your life.

6. Public Speaking Coach

7. Business Consultant

8. Accountant

9. Investment Advisor

10. Dating Coach

Johnny Cassel Dating Advice

Most Popular Online Service-Based Businesses

1. Wedding Planner

2. Party/Corporate Events Planner

3. Get Baking!

Tasty Bakery

4. Foreign Language Teacher

5. Kickstarter/Indiegogo Advisor

6. SEO Expert

7. Selling Online Courses

Derek Halpern, Social Triggers

8. Mystery Shopper

9. Selling Professional Photos

10. Bug Testing

11. Video Producer

12. Graphic Designer

13. Website Developer

14. App Development

15. Theme Designer

Most Profitable People Based Businesses

1. Translator

2. Social Media Manager

Aggressive Growth Marketing

3. Remote Customer Service Agent

4. Virtual Assistant

5. Makeup Artist

6. Music Teacher

7. Personal Trainer

Personal Trainer Kayla Itsines

8. Remote Sales Team

9. Affiliate Marketing

10. Lead Generation Service Provider

11. Become an Influencer

Online Business Opportunity Ideas

1. Handmade Goods Shop

2. Become a Private Chef

3. Dropshipping

4. Fresh Produce Delivery

5. Open a T-Shirt Online Shop

TruffleShuffle

6. Natural & Organic Beauty Shop

7. Women Sportswear

8. 3D-Printed Products

9. Ethical Fashion Brand

One thing is clear – clothes and accessories will always be one of the super-profitable online business ideas for an ecommerce site. However, with so many boutiques and brands already online, rising above the noise is extremely difficult. Yet, one promising idea that savvy entrepreneurs have probably already noticed is the booming trend of “ethical fashion”. Brands, such as Pachacuti, People Tree, Sea Salt, and Matt & Nat have successfully crafted their brands around the concept of organic, ethical production of fashion items and are riding the trend to the top of the strongest brands list.

10. Mystery Objects Shop

If you have an eye for quirky stuff, maybe running a mystery object shop could help you combine the thirst for curious things with a steady source of income.

Muddy Creatures

Successful Online Business Ideas

1. Online Researcher

2. Proofreader

3. CV Writing

4. Speechwriting

5. Self-Published Author

6. Ghostwriter

7. Content Curation

Brainpickings.com – An inventory of the meaningful life.

How to Start an Online Business

The most important first step in how to start an online business is to:

Decide Your Business

This is the most important step as without it you don’t have a business. Check out our above list of the most popular online business ideas and choose which one suits you best.

Research Your Industry

Create Your Brand

Begin Getting Customers

Conclusion

Want to Learn More?

Free Business Name Generator

The One-Product Business: This Entrepreneur’s Simple Formula for Success

Business Ideas That Will Make You Money

What Should You Sell Online

Is there anything else you’d like to know more about and wish was included in this article? Let us know in the comments below!

The post The Ultimate List of The Most Popular Online Business Ideas appeared first on Oberlo.

http://bit.ly/2PbwW89 April 10, 2019 at 06:29PM http://bit.ly/2D912US

0 notes

silver-and-ivory · 7 years

Text

@slatestarscratchpad

I kind of disagree with your post here. Disagree is sort of a strong word, since I agree with your conclusion; but I think your argument in the middle is shaky.

You say that-

What scares me is the possibility that the kinds of cultures that promote *my* values are memetically unfit. Liberalism hasn’t been looking so healthy lately. There are all these people saying that we should stop resolving problems through debate, that violence is good, that free speech is stupid, that scientific truth-seeking should be circumscribed by the greater good, et cetera. These people are on both the left and the right, but the left is scarier since it has momentum and the tide of history on its side. The left is losing badly in the sense that Republicans control everything, but most Republicans are sort of idiots (sorry, it had to be said) who are resisting illiberalism for the wrong reasons, kind of by coincidence. Like, regressive-leftism would have conquered everything by now except for the weird coincidence that 51% of the population is kind of crazy in a way that happens to exactly counterbalance them. THe number of people who are resisting for the right reasons is a small minority.

As far as I can tell, your argument summed up in a few sentences is-

There are many people on the left who are against free speech. The left is generally becoming more and more powerful historically, so these people on the left against free speech are going to become more and more powerful. There are very few people who oppose these people on the left for the correct reasons; most of the people who oppose these anti-free-speech leftists are doing it because of stupid tribal affiliations or irrational beliefs, and will soon be defeated.

Therefore, liberalism is doing very poorly and is possibly memetically unfit.

I disagree with your pessimism about the success of anti-free-speech-leftists. While it’s true that progressivism as a whole has generally succeeded and become more powerful throughout history, I don’t really see why that would apply to anti-free-speech leftists and not to pro-free-speech leftists.

Secondly, I don’t think that the examples you give (anti-free-speech liberals, stupid conservatives) actually show that liberalism is memetically unfit. To be more specific- since liberalism is a really large category of ideas -I don’t think that your examples show that free speech is memetically unfit, i.e. that free speech results in self-destructive and bad ideas becoming more common. Furthermore, I think that free speech is memetically fit, i.e. that it results in less self-destructive ideas and more good ideas becoming common.

I also disagree that tyranny is at all an effective solution, even in the short term.

Your examples do not show that liberalism is memetically unfit.

Your examples are exactly what one would expect even if free speech worked fine. It seems to me that public support for free speech is more of a pendulum. Look at, say, public attitudes (rather than governmental decisions) during the 20th century. During WWI, free speech is increasingly restricted (both socially and governmentally); during WWII free speech was instead emphasized as one of the major rights to be protected. That was followed by the Second Red Scare, which successfully stifled social freedom of speech during the 50s. But the 50s were followed by the 60s, which were increasingly dominated by the pro-free-speech New Left. I am not familiar with the decades since then enough to summarize them, so I’ll skip to 9/11. After 9/11 the general atmosphere was that free speech could fck off in favor of safety and terrorist-killing.

The general pattern here is that political ~atmospheres~ towards free speech tend to vary cyclically. Right now the political atmosphere in some places is such that free speech is not supported. Historical evidence suggests that this is temporary and that we are simply in one of the troughs.

Someone during the Second Red Scare might conclude that free speech was dying. That does not, however, actually mean that it was dying; merely that it was not as strong as it once had been.

(Also, a cursory search for attitudes towards free speech turns up this, from 2013-

Public support for civil liberties has risen over the last 40 years. People were asked whether members of certain politically or socially controversial groups should be allowed to make a public speech favoring their point-of-view, have a book advocating their position in a public library, or teach in a college. The groups asked about were those “against all churches and religions” (anti-religionists), those believing that “blacks are genetically inferior” (racists), Communists, those favoring “doing away with elections and letting the military run the country” (militarists), homosexuals, and Muslim clergymen who preach “hatred of the United States” (Muslim extremists). (For the wording of these questions see Appendix 1: Question Wordings.) As Figures 1-6 illustrate, there have been appreciable increases in support for allowing public speeches, books in libraries, and college teaching for almost all groups. Approval typically increased by 10 to 30+ percentage points. For example, allowing anti-religionists to make speeches rose from 66.1% in 1972 to 76.4% in 2012; permitting a Communist library book grew from 53.4% in 1972 to 70.5% in 2012; and accepting a homosexual college teacher climbed from 48.1% in 1973 to 82.7% in 2012. (For full percentages for all groups and all years, see the attached tables.)

The one notable exception was for racists. There was no clear trend on civil liberties for racists and the changes from earliest-to-latest year were modest. Support for allowing a public speech fell from 61.5% in 1976 to 57.1% in 2012 (−4.4 percentage points), for a library book it went up from 59.8% in 1976 to 62.6% in 2012 (+2.8 points), and for college teaching it rose from 40.5% in 1976 to 45.6% in 2012 (+5.1 points). The average 1976-2012 change on these three items was only (+1.2 points). It appears that the growing disapproval of racists suppressed the general rise in acceptance of civil liberties for this group.

“Oh no! Support for racists’ freedom of speech didn’t rise as much as support for other people’s speech! This is horrible!” — It’s unfortunate, but it’s not exactly doomsday, either.

Other interesting article here, which is where I found the link to the survey above.)

Free speech is memetically fit (that is, it leads to the spread of good ideas and the not-spread of bad ideas).

In the US, which has free speech, public opinion has shifted significantly. We should pay attention to the Overton window rather than to the amounts of people who are wrong, since the great majority of Americans have been wrong for hundreds of years, and the only interesting thing is to what degree they are wrong.

The Overton window in question has shifted significantly and I think that it has shifted in a good direction, with the centrist opinion shifting from “slave-ownership is fine, probably” to “what the fuck, of course slavery is evil”; from “marital rape? what” to “marital rape is really really bad ://”; from “poor people allowed to vote?? radical!” to “everyone should be allowed to vote (except not prisoners)”; and so on.

There’s also the general decrease in discrimination against various groups in the US. You are aware of this, I know, since you posted a chart showing decrease in some opinions favoring discrimination in response to jeysiec. I am not sure if you have made the connection between that and free speech.

It’s true that this can’t be shown to be the result of free speech, but I think it’s weak evidence in favor of the proposition that free speech enables good shit to happen, especially since a lot of these changes come from activism and especially things like mudraking journalism during the Progressive Era, the Second Great Awakening in the 1840s or the civil rights movement in the 1960s.

Perhaps most importantly, however, tyranny is not only ineffectual, but also directly contradictory to your goals. The low-entropy state you mention I believe refers to freedom. Like, liberalism creates an atmosphere where freedom doesn’t deteriorate as quickly into tyranny.

It is completely backwards to try to preserve the low-entropy state by making the low-entropy state high-entropy. Once you’ve imposed tyranny there is no liberty to protect. There is no way that liberalism is worse at preventing tyranny than tyranny is.

Of course, this might be more complex, with multiple tradeoffs between different types of tyranny and different types of liberty. But without more specificity, it becomes self-contradictory.

#the laws of justice and liberalism #effortpost #freedom of speech #slavery cw #rape mention cw #apush with silver-and-ivory

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ungoodgatsby · 8 years

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Snape is neither unequivocally good nor bad, and that is what makes him interesting: an analysis

Fan conversations about Severus Snape in the Harry Potter series are very polarized. There are fans who are very sympathetic towards him and others fans who think he is the worst, to put it in simplified terms. I can’t help to think both of these stark sets of opinions are wrong and I really wish fans were more willing to analyze Snape’s role in the overall story (rather than just his individual actions) and what they mean thematically and symbolically. So here we go...

We’re supposed to draw specific parallels between Harry, Snape, and Voldemort. In Deathly Hallows, Harry specifically refers to the three of them as the lost boys of Hogwarts. They all are (1) half-blood wizards with (2) not-so-great home lives (3) who have some particular magical talents (4) who find a place and home at Hogwarts.

Now the connections and similarities between Harry and Tom Riddle have been pointed out explicitly since at least Chamber of Secrets. However, this is also the book where Dumbledore tells us that it is our choices, far more than our abilities, that determine who we are. Snape fitting into the comparison with Harry and Voldemort is only uncovered in the last book, when his full backstory is revealed. Because there is so much going on in that book, including just what’s going on with Snape, this nuance gets overlooked in the analysis of the Harry Potter saga.

Now each pair amongst the three have some particular parallels that the third doesn’t have. (Both Harry and Voldemort are orphans while Snape is not; both Harry and Snape are bullying victims while Voldemort is not; both Snape and Voldemort resent their Muggle fathers, while this doesn’t apply to Harry, etc.) However, all three don’t need to be exact matches for the power of the story or parallel to work.

It is our choices that determine who we are. Voldemort is power-hungry, cruel, uncaring, unloving, with no ability to trust or foster friendships or value human souls. Harry is a flawed human being, as we all are, but ultimately good. He stands up for what is right, confronts bullies, is generally kind and accepting, and altogether brave, and and so loving he is willing to sacrifice his own life for others.

Snape is… somewhere in between. He is spiteful and bitter. He is a bully, and the worst kind of bully in my humble opinion, an adult in authority who bullies children. He’s made a lot of mistakes (the word mistakes being understatement here) getting involved in Voldemort’s movement the first time around, but also spent his entire life trying to make up for being involved in a movement that ultimately resulted in the death of the one person he ever really cared for and loved and had a meaningful relationship with -- his childhood best friend and the woman he was ‘in love’ with, Lily. He risks his safety, well-being, and life, and -- in the end -- does give his life in pursuit of protecting Lily’s son and defeating Voldemort. If we can take Snape telling off Phineus for using the word ‘mudblood’ as an indication, he grew out his bigotry. (Although I have a theory that it wasn’t the blood supremacy stuff that was the main draw to the Death Eaters for Snape. Yes, he expressed the ideals, even going to far as to use a slur towards his best friend, but I think he was more in it for power via the dark arts, but I digress.)

In the final battle between Harry and Voldemort, Harry calls for Voldemort to feel remorse. Throughout the whole series, the emphasis on the power of love as the strongest magic there is has been repeated ad nauseum. I don’t think I have to point out of the importance of ‘the power of love’ in Harry’s journey; the books do that for me wonderfully. Voldemort never felt remorse or love, and the idea that they were important or necessary was ridiculous to him.

Snape felt remorse and he loved, limited as it may be. This is the redeeming thing about him. Love and remorse were what inspired him to do things like be a triple agent/reverse mole between Voldemort and Dumbledore, gaining both invaluable information for Dumbledore, but also setting himself in a place of power as a Death Eater so that he could continue to do Dumbledore’s work and play Voldemort after Dumbledore’s death. I want to keep using the word invaluable over and over again, because Snape got the Gryffindor sword to Harry, and Snape was the last conduit of necessary info from Dumbledore to Harry, and Snape was covertly protecting the Hogwarts’ students from a worse reign of terror under the Carrows. Yes, on a personal level, Snape is a pretty awful person and I am not denying it or defending it. He is very unnecessarily cruel to his students, lets himself be blinded by his old resentments, and is kinda a major douche. But there is a difference between being a major douche and being sadistically, power hunger, completely loveless evil like Voldemort.

A lot of fans, I’ve noticed, have called Snape’s actions selfish, or something of the sort. I kind of a agree, but also think many acts of seeking redemption or forgiveness have an element of selfishness to them. We want to feel better about ourselves or we want to assuage our guilt. Sometimes we want something, like a renewed relationship, whether romantic, friendship, or familial, that has been damaged by our actions.

But Snape really had nothing to gain, and wasn’t really looking to gain anything. I think it’s quite clear he didn’t care about his life or reputation beyond protecting Lily’s child after her sacrificial death (and how that tied in to destroying Voldemort, because Voldemort was out to destroy Lily’s child). He didn’t care if he was remembered as a villain or traitor or the man who murdered Dumbledore, that was how dedicated he was to his mission. Honestly, I think if it is was up to Snape, Harry never would’ve learned that he cared deeply for Lily, but Snape was dying and the only way to give Harry the necessary information from Dumbledore and have it believed was to let Harry know the whole story.

Now, I don’t think he compares to Harry, who I think is one of the most loving, most selfless, and most brave characters in the story (although Harry is definitely too humble to think of himself this way). However, Snape was also loving and selfless and brave, again, in his limited way.

The real tragedy of Snape’s character is that he couldn’t let go of resentment and be a better person and teacher. He is able to give up his safety, his life, his reputation, any other aims or goals he had for his life, in the ultimate act of remorse for the person he loved. But petty resentment? Nope, that’s off the table.

He’s no Harry Potter. If we’ve established that the difference that makes up the gap between our parallelled lost boys of Hogwarts, our three brothers, it is that Snape can feel love and remorse when Voldemort can’t/won’t. The difference between Harry and Snape, the lonely kids with abusive childhoods and ratty, ill-fitting close who are just looking for a place to belong and people to belong with… the difference is that Harry is able to forgive. He’s able to shake Dudley’s -- his childhood bully’s -- hand, share a nod with Draco, call his most hated teacher “the bravest man I ever knew.” He’s able, after time, after growing up and gaining perspective, see past being wronged to forgive, to not hold onto resentment and bitterness. He gets hurt, loses loved ones to death, but that doesn’t stop him from forming new relationships. Harry might claim in moments of intense grief, such as after Sirius’ death, that he doesn’t want to feel or care anymore, but he never stops feeling or caring.

It’s when you bring Snape into the well-defined parallels of Harry and Voldemort that you get this more nuanced look than just good and evil outcomes. I think that is why Snape is bickered over so much in fandom, because he’s not something that can easily be categorized or written off. He’s not evil in that way Voldemort or Bellatrix or Umbridge are, but he’s not Harry, Ron, or Hermione, humanly-flawed but still stand up examples of friendship, loyalty, and bravery. Snape’s not someone we can call good without major caveats. But he’s so important in the Harry Potter story, and not just plotwise, but character-wise and theme-wise as well.

While the Harry Potter story does seem in many ways a purveyor of that traditional good vs evil fantasy trope, Snape frustrates that, not being a moderately flawed hero or an outright villain or just a jerky stock character that can be brushed aside without need for further thought. He’s not nice. He did some really good things; he did some really bad things. He was one of Harry’s biggest obstacles throughout his schooling, but Harry also couldn’t have completed his mission, killed Voldemort, saved the wizarding world without him. In a story about love and love’s redemption, Snape loves but it’s necessarily pure or healthy. In a story about choices defining who we are, Snape makes contradictory ones. In a good vs evil story, Snape is there, not really fitting into either, and that’s what makes him fascinating and endlessly debatable. What is not debatable is that in the Harry Potter saga Snape is one of the fulcrum on which the story relies.

#Severus Snape #Harry Potter #HP #Harry Potter meta #Severus Snape meta #snape #professor snape #please someone talk about snape with me in a nuanced literary analysis way

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carefullydoesit-blog · 8 years

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EVERYTHING ON MY DESK / IN MY ROOM RELATED TO BROODTHAERS

‘To be bien pensant …or not to be. To be blind’

What is Art? Ever since the nineteenth century the question has been posed incessantly to the artist, to the museum director, to the art lover alike. I doubt, in fact, that it is possible to give a serious definition of Art, unless we examine the question in terms of a constant, I mean the transformation of art into merchandise. This process is accelerated nowadays to the point where artistic and commercial values have become superimposed. If we are concerned with the phenomenon of reification, then Art is a particular representation of the phenomenon – a form of tautology. We could then justify it as affirmation, and at the same time carve out for it a dubious existence. We would then have to consider what such a definition might be worth. One fact is certain: commentaries on Art are the result of shifts in the economy. It seems doubtful to us that such commentaries can be described as political.

Art is a prisoner of its phantasms and its function as magic; it hangs on our bourgeois walls as a sign of power, it flickers along the peripeties of our history like a shadow-play – but is it artistic? To read Byzantine writing on the subject reminds us of the sex of the angels, of Rabelais, or of debates at the Sorbonne. At the moment, inopportune linguistic investigations all end in a single gloss, which its authors like to call criticism. Art and literature … which of the moon’s faces is hidden? And how many clouds and fleeting visions are there.

I have discovered nothing here, not even America. I choose to consider Art as a useless labor, apolitical and of little moral significance. Urged on by some base inspiration, I confess I would experience a kind of pleasure at being proved wrong. A guilty pleasure, since it would be at the expense of the victims, those who thought I was right.

Monsieur de la Palice is one of my customers. He loves novelties, and he, who makes other people laugh, finds my alphabet a pretext for his own laughter. My alphabet is painted.

All of this is quite obscure. The reader is invited to enter into this darkness to decipher a theory or to experience feelings of fraternity, those feelings that unite all men, and particularly the blind.

Ten Thousand Francs Reward (1974)

1. OBJECTS

Q: Do objects function for you as words?

A: I use the object as a zero word.

Q: Weren’t they originally literary objects?

A: You could call them that, I suppose, although the most recent objects have escaped this denomination, which has a pejorative reputation (I wonder why?). These recent objects carry, in a most sensational manner, the marks of a language. Words, numerations, signs inscribed on the object itself.

Q: Did you, at the beginning of your activity, follow so definite a direction?

A: I was haunted by a certain painting by Magritte, the one in which words figure. With Magritte, you have a contradiction between the painted word and the painted object, a subversion of the sign of language and that of painting so as to restrict the notion of the subject.

Q: Do you still value any objects?

A: Yes, a few. They are poetic ones, that is to say, they are guilty in the sense of “art as language” and innocent in the sense of language as art. Those, for example, that I shall describe to you.

A tricolored thighbone entitled Femur d’Homme Belge. Also an old portrait of a general that I picked up at a flea market, I forget where. I made a little hole in the general’s tight mouth and inserted a cigar butt. In this object-portrait, there is a fortuitous tonal harmony. The paint is brown, sort of pissy, and so is the cigar butt. Not just any cigar would suit any general’s mouth …the caliber of the cigar, the shape of the mouth.

Q: Would you call it the art of portraiture?

A: I prefer to believe that it acts like a pedagogical object. The secret of art must, whenever possible, be unveiled – the dead general smokes an extinguished cigar. So, counting the thighbone, I’ve made two useful objects. I wish I’d been able to do other pieces as satisfying to me as these. But I distrusted the genre. The portrait and the thighbone seem to have the strength to make a dent in the falsity inherent in culture. With the thighbone, nationality and the structure of the human being are united. The soldier is not far behind.

Q: There are many shells, mussels, and eggs in your work. Are these accumulations?

A: The subject is rather that of the relationship established between the shells and the object that supports them: table, chair, or cooking pot. It’s on a table that you serve an egg. But on my table, there are too many eggs, and the knife, the fork, and the plate are absent – absences necessary to give speaking presence to the egg at the table, or to give the spectator an original idea of the chicken.

Q: And the mussels – a dream of the North Sea?

A: A mussel conceals a volume. When the mussels overflow the pot, they are not boiling over in accord with physical law, but following the rules of artifice whose purpose is the construction of an abstract shape.

Q: Does this mean that you are close to an academic system?

A: It is a rhetoric that thrives on the new dictionary of received ideas. I don’t so much organize objects and ideas as organize encounters of different functions that all refer to the same world: the table and the egg, the mussel and the pot to the table and to art, to the mussel and to the chicken.

Q: The world of the imaginary?

A: Or that of sociological reality. It is that for which Magritte did not fail to reproach me. He thought I was more sociologist than artist.

2. INDUSTRIAL SIGNALIZATIONS

Q: The plaques made of plastic – do they correspond to this sociological reality?

A: I thought using plastic as a material would free me from the past, since this material didn’t exist then. I was so taken with the idea that I forgot that plastic had already been “ennobled” by its appearance on the walls of galleries and museums under the signature of the nouveaux realistes and American poop. What interested me was the warping of representation when executed in this material.

Q: They were published in editions of seven?

A: I myself was responsible for the edition, since no gallery would assume the risk of bringing them out at that time. To make them I did get some help from the private sector.

Q: What about the language of these plaques?

A: Let’s call them rebuses. And the subject, a speculation about a difficulty of reading that results when you use this substance. These plaques are fabricated like waffles, you know.

Q: Are these plaques really all that difficult to decipher?

A: Reading is impeded by the imagelike quality of the text and vice versa. The stereotypical character of both text and image is defined by the technique of plastic. They are intended to be read on a double level – each one involved in a negative attitude which seems to me specific to the stance of the artist: not to place the message completely on one side alone, neither image nor text. That is, the refusal to deliver a clear message – as if this role were not incumbent upon the artist, and by extension upon all producers with an economic interest. This could obviously be the beginning of a polemic. The way I see it, there can be no direct connection between art and message, especially if the message is political, without running the risk of being burned by the artifice. Foundering. I prefer signing my name to these booby traps without taking advantage of this caution.

Q: What kind of simpletons do you catch with your plaques?

A: Well, those who take these plaques for pictures and hang them on their walls. Although there’s no proof that the real simpleton isn’t the author himself, who thought he was a linguist able to leap over the bar in the signifier/signified formula, but who might in fact have been merely playing the professor.

3. THE FIGURES

Q: Do you situate yourself in a surrealist perspective?

A: This one I know by heart: “Everything leads us to believe that there exists a state of mind where life and death, the real and the imaginary, the past and the future, the communicable and the incommunicable, high and low, no longer seem contradictory.” I hope I have nothing in common with that state of mind. With Ceci n’est pas une pipe Magritte did not take things so lightly. But then again he was too much Magritte. By which I mean that he was too little Ceci n’est pas une pipe. It is with that pipe that I tackled the adventure.

Q: Can you give an example?

A: You can see in the Monchengladbach museum a cardboard box, a clock, a mirror, a pipe, also a mask and a smoke bomb, and one or two other objects I can’t recall at this point, accompanied by the expression Fig. I or Fig. 2 or Fig. 0 painted on the display surface beneath or to the side of each object. If we are to believe what the inscription says, then the object takes on an illustrative character referring to a kind of novel about society. These objects, the mirror and the pipe, submitted to an identical numbering system (or the cardboard box or the clock or the chair) become interchangeable elements on the stage of a theater. Their destiny is ruined. Here I obtain the desired encounter between different functions. A double assignment and a readable texture – wood, glass, metal, fabric – articulate them morally and materially. I would never have obtained this kind of complexity with technological objects, whose singleness condemns the mind to monomania: minimal art, robot, computer.

The nos. I, 2, 0 appear figurally. And the abbreviations Fig. poorly in their meaning.

Q: Is this the condition for your feeling at ease with yourself?

A: What reassures me is the hope that the viewer runs the risk – for a moment at least – of no longer feeling at ease. Be sure to visit the Monchengladbach museum.

Q: But suppose the viewer gets confused, and sees there an expression comparable to that of the nouveaux realistes of the 1960s?

A: My early objects and images – 1964-65 – could never cause that particular confusion. The literalness linked to the appropriation of the real didn’t suit me, since it conveyed a pure and simple acceptance of progress in art …and elsewhere as well. Given that, however, there’s nothing to prevent the viewers from getting confused, if that’s what they want. I do not assume good faith in my viewers or readers – or bad faith either.

Q: Did you begin with an elaborated vision of your project?

A: I have no idea what my unconscious may have fabricated, and you cannot make me put it into words. I have fabricated instruments for my own use in comprehending fashion in art, in following it, and finally in the search for a definition of fashion. I am neither a painter nor a violinist. It is Ingres who interests me, not Cezanne and the apples.

Q: Why haven’t you made use of books or magazines? There are many such means of information available.

A: As it happens I can more easily apprehend conceptual or other data through the information provided by the specific product (especially my own) than through its mediating theorization. It’s much harder for me to grasp things and their implications by reading books – except when the book is the object that fascinates me, since for me it is the object of a prohibition. My very first artistic proposition bears the trace of this curse. The remaining copies of an edition of poems written by me served as raw material for a sculpture.

A: A spatial objects?

Q: I took a bundle of fifty copies of a book called Pense-Bete and half-embedded them in plaster. The wrapping paper is town off at the top of the “sculpture,” so you can see the stack of books (the bottom part is hidden by the plaster). Here you cannot read the book without destroying the sculptural aspect. It is a concrete gesture that passes the prohibition on to the viewer – at least that’s what I thought would happen. But I was surprised to find that viewers reacted quite differently from what I had imagined. Everyone so far, no matter who, has perceived the object either as an artistic expression or as a curiosity. “Look! Books in plaster!” No one had any curiosity about the text; nobody had any idea whether this was the final burial of prose or poetry, of sadness or pleasure. No one was affected by the prohibition. Until that moment I had lived practically isolated from all communication, since I had a fictitious audience. Suddenly I had a real audience, on that level where it is a matter of space and conquest.

Q: Is there a difference between audiences?

A: Today the book of poems in new forms has found a certain audience, which is not to say that the difference does not persist. The second audience has no idea what the first is interested in. If space is really the fundamental element of artistic construction (form in language and material form), then, after such a strange experience, I could only oppose it to the philosophy of writing with common sense.

Q: What does space conceal?

A: Isn’t it like a game of hide-and-seek? Of course, the one who’s hiding will always say he’s somewhere else, and yet he’s always there. And you know he’ll turn around and catch someone. The interminable search for a definition of space serves only to hide the essential structure of art, a process of reification. Any individual who perceives a function of space, especially a convincing one, appropriates it mentally or economically.

Q: What are your political ideas?

A: Once I’d begun to make art, my own, the art I copied, the exploitation of the political consequences of that activity (whose theory can be defined only outside the domain where it operates) appeared ambiguous to me, suspect, too angelical. If artistic production is the thing of things, then theory becomes a private property.

Q: Have you ever made art engage?

A: I did once. They were poems, concrete signs of engagement since without compensation. My work in those days consisted in writing as few as possible. In the visual arts, my only possible engagement is with my adversaries. Architects are in the same position whenever they work for themselves. I try as much as I can to circumscribe the problem by proposing little, all of it indifferent. Space can only lead to paradise.

Q: Is there any difference between the plastic arts and a disinterested engagement?

(Silence).

Q: At what moment does one start making indifferent art?

A: From the moment that one is less of an artists, when the necessity of making puts down its roots in memory alone. I believe my exhibitions depended and still depend on memories of a period when I assumed the creative situation in a heroic and solitary manner. In other words, it used to be: read this, look at this. Today it is: allow me to present …

Q: Isn’t artistic activity – let me be precise: I mean in the context of a circulation in galleries, collections, and museums, that is, whenever others become aware of it – isn’t it then the height of authenticity?

A: Given the chosen tactics – to engage in territorial maneuvers – it is perhaps possible to find an authentic means of calling into question art, its circulation, etc. And that might – although it is unclear no matter how you look at it – justify the continuity and expansion of production. What remains is art as production as production.

Q: In such a game of roulette, how do you keep from losing your bet?

A: There’s another risk, no less interesting, to find the third or fourth degree. And you don’t have to get burned: that is. …

A Dream (1960)

Shattered eyes a Gothic king

strides without end the paving stones

of an ivory cathedral.

Clouds and death embroider his costume.

An angel plays dice:

a dazzling river

a drowned man lain among the flowers

a pewter decoy

a severe path

a harpsichord full of silver

an orchard enclosed with hair of gold

At the cradle of the forest

the paths are empty.

Two o’clock sounds. A

carpenter in a blue apron

descends from the heavens.

He takes a plank from the tree.

What’s the weather like?

It isn’t snowing yet.

The season is mauve. The foliage

opens:

a group of recent sisters roll

their eyes back to a tender storm.

Their hands cross over their enamel foreheads.

The houses burn with a celestial green.

One by one the magi parade by in blood.

It does not cease to sound two o’clock.

Three birds drink a bucket of tears.

Four Five Six Seven

Nine Ten Eleven Twelve

The blue of the fields darkens

at the base of the crystalline night.

Still dreaming the king

takes his hand to his marble heart.

It snows. The street is white.

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