#wtc final news

[tajanews247]

1 मैच 300 रन... जब रोहित शर्मा के बल्ले ने विजाग में उगला था आग, विदेशी गेंदबाजों को किया तहस-नहस

नई दिल्ली. नई दिल्ली. भारत और इंग्लैंड (India vs England) के बीच दूसरा टेस्ट विशाखापट्टनम में खेला जाएगा. दोनों टीमें इसके लिए तैयार है. मुकाबले में किस खिलाड़ी का बल्ला चलेगा. ये देखना दिलचस्प होगा. उम्म���द है कि रोहित शर्मा (Rohit Sharma) मुकाबले में कमाल कर सकते हैं. आखिरी बार जब वह इस मैदान पर बल्लेबाजी करने उतरे थे तो उन्होंने एक टेस्ट मैच में 300 रन ठोक डाले थे. दरअसल, साउथ अफ्रीका के खिलाफ…

[vocaltv]

कोहली ने टीम के खिलाड़ियों को किया संबोधित, देखे वीडियो

विश्व टेस्ट चैम्पियनशिप 2023 के फाइनल में भारत बनाम ऑस्ट्रेलिया के बीच मैच था। भारत बनाम ऑस्ट्रेलिया बीच चल रहे मैच के तीसरे दिन के आखिरी सत्र के शुरू होने से पहले विराट कोहली को भारतीय टीम से बातचीत करते हुए देखा गया था। जैसे ही आस्ट्रेलियाई बल्लेबाज बल्लेबाजी के लिए उतरे, कोहली ने टीम के खिलाड़ियों को संबोधित किया। कोहली अब टीम के कप्तान नहीं है, लेकिन जब उन्होंने टीम बात की तो ऐसा लगा जैसे…

[trickricksblog08]

The Twin Towers were white elephants that their owner, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, had wanted to demolish for years but could not as the buildings were loaded with asbestos that would have cost millions to remove.

Among other issues, the buildings were not wired for WIFI and the occupancy rate was below 50%. Why on earth would anyone want to lease these antiquated pieces of trash properties?

Why indeed?

In January 2001, Silverstein made a $3.2 billion bid to lease-purchase the World Trade Center complex. Silverstein's negotiated bid was finalized on July 24, 2001, less than 2 months prior to 9/11. The Port Authority agreed to lease the twin towers to Larry Silverstein and he agreed to pay the equivalent of $3.2 billion over the next 99 years. This was the first time in the complex's 31-year history that it had changed management.

The lease agreement applied to One, Two, Four, and Five World Trade Center, and about 425,000 square feet of retail space. Silverstein put up just $14 million of his own money to secure the deal. The agreement gave Silverstein, as leaseholder, the right and the obligation to rebuild the structures if destroyed.

The insurance policies for World Trade Center buildings WTC 1. 2, 4 and 5 had a collective face amount of $3.55 billion and the insurance policy he took out included protection against terrorist attacks.

🔗Vincent Kennedy 🇺🇸

[mikrokosmos]

J.S. Bach - Contrapunctus XIV from The Art of Fugue, BWV 1080

On this day 274 years ago, J.S. Bach passed away and his death was treated as the official end of an entire era. It is cliche to crown him the Best Composer of All Time, but it's hard not to be intimidated in his shadow for how influential he would become in the grand narrative of European music. And maybe it's Fate which brought me back into listening to a lot of Bach lately. At least my ears had been itching to revisit his great organ fugues, and different performances of the Well Tempered Clavier. So I thought I would commemorate his death day anniversary with the "last piece he ever wrote" (citation needed). The Art of Fugue is a collection of fugal exercises based on one theme, each fugue showing different potentials inherent in the theme. Like the WTC, this piece is more of a pedagogical work, originally not scored for any specific instruments so possibly written to be studied more than performed. But there's no reason why even a music theory exercise by Bach shouldn't be played for an audience, or by a musician for their own personal enjoyment.

The beautiful moment here is the last fugue in the set, Contrapunctus 14, which starts as a fugue on a completely different subject than the main theme that ties the rest of the pieces together. Instead, a solemn and contemplative fugue develops from this first theme, and in the middle a new subject emerges with shorter note values and moves forward quickly, bringing back the first subject and then develops as a double fugue. Then, another new subject comes in... so in German notation, they refer to the pitch B as H, and the pitch Bb is called B instead. I don't know why this is, but conveniently it allows Bach to sign his name in notes. But the motif Bb-A-C-B is chromatic and so close together, it doesn't sound like something that would work well for a baroque style fugue (at least, the later B-A-C-H pieces [i'm thinking by Liszt and Reger for example] are much more fitting for Romantic angst and drama). But Bach surprises us with his genius in writing a coherent and harmonically "correct"/"functioning" fugue around this complicated subject. And after the BACH fugue develops, the other two subjects join in and the piece re-introduces itself as a triple fugue.

Or at least, it promises to, but Bach stopped writing at this very moment. It is assumed that had he finished the work, he would have finally brought back the main fugue theme from the other contrupunctus pieces in the set and end with a developed quadruple fugue. And as someone who has tried and constantly failed at writing a decent sounding basic fugue for one subject, the dream of what could have been boggles my mind. Why did Bach stop? The score notes at the very end "While working on this fugue, which introduces the name BACH in the countersubject, the composer died." in CPE Bach's handwriting (one of Bach's many musically gifted sons, nicknamed "the Berlin Bach") but historians believe the manuscript is from a year or two earlier, before his deteriorating vision kept him from finishing. It's also a Romantic notion to imagine that Bach intentionally stopped there, letting the BACH fugue be his personal farewell to life, to composition, to music...a way to wrap up his lifelong work of trying to use difficult and contrapuntally dense music to reflect the glory of God and the intangible heavenly kingdom.

Whether he meant to or not, it's impossible not to feel this profound sense of farewell listening to this work trail off with the last threads hanging loose, as if such anticipated perfection of the quadruple fugue can only be heard in the life beyond our lives on earth. I first heard this piece in high school, and despite being young and naive and stupid in a lot of ways, the final unfinished fugue immediately hit my soul in a way nothing else had at that point, and I listened to it over and over, on piano, on organ, on guitar, as it was written along with different completions by other musicians or musicologists...

and I remember some question on some old web forum asking users "if the world was ending, what's the last song you'd want to hear". Of course I choose this one, and because of the question, any time I listen to Contrapunctus 14, I imagine myself as an astronaut, the last human alive, somehow detached from the ship and floating off into the cold and infinite abyss of the universe, listening to this piece as my oxygen runs out and I lose consciousness looking at the glittering stars, following the remains of the music into oblivion.

[ultraericthered]

WTC Higurashi Trivia

I actually originally designed Irie’s true identity as that of a ruthless, final boss-like demon of a man. I envisioned a scene where he pulls out Satoshi’s brain encased in formalin in front of Satoko and says “Look, you finally meet again...” However, the setting was changed and he became a missionary of maids. I was aiming for a disconnect where the maid man becomes the cruel final boss. When Irie was set up as the final boss, Takano was planned to be in what is now Nomura’s position. However, when Irie told Satoko about having Satoshi’s brain encased in formalin, BT-san got angry and said, “Irie’s such a kind person, but that’s too horrible!” So we made various changes, and Takano-san was promoted to the final boss. As a result, she gave such a wondrous performance.

--- Ryukishi07

I’m of two minds to this news...

1. We could’ve gotten evil mad scientist Dr. Irie!?! Dammit, I have always wanted to see that done somewhere, as Irie’s already one of the prime antagonistic forces in the story given all that the Irie Clinic is concealing (with he himself just an unwitting pawn in some bigger, behind-the-scenes government/military conspiracy games) and he’s got just as much potential for villainy as Takano, Okonogi, and even Ooishi. The idea that he was initially concieved as a Colonel Muska type character whose pleasant, patient and kindly persona would be a ruse for a vile, ruthless “demon of a man” only makes the concept sound cooler to me - like a literal case of Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde, which would embody all the thematic ideas behind Hinamizawa Syndrome.

2. Based on BT’s objection, it sounds like it wasn’t thought through very well by Ryukishi07 and came off like cheap shock value horror for its own sake, with Irie’s true inner evil being so outlandish and cartoonishly over-the-top malicious and mean-spirited that it made Irie feel like a bad Surprise Villain and a lesser character for it. The whole idea of him having Satoshi’s brain encased in formalin...why? To what end? Plus, his pedo tendencies are offputting as is, and this would’ve taken them to the most generic and expected conclusion - he’s just a predator and does sick experiments on all the children he befriends, treats, and coaches. Ultimately, Takano makes a much better direct mastermind/Big Bad/final boss than Irie would’ve.

So with that said, there are three ways to make Evil Dr. Irie work:

- Switch Takano and Irie’s intended roles. Takano plays the role she ended up playing, but the vague and engimatic Nomura is replaced by Dr. Irie as the true mastermind who sponsors Takano’s atrocities.

- Have Dr. Irie as a willing co-conspirator with Takano, the brains to Okonogi’s brawn. He’s not keen on the idea of having to harm any of the kids, but he fiercely believes he’s doing what’s right for mankind. Unlike the above and below, this Irie would still be redeemable.

- Do one of many side-story loops that has Irie succumbing to Hinamizawa Syndrome and hijacking the conspiracy from Takano.

[boycottdivestsanctions]

Get This, Larry Silverstein The Man Who Purchased & Insured The Twin Towers 6 Months Before 9/11, Was In A “Big Hurry” To Close The Deal

The deal was so important & needed to be done so quickly he was hospitalized but asked to be taken off morphine so the deal could be finalized “

The stalemate was broken when a real estate tycoon named Larry Silverstein who already owned Building 7 offered to purchase a 99 year lease for the Twin Towers.

— Silverstein seemed in a big hurry to close the deal. Even though he had been hospitalized for a car accident during the bidding operations, he asked his doctors to take him off the morphine so the deal could be finalized.

So I told the doctor, I said, kill the morphine, and I got gotta get my people in here because you can't think with morphine. So they let the morphine run down. The pain was terrible, and but I brought everybody together, and that's when we famed our our best and final bid.

On July 24, 2001, Larry Silverstein celebrated the acquisition of the Twin Towers with a public ceremony.

Silverstein signed the lease on the World Trade Center just 6 weeks before 9 11.

He then took out an insurance policy covering the Twin Towers for $3,200,000,000 in case of total destruction. Silverstein then began spending every morning of the week in his new office in the North Tower.“

But not on 9/11….

Lucky Larry Silverstein:

- Acquires 99-year lease for Twin Towers just 6 weeks before 9/11 - Insures both towers for $3.2 billion against acts of terrorism and ensures he can build new WTC complex if destroyed.

- Wife allegedly convinces him to attend dermatologist appointment on morning of 9/11 instead of scheduled meeting in North Tower

- Twin Towers attacked, collapsing to dust along with his other skyscraper (WTC 7), all plummeting at near free-fall speed

- Files insurance claim for $7 billion, arguing attacks on Twin Towers consisted of 2 separate events thus double compensation required

- Settles for $4.5 billion compensation on Twin Towers and collects millions in other insurance payouts - Builds new WTC complex

[mthguy]

Framing Freedom

One World Trade Center, also known as One World Trade, One WTC, and formerly called the Freedom Tower during initial planning stages, is the main building of the rebuilt World Trade Center complex in Lower Manhattan, New York City. Designed by David Childs of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, One World Trade Center is the tallest building in the United States, the tallest building in the Western Hemisphere, and the seventh-tallest in the world.

The construction of below-ground utility relocations, footings, and foundations for the new building began on April 27, 2006. One World Trade Center became the tallest structure in New York City on April 30, 2012, when it surpassed the height of the Empire State Building. The tower's steel structure was topped out on August 30, 2012. On May 10, 2013, the final component of the skyscraper's spire was installed, making the building, including its spire, reach a total height of 1,776 feet (541 m). Its height in feet is a deliberate reference to the year when the United States Declaration of Independence was signed. The building opened on November 3, 2014; the One World Observatory opened on May 29, 2015.

[iworshipsappho]

Bestie did you hear the news that Richard (the 2019 semis, wtc final, 23 final umpire) is the one for Ind vs Aus Super 8 match?🙂

fuuuuuckkkkk machaaa i did not ashsjfsdkgsg ive been uhh very pre-occupied with my MUN tmrw ahdsjafhskdgsg

[canmom]

having just read an enormous metafiction about tabletop roleplaying games, i ended up reflecting a bunch on how I play them - what my characters are to me. a discussion which ended up as a segue into a discussion of what an rpg 'system' actually means in practice.

...happy new year!

as a GM, I tend to be far more improvisational than Joon of Worth the Candle, but I have an affinity for how he does things - one of my most successful games had the players ultimately ascend to usurp me as MC of my Apocalypse World game, which is essentially the structure of WtC.

as a player... my characters are usually ways of experimenting with ideas or conflicts, reflecting some aspect of me, attached to some kind of cool image. my characterisation has been a bit weak for a long time, but I'm growing out of it.

sometimes I've played with groups who found it very easy to see what my character is 'about'. sometimes not. in one sad story - nothing Fel Seed level, don't worry - I struggled fruitlessly to find a way to mesh with the type of story desired by the group and create a story I found compelling. every time I thought I'd hit a groove, I'd press other people's buttons in a bad way. eventually I was asked to leave, and after doing a session where I retired my character, which felt at the time like reading out a false confession before my execution, except I had to improvise within bounds, I left the group and server and basically never spoke with them again.

looking back on it... I was going through some shit. not on the level that Joon was, and I didn't deliberately try to hurt people or lash out in frustration, but I wasn't able to see beyond what I was struggling with (at that time, the surface presentation was my discomfort with the need to make violence in fiction out to be justified, like 'evil races'). I didn't realise that the concepts I found compelling kept hitting another player's no-go list, which sucked for both of us - her to have a frighteningly opaque person who seemed determined to press boundaries, me because it seemed like every time I finally came up with a good idea and thought I had a handle on my character, the DM would quietly ask me to shut it down. nowadays I hope I would have understood all this and recognised the group and game was not right for me and quit sooner, but at the time it seemed like a deep personal failing. it's still a little sore.

nowadays I'm blessed to have a really good group of players with a great DM and everyone invested in the game, and I'm playing a Baru Cormorant knockoff who's the best realised character I've ever come up with I think. and like those previous characters, "Silene" is someone who exists to help me explore some shit. I can invest her with beliefs and attitudes I find repellent but could imagine another me believing, use her to examine arrogance and disregard for others. she's kind of an evil Bryn, and I can slip into playing her like a glove to get a different angle on these kinds of feelings, and then take the glove off later. and for everyone else, she hopefully comes off as an entertaining, strongly defined character that gives good handles to play off.

it's an interesting double consciousness because I absolutely get invested in what she wants and try to make her cool, but also ultimately I think she's wrong and I want to show it. and yet... I put stuff I do like into her, or follow ideas that come to me in the moment. her playful enthusiasm for 'natural philosophy', her loyalty to her friends - she's got an endearing side, she could grow out of it. i ended up 'discovering' that she has a lot of discomfort with rejection, which isn't a character choice I made consciously, but something I felt when other characters responded appropriately to the offputting character I had deliberately created. and it works, it's a good trait for her.

sometimes I get afraid that Silene is more of a true portrayal of me than I want to admit, or that I've been playing her too hard in a way that's unpleasant out of character too. I'm lucky that my friends are understanding and willing to reassure me in this situation. it can be a fraught thing to play this kind of character, but that's why it's interesting!

at university a long time ago, I played an industrialist character, "Sarus Tarr", in a game of Burning Wheel. that was another great game with a GM who was honestly much more astute than I was, probably than I am.

Sarus Tarr was not a good person. he was "about" the costs of technology, the industrial revolution - at the time I was much more straightforwardly a transhumanist true believer, so I made his conflict honestly a bit too simple, about the people chewed up by his factories as they changed the world with cheap iron goods. (the transition to modernity has been an obsession for that long I guess!).

I listened to the Clockwork Quartet a lot in that period. I was fascinated by the doctor who builds increasingly elaborate contraptions to save his comatose wife, replacing more and more of her - "what nature has neglected, the fruit of modern science will provide". I didn't really know much about the industrial revolutions, but I knew a little about the Luddites.

I remember one scene from that game the GM arranged a conversation battle scene in which Tarr was forced to defend his factories, using Burning Wheel's elaborate system. I wasn't sure I was up to it, but with some encouragement, I went for it, and surprised myself, getting into a good flow arguing - one of the most intense sessions I've played, but that was what made it so great. I defended Sarus Tarr's factories as thoroughly as I could. I can't remember what I had him say, but there was a choice about whether he was lying about some point he made about the safety of the factories, and I had him tell the truth. on the rules layer, I did my best with an unfamiliar system, weighing up options and FORKing in skills where I could.

in the end, Sarus won, and the protestor was forced to change his beliefs, the stake of the battle. if I'd lost, Sarus would change instead.

I realised that this didn't feel right. Sarus shouldn't have won. I didn't change my beliefs on the spot and instantly become an anarchist or a Marxist or something, that came later, but I think I learned something important, whether about the sorts of characters I like to play, or about what I really thought about factories.

nowadays I love the spotlight and I have to be conscious to make sure other players get their moment and I don't hog it. a lot of good RP is just improv comedy principle when you get down to it - making and taking offers, 'yes and'. your first idea is rarely as good as the idea you can make by bouncing off another player. why is that hard? there's something addictive about RP, a mindset I can access every week, where creativity just flows. ideas come, you respond to the prompts, you kind of inhabit another mind for a bit - it's not for nothing that hardcore LARPers talk seriously of 'bleed'. being in the hotseat with no time to think too hard, and just going for the idea that comes to mind from whatever is simmering in the subconscious, is fantastic. it cuts through all the barriers and blocks, and you get to see the response immediately, from people who each have an entirely different perspective on what this story is about and a different palette of ideas.

that flow state, the positive feedback, is hard to build and a little fragile. you need people with the same sort of wavelength, it's hard to find with strangers. you need to feel safe - it's a very vulnerable act. you need to be attentive to the other players. there's so much unspoken.

the 'Forge' and 'story games' movements did their best to translate those best practices for creating that kind of intense game into rules and procedures. I don't think it made bad games at all, it's hit and miss like any paradigm, it's more... most of the stuff that makes a TTRPG work is stuff you can't make into formal protocol.

but one of the good ideas to come out of those movements was the need to view a 'game system' (which 'Does Matter', ron would like you to know) as not just what's printed in the book, or the formal system of rules, but the actual way which people interact at the game table. accordingly, they made experimental games which played with ideas like sharing the right to have a final say on what's true, game mechanics which adjust the fiction based on drama rather than internal logic, or formally structuring conversations around scenes and phases and times for picking from lists of prompts.

for me, this was great. I struggled a lot with doing prep, since it's been hard to concentrate and hard to come up with a new image when one is filling my head. writing and drawing is a way of releasing them so more can grow. having a structure to facilitate an improvisational style has been an incredible boon.

but as it turns out, a book - which is not some perfect formal system but a prompt that players lean on while creating the 'actual game' - can only do so much. you can only playtest and wordsmith so far.

that's great. every Apocalypse World or D&D game I've played (to focus on the systems I've gotten to use more than once) has been completely different, arising from the dynamic of the group I'm playing with and the skills brought by the players. and yeah, cultures will develop - the Actual Play podcast is a powerful machine for aligning expectations, the D&D forum egregore acts as a weird sort of dialogue partner for many groups, there are many floating expectations of what a game is supposed to look like - but ultimately it's a weird inscrutable alchemy created by the ritualistic social space where you make up a story with another person and each let out some of the stuff you're carrying under the surface.

that's why people care so much about their characters. and it's why telling a good story about an RPG session is hard in most of the same ways telling a good story about a dream is, though you usually have a bit more shared context to lean on with an RPG.

my very first in-person RPG group was when I was what, 15 or so? maybe younger. we played D&D 3.5. I was by far the most invested, and I'd built up an idea of what D&D is like from the Giant in the Playground forums. we played through Sunless Citadel and then various brief games under rotating DMs while I tried to cook up an Eberron game, which... never really got off the ground and now I think about it, one of the players tried to have their character do a rape, and that probably had something to do with it. (i tried to negate it IC bc I was young and stupid). this was in the heyday of 4chan and my friendship group were all big channers so the humour we shared was very "15 year old teenage boys in Somerset who know about encyclopedia dramatica". I was Quite Autistic and often oblivious or hyperfixated and kind of the butt of a lot of jokes, but my friends found me endearing I guess, and were willing to indulge me in playing D&D and get into Warhammer. I would sometimes pretend to run out of the room and commit suicide as a joke. one time I misunderstood the word 'elope' and implied a relationship with another player character, and while it would be nice to say I played it cool and was like yeah we eloped that good with you~, I actually ran upstairs and printed out a replacement version and tried to pretend it didn't happen. teenagers!

anyway, we played "D&D". the rules were functionally pretty much what I said they were because nobody else cared that much and digging into one of those tomes is like... instant screeching halt to the session. I would print off maps and try optimised builds from the stack of splatbooks that absorbed all disposable income. mostly it was a pretext to just hang out. the players were trying to wind me up as much as anything. I played the role of exasperated DM who wanted tob keep the game on track. nobody cast magic missile at the darkness but that's the vibe.

I would also run games of "D&D" online over the Giant in the Playground forums. this was a strange ritual. the first step was that someone would write a forum thread with a pitch. then, players would bring complicated builds and pages of backstory. if I was the DM... ostensibly I'd be selective but I hated rejecting people so I'd start a second group of necessary. we'd start the IC thread. I would set a scene, then everyone would describe the appearance of their characters for several paragraphs. Some light character interaction would happen - slowly since you had to deal with different schedules and time zones, hence the paragraphs. Hopefully nobody would lose interest already, and we'd get going.

eventually we might reach a point where a dice roll is called for. this would take a couple of days to resolve if there was a timezone difference. at worst, the player would state their intended action with a paragraph of flavour, the DM would ask for a specific dice roll, the player would roll it and report the number, the DM would resolve the action.

if that sounds slow as shit, imagine how much it would bog down when you actually started combat. you'd have to establish initiative, everyone would need to take their turns, and if someone was away for some reason? you just gotta wait, or maybe bump the thread with a nagging message.

for this reason, games would very rarely get past their first combat. the fate of just about every single one of these games would be to fade away after some player stopped responding and the rest gradually lost interest. the game was more about... suggesting the idea of a game, and agreeing that idea seemed cool, and a token gesture at playing it.

(the much more robust form of forum RPG was the 'god game'. these would revolve around a pantheon of gods creating a world together. they would usually start on farflung parts of the map and build civilisations that would eventually interact, if the game got that far. the need for back and forth was minimal. posts would be enormous, each one looking more like a short story. the players had a lot more leeway to make decisions but direct interaction was rare. in short it was a form of parallel play.)

both of these 'games' as rituals have little resemblance to what D&D is supposed to be, as declared in the books and suggested by people who had real, dedicated in-person groups of the kind I have now. they were almost a kind of meta-roleplaying? everyone agreed that the activity we were doing in each case was 'playing D&D' though, and we really were responding to the D&D rulebooks.

every time I've played Apocalypse World, even in friend groups where talking about sex is pretty normal and comfortable, the 'special moves' on each playbook that trigger upon sex were implicitly or explicitly off the table. it would be weird. it's definitely part of the design that Vincent and Meguey seem to have intended, though. maybe in their group that is chill. moreover, i tend to neglect the inter-session planning methods, threat clocks etc., and refer to the list of MC moves much less than I'm supposed to. I would still say the games we've played are Apocalypse World, even if it's not exactly the Bakers' well polished machine.

in one game of D&D I played, I started creating an elaborate 3D map of the zone we were exploring in Blender as we played, which I streamed live on Twitch. (the creative energy of an RPG seems to feed into visual art somehow - or maybe just the sense of confidence it engenders). that became a core part of the game procedures for us: @barnacleheretic would describe a scene and I would take a minute to add a model of it to the map. you could never write that as an explicit game mechanic in a published book, but it did a ton to anchor the group and make the setting feel substantial. likewise, I always draw every group I'm in, and if the game goes on long enough, scenes that feel particularly vivid. drawing forces me to pay attention to detail.

the actual process of creating a character and inhabiting them is... very hard to teach except by giving people examples of other players and space to figure it out for themselves, I guess. playbooks and classes help with the blank page problem, but to get to the point where you launch away from the list of numbers and start to get a feeling for how your character thinks and what they mean to you? that's art, and thus as hard to teach as any art. all you can set up is the scaffolding, a gamut from combat stats through beliefs and tags and flag systems to whatever the hell chuubo's is doing, and rely on the social skills of the players to engage each other and get the engine turning, juices flowing.

I hope I continue to play RPGs for the rest of my life.

[businesstiramisu]

Okay I rewrote the post. Thoughts on the last tenth (or so) of Worth the Candle:

[I don't really expect this to be interesting to anyone except me, but i do want to save these for future me, lol]

 I found the ttrpg Fel See Incident much more satisfying than the Aerb version. No, not satisfying, it was horrible. But it was exactly what the story had been building it up to be, for 1 million plus words, and that's quite an accomplishment. Whereas the Fel Seed of Aerb.... I think the problem is scope creep? When the stakes get Too High and the antagonists (or protagonists, for that matter) get Too Powerful my brain just gives up and I disengage. Like "sure, whatever, just tell me who wins". Whereas the ttrpg version, and the real world-level drama around it, felt horribly plausible.

I did like "we'll win the second time because, if Joon had gotten a second chance at the game, he would have let the players win." That was a nice bit of narrative reinforcement/article of faith.

 I love the Long Stairs. It's almost enough to make me think I should give SCP a more serious look, but I'm still worried the horror will be Too Scary for me. (And don't get me wrong I would hate to play a ttrpg campaign in it... actually, maybe it wouldn't be worse than usual? I could just follow the RDP instructions instead of my usual choice paralysis. well, depends on how often they come up. I probably wouldn't like having to make new characters constantly b/c they keep dying.) But like when Juniper wished they could've stayed in the labyrinth and explored the other cultures living there, I was right there with him.

The final reveal of Uther/Arthur..... hmmm, complicated feelings. On the one hand, ugh! why couldn't he just apologize, and admit to being terrible!! Well, he kinda did later... to Juniper, after they'd spent a long time rebuilding camaraderie and basically giving each other a pass for the horrible shit each considered the other to have done. And that was depressingly realistic. Well, idk that anything in my life compares (fortunately) but the most serious, scary arguments in my life have mostly gone like that.

Juniper and Arthur's ultimate goodbye felt appropriate, even cathartic. Raven and Bethel didn't get anything comparable though. Just Uther brushing them off (or in Ravens case saying "I understand this is hard for you but you've got to suck it up", basically). Which, yeah the world ain't fair. It wasn't justice, though. They didn't get their due like Juniper did.

The final conversation withe the dungeon master was also surprisingly satisfying! I liked it a lot more than when Sophie's World did the same thing. (And I've probably read more books that have the character confront the fact that they're characters in a novel, but that's what came to mind lol).

Maybe b/c it was really funny how the DM told Juniper "you're all characters in a novel I'm writing" and Juniper immediately rejected that explanation as bullshit.

Similarly, the Narrator, as the actual Juniper who was writing WTC

Heaven!Fenn though, felt overly self-indulgent to me. Which is maybe ridiculous, b/c the whole story is an exercise in self-indulgence/self-examination, but i dunno she just didn't work for me

Well, it's pretty hilarious that she was The One Person In Aerb Ever To Go To Heaven, and was always destined to be that one person. Hilarious in a pretty arbitrary way.

Someone in the comments to Ch. 245 or 246 said that "Worth the Candle but Reimer died instead of Arthur" is a great fanfic premise and... i dunno, it would be a massive amount of work, but it's tantalizing to think about. Seems like Aerb would have to be very different with--well, idk, would it be a whole collection of Reimer's characters, since he never seemed as devoted to one of them?-- instead of Uthur Penndraig, but with the themes of putting people on a pedestal, using their tragedies as an excuse to wallow in your own grief and depression and rage, and also the DM presumably having the same goals, I have to wonder how much it would even matter?!

Wow, the void beast was a metaphor for global warming?! kinda kicking myself for not picking up on that. Unless I just forgot about it; this story is really long.

[samusique-concrete]

1052R

i read something today that forced me to reconstruct the history within it as my favorite instance of what the kids today categorize as “game recognizing game.” both game entities in my new favorite recognition instance happen to be johann sebastian bach, because bach is and was unparalleled. he’s the only one that could go head to head with his particular mind. this thought brings me comfort.

historians and musicologists today presume bach wrote a violin concerto so difficult to perform that it led to it not being preserved by [lack of] virtue of there simply not being many around able to keep playing it. late in his life, historians and musicologists today presume, he’d recover this concerto and repurpose it as a harpsichord-centered piece, thus making it more accessible. this ended up becoming the 1052. the reconstruction of the presumed original violin version is known today as 1052R. bach was so painfully aware of the magnitude of his snapping with the original 1052 that he refused to let it die. the previous sentence is my reconstruction of the history inside the hypothesis.

i like to think about him often. i think about him writing the minor, lesser pieces in his repertoire because i like thinking about how, in contrast, his bigger, grander pieces feel in terms of showmanship. i like to imagine him symbolically waving away the tails of a period-and-culture-inaccurate frac before sitting down at his clavier stool (a gesture that could only mean “Time To Break Out The Big Guns”) in order to write works like the 1004, the 582, the 997, the apostles’ passions, the mass, the offering, the variations - as opposed to writing something like the WTC prelude N°1 tucked in bed in his nightgown by candlelight. this is why i speak of showmanship; the c major prelude is one of the most perfect portraits of western music sensibilities - it just happens to be subtle about it. both the lesser pieces and the grander pieces required of him the same amount of skill, albeit with different subsets and configurations of it. these are, again, my reconstructions of a particular history.

history does something funny to us: we let it wrap itself around our perception of it in such a way that there ends up being room for only one conjecture to be conjured. reading about the conception of the offering is a great example of this: it is impossible to finish that story without thinking of bach as what the same kids that’d classify him as “game” would call a “baller.” we like to think of bach as a baller. when i finally went to see a live performance of the 582, the organist told the audience a bach-biographical baller story i’d never heard. we like to think of his pilgrimage to buxtehude’s door as a baller move. i like to think of his body of work as the biggest flex on his contemporaries. this only inflates the image of bach the showman. this is the biggest reconstruction of all.

bach loved god. bach feared god. this is as far away as we can get from a reconstruction of his persona: it being the closest we can get to a fact, it leaves us with more of a reproduction. whether devotion and showmanship can coexist is not what i wanna argue. i wanna argue that historians and musicologists throughout the years have pretty much determined the presence of one of these traits in him, and not so much the other. i don’t want to argue whether we should reconstruct him possessing the latter trait or not. i just know we do. i also know this inevitably makes him, fortunately or not, a baller.

[oww666]

some some footage on 9/11 I had never seen before inside building #7 where a uniformed man warns the photographer ..you better get out this whole place is coming down ...they were in the lobby after at least one of the towers had collapsed

[philhoffman]

Breaking my own rule and rewatching 25th Hour less than a month after my last Monday Philm watch because, obviously. I was interested to check out one of the commentary tracks (my copy has three) to hear what Spike Lee says about 9/11 and its place in the film. Also, today I watched the docuseries 9/11: One Day in America, which included a shot of people gathered along the East River 22 years ago today, covered in ash and blood—the same riverside park where Monty is sitting at the start of the film.

Spike's commentary track was great. He's got a really great laugh. And his commentary style is fantastic, very easy and fun to listen to. Some filmmakers get bogged down in very technical details, follow irrelevant threads, just lose sight of what they're going on about. But Spike is on it—he knows every shot, every line, every cut right before it happens. He keeps up with his own pace and provides some enlightening tidbits.

Here are some quick hits:

In one scene, Spike swears they shot a close up and his editor swears they didn’t. That’s such a simple, funny quibble—those things you can’t remember if you forgot or if you forgot to remember. Directors: they’re just like us!

He said the dog that played Doyle was a very good dog :)

In an earlier cut of the film, they removed a lot of the Doyle stuff—Ed Norton saw that cut and made them put it back.

Every time Spike sees Jakob Elinsky he says the same thing: "Jake and his problems." "Jake, as I said before, he has problems." "I said it before, Jakob Elinsky has a problem."

Spike had to fight the studio to include that long shot of Ground Zero. He also talked about filming that scene with Phil specifically: "We did eight or nine takes. After the fifth, Philip was saying, 'Spike, don’t you think we got it?' Philip is more impatient than I am. He comes in, hits it from the beginning, ready to go. I like that. I like it very much."

“I’m glad I was finally able to work with Philip Seymour Hoffman. Phenomenal. Phenomenal. He’s a pretty good softball player, too.” Phil had a 25th Hour baseball cap I've always been curious about, and tonight I learned Spike often has his casts play softball together for bonding purposes. Mystery solved! Wbk he was a great first baseman

The Jakob Elinsky dolly shot: "That is a 'what the fuck have I done' look. 'I’m gonna burn in hell.'"

Phil was in New York on 9/11, of course. Three weeks earlier, he was at a club on the 114th floor of the WTC. From an old pal: "We hugged forever, his beard tucked in close against my face... ohhhhh man! ... As I took the railing looking out upon the NY landscape, I looked down to read the plated sign, 'Warning: Please hold the railing tightly before focusing on the street below, as you might lose your balance and even fall.' Phil quietly murmured, 'It's all about perception.'"

He was just a few blocks north in Tribeca on the day of the attack. A couple of his friends and acquaintances have talked about seeing him that day. Every single one of them mentions the big hugs he gave them. Just something I've been thinking about today.

[caitsyoi]

I'm going to talk about 9/11 a bit, but I'm going to put it under the cut because it may be long, and I'm not sure anyone would want to read it. I just need to vent a little because the day always makes me a little sad. I'm going to recall some memories from that day, too, so be warned before you read. I'm a tumblr old, so I remember it well, and many of these memories involve some traumatic shit.

To me 9/11 is always a solemn day not just because of what happened that day, but also what it did to us as a country and the world. I don't want people to remember 9/11 like so many of us did, as a justification for war. Tbh I don't know what I want from writing this. I think I just need to express some things that have been rolling around in my head today.

I was fortunate to not lose anyone that day. One of my older brothers did spend about half his time in the WTC though, and there was a period of time that day where we didn't know if he was there. This was pre cell phones for most people and we couldn't get through to his work phone. When the towers fell I still didn't know, and that fear is something I will always think of on 9/11. I used all my lunch money on a pay phone trying to call family members. About an hour after that my dad did hear from him and we were all relieved. He went on to have 3 kids and I sometimes think about how many people weren't born due to 9/11 and the wars afterward.

The community I grew up in wasn't close to NY or DC, but we did have some connections to it. The girl that sat next to me in typing class had a father who worked at the Pentagon, and she told me her dad was helping to look for bodies there. About 10% of my class joined the military later, and 2 died in Afghanistan. When I was a senior years after 9/11, my boyfriend was a year older than me and in the National Guard. He was sent to Iraq and wounded there. My mom's work was tied to the military, and she spent most of the next few months working long, stressful hours. It led to her having a mini stroke, and she retired early about 8 years after 9/11.

That day and for days after all the channels showed endless 9/11 footage. There were close-ups of people in or above the impact zones in the towers, which is something they showed live. I have the image of people waving for help from the windows permanently stuck in my head. The news also showed people falling, they would try to cut away most of the time but sometimes the camera would linger and you could see more detail than you wanted too. That evening they also kept showing pictures of falling people, until finally they decided that was fucked up and stopped. Those images are stuck in my head too.

Many people were glued to the TV and we we were just completely immersed in these images over and over again. While it was happening there was the terror of not knowing what would happen to all those people. Could the people waving for help be rescued? Were there any more hijacked planes full of people waiting for their deaths? When the towers fell, how many people were in them still? The news kept saying there could be as many as 10k people dead from the towers alone. Were we going to war? We had to be. Somehow, we had to get revenge for all these people who died in terror. I remember waking up the next morning to find my mom crying in front of the TV, I think it was just all too much.

We really didn't know what would happen next. Later that afternoon, Air Force 1 flew over our house, and the jets around it caused a sonic boom. I had never heard one before. The local news cut in and said there was an explosion not too far from where my mom was (this was later corrected to a random fire + the sonic boom). This is going to sound silly, but I had an anxiety attack that my mom was in danger, which was exasperated when she didn't answer her work phone. I remember when she got home that day, I was sitting at the kitchen table and saw her pull up. I ran outside crying and hugged her.

As time passed, we learned more about the dead. There were children on the planes. I remember before the 2nd plane hit the towers, my mind thought the first plane had to be a smaller one, like a little Cessna or something. It didn't make sense, but my mind couldn't accept that someone would fly a plane full of people into a building. Then the 2nd plane hit and reality set in.

The news showed people covered in dust and sometimes blood fleeing the towers. It showed hospitals with staff waiting outside with gurney beds waiting for victims that would never come. Posters of all the missing all over NYC. People went on the news looking for their loved ones and there was so much pain on their faces and in their voices.

All this grief, all this anger we felt, was then used to inflict more tragedies on others. Nearly a million dead in the War on Terror (how the fuck do you go to war on a concept?). I'm ashamed to admit that I bought into the propaganda, I think most people did until the Iraq war, myself included. For years afterward, 9/11 would fill me with so much anger. Now I look back on that, and I'm angry for different reasons. I'm angry we decided to go along with everything the government wanted to do in response, like a war without a timetable or plan to end, the Patriot Act, and the Iraq War started entirely on lies.

I think about how different things were before 9/11. When my mom would go away on business, we could go right up to her gate to greet her when we got home. In a broader way, there was just this naive view of America. We had "won" the Cold War, and we had the greatest military and the greatest economy in the world. I think we really thought we were untouchable, that war and other fucked up things would always be distant and never really reach us. I understand there was another naivete within myself, too. I was a middle-class white person, and I understand now that how I viewed the world was entirely based on my own circumstances. But also, overall, so many of us just didn't expect something like this to happen. 9/11 really changed our idea of what the world was and what our government should be.

Idk what the point of this post is, maybe just venting. Sometimes, I just want to explain why we reacted the way we did. Sometimes, I just want to relieve the shame I feel at our response. How could I be so naive that it took until the lack of WMDs found in Iraq for me to start questioning things? How much pain did we unleash on the world because we didn't view the world as it was? To me, 9/11 will always be a tragedy for all the innocents killed that day and in response to that day.

[bandtrees]

now say something beautiful and genuine

now that we're closing in on 2022: i know we like to joke teehee hell year but i've grown lots this year and i think this is the most confident iv been in a long time. of course that comes with its own troubles - emotional growing pains, restlessness, all that - but this is the year that made me really feel like a person, like a fully fledged one, in all my neurotic and childish and passionate glory. and i’m so used to hating myself that it feels... wrong, almost, like there’s about to be a catch somehow, but i wanna bask in it.

i’m twenty years old, technically speaking i’ve been an adult for a fair bit now (though mostly im just a big teenager tbh), but i’m starting to actually feel like one, as silly as it feels to say - i owe so, so much of it to the trip across the country i took in october, getting to see people i love so much in real life for the first time, experiencing the “adult”-y mess that was trying to navigate an airport alone, taking pictures in different states in the only time i’d ever been excited to take selfies... i’d live that trip again every day if i could.

i’m used to being a very nervous person, and even as i talk about that trip i replay the embarrassing parts over and over in my head, but i think i’ve finally developed the ability to convince myself my nerves are just... a part of my sometimes-dumb-but-mostly-lovable-and-trying-its-best brain. that i’m loved, that people give me chances because they care, that i’m worthy of being had in the lives of the people i love so much. and i know these things are a given but man, it’s crazy!

anyone who’s followed me for any semi-large stretch of time knows how all-over-the-place i am with fandoms (sorry to the people who followed me for, like, outlast or something) but... as silly as it sounds, i owe a lot of my happiness right now to getting into wtc and transformers: i don’t think it’s a coincidence that this is the year i got to read the words “without love it cannot be seen” and “without love there is no meaning”, as much as these stories have impacted me personally with their messages, it all pales to the friends and experiences i’ve made through them: all the friends i read higurashi and umineko with, the new friends i’ve made through mtmte... all of it just means so much to me.

i have so many people to thank for making this year what it was for me (i wouldn’t have even HAD my crazy confidence boosting country trip if not for my mom, bless her<3) - every single friend i’ve gushed about characters with or complained about nonsense to or said “i love you” to (because i do! all the time! and i mean it every time!), every single person who’s appreciated my art or listened to me talk or been there for me or just made a day brighter by hanging out, i love you guys so much. the foxden server and the yanderepliers and the meatys and real hq and the umi club and all the other gcs i’m in, bless you guys, i love y’all more than words can say.

(special special special shoutouts to @sammisafetypin my beloved qpp who i’m always so happy to remember has been with me for the past Whole Entire Decade Oh My God i love you so much. and to the beloved nerds we called with practically every day @uramis @hatsunoid i have genuinely no idea where i’d be without getting to mess around with you guys so much, no matter what it’s always a highlight of my day just getting to see you guys around and your friendship has meant more to me than i can even say. i feel like i’ve known y’all my whole life <33 @tonypostt YOU TOO YOU FUNKY LITTLE COMPUTER VIRUS (squeezes you so hard) @cest-la-vivie for all we create together and for being such a delightfully kind and fun person and buying me that brownie squishie i couldn’t afford that has now been practically skinned of all of its sprinkles because i pick at it like a damn scab. i hope you and flux get married and i can crash your wedding or something. and i can serve that godawful castle cake. @heavenpierceher you’re like a cool big sister to me and i’m really happy we’re as close as we are and that me and my friends’ silly server is a place you can call home Also fuck you for introducing me to mtmte you ruined my life. you’re an inspiration to me in the silliest ways and i would hug you 10x harder than i did in my airbnb driveway if i could. @princealberich one of my oldest and dearest besties it’s been so wonderful watching you become a happier more confident person over the year and you deserve that happiness so so much, @neon--nightmare my babebro(Sorry) my best friend ever who i’m so happy is still in my life, one of the kindest people i know, i know this year’s been hard on you but you’re one of the best treasures in my life and you deserve the best, every time we hang out it’s some of the happiest i’ve ever been, and i hope so much that i can light up your life the way you do mine. and to... so so so many more people. i tend to take for granted how many friends i have, ones i’ve had for years and years i’m grateful every day that i still get to see and spend precious time with, ones i’ve only just met but i already can’t imagine without, and... spending time with people and making them happy and having fun with the people i love really is the reason i’m alive. i can’t talk up enough just how much the silly little people in my phone mean to me. (if you think this is about you: it is. i love you too. <3)

this is a long windy strange post but i just... have a lot to smile about this year, in ways i haven’t really before. and i’m really really grateful for that, and i hope i can bring that into 2023 and bring the people i care about the happiness they bring me<333 i know this year sucked for a lot of people, but i’m wishing well for all of you, and for a lovely 2023 🫂🫂🫂

[marvel911]

Cable – “HOW TO COPE WITH YOUR WORST NIGHTMARES”

Cable Volume 1 No. 98 Released Nov. 2001

Letter pages are a fun part of the history of superhero comics. Readers write in to compliment, complain, and contest. They get the joy of seeing their words printed in their favorite comic and maybe even winning an infamous Marvel No-Prize. The letters page usually even has a cheesy name like “Let’s Level with Daredevil.”

But you know what’s more fun than letters from readers?

A letter from the artist about precognitive 9/11 dreams, why the Editor-in-Chief of Marvel is wrong, Carl Jung, reproduction as the meaning of life, Serbian concentration camps, accidental shootings, and the value of talking about traumatic experiences with others.

That’s what Igor Kordey delivers on the final page of Cable Vol. 1 No. 98, in an essay titled “HOW TO COPE WITH YOUR WORST NIGHTMARES” and printed where reader letters normally appear.

The impetus for the essay is concerns from Marvel’s editorial staff about images of terrorism in the wake of the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States. Kordey disagrees with management’s concerns. It’s not completely clear why. He might see it as a denial of reality, or he might see it as a denial of the power of precognition? And then he goes in a bunch of different directions, ultimately ending with some sweet and insightful advice from someone with experience dealing with this kind of trauma.

It’s an entertaining read and it definitely feels at home in a comic book about a militant mutant from the future who preaches the value of mediation. It’s tempting to try and dissect what the letter reveals about the time period, about the artist himself, about bravado and vulnerability coexisting side by side… but to avoid the risk of over psychoanalyzing, let’s just go to the letter in full.

HOW TO COPE WITH YOUR WORST NIGHTMARES

I received a call from Joe Quesada the other day. Joe (and not just Joe) was upset about the possible psychological impact of page #12 of this issue (thanks to my ingenious storytelling), with a terrorist flying a jeep full of explosives into a financial building and blowing it up. Obviously, this is an image very close to everyone’s heart right now.

The page in question was drawn in June, but Joe and I spoke two weeks after the terrible disaster in New York City. Joe’s opinion was that we should somehow get rid of the most shocking images from this page. This is understandable, considering that pictures of planes crashing into the WTC towers were too fresh and too painful for the people working at Marvel (which is based in Manhattan), just as they are for many of you.

Well, I had a different opinion. By chance, I had a conversation with Brian David-Marshall the day before. Brian was worried about his Captain America script, written well before September 11, 2001, and featuring Captain America fighting terrorists who possess a nuclear bomb. In addition, I spoke with a number of people who had pre-cognitive dreams or nightmares about disasters several days before the tragic events in New York, Washington, DC and Pennsylvania. Most of these people didn’t discuss these feelings before it happened, as they were afraid of ridicule or embarrassment.

But that doesn’t change the fact that these things are happening.

It is my belief that this precognition is a warning to humankind, a form of collective subconscious as described by Carl Gustav Jung in 1914. These theories were written with the world on the brink of World War I, as Jung recognized himself and a great number of people around the world having precognitive nightmares. On a personal level, these themes were explored in a project called “Tarzan: Rivers of Blood.” Neven Antichevich and I began work on the first drafts of this story in the early eighties, during the turmoil in the former Yugoslavia after the death of President Tito.

However, we continued work on this project in the spring of 1991, immediately preceding the Serbian aggression against Croatia (my homeland).

When I first saw the pictures on TV, with planes crashing and towers collapsing, I thoughts to myself, “You can never get used to it!” This, in spite of the fact that my family and I survived war in Croatia between 1991 and 1995, witnessing similar spectacles nearly every day for four years (from the apocalypse of Vukovar town to the mass slaughter in the Srajevo market, to name just a few examples). My second thoughts was “death walks behind you” (Also the title of an old Atomic Rooster song), because I only moved to Canada in 1996. My wide Andrea and I were thrilled to Canada because we KNEW there had been no war in North America for nearly 100 years, and we KNEW that at last our children would be safe. And this year, our worst nightmare was revisited. We knew we could never get used to it, though we knew we could cope.

We fell back to the lessons we learned. Never lose HOPE, and never be SELFISH. The meaning of life is really very simple: REPRODUCE and keep your family SAFE. So we now cope with life by living in Canada with our three beautiful children, Rea (10), Vilena (8) and Rita (4). And we also learned to discuss our experience, sharing them with other people. In fact, some of my best friends here in Winnipeg are guys who survived Serbian concentration camps, only to be scrutinized and hated again because their religion is based on Islam.

But that’s not what we’re talking about. We’re talking about getting these things out of your head. Talk about things, share your thoughts and experiences. Don’t let your dark side stay inside you, or sooner or later it’ll come out through aggression in the worst way – in full view of your friends, family, or your lover.

And it’s this dark side that reminds me of a statistic I once read. Nearly one out of every three young women and men in North America experienced some form of sexual or physical abuse during childhood. Most of their tormentors manage to get away with their crime because many children are afraid to talk about such things in public. We can’t do the same things with our feelings following September 11. Don’t hide your feelings under the carpet, but be aware of your feelings and learn of their true causes. Only then will you learn to live with trauma. In the meantime, turn to your loved ones for support, stay busy, sleep as much as you need, and DON’T LOSE YOUR SENSE OF HUMOR! That kept me a SANE human being for a long time.

Yours truly,

Igor Kordey and family

(Photo caption) During the war in Croatia, my turn came to defend my county. This picture is from the Croatian highland, Lika. In spring of 1995 (that’s me with the hat). I show this picture because there is a story behind it – one of 5,000,000 Croatian war stories. The guy in the middle shot the guy standing to his right (his best friend) during the watch in the dead of night. It was an accident that occurred because we were all scared out of our minds. I was able to save the man’s life, because I was the only one in my squad who knew the basic first aid. But the man remained an invalid. He was just a poor farmer. A poor farmer with a family of seven.

Above: The page in question, Cable, Vol. 1 No. 98 page 12; writer David Tischman; artist Igor Kordey; colorist Avalon Studios.