#the drawing is based on its feelings surrounding the event in the post that was linked

[beatcroc]

ENA thoughts & theory: on Theodora, the Bathroom, and Unforgiven Frank

[aka: historical events in uncanny streets, aka: I Think I Figured Out What Frank Did.]

edit: you can now also read this on my neocities! it has a cute little page themed after the dbbq menu style :) but anyway on with the post

Throughout most of chapter 1, it feels pretty heavily built up that the bathroom is some sort of force that works in direct opposition to “the genie”. it certainly felt malevolent to me; like it's something that’s replaced “the genie” in the minds and vernacular of the people of uncanny streets; perhaps a kind of corruption or overthrowing of its genie, and usurpation of the people’s efforts to seek it out as a sort of reprieve or authority. once you actually get to the bathroom though, it seems that this… isn’t actually the case?

The simple fact that theodora still exists in there and is perfectly fine and unharmed and surprisingly cordial if you manage to find her is proof enough there's not actually anything sinister about the bathroom, but the "angels" ena corrupts into when trying to mention a "genie" in prior conversations being the same things she transforms into when theodora begins to let her ascend [as well as seen during the icy ascension climb] ties the whole operation directly to theodora.

It seems that the bathroom is in fact actually theodora’s own design, and i posit that it exists as a front to deliberately obscure her name/presence + throw people off her trail. She’s not exactly trying to completely close herself off from everyone, but she does seem to be “in hiding” to some extent. this of course begs the question: why would a character who’s basically a lesser deity be in hiding?

Well, part of it is I think she just kind of got tired of attending to everyone's "aspirations" and whatnot at a whim.

The presentation of the bathroom as a confessional and the surrounding talk of things like “washing clean one's sins” seems in a pretty similar vein to what i’d assume theodora’s more regular duties are, based on her interaction with ena; cleansing, reflection, forgiveness, rebirth, that whole usual god-type jazz. it's all pretty handily represented here, and the whole deal of her ‘throne’ being a wishing well pretty directly parallels how one would typically 'wish' on a genie as well. perhaps she simply wanted people to put in their own work to solve their problems rather than continually come to her for everything.  Interestingly though, she IS still quite willing to help directly if you just come straight to her. like, the bathroom serves its own purpose if you assume that’s all there is, but there also seems to be a thing of "if you still remember the genie and/or have done the work to know she still exists and/or are simply diligent enough to search around to find her, you are welcomed to her benefits”.

It’s a bit strange next to the whole ‘burying her name and presence’ thing! If all she wanted to do was make people earn their forgiveness, she could have accomplished that just by making herself really hard to reach¹. But taking those extra levels of censorship...the general populace clearly isn’t the real problem here. she’s obscuring herself because of something else. something specific. something she would not forgive.

...so the frank spec was originally going to be a separate post, but after chasing the ideas in it far enough, i found the two wound up running right back into eachother. I am joining them unceremoniously with this block of text. He has a lot of shit to get through but i promise we will eventually wrap back around to the G͊̉̀Eͦ̿̓N̵̶͠Ỉ͂̏[BATHROOM] 

Frank…. Frank is an interesting case to be sure. He’s so calm and cordial, even to ena, yet he speaks of “past mistakes” and having to “remain unforgiven"? He’s the only character theodora is less willing to help out than ena too; she’s fine with letting your excommunicated ne'er-do-well wipe the world bare, yet she draws the line at showing mercy to frank? what did this motherfucker DO? My answer is uhhhhhh colonization, probably!

Right. So assertion #1 i have about frank is that the ship you enter and leave uncanny streets through belonged to him*.

This seems like too deliberate a line to just mean "i walked through the door on there to get here”. he's got a history with that ship. if it belonged to him, i have to figure he was also the one who originally crashed it into uncanny streets. He does refer to both ena and himself as ‘travelers’, after all;  i don’t think it’s just that the ship had always been lodged there and he just lived on it. ramming that giant ass thing in through the sands has already not got him off to a great start, but i mean that could have been an accident. You never know. maybe he’s just a bad pilot. No, the real problem, i think, is that after doing so he proceeded to attempt to harvest uncanny streets and/or remake it according to his vision.

frank has some very very strong and very very baffling associations with the wanderers. i don't quite want to say it's anything so simple/direct as "he created them" or "they work for him", but he has most DEFINITELY had some kind of hand [or robo-foot, as the case may be] in how they currently exist and operate. to be completely real i haven’t been able to makes heads or tails [or snakes and hippos] of all the NUMEROUS scattered clues about them in any sort of sensible or satisfying way, but… the barest overall gist is that the wanderers are something frank either designed himself or sought to harness, but doing so in the form presented here in the tapestries in his room was….not viable. As you can see, it’s a bit… incomplete there, compared to what we see in the game.

This… facility? In the secret area of the gutsy maze is connected directly to frank’s room, as seen with the respective doors + same brick texture between both, and the even same music as in frank’s room will play if you approach this door. obviously this gives him a pretty big tie to the production[???] of these things!

There are a lot of individual elements to the wanderers who are up and out there flying around uncanny streets: hippo, veins, snake, diamond, eye, ribs. The thing that drives me crazy is that despite there being so many places where these elements turn up individually or in groups, none of them are exactly complete sets, or presented in consistent ways, or seem to be from the same origin. this is a bit of a ramble for making only a tangential point but bear with me. The facility hits their 3 biggest features-hippo/snake/diamond, but don’t line up with the elements in frank’s tapestries-hippo/diamond/veins---which weirdly, the veins seem to be their own sort of free beings there???? yet seem to act as a binding agent for the hippo in the functional wanderers? There’s also the eye and the ribcage thing, which i don’t think turn up directly anywhere, but they are… let’s say, more crude and primitive structures/organs, that i might associate with, say, a fetus. those red and blue tendril veins are also notably present in that thing, and act in a similar sort of “binding” manner of ena “becoming one with [the orb]”. it's also those things binding the taxi driver’s heads but i’m gonna get too out in the weeds² if i keep going on about the wanderers' elements. 

the point of all this is to say that while frank seemed to have a partial vision/plan for what he wanted the wanderers to be, it seems to me that certain resources/elements/processes vital to them actually functioning were native to/only available in uncanny streets. And so I think he sought to take them for himself by force.

Look, the dude’s a big king head. This alone EASILY carries vibes of conquest, but on top of that apparently his mecha legs are also pretty handily lifted from the ED-209 mech in robocop. granted, i haven't actually seen robocop so i could be way off base here, but i feel like a police gunmech isn't exactly, uh, going to be a force for everyone’s civic benefit yknow. Not to mention the job listings refer to the wanderers as “enforcers”. He is a guy whose associations all reek of hostile takeover.

Thinking more on the wanderer’s purpose though…the npc’s call them wanderers in a general sense, but i wonder if they “wander” because they are searching for something. in their dialogue they report on finding various oddities:  

”A SEVERE BRAIN SIGNAL CAPABLE OF PRODUCING [UNINTELLIGIBLE] WAS LOCATED.” “A NEW PHENOMENON HAS BEEN DISCOVERED /// THE ENORMOUS EGG THAT HOLDS US ALL AS IN THE MOTHER’S WOMB”

a severe brain and an egg/womb, huh.

…I have a hunch they're looking for theodora. The brain thing seems the most indicative because there’s no other imagery or references of a brain in the game, and while the ‘egg’/’fetus’ orb thing is a good bit more nebulous, it IS the most direct connection we have to theodora currently. And boy those fuckers sure do love flocking around this "new phenomenon" leading to her.

It’s no secret that genies have massive power within and/or over the door they rule, so it would make sense for the purposes of colonization³ that he’d seek out something like that to gain access to or control, perhaps to further form the land to his liking.

Obviously, theodora isn’t going to be wild about all this. She intervened and ultimately stopped him, but not before his assault did some damage. 

this “broken palace” where the shattered theodora lies… i’d like to assert it was in fact formerly HER palace. I always did find that area weirdly serene and beautiful, in an out-of-place sort of way; it’s certainly a more natural kind of aesthetic i could associate with her were the bathroom not in play. Seems a shame to abandon it rather than rebuild, but…i believe that when frank launched his attack, she feigned her own death in the process of fending him off. The wanderers, too, seem to corroborate this:

“WE HAVE ISSUED THE TIME OF DEATH AT 2:04 P.M.”

She let him believe that this attack did in fact destroy her, to set up an eternal stalemate--that, by a cruel trick of fate, in his effort to take over by force, he’d also destroyed the way to accomplish his goals. That’s why he’s trapped there in the lost village now. Trapped with the ruins of his ambition, trapped with a dead god that provides no way to change the land he sought to conquer.

It is certainly interesting, when ena talks to the shattered theodora, that she very deliberately highlights she “can only keep you from returning” despite that having no real relevance to the conversation they were having. That’s all that remnant of her exists to do, and it’s keen on letting you know it. 

Meanwhile, the real and very much not actually dead theodora is far more into subterfuge and also still needs a place to live. So she simply made a new makeshift palace/hideout/base of operations, and… you guessed it. That's the bathroom babeyyyyy. That’s why you can’t speak of a “genie” in uncanny streets, and why no one there these days even knows what the genie is. she wanted something completely disconnected, unassuming, and censored so that she may evade the remaining wanderers, and so that word she’s still alive and in power and serving her people [even if more passively now] never reaches frank; forcing him to live with his guilt + the consequences of his actions, and/or just to set an example so he doesn’t try any shit again.

And that’s how we find things in chapter 1.

Going forwards, though… i do find this line interesting:

There are… certainly a number of ways to interpret this one⁴, but for the sake of this post, i think there’s a fair call that this line can mean “the pretense of theodora’s being dead” has been stripped away. It has got to be crazy to learn that you’ve been living a lie for the past however long, but at least he doesn’t seem too pissed that she’s been deceiving him all this time. Whatever happens, it’s nice that he’s not interested in going back to his old ways now that he’s free.

I accused frank of a lot of shit in this post, but i do really love the guy. it’s hard not to be endeared to a guy who’s accepted his punishment, but still commits to being better even though he knows it won’t absolve him. It’s hard not to be endeared to one of the only people who’s actually fucking nice to you. And of course, ena might also have her own history with him, given he’s a thing she thought of for her aspiration to theodora + how frank bafflingly uses the correct ‘ƎNA’ spelling of her name. There’s a lot about his past that i’ve tried to piece together here, but still quite a bit more beyond reach-at least at this this point in the game. I certainly hope we get to see more of him, and i get the suspicion there’s a good chance we will.⁵

…

Alright yes i’ll address the superscript numbers now. Because this was clipped together out of two separate posts that were Specifically About Frank and Specifically About Theodora initially, there are a few tangential points & observations that i removed from both broader topics to make it flow better as one throughline about uncanny’s history. They’re not substantial enough to merit their own posts so i’m just tacking them on down here as footnotes.

¹. i’ve seen a bit of questioning of why theodora allows the purge events to happen, and im gonna be honest chief i dont think she cares. If people are creating their own path to her that's not her problem, and by whatever metric the purge events are “illegal”, i don’t think she was the one to declare them as such. Now, the wanderers on the other hand….. VERY distinctly seem to dislike the purges. They were the ones to take the taxi driver’s head, and also seemingly what hurled that chunk of building into uncanny dark to try and prevent you from getting in [an echo of their murmurings can be heard before seeing it crash up from the below] Which i find so so baffling with everything else i’ve posited about the wanderers in this post! I don’t get why they would care at all, let alone try to stop it.

². For reasons i could not even BEGIN to guess, that whole underground gutsy maze area has EXTREMELY direct parallels to EVERYTHING frank has going on. The music and doors and brick texture as mentioned above, but it’s also got the same sort of water as in the broken palace, and wouldn’t you god damn know it, those are also both the locations where the pointing spirit guys appear.

Not to mention this is also where the wanderers decided to take the taxi driver’s head, and there’s also that strange priest in the underground vignette of ena with the lantern featuring a wanderer that leads with the snake’s head rather than the hippo’s…. Sincerely. What did they mean by all this. 

³. this isn’t even the first or only theme of colonization i’ve picked up in dream bbq. This is probably going to be its own post later but... Man… i dont know… i think it could mean something that she and frank both are similarly “unforgiven”, almost as if they may have similar crimes. I don’t think ena is actively malevolent per se, but she does seem…uncaring, and i could definitely call her complicit. paving the world over in homogenous grey, paving the way for “investors in real estate” and auctioneers to immediately move in once it smells “much more valuable” and to liquidate the remaining assets… her own being wrapped up in being a “salesperson”, the big fuckoff gun..... i dont know man....

⁴. the gut vibe check i had for this line is that it has something to do with that bit theodora says about "fears and hesitation will only betray [ena’s] true ambition” in claiming her aspiration. But like the “truth” of ena’s aspiration that frank sees is uncanny streets getting outworlded, and that seems…a bit needlessly sinister, that he’d call that “noble”. There is also an admittedly much simpler read in the lies and truth just refer to the directions from the green and orange pointing spirits. But like thats boring. that is simply too mundane to feel appropriate for this series.

⁵. chapter 3!!!!! 

Frank ABSOLUTELY has history with piero and is apparently on pretty good terms with him, which ena very much distinctly is NOT. but ena also seems to be on good terms– dare i say even friends with frank– so i think he’s gonna come in clutch for us trying to get us in the crowd door. Also apparently if you look at that painting in isolation it does have eyes. this isn't relevant to anything, i just wanted to share it 'cause it's neat.

This…does present an interesting case in that frank is not a guaranteed encounter in chapter 1. If you don’t meet him there, would he still be there for us later? And if not, what is there for the crowd door? Disguise? Breaking in with force??? Continuity going forward is something i think about a lot for dbbq; how each route leaves you with and without certain tools to use later. If you have the humanboard, you probably won’t see frank. If you see frank, you probably won’t have had the humanboard. Is the best option doing the quests for humanboard and then hopping in the river to meet frank? hell, you can even get out of chapter 1 with 'useless' extra inventory like the chocolates. will any of that shit be relevant later? Boggles the mind.

*For getting all the way down here i present you, finally, with an alternate offshoot version of this theory that leaves more questions than answers: The ship may have been frank’s… and theodora’s. It’s for sure interesting the ship is where the door is, and that frank likewise may have owned a door. it really could go either way whether the door was already on there or if it was added as a way for other people to come and go more easily once the ship became a, uh, permanent fixture of uncanny, but IF that door had always been on the ship…. It could have interesting implications for theodora, depending on how long she’s been the genie of it.  Particularly since there is a very fair read that the missing statue of her on the ship may be the same one that’s seen in the broken palace---they do have the same pink eyes, after all.

The only conclusion i’m willing to draw about this for now is that theodora may have also come in on the ship along with frank. Perhaps they could have been working together, at one point. This doesn’t change all that much about the rest of the theory though; frank could’ve still gotten power-hungry, and theodora could’ve clashed & broken ties with him all the same.

It could also have some interesting implications about where a door actually leads, and a genie’s powers in relation to that door and the area it’s located in, but, well, that’s more off the wall stuff that’s not really productive to think about right now. Perhaps in chapter 2 with the whole ‘inauguration of the new genie’ business…..

There also may be something to said about the ship having the same kind of stained glass as the orb; again with how the orb is a pretty direct association with theodora and how the wanderers seem to be drawn to it.

 I wasn’t able to draw anything constructive out of it, but it’s… it’s there.

[babyjakes]

baby barnes | 1. homecoming.

〈 disclaimer: this blog posts content not suitable for individuals under the age of 18. minors are strictly prohibited from viewing, sharing, or interacting with this blog. for more information on this blog's commitment to protecting minors, read our full statement here. 〉

summary | upon returning from a small solo mission, natasha has something to give to steve.

characters | steve rogers, natasha romanoff, bucky barnes, other assorted avengers, 'baby barnes' (original character)

warnings | all warnings from the original headcanon probably apply (slightly above canon level violence, child abuse, major character death.) very angsty, steve cries a lot.

word count | 1,440

an | based on my baby barnes headcanon, with some slight changes to the universe and storyline. in this version of events, after bucky is killed, nat goes on a solo rage mission to kill everyone at the hydra facility and bring baby barnes home to steve 🩷

"Sorry. This place is a mess."

As hard as he tried, Steve just couldn't pick his gaze up off of the floor as Natasha stood there in the doorway to his living quarters. "It's okay. Things have been hard, I know." The redhead's voice seemed as though it was trying to float through a thick screen of smoke, or maybe Steve was just underwater. Maybe he had been drowning for weeks.

It was quiet as the woman entered, slipping her shoes off on the mat near the door. Steve could feel her careful eyes taking him in, assessing the damage. Every word he pulled from his throat felt like a fishing line digging right back into his burning flesh as he questioned quietly, "Would you like some tea?"

He didn't have to lift his gaze to tell that she had shaken her head. The pair moved further into the room in silent tandem, Steve leading the way over to the long beige couch. The blonde's focus was fleeting as his eyes fell on his friend's lap, before shifting over to the old photo albums on the coffee table, then to the front door, then back to his own folded hands. Natasha cleared her throat, and Steve almost found it amusing, the way she was preparing to speak like she could possibly find anything to say in that moment that would somehow make things better.

"The mission was successful," was what she finally stated, the underwhelming words drawing a knowing look onto the supersoldier's face.

He nodded, doing his best to keep things polite. It wasn't Natasha's fault that he had fallen so out of love with the world; he knew that. "I'm glad," Steve hummed, thinking back to the telephone brief he had received about the agent's assignment before it had been launched. "She's just going in to clear out a suspected outpost. Nothing major," Stark had told him. The captain didn't like sending anyone off on solo missions, but he wasn't in any state to tag along, and thankfully it didn't seem like he was needed.

Through the heavy air, Natasha took another breath before finally speaking again. "I have something to show you." Her hand slipped quietly into her pocket before appearing again, holding a small photograph by its corner. When she handed it to Steve, the man couldn't help but begin to weep.

For a moment, all he could see was the girl's tender face. The face that had haunted his dreams for the past several months, ever since that first 'baby barnes' tape had arrived in the mail. In the photo, which he held tight with both of his shaking hands, the infant's big brown eyes were looking up at something. Her cheeks were round and soft, rosy as ever. Steve couldn't help but wonder when the picture had been taken, how close it was to capturing the baby's last moments on earth before she was put to rest like her father.

Finally shifting his attention away from her angelic face, the blonde trembled as he started scanning the rest of the photo for any clues. Brow furrowing in confusion, he was immediately puzzled by the plush blanket that sat in a messy pile surrounding the baby's little bottom and legs. "What's this?" he paused quietly as he thought back through all the tapes that were permanently engraved in his memory, like an endless reel of vivid film looping across the walls of his troubled mind. Not a single one had shown the infant with any sort of blanket or covering; that would go directly against the purpose of the project. She was deprived of any warmth, human or inanimate, as a simple yet effective form of torture. The blanket in the photo simply didn't belong. Steve was absolutely sure of it.

The next indicator that something was off was the state of the baby herself. She was unusually clean, her ivory skin appearing fresh and well-kept. Her medium brown whisps of hair laid neatly over her small head, lacking the usual knots and mats that he had grown used to seeing. Swallowing hard, Steve was struggling to understand why she looked so different, almost as if someone had been caring for her for the first time in her short life.

Desperate for any sort of explanation, the captain kept studying the photo, trying to make sense of each little detail he could make out. The background itself was insignificant, just a simple wall of dark metal paneling that didn't give any insight as to where or when the picture was taken. But then, in the very corner of the photo, Steve was finally given his answer. The edge of a jacket sleeve was just barely visible against the floor, the navy fabric recognizable to him anywhere; it was Nat's, an old garment from the team's days with SHIELD. The man's breath hitched in his throat as he began to stammer.

"N-Natasha," his voice wavered. "Nat. Where... how... wh-when was this-?" Steve continued staring at the small photo, more tears building in his eyes as he choked back something between a whimper and a sob. "Wh-when did you... w-was this, were you-?"

"This morning," the agent told the supersoldier softly, reaching out to place a steadied hand over one of his shaking ones. "Bruce and I got her all cleaned up and sorted out in the med bay. She wasn't a big fan of the bath, but we got a little smile out of her when we blew bubbles with the soap." Natasha's gaze was tentative, not knowing how Steve would take the news. But as she sat there, watching the revelations sink in for her friend, she couldn't help but let slip what she had been wanting to tell him since the moment she laid eyes on the infant while breaching the lonely Siberian outpost. "After what they did to Bucky, I knew what I had to do," she said quietly. "I had to save her for you, Steve. You would've done the same for me."

All at once, Steve could feel nearly a month of tension and agony lifting from his bones as he took what seemed like his first breath since witnessing Bucky's last through a screen. If he hadn't been seated, he would've fallen to his knees right there, maybe before God or maybe before his dear friend, the one who he now understood had brought the baby back safely after an undoubtedly perilous mission. The baby, the baby, the baby... that was all the captain's mind could hold onto as he sat there, clutching her photo as if both of their lives depended on it. She was alive, she was safe. And she had been brought home to him.

"Natasha," Steve choked out the young woman's name through tears, his voice like warm hands cradling their years of partner and friendship. There was something so unspeakably profound about the endless ways they were willing to live and die for each other; neither of the two could put it into words, but the feeling was certainly present all around as they sat there in the man's small living room, holding onto each other in a moment of shared silence. The gravity of Nat's actions was quick to settle in, and the significance of what she had done- all on her own, without being asked- was nearly unbearable to Steve. "Y-you went... all on your own? You could've-"

"I had to, Steve," Nat cut him off gently, her certainty on the matter unmistakable as it flashed across her face. "You were in no condition to fight, and the others would've only been in the way." As much as he didn't like what he was being told, Steve knew it was the truth. Things had gotten bad for Nat after Bucky's final tape; her decline was much more subtle than that of the captive's best friend, though he was still quick to notice it. It was only his nature. Now Steve understood that when she went dark like that, little could come between the agent and what she set out to do. As much as it worried him sick, that worry couldn't quite outdo the larger sense of relief that was flowing through him like water.

Steve's gaze drifted back to the tiny girl sat posing in the photo, another wave of grief washing over him as he saw a shadow of his late friend gazing back at him through those familiar brown eyes. Giving his hand a gentle squeeze, Natasha finally made the proposition, "Whenever you're ready, I'll take you to see her."

[incongruence-osaf]

EXCITING NEWS, SECRETS SHARED

Hello!! It is time for me to officially post the first two chapters of my first ever multi-chapter fanfiction story, The Incongruence of Stars and Flowers!!!

So far the word count has reached over 8,000 words, roughly 21 pages at 1.15 spacing (including the current WIP of Chapter Three). This was a huge challenge for me that I am so glad to have started. I'd been keeping this (mostly) a secret for many months during a collaborative creative process.

It started when I saw an application for Sonic Big Bang 2024 zine on Tumblr. Around 300 participants of fellow writers, artists and readers were sorted into secret groups of 2-4ish for developing writing and artwork surrounding story submissions! I had the pleasure of being paired with wonderful artists who made beautiful sketches, concept art, and illustrations based on my writing, linked here: @major-wren (ART) (ART) and @pastelspindash (ART)

Go check out their awesome art (and writing) as well as all the other amazing creatives featured in the zine on the official blog page @sthbigbang! My awesome and very helpful beta readers were/are @starredfishing (Tumblr) and @zaffretension (Instagram) who gave me excellent advice about dialogue, pacing, and plot. THANK YOU!!!

And also a big THANK YOU to the moderators of this expansive event for keeping it running so smoothly, for organizing everything, and for encouraging all of us in one of the most supportive and energizing creative environments I've ever been apart of!!! I have talked to many cool and talented people and I love the community that we have all been growing as a massive group.

I am excited to continue the adventure of learning, reading, and writing to see where this adventure goes with familiar characters. If you are too, I hope you enjoy <3

Without further ado, below is the summary for The Incongruence of Stars and Flowers.

This alternate universe combines the vibrant world and history of Sonic the Hedgehog with our very own, resulting in a version of Planet Mobius that’s both familiar and distant. Yet, this altered reality is neither idealized nor greater than the sum of its parts. 

Anthropomorphic beings, humans, and animals of Mobius are struggling to rebuild their cityscapes, ecosystems, communities, and personal lives in the wake of the cumulative devastation of the Perfect Chaos Flood and the Black Arms Invasion. Shadow the Hedgehog takes a leave of absence from G.U.N. to temporarily settle down in Station Square, laying low after the world-shattering encounter with his alien DNA donor Black Doom. While the cityfolk around him undergo the growing pains of instability, nonconformity, sociological upheaval, and corruption, so too does the alien hybrid. With the support of unyielding friendship in aloof activist Sonic the Hedgehog and cultured confidante Rouge the Bat, Shadow coasts in this new life chapter while feeling profound pulls to unravel memories surrounding his loving creator, Professor Gerald Robotnik and solve mysteries within his environment, mind, and body.

Past and present perspectives interweave to show slices of unordinary lives, drawing from early-to-mid 2000s culture shifts/natural disasters/political tensions, U.S. and European history, and various fields of science as inspiration for this multi-chapter science-fiction drama mystery.

PROMINENT CHARACTERS: 

Shadow the Hedgehog, Sonic the Hedgehog, Rouge the Bat, Professor Gerald Robotnik, Maria Robotnik, Black Doom(?), Commander Abraham Tower, Helen (from Sonic X)?, and new original character(s)

Body dysmorphia and dysphoria, racism/speciesism, internalized xenophobia, mentions and possible depictions of police violence, generational trauma, trauma and imagery from medicalized settings, processing grief

TRIGGER WARNINGS:

CHAPTER ONE HERE

[imnobodyuknow]

Surprise!!!

Sorry for the lack of posts lately, but *insert the usual excuses here*. I plan to get back to drawing stuff at some point, but in the meantime, allow me to present my very first piece of Murder Drones fan art!

I bet you didn't see this coming a mile away, huh? 😏

So, consider this scenario: At some point before the canon events in Murder Drones, our favorite Worker Drone Uzi Doorman gets herself into a different sort of predicament -- one that lands her on planet Earth in the past. When in the past, you ask? How about, oh...

...2009?

For those of you who haven't looked at the game Class of '09, either of its sequels, or the anime...

...

...

...

...

...don't. It's mostly a load of garbage. ���� No, for real, it makes Danganronpa look tame by comparison, and y'all know how I feel about that game. 😏

That being said, as someone who graduated high school in 2009 in the real world (no foolin') and has some knowledge of the ups, downs, way ups, and way downs of high school life in the US back then, I found the less trashy parts of the game to be both relatable and inspiring. I also had fun trying to decide who to dislike more -- the psychopathic protagonist Nicole or the equally messed-up characters she's surrounded by. 😅 (Even so, I don't recommend going into it without putting on a gas mask first. You've been warned.)

In any case, there's a reason why I chose to have these two angsty teens meet each other. As some of you may know, they don't just have similar personalities -- they're also voiced by the same talented voice actress, Elsie Lovelock! 😄 As soon as I made that discovery, it didn't take me long to see the parallels between Uzi and Nicole's personalities (not to mention their backstories) and start wondering how well they would relate to one another. They might be from different worlds, cultures, and situations, but I could still see them having a lot to talk about. And if you're familiar with either of them, then you know just how desperately both of them can use someone to talk to. It just seemed right somehow, I guess. 😊

Getting the details right in this picture -- the different shines on Uzi's hair, face, body, arms, and beanie, her unique eye and mouth design, the fine details in Nicole's hair, face, and outfit, the shadows, and the pattern of the floor tiles -- was a pretty fun challenge, I have to say. I used a few different pictures of Uzi as references, but for Nicole, I just used her smiling sprite:

The device in her hand is a Sidekick, based on a picture of one:

And finally, the room they're in is the cafeteria from Class of '09:

Why Nicole is the only one there who's interested in chatting with a drone from the future...I have no idea. That's just a minor detail, though, right? 😉

Anyway, I hope you enjoyed this brief collision of worlds, and I also hope to see y'all again real soon (hopefully with something new to share). Take care!

[wolpromptaday]

In reference to this mornings prompt.

Writing like all art, is a form of therapy. While this was not intended specifically to reference 9/11 I didn’t hesitate in posting it today for my own reasons.

There are people out there like me who lost people on 9/11, not just in the USA but all around the world in the other attacks. I lost friends from FFXI in the Twin Towers and I’m close enough to DC that the smoke from the pentagon reached my home. For that much, 9/11 has been a rough day for me personally since a decade before the attacks. Some of us have continued losing people for years after in adjacent military campaigns. Some of us know people who were on one or all of the ground zeros. Some of us have never been allowed or able to process our emotions.

If the prompt does what it’s supposed to and makes people think then it’s served its purpose. Perhaps it gives people the space to grieve, releases a long held anger, or lets them cope with their feelings in other ways. Art is therapy.

There isn’t a random draw bot that pulls from a list. I write these prompts for the month ahead of time, meaning I have a list that I make at the beginning of the month and post from each day. I purposely put that one down for today and I won’t apologize for the timing. Yes it’s difficult but it stirs up the emotions needed to be an effective writer.

Yes, sometimes art offends people and sometimes it draws upon strong feelings. In the end you have to realize how much media nods back through history. Take Star Wars for example, the galactic empire was based on Nazi Germany. We turn a blind eye to this because of how popular the saga is. In a few weeks the world will celebrate Halloween and play a song that talks about a massacre in Ireland simply because the song is titled “Zombie”. Never mind that it’s about the events of April 24-29, 1916. It has nothing to do with Halloween. But people continue to turn a blind eye to its true meaning.

The purpose of artists is to make people uncomfortable.

I understand that you and maybe others have a problem with that prompt being on 9/11 but it wouldn’t have an impact on Christmas or New Year’s or any other plain day. For that much it could have been posted on December 7th, or August 6th and no one would have said anything. Because no one really remembers what happened on those days.

I chose a day where the entire contemporary world saw evil and learned the definition of tragedy. Much like the survivors of the previously mentioned dates. Today is a day that has living people who remember what that feels like, the emotions are still raw. Not just in the USA but people who survived attacks all around the world on 9/11/2001. It is far more impactful than any random day. (Though most if not all of the people who have had issue with the prompt were not alive yet or too young to remember the events of September 11, 2001.)

I hope in the end that you are able to respond with an open mind. Tragedy surrounds us every day. You can let it hinder you, allow yourself to be blind to it, or expand your mind and do something that contradicts the intended outcome. Someone wanted the world to fear them. Will you let him win? The world was attacked that day, how do you cope in parallel to your WOL/D?

You do not have the right to not be offended. These prompts are meant to make you hear, feel, think. Our emotions are what make us who we are. If this is something that haunts you and makes you emotional, then I only succeed in our goal.

You’re welcome.

- Griever Worship

[rata-novus]

soto started so strong and ended so. bland.

editing bc i actually really want to rant. hopefully mostly coherent rambles bc im going on like 5 hrs sleep lol

the base release was genuinely, while on the shorter end, good. interesting characters and intrigue, both from the kryptis and the (presumably skeevy) wizards/astral ward. fun lore collections. we learn about one of the astral ward who left, which shouldn’t be possible. the intrigue! (that’s never brought up again.....) the majority of zojja’s post-hot story was done thru text but it was!!! actually v good!! her ascension made me feel a mix of icky at her losing her memories and glad she found a new family - and then all that ~mystery~ and moral ambiguity surrounding the astral ward just *poof* gone.

the nayos patches started and we went from “fighting against the kryptis and also low key side eyeing the astral ward bc what they’re doing seems dubious at best and breaking some kind of moral law at worst” to “the kryptis are literally like any other group we’ve ever encountered and aren’t actually that bad and we need to overthrow their big bad the end”. oh and do about 5-10 events between story steps ty.

there were a lot of qol additions during the soto era, and i’m going to give the next xpac one more shot, but if its of the same calibre or worse (bc what’s going to be the big draw, theyve already pulled ledgy armor out of their back pocket), idk man. idk.

editing again bc i aint done lmao.

and eparch???? built up to be this terrible cannibalizing spider whom the rest of the kryptis wouldn’t dare to question (bc of the cannibalizing thing you see) and in actually he’s small with 2 lil toothpick legs and we fight him for a few minutes and he just. gives up and peitha assumes the role of king. okay. sure. whatever why not. but like..... no backstabbing? its really that simple?

sometimes..... at plot that’s straightforward. is worse. (bc its boring)

i literally could not tell you the story beats surrounding *looks @ wiki* labris, nephus, and the new kryptis general (?) at the end who isnt even on the wiki yet. what even happened? why add all these characters we’re supposed to respect and idk who they even are? build upon the new characters we already met in the base soto story. a small cast could have done wonders tbh. again: lost potential. what a mess.

[evilkaeya]

very sorry if this bothered you in any way but hello hello

i just need some help in getting out of an ongoing art block for several months.

if you're willing to share, what flowers do you consider most suitable for your favorite bsd characters?

there's no restrictions, up to personal preference. it can be based on flower symbolism, aesthetic, your own scenarios, or based on said character's backstory.

could you explain if it's a little complicated? so i can draw with a better guideline rather than going on pure imagination.

if i manage to post it, i'll be sure to give credit. if you're up to it.

anyway, if you liked this idea and you're comfortable with it, thank you so much. if you aren't, feel free to ignore this ask, no harm done.

have a nice day— or night? whenever you see this honestly. take care!

hi hello I'm sorry I just saw this 😭

I actually don't have many bsd characters I associate with particular flowers but I am obsessed with hanakotoba so here we go!!

Chuuya: You guessed it, camellia. It's not my fault he's always surrounded in camellias in official arts + the Japanese meaning of the flower, 'noble death' really suits him, given his personality. I also associate him with red daisies (I just feel like it) and freesia (flower language: trust and friendship!)

Dazai: Oh boy I'm about to get very annoying so bear with me. I associate Dazai with multiple flowers. First, sunflowers! I don't know if this is part of flower language but you know how sunflowers are always following the sun right? Constant inclination towards the light, just like current Dazai. Yes, he has his ups and downs, and yes, he's unsure of his own actions sometimes, but he'll never turn away from the light Odasaku pointed him towards. That's why I think sunflowers suit him. ADA Dazai is VERY dear to me.

I also associate him with daffodils for its flower meaning, rebirth and new beginnings. PM Dazai is sakura to me because of its contradictory meanings (life and death, beauty and violence).

Kunikida: Gladiolus! Because it means strength of character and moral integrity. Kunikida is also one of the few bsd characters with the strongest characteristics, in my opinion.

Kenji: Sunflower again, simply because it suits him (both flower language and aesthetic. I've seen so many art of Kenji with sunflowers and they make me so happy)

Atsushi and Kyouka: I associate both of them with daffodils, again, for it's flower meaning. Atsushi specifically with white lilies too, just because they match his aesthetic.

Fyodor: Black lilies. Because they mean beauty, mystery and death. Also the aesthetics suit him.

Yosano: Iris! They symbolize elegance, strength and admiration in Japanese and I've seen an art of Yosano standing in an iris field once and it stuck with me ever since.

Soukoku: I associate these bitches with too many flowers but I'll give you the ones I think of the most after the recent events. Manjushage or spider lilies, because they mean 'final goodbye' and asters because they mean 'I won't forget you' :)

That's all! Thank you for the ask, I loved answering this <3 I hope this helps you get rid of your arts block, even if it's just a bit.

[ruleofbirds]

𝚍𝚎𝚟𝚕𝚘𝚐_𝟶𝟷.𝟷

Kia Ora, Te Ao!

Hello, World! It's official - Robbie has a tumblr now. Absolutely unfathomable. Honestly, it's mostly because it was this or Wordpress (or a more obscure indie dev forum) and this seemed the most accessible and quirky. I'm sure this won't lead to another awful endless scrolling habit. Any advice for the visual side of things is warmly received! I want this blog to be a fun part of the week, because a lot of fun will be had developing RoB. Just realised that acronym happens to be my name. Could be worse.

Okay! Now that the initial ramble into the void is out of the way, it's time to get into the c o n c e p t.

This tumblr is a devlog for my NZ ecosystem simulator currently titled "rule of birds", which I will be working on for the next 8 weeks as part of Blackbird Foundation's "Protostars" program. This means a weekly check-in with the other creatives in the program, the organizers at Blackbird, and a post for all of you here.

I'm breaking this week's post into 3 sections just to cover the bases;

01.1 -a bit about my creative practice and how it led to this project

01.2 -a discussion of "flocking" in programming (using p5.js)

01.3 -a discussion of NZ natural history

So here's the intro post, where I ramble about myself for a sec.

So! basically, I specialize in spatial design, I love working with anything nature-related, and I want to make a video game.

Lately I've been on a tangent based around art in NZ's cultural context - the design principles behind whakairo (Maori woodcarving) and how their composition conveys meaning, how histories of spirituality, tribal and colonial relations affected design, and my own art interpreting my natural surroundings with photography and charcoal drawing. I can neither confirm nor deny whether there will be an art zine compiling a wee bit of this work on the community table at the Whanganui Zinefest this Saturday.

That tangent branched off into a focus on natural history that's the keystone of rule of birds. My motivation for focusing on an ecosystem simulator is to articulate a basis for the sort of games I want to come out of Aotearoa. The sim will be the proof of concept - and I suppose this blog will be the manifesto.

I feel like there's a massive demand for games exploring NZ history - like, imagine a big-budget maori-led release set in pre-colonial time, with all the unique aspects of survival, resource management and day to day activity that involved - or an assassin's creed type action game based during the time of Te Kooti. It goes unsaid that Kupe is one of the best parts of Sid Meier's Civilization VI - iykyk.

What I think separates a good game from a great one is how alive the virtual world feels - rather than being led through an a-to-b progression of events presented in the same visual style I've seen countless times before, if the world can react in a dynamic way, and the details in the background are crafted to feel organic and immersive, I'm going to want to stop and wander off the beaten track that an objective marker may be pointing me towards.

The last game that caught my attention in this way - and coincidentally the one that made me want to put my coding knowledge to the test with gamedev - was, of course, Rain World. To everyone who knows me, I'm sure you're surprised I've made it three paragraphs without bringing this game up. I'm not going to go into too much detail here, because there is *a lot*, but key points are you are one creature among many scavenging for food in a brutal biomechanical ecosystem, hibernating between cycles of cataclysmic rain, and the game plays like basically nothing else due to how the coded behaviour of every entity in the world follows its own logic that has much more to do with its own survival than the experience of you as a player.

Here's a nice little illustration of the physics behind a movement-sensing tentacle monster, to give a sort of discrete example - but the creatures that act according to behavioural karma systems and the dynamics of how the different lizards scuffle and coordinate with each other is worth looking into too, if this is your thing.

(Source: GDC, Curious Archive)

Now, I really want to jump into some of this behavioural coding stuff, so I'm just going to move on to collecting things for the next post - hope this has been an interesting read! if you somehow found this page in your tumblr algorithm, welcome! I'll also be posting bits on the instagram page @robbiek_devlogs and you can check out my other work on my main insta @robbiek_art

Hei kōnā mai,

Robbie K

Next up: simulation in coding, natural history research post #1

Next week: Adventures in Godot Engine!

[blackvahana]

Lottery spell notes:

Machine spells.

Astral side:

1: Pick a date a draw is occurring.

Get the energy signature of the date and the time itll be occuring, plus and minus about ten minutes either side. Isolate it and centre it, this is the key to the gateways formed as well as the justification for the time web branches

2: Pick around 5 people you intend to give money to

Rearrange the fates in relation to the win, fortune after it and because of it. Recraft their partial fates and loop them to the justification and event of the central key

3: Reorient your own fate around it

Create a new version of self that happens after the win, a new fate, link them to the central key

4: Rewrite the Records

Rescribe the Records surrounding the event, specifically by obscuring or blurring the individual records so that they can settle into fact after the win. Doing it this way prevents them snapping back to mirroring externally-recorded truth

The altered Records should include fates, power changing hands, the mechanism of how things came to be, etc.

--

Here, we should have a series of branches surrounding the central key of the date and time of occurrence. Any other things can be added such as community effects and so on, but the more fates tied to it the more their own wills will affect the workings

--

5: Tighten the threads

The threads between central key and rewoven fates should be high strung literally, the magnetic channels woven so tight in that the key and its peripheries will do what they must to snap together when the spell is introduced into reality

Keep the Records blurred

6: Gather energy that will legitimise the spell

In this case worship, the energy of hymns and prayers. In exchange for a life of peace here, I return to my own throne with the ability to focus on work returned to me. Legitimising energy can include the future energies of those whose fates are altered, especially praise and thanks for the dissemination of power post-win

7: Employ any guardians of the gates to maintain and work with the spell

as stated.

Physical side:

8: Locate the place its unfolding

The literal room it unfolds in should be located, as well as the energetic storerooms that occur around things like this. All significant rooms in the building must be accounted for, all major spirits involved must be traced back, and any external rooms must also be accounted for

9: Dissect, diffuse, destroy

Rooms/people/etc should be peeled away from being influential for this specific date as much as possible. Diffusion of energy and fates as well as energy buildups solely surrounding the date and time chosen should make attaching easier. Destruction is the last thing to fall back on, pruning past wins, past fates, and even consuming attached spirits if necessary

10: Claim territory

Set up temporary territory in the location. Servants or assistants or whatever one may have should set up base, cleansing the area surrounding the time-place of the win. Chronomancy should assert the time-place as belonging to oneself, servants/etc should patrol and keep influences out and from reasserting their own claiming of the win.

11: Assert influence flow in the time-place

This should effectively turn into a shrine/temple for you for this time. Its your rise to power, and additionally one should know how to move masses of people into power assertion

Back to the astral, because I feel like listing it this way:

12: Mass influence

The individual fates of many dont have to be altered through Record rewrites or detailed fateweaving, but should be, where possible, microedited. The people who funded this should have their fates subtly rewoven into specifically supporting you, that they paid for their money to go to you. Not altering their minds, their opinions, their reasons, but instead turning a million tributaries into a river flowing for and to you.

Justifications such as worship may be used, if your name is known to them you can petition their unconsciousness to donate

13: Calling to the Everything

General stirring of the waters to flow to and for you

Void side:

14: Calling to the Void

Optional work with the Void to set up a specific magnetic signature for the central key

The unoptional or less optional work should surround the movement of the physical plane, the balls or whatever else is drawn will need to either be possessed or literally moved through Void magic. If a person is drawing the numbers they may be subtly possessed, but if theyre free-falling other manipulation may be used

Astral side, again:

15: Refinement of the spell

All factors should either be linked or unlinked, depending on the weights on each thread and the influence specific parts will have on each other. For instance, two or more spells done simultaneously may be more effective when it comes to altering fates and then doing the physical boundary setting, if the spell gets too messy with it all. Things may coincide at one point, and using co-incidence should be considered

16: Sinking the spell

The spell should now be ready. Energy mixed with it like fertiliser, it should be lowered into the waters of existence but maintained and observed at least by attendants. Fate waters and so on will alter and jostle around the individual fate directions and such

Physical, again:

17: Proper camp made in the location

This includes now weaving the reality-broaching tendrils into the building where they need to be, setting up the means of physical substance manipulation, and so on

[sidharthojhasns]

Blog Post 9.

Depiction of historical periods in media from a modern lens

Depiction of historical periods in media from a modern lens There are many depictions of historical periods on screen over the years, any period that is not of the time when the media was created can even extend into the future and into the past. Historical media can be informative, and educational, it can give us a glimpse into another period or put us in the shoes of someone very different, it can even just be an interesting backdrop for a story, that is something different that can add a little variety. These depictions often form the public's perceptions of the period (Rosenstone, R. 1995).

People remember and acknowledge the past through cultural and symbolic acts, and they in turn form their cultural memories and identities (Reading, A. 2011) and their ideas about the past are very often influenced by media.. This is important for understanding our identities and histories.

But there are a few aspects of historical depictions that are peculiar and can be seen in many places forming a pattern. One of these is the depiction of people and how they behave. Their mannerisms personalities, behavior, their way of speaking is often very formal and stilted. And often it even has a theatrical feeling. Certain things that we expect people to have while they are speaking like stuttering, and swearing. Being sarcastic, cracking jokes, and very naturalistic ways of being that are commonly seen in contemporary media are absent.

This difference can be compared with the change between classic Hollywood and New Hollywood that started in the 70s. Where the artificiality was dropped in most cases. When it comes to historical media, it wasn't. One of the reasons might be that when new Hollywood decided to shed its artificiality, there was no new visual style that had to be created. The actors had to just be themselves or had contemporary references to draw upon. But when artificiality is dropped in a historical film or TV. The natural state of being has no reference. To do it naturally, would require a very high knowledge of the history of that period. And even then the results may not be accurate. Going for a naturalistic approach to acting and dialogue in a historical piece may seem fake with the characters feeling too 'modern'. This is often seen in the internet meme that goes around in film and media circles that refers to actors playing characters that have 'seen an iPhone'. And are unable to sell themselves as someone from a different era.

It's also possible that if the results are historically true it may come across as uncanny or absurd. Since human culture can vary greatly over time and is subjective to a great extent. People might find something that is actually accurate as being too absurd. A small example of this could be how George Washington is rarely depicted with dentures since modern audiences may find that absurd. It is perhaps impossible to truly represent a historical period that has gone by and it gets harder to represent it the further back we go in time. Therefore it might be much better to focus on representing an impression of the past, or the feeling of it. And in that case, it might be better to not focus on Truth in a literal way. However, it should also be acknowledged that these feelings of the past can even be weaponized and used nefariously by political forces (Kalinina, E. (2017).

One example of depicting the past as a feeling is the TV show "The Terror" which depicts a British expedition into the Arctic to find the northwest passage in the 19th century. The show is based on real events and follows the period and history very closely in great detail. However, it has some supernatural elements in it. The major one is the presence of an uncanny, polar bear-like monster called "Tunbaak". This creature although at first glance seems out of place. It makes more sense once examined. In the modern world, we are constantly surrounded by images of polar bears, we have seen them in zoos, tame ones being cute in YouTube videos, plushies, and friendly animated characters. Our relationship to a polar bear is very different from a 19th-century explorer, which is why it might be a better choice to show a monster instead of the real animal which is how polar bears would have been perceived back then by some who had never seen anything like it. In this way sometimes when imagining the past, fantasy is more 'true' than reality.

Sources-

⦁ Rosenstone, R. (1995). The Historical Film as Real History. Film-Historia, 1, 5-23.

⦁ Reading, A. (2011) 'Identity, memory and cosmopolitanism: The otherness of the past and a right to memory?', European Journal of Cultural Studies, 14(4), pp. 379-394. doi: 10.1177/1367549411411607.

⦁ Kalinina, E. (2017). Beyond nostalgia for the Soviet past: Interpreting documentaries on Russian television. European Journal of Cultural Studies, 20(3), 285-306. DOI: 10.1177/1367549416682970.

[officalheydenjh]

SELF-INITIATED PRACTICE

30/11/2024

We were asked to come up with a self-assigned brief. I wanted to pick something that resonates with my values and identity. Based on this, I decided to surround this project on Welsh culture. I want to look at storytelling as a form of cultural preservation and how cultures are able to preserve their cultural practices and traditions, but with a concentration on welsh culture specifically.

I wanted to work on project that involved a lot of 3D and sculptural elements as my previous projects have been very illustration heavy and I want to develop my sculpture work more. I also want to take advantage of the "visual media" aspect of my course and to work on something I can throw myself into. I wanted to choose something I am passionate about and would work well in 3D and that thing for me is puppetry.

In this post I will showcase some puppet media I really enjoy and would like to draw inspiration from.

THE DARK CRYSTAL

I have had a deep love for the dark crystal since I was a child. Most report feeling scared by the original movie, specifically because of the skeksis but I was completely fascinated. It was amazing to me that a whole new world had been made with puppets and had zero humans. I remember having The Tale of The Dark Crystal book as a child (pictured below) and always taking time to look at the illustrations and just be taken to another place.

To my delight, they made a mostly puppeteered show in 2019 (enhanced with CGI) that was absolutely magical. The puppets had been improved vastly and were so much more life like. The movie will always take top place in my heart but the series is a very very close second as everything about it just enhances the original story and gives so much more context to the events that take place in the 1982 movie.

Growing up, I had a special edition DVD of The Dark Crystal that had a "in the making" documentary and I believe I watched it just as often as I would watch the movie. There is nothing even similar to the Dark Crystal that is worth noting because the Dark Crystal is the first of its kind and nobody has tried to replicate it.

LABYRINTH

I also wanted to take a moment to look at Labyrinth which was released only 4 years after The Dark Crystal. This movie did actually frighten me as a child, the goblin puppets were a lot less whimsical and were quite nightmarish for me if I am honest. The non-goblin puppets were a lot more palatable but the overall movie felt a lot more gritty and less fantastical for me. This doesn't take away my love for the movie as the music is fantastic and the story is good but I wanted to just draw contrast between these two medias to show the two ends of the spectrum. One end is a beautiful and rich world the other is a world that is entirely uncertain and untrustworthy. I think my main gripe with the movie is that nearly every character Sarah meets greets her with distain (apart from Ludo) which gives you a uneasy feeling and makes it difficult to immerse because you sort of feel scared to trust any of the puppet characters.

LAIKA

Laika is also a childhood love of mine. I watched Coraline in theatres as a child when it was first released, I absolutely loved it. I loved the characters, story, music and the visuals. As an adult, I can fully appreciate the work and effort behind their movies. Similarly to The Dark Crystal, as soon as I got Coraline on DVD I went straight to the special features as I had to know how they made it which opened a whole new world for me.

Although I am not wanting to use stop motion for my project, I still wanted to mention it as it was quite a big influence on me as a child.

[jcmarchi]

Stopping the bomb

New Post has been published on https://thedigitalinsider.com/stopping-the-bomb/

Stopping the bomb

“The question behind my doctoral research is simple,” says Kunal Singh, an MIT political science graduate student in his final year of studies. “When one country learns that another country is trying to make a nuclear weapon, what options does it have to stop the other country from achieving that goal?” While the query may be straightforward, answers are anything but, especially at a moment when some nations appear increasingly tempted by the nuclear option.

From the Middle East to India and Pakistan, and from the Korean peninsula to Taiwan, Singh has been developing a typology of counterproliferation strategies based on historical cases and to some degree on emergent events. His aim is to clarify what states can do “to stop the bomb before it is made.” Singh’s interviews with top security officials and military personnel involved in designing and executing these strategies have illuminated tense episodes in the past 75 years or so when states have jockeyed to enter the elite atomic club. His insights might upend some of the binary thinking that dominates the field of nuclear security.

“Ultimately, I’d like my work to help decision-makers predict counterproliferation strategy, and draw lessons from it on how to shield their own citizens and economies from the impact of these strategies,” he says.

Types of nonproliferation tactics

On Oct. 7, 2023, Singh awoke to air raid sirens in Jerusalem, where he was conducting interviews, and discovered Israel was under attack. He was airlifted to safety back to the United States, having borne witness to the start of a regional war that “now has become relevant to my research,” he says.

Before his hasty departure, Singh was investigating two singular episodes where military force was deployed to advance nonproliferation goals: Israel’s airstrikes against nuclear reactors in 1981 in Iraq, and in 2007 in Syria. To date, these have been the only major attacks on nuclear facilities outside of an active war.

“I spoke with Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, who ordered the strike in Syria, and with the commander of the Israeli Air Force who planned the Iraq airstrike, as well as with other members of the security bureaucracy,” says Singh. “Israel feels a large degree of threat because it is a very small country surrounded by hostile powers, so it takes a military route to stop another state from acquiring nuclear weapons,” says Singh. But, he notes, “most of the states which are not in this predicament generally resort to diplomatic methods first, and threaten violence only as a last resort.”

Singh defines the military response by Israel as “kinetic reversion,” one of five types of counterproliferation strategies he has identified. Another is “military coercion,” where a state threatens the use of military force or uses moderate force to demonstrate its commitment to preventing the pursuit of the bomb. States can also use diplomatic and economic leverage over the proliferant to persuade it to drop its nuclear program, what Singh calls “diplomatic inhibition.” 

One form this strategy takes is when one country agrees to give up its program in return for the other doing the same. Another form involves “placing sanctions on a country and excluding them from the world economy, until the country rolls back its program — a strategy the U.S. has employed against Iran, North Korea, Libya, and Pakistan,” says Singh.

India was rumored to have embraced military tactics. “I had always read about the claim that India was ready to attack the Pakistani uranium enrichment plant in Kahuta, and that planes were called off at the last minute,” Singh says. “But in interview after interview I found this was not the case, and I discovered that many written accounts of this episode had been completely blown up.”

In another strategy, “pooled prevention,” nations can band together to apply economic, diplomatic, and military pressure on a potential proliferator.

Singh notes that diplomatic inhibition, pooled prevention, and military coercion have succeeded, historically. “In 2003, Libya gave up its nuclear weapons program completely after the U.S. and U.K. placed sanctions on it, and many states do not even start a nuclear weapons program because they anticipate an attack or a sanction.”

The final strategy Singh defines is “accommodation,” where one or more states decide not to take action against nuclear weapon development. The United States arrived at this strategy when China began its nuclear program — after first considering and rejecting military attacks.

Singh hopes that his five kinds of strategies challenge a “binary trap” that most academics in the field fall into. “They think of counterproliferation either as military attack or no military attack, economic sanctions or no sanctions, and so they miss out on the spectrum of behaviors, and how fluid they can be.”

From journalism to security studies

Singh grew up in Varanasi, a Hindu holy city in the state of Uttar Pradesh. Frequent terrorist attacks throughout India, and some inside his city’s temples, made a deep impression on him during his childhood, he says. A math and science talent, he attended the Indian Institute of Technology, majoring in metallurgical and materials engineering. After a brief stint with a management consulting firm, after college, he landed a job at a think tank, the Center for Policy Research in New Delhi.

“When I moved to New Delhi, I suddenly saw a world which I didn’t know existed,” Singh recalls. “I began meeting people for an evening round of discussions and began reading voraciously: books, editorial and opinion pages in newspapers, and looking for a greater sense of purpose and meaning in my work.”

His widening interests led to a job as staff writer, first at Mint, a business newspaper, and then to the Hindustan Times, working on both papers’ editorial pages. “This was where most of my intellectual development happened,” says Singh. “I made social connections, and many of them grew more towards the academics in the security field.”

Writing about a nuclear security question one day, Singh reached out to an expert in the United States: Vipin Narang, the Frank Stanton Professor of Nuclear Security and Political Science at MIT. Over time, Narang helped Singh realize that the kind of questions Singh hoped to answer “lay more in the academic than in the journalistic domain,” recounts Singh.

In 2019, he headed to MIT and began a doctoral program focused on security studies and international relations. In his dissertation, “Nipping the Atom in the Bud: Strategies of Counterproliferation and How States Choose Among Them,” Singh hopes to move beyond a classic, academic debate: that nuclear weapons are either very destabilizing, or very stabilizing.

“Some argue that there is stability in the world because two states armed with nuclear weapons will avoid nuclear war, because they understand nobody will win a nuclear war,” explains Singh. “If this view is true, then we shouldn’t be alarmed by the proliferation of these weapons.” But “the counterargument is that there will always be an off chance someone will use these weapons, and so states should “try to use all their military and economic might to prevent another state from gaining nuclear weapons.”

As it turns out, neither extreme view governs in the real world. “The main takeaway from my research is that states are obviously concerned when some other country tries to make nuclear weapons, but they are not so concerned that in order to prevent a future destabilizing event, they are ready to destabilize the world as of now.”

In the final throes of writing his thesis and preparing for life as an academic, Singh remains alert to the parlous state of affairs in the Middle East and elsewhere. “I keep following events, knowing that something may prove relevant to my research,” he says.

Given the tense times and the often dark implications of his subject matter, Singh has found an optimal mode of blowing off steam: a daily badminton match. He and his wife also “binge watch either a spy thrill or a murder mystery every Saturday,” he says.

In a world both increasingly interconnected and increasingly threatened by regional conflicts, Singh believes, “there is still much to be discovered about how the world thinks about nuclear weapons, including what the impacts of nuclear weapons use might be,” he says. “I’d like to help shine a light on those new things, and broaden our understanding of nuclear weapons and the politics of nuclear security.”

[containmentbreachsblog]

Naturalist Manifesto

Nature is a part of human life that will never leave. As long as we are living, nature is living with us. How can we live without living in nature? It simply is not possible. Nature lives with us, and we live in it and use its resources. Think of nature as a person offering their area of living to you. We are obligated to help care for nature as it helps care for us. 

I have continuously mentioned and analyzed our interactions with nature through different art forms throughout my blog posts. The connections between humans and nature can be seen throughout our everyday lives. In my blog post titled “The Florida Panther”, in which I analyze a statue portraying a family of panthers, I wrote, “Having only two panthers in this wide square area draws attention to how panthers are an incredibly endangered species. Additionally, this sculpture shows the hidden aspect of nature in our communities.” Through this quote, I hint towards the connections between humans and nature by stating how panthers are one of the many species of endangered animals and how nature is present throughout our communities. Despite nature caring for us, humans have disrespected nature through acts of poaching, hunting, and simply trashing it. This can be seen all around us, as you can constantly find trash on the ground around you and find that areas of nature have been demolished to make room for more pollution-causing constructions. Nature in our communities needs to be cared for, as it cares for us. It brings us food, shelter, and everything we could ever need, yet we choose to disregard its efforts to provide and forcefully take what it gives us.

In a more positive light, nature has given us the ability to make art itself. Being surrounded by nature has given us the opportunity to recreate aspects of it through art. Nature is incorporated into music, painting, writing, and more. For example, in another of my blog posts titled “My Musical Theme: Seasons”, I chose to create a playlist including songs that reference the four seasons- a crucial part of nature. In this post, I wrote, “...I adore the differences between each of the four seasons, and I felt it would be interesting to find music relating to them from different genres.” Finding music relating to the seasons is a prime example of how nature influences art, as there are an endless amount of songs referencing the nature around us. The songs I chose, ranging from jazz to rap, all were inspired by the seasons as their titles described different ones and their lyrics described them as well. In another blog post of mine in which I created an ekphrasis, I used the artwork “The Great Wave off Kanagawa” to base it on. This piece of art illustrates a large and beautiful wave with a local mountain, Mount Fiji, behind it. This artwork is another example of how nature influences art as even a dangerous event can produce a beautiful work of art. 

Overall, I view nature as the most important part of humanity itself. Without nature, we would simply cease to exist. For this reason, I believe that we should treat nature with kindness due to what it provides us with and what we can do with it. Additionally, nature is a beautiful outlet to create influential art that will impact others for centuries. Animals, trees, water, and everything that we see around us can be used to create art and invent new things that will lead our future to improve. As you have read this manifesto, I hope that you understand my feelings towards nature, as it is essentially a caregiver for me and every living thing on this planet. Nature is not only a living, breathing source of what we need to live- it is a beautiful thing that never fails to amaze us.

[stovetoast]

its... nothing new. ive always been wrong. x

[wwindblumee]

Pausing my Lantern Rite event to release my newest event!

Based on this post by @ritinja-draws! Permission has been given by the artist to use their idea.

Wake up. Awaken and note your surroundings.

A wet, sticky feeling awoke <Muse>.

Around you.The thought jarred <Muse>'s brain to life. Around you. There it was again...

<Muse> finally turns around to notice they were near a cliff. There was a huge fire raging under the cliff. There was purple blood pooling everywhere, so much so that it created a small flood. Under them, around them, everywhere. A bit away was a red dragon, the source of the purple blood. It seems that something had fatally bitten its throat out. Another dragon, not too far away. Dvalin..?

Above you. Another thought.

<Muse> looks up. What a horrible sight. Their friend (loved one as well! if our muses don't know each other- a young man with wings and a quite revealing outfit) was plummeting.. and fast. He was in his Archon form, his wings fluttering limply in the wind as he fell. He landed on his back with the sickening sound of bones breaking as his wing caught on a particularly sharp rock. Tears were rolling away from his outstretched eyes, too grief-stricken to even cry out in pain.

Go support the amazing artist!! Check out their comic when it comes out!

Tagging: @mikado-sannoji (pausing the lantern rite one!), @the-flowerdemon, @misspinkelfelysia, @sxft-viktorvibes, @londonthegayest, @internal-orchids (taka please :D- @orchidsinmylungs), @lxttlesxnshine, @oddblogfullofoddmuses (our first interaction! since our muses haven't met, please use the second prompt in the parentheses that has been boldened!).

[preemshots]

the definitive post of WHERE IN THE WORLD IS JOHNNY SILVERHAND’S BODY?

AKA the post of HERE’S WHY I WANT TO BELIEVE WE ARE GONNA GET JOHNNY’S BODY BACK IN DLC. 

buckle up, gamers. it's time for some lore. this is a very long post. 

warning: this will contain a million spoilers. both for details of multiple game endings, a wee bit of the “where’s johnny” comic, and the cyberpunk RED book. if you want a sparknotes version this is the post for you. my main source here is the cyberpunk RED book as well as as some references to the cyberpunk 2077 world book to cross examine the lore. 

i have no idea if someone has made this post before or what anybody else has been finding in their own lore diving. this is just me documenting my own findings from the sources i’ve been using.

it would be disingenuous not to preface this with the ways in which cyberpunk 2077's telling of the arasaka assault differ from the version told in the TTRPG books. the books =/= the game. pondsmith acknowledges in the intro of RED that this is a bridge between the old cyberpunk world and the new world of cyberpunk 2077. 

we also know that johnny's an unreliable narrator and his memories presented to V are often different than real events. but on top of that we don't know if the reason why many elements are changed is simply CDPR editing/adjusting/condensing the storyline for their own canon, or if it's due to johnny's construct being manipulated by outside influences such as arasaka.

some of the main differences you need to know from cyberpunk RED canon:

in 2023 johnny doesn't bring the nukes to arasaka tower. he's solely there to free alt.

johnny and rogue and their team from the atlantis/the aldecaldos are actually hired by morgan blackhand. 

morgan blackhand is the one who plants the nuke, unbeknownst to many members of the team. 

morgan blackhand promptly disappears after this event and no one knows if he's alive or dead. (claire confirms this fact to jackie and v before the heist in 2077 canon)

johnny's silver cybernetic arm is its own character, separate from himself. it seems to have a mind of its own and johnny interacts with it and/or is influenced by it.

when he, spider murphy, rogue, thompson, shaitan, and a team of los lobos from the aldecaldos (who are there in place of santiago, as he’s busy as the leader of the aldecaldos at this point) are attacked by adam smasher, johnny and his arm actively choose to draw smasher's fire in a deliberately suicidal move. smasher downs him instantly, but the distraction is enough to also save his friends.

spider murphy shoves a mysterious chip in johnny's dying head as they escape that alt had downloaded to her a long time ago.

johnny's body is later "rumoured" to have been retrieved from the rubble by a full-body borg groupie that was a first responder to the ground zero of AHQ and then hidden away in a nearby garage.

here comes the political lore that makes my eyes cross, so hopefully this accurately summarizes it: the 4th corporate war begins to end. arasaka is ultimately blamed by the NUSA government to have nuked themselves in a political move to protect their secrets and promptly banished from the USA. arasaka denies this all the way back to japan, then eventually returns to “liberate” night city in the unification wars.

but what the public doesn't know is that kei, saburo's oldest son, had actually hidden an EVEN BIGGER MORE DEVASTATING NUKE at the bottom of the tower to, well, do exactly what they were being accused of doing, even though blackhand was the one who actually dropped the smaller nuke on them. and luckily the bigger one didn’t go off.

arasaka tries to find their nuke in the rubble so they don't get in even bigger trouble, only to discover that it was moved and hidden away to... surprise! a nearby garage.

to compare with 2077:

in RED: we have no johnny loading the nukes into the elevator. no johnny being carried off the premises. no meeting saburo. no johnny getting soulkilled.

in 2077: there's a parallel moment to RED's version of events right after johnny uploads "liberator" from alt's old cyberdeck with spider's help into the arasaka mainframe in saburo's office. adam smasher comes for him as he's trying to escape, knocking him off the second floor of the atrium into the rock garden below.

visually this is the same atrium we always meet alt in in cyberspace and also where V meets johnny for the first time. hmmm. meaningful, perhaps.

not unlike what happens in RED, johnny unloads a clip into smasher at that point, but from there the scene instantly cuts to him running to the roof attempting to board the AV with rogue, where smasher shoots him down again. it’s possible johnny actually died to smasher in the atrium and we have some fabricated memories going on. 

either way, in 2077, we lose the character beat of johnny dying for his friends, and the current-day general consensus from rogue and others is that he’s perpetually a selfish asshole with ulterior motives. 

and, just to wrap up the politics of it all: morgan blackhand is rumoured to have been secretly hired by the militech-backed NUSA government to help end the 4th corporate war by... you guessed it! nuking arasaka.

HERE'S WHERE JOHNNY'S BODY ENDS UP IN CYBERPUNK RED (SPARKNOTES VERSION):

RED ends with a story called "black dog" set in 2045. black dog is the last song johnny recorded right before the assault on arasaka tower, but the final copy is a bootleg copy of the song and only a fraction.

we're introduced to a fun group of cybernetic-enhanced characters that represent the classes in the TTRPG and based on/designed by real people in collaboration with CDPR.

this group includes trace santiago, santiago's son, who is a media that is curious about the mystery surrounding the circumstances around his father and the arasaka bombing. 

just connecting lore here: if you talk to saul at the aldecaldo camp in 2077, he confirms that santiago was killed for his involvement with johnny and the bombing, something that rogue and johnny reference when they talk about their now-dead crew from the afterlife, and in chippin in, santiago is a friend that johnny lists as someone he had disappointed.

the group sets off to find any info about black dog, and meet up with a full conversion chrome woman named samantha in a garage who is blatantly a johnny silverhand fangirl. trace discovers she has a history with johnny, having rescued him from a studio fire at some point in 2015 and speculates she could have been a groupie also.

she mysteriously has a more complete recording of black dog, though not perfect, and offers to trade it for a service: she wants the group to transport a large crate to a facility in new mexico, asking them not to open it.

shit goes down. evidently everyone in night city wants to kill them for this package once it starts moving. eventually they open it. it's the arasaka nuke that had been hidden and never went off, emblazoned with warnings.

trace inquires about the circumstances surrounding the arasaka assault with an older member of the lobos who had been present with rogue and johnny. the man mentions that it was weird, because morgan blackhand organized the whole thing and then ran off immediately with a mysterious bag that we now know contained the nuke. 

michiko arasaka intercepts the gang, explaining the situation around the bigger nuke, that other factions in arasaka want to utilize it for their own goals (presumably hanako and yorinobu) and her father's legacy, that she feels responsible for. she escorts them to new mexico so that the nuke can be dismantled once and for all.

they meet up with a woman named angel in new mexico that takes the crate from them, at a facility that specializes in nuclear material. she gives the group the full recording of "black dog". the group leaves successful.

this woman is also a johnny silverhand stan. once alone, she calls up samantha, who says, "i promised i would get him to you in the end" and reveals that she had already gutted/dismantled the original nuke and discarded the material into the bay.

angel opens the "nuke" to reveal a hidden cryochamber, and greets the face of the person inside with, "hello, my love."

i mean, holy shit. okay! so that’s DEFINITELY johnny’s body. cool!

now let’s go into all the references to this story in the actual game of cyberpunk 2077 that SUGGEST we are going to pursue this story AND johnny's body since it’s such a HOT FUCKING TOPIC. 

and i know many of the following can just be considered easter eggs. but my personal interpretation of this game is that it has a really delightful way of intentionally glossing over important story details—and not by ONLY putting them in shards (which people tend to dislike because lol reading) but by also hiding them in plain sight, constantly deferring to V's own ignorance, distracting us with shallower, shinier things, encouraging us to actually play as the fool hero of this story. 

so here's the fun list of “””evidence”””:

this one’s a reach, but fun. in the initial arasaka assault flashback in 2023: we can interact with the groupies at kerry's show as johnny. samantha doesn't appear to be present, but the first person and groupie you can encounter in the flashback has a passing resemblance to angel in that she has a cybernetic arm.

in chippin' in, where we go to johnny's "grave" in the oil fields: if we are to take the 2077 retelling of events as truth, the story could instead be pretty easily be changed that samantha procured his body from there.

mike pondsmith, who wrote these stories and created the TTRPG can be heard on the radio narrating various conspiracy theories. and sure, these can just be easter eggs, intended to reference the differences between the TTRPG lore and the game, so take it with a grain of salt:

johnny. bro. tell him it was morgan blackhand

to top it all off, mike also directly references the actual WORSE nuke arasaka had hid in another arasaka conspiracy: 

SPOILERS FOR GAME ENDINGS AHEAD.

in the rogue ending of the game we discover rogue has a son. it's possible her son is trace (edit: nvm NOT LIKELY, since in RED’s black dog story rogue is listed separately from santiago’s mom in conversation) OR possibly one of the other characters. she tells her son to "pull over and look at the stars" or something along those lines. maybe just details, so that screams nomad to me.

rogue also has a photo of herself and johnny with mike pondsmith in her apartment/office in the afterlife. i initially read this as a delightful cameo but it also can mean mike the CHARACTER knew johnny and rogue, and rogue therefore has some kind of relationship to him and these conspiracies on the radio. and why the fuck not make him a full on character? we have a smattering of streamers and personalities already integrated into quests in the game. the creator of all this should be no exception. fuck it! 

rogue and johnny constantly dance around this accusation of her “selling out”. it’s repeated over and over that she and adam smasher worked for "the same people". i'm beginning to wonder if this wasn't meant to imply only arasaka since smasher mysteriously disappeared after the AHQ assault in 2023 and returned to SOMETIMES take jobs from arasaka... but possibly morgan blackhand and/or by extension, the NUSA or any other greater influences. (like nightcorp? we still don’t know where all this shit with nightcorp/the peralezes/sandra dorsett’s discovery about their research into mind control is gonna go) this also doesn’t account for the multiple factions inside arasaka with VERY different motives. 

morgan blackhand and adam smasher are rivals in the TTRPG, a role that appears to be at least partially filled by johnny instead in 2077. in relation to the arasaka factions, it’s worth nothing that smasher specifically works for yorinobu as his bodyguard at the beginning of the game, in part i assume because yorinobu is avoiding working with arasaka security details as he stole the relic and is plotting against his father. he is then promoted to head of security by yorinobu when yorinobu assumes power. 

in the ending as you work your way through arasaka tower with rogue and shaitan and johnny, rogue remarks:

michiko at this point in 2077 is the leader of the more “liberal” faction within arasaka, so it’s possible we’re seeing that while rogue and smasher work for the same people/family, they couldn’t be more different. 

you can also encounter rogue more than once on the phone fighting with wakako, who has apparently crossed her. wakako also seems to have her own ulterior motives and works mainly with the arasaka-backed tyger claws. she notably gives v/takemura the parade security info for “play it safe” without asking for anything in return, enabling hanako’s kidnapping. my theory is that yorinobu intentionally leaked the parade info to her to give away to put hanako in danger or at least continue to destabilize arasaka. 

in the takemura/devil ending of the game, there is a point where violence breaks out at the arasaka board room meeting when yorinobu-allied security open fire on them. one of the only people that survives along with hanako is michiko arasaka, who was at odds with hanako’s decisions, but  very involved in the preceding discussion.

and now for is my favorite detail! in the afterlife AT ALL POINTS IN THE GAME (but it can only really be inspected in the rogue ending when we are allowed behind the bar), we can find a photo of the squad that transported johnny's body from samantha to angel on the shelf below johnny's tequila, of them hanging out in front of the afterlife sign:  

this implies rogue has some relationship with them, and sentimentality, if we're to judge by the placement. she maybe even took the picture. i don't know, it's charming, it could be all easter eggs. who fucking knows.

either way, rogue and these kids both have in common that they worked with or at least interacted with michiko arasaka. 

and you know what my final evidence is? more wishful thinking! black dog plays on the radio in game. we got a full recorded version of it by refused. if not an oversight, i go ahead and take it to mean the final version was finally released to the public by those kids that were looking for it. 

i haven’t the slightest idea how this is gonna wrap up in future DLC. who has johnny’s body now in 2077, decades after it was dropped off in mexico? what is the truth?? where the fuck is morgan blackhand?? from the devil ending, we know that arasaka stole jackie’s body and put his soul into mikoshi, so the idea that they would just toss johnny’s corpse has always been laughable. the “where’s johnny?” promotional comic was even about thompson unsuccessfully trying to find johnny’s body. i know i am biased here but i cannot fathom all this talk about johnny’s body ending off with us NOT finding it, whether it’s just to bury it, shove johnny’s engram back in it, make out with it, or WHATEVER.

if you made it through this slog, congrats. thanks for reading!