#BLINDSIGHTED ME.

[night-dark-woods]

ok Exordia review time (not spoiler free!) since i finished it a few days ago. this is long and rambling and unedited.

4/5 i love Seth's writing and im glad they got to play with scifi again BUT i think they needed a better editor OR to split it more cleanly into sections- in one of the interviews they said it was originally a series of novellas each from a single POV, and i think the constraint of that would have made it a much tighter story.

one of the best things about their Destiny lore is how much they do with so little- thinking of this section from the Beyond Light CE:

Disaster at the worksite. Clearly we will not be moving Clarity Control like we did the K1 artifact. It reacted violently to the attempt. I have entered 19 casualties into the log, since 19 engineers from the Hannu team were caught in its reaction...though there were many more than 19 bodies when it was finished. I have sequestered the recordings. Especially the sensorium telemetry. Quite upsetting. Yet I do not believe it was an act of hostility. Even this outburst carried themes of duplication...as if Clarity Control wanted to show it could help me.

which i was originally thinking of as a first run at Blackbird, but i think these may have been simultaneous? i'm not actually sure. i know Exordia was started after the first Baru book was published, but i'm not sure how much lead time there is for the CEs.

or the clarity of Unveiling compared to a lot of what felt like similar ideas that took much longer to get thru in Exordia. primes. pink noise. math. alright lets fucking gooo oh wait. five more pages of ethics first. okay sure i'll do that for ya Seth bc i love your prose. which also. a) conway game of life mentioned!!! b) this part from Exordia made me LOSE MY MIND:

But that was impossible. The whole universe came from the same source: the same designers. I was part of one of them. If I could only remember... We were arguing, I think. Or maybe we were the argument, because gods cannot do things, they can only be them. We were in contest over the morality of infinities: the cardinality of all possible souls measured against the mere infinity of souls to ever be born...

(this is the part from Unveiling, for the optimistically two people who will read this who haven't read Destiny lore):

Once upon a time,* a gardener and a winnower lived** together in a garden.*** * It was once before a time, because time had not yet begun. ** We did not live. We existed as principles of ontological dynamics that emerged from mathematical structures, as bodiless and inevitable as the primes. *** It was the field of possibility that prefigured existence. They existed, because they had to exist. They had no antecedent and no constituents, and there is no instrument of causality by which they could be portioned into components and assigned to some schematic of their origin. If you followed the umbilical of history in search of some ultimate atavistic embryo that became them, you would end your journey marooned here in this garden.

at the same time, idk what i would remove- at very few points was i reading something that dragged, with the exception of spending a LOT of time with Erik and Clayton in the middle (this is when i put the book down for a month and a half or so). and i know so many people were like sickos.jpg about them However their dynamic did sooo little for me and i don't think Rosamaria was given enough time on the page (and i think having her Be the ship was weird- i recognize that Blackbird needs to have a voice to make the plot go, but i don't think this was the best or neatest way to do it, and collapsed a lot of what i found fundamentally so interesting about Blackbird into something akin to a standard scifi Ship AI).

again i think the restriction of each section of the story being from a single POV might have been the restriction needed to end up with a tighter story- at no point were the multiple plot threads & POVs confusing, per say, but i'm not sure what the structure did for the story bc we could switch to whoever could tell us the most about what was happening whenever convenient, instead of having to piece things together from a limited POV. i'm thinking again of the BLCE, this time the part where Clovis is talking about Maya Sundaresh behaving erratically- i'm no Ishtar group expert but i believe we are supposed to put together that these are all different iterations of her from within the garden). oh- i also wonder if Aixue and Chaya are another run at Maya and Chioma to some degree...

anyway. i also think i am also less the target audience for this book because seth loooves their trolley problems and i simply do not have the patience for it! i loved the hard scifi and the first contact aspects and the character work (Seth's character work is, as always, spectacular. their characters always feel deeply real and flawed in very human ways, while still being exaggerated in the ways characters have to be to function as plot fulcrums), but this isnt something like Baru where i can be like yes you should read this to everyone i talk to.

I think the language in the book is DELIGHTFUL, as always, especially how Seth plays with the idea of an alien translator that sometimes can get an English equivalent to something and sometimes can't! i think that's very fun. because it's on my mind bc ive been listening to the Shelved by Genre episodes on it, it makes me think of Book of the New Sun, and how the "translator" figure of G.W. talks about picking words that are close but they aren't being used like we would use them now- e.g. "metal" in BotNS isnt the same thing we think of as metal! its used more broadly! but its close enough in purpose and point to work just fine. the destriers have horns. i need to know if Seth has read these books.

but back to Exordia. here are some specific prose parts i fucking loved.

this part of the full-page loving, detailed, and technical description of 40 alien nukes detonating in atmosphere:

In the band of thickening atmosphere twenty-five to thirty-five kilometers above the Earth, these gamma rays slam into atoms of oxygen and nitrogen, stripping their orbiting electrons. The orphaned electrons hurtle away at 90 percent of lightspeed. They want to go in a straight line, but hold on now, it's not so easy to leave home. Earth's magnetic field bends their course. They begin to spiral down. When an electron moving near lightspeed has to turn, it emits synchrotron radiation. Poison light. And beneath each bomb there are 100,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 electrons swerving at once. The result is a blast of electromagnetic noise. No: not noise. A coherent pulse, spiking and faling in harmony. Shiva's own beat drop on electrical civilization. An EMP.

This part. i love Anna and wish we got more of her.

He gives her back her Glock. She accepts it with resignation. "You'd better get your men ready," she says. "It's going to be bad." "Women too," he says, trying for lightness. "The pilot's a woman. We've got a female forward surgeon, a psyops lead, a linguist- she's pretty badass, ran with SEALs in Afghanistan. And Lt. Gainer, she might have some advice for-" "For what?" Anna says calmly. "Advice for what, Erik? How to get killed in a feminine way?"

Seth has such a good and specific way of writing metaphors. a little bit Douglas Adams:

The upshot is: the air around the engine exhaust beam explodes outward with a sound like a tuning fork hit by a Space Shuttle launch. Lung-jellying power. Anything in the beam path suffers the short, severe influence of a needle faster and hotter than a vajra thunderbolt. Anything around the beam eats fireball.

& this part. again. i wish more of the book was Anna and Ssrin's fucked up kismessitude. or whatever.

She slides the barrel of the weapon into the uppermost crater on Ssrin's spine. Slick pain makes Ssrin hiss in psuvoluntary fury: psuvoluntary because it is reflex subject to veto- she could quash it, but the feeling is deliciously wrong, and it is so good to bare her fangs and to unleash that ancient khai instinct of pain-as-motivation. "Questionsss," Ssrin gasps. "I want to know how this story ends." Oh serendura. You'll wish you hadn't asked. You'll wish you'd gone in with your eyes shut and your tongue in your throat so you couldn't smell the poison til it was too late.

which also!!! that's something i love about the Ssrin POV like. Seth is always good at writing aliens and slipping in details that tell us about them. "tongue in your throat" to not smell the poison bc she is a snake alien and smells with her tongue!!! that rules!!!

#bookposting #exordia #this is sooo long sorry #before i reread this i am going to reread blindsight. bc i think a lot of it in in here. #also i cant believe i hadnt even finished exordia when i was writing the gunplay fic. that passage was sitting there waiting for me. #anyway.

[twogaty]

mouse doodles

#two is bug coded to me #gaty is peacock coded #emeraldgate duo #twogaty #blindsighted-art #ash-tg-art

[wiltking]

ive been trying to read more lately + remembered that a while back you posted about peter watts' blindsight and even though im not a scifi reader i picked it up. Holy Shit this book made me feel like i was dying. genuinely it was so jarring in a good way to actually read about characters who are also unconventionally brainweird like me and if anything the transhumanist angle made it so much more rich (SARASTI I CARE YOU….)……as well as the arguments for and against consciousness being shaped by siri's own perspectives on isolation and just generally being an unreliable narrator……….this book filled a hole left by soma (2015). message to the lgbt community please read blindsight. thank you for being a book guy. love and peace

hell yeah. blindsight is my favorite peter watts book but since you are also permanently altered by soma (2015) i miiight nudge you in the direction of his book Starfish. i didnt finish the series, i think the plot is a lot more convoluted, and the character cast might be too unlikable for some people. but the first book in particular just had such good deep ocean stuff that it still has a special place in my mind. also Down by ally blue if you havent read it already (its a deepsea horror with m/m romance). wont be as impactful as blindsight but it scratched my soma itch and ive read it twice. peace and love and maybe a pinch of existential terror <3

#happy to hear you are trying to read more! good luck! #blindsight is essential lgbt reading. just trust me

[soupandsorcery]

have you ever seen a man so beautiful?

#bg3 #bg3 tav #tav #noah oc: cillian #help he's just too pretty #i spent so much time scouring through mods to figure out how to make a tav with body 2 that i like #and he's still too bulky for me but i can live with it #cillian's a bard and he's blind #he 'sees' with blindsight #he's just a quiet sweetheart who wants to make music and also make astarion's pain go away #one of those is easier than the other to accomplish #his class might change if i find something else that i think suits him #but for now he's a music boy

[alex-van-gore]

Some more Sarasti, because… because x) I don’t think he’d logically have long hair what with zero gravity and all, but I’m trained on musical vampires so who can blame me. It was very fun to give him a visor that is all angles. Good luck with that allergy…

#blindsight #firefall #jukka sarasti #fanart #digital art #he scares me I love him #also author if you ever end up seeing my stuff I apologise I think you’re cool and nice thank u for writing fun books #haven’t started echopraxia yet bc my library has me on hold

[mattiebluebird]

siri keeton: hello, my job is to take the jargon spat out by hyperintelligent posthumans and translate it into something that the average person can understand. in order to do this, i must observe, and due to this (and other various traumas in my past) i've developed a set of algorithms to study and mimic human behavior.

everyone, for some reason: you unfeeling monster. you unsentient creature. get out of my fucking sight.

#listen siri is a weird guy and a bit of a creep and a reddit atheist but he did NOT deserve the level of dehumanization he faced #remember when they were like 'wow these aliens r intelligent but not sentient. they have no empathy or sense of self. sound like anyone we #know?' WHAT THE FUCK. #or when siri got brutally mauled by jukka just so he could make a Point/traumatize the poor guy into having an Epiphany. and pretty much no #one gave a fuck. #pour one out for szpindel pretty much the only character that treated siri like a human #ALSO when his gf was like 'hey what if i just CHANGED YOUR BRAIN CHEMISTRY A BIT' #and siri understandably said 'no thank you that feels like manipulation to me' and she had a fit #siri keeton #blindsight #blindsight peter watts #firefall #firefall peter watts #jukka sarasti #or his MOTHER. good god #they legit treat this guy worse than the ACTUAL VAMPIRE

[gaymcwee]

Oh! Super curious, but if you were a Pokemon Trainer what would your battle quotes be? Things like victory, defeat, your Pokemon landing a super effective hit, your Pokemon taking a super effective hit, Pokemon on low HP, Pokemon fainting, low HP victory, stuff like that?

It would start with me saying ‘can we not?’ and end with me on the floor unconscious. Win or loose

Everything in between is me crying

#imagine family guy death pose #I am a lover not a fighter #I would have a gengar tho emotional support ghost #talkin #sorry I’m so late with asks they always blindsight me #asks

[ennuidays]

hate to admit it here but ed bitches make me so mad

#Theyr just fucking annoying like #ooo im so fat ugh i had a yummy treat Oooo i had 500 cals today thays too much ..!!! Why is my hair falling out guys #hate to be this guy but Nobody cares Nobody gives a shit ab ur bmi or how little u ate . idc what ur goal weight is idc how much u weigh rn #on the topic of weight tho Fuuuuck bitches who r like Omg u weigh more than me ...?!? Omg why do i weigh less than u ...!!! #those people r the pieces of garbage who make people have eds anyway #on top of that they dont know basic fucking anatomy that taller + more muscular people weigh more #and trying to explain how muscle mass weighs more than fat just makes them look at u weird #some people just dont understand body type . or how bmi doesnt take anything other than weight and height into account #when there r so many other factors . #ed bitches LOOOVE pretending the only measure for overweightedness is bmi . #i know the point is they have a warped sense of reality But i dont give a shit Theyre stupid and blindsighted by bullshit weight loss propag #<- not finishing thay tag u get it

[automatisma]

Blindsight preliminary assessment so far is...

Physics of space & time, engineering: I sleep

Evolutionary biology: nice

Language and communication: REAL SHIT

#eng #fandomposting #blindsight #which probably tells me that the enjoyment one can derive from the novel is probably tied at least somehow #to how much you're interested/knowledgeable about these subjects #but we'll see what the characters will add to the mix

[i-amarobot]

I read blindsight by Peter watts about a month ago and honestly I am still thinking about it

#i also read the sequal echopraxia but that hasnt massively stayed with me #honestly though blindsight is kinda a difficult book to read (for me at least) just because everything is so alien #but i just keep thinking about it #and the idea that consciousness is maybe something that isnt helping us #i just recommend it to anyone that likes really alien aliens and really alien post humans #and lots of discussion about consciousness #i am not discribing it well #also i recommend it but also you really will need your thinking cap on while you read lol #at least j did

[macbethz]

Still one of my favorite little blindsight details. Lost his pronouns in a tragic gender accident :(

#this whole section of blindsight makes me go insane every time I read it and is also why even tho I would LOVEE to adapt it to film I don’t #know if it would be as effective. bc the whole idea of blindsight is were getting siris translation of events #and I just love love love that they are all incomprehensible to outsiders without him #warlock wartalks

[the20thcenturykid]

one piece? more like mid piece

If this is mid think about how high we can still go! Such opportunity! Sky isn't the limit anymore!

#i had to #but honestly this is kind of true because if one piece is REALLY mid so... im here for whats better #i mean i know a lot of works that concept writing or complexity wise are better than one piece so i know theres a lot of room out there #but here i am coming back to one piece from all of those masterpieces to my comfort zone of safety hope and inspiration #try to take it from Blindsight. I DARE YOU #and for me it's one of rare masterpieces out there #this book is everything but safe place #and i love it #but after long week of work i dont need psychological cosmic horror. i need safe uplifting safe place when i feel like home #imperfect as it is #so yeah i will take that mid so i can venture to projects that can shatter my existence to the core #just to come back to op for sould shattering characters backstory lmao #anyway #yeah #back to ffxiv #one piece

[puncromancer]

personal shit

 but i got laid off last year right before the holidays which is the shittiest time in the world to lay someone off because absolutely nobody hires you at the end of the year because that’d be wild to hire before the new budget and also everyone’s just out for the holidays. My boss was very respectful about it and gave me privacy and like blocked the window to my office with his body so nobody could look and see me crying which was very nice. But the CEO had a stick up his butt about there had always only ever been two IT people before and he felt that having three was a waste of money. Ben the other sysadmin had been with the company (not in IT though another department) for 5 years which left only me on the chopping block. Even though I consistently closed the most tickets and put the most work in. And he said it was nothing about my work and that he’d recommend me to any contact that asked for a sysadmin and he’d be happy to answer any reference calls for me. And honestly a week after new years, i got a very sexy new job making 20k more than i was and doing like 10% of the work? so it worked out very much in my favor but it was a very deeply shameful fact for me that I was unemployed for two months. it felt like i failed my wife and it was awful for my mental health i couldn’t sleep i was straight up hallucinating and had trouble telling what was cooked up by my depression soup brain and what was real. Looking back on it I think I might have schizophrenia or something that emerges due to stress because things were not good during those two months. 

And also the unemployment website said to keep track of all work search activities because they might randomly request a history of your work search activities but to not upload it unless specifically requested. So it was the week of new years and new job postings were still pretty slow so I spent deadass a whole day of 12+ hours making an excel spreadsheet and going back through dice and linkedin and all the other random job applications and documenting every single job I applied for and every interview I went on. There were fucking 500 entries. Not even 2.5 months unemployed and I had 500 work search activities. The minimum to claim unemployment is 3 a week. And I was doing 50 a week (just a cool 17 times more than required) like I was putting the work in on searching for work. It was a major point of pride that I was going so far above and beyond but it also fucked me up that I was putting myself out there so much and not getting any traction. And I remember thinking wow it’d be funny if now that I put all this time into documenting all my work search activities if i would get a job offer because then obviously i wouldn’t claim the unemployment any longer and thus wouldn’t need the list that the work search commission nebulously may or may not ever call for. 

And literally the next day I had an interview go extremely well (all my stories and answers were well honed by the hundred other interviews at this point) and they were in a rush to hire someone by next monday so literally a few hours after the interview they sent me a job offer on like a wednesday and asked if there was anyway to go ahead and do the paperwork and drug test by the end of that week. And I was like well hey i won’t have to interview any more so getting to cancel those freed up my days. So the next day I did all the paperwork online and went in peed in a cup that morning and then had a follow up interview with them that afternoon and they were so impressed that I helped them get this done in their accelerated timeframe that they game me like a $5k raise. I had already signed and submitted the job offer but they voided and sent over one with the increased salary. It’s with an MSP so it’s a company that just does IT for other companies. But it has like the most room for growth possible for someone like me. They have a team of 500k app developers so if i want to start doing that they’ll show me how. But the gig I have right now is a 5 year contract to be the helpdesk guy on site at this union. But we’re outsourcing all the mundane remote helpdesk stuff so I literally just have to do the onsite support but it’s an office of like 20 people. It’s the cushiest gig I’ve ever had. 

First IT job was doing everything for 150 users, then I asked for a raise after 5 years of the same salary and was denied so I moved to that last company and was there for 1 year. It was 250 users that I had to do everything for (that also had a history of ransomware attacks and I overhauled their whole security and then they fucking laid me off that same year wild) but for 10k more. And now it’s 20 people for 20k more. So anyway I’ve been here for a month now. The first couple weeks were really hectic settling in so that’s why I’ve been offline mostly. But incredibly grateful for this opportunity. The whole point of this was to actually say that since I’m working for a union right now the mindsets of my coworkers is such a heelturn than what I’m used to. All my users before have been very entitled old white dudes. So I’m used to having to have them spew random vitriol out of nowhere and having to pretend that their incredibly hurtful words is totally fine. But working for a union is great everyone here is very pro worker. You can leave early if you need to. We were watching a senate hearing and everyone’s rooting for the worker’s rights side and it’s just such a liberating feeling to work somewhere that shares your point of view.

#about me #sorry for the personal dump lmao #anyway stacey watch out since our lives run in parallel don't want you to be blindsighted #long post

[wtwrk]

I have been reading the novel 'Blindsight', by Peter Watts.

#blindsight #this book is so strange #of all the strange things in this novel #this is the thing that has bothered me most #it's good though

[ashydrawsthings]

I really wanted to talk to her.

I just couldn't find an algorithm that fit.

#blindsight #siri keeton #peter watts #fanart #this scene kills me whenever i re-read it #i probably shouldn't relate to siri as a protagonist as much as i do but OH WELL

[hiroshotreplica]

Online tableturf is cool, but I have a hiro themed url and blog i must talk about him being yellow

#im so used to seeing him being blue that this blindsighted me LMAO #image is from the jp splatoon twt acc btw