#that’s right this is a pyramid scheme

[exeunknown]

Art dump who would have guessed (couldn’t fit one of them oh well)

[poor-ciceros-voring-again]

So now that we're shipping pyramid Steve with Stanley, does Steve have a human form yet.

[hsslilly-blog]

quick cheer claire doodle because i wanted to figure out her school's uniform. teenage claire is so interesting to me

[deva-arts]

A colored sketch of Nox and Harv.

They would (probably) immediately get into a one-sided fight... or maybe not. Who knows.

I do like how I did Nox's hair though. I never saw it from a side view, so this is what I think it would look like. It looks so messy. Get a hair comb, my dude

Submitted by @mettamorphoses! Look at our not so good boy! our happy immoral menace to society! or maybe just a sleep deprived nate on a bad hair day. Noctis Umbra is a subtle person. He's a mercurial, nebulous man. He can be your best friend. Your sweetest memory. Your worst nightmare. The only man who can leash him is himself, but... Who really has time for that? Certainly not him.

"So, 'Harvey'. You keep on saying you're not from here. 'Different world' this, 'futuristic' that... You're either a great actor, a deluded amnesiac, or an interesting mental case. Maybe you just like old timey shit, who knows?"

"...What are you trying to say?"

"How about I show you around? You're real lucky I got to you first, I'm a fun guy. Call me Nox. Hey, ever try Halcyon?"

[afklancelot]

see, House of Leaves is like a pyramid scheme. it’s a manuscript written by an old man obsessed with a film about a photographer obsessed with his weird-ass house. then a tattoo artist apprentice finds the old man’s writings and become obsessed with it. and then we the reader find the book itself and become obsessed with it in turn, leading to recommending the book to others in hope that they also become obsessed with it. a memetic effect.

[sunlessea]

my new years resolution is more monster romance ships i've given up i know who i am

[existennialmemes]

God being alive is just absurd,

like mechanically speaking.

My ability to feel joy significantly depends on the functionality of the microbes in my intestinal tract, and I'm sorry but this is a

bullshit system

and I demand to speak to the Devs

[sunnykeysmash]

Ok so, the new trailers got me curious, especially here with the whole... trap thing.

Let's just go on a little chill journey about it together, no strings attached.

So... something I do casually to pass the time while deep in sunny fixation is keyword searching in episode transcripts, to see if there's fun connections I can do. So naturally, I look up "trap", to see where else it comes up outside of Gets Romantic and Flowers for Charlie (the first two episodes that come to my mind when talking about traps).

What I found was an interesting connection between three specific episodes:

Mac is a serial killer

Dennis looks like a registered sex offender

Flowers for Charlie

And I wanna go through it. Kind of in random order because I don't know how to structure this (lmao).

Now, these episodes obviously have come out in seasons throughout the years, with the earliest two on s3, and I'm gonna be talking about things I think might happen in relation to these episodes. Parallels, metatext, about things that haven't aired yet. So I may be wrong. Let's get that out of the way. Usual disclaimer, get out now if you don't like rambling, and I'm not responsible for building anyone's expectations, that is on you. This is how I have my own fun. Let's move on.

But talking about these episodes in such a way requires me to acknowledge macdennis as something that's been not only intended, but planted, am I gonna be arguing that this was all intentional the whole time? ...No. ...Yes? Maybe. This pains me to say more than it pains you to read, believe me.

Now by planted I don't mean they ever really planned to have it happen necessarily. I'm talking about the trap aspect of it all. The will they, won't they. The question, the mystery of what's inside the crate. You get me.

I wanna start from the fact that there's fifteen severed heads in the fridge. Severing heads being a metaphor very prevalent in season 15 as we've seen, but especially...

And that's the scene.

Yes, I'm aware.

I'm done. I was in character before, but I'm me now, so you can tell me how good I was.

Oh, okay. Well, you just cut in front of 15 other actresses.

You're welcome. I took a gander at 'em and... ( sever head gesture )

Plus, I do feel like that's what the character would have done, and I've been in character all day. As a matter of fact, don't want to brag, but I've been in character all week.

Fifteen, like the seasons? It could be they were hoping to reach that number to break the record, just like Charlie is shown doing at the start of DLLARSO, attempting to break a record to see how long he can hold his breath for.

Dee: What is going on in here?

Mac: Just laying low and breaking world records. Don't even think about breathing, b¡tch.

Dennis: All right, so here's the deal. Got rid of that child molester. The sеxual predator guy? Yeah, he's gone. He's out of the situation, so my problems are solved. You had a thing too, right?

Dee: Mac's dad. I want your dad out of the bar.

So three things, breaking records, the second Dennis leaving (you know, Dennis Double Life thing), and I do think Luther might be dying this season, as well. It seems to line up to me... we know Mac is going to "collect his inheritance", which he wouldn't really have unless a parent died like Charlie's. He also walked out, so.

But that's impossible, that's season 3. I thought so too.

So I want to bring another example of severed head onto the table... Chardee Macdennis 2. Season 11.

They're asked to sculpt "clues" for the game, and what does each of them sculpt?

Mac: "Cupid's arrow". Which Charlie keeps calling a penis, and which looks strikingly similar to a RPG missile to me, I'll add.

Frank: A heart. Like the heart shaped lock?

Dennis: A woman's head in a freezer, which he says, and I quote, represents "the preservation of love forever and ever".

Keep in mind, there was no theme given for the sculptures, the whole goal was for the teammates to guess what the other was sculpting. Now why are they... love themed?

I just want to say right out of the gate, I don't know what everything means, I'm more so here to draw parallels that I've noticed. I think it's interesting that everyone can draw their own conclusions too.

So, to summarize all three episodes:

In Mac is a Serial Killer, the gang see Mac acting weird, so they start suspecting he's a serial killer.

(I do want to point out Carmen scratches Mac (during sex), which is one parallel with Dennis, but not my overall point.)

Frank and Charlie scour for clues in Mac's apartment, while Dennis tries to use Dee as bait to catch the serial killer. Frank gets a confession out of Mac's mom, and then the gang starts to hatch a scheme (which they call a trap) to "catch" Mac about this, and drive a confession out of him. The truth though, is that Mac is dating Carmen, and doesn't want the gang to find out.

In Sex Offender, Luther is finally out of jail and is visiting a bunch of people. Mac and Charlie see that Luther has a list with their name on it, and panic thinking he's been killing these people and is gonna kill them next. What is really happening though, is that he was actually making amends with the people listed (something that comes back in S16!), and had a surprise prepared for Mac, who "ratted him out". The B plot has Frank moving out because he thinks he can do better than Charlie, so he gets with Bonnie, his "bang maid". Both Charlie and Mac hatch a plan (again called a trap here), a romantic dinner, with very different goals. Charlie wants Frank back and to expose his mom as a cheater (in a situation that actually reminds of the s15 dinner, with the turd in the soup), Mac wants to pair his parents back together so they can raise "happy boys". In the end, Luther gets with Bonnie, which coincidentally does drive Frank back into Charlie's arms, but in the end Luther gets carried away by police. Additionally as we've discussed, there's a second Dennis in this episode, a fake, who is threatened into leaving at the end of the episode.

In Flowers for Charlie, scientists are running an experiment on Charlie who becomes their lab rat, while Dee Mac and Dennis are dealing with a rat problem in the bar, discussing ways to catch and kill it. Charlie starts thinking he's too good for his friends and notices that "they've been using him", Frank enlists the help of the Waitress by setting up a dinner between them, hoping Charlie's deep infatuation with her will pull him away from his new life and the corner he's turned and back to Frank, and when that doesn't work, Frank tells Dee Dennis and Mac that he wants to "drag him back down into the sewer where he belongs". Dee thinks she's stuck to the rat glue trap, but after the rat eats the cheese and scurries away unaffected, thanks to Frank's help she finds that by letting go of the trap, she becomes unstuck. In the end we find the experiment didn't make Charlie smarter, only more arrogant, and perhaps more fascinatingly some other things, like he believes to be a mathematical genius, and writes:

X = 9 + 9 = Box... that's where the cat is.

(9 + 9, like 18? Like the seasons we have confirmed, 18?)

And more.

And in the space of an hour, the subject has lost all interest in a woman with whom he had been in love for years, because of a perceived upidity relative to himself. Perhaps the most interesting were the series of side effects that he believed himself to be having. Uh, debilitating aches and pains. It was all in his mind.

According to this, the more arrogant someone is, the more he forgets about the people he loves, and the more he suffers various pains. Therefore, you need to knock someone down a peg to remind them of their feelings, and make them feel better.

In Mac is a Serial Killer, at the end, Mac is also accused of being two people.

Charlie: I'm sorry, Mac. You can't keep running from this thing. You gotta face this head on! (whispers) I'm gonna get you off this. Don't be afraid to show me your ugly side. All right. Put that away, Frank. You don't need a chain saw. You're talking to an innocent man. All right, Mac. I'm gonna ask you now 'cause I'm tired and hungry. I want to go home. I want to wash my hands of this whole stinking mess. Did you or did you not snap into an alternate and distinct personality... causing you to go on a serial killing rampage?

Mac: What? No.

Charlie: What? Yes, you did. You... All right, Mac. You're crazy, right? You're a crazy person. Sometimes you're two people. Let's see the other guy. Let him out.

Mac: Let who out?

Charlie: The serial killer, Mac! Let the serial killer out!

Mac: I'm not a serial killer!

Frank: Then why all the shady behavior?

So, what is the trap... so far, we've seen that you trap someone either to set them up with someone else (the romantic dinner in DLLARSO, but also the trap in Gets Romantic, and also when Dee sets them up in Break Up by using a lady with giant breasts as bait!), or to draw a confession out of them (like in MIASK, but also Catches a Leprechaun). Perhaps both, at the same time, as there may be multiple people scheming the same thing with different end goals, or different things with the same end goal. Either way, that's the conflict of the trap.

Brief intermission to talk about another episode where the trap comes up. Charlie's Home Alone.

Charlie empathizes with a rat, and saves him from a trap.

'Cause I know what it's like to be caught in a trap now, and it's not okay. I won't let you get caught in a trap, okay?

Takes him in his hand, and eats him (DLLARSO also has talk about Luther looking like he eats people, but I don't have a thought on that yet aside from basic cat eat mouse type stuff, also not everything is Something, but I digress!).

Later a real trap is introduced as part of the rituals, and Charlie steps on it and must free himself. The release lever is at the bottom. He frees himself, but once Brady has the ball, he has to step right into the trap again.

This stepping in and out, again it reminds me of Dennis in Gets Romantic, but since it was a season 13 episode, it may also be Glenn about the show.

But here's something I think, just to spice it up, I think the trap may also be, more in general, a relationship. Right? Dennis has been in one (with Maureen), didn't like it, yada yada. Now Mac talking about banging, that's one thing. Mac getting in a relationship? Suddenly he's ruining everything, getting locked in, that's different. And the scene between him and Dennis in Flowers for Charlie, implies to me that we have two rats and one bait, that the trap involves two people. Like a relationship. Now am I married to this idea, pun not intended? Not really, but it's possible.

Either way, the trap is something that catches rats. Thanks to Flowers for Charlie, both Mac and Dennis can be rats, due to said dancing scene...

Dennis: He scurried away.

Mac: All right, well, when he comes back, I'm gonna smash him up good. Dennis: No, no, Mac, come on. We're smarter than that. That's just gonna spread rat blood and disease all over the place. It's not about brute force. It's about seduction. See, I'm gonna place some enticing tunes for the little guy. And then I'm gonna bait this glue trap with some Brie cheese.

Frank: Because drawing a confession out of someone... is like doing a beautiful dance... a beautiful dance with a chain saw.

When Charlie is framed as the rat in Flowers for Charlie at the beginning, he's dead set on getting the cheese he can't have, and has no interest in the one under the green light. Which reflects the chase. Like cat and mouse.

This experiment, that's being talked about as groundbreaking and that will revolutionize the field, is all about making the subject feel smart due to the constant encouragement, but the subject really isn't.

Mac is not the serial killer. He's not smart enough. He's a dumb person. And dumb people are not capable of serial killing.

In Chokes, it's said that Dennis will see through the ruse, because he's smart, but the truth is that he didn't, because he isn't. It's Mac that heightens his confidence, and it always has been.

And in the sideplot of Flowers for Charlie, Dee Dennis and Mac end up watching "cat and mouse" cartoons to understand how to solve this rat problem. But... a cat was never introduced in the episode prior to this?

The mouse always wins. There's... there's, like, no winning with mices. Cat keeps getting hurt. He gets hurt. Well, it's dangerous, yeah. What the hell are you guys doing? We're trying to watch cat and mouse cartoons to find out how kitty cats deal with their rat issues.

But historically, the cat has always been Dennis... the cat in the wall (through framing and dialogue), and then ongoing with like the painting in s15 and the dead cat in the room and so on. This cat may get out of the wall, or he may die in there. That duality belongs to Dennis. But how can he both be a cat and a mouse? No, I don't have an answer, but perhaps it's up to confidence. If you bring it down low enough for both Dennis and Mac, they're finally both little mouses, and you can catch them in your trap. Not that the trap ever works? In all episodes where it comes up, it either fails (Flowers for Charlie), is painful (Charlie's Home Alone), complicates things (Gets Romantic), or a combination of those (Serial Killer and Catches a Leprechaun).

It's also about method.

How do we lower this guy's confidence, how do we reach rock bottom.

In Flowers for Charlie, Mac's solution is to bash the rat.

In Mac is a Serial Killer, they want to draw a confession out of Mac by torture when they catch him. Using a chainsaw even.

And in Dennis Looks Like a Registered Sex Offender, Dennis takes a good beating because he's mistaken for an awful man that looks like him, as per Dee's plan.

And this in Mac is a Serial Killer:

Dennis: This is the fun part, Dee. This is the part that we've been working up to. This is what all the work has been for. We're gonna follow our victim. And then we're gonna jump her. And then I'm gonna strangle her and you're gonna chop her into pieces.

Dee: Okay, but what are we really gonna do?

Dennis: Huh?

Dee: We're not really gonna kill her. What are we gonna do?

Dennis: Oh, yeah. Oh, shit. That's a bummer. Yeah, you're right.

Dee: Let's just follow her for a little. We'll throw a good scare into her. Figure out what to do later.

Plus, in Charlie Catches a Leprechaun, which is another episode in which a man gets captured with the goal of driving a confession out of him...

Mac: Nasty little son of a b¡tch, isn't he?

Charlie: There's, like, a real bite to him.

Mac: You know what I think we should do? We just rough him up a little bit. You know, just get the truth out of him, just a little bit.

Charlie: It's a great idea.

Mac: We don't want to bruise him up, I just wish we had, like, a hose or something. You know, we could blast the truth out of him. Right?

Charlie: That'd be good...

Setting aside the episode insisting a lot about ancient authentic irish traditions and other parallels I don't have time to get into, this ALL reminds me of course of the plan from the castle about the irish doctor in S15, you know, pour scalding liquid from the murder hole (a predecessor to the glory hole!) and char him.

Dennis: Yeah, so you'll lure him under the hole, where I will, uh, douse him with boiling oil or hot tar or really any scalding substance.

Frank: Wait, you're gonna char the guy? Gonna char him up?

Dennis: Yeah. I'm not gonna kill him or anything, but it's got to be hot enough to be annoying as shit, right? You know what I mean?

Frank: Yeah. Burn him.

Dennis: Uh, he's gonna get burned. But, I mean, Charlie's got to see him lose his cool, so we can expose him as the child-abandoning monster that he really is.

In s15 later, Dennis talks about that incident as "taking care of him". We all giggled at the gay implication of that, but the thing is, Mac is a Serial Killer and Dennis Looks Like a Registered Sex Offender both play with that duality of meaning, as well.

Dee: Could you come take care of me?

Charlie: I'll allow it.

Mac: Uh, yeah. Yeah, I can take care of you.

Dennis: What were you planning on doing to Sandy?

Mac: What do you think, dude?

Dennis: Well, according to this phone transcript, Mac... you were going to "take care of her"?

Mac: Yeah. Take care of her.

Mac: He told me these are people from his past, and he's got to take care of them. And once he takes care of them, he's gonna take care of me.

And it really is like that sick extended metaphor where on one side we have Mac and Dennis, on the other we have death. Same as Dennis' Double Life. You know, "give me dong or give me death". That you can either love someone, or kill them. It reflect the concept of the trap, I think.

But speaking of which...

Frank: Stay away from my bang maid.

Charlie: Damn it, Frank! This isn't about them... Charlie... or Mac or anyone else... this is about you and me, bro. This is about dudes living together, hanging out, sharing their bed and their life...

Mac: No. That's not what this is about! This is about people meeting back up after many years and sparks flying... and families getting back together and raising little boys so they can be happy again!

Much like Clip Show, that same duality. On one side living with Mac (dudes living together, plus Charlie and Frank are often a parallel for Mac and Dennis), on the other, raising Brian Jr (families getting together and raising little boys).

Charlie: Shut up, Frank. You don't know what she wants any more than she knows what you want. You know who knows what you want? I do. I've always known what you want. And I can give you want you want. Just let me give you what you want.

I don't like jumping into specific event predictions because I always get them wrong, and I don't find any fun in that. And while the trap and rats meta is real, I may be completely off with it here. I just like drawing connections.

But speaking of traps and ruses, here's another bit of dialogue that comes to me, in times of need.

Charlie: I see you all fell for my ruse.

Dee: What ruse? You asking us to go on a hike with your dad, and us saying "yes"?

Charlie: Oldest trick in the book.

Dennis: Asking someone to do something?

Charlie: Exactly.

Dee: And then, them doing it?

Charlie: Precisely, yes.

I think traps usually are something you hatch to uncover a ruse.

That's why in all of these examples, the goal of capturing someone is to draw a confession out of them. But they don't work that way, because what the capturer and the captured hold as truth doesn't align. Mac is a serial killer, they expect him to confess to serial killing, but he was just dating Carmen. Catches a leprechaun, they expect him to admit that he is, but he really isn't. Even in Worst Bar in Philly, another ep where they kidnap a guy, they are trying to extort a fake review from the journalist.

So if the trap succeeds, it'll have a different result than intended by who hatched it, and uncover a truth that wasn't the expected one. Just based on statistics, I guess...

If the intended goal is really to hatch a plan to humiliate Dennis, char him or whatever, then what it may actually do is break his cold, calculated shell. But I don't know...

Frank, I am thinking on the physical level, the metaphysical level, the pataphysical level.

So we've all talked about meta and that's fun, but let's talk pataphysical too since Flowers for Charlie mentions it.

That's difficult, as there are over one hundred definitions of pataphysics according to wikipedia.

A few are:

"Pataphysics will examine the laws governing exceptions, and will explain the universe supplementary to this one"

"Pataphysics is patient; 'Pataphysics is benign; 'Pataphysics envies nothing, is never distracted, never puffed up, it has neither aspirations nor seeks not its own, it is even-tempered, and thinks not evil; it mocks not iniquity: It is enraptured with scientific truth; it supports everything, believes everything, has faith in everything, and upholds everything that is."

"Pataphysics "the science of the particular" does not, therefore, study the rules governing the general recurrence of a periodic incident (the expected case) so much as study the games governing the special occurrence of a sporadic accident (the excepted case). Jarry performs humorously on behalf of literature what Nietzsche performs seriously on behalf of philosophy. Both thinkers in effect attempt to dream up a "gay science" whose joie de vivre thrives wherever the tyranny of truth has increased our esteem for the lie and wherever the tyranny of reason has increased our esteem for the mad."

"Pataphysics is science, albeit one with an aesthetic sensibility; it regards “humor” and “the serious” with the same imperturbable gaze. "

"Pataphysics is simply an awareness that everything, including our very selves - is what we pretend it to be."

In other words, truth is not what's actually real, what we do or our past, truth is what we believe it is. Much like identity.

One more.

"You have seen that far from regretting the past I would simply suggest that we improve it…’Pataphysics will always be plunging ahead, precisely because it is static in time, and because time, itself, is retrograde by definition."

So if one is dissatisfied with their past, they can simply change it... by going there. This concept is played around plenty in Clip Show, but I want to talk about something else. I want to talk about Dee Day.

That is the episode where we take off Dennis' make up, but there's something else too.

This is where Dee talks about wanting to do a "retrospective" of her characters.

And the plan to make the ordinance pass, includes the gang stealing the councilwoman keys and setting her clocks back so she would miss the vote.

And look, we do have one flashback promised to us, in the bowling episode if I recall correctly.

"But is there any other canonical way of viewing the future (whether one calls oneself serious, in the profane or pataphysical sense of the word), than as a bouquet of imaginary Solutions – that is, potentialities?"

I forget if I've talked about potential in sunny. The seeds, the puppies, the eggs... always about the potential of life. I think it's fascinating. Like there is an infinite branch of ways in which macdennis could happen, right? And that's the potential. And by bringing it into the text, you're effectively killing it.

But are you, really?

The first time round is a bitter pill

But the second chance is better still

And then we find new seeds to sow

To grow our love we didn't know

There's always new seeds to plant...

But I'm not done with the pataphysical. Oh no, there's more.

There's also the fact that Flowers for Charlie talks about the structure and the foundation. When asked where the foundation is, they respond "on top", but Frank corrects them, on the bottom.

I have a feeling both answers are correct, just like both of Dennis' lives are true, and here's why.

Concepts that embody pataphysical include:

Antimony: An antinomy is the mutually incompatible. It represents the duality of things, the echo or symmetry, the good and the evil at the same time.

Clinamen: A clinamen is the unpredictable swerve of atoms that poet Christian Bök calls "... the smallest possible aberration that can make the greatest possible difference". An example is Jarry's merdre, a swerve of French: merde ("shit").

Syzygy: The syzygy originally comes from astronomy and denotes the alignment of three celestial bodies in a straight line. In a pataphysical context it is the pun. It usually describes a conjunction of things, something unexpected and surprising. Serendipity is a simple chance encounter but the syzygy has a more scientific purpose.

Absolute: The absolute is the idea of a transcended reality.

Anomaly: An anomaly represents the exception. Jarry said that, "Pataphysics will examine the laws governing exceptions, and will explain the universe supplementary to this one." Bök calls it "... the repressed part of a rule which ensures that the rule does not work".

Pataphor: The pataphor is a term for an unusually extended metaphor based on Alfred Jarry's "science" of 'pataphysics'. Whereas a metaphor compares a real object or event to a seemingly unrelated subject to emphasize their similarities, the pataphor uses the newly created metaphorical similarity as a reality on which to base itself. In going beyond mere ornamentation of the original idea, the pataphor seeks to describe a new and separate world, in which an idea or aspect has taken on a life of its own.

Once again this rings true for Clip Show in general, as a concept, but I would maybe dare say this applies to macdennis regarding many associated concepts such as the trap or the crate. In particular, Macdennis as a concept has been morphing and evolving separate to the textual plots, due to heavy metaphor use.

In particular, they're always placed in the role of married couple, in multiple episodes. Break up, Suburbs, Gets Romantic, Mortgage Crisis. It doesn't just say "you are like a married couple", it shows them behaving as one. Therefore, if looked at under a pataphysical lense, that's what they are. That's the reality of it.

Of course, since this whole spiel is born from one word in a single episode from season 9, there's no telling how much it actually matters. It may be a happy coincidence. Does it really matter? (Not in pataphysics).

In a similar sense, we spoke Mac into coming out as audience, because we believed in it as our reality.

And another thing, since I'm riffing a lil bit at this point.

But since Dennis has been intentionally led to portray two separate and apparently opposing realities, the audience is equally divided on him, and as a result both realities keep appearing as true.

So in DLLARSO Mac is stealing Dennis' car and using it without him knowing. If we go with the whole "Dennis' car is his identity" which is very dear and near to me and I basically think of as true at least since Misses The Boat (and this is a s3 ep, which is why I'm saying IF), I'm wondering how this extends in season 16.

Well for starters, we see Mac behind the counter twice just in trailers. That has been, typically, Dennis' spot as the bartender. Very rarely does Mac cross behind, even less so on his own. Notably, it happens in Mac Fights Gay Marriage AND Dennis Gets Divorced (which btw, these two parter titles make it sound like they're the two that got divorced lmao, but um).

Another way in which we see him possibly take Dennis' place (or walk in his shoes! wear his skin, whatever you want to call it), is by the fact Dennis is teaching him the DENNIS system (an altered version I assume?), like passing the torch on to him (and Dee, who wants that place in the gang hierarchy as well...).

Finally, something that may not be a thing at all, but he meets Chase in S16, only Chase thinks he already met Mac. Because Dennis gave him Mac's name in Stranded. I'm expecting some name shenanigans of some kind. (perhaps Mac will use Dennis' name? I'm not banking on that, but how's he gonna explain? that is, unless someone else already did, in his pursue to make amends... well, who knows. you know what they say about assuming)

It's funny because Stranded is an episode all about how saying no brings you misfortune, while saying yes brings you luck. And money. 10.000$ of them specifically, both in Stranded and, casually, the original amount won by Mac with the scratcher.

The amount that... after all the bills, ends up being only 14$ dollars. (like the seasons?)

Stranded is also interesting on its own... Frank avoiding the main road because he doesn't want to pay the toll... Okay, that's enough. Getting off track.

So, final notes, since this is a more speculative and rambly post, and I'm under the impression the metaphors discussed (rats, traps, severed heads...) aren't complete (meaning they're gonna expand on these more in S16), I'm very much hoping everyone chimes in with their thoughts and speculations... perhaps other episodes that you think may fit this... let's throw away the oars and get into it, like, who cares if it ends up wrong, you know? I may come back to this too after the season airs to see what else there was...

[tumbleweed-palmer]

Still say Jimmy Palmer looks like he'd accidentally join a cult and not realize it. He looks like he'd fall for an MLM. He'd sell Plexus or Monet and think he's making a smart girl boss move.

[unproduciblesmackdown]

also given that the logic of said superiority authoriority is an entitlement to deny someone's personhood & use them as an object for your purposes, from obviously getting to direct what they must do & can't do, to enjoying whatever gratification from lashing out / demeaning which is also going to serve as an affirming exercise in authority when one can do that from an insulated elevated place....a crucial part of whatever form of this violence, from the most nanoscopic triangle in the sierpiński triangle pyramid scheme hierarchy, to the hypothetical largest (zoom in or out to whatever degree: the same shit also), being that indeed the superior parties need the deserved insulation from any Consequence to exerting their superior status, including indeed from having to witness the consequences For the "inferior" parties, such as whatever externalizations of suffering they recognize as such, which either (a) need to be put away (b) are manipulative performances or otherwise exaggerated (e.g. being a pussy / not even having the sense to realize how little suffering they're Really experiencing) or (c) can be fun to witness if you decide you enjoy that as an affirmation of power as per your ability to completely detach from any avoidance of causing pain, harming for its own sake, b/c you Can

all which is to frame how Interesting it is that after all those moments of going "well, they keep bothering with reaction shots of winston noticeably feeling hurt & expressing it, sometimes also verbally. it's like it could be setting up something" it set up Nothing; while once again just like has been done dozens of times a scene just Ends on winston being rejected &/or hurt, no resolution then, no resolution ever, and in the case of 7x03 was so significant an attack that just like in 4x11 when mafee gets to take out his own Loyalty Insecurity on winston while everyone else hangs around in tacit to overt approval, everyone just leaves the room & we get winston staying behind in the Most distant position aaand scene's over! thread's over! david levien get back here after you Liked that 4x12 livetweet of mine pointing out "so see & winston was right anyways??" like....that is: we are given the Perspective of someone who is also now Leaving winston behind, thus immune to the consequences of however that treatment could actually affect him or how he might struggle to deal with that now (who cares! the answer is: Alone) like Whatever, next time we see him he's completely fine now. and i'm just so happening to think that all the little moments of getting to see winston wither & withdraw & etc in reaction to being shitted on was also us being granted the perspective of Gratification that he's punished for speaking or existing or whatever, without it ever going anywhere or mattering beyond that instant. we too are the ones who surely get to relentlessly bully the autistic person & damn if we don't at least enjoy someone getting to go off the rails restoring their ego by doing absolutely whatever they want to him, which just so happens to be perfectly aligned with getting him Back In Line. pull yourself together winston! the only consequences you're experiencing we wanna deal with are the ones where you give us the algorithm we decided we want, actually. and now let's look across the rest of the season where the consequences for wags for being this way (or anyone else for standing by, ready to benefit, with philip bafflingly declaring as well how actually it was brutal in a good way) is approximately fuckall even as of course nobody's pretending he's one of the personal growth guys out here: rian is though, and didn't have to "grow" out of abusing winston or thinking that was fine & good or that of course she's inherently superior! and in the end we have more affection and interest for the Epic Asshole than their Cringe Targets

[talentforlying]

the silt verses 🤝 hellblazer: we accidentally invested this mundane concept with otherworldly power by casually creating and enacting everyday rituals in service of its potential omniscience until it learned that it possessed that power over us and acted upon it

[gas-stxtion-a]

//funniest emotional journey i've gone on as of late is joking offhandedly to a friend that i think my previous boss was an mlm, him asking me to explain, and then me sending him their website only for him to say "so uh i think you're right"

[nando161mando]

Fortune 500 company

[piedoesnotequalpi]

for the ask game; 1, 7, 11! - @pigeonwit

Thanks Pidge!

Song of the year?

I went through three different song phases (based primarily on what I was writing at the time), so this isn't super representative of my overall music taste.

First phase: Not With Haste (Mumford and Sons)

Second phase: Bury Me (Noah Kahan)

Third phase: Sleep On The Floor (The Lumineers)

7. Favorite actor of the year?

Matthew Duckett! I liked his portrayal of Crutchie so much that I talked about it in a research paper for one of my classes.

11. Something you want to do again next year?

I want to go on a trip on my own (or maybe with a friend) again! I went to London on my own in July, and it was so cool to travel on my own (and see Newsies three times while I was there). And if I plan ahead better, I might even be able to get a window seat next time 🙃

[sunlessea]

omg happy pride month straight ppl don't exist in london

 😳 😳✨🌈

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Kickstarting a new Martin Hench novel about the dawn of enshittification

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2025/01/07/weird-pcs/#a-mormon-bishop-an-orthodox-rabbi-and-a-catholic-priest-walk-into-a-personal-computing-revolution

Picks and Shovels is a new, standalone technothriller starring Marty Hench, my two-fisted, hard-fighting, tech-scam-busting forensic accountant. You can pre-order it on my latest Kickstarter, which features a brilliant audiobook read by @wilwheaton:

http://martinhench.com

This is the third Hench novel, following on from the nationally bestselling The Bezzle (2024) and Red Team Blues (2023). I wrote Red Team Blues with a funny conceit: what if I wrote the final volume of a beloved, long-running series, without writing the rest of the series? Turns out, the answer is: "Your editor will buy a whole bunch more books in the series!"

My solution to this happy conundrum? Write the Hench books out of chronological order. After all, Marty Hench is a financial hacker who's been in Silicon Valley since the days of the first PCs, so he's been there for all the weird scams tech bros have dreamed up since Jobs and Woz were laboring in their garage over the Apple I. He's the Zelig of high-tech fraud! Look hard at any computing-related scandal and you'll find Marty Hench in the picture, quietly and competently unraveling the scheme, dodging lawsuits and bullets with equal aplomb.

Which brings me to Picks and Shovels. In this volume, we travel back to Marty's first job, in the 1980s – the weird and heroic era of the PC. Marty ended up in the Bay Area after he flunked out of an MIT computer science degree (he was too busy programming computers to do his classwork), and earning his CPA at a community college.

Silicon Valley in the early eighties was wild: Reaganomics stalked the land, the AIDS crisis was in full swing, the Dead Kennedys played every weekend, and man were the PCs ever weird. This was before the industry crystalized into Mac vs PC, back when no one knew what they were supposed to look like, who was supposed to use them, and what they were for.

Marty's first job is working for one of the weirder companies: Fidelity Computing. They sound like a joke: a computer company run by a Mormon bishop, a Catholic priest and an orthodox rabbi. But the joke's on their customers, because Fidelity Computing is a scam: a pyramid sales cult that exploits religious affinities to sell junk PCs that are designed to lock customers in and squeeze them for every dime. A Fidelity printer only works with Fidelity printer paper (they've gimmicked the sprockets on the tractor-feed). A Fidelity floppy drive only accepts Fidelity floppies (every disk is sold with a single, scratched-out sector and the drives check for an error on that sector every time they run).

Marty figures out he's working for the bad guys when they ask him to destroy Computing Freedom, a scrappy rival startup founded by three women who've escaped from Fidelity Computing's cult: a queer orthodox woman who's been kicked out of her family; a radical nun who's thrown in with the Liberation Theology movement in opposing America's Dirty Wars; and a Mormon woman who's quit the church in disgust at its opposition to the Equal Rights Amendment. The women of Computing Freedom have a (ahem) holy mission: to free every Fidelity customer from the prison they were lured into.

Marty may be young and inexperienced, but he can spot a rebel alliance from a light year away and he knows what side he wants to be on. He joins the women in their mission, and we're deep into a computing war that quickly turns into a shooting war. Turns out the Reverend Sirs of Fidelity Computer aren't just scammers – they're mobbed up, and willing to turn to lethal violence to defend their racket.

This is a rollicking crime thriller, a science fiction novel about the dawn of the computing revolution. It's an archaeological expedition to uncover the fossil record of the first emergence of enshittification, a phenomenon that was born with the PC and its evil twin, the Reagan Revolution.

The book comes out on Feb 15 in hardcover and ebook from Macmillan (US/Canada) and Bloomsbury (UK), but neither publisher is doing the audiobook. That's my department.

Why? Well, I love audiobooks, and I especially love the audiobooks for this series, because they're read by the incredible Wil Wheaton, hands down my favorite audiobook narrator. But that's not why I retain my audiobook rights and produce my own audiobooks. I do that because Amazon's Audible service refuses to carry any of my audiobooks.

Here's how that works: Audible is a division of Amazon, and they've illegally obtained a monopoly over the audiobook market, controlling more than 90% of audiobook sales in many genres. That means that if your book isn't for sale on Audible, it might as well not exist.

But Amazon won't let you sell your books on Audible unless you let them wrap those books in "digital rights management," a kind of encryption that locks them to Audible's authorized players. Under Section 1201 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, it's a felony punishable with a 5-year sentence and a $500k fine to supply you with a tool to remove an audiobook from Audible and play it on a rival app. That applies even if the person who gives you the tool is the creator of the book!

You read that right: if I make an audiobook and then give you the tools to move it out of Amazon's walled garden, I could go to prison for five years! That's a stiffer sentence than you'd face if you were to just pirate the audiobook. It's a harsher penalty than you'd get for shoplifting the book on CD from a truck-stop. It's more draconian than the penalty for hijacking the truck that delivers the CDs!

Amazon knows that every time you buy an audiobook from Audible, you increase the cost you'll have to pay if you switch to a competitor. They use that fact to give readers a worse deal (last year they tried out ads in audiobooks!). But the people who really suffer under this arrangement are the writers, whom Amazon abuses with abandon, knowing they can't afford to leave the service because their readers are locked into it. That's why Amazon felt they could get away with stealing $100 million from indie audiobook creators (and yup, they got away with it):

https://www.audiblegate.com/about

Which is why none of my books can be sold with DRM. And that means that Audible won't carry any of them.

For more than a decade, I've been making my own audiobooks, in partnership with the wonderful studio Skyboat Media and their brilliant director, Gabrielle de Cuir:

https://skyboatmedia.com/

I pay fantastic narrators a fair wage for their work, then I pay John Taylor Williams, the engineer who masters my podcasts, to edit the books and compose bed music for the intro and outro. Then I sell the books at every store in the world – except Audible and Apple, who both have mandatory DRM. Because fuck DRM.

Paying everyone a fair wage is expensive. It's worth it: the books are great. But even though my books are sold at many stores online, being frozen out of Audible means that the sales barely register.

That's why I do these Kickstarter campaigns, to pre-sell thousands of audiobooks in advance of the release. I've done six of these now, and each one was a huge success, inspiring others to strike out on their own, sometimes with spectacular results:

https://www.usatoday.com/story/entertainment/books/2022/04/01/brandon-sanderson-kickstarter-41-million-new-books/7243531001/

Today, I've launched the Kickstarter for Picks and Shovels. I'm selling the audiobook and ebook in DRM-form, without any "terms of service" or "license agreement." That means they're just like a print book: you buy them, you own them. You can read them on any equipment you choose to. You can sell them, give them away, or lend them to friends. Rather than making you submit to 20,000 words of insulting legalese, all I ask of you is that you don't violate copyright law. I trust you!

Speaking of print books: I'm also pre-selling the hardcover of Picks and Shovels and the paperbacks of The Bezzle and Red Team Blues, the other two Marty Hench books. I'll even sign and personalize them for you!

http://martinhench.com

I'm also offering five chances to commission your own Marty Hench story – pick your favorite high-tech finance scam from the past 40 years of tech history, and I'll have Marty bust it in a custom short story. Once the story is published, I'll make sure you get credit. Check out these two cool Little Brother stories my previous Kickstarter backers commissioned:

Spill

https://reactormag.com/spill-cory-doctorow/

Vigilant

https://reactormag.com/vigilant-cory-doctorow/

I'm heading out on tour this winter and spring with the book. I'll be in LA, San Francisco, San Diego, Burbank, Bloomington, Chicago, Richmond VA, Toronto, NYC, Boston, Austin, DC, Baltimore, Seattle, and other dates still added. I've got an incredible roster of conversation partners lined up, too: John Hodgman, Charlie Jane Anders, Dan Savage, Ken Liu, Peter Sagal, Wil Wheaton, and others.

I hope you'll check out this book, and come out to see me on tour and say hi. Before I go, I want to leave you with some words of advance praise for Picks and Shovels:

I hugely enjoyed Picks and Shovels. Cory Doctorow’s reconstruction of the age is note perfect: the detail, the atmosphere, ethos, flavour and smell of the age is perfectly conveyed. I love Marty and Art and all the main characters. The hope and the thrill that marks the opening section. The superb way he tells the story of the rise of Silicon Valley (to use the lazy metonym), inserting the stories of Shockley, IBM vs US Government, the rise of MS – all without turning journalistic or preachy.

The seeds of enshittification are all there… even in the sunlight of that time the shadows are lengthening. AIDS of course, and the coming scum tide of VCs. In Orwellian terms, the pigs are already rising up on two feet and starting to wear trousers. All that hope, all those ideals…

I love too the thesis that San Francisco always has failed and always will fail her suitors.

Despite cultural entropy, enshittification, corruption, greed and all the betrayals there’s a core of hope and honour in the story too.

-Stephen Fry

Cory Doctorow writes as few authors do, with tech world savvy and real world moral clarity. A true storyteller for our times.

-John Scalzi

A crackling, page-turning tumble into an unexpected underworld of queer coders, Mission burritos, and hacker nuns. You will fall in love with the righteous underdogs of Computing Freedom—and feel right at home in the holy place Doctorow has built for them far from Silicon Valley’s grabby, greedy hands."

-Claire Evans, editor of Motherboard Future, author of Broad Band: The Untold Story of the Women Who Made the Internet.

"Wonderful…evokes the hacker spirit of the early personal computer era—and shows how the battle for software freedom is eternal."

-Steven Levy, author of Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution and Facebook: The Inside Story.

What could be better than a Martin Hench thriller set in 1980s San Francisco that mixes punk rock romance with Lotus spreadsheets, dot matrix printers and religious orders? You'll eat this up – I sure did.

-Tim Wu, Special Assistant to the President for Technology and Competition Policy, author of The Master Switch: The Rise and Fall of Information Empires

Captures the look and feel of the PC era. Cory Doctorow draws a portrait of a Silicon Valley and San Francisco before the tech bros showed up — a startup world driven as much by open source ideals as venture capital gold.

-John Markoff, Pulitzer-winning tech columnist for the New York Times and author of What the Doormouse Said: How the Sixties Counterculture Shaped the Personal Computer Industry

You won't put this book down – it's too much fun. I was there when it all began. Doctorow's characters and their story are real.

-Dan'l Lewin, CEO and President of the Computer History Museum