#come on the simulacra are so fucking interesting

[galehowl]

Thought about Revenant again and I'm still annoyed over how the character's potential in what stories could be told surrounding his situation, and the characters related to him, as well as how many themes could be explored, all went totally down the drain lol

At least the fandom's creations provided me with far better sustenance

#he's going right there with Grievous #I can't get a break with villains with potential being treated badly by the writers lol #I sort of get why they flip-flopped with him but ending up on the blandest “lol he's more evil now because whatever” is just lol. lmao even #that doesn't even work since no one can get seriously hurt or die anyway so he's still ineffective and not a threat #no one can even KILL HIM even though he's supposedly like a supervillain now #WHY IS HE STILL IN THE APEX GAMES AT THIS POINT #because game logic #also I'll never forgive cockblocking Loba like that and giving her no resolution really #you could've ended this in a billion more interesting ways for all characters involved #but no #come on the simulacra are so fucking interesting #why you do this #he will also now be a character I rage about once a year like I do with Grievous #tragic #text post #apex legends lol

[ranboo5]

reminds me of people saying wilbur (lovejoy) it's like its their last names. just like tumblr url

Yeah that I think is fun honestly like . Okay to compare it to a nimisin in post

FUCK I JUST ACCIDENTALLY DELETED A WHOLE PARAGRAPH FUCK MY LIFE. Whatever

Anyway toki pona, the gibberish I've been intermittently posting in, is a philosophical experiment of a conlang where, due to a restricted vocabulary and simple but restricted grammar, invoking any concept is an exercise in (as described by unofficial spokesperson/Renaissance jan/famous variety YouTuber jan Misali) not knowing what the "word for it" is but describing what it is in essential, contextual terms. It's a context-dependent ad-hoc descriptive process and it can be unwieldy fuzzy and sometimes bad for communication in novel ways sure but it's actually much more powerful and capable than people expect – I would say that toki pona doesn't have /more/ things it struggles to communicate than a natlang like English does, it just struggles with different ones – and many things that are hard to comprehensively express in English are easier to invoke in toki pona!

But yeah sometimes it can be hard. So sometimes ppl will introduce nimi sin, literally "new words" (loaned into English as "nimisin"), to describe some things.

These are. Debatable in value. I use "powe" (a nimisin) several times in the meta bc it affords me a greater agility w/ which to discuss the concept of fiction – I'm not sure if this is a decision I'll stand by as I get better expressing things in toki pona, but for now it seems to be good for my uses there

There are some nimisin though that are less convincing imo – "isipin", "thought," is the main one I wanted 2 compare this whole thing to

I really don't like "isipin." In toki pona there is no simple way to express the concept of thinking – and if you try to describe it that's because you aren't actually talking about things that necessarily belong in the same semantic grouping! Trying to analyze what you mean when you say "thinking" is really interesting – the different phrases people can come up with on that front are often more useful than just "thinking"!

"pilin" for gut feelings "mi la" for when smth is in your opinion "nasin mi" for moral codes "lukin" for examination "alasa sona" for investigation or exploration "kama sona" for learning "toki insa" for internal monologue "toki lawa" "lawa pilin" "Pali sona" and so much more – it communicates and helps you acknowledge what angle you're actually coming at something from. It's really interesting and a great thought exercise

"isipin" eliminates that exercise. You just say "isipin" and you skip over identifying and communicating what kind of consideration you're talking about, yk?

And that's how I feel about "content" and "content creator," I think, having evaluated it. We use these phrases as shorthand for... what, at this point? What are you talking about when you say "content"? Do you mean to say "art?" "Entertainment"? "Comedy"? "Presentation"? "Simulacra of companionship"? Do you mean a specific work of theirs? What do you actually like about things? And like ... at risk of somehow sounding even more pretentious than I already have, I think that's worth considering sometimes. What do you actually come here for? "Content" describes nothing. "This game contains scenes." And that can be useful as a term sometimes, sure, but like... idk . Actually citing what people do or perform is cool I think . And not to say that's not also a shorthand it v much is but like . Idk maybe we could all do to choose what shorthand we use more deliberately

#It's not incomparable to the problem of duo&c names too #This sounds... so unhinged idk

[nemesis-is-my-middle-name]

Angsty idea: the Constructs CAN'T come clean. They want to, since they're starting to feel guilt, but the Disk sees an opportunity, and it's not letting its creations blow this chance because they've started to feem. So they are physically incapable of admitting to the swap. (So they are physcially incapable of admitting they're not real-and when one tried to force the issue, their lungs stopped working for ten seconds.)

[ Anonymous: (Between the Constructs, who do you think would start to feel guilty about the charade, and who's want to revel the truth to save themself from re-assimilation?) ]

see that's an interesting question because it requires thinking about what the constructs are actually. like, when they aren't trying their best to be perfect simulacra of the people they're meant to impersonate. if the constructs were made based on other people's mental images of the subjects, with the intention of passing as them, it's probably a personality based on what other people perceive them to be like, vs. anything to do with their actual internal life, something they have no understanding of. and naturally, the less well the people they're in contact with actually knew protag and ingo, the less accurate that's going to be.

this is actually a really interesting question if we consider where their first impressions come from—since i'd assume whichever impression they were initially given is the one that imprints most heavily, even if they continue to hone the personality via other people. so, if it is in fact barry and emmet who are necessary for the copies to be created, their personalities are going to be very accurate, if a little rose-tinted (because naturally their childhood friend/fucking twin knows them better than almost anyone). on the contrary, if sada/turo is the one who gives the initial impression, that personality is going to be very skewed indeed, because the professor doesn't know hardly anything about a unovan subway boss and a kid champion from sinnoh other than what's been on like, the news.

it's also possible that their personality is, especially the beginning, an extreme chameleon that shifts moment-to-moment to be a perfect reflection of whatever their conversation partner expects. but i imagine they'd eventually settle into something more concrete from person to person. we also have to keep in mind that while they're very good mimics, they were also functionally born yesterday and are still learning a lot of things.

so the protagonist-copy is brazen and fearless, but also childish at times, y'know, the kind of person who makes international news at 12 for foiling an apocalypse plot. maybe the professor fills in the gaps with pieces of nemona or arven, depending on how well you think they know either of them. they're lacking the true protag's people-pleasing nature and deep, all-consuming love of pokemon. the professor knows even less about ingo, so the ingo-copy is much more of just like, a blank shell before emmet comes along. he's professional and serious, but lacks a lot of the enthusiasm he used to have (since the initial impression of him is mostly just based off photographs and his appearance), and has "forgotten" a lot of the minutia he used to know, especially about running the subway.

i think construct ingo might crack first, because ingo is known to his friends as someone who is very honest, at times to his detriment—he might understand that keeping secrets is the better course of action but he just cannot lie to people. so the construct, copying that, would have a really hard time keeping up the charade and would probably pick up some of the radiating guilt from that trait. protag, on the other hand, is able to coast on "people are happy i'm here and would be sad if i told them the truth"—which ironically makes them even more scared of being reassimilated because if they go away all protag's friends will be sad again!

#the nemesis speaks #the nemesis answers #anonymous #pokefic pitch #zero constructs

[darchildre]

Sara Reads an Infuriating Book, part 2

Chapter 2 of W Scott Poole's Wasteland is entitled "Waxworks". This is where I got angry enough to start taking notes in earnest rather than just annotating the ebook, so this is longer and has more actual quotes.

First, a disclaimer: I do not in any way disbelieve that WWI had a huge impact on early 20th century horror. Of course it did; how could it not? What I object to is Poole's assertion that it is the only thing that could possibly have had such an impact and that that impact always and only comes in the form of fear of bodily death and the corpse as an object of horror. Any time anyone gives you a Grand Unified Theory of Horror that claims to explain all of reasons that humans create scary or disturbing art, that theory is never going to be correct. People are more complex than that. And now, bullet points!

Okay, first off, I do have to apologize for ranting about Poole talking about Machen's "The Bowmen" without actually talking about it last chapter, because he talks about the story explicitly in this chapter. This is a structural thing he does repeatedly: he'll mention a writer/director/etc and hint at a work he's going to discuss later without actually naming it. (In this chapter, he does this with Fritz Lang and Metropolis.) This structural choice is not well-signposted and I don't care for it, but at least now I know that's what he's doing.

He also touches on Lovecraft again here, so I apologize as well for accusing him of skipping ol' Howie. Here, we talk briefly about "Herbert West: Re-animator", as it's the only Lovecraft story to a) actually feature WWI explicitly and b) deal much with corpses. There's also this quote about Cthulhu which is...a big fucking stretch: "He raised great Cthulhu, a monster that has haunted the century, a new death’s head spreading wide his black wings of apocalypse, which was clearly recognizable as the Great War and its meaning continued to menace the world."

Like, there is absolutely an argument to be made that WWI was a major influence on the invention of cosmic horror at the beginning of the 20th century. Again, how could it not be? WWI was proof for a lot of people that the universe fundamentally didn't care about them. But that's the thing that I don't think Poole gets - cosmic horror is not about the fear that you are going to die. Cosmic horror doesn't care about your corpse because it doesn't care about you. Cosmic horror is about the fear that no one cares that you exist at all. That is a huge and important difference.

As the chapter title implies, there is a lot of repeated discussion this chapter of waxworks, dolls, puppets, poppets, etc. Poole insists over and over again that a) all of these simulacra can be collapsed symbolically into a single image and that image is of a corpse and b) these objects became horrific after WWI because of the corpse thing. But then he'll go through the history of the fascination with creepy wax figures stretching back to wax images of saints through Madame Tussaud's Chamber of Horrors, or he'll talk about dolls and reference E T A Hoffman's The Sandman (from 1817), which, to my mind, totally undercuts his point. You don't need the Great War to make waxworks creepy, my dude.

(Somewhat relatedly - there is a really interesting book to be written about the prevalence of hypnotism/mind control/sleepwalking in early horror film, but it is not going to be this book because Poole thinks all that's happening there is more corpses.)

Which leads us to the discussion of The Cabinet of Caligari! Poole spends a lot of time rehashing a widely accepted interpretation of the film proposed by Siegfried Kracauer in his 1947 book From Caligari to Hitler: Kracauer reads the film as a warning about the dangers of authoritarianism, with the somnambulist Cesare standing in for the people of Europe who unconsciously do the evil bidding of their authoritarian masters. Not saying that's the only possible reading of the film - I don't believe there's only one possible reading of any film - but it's an interesting and persuasive one. 'Nope!' says Poole. See, his theory is that the filmmakers wanted to get artist Alfred Kubin to design the look of the film (he did not end up working on the film), Kubin's work has a lot of doll-like figures in it, dolls are always corpses, and therefore Caligari is, once again, only about how all those people died in the war. This is the only thing the filmmakers could have meant.

(On the positive side, this did lead me to look up the art of Alfred Kubin, which I was previously unfamiliar with. It's pretty rad.)

"There’s not enough evidence, for example, that the world understood that their somnambulistic obedience helped produce the outrages of the Great War." I don't see that the world as a whole has to see that in order for the film to attempt to convey that meaning - surely what matters is that the filmmaker saw it and made a film about it. It's not necessary for the world to understand the meaning behind a work of art for a person to make that work of art.

(Somewhat ironically, Poole complains that Kracauer is only capable of interpreting German film in the 1920s through the lens of his pet theory. Who does that remind me of? Couldn't say.)

Oh my god this is already so long, I haven't even talked about J'accuse. Poole thinks J'accuse is a zombie movie which I won't argue because I've only read about it and haven't seen it yet - that could be a valid interpretation for all I know. But then he compares it unfavorably to Romero zombie films and complains that the director of J'accuse "did not really know what to do with [his zombies]", just because they rise from their graves, make their point, and then return to their graves. The entire point of the film is to make the viewer bear witness to the dead. Poole even says this: "The film’s theme of marital infidelity, that inescapable trope in the cinema of the Great War, became a symbol for the larger question of whether the nation had been faithful to the cause of its soldiers.  The dead came back to make sure they had." What else did you want the zombies to do???

God, the whole section about Vampyr made me crazy. Poole is all, "Carl Theodore Dreyer had little connection to the war and I’m not going to show any actual evidence that the war had an impact on his work but he made Vampyr in 1932 and it’s weird and scary and full of shadows and creepy imagery, so obviously it’s about WWI." (nb not at all an actual quote.) There's just no acknowledgement that a person might make a horror film that was inspired by something that happened to them that wasn't WWI. Hell, there's no acknowledgement that a person might make a horror film because they like making spooky stuff. I was a monster kid basically from birth - I suffered no trauma to make me that way. I certainly didn't participate in WWI. Explain that, W Scott Poole.

Lastly, he's just factually wrong about The Phantom of the Opera, in that he claims that the 1925 film presents no explanation for Erik's deformity, unlike the novel. This is not correct - there is no reason for his deformity in the novel either. Later films added that. The lack of explanation in the 1925 film is not a response to mutilated war veterans; it's just an accurate adaptation. Poole says, "No one in the Western world could have looked at the visage of Lon Chaney and not thought of what the French called the gueules cassées…" and maybe that's true, but he's just stating a theory based on a mistake and presenting no evidence.

On the plus side, I'm making a very cool list of books I want to read from the works cited, and also some films that I haven't gotten around to seeing yet.

#i left out the bit where he talks for several paragraphs about the first italian horror film: 'il mostro di frankenstein' #before revealing that this is a completely lost film #to the point that what remains of it is some promotional materials a photo one still and a single contemporary review #but he's sure that it supports his thesis #and also the bit where i'm sad every day that i don't have a time machine that would allow me to attend performances at the grand guignol #sara reads an infuriating book

[gemalawasliveblogs]

John getting the idea of how to prank Past Karkat FROM present Karkat is super fucking funny. Also, Karkat calling John "perverse" for enjoying the trolling is several extra layers of funny in context. Karkat thinks the trolls are going to hate the kids forever, which is especially funny considering the entire rest of the comic...and Karkat in particular. This guy crushes on three different humans and seemingly canonically dates one, even outright ignoring post-canon which 100% confirms this. Karkat is also rather helpful, telling us about the Reckoning and what's going on.

Some long and interesting Hussie commentary is below the cut.

The first four lines Karkat says here literally sound like they could be a disgruntled Homestuck fan talking smack about me as they scan backwards through the story. Which sounds like a funny thing for me to say—and it is—but it's also not that remarkable, since at any given moment Homestuck is full of surrogates for various factions of the readership. Basically any character who is viewing the actions of other characters on a screen can be seen as a consumer of that story through some form of in-canon digital media. Whether they type in character commands like the exiles, or use Trollian to skip around the "archive" in a nonlinear way like the trolls do, for the sake of "adventure analysis" or to heap scorn on those involved, every narrative-viewing character is temporarily filling the role of the Homestuck reader from a certain angle. Later, cherubs become the ultimate distillation of the idea.

There's something kind of eerie about these stable time loops when it comes to the absurd, bitchy conversations the characters have with each other. There is literally no discernible origin to this prank John is playing. It's pasted to him from the future, he thinks it's a great prank, and he decides to play the prank in the future because of it, exactly as typed here. And yet, the whole exchange appears to be perfectly in character and in full alignment with their personalities. So entire exchanges between two individuals can be totally without origin, yet still sound exactly like them. This opens up a whole bunch of creepy possibilities. Ghosts or afterimages of their personalities seemingly can emerge from pure void in a convincing way, like bodiless simulacra. Echoing time loop mimic-wraiths, intruding on their conversations.

While I know about the Cherubs as a reflection of readership (Callie being a parody of Homestuck lovers and Caliborn of Homestuck haters), and the Alpha Trolls as a caricature of people (Porrim of feminists, Kankri of Tumblrinas, Horuss of systems, etc - a writing choice I'm not a fan of), I admittedly never thought of the Beta Trolls and exiles as fulfilling a similar purpose, albeit more subtly. The trolls often echo or mock our thoughts on what's going on in the story, and provide meta-commentary while still being IN the story.

And then there's commentation on the unsettling nature of time loops and, seemingly, dream bubbles. Stable time loops police characters into having perfectly replicated conversations with no origin, a deviation from which would get them all killed. Creepy shit.

Also, apparently, the concepts of Ancestors and the hemospectrum weren't present/fleshed out at this point. Also, this:

From my perspective, the great thing about this stupid backwards conversation was that any time someone wanted to know the answer to an obvious question, like "What's the point of the game?", and I didn't think it was time to reveal that info yet, I could just have this jerk say "I ALREADY TOLD YOU THAT" and justifiably be reluctant to repeat himself. But he would indulge in other details of lesser importance, like the material here about the Veil. He hasn't mentioned that yet, so he can take some time to cover it now. It's a totally organic and logical way of concealing critical story information so that it flows in an order of least critical to most critical.

This is genuinely clever. Hussie figured out how to prevent a forthcoming and helpful guy (Karkat) from simply revealing everything right away, and then also made it a fun gag.

#homestuck #gem liveblogs #homestuck liveblog #gemposting #analysis #particularly chaotic

[characternerdocs]

🎮 — favorite video game(s)?

munday asks ||| @icybreaths

Some of my favorite games, first has to be Alice: Madness Returns. Not only do the game and the games version of Alice sort of inspire Heather and Vincent’s characters. (Vincent I feel has grow into the male verison of Alice Liddell as he has emerged from his cocoon of villian and had turned into a beautiful anti-hero moth. While Alice’s impromptu trips into Wonderland she makes through the game and her “powers” were inspirational to Heather’s creation. I believe from day one I was pulling from Madness Returns for Heather’s character.)

ANYWAY, besides that. I love this game’s story, it actually the sequel to American McGee’s Alice, but I really like Madness Returns because the story of the game is just *Cheif’s Kiss* fantastic in my mind. I feel like there are a lot of dark retellings of Alice in Wonderland which can either be a hit or miss, but this one does it so well. In the first game, Alice is fighting to save Wonderland from the Jabberwock and the Queen of Hearts, personifications of Alice’s survivor’s guilt and all of the negative emotions and thoughts respectively. After defeating them, saving Wonderland, all a metaphor for her mental health, Alice is release from Rutledge Asylum, where she had been since the fire that claimed the lives of her parents and sister. A fine story, but Madness Return's is so much better. Come to find out after years of thinking she is to blame for the fire, and once again Alice must save Wonderland as a train (of all thing?) is destroying the land by reclaiming her memories from the night she lost her family, and remember that really cause their family’s death. And the truth is REALLY fucked up. At least it was to a little middle school aged me when I first encouraged it.

I also really like Hades, and am excited for the second one. Prolly should try to finish the first game though. But I like Hades cause I’m not good at video games, but Hades does reward you for failing. To level yourself up you have to die. and I like Greek Mythology so it’s fun.

I also like a weird phone game called Simulacra. I know there were two other games that came out after it, Simulacra 2 and Simulacra: Pipe Dreams, but the first one is the best cause of what you don’t know until the very end of the game. Which the other two have a very similar forum but with the same “twist” that the player already knows is coming because of the first game. But the first Simulacra is great. it’s an interesting commentary on the different persona we create for our online presence vs our offline self. I wrote a paper on it in college for one of my digital media classes.

Finally my friend at work has got me hooked on Skyrim. I’m like ten years late to this game it would seem, but I’m having a romp through this fantasy game. I have little idea what’s happening to be honest as I am basically a murder hobo, walking from city to city, but somehow I have like 30000 gold now. I know there is a plot, but my ADHD brain just distracted by all the caves with bandits, undead, and vampire to fight that I forget the quest I set off to do. I think I got like 70 hours into the game until I actually did something for the main quest killed a dragon and got the shouty powers.

Thanks for that ask @icybreaths

#Icybreaths #Video games #about ME

[commander-diomika]

(Click to Read From the Beginning) Part 7 Pairing: Zolf Smith/Oscar Wilde, James Barnes/Howard Carter Word Count: 1600 Rating: Mature Additional Tags: Slow Burn, 18-Month Time Gap (Rusty Quill Gaming), Opposites Attract, Trans Male Character, Barnes and Carter have a mild D/s thing going on but there's nothing explicit in here

Summary: Wilde opened the Campbell. He genuinely tried to read, but like bubbles in a glass, his eyes rose off the page and over the top of the book. He enjoyed this one, truly, but a fictional romance held slightly less fascination for him than the reality of the one relaxing in his sitting room.

It’s been almost a year and they still can’t bear to take their hands off each other, Wilde thought bemusedly.

Barnes lounged on one of the comfy chairs in Wilde’s sitting room, watching the fire, whiskey in one hand. Carter had a pile of knives and complicated-looking tools laid out on the low table, humming softly as he did inventory and repairs. He knelt on the floor practically between Barnes’ uwabaki-clad feet, and as Wilde walked in, Carter reached behind himself almost absently to pat Barnes on the thigh, finishing with an affectionate squeeze before shifting focus back to his work.

The pair of them had just finished up yet another round of quarantine and, post bath and debrief, had seemingly settled in for the evening.

Wilde nodded to Barnes and went to pour himself a drink then settled in opposite the pair with a book. Zolf was away once again, returning to his old network with the Harlequins to see if they had discovered anything on the simulacra since he’d left their employ. He was due back in the next few days, and the fact that Wilde had timed each deployment so that the other men could do the inspections for Zolf… well, it was just good luck, not good management.

Wilde liked sending out Zolf alone about as much as Zolf had liked the reverse. But that was part of the job. They no longer lived in a world with much room for sentimentality. Besides, Wilde was almost accustomed to the underlying hum of anxiety every time one of the team was away. He was adept at neatly packaging up that fear, that preemptive grief, and putting in a quiet corner of his mind to either be unboxed when the worst happened or discarded if it didn’t.

“Thought you’d already read that one,” Barnes said by way of breaking the quiet. This was often how it was after a mission, by unspoken understanding; conversation carved deliberately out of the soft, the easy, questions neatly avoiding the state of the world or the work.

“If one cannot enjoy reading a book over and over again, there is no use in reading it at all.” Wilde replied. Truth was, between the enforced waiting between missions and the inescapable breakdown of the global market, books he hadn’t read were becoming harder to find.

Barnes gave a non-committal grunt that said he didn’t know the feeling.

Wilde opened the Campbell. He genuinely tried to read, but like bubbles in a glass, his eyes rose off the page and over the top of the book. He enjoyed this one, truly, but a fictional romance held slightly less fascination for him than the reality of the one relaxing in his sitting room.

Barnes reached out with the hand that wasn’t holding the whisky, and without taking his eyes from the fire, gave the back of Carter’s neck a squeeze; strong grip working into the muscle. Carter’s tune transformed into a low hum of pleasure, hands briefly stilling on his tools.

It’s been almost a year and they still can’t bear to take their hands off each other, Wilde thought bemusedly.

This had been the last thing he’d expected when he’d paired them up together. He had honestly been worried they would both crack after the first quarantine, and either quit or demand someone new to work with. At the very least after the umpteenth round of spending a week in a small room together, Wilde thought they’d want a little space. But here they were.

Wilde felt a strange pulse of guilt. If either one of them died whilst out on a mission- he snapped his eyes back to the book. It was a harsh world. As their handler, it could only be viewed as a good thing that they had become, well, devoted to one another. A strategic benefit, he said to himself, wanting ardently to believe it.

Wilde turned a page without having read a word on it.

“Hey sailor,” Carter said softly. He’d finished repairing his thieves’ tools and was pulling out a weapon-care kit. “Grab your sword, I’ll do her first.”

Wilde fought to keep his eyebrows level as Barnes fetched and handed his sword over to Carter. “Use my whetstone; don’t think yours is quite up to the task.” Barnes settled back in his chair, looking like a man without a care in the world.

Wilde swallowed. They really did feel safe here, safe with one another. If only they all could just… stay here. Hope that the war would not come to their doorstep. If only they could be left in peace, if only there was no threat eating away at the world. If there wasn’t a job to do, Wilde felt like he could just stay here; with these two, and the locals, and be happy.

He could put it all down. And Zolf would be there too.

His dreams used to be much bigger than a life of relative safety and obscurity in a tiny Japanese backwater, but the looming decay of a previously ordered world had a way of shifting priorities.

Carter eventually finished his chores, and then successfully watched the fire for three whole quiet minutes before announcing he was going to the kitchen.

“Don’t be a pest,” Barnes said in a well-practised farewell. “When you come back, I’ve got some shirts that need mendin’ too.”

Carter blew air through his teeth. “I’m not your valet, Barnes,” he replied, and Barnes just raised an eyebrow at him. Walking out, Carter muttered something under his breath about buttons that didn’t even get used.

“If you’ve got anythin’ that needs repairing, I’d get Carter to do it to,” Barnes offered, secure that Carter’s departing comments in no way reflected his actual intentions. “He’s a fair hand with a needle.”

Wilde smiled knowingly as he shook his head, and without conscious thought, a question popped out of his mouth.

“How did you two… happen?”

Barnes looked surprised at the question. Not that he felt it inappropriate, Barnes just wasn’t used to Wilde being confused about the obvious. “Well,” he said, brow furrowed as he tried to figure out how to phrase it. “He just needs a firm hand on the rein, y’know. Didn’ take us long to figure out I could be that for ‘im.”

The noise that Carter had made as he came, muffled in said firm hand, was still remarkably fresh in Wilde’s memory. The sound flashed through his mind as if to punctuate Barnes’ comment.

Barnes must have seen the brief rise of heat in Wilde’s cheeks, because his next comment, mildly spoken, was, “You interested in joining us, Wilde?” When Wilde’s only response was a raised brow, Barnes continued. “I don’t mind sharin’.”

Wilde leant back in his chair, considering this surprise twist of in the conversation. It had been quite some time since he’d been openly propositioned, and despite the languid set of his body, he felt his heartbeat speed up and a slight blush heat his cheeks. A younger Wilde, an unshackled Wilde, would have said yes in an instant. He’s fallen into bed with someone, or someones, for less.

Wilde briefly allowed the beast that was his imagination off-leash. He saw himself, besieged with pleasure. Bodies surrounding him, hands and lips on him, stuffed at both ends, absolutely overwhelmed, worshipped, had.

It was a very nice thought.

But it was more complicated now, without his magic. It wasn’t that he felt shy, or that he thought either of his co-conspirators would react poorly to his… unconventional physiology. It was just that sex for the younger version of Wilde didn’t used to be so revealing. It used to be something he could just fold into his performance persona, slide straight from stage to bed without having to play a single open card.

Skies above, Wilde missed those days. He investigated his drink, calm face hiding the stream of images bubbling through his mind. Somewhere amongst the tantalising and lascivious, were the complex and confusing. Barnes and Carter fucking in the cell downstairs, the very same one where Wilde had been pushed to let Zolf in on a secret truth. An expression of conflicted desire on Zolf’s face.

Wilde couldn’t sort those images into a cohesive narrative, so he put them aside with a dark, self-deprecating chuckle. “I thank you, but no. I was merely seeking satisfaction for my curiosity.”

Barnes nodded, unruffled. Wilde had seen the man fight and had heard him fuck. He knew the energy, the potential Barnes contained, and yet in conversation he was such a mild creature. He was a contradiction. It was almost as though he saved up all that vitality, that power, for when it was needed the most. The rest of the time he simply… switched it off.

Wilde pulled his mind back to business with a sigh, “Besides, if we don’t hear from Zolf in about twelve hours, I’m sorry to say you two will be heading out again. It’s a short turnaround, I know. You should spend it together.”

“For sure, I wouldn’t mind a sleep in a proper bed for one.” With that, the two lapsed back into a comfortable silence.

When Carter returned from the kitchen, he had a bottle of sake and a bunch of grapes. He came up behind Barnes, dangling both his prizes into the seated man’s eyeline.

“C’mon, sailor. Let’s get out of Oscar’s hair.”

Barnes smiled slowly, making deliberate eye contact with Wilde. He wasn’t the sort to waggle his eyebrows or leer, but his gaze communicated last chance, offer still stands, as clear as a sunny day.

With a small smile, Wilde waved them off. There was something like envy bubbling in his chest, over the ease which Barnes and Carter shared with each other.

He sighed and picked up his book.

#pspsps come and get it #hank writes #strange company #zoscar #zolfwilde #rusty quill fan fic #rusty quill gaming #rqg #zolf smith #rqg oscar wilde

[queernuck]

Who Is Mayor Pete?

an interesting phenomena surrounding that post that criticizes the supposed homophobia of backlash to Mayor Pete on grounds of how difficult it is to read him as gay, how much he comes across specifically as an assimilationist, as an example of what exactly many of us hate seeing in that community, is that there is a certain way that it resonated with TERFs which I think is important to consider. it taps into a great deal of rhetoric around the way that transmisogynist violence is enacted, how the creation of hostility in communities to ideas of queerness, faggy-ness, how the sanitization and creation of a fetishized notion of butch/femme culture has been a project of so many TERFs unfortunately, the way all of these converge into the yearning for the exact image that Mayor Pete fits: one of an incredibly assimilated, boring figure which refuses typical libidinal flows, who almost reads with a kind of sexlessness that dovetails quite nicely into the sort of policy goals that he most typically holds.

while discussing him as a Republican is perhaps not quite accurate, the way in which he is reminiscent of a recent letter to the editor where a gay man talked about how the transition from Obama to Trump impacted him little but a transition to Sanders (he fears) would ruin him due to his career as an investment banker, Buttigieg typefies this idea, the archetype of the successful gay man who has rejected all of these signifiers of gayness, who has divided himself cleanly from any kind of notion of “queerness”, of faggish tendencies, who almost more closely resembles an embodiment of the sterility and structural prescriptivism that “homosexual” would imply. He is not violating any sort of taboo except insofar as his violation thereof affirms the mirrored process: in becoming-gay, Mayor Pete does such in a way that affirms the mirroring of that process in the dominant subject, is part of a series of desiring-machines through which the libidinal flows of numerous Democrat voters may be actualized. For many, the idea of Mayor Pete as Their Gay Son is a kind of fantasy, a point in the questioning of why their own children cannot manage to just be “normal”, cannot have jobs in finance or join Naval Intelligence or become mayor of South Bend.

There are many men that outwardly appear like Mayor Pete out there, and I can hardly blame them. However, just as Mayor Pete is not Pete Buttigieg, is rather a kind of second-order simulacra intended to relate to other candidates and to voters in a certain fashion, they resemble him only in that they have these rather carefully constructed personae which they use in order to gain the advantages that apparent assimilation brings with it. In their real lives they may be fathers and husbands and have relatively normal, “basic” tastes but at the very least, if they are sexually active even with only a single partner, they violate at least some kind of taboo and become an unsuitable subject. The hate the sin love the sinner ideology is very much prevalent in ideas of even a married gay couple, where the idea of two men being married to one another and having a happy, fulfilling sexual relationship is itself revolting. 

When one throws in various different scenes and communities such as PNP/Chemsex, leather, even simply going out to the wrong sorts of parties or gay bars, and what is seen as a kind of salacious and enticing possibility for heterosexuality is now a condemnation, is too much for being a violation of far too many taboos at once. That some gay men have open marriages is an indication of degeneracy. This is true, as well, for many trans women: simply enjoying sex, having sexual partners, is seen as a sort of unsuitable deviance, as part of an inherently sexual identity and moreover the reduction of trans women to fetishes, the notion that we cannot exist at all except while evoking kink, that us, gay men, lesbians, bisexuals are all constantly evoking sexuality through mere existence even when heterosexual identities are allowed to imply or mimic our own while being outwardly validated, being understood as separated from these behaviors.

A comment that particularly sticks with me from this cursory (but rather unsurprising) investigation of transmisogynists getting angry about the idea that Pete isn’t Queer Enough is an insistence that one does not want to share community with “the BTQ, you are freaky and not in a good way” as one person put it. Going beyond the usual “drop the T” rhetoric, the concentration on just lesbian and gay identities is a kind of reactionary turn toward using taxonomy and ideological fetishism to create notions of what our community should be rather than looking at who it has been, who we have found solidarity with, and moreover why this solidarity is so important. The way in which Mayor Pete most openly seems a figure of heteronormativity is not in being happily married, especially given that so many happy marriages and engagements I know of consist of two people who would be marked deviant just by their identification. It lies, rather, in the same kind of turn of separation and separatism that so many transmisogynists generally and TERFs more specifically accept as part of their ideological positioning, are eager to use as part of maneuvering into a position of accomplishing the most important parts of their ideology. 

The reactionary red-brown alliances one sees TERFs willing to make (that is, if they were even really all that red to start with) are hardly accidental, and do little to advance the causes they supposedly stand for except through empty signification of a progressive simulacra of the reactionary ideology they support. The aforementioned discussion of a sort of fetishization of butch/femme identity is the means by which reference to an imagined past, one which includes these roles and imagines lesbian bars, spaces, identities is so often cleansed of any meaningful history, any connection to radical politics beyond being left-wing by the liberal standards of the current Democratic party, any kind of actual look at how and why communities of LGBT commonality were formed and realized and lived and continued and developed to this day, is used as a means of recapture for transmasc identity in order to affirm the biological determinism that their ideology necessitates. This turn is used to insist on trans men as something lesser, something denatured and not to be understood as a “man” while trans women are absolutely, ontologically men in a sense that can never be changed, that persists as the kind of marker which ignores any experience of transness in order to instead whip up a false frenzy of ideological maneuvering against vulnerable women. The conservatism of clinging to particularities of past expressions of “butch” and “femme” rather than looking at how they deride current and contemporary communities which contain plenty of butches and femmes, which contain other expressions of gendered performativity, which navigate the tensions of the sexed body through these performative creations of identification and shared space within, and most of all how many of these spaces are ones where liberation is seen as shared, as including justice on grounds of fighting antiblackness, supporting antiracism, intensely personal accounts of anti-antisemitism and anti-Islamophobia and anti-Xenophobia action, a paradigmatic antifascism, opposition to colonialism, a philosophy of anticapitalism, how vital the turn against assimilation therefore is, that the idea of assimilation as a whole involves abandonment of these ideals and instead an acceptance of the very structures that Mayor Pete most ardently advocates for, is what makes him so frustrating.

His prominence is defined so much by his assimilationism not because he is a relatively boring person with a husband. That describes plenty of people who still at least passingly validate the necessity of how LGBT histories involve anticapitalist struggles, who may themselves hold these views. There have always been people like Mayor Pete: they were the landlords driving up rent in Greenwich Village during the AIDS Crisis. They were the ones saying that bills could only pass if they dropped protections for trans people. He is a representation of the way that so many politicians only turned to supporting gay marriage when a certain arbitrary threshold was crossed by public support for the idea. The way that criticism of Mayor Pete as a politician who holds incredibly reactionary views, who has presided over violent police action and brazen codification of antiblackness within police work, who willingly joined a colonial war machine and uses that as part of his sales pitch, one who will defend the interests of capital to his dying breath as part of his campaign, one who somehow manages to propose a more cumbersome healthcare plan than Obama’s ultimately ended up being, this is the kind of candidate we have at hand. 

And he is fucking awful.

#pete Buttigieg #mayor pete

[cavitymagazine]

Haptic Narratives: The Absurdly R EA L Artifacts of Dale Brett / / / [part 2]

[D]: Lately though, most of my influence has come from other forms of media opposed to writing. I have found the more I write, the less I read – at least long form. Music, animated series/films - both Japanese anime and stuff like Adult Swim and internet culture - all of these things come through in my work.

[W]: Music.

[D]: Definitely music. I often try to write with a type of musical style I enjoy in mind. This is, believe it or not, one of the reasons I decided to re-commence writing fiction. I was sick and tired of googling combinations of "vaporwave + fiction + dream" or "shoegaze + literature + drugs" to try and find works that fit a certain aesthetic that did not exist. So why not create them myself? For instance, ambient and to a lesser extent dreampunk, would be the genres I was trying to build on in Faceless in Nippon. With Ultraviolet Torus it is no secret that it is my shoegaze project. As you know with our mall collaboration [cloud mall and maze/mall], this will be vaporwave-heavy in aesthetic and theme. I think these musical styles also take me right back to the original interests that I have garnered from literature: how to feel and express oneself in light of the consumerist dream, how to find meaning in the face of a constant blurring reality. I want to produce words that create a sensory experience. Words to touch your skin, words to make you see refracted colours, words to make you realise life sucks but it's all okay.

[W]: Aesthetics are important to me as well. The depth of the surface. The synthetic, simulacra. I suspect any "honest" portrayal of our day-to-day life, even a so-called "realist" presentation, would be sci-fi, at least in part. The kitchen-sink realism of today would include game realities and all sorts of "tropes" – or what one used to call tropes – of sci-fi. DeLillo’s White Noise is a big work for me, related to some of the consumerist themes. The three layers you refer to are impressive – you've put a lot of thought into where your work comes from, what it's shaped by. I've never thought in those terms really. Although "Pessoan cyberpunk nihilism" as a blurb would have me buying whatever that book is. Abe's The Box Man - I read that in I think 2015 or so. I see Abe's tone in some of your prose. That is a hard tone to tap. It's soft and dislocated. Requires a gentle hand, and a kind of amorphous thought process. In recent years I've taken influence more from video games and commercials and music than anything textual. I assumed your influences now were primarily visual. Graphic novels, anime, bad TV movies - I cull more from kitsch than I do from literature now. Would you tell me a bit about your time in Japan? And how would you describe Faceless in Nippon to a reader who knows literally nothing about it?

[W]: I relate very hard to your not being able to google, say, "vaporwave + dream + fiction" and get a hit. You had to create your hits. I feel the same way. It's like I want "Borges + USA Up All Night" or something similarly niche and not-quite-available-elsewhere. The established subgenres you mention, like dreampunk, are still these largely unexplored parks of the mind. There aren't a whole lot of titles. Do you view Faceless in Nippon as your first book and Ultraviolet Torus as a sophomore effort?

[W]: One aspect of your work that struck me right away is its sensory nature, and its desire to make complex emotions like melancholy or lostness more tangible or tactile.

[Ed.:  racetams with caffeine are ingested.]

[D]: I really like your description – “the depth of the surface.” This really fits what I’m trying to achieve with writing. I try to attain a certain sensory experience with abstract imagery, but endeavor to maintain a somewhat conventional narrative or “everyday” story underneath. For instance, Faceless in Nippon was always meant to mimic the feeling of floating in/on water, gently bobbing through society’s ambient capitalist waters attempting to find a purpose. This incorporeal imagery juxtaposed with the more straightforward vignette format and story arc of a young western male living abroad. With Ultraviolet Torus, the prose and format are more unconventional – it was designed to mimic gemstone/mineral structure and shoegaze music, with the narrative underpinning the imagery taking the form of the rise and fall of a standard relationship. I agree that even a “realist” presentation is somewhat sci-fi these days – it is unavoidable. Our friend, contemporary, and collaborator James Krendel-Clark and I have often spoken about how the only thing left for sci-fi is this almost meta-sci-fi angle, where all the tropes have become so cliché and ingrained that really any attempt at sincere “world building” is futile. It’s better to experiment in syntax and delve into what another contemporary of ours, Nick Greer, likes to call “hyper-genre”. Use the tropes, but explore them linguistically, see what they do for the reader sensorily, opposed to using them as the building blocks to create another mundane genre narrative. I have certainly done that in shorter form through the Concentric Circuits: CODA stuff on Surfaces. I think my sci-fi influence comes through in both Faceless in Nippon and Ultraviolet Torus, certainly in the way that I frame the setting or landscape as a character almost, similar to how Ballard and Gibson craft their prose. I have had a lot of time to think about the aforementioned literary influences. I am slightly OCD too, so I often create these massive lists and Venn diagrams and shit of artists/works with certain styles and aesthetics that overlap. I do like to think of myself as a modern-day Walter Benjamin in the way I compile notes and lists and memories that form the basis of my artistic and existential exploration. I think Benjamin would have had a hell of a time with the notes app of a smart phone.

[D]: Regarding Kobo Abe, you are correct, certainly not an easy tone to master, and one that I definitely have not. My writing is not as sound as a master like Abe, which I think is why I subconsciously fall back on the sci-fi landscape syntax/prose mentioned above and the more colloquial twenty-first century alt-lit style to strive forward in my work. I am still developing though, and hopefully, opposed to just replicating Abe’s tone, one day I will be in a position where people are speaking about a tone entirely of my own that others will use as an influence. Abe is also a good segue into other forms of media that influence written work, as he has often been an inspiration to artist’s in the visual field such as filmmakers and video game creators. It is no secret that he is Hideo Kojima’s favorite author.

[D]: Since re-commencing my fiction-writing, which was at the beginning of 2019, you are accurate in your inference that I have primarily relied on other forms of media to influence my work. I have barely read any novels at all in the last couple of years comparative to the previous decade of reading. I garner much more from music, anime, and internet culture these days. I am glad you brought up the influence of commercials – I think we certainly share an avid interest in exploring the consumerist sphere and its effects on art and society. There are a number of important moments in Faceless in Nippon dealing with commercials, products, stores and their underrated aura. Hell, I even created fictional beverages and advertisements for the book.

[D]: My time in Japan was an incredibly formative experience for me. I really only returned to my home country, Australia, when my wife became pregnant. Otherwise I would probably still be there, cruising around upper-class malls, lower-class malls, drinking massive cans of Asahi on the train, staring at LED signs from concrete overpasses at night interminably. I certainly still yearn for my time there. I did go back to visit friends recently and it was a strange experience, like I could not re-create the feelings of my time there in the past no matter how hard I strived. It became apparent that my yearnings were purely for a time in my life while stationed there, opposed to the setting itself.

[D]: I would describe Faceless in Nippon as a meditative, aqueous travelogue on what it means to exist as a middle-class person in the twenty first century, the entirety of which is set in urban Japan.

[D]: I really admire artists that have an unmistakable aesthetic stamp on their work. Auteurship, if you will. For what it’s worth, I think you are one of the few that has a singular, univocal voice in the online “outsider” lit community or whatever you want to call it. I would like to think mine is the same. That people will read it and go, “Oh fuck, that’s Dale alright.” I have been told before that my work reads like MDMA. I am exceedingly happy with that comparison. I would be pleased if that was how I was known as an artist after my “career” or whatever you want to call it is over. Basically, I want to create things that are uniquely my own, things that have not been attempted before. Another reason I think that you and I gel well together as creatives is that despite our many differences in aesthetics, we are enamored by the depth of so-called low culture and continually mash it together with the supposed “high culture” of literature. 

The "Borges + USA Up All Night" example illustrates this perfectly.

[D]: Both Faceless in Nippon and Ultraviolet Torus will be available at similar times. However, there is no doubt that Faceless is my first book. It is the first thing I started working on when I didn’t know it was going to be what it became. Torus was a more experimental foray into the literary field. I compiled Torus, an exploration of gemstone and dream imagery, between drafts of Faceless. I was particularly taken by crystals, shoegaze, and giddiness over my interactions with some beautiful people on the internet at the time. It proved to be a fruitful break from Faceless rewrites, as not only did I let the novel marinate and become better before publishing it, I also gave birth to another creative treasure.

[D]: Making emotive words tactile, rendering the textually intangible tangible. This is something I want to see extended even further as we continue collaborating on our mall project. I want to delicately wrench the phaser knob on these effects and really see where we can go with our adventures in the literary sensorium.

[W]: I remember you saying you wanted Faceless in Nippon to "feel like floating in water." It made me think of a novel as a kind of sensory deprivation tank, the floating and the effects. Did you think of Ultraviolet Torus as a gem, in the abstract, or was the structuring of it more precisely gemlike? James [Krendel-Clark] and I wrote the rough draft of this Blanchot-bodyhorror, broken-videogame-reality novel called Cenotaph, and much of it deals with irrational spaces and Phildickian pulp. As far as sci-fi goes, the more subjective my take, the more "sci-fi" it seems to become. Just last night I drifted between three realities - one in which I was an unemployed writer living under Covid-19, one in which I destroyed an organic ship/braincraft with a cyber-tank, and another where I trained as a druid mage in a treacherous cursed desert. Of course these last two were games and that doesn't even entail any other branching realities that came about as well with regard to books, narratives, televisual influences, lies we tell ourselves, 5G brain-attacking waves, et al. It's late and I'm stoned and tired but yeah. Nick Greer is a fascinating individual. I didn't know you knew him. We spoke about set theory once. Gödel. I read very little, yeah. Or I should say I don't sit and read a physical book as often as I used to. I read rigorously for a good 20 years. If I'm awake enough to read, I usually would want to spend that time writing, or perhaps gaming. Or dreaming. All of these beats - the fictional beverages and ads and playing metafictionally with products and whatnot - I kind of live for that shit. I do that more and more. And it's not even a critique or any kind of satire of it for me - like the low-rez haze of 1-900 commercials was a fuzzy heaven in a box for me as a kid. The K-Mart cafeteria did possess a unique and strange power. I think we're kind of on the same page here as far as we share a kind of reverence for the artificial, the things rendered meaningless through mass production, and other similar slippery intangibles. There is a wonder here that sets it apart from, say, a satirical/scathing view of consumerist life. God, yeah, your experience in Japan. I think I've experienced similar stuff. I remember a time in 2000 when Boca Raton, Florida, was kind of magical for me. I went there a few years back; it's just any place now. Such a strange thing. And sad too. This is the only kind of interview I'd conduct, one with a writer whose work I think truly good. You might've remarked upon the melancholic allure of vending machines coding out at night. Or something similar. It's that sort of sentiment I recognized straightaway as what I consider tuned-in to a cryptic aesthetic I love. I was relieved to discover your wordcraft was honed – that's usually the big problem for me liking someone's work. One of the big draws for me about your work is the stuff you're able to do that I really dig but am not really suited to pull off myself, such as the MDMA vibe, or the ennui mixed with light, hope, etc. There are a dozen or so singular voices around in the online outsider-lit community/whatever, voices I'd consider distinctive: you, Clark, Elytron Frass, Durban Moffer – a few others.

[W]: Your themes I would say demand nuance and control. We've talked about how our mall project is slow-going because it seems very painstaking, almost like etching or surgery or something. Introspective, in any case. Although I just sort of dismissed reading a second ago, I do believe that a unique body of work is made unique by a dizzying variety of blendered influences. I had that 15-year stretch in the suffering cubes to read pretty much constantly, and haphazardly, as far as selection, in a lot of ways, so my influence map is like really fucking bizarre and extensive, which I think makes my stuff appear unique, when all that is unique about it probably is my little perspective or whatever subjectivity is injected into this array of eclectic influences.

[nihilisticlinguistics]

nott & the assembly

you know what actually, I see why Matt wrote up the possibility of meeting Oremid Hass for his Harvest Close prep--

because one member of the party explicitly expressed interest in /that sort of stuff/ vis-a-vis Cerberus Assembly back in episode 11. 

Namely, Nott inquired after how Pumat Sol came to have so many doubles, specifically asking if he did that, or if it was an accident, or what. Pumat explained that he does favors for the Cerberus Assembly and they made the simulacra. Nott verified that if someone were interested in that kind of magical power, then Pumat could not provide it, but the Cerberus Assembly could.

Now, from Matt’s notes we know that Pumat’s contact in the Assembly is Oremid Hass. From Caleb’s reaction to Hass in the Victory Pit we know that he is familiar with him, even if he doesn’t know him outright. 

We also know that Nott knows Doolan Tversky of the Cerberus Assembly in some capacity--when she was asking about someone with a similar name, she said she ‘had something of his,’ but there’s no knowing how much of that statement is true, only that she knows the name somehow.

what does all this mean, you ask?

well, in hindsight, it seems clear to me that Nott was asking Pumat about high-level magic, like the simulacra, because she saw an opportunity to be turned into a halfling (Pumat sells his magical ability, so at first I think perhaps she was planning to pay him to Polymorph her until she learned he’s not at that level of power). When he told her about the Assembly, Sam’s expression looks so intent on what’s happening. He keeps fishing for more information, learning that it’s possible, with enough friendship/positive encounters, to get the same kind of favors (Pumat specifically references Nott acquiring her own simulacrum, but she doesn’t actually refer to that, only to high-level magic), and where to find the local member of the Assembly, who runs the Hall of Erudition.

So we have Nott expressing interest in the Assembly Member in the Hall of Erudition (we had not yet heard the name Oremid Hass). 

One episode later, we see Hass (and Ikithon) in action, though we still don’t know it’s them, and shortly after that the party acquires the Beacon, which they know is wanted by the powerful mages of the Empire.

Matt handed Nott a bargaining chip.

Caleb was afraid of the Beacon and afraid of what the Empire’s most powerful mages would do to anyone who had it, especially if it was found in his possession. But if Caleb hadn’t been so protective of it--if he allowed the party to turn it over to the Hall of Erudition--

well, as we saw in Matt’s notes, the Beacon could earn them a favor. And Hass seemed interested in “civilizing the more volatile races,” according to his little dialogue tree that focused on Nott.

If they’d gone to the Hall of Erudition instead of the festival that day, Nott might already be a halfling.

But of course, Caleb would never have allowed it. We all know he’d rather run in the dead of night than come into contact with members of the Assembly. The Hall of Erudition was almost not an option at all--but Matt’s been giving Sam these little points of access over and over.

Because Nott does, in some way or another, know about Doolan Tversky, archmage of dysology. We don’t know how, we just know that she knows his name. We don’t know what kind of contact they had, but there’s no way that’s coincidental.

Because so far Matt’s thrown three members of the Assembly in Nott’s direction. Tversky, from her backstory; Hass, who could offer her a ‘favor’ in exchange for the Beacon, and Lady Vess DeRogna, who has been working with Nott’s husband for weeks if not months. 

Now, once is interesting, if not particularly noteworthy. Twice is a coincidence. Three times is a pattern. 

And when these archmages come up, Caleb shuts down all possibility of interacting with them. Steers the party away from exploring these paths. For good reason, of course, but still, his fears are explicitly and diametrically opposed to what Nott wants. Matt’s been building up opportunities for friction between the two of them since day one (or at least since giving Sam the name Doolan Tversky)

I am, however, desperate to know why and how Nott knows or knows of Tversky, since she seemed surprised to hear that he was a member of the Cerberus Assembly. Did she seek out a powerful mage to change her back at some point? was Tversky involved in Yeza’s alchemy, which led to Vess’s experiments with the Beacon in the Brenatto basement? Did Nott just so happen to cross paths with one of the most powerful mages in the Empire, and if so, does she really have something of his?

She lied, way back in the beginning of the campaign, and said that “no one is after me.” and Sam deflected the “who” when asked, saying it’s dangerous to be a goblin, but what if that’s not the case? what if the “who” is Tversky, and Nott took something that belonged to him? before becoming a goblin, or after? We know she wants to avoid him, but we don’t know why. 

in sum: Nott has been linked with the Cerberus Assembly three times now, and I want so badly to know what that means. because what the Fuck happened with Tversky?

#critical role #cr spoilers #critical role spoilers #i was rewatching zemnian nights and nott started asking pumat some Specific Questions and i had to write things

[diarrheaworldstarhiphop]

How big is the average Canadian into the Royal Family? Is having Royal or Crown in government named things embraced?

Edit: jesus christ i accidentally stream of thought effortposted againyounger than 50, they dont give a shit. It’s been semi-systematically programmed out of the younger generations, as well as like, just the closer relationship to the USA now and the adoption of the post-national globalist state model that Canada can’t shut the fuck up about in bragging of in absence of any ties to our past. Unless, of course, you are Quebecois or a maritimer. The former, cus duh and the latter because significantly economically depressed regions have an uncanny habit of preserving regional identity.

The conservatives in this country used to be queen and country traditional styled anglophiles but since the 80s, the neoliberal platform (see: alberta) has completely subsumed that faction into becoming generic low taxes capitalist whigs in the style of the American Democrat party. They embrace the immigration and trade policies as we have it because, like the liberals of this country, they are the Fortress Calgary to the Fortress Toronto of the Grits in wanting to become a “super power” in that one sole tradition that Canada still maintains itself, which is the inferiority complex it has with the United States. Canada wants a significantly larger population so it can, in theory, accrue global power and prestige. It’s literally that shallow.

The long time nationalist forces that wanted to break from Britain in search of independence have won. They have the power, the money and the media. Their slow detachment from empire won out, but due to the timing with modernity and frenzied capitalism, we have no distinct culture to speak up aside from icons of consumerism. Tim Hortons, Ketchup Chips, and little red maple leafs on american corporation logos is the new cultural identity. Eat up, citizen.

I am currently living in the era where ive witnessed british arms, british servicemen bars/legions and british goods stores serving an extremely elderly demographic be replaced by japanese stationary stores, modern bars & grills and pho noodle places. My anglophile grandma (see: not the oma) was so distinctly british in her mannerisms and character that she used to have me shop with her in rural Ottawa and flip around the containers to show the english side out because she couldnt contain her disdain for the french, lol. She was the only family member i know who had portraits of the young queen, old queen and other commonwealth/empire memorabilia. That is another uniquely canadian feature of this dominion that is quickly being lost, which is the anglophone vs. francophone dichotomy in this country. The anglophone side has simply ceased to exist, or rather, just become Generic Globalist Consumers with a generically racist right wing that votes Tory. And it wasn’t necessarily something mourned. it just happened as a result of geopolitics, mainly.

Canada is in the process of pivoting toward the west, formerly Europe’s east

This is inevitable because of the collapse in British prestige, the relatively young age of the country and the normalization of Canada’s relationship with the USA culminating with NAFTA, so it can’t be helped. There is literally no political faction in Canada that wants to preserve this sense of identity. As has been the case for a few decades now because people feel its not “our” identity, let alone see it at all. What’s more, they would prefer not to. it feels like reaching into something full of moth balls.

Even Maxime Bernier’s kinda reactionary new Peoples Party is just a generic anti-immigration clone of the Tories.

And describing this cultural identity is not like, going “lmao british people” because it was bigger than that. It is rife with the simulacra that comes from being at the extreme end of a globe spanning maritime empire regarded to be at the time of time. It’s not a British culture, it’s british? It’s the culture that arises from great affinity for a distant mother you miss and try to emulate out of pride for her.

Contemporary conservativism is fundamentally modernist (late 19th century, onward), so it can’t grasp this gilded traditionalism that carries generations and is rooted in Enlightnment. It’s sense of identity is firmly restricted to the want for preserving how it was in the contemporary generation’s youth, which is itself fleeting from the acceleration of technocapital. This sense of identity is intrinsically degenerative because western society ran obsolete, the old aristocracy, it’s values of enlightenment and aristocracy itself almost a century ago. So we are left with a wildly expanded merchant (trade/business) class, the middle class, which has little intrinsic interest other than that of material concern. Conservatism, as opposed to this gilded traditionalism, is lowbrow nostalgia and liberal capitalist. lol

This limit for scope of cultural inheritance is why the conservatives of today were the liberals of two decades ago. In a few decades, the Conservatives will be defending/preserving their nostalgia of shit they tried to prevent today. Whig history, etc etc

Describing this cultural loss is like.. you can’t really look at it in an literally skin deep ethnic lens like in the way the modernist fascists fret, because it was a form of identity that precedes the modern, capital-corroded sense of the cultural. Even superceding that. Britain was a global empire that reached it’s zenith in the twilight of an older sense of identity (nationalism was a new, radical phenomenon then).

The loss of this Britishness in Canada is like the fading warmth from the last touch of a benevolent caretaker who has since passed. You weren’t around to know her when she was a cold, calculating, powerful, feared bitch in in her youth, but what you do remember in fragmented childhood memories is how she was in her elder years, glowing one last time after beating the cancer (nazi reich) afflicting her. But it took the strength out of her and so she quickly expired after that, leaving her children to divvy up, sell and throw away all of her belongings. After all that, all that’s left to you, this generation in the commonwealth, should we actually take care to notice, is that fading warm touch that is deeply of the visceral, the simulacra at this point. Hard to really distinguish what that touch felt like. You try to focus on the warm spot, to conjure her voice in your head and remember at least those stories from beating the cancer or other stories.

But then the contemporary alt-righter thinks he feels it too, so he quickly slaps his hand onto the warm spot and just replaces it with his own warmth. The touch is now completely lost. He doesn’t even realize it.

#effortpost

[heartslogos]

newfragile yellows [451]

“Logically, I know that's a damn big house,” Bull says, leaning back in the sofa and holding the phone as far back as he can. “Get off my kidney.”

“Your kidney’s handled worse,” Dalish says, pointy elbow digging deeper as she leans into the camera’s frame, waving. “Ellana, tell me everything.”

“Anyone die yet?” Skinner asks, shoving Bull’s head to one side so she can get in more.

“Move your head I can’t see the rich person house,” Sera says, shoving Bull’s head down. These guys are going to break his damn neck.

“You’ve seen plenty of rich people’s houses,” Dorian says, “You’ve seen my house. Can I get in the frame yet? Ellana, cough once if you’re still alive. I can’t see you at all because there isn’t enough room for me to get in the shot without one of these hooligans getting rough with me.”

Ellana coughs.

“Anyway,” Bull says, “I know it’s a big house. But somehow your texts make it sound very crowded.”

“You can’t just fit eight elves who are semi-related into one house and expect them to not mingle and cause some casual conflict,” Ellana says. “That said we did decide on ground rules.”

“No killing.”

“Uh.”

“I feel like that one should be unspoken.”

“Well. It remains unspoken. Anyway, we decided that all video calls can only be done in the kitchen. Because the sanctity of the kitchen will protect us from walking in on people having video phone sex. Gross. Keep that shit on audio only in your room people. Yikes.”

“How’s it going so far, anyone quit?”

“Are you settling in okay?”

“How’s Mahanon? Is he still weird?”

“I bet all of them are weird.”

“Are you physically and mentally, as well as emotionally and spiritually, undamaged?” Bull asks.

“Yes, yes, yes, and yes. But you know, having to listen to some of these people I’m distantly related to talk about their lives is like…a mental and spiritual marathon because I can’t believe we share blood. Like. I mean. Did you know Kallian doesn’t like squirrels? Is she insane? What’s she got against squirrels? Also Theron, I love my cousin I do, but he’s a fucking idiot.”

“I am in this room. I am currently attempting to FaceTime my girlfriend.”

“Shut up, Theron. You can’t even fry eggs right. Morrigan tell him that this is why you dumped him.”

“No one puts butter in their eggs, Ellana. And Morrigan didn’t dump me. We have a child together. Your nephew.”

“That’s what you think, you sad, sad man. I feel sorry for my nephew that he doesn’t get real fried eggs, instead he gets your sad pale shadow imitations of them. These simulacra that lack the depth and breadth of substance that would — “

“Focus,” Bull says. “Updates?”

“Oh, right. Well. Neria and Alim are currently having some sort of contest over who gets majority of the time at the training room. Because. You know. Those two are absolute monsters. I say that, but I literally just met Alim for the first time one week ago and Bull, babe? Babe. You know how I love your pecs and your thighs and all that strong person stuff? And I think it’s super impressive and really cool that you can maintain that and also use it in a practical sense that isn’t simply aesthetic?”

“Go on?”

“Do not go on, his ego does not need this.”

“Alim could fold you in half and shot-put you across this entire property in his sleep. Alim is the tallest, most stacked person of my race I’ve ever laid eyes on and I’m kind of scared of him.”

“So…Alim’s winning?”

“Pffft. Hell no, I’m kind of scared of Alim. I am completely accepting of my fear and hind-brain animal instinct to fly in the face of Neria. Neria’s winning by sheer force of personality. Alim’s only in the contest because he’s doing a sit-in. Lyna, that angel, has been bringing him sustenance. Neria permits it because she knows he’s going to crack soon.”

“So does that mean you guys are safe from Neria right now?”

“Mostly,” Ellana says. “It’s only been a week. We need time for the plot to thicken. We’re getting to know each other right now. It’s alright. I like to think we’re mostly pretty chill. No major upsets so far, except me knowing in my heart that I have to take Theron down with everything I have because that heathen isn’t getting this beautiful house.”

“Ellana, can you just chill?”

“No, Theron. I can’t. I cannot just chill. That said? If I end up getting this house? I would absolutely let Morrigan and Kieran stay here for as long as they like and I’m going to make Keiran eggs with butter. Speaking of butter, hey babe, how’s life? I’d say I miss you but that would be admitting weakness and there can be no weakness here. Kallian’s a lawyer and she can smell weakness in the air like the smell of butter frying in the morning — “

“Ellana, I swear to — “

“To what, Theron? Morrigan likes me better anyway.”

“My girlfriend does not like you better than me, the father of her — “

“Alas Theron, this is where I break it to you — “

“Morrigan. Et tu?”

“Is this how it’s going to be every time I try to video call you?” Bull asks.

“Probably,” Ellana says. “Next time I’ll try to see if I can get you a shot of Alim. Maybe he and Neria will have come to terms by then. I really want to get the two of you talking. Apparently Alim lives in the Anderfels? He does something up there and gets paid a decent wage with healthcare. I haven’t the faintest idea what it is. But it’s something. He seems really interesting. Depths upon depths, that one. Right, Theron?”

“What do I have to do to get you to not interrupt my time with my girlfriend and child?”

“Oh, Kieran’s there? Nephew! Baby! Baby! Theron lemme see my baby!”

“Your baby?!? Oh my god, I can’t believe I thought Mahanon was the annoying cousin before this. Bull get your girlfriend under control, please make her miss you so bad that she leaves me alone.”

“Say hi to Morrigan and Kieran for me,” Bull says. “I’ll text Morrigan later about taking him out bird watching.”

“Ellana’s stealing my girl and Bull’s stealing my son? I’m betrayed on all sides.”

#heartsfic #gather your party and venture forth

[eng2100]

the matrix 2 electric boogaloo

Y’all ever heard of too much of a good thing?

Let’s...um, talk about what I liked first?

what i liked

The Wachowskis are guilty of a lot but they aren’t guilty of making the same movie twice. For better or worse, the Matrix Reloaded and Revolutions are...um, different?  I appreciate that the movies go off the rails about the Chosen One stuff with the machines being part of it and umm...it’s cool that Neo isn’t really in the climax of the second one so that Trinity and Morpheus could flex. Some of the new characters are cool, but underutilized, Niobe especially.

They take the Chosen One narrative and twist it sideways which is a cool idea. The fight choreography is tight per the usual. There’s a lot of good reincorporation of imagery in Reloaded re: the idea of cycles, the clock especially. The CGI mostly stands up, but a lot of it ends up looking rubbery and weird. There were multiple moments where I laughed out loud at these movies where I did not mean to and I felt bad about it afterwards. Some of the imagery can be straight up H.R. Geiger-y which is nice (the xenomorph is my girlfriend I love Alien).

matrix reloaded

So let’s say that The Matrix: Reloaded is a movie about determinism, which is basically the philosophy of cause and effect that the past directly leads to the future and there’s an element of immutability to it. The movie opens on a scene that’s chronologically late in the movie’s events where Trinity gets shot, emphasizing that there’s kind of an unbreakable cycle of time and you can’t actually change anything. This is a cool philosophical idea with interesting story leads, but what it amounts to in this movie is that you spend a lot of time going “why are they doing this? when is anything going to actually happen?” and listening to the characters wax philosophical about it in between every action set piece. 

Neo only really does 4 things in this movie that has an over two hour long run time. He finds the Oracle, he finds the Keymaker, he goes to the Source, and he rescues Trinity, and everything else is either beating you over the head with The Theme, or it’s a fight scene. Now, this wouldn’t necessarily be bad if the movie hadn’t spent its entire runtime telling you that Neo has no agency and nothing he does matters-- the choice of saving Zion or saving Trinity could have had genuine weight, but every character treats it like a foregone conclusion-- and if the rest of the movie hadn’t been about Neo’s lack of agency, that could’ve been a sweet moment showing how much Neo cares about Trinity.

Anyways, there’s a lot of other things that are’t good here. The CGI hasn’t aged particularly well in a lot of spots, they don’t lend enough interest to what Agent Smith’s arc even is because he’s also busy talking about determinism. They kind of damsel Trinity, which is annoying. They add a lot of characters that don’t really add anything to the world of the Matrix. The Christian mythology is hamfisted (the Merovingian is named for the protectors of a book (the Keymaker) that led to the location of The Holy Grail (the Source)) and the Jesus imagery associated with Neo has only been outdone by Zac Snyder’s embarrassingly on the nose Man of Steel shots. 

Reloaded sort of “undoes” the entire weight of the first movie because making Neo’s rebellious Chosen One narrative part of the system makes you go “what was the point then?” and not in like, a fun to watch or think about way. Then the movie just sort of ends, and gives you that annoying “to be concluded” tag.

the matrix revolutions

I have to keep talking about themes and philosophy I’m sorry. So a postmodernist daddy named Jean Baudillard wrote a book in 1981 called Simulacra and Simulation, which the Matrix trilogy references many times both by just showing the book and Morpheus line about “The Desert of the Real”. TL;DR the Desert of the Real refers to Baudillard’s critique of postmodernist semiotics in which reality is replaced with shittier symbols of the original thing. Simulacra is his term for signs that have no tangible relation with “the real”, but pretend to. When a lot of simulacra come together, they form a simulation-- and when a lot of simulations get together, we end up with a “virtual reality”; when these simulations become more real than reality and begin to dictate it, we get hyperreality. The entire concept of The Matrix basically owes itself to this theory.

Baudillard actually wasn’t much a fan of the Wachowskis work because he took issue with the Wachowskis drawing such clear lines of distinction between the virtual and the real, and to the Wachowskis credit, they totally abandon that idea in Revolutions by giving Neo like, superpowers in the real world. I suppose the implication is that the virtual is not separate from the real, but more like a “layer” of the real that Neo taps into. That’s what I’m using to justify the superpowers, anyways.

If it seems like I’m rambling about this it’s because I don’t actually have much to say about Revolutions-- it’s...er, fine? It’s a weird ending to it all and it leaves more questions than answers, but I liked watching it marginally better than Reloaded. I mostly wish that it had resolved the series’ questions about free will and determinism, but it really doesn’t-- even Neo’s last lines don’t make sense-- he says it was inevitable, but also that he chose? Am I on fucking crack?

conclusions

I don’t have any! I’m completely boggled by this series. The Matrix 1 really felt like it had something to say, and Matrix 2 felt like it was trying to go somewhere, but then Matrix 3 just kind of happens in a big blur of machine guns and I’m left at the end going ??????????